EPTI would like to change this blog post to something that is more past tense, my own experience with Starcraft II, perhaps even something that other people can relate to on these forums.
To preface this I would like to give some back story. My brother bought Starcraft a few months after release because we thought it would be just like Warcraft 3 and we could play with our key-genned CD keys or cracked editions. I installed it on my computer as soon as I had it and was riveted by the story on the installer. and I jumped right into the campaign. Played the campaign, got bored and went on the multiplayer.
The first multiplayer experience I can remember is on Blistering Sands was a TvZ where I went for marines and marauders, but my plan was thrown off by a baneling bust.
WHAT THE F****?
What sort of crap game is this? Who rushes, this is stupid I just wanted to build up my army and have a big battle.
So I didn't really play for a while.
Then when I was done playing Call of Duty with my friends I wanted to play something challenging so I went back to the ladder. I started to 2 rax bunker rush every opponent as my opening strategy, and I would transition into mass viking because landing them in the worker line of the opponent would be something they would never see coming. Thinking back on that time, I must have had crazy good macro to pull off mass viking against people who were trying real unit compositions, but I digress.
Eventually while I was starting to play higher and higher bronze leaguers, I was self teaching myself to hold all the stupid strategies that people came up with. and then I started playing silver league players.
Dear god, I was FRUSTRATED. These silver league players knew their strategies. They seemed to be able to find the weaknesses in my strategy and I decided to make a post on the Blizzard forums saying that I would like to not be promoted (lol like Blizzard looks at forums, or would do what I was asking) because it was too hard. One of the replies was a zerg player who said he would sit down and play a few games with me to show me a better way to do my strategy.
This was my first online experience where the people online started to seem real. They were REAL people that were trying to have a good time at this game just like me.
So we played a game and I got completely wrecked, and we watched the replay together. Before this, watching a replay was to have a laugh at my proxy battlecruiser strategy working. He taught me that a depot goes down at 10, both the rax go down at 12, and the OC goes down at 15. At first I thought it was silly that one would be so specific, because to me as long as the units get out and the job gets done it does not matter to me. But I listened to him.
I went back to the ladder after a sizeable break, but with a solid build order, and I started winning games.
My strategy was still 2 rax bunker rush into mass viking in their mineral line, but, to use an analogy, I was no longer 'throwing paint at canvas to see what it looks like.' I like to think of it more as starting to sketch stick figures that a child might use a magnet to stick to the fridge in the kitchen.
Within no time, I was in Silver league. Holy crap, I have gone to the next echelon of this game. I kept doing it, but then as the strategies got more and more refined I was finding that, man, I am very vulnerable on the ground because of my marine based army, but very safe in the air because of the vikings. So I began to learn how to create unit compositions. I started mixing in marauders, because marauders are good at killing mech units and absorbing baneling damage. I started to lose TvT because of tank-based strategies, TvZ to banelings, and not really TvP because Collosus were useless ^^.
At this point I got frustrated with the game because my strategy wouldn't work. They could make a tank or some banelings and now my marines can't go attack and it is no longer fun. I felt limited, and even now I get frustrated at certain points of a game (MECH TVT'ERS!!!!!!!!) because I feel limited.
So I started to browse these beautiful forums and found a strategy by iechoic where you harass the terran to death and he wont be able to get tanks to limit you! I also began to meticulously move my marauders to the front of my army, and marines to the back, and instead of vikings, I would use medivacs and drop agaisnt the zerg.
Before I knew it I was gold, and I ROCKETED through gold, straight into platinum, and momentum carried me into Diamond. I had spent almost half a year working my way into silver and gold, then in less than a month I was the top of my platinum division facing off against diamonds.
The way I would like to describe the way I improve is similar to how in the book, Eragon, the main character learns to use magic. He is revealed to the existence of magic in his mind/conscience and he feels like there is a bubble of sorts. With mental prodding and perseverance he can break that bubble and access the magic.
In Starcraft, time and time again I would hit a point where I feel I am done with this game. I can no longer improve and I should play something else. Lets think of this as that bubble. With hard work and a lot of thought going into how to beat strategy X, or how to improve this part of my gameplay, I can break this bubble and smash my way through into a new skill bracket.
It feels inconsistent to me, maybe some people slowly build up their skill continuously. I seem to plateau, and then have a ludicrous jump every once in a while.
The most extreme example was In August of this year. I was about to go to Poland to visit my cousins and grandparents in roughly 5 days, and a new season was starting so I really wanted to break in to masters league. During this time I played roughly 40 ladder games a day (didn't take the time to count practise games) and just working on my build orders and mechanics. After I think 4 days of this GRUELLING schedule, where by the end of the session I would just like to lie down and sleep the day away, I broke into masters and went to Poland feeling like I really worked hard for something and did it.
Throughout my entire gaming time of Starcraft, I have always had atleast one practise partner to hang out with and talk strategy. I spent the most time with practise partners during diamond, and spend a fair amount of time with them now in masters league.
In Diamond I would play king of the hills with dudes who were 20+ years old, in college, or even with jobs and living on their own. I am just 16 years old, but, a little bit off-topic, I was amazed that because I never told them my age and my fairly mature voice that I was accepted into their circle of gaming as one of them with absolutely no discrimination. I think during Diamond I spent the most time exploring strategies, and being exposed to a wide variety of them.
In masters my old Diamond group seemed to have faded away, They would all be busy at work or school and didn't play at all any more. So I tried hanging out in team channels and found practise partners there. I didn't do so well, I would plateau in sub 30 rank masters, even though I am trying oh so hard and playing countless custom games to learn a matchup (Thanks SOOOOO much to FGOmni and FGMagic) I never seemed to rocket the way I was used to in the lower leagues. I feel like my real breakthrough was beginning to do z33k dailies, and playhem dailies. Being exposed to how good players ACTUALLY are really helped motivate me to get better, but I was unable to find my way to get better, so I simply did mechanics practise and didn't really seem to go anywhere.
There probably were many small improvements I made during this time, but the biggest was definitely when I was practising to join a team called PG, or prodigy gaming, I got to practise 3 games with a protoss I don't remember (sorry), and a member of PG called Orchid. Now TvP had been my worst matchup for MONTHS, consistently being >25% winrate. But I was introduced to a new way of thinking about how to approach an engagement, and how to think differently about timings. I was really only told 1 important 'by-the-book' timing, but I think as a result of feeling so damn foolish during those games I began to suddenly have a grasp of the matchup. It started to make sense, and I will never be able to explain it and I am now enjoying more than 60% winrate in TvP. Thus bringing my overall rank to hover between 12-20 this season ^^
Thats basically my story of how I improve at Starcraft. My goal was to hopefully be able to relate with other people in my experience and I would like to apologize for an spelling or grammar errors, I wont be editting them because this story was written in the middle of the night on a whim, and tommorrow when I read this over and try to reply to the comments I might laugh about some things I have said.
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