|
What happens when you can only play part time but still love the game?
Hey folks, I really enjoy playing SC2 but I don't have all the time in the world to devote to it. So I'm starting a series to show my exploits as I struggle along. I'll be posting my videos to YouTube and I'll be updating this here blog type thing as I go along.
- When you don't have tons of time to practice how do you get better?
- Are there better ways to practice when you can only put in so much time?
What I got figured so far is: A) It really is going to be a longer more tedious learning curve so I might as well enjoy it
B) I know I'll never be pro - and fact is, I'm ok with that
C) I really have fun playing this game even at my level and I want to slowly get better anyway! 
D) I only have so much time to put in
E) I'm not the only one in this situation - there are more people out there like me! If I keep at it even part time - that's still practicing, right? There's got to be other part time SC2ers here at TeamLiquid. What have you experienced? How high can you get eventually? (Any Platinum part timers out there? Masters?  )
I'll be recording the games with live commentary and then I'll also be posting videos looking back over the matches so you guys can see what I'm thinking about and what I think I need to work on (Which I'm pretty sure will be entirely wrong, but hey that's why I'll be posting them... I'm assuming they'll get better eventually, especially as I learn more.)
First I'm just playing the placement matches to see where I end up. Then I'll make some vids looking back over these games to see where I'm at now and what's the next things I should work on to improve. I'm going to assume I'm not the only part timer out there. I love the game and it can be very challenging to learn and get better at when you only have so much time to put into it. So hey, why not have some fun with it?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 13: Hey folks, all the placement matches are up. Now that I've finished up the placement matches I'm starting to look back at them and see just where I'm at and what to start working on first.
[Q] What are the first things us lower leagues should really be working on to get better for the long term? (I'd really appreciate all advice as I'm planning on making practice videos as part of the next wave of my little SC2 Vloging adventure...)
***********************************************************************************************************************************************
Posted so far: (*new videos)
 
|
Good luck bro. I hope you find success.
|
I'm a part time sc2 player, part time student (undergrad...) and mid masters. Honestly I love the game but playing part time gets frustrating. I was high masters but I could not keep up with the level of play. Whenever I don't play for 2-3 consecutive days it feels horrible to play again.
Best tip I can give you is to try to play a bit every day. When I do hw that doesn't require too much focus or just some time-consuming computations I watch some GSL of streams...It's not playing but at least it's educational and entertaining.
Give yourself a goal every time you practice too. Most people find they improve quicker by focusing on something than just playing and working on every time at once. For example one of your key mistakes I saw from your youtube video is to use the side scroller. Use the middle mouse button man! Play with the sensitivity and see what works best for you. You gain so much speed because you don't have to move the curser to the side of the screen and back to the middle. SO stop using it entirely one day, even if you are significantly slower. In the end, you'll gain speed. Also, use your hotkeys! Get used to it and eventually it'll come naturally. But if you don't force yourself to do it and be slower (and lose games) in the process, it'll be really long until you use them.
Good luck! And nice quality of the videos 
|
Watched your first SC2 placement, watched about 20 seconds, hit the subscribe button. This is hilarious...
I'm really liking the videos. Sound quality and video quality is excellent. Good luck on your endeavor to masters(or wherever you want to end up xD).
(BTW, you have an awesome voice.)
|
On December 06 2011 06:26 TheLOLas wrote:
Good luck bro. I hope you find success.
Thanks man! Honestly... I have no idea what I'm going to find.
On December 06 2011 06:41 Steel wrote:
I'm a part time sc2 player, part time student (undergrad...) and mid masters. Honestly I love the game but playing part time gets frustrating. I was high masters but I could not keep up with the level of play. Whenever I don't play for 2-3 consecutive days it feels horrible to play again...
I knew there were more of us! Thanks for posting and for the tips!! (virtual cookie for Steel) I'll admit playing every day is hard to commit too. Couple times a week - a little easier. Once a week - done. I will practice using the middle mouse button... Honestly, I didn't know that it did that... add that to my list. Thanks for the kind words!
On December 06 2011 07:03 Peanutbuttah wrote:
Watched your first SC2 placement, watched about 20 seconds, hit the subscribe button. This is hilarious...
Thanks a lot Peanut (can I call you peanut?) I have no idea where I want to end up. Honestly, I don't know how far I can get. But as far as I see it, might as well have fun while we're on the way.
|
As long as you remember to have fun, sc2 is a great game whatever is your level.
I don't know your personnal situation or how much time you can devote to the game, but it's definetely possible to keep up a decent level (mid master at least) without playing too much.
As long as practice is concerned, I'd work a bit on the, oh so important on TL, mechanics (hotkeys and not scrolling especially) and then chose one or two builds per match up that you enjoy (ie I prefer playing a mass marine style (it works ridiculously well in mid master) than safer and maybe be more efficient styles in TvZ) and play them all the time, so you're able to learn the different reactions to your builds, and being able to defend the 1XX possible all ins/cheese coming at you
But the most important thing is to have fun !
|
Heh, sure, call me Peanut.
If you ever want to play a match with me, my account is SCAXelloS.227 and I'm usually on about an hour every day or so.
And here's a link to a really good guide on how to become better at SC2, the basic mechanics, micro, macro, general strategy and unit composition, all that stuff.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=253300 - [G]%20The%20Starcraft%20Pyramid
|
Good Luck!
I watched your first match. The biggest thing that you can do to improve super quickly from your level is to ONLY use hotkeys to make units, buildings and upgrades. There is a hotkey trainer you can search for in the battlenet custom games. If you do one round of it every time you sit down to play, you will be playing much faster in no time. Make sure you do not cheat and look at the keyboard. In no time, you will feel much more in control of the game.
In game 2 (I just skimmed it) I saw you trying to use control groups, so you already know about them.
If you get placed in bronze, don't be too disappointed -- smashing newbs makes learning the basics more fun.
|
On December 06 2011 09:00 Mr. Black wrote:
If you get placed in bronze, don't be too disappointed -- smashing newbs makes learning the basics more fun.
^ what he said. You will see your improvement most in Bronze because it will get easier much quicker without having too many properly executed cheese builds thrown at you.
|
This is actually really fun to watch, recommend watching one if you have the time
|
On December 06 2011 07:29 sAsImre wrote:
As long as you remember to have fun, sc2 is a great game whatever is your level...
I can't agree more. It's a game! I'm really trying to accept whatever skill level I'm at and not let the losses bother me. Like I mentioned above (somewhere) I'm hopeful to keep a consistent once a week at the minimum and get in more if I can. It's good to hear if we part timers keep playing on some form of regular basis, we can keep at a certain skill level. That's hope for the future right there. Thanks for the tips as well.
On December 06 2011 07:30 Peanutbuttah wrote:
Heh, sure, call me Peanut.
If you ever want to play a match with me... And here's a link to a really good guide on how to become better at SC2, the basic mechanics, micro, macro, general strategy and unit composition, all that stuff...
Thanks Peanut, I'll look you up when I'm online. Thanks for the guide thread! That's awesome! That is exactly the kind of thing I need.
On December 06 2011 09:00 Mr. Black wrote:
I watched your first match. The biggest thing that you can do to improve super quickly from your level is to ONLY use hotkeys to make units, buildings and upgrades. There is a hotkey trainer you can search for in the battlenet custom games...
hmmm, a hot key trainer. Not sure exactly what that will be like but I'm just going to have to check that out. Thanks.
On December 06 2011 11:15 Shortynut wrote:
^ what he said. You will see your improvement most in Bronze because it will get easier much quicker without having too many properly executed cheese builds thrown at you.
Well, we'll see where I start out in! I've been hearing cheeses happen just about at all skill levels?
On December 06 2011 12:02 TBone- wrote:
This is actually really fun to watch, recommend watching one if you have the time
Thanks Tbone.
|
Sorry for the double post here but this is my TL blog newbiness shinning through. When I post more videos, should I update this thread or create a 'new blog entry' in my TL blog? How's that supposed to work?
|
On December 06 2011 13:36 Roshivic wrote:Sorry for the double post here but this is my TL blog newbiness shinning through. When I post more videos, should I update this thread or create a 'new blog entry' in my TL blog? How's that supposed to work?
Just update your opening post, and organize it clearly (the chronology should be visible for everyone's comfort)
|
|
|
Well I got one more video up. I updated the opening post above.
YouTube is giving me trouble uploading the next video, placement match 3. First time it seemed to process completely but then when I went to see if it worked - there was no new video! Now it just seems to freeze while uploading. <sigh> It'll go eventually, sorry for the delay.
On December 06 2011 17:44 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 13:36 Roshivic wrote:Sorry for the double post here but this is my TL blog newbiness shinning through. When I post more videos, should I update this thread or create a 'new blog entry' in my TL blog? How's that supposed to work? Just update your opening post, and organize it clearly (the chronology should be visible for everyone's comfort)
Thanks, I'll give it a go. Open to suggestions if anyone has some ideas or feedback.
On December 06 2011 17:50 Inori wrote:
In case you meant "play with very limited amount of free time", then yeah, I'm playing "part time"... On average I play 3-4 hours/wk and ocasionally don't even log on for months (max was 3,5 month I think). Level is mid masters.. it's not that hard.
Yup, that's what I mean, limited free time. Nice, congrats on maintaining mid masters! Sounds like the game comes pretty natural to you. I think there are a lot of people who can't say that. Good to know the game can get so ingrained that some people can pick it right back up so easily after being away for awhile.
|
So, I just watched the 3rd placement and the second look. Here's what I thought of it.
(pretty big post)
+ Show Spoiler +What I liked:-You pulled off that banshee harass extremely well, killing nearly all of his drones. -You killed off his expansion fairly early in the game. -The 1-1-1 build is amazing and is fine for your level. -You stayed cool throughout the game. Part of the game is not stressing out when something unexpected happens (ie. mutalisks.) Staying calm and collected will help you make rational decisions under stress. What I think you could've improved on:-Shift-Hotkey your command centers together and spam S every so often to make sure you are steadily producing SCVs. -Every so often, energy would build up in your Orbital Command, you should try and be on top of your MULEs/Scans as much as possible. -When you sent your first SCV, you saw that he had expanded before he began building a spawning pool, you should try to expand yourself. Since he didn't have a spawning pool, that would've put you in a great position to expand and wall off your choke point on the low ground since he would have no means to attack you early on. -Transfer SCVs. When you expand somewhere, take a chunk of your SCVs from your main and move them to your expansion. This is so you can saturate both bases quicker. -Your first expansion was late. Other expansions put you even more behind and were going to be killed off anyways simply because you had absolutely no means to defend them other than a few missile turrets. I'm going to quote the starcraft pyramid again. It really is a great learning tool For the most part, I only picked at things that apply to lower leagues. Learning these things will help you become a much better player. + Show Spoiler +The very first fundamental concept behind the best players is economy. This implies constant worker production and taking bases in relation with your worker count (approx. 1 base per 25 workers). The sheer amount of money intake will be the foundation of the rest of your progression in Starcraft 2. Production, production, production. The second brick in the Starcraft Pyramid is making as much “stuff” as you can. The sheer number of units popping out on the map will be enough to win against any player who has not mastered this step. At this step, the type of unit does not matter, as long as you fully utilize your economy with lots and lots of production. It can include army, defense and upgrades, just spend that money!http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=253300 - Here's a page about effectively countering zerg units. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Terran_Unit_Roles_(vs._Zerg)Also, here is a link for a great build order against zerg in general. (liquipedia is AMAZING by the way ) http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mech_(vs._Zerg)
As you said, the guy wasn't even in your league so I wouldn't stress too much about it. You can only get better.
Having said all this, I'm only in platinum, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Aight, well I'm off to bed now. Yawn...
|
Hey folks, placement matches 1-4 are up. pm 5 should be up tomorrow I'm hoping. [Q] Any guesses which league I'm going to end up in? Now that I've finished up the placement matches I'm starting to look back at them and see just where I'm at and what to start working on first. [Q] What are the first things us low lifes leagues should really be working on to get better for the long term? (I'd really appreciate all advice as I'm planning on making practice videos as part of the next wave of my little SC2 Vloging adventure...)
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
