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So like it is more of a rage blog rather than anything else.
So this is my first RTS game and I've been playing hours upon hours. I've played probably more games than most of the masters people in my division and I can't improve at all.
Nothing
Nada.
Every time I always feel improvement, I lose and lose until I am playing mid/high diamonds again and the cycle continues. I've watched my own replays and the same mistakes are getting repeated again and again with bad scouting/ bad macro.
I've bought myself an TW/KR account and I'm thinking of just simply moving and training on the KR server for one month and see what happens. The thing is I have no friends over there to talk about strategies with so that may be pretty bad...
 
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If it's your first RTS, then high diamond isn't bad at all.
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I'm in mid masters, but the hours I put into the game I feel like is not very productive. I've been at mid masters for uhhhh 4 months?
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You dont suck lol, kind of like an insult to players lower than mid master, I think your just getting behind with the metagame? Perhaps?
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The thing is the time I put into this game is not representative in my ladder rank. I have a 0 bonus pool at all times LOL.
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I don't know if a TW/KR account is going to help...it'll expose you to different styles, for sure, but because you aren't a GM player, you're just going to get placed against people of the same skill...things won't really be ramped up a level.
Improvement is hard once when you get to that mid-master's range. Totally been there.
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If I was actually playing at a mid masters level I wouldn't be too mad but the fact that I keep playing in a cycle of mid-high masters and then mid/high diamonds because of all the losses the other day.
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how many games do you have?
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I doubt that a TW/KR account will help much. At most, you'll just see a different style of play.
The way I went around with practice was by grinding out games with the AI (Green Tea AI or Fyn AI(this doesn't work anymore  )). That AI, even when just set to Medium difficulty, is better than most of the ladder chumps I went up against. I'm in Master league, just to clarify any confusion that the people I face on ladder aren't on the lower spectrum of the ladder.
Or you could just play Brood War. That helped me loads.
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On October 10 2011 09:43 Polar_Nada wrote:
how many games do you have?
4000 Ladder Games of 1v1. I don't know about customs 1v1 yet.
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Lol sounds like me, I just got my carrier (750 wins) I go on huge win streaks, beating low/mid masters, then go on huge losing streaks and play mid/high diamonds and this cycle never ends. I dont know how to improve and be consistent enough to get that promotiong.
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I'm just interested, what race do you play?
Also, do you honestly believe you aren't improving, ie. that your progress is stagnating?
Do you have any idea, whatsoever, what might be holding you back?
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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.
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are you taking active steps to improve certain portions of your gameplay? or are you just grinding out mass ladder games and hoping that the raw playtime alone will keep a constant and steady improvement?
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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.
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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...
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Well, you just identified a few different issues in your gameplay. You are uncertain as to how to concentrate on just one aspect of your game and your desire to win leads you to become overeager.
I think that mass gaming will help you hone your mechanics and you will intuitively be able to draw from that in real-game situations. However, if your goal is to improve and not just 'play', then you must always set goals for yourself. 'I want to win this next game' is not a legitimate goal. Any player who can be honest with themselves and are sincere in their desire to improve should go into every game with a plan.
If you want to force yourself to macro, then play a whole series of games where all you do is concentrate on building armies and improving your economy.
If you want to force yourself to be patient, then play a whole series of games where you cannot move out until you have a certain supply in your army, even if you know you can end the game.
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But the thing is if I just focus on economy and building army, when I go back to the overall game plan, wouldn't my macro be fucked up again? Also, sometimes my macro is insanely good and sometimes it just sucks big ballsacks.
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On October 10 2011 11:23 psp219 wrote:
But the thing is if I just focus on economy and building army, when I go back to the overall game plan, wouldn't my macro be fucked up again? Also, sometimes my macro is insanely good and sometimes it just sucks big ballsacks.
You just sound like a whiner. Instead of sulking and bitching look at your games and figure it out. Nobody here is going to give you a magic answer.
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On October 10 2011 11:34 Just_A_PhasE wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 11:23 psp219 wrote:
But the thing is if I just focus on economy and building army, when I go back to the overall game plan, wouldn't my macro be fucked up again? Also, sometimes my macro is insanely good and sometimes it just sucks big ballsacks. You just sound like a whiner. Instead of sulking and bitching look at your games and figure it out. Nobody here is going to give you a magic answer.
I had done that.. but I'm just looking for better and more efficient ways to improve.
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Have you considered coaching? There are so many great players out there offering advice for (not too much) money. I think in your situation it might actually help. Especially since you are saying you don"t no how to improve certain portions of your gameplay.
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Yeah I've paid over 60-70 dollars for multiple sessions of coaching and I don't feel like it has actually helped me at all.
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On October 10 2011 11:40 psp219 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 11:34 Just_A_PhasE wrote:On October 10 2011 11:23 psp219 wrote:
But the thing is if I just focus on economy and building army, when I go back to the overall game plan, wouldn't my macro be fucked up again? Also, sometimes my macro is insanely good and sometimes it just sucks big ballsacks. You just sound like a whiner. Instead of sulking and bitching look at your games and figure it out. Nobody here is going to give you a magic answer. 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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I'm not saying because of my rank I suck. I'm saying because of my inefficient practice and this weird cycle I suck.
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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!
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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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+ Show Spoiler +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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I think the most important thing to do when you hit a wall is try to figure out what you are trying to do with your games. Ladder isn't going to magically make you a better player by mass gaming(within reason obviously it helps to a point). I really think that you want to have a strategy and a plan when you go into a game on map against a race and also know what types of things he could do to you to make you transition into other things.
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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EPT
