EPTI suck at SC2. - Page 2
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bitter[KALT]
United States138 Posts
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psp219
United States315 Posts
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Just_A_PhasE
United States89 Posts
On October 10 2011 11:40 psp219 wrote: I had done that.. but I'm just looking for better and more efficient ways to improve. But saying "i suck at sc" then saying you are mid masters is a bit annoying. Thats saying a huge percentage of players also suck at sc. Its just like that girl who's smokin hot and complains about how fat she is. I'm not hurt by it, i'm top 8 masters, I just find it annoying. | ||
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psp219
United States315 Posts
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Carapas
Canada242 Posts
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Razith
Canada431 Posts
On October 10 2011 11:05 psp219 wrote: I play terran. I feel that my progress is just going up and back down to the same point and back up to the same point. I think the thing that is holding me back is my decision making. For example, I have 3 bases and he has 2 bases and I don't know why I would attack but I just do it and lose my army and its gg. I can never stay passive and macro and when I move out constantly my small ass terran army just gets destroyed. The thing is I don't know how to actually improve CERTAIN PORTIONS of my gameplay. I'm more of grinding out mass ladder games and hoping that the raw playtime will be constant and steady improvement which I feel is my problem here. I have no idea how to isolate certain portions of my gameplay and practice each part separately. With piano or something like that, I just practice one part but with sc2 everything is always changing... You're right, your decision making abilities is whats lacking. If you are moving out to attack and have no clear reason as to why you are attacking, that's clearly a problem. Up until this point macro and mechanics was enough to beat your opponent, but now you have hit a ceiling where players match you in this skill set, so what is your upper hand? To help your decision making and what you should be doing, think of it like this. Lets take a mirror match up TvT as an example as it'll eliminate the complications of the different race mechanics. Both players start on 1 base and are constantly building SCVs. Both players incomes are growing at the same rate, therefore offering the same players the same amount of capital to invest. Your two decisions basically are: 1) Expand 2) Tech & Army So lets say Player 1 opts to take an expansion, and Player 2 opts to tech to siege tanks. This has created a scenario where temporarily Player 1 is weak, and Player 2 is strong. We know this because if Player 2 is matching his spending with his income, which matches the income of Player 1 as they're both on 1 base, then its impossible for Player 1 to be expanding and teching to siege tanks at the same time. This creates this small window of opportunity where Player 2 has the upper hand. However, once Player 1 recoups that 400 minerals and techs to siege tanks (which he would do immediately after starting his expansion), he is now on par with Player 2 tech wise and is safe. However, now Player 2 is behind as his income is drastically lower than Player 1's. But lets say Player 2 expands right as he moves out to take advantage of this small window, and successfully delays Player 1's expansion by sieging his natural and killing some units, then Player 2 will be ahead as his income has grown faster. While this example is pretty straight forward and simple, it serves the basis for a lot of the decision making in SC2. Factor in other race mechanics, and the normal 'progression' of the game through early, mid, and late game, and the current meta game, you can see that you'll be faced with tons of these decisions all game. Take for example TvZ and you see tons of these windows. Consider marine/tank/medivac vs muta/ling/bane mid game. Zerg takes hatch first, delays speed upgrade + lings to accomplish this. Terran has a window of opportunity, and we see this with bunker rushes and simple marine kiting. Eventually, he gets lings out and gets speed, and the window to do damage with marines has closed. Zerg now has more income than Terran, and has the tech to deal with Terran's current tech. Terran is now on the defensive to match income, and get tech to deal with speedlings, which would be siege tanks. Zerg knows he can now expand, build up his army or tech. Considering the normal pace of the game moves into siege tanks and drops, he knows he'll want to get mutas out to help deal with this. Terran scouts the quick lair tech / spire, and knows that the money couldn't have been spent on lings and banelings, so he can now hit this window before the spire gets up. These are really basic examples in the early game, but they clearly show the types of decision making you have to make when it comes to teching and expanding. Sometimes these are completely overlooked as people are looking for the 'next best build' and follow it so mechanically they don't actually understand what they are achieving. As to how to improve your gameplay, look at your replays and watch for these small windows, and also look for signs or tells that you could scout to know when these windows arise. Did you have MMM + stim going before your Protoss player had collosus out? Attack! Did you let the zerg player mass drones and tech to mutas super early when you had siege tanks and marines? Know its important to scout that tech and to attack before it pops up! Take for example a diamond player whos got awesome macro and awesome execution of builds, but just follows things mechanically. He does a 2 rax expand into 3 siege tank push in a TvZ, designed to have a strong push during the muta tech. However, lets say the zerg player just massed zerglings and baneling instead of teching. The Terran player pushes out and gets destroyed mid field by the zerg player. This puts the zerg player on top although the terran player has awesome mechanics. If the terran player scouted the lack of lair tech/spire, and had siege tanks with siege mode, he could've easily expanded behind his siege tanks and gone really far ahead in macro. But because he's playing so mechanically, and the zerg player knew the painfully obvious 3 tank push build, the zerg player simply just outplayed him. Hope this helps, kind of long winded but I wanted to share as many examples as I could to help you think about other similar ideas. | ||
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slytown
Korea (South)1411 Posts
On October 10 2011 11:47 Carapas wrote: What you've got to remember is that the number of hours doesnt matter. The number of effective training hours is more important. For exemple, these days I have been working on my APM, I know some guys says that it isnt important, but for me it helps me reacting faster and handleling multiple things more efficiently and this way I finally played some known players on ladder. My advice for you is always working on something on your play, if you just play for 10 hours a day and repeat the same errors all over again it doesnt matter the time you put in the game you are going to stagnate! +1 Carapas I'm just a Gold player but I think you can apply a strategy I do in other complex projects like writing a thesis; Attack one little thing at a time. Pick one issue with ur gameplay, say scouting. Focus on ur main build order but add in constant scouting. They say it takes one month of practice everyday to get good at something. Focus on something as specific as scouting all game will probably get fixed in less than a month, but it's a time frame to shoot for. Like Carapas indicated, u need to play consciously and not just walk through a game without pinpointing why you lose and why u win every game. Part of that is watching EVERY REPLAY afterwards and studying those things. I watch almost every replay and I'm just at Gold leaague, where basically my main weakness is speed. | ||
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groms
Canada1017 Posts
This decision making thing is actually a reflection of poor planning. Artosis and Tasteless often talk about great decision making from players in the GSL but I find they often don't mention how that comes about. The reason most players make good decisions is that they: A. Have been in this situation before(this is where mass-gaming can help you) B. They have a road map for every possibility(or at least most). When you have a plan and someone surprises you with some weird build the last thing you want to do in a stressful ladder match is have to make a very hard choice about whether to go all-in or try to macro and transition. You should already know what to do. If you don't know then there is a problem with that. Scout and figure out what he's doing and then make your decision according to your plan. Disclaimer: I'm not that good at this game I'm only a masters toss and I don't get to play that often. I just find that having a good build for each matchup and spawn location with all the branches of my build planned out makes laddering a lot less stressful and a lot easier. | ||
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