Bronze Part 2: Hell is Other People - Page 10

On February 21 2012 03:13 imbecile wrote:
This article just demonstrates that the better players just cannot conceive that the most pressing problem, the thing bronze players struggle most with and that makes the game an arduous exercise every second is basic interface use and unit control.

All those horrible things the good players see the bad players do and don't understand why: the reason is always because they struggle with basic button pressing and mouse clicking and selection.

They build cannons for early defense because even badly placed cannons protect them several times better than any zealot controlled by them.

They don't scout because their control is so bad that they won't see anything before the unit dies.

They lose to worker rushes because selecting all workers and attack moving and focus firing requires a level of speed and precision that is inconcievable and unattainable for them. (I can't count the times when I tried to attack move my drones in response to a 6pool and instead attacked my hatch or pool with them).

This is the one thing better players just don't grasp. They are completely oblivious to the gravity of the problem that just basic interface use poses to the fine motor skills and concentration of the majority of people and just how much attention and effort it takes to locate something on the map, click it accurately, then then press the right buttons and click accurately on the map again.

Why they don't grasp it? Because those kinds of problems disappeared for them years ago when they played computer games with the mouse and keyboard more than 10 hours a day. They never meet and play against anyone for whom just a basic worker split is a risky undetaking that can lead to a mining loss of 10 seconds and more for half his workers.

Most people that try starcraft quickly give up again because they see that just learning the basic motor skills to quickly and accurately click units and the minimap would probably take them several weeks of hard practice for hours every day. People that played console games their who life, and only ever used the computer to browse the web or write documents with 2 fingers: sitting them in front of a starcraft game is like sitting them in front of a church organ.

The title of strategy game is very decieving for starcraft. Because the most basic and important skillset is not strategic thinking, or thinking at all. Not even close. The legions of horrible horrible players with maphacks and complete information is a testament to that. The ability to press the buttons or pluck the strings of the instrument is more important for a performer than any understanding of musical theory.

Virtually all losses at that stage are the result of misclicks and miscontrols. Either by a single big one that got punished horrribly, or by the accumulative effect many small errors provide. Just the simple act of sending out a scout and looking at it when it sees something can fumble your general control so much that you get supply blocked hard. Just building a refinery or putting workers on gas takes enough time for someone to kill all your workers at the natural. Hell, just moving the screen on the minimap or finding the right control group and pressing it twice takes enough time for someone to kill all your workers.

There are brilliant professional writers and good office clerks that write a lot every day for decades and still type with only 2 fingers. That's not because they are stupid. They simply don't have the motor skills. And their motor skills didn't improve much despite them typing for several hours every day for decades. Proper typing training at a much earlier stage would have helped them of course. But those kinds of people would never become a more than average typist.

If you pit a decent piano player against a decent chess player in SC2, or a decent Guitar Hero player against a decent HOMM player, the piano and guitar hero player probably will win the majority of the first 100 games they play.

I got to diamond as zerg for a brief time, and I never really get past 30 APM. Worker rushes, 6pools, cannon rushes, 2-gates, bunker rushes, early reapers are probably still the strategies I struggle the most with. Defending those successfully is more stressful and draining to me than defending 20minutes of constant drops, because of the fast and precise micro needed and the big impact even small slipups have that early in the game.

Well, now, I switched to terran. Still dropped to silver again. Why? Because I'm someone for whom it takes a day of playing before my basic control is good enough to not lose several SCVs to silver level worker harass while my barracks is building. And then it takes another day or two before I don't get heavily supply blocked while not losing any SCVs early. And then I don't play for a few days, and then it again takes a day of playing before I can reliably execute a build in the first 4 minutes of the game again.

Edit: as if to prove my point: the amount of typos in this post was staggering. Not because I don't know how to write the words. But because I pressed the wrong keys. And I'm someone who types several hours every day professionally for years. When typing you can proof read and correct. In starcraft you just lose.