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Gheed, your blog is hilarious and amazing. I wish I could give you 6 stars.
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On February 21 2012 06:50 Myles wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 06:37 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 06:01 Myles wrote:On February 21 2012 05:43 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 05:15 Myles wrote:On February 21 2012 05:00 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 03:44 RyN wrote: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 a 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 ad selection.
etc.
This post actually makes a lot of sense. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't true in the majority of these cases - what we (as relatively seasoned gamers) perceive as a mental inaptness could probably very well be physical - for us using the mouse and keyboard in the fashions that we do has long become second nature. This is not the case for everyone though - there's bound to be people like that that managed to get their hands on a copy of SC2 as well. Another indicator that the main difference between the different skill levels is not strategy and game understanding but basic button pressing is that I used the same builds and strategies that I used in bronze in diamond too, just as successful (or unsuccessful, if you like). People use 4gates, 6pools, cannon rushes in all leagues on all servers. The difference is not that one 4gate or 6pool or cannon rush is smarter than the other. The difference is one of them can press the buttons faster and more precisely. I have seen professional playes say the most oblivious, uninformed and stupid things on basic game mechanics and unit abilities of their own races. The reason those are up there is not because they are smarter and more knowledgeable, but because they can press buttons better. While your point has some merit - there's a reason that mechanics are drilled into every noob - mechanics alone don't mean everything. A GM's 4 gate doesn't show up 4 minutes earlier then a bronze's just because he clicks faster. What build you choose is almost as important as how you execute it. Sorry, gotta disagree here. When both players go gateway, assimilator, core, warpgate, all time differences are execution. There is no real room to rearrange or shift. And if you do, it always comes at some price and is a gamble. You can alleviate those risks by having good scouting and delaying your opponent: but both are things that require you to step up your mechanics several levels if you wanna do those and not fuck yourself over more than your opponent. Now, I do agree that good strategy and smart risk taking can win you games. That's why my ZvZ was by far my best matchup depsite having dismal unit control and reaction times. I know I will never be able to consitently go above 30APM, simply because despite the thousands of games I played since the release, I only improved from about 15-20APM at the start to 30 in 2 weeks, and then was stuck there, no matter how much more I played and how much I tried. Not at my age. So eventually I started trying to find strategies that allow me to get away with this handicap most of the time. That's exactly most bronzes problem, they shouldn't rearrange or shift, but they do, probably without even realizing it. They don't properly choose OR execute a build, if they even have one in mind. And even if they have the proper 4 gate build, things like forgetting when to build/cut workers, forgetting to click warpgate, forgetting a forward pylon, none of these things require even average mechanics. I could execute a proper 4 gate with 15 apm, it just comes down to knowing when and where to place your attention. Sorry, it's not just know whem and where to place your attention. It's actually being able to shift that attention. The simplest worker harrass or just the pressence of a worker can completely fuck any one over who has to dedicate most of his consciousness to just selecting a worker at the right time. There is a reason cheese is so comon in the lower leagues: even if it was dismally executed and doesn't even kill much, it derails anyone with bad mechanics to a degreee they can't really recover from. Getting cannon rushed at that level means choosing between dying because the cannons get up or dying because you forgot to make an overlord or your queen or the pool or ling speed, simply because you are not able to take care of all this at the same time, because each of those takes you ages. There was a time when I consciously let my first scouting SCV die a lot of games because I simply couldn't look at it, save it and build my 3rd depot in time. Or how often I lost because I accidently made a drone too much, pressing the wrong key and my pool was too late because of it. Making an evo chamber instead of a pool happened a few times too. In an environment where more than 60% of the players cheese you within the first 5 minutes, any one of those little control errors can cost you a game immediately. And every low level player makes several of those every minute. Not because they don't know better. Most of them have read forums, watched games and know build orders. A lot of them go even around asking on forums before they ever touch the game in multiplayer. You see several of those posts every day if you look. They just can't do it properly. To you it is trivial to make depots and scvs on time- you don't even think about it. To a bad player this is already too high level. They struggle already with selecting an SCV. They struggle already with sendign an SCV to a proper building place. They struggle already hitting build and build depot button. Or they use the mouse for it and take several seconds just to find the right icon. They can't worry much about hitting SCV and depot timings, because they have to worry about hitting keys. If they struggle just to select an scv and move it one place to another, then I question how they get anything done in life at all without having their hand held the entire time. I say this because I was one of the bronze noobs. I started off in the beta with no previous rts experience. Over about 6 months I learned what was necessary to get me to borderline masters. I did this with about 60 apm. I see no reason why any normal human being can't do the same. Learn for your mistakes, develop a little bit of muscle memory, and learn to multitask a bit. It's one thing to be losing to this kind of stuff your first few weeks, but after a while you should adapt. If you're still losing to bronze players doing horrible builds after hundreds of games, well, I think you need to take a hard look in the mirror because you either don't care enough to learn, or you have some other handicap that should probably be addressed. And I find it hard to believe that all these bronze players are handicapped.
Well, of course not everyone cares enough to play several hours a day over weeks and months. Doesn't mean they don't enjoy the game. When it comes to the total population the ones that actually bother to try SC2 ladder are probably already in the upper third of basic computer control skills. You played intensively over several months and got better. Not everyon wants or can play that much. And the thing that will lag behind the most from that is basic control and mechanics.
People have different talents. Idra was immersed in Korea for years, took lessons, and his Korean is still not very good as far as I know. I don't call him stupid or handicapped because of that. Most people never are able to learn languages properly if they don't learn it as children. Your whole wiring for hearing and the tongue and larynx muscles is set. Similar for music instruments, most sports and any activity that requires some kind of unusual motor control: if you don't acquire the abiltiy as a child, you will have a very very hard time as an adult and a lot are never able to.
I touched my first computer when I was 13. And the first time that I had actually access to a computer on a regular basis I was 16 (imagine how old I am!). I became a good programmer and developer. But just basic typing is still something I can't really do reliably and without errors. Luckily the bottleneck for my job is analysis and thinking and not typing, because you can automate and write your own tools and automatically check and test. And using your time to do that is more productive and beneficial than practicing to type faster and better and get better at manual repetitive tasks yourself. That's what computers are for. Using macros in starcraft is cheating. I still enjoy the game. I just had to accept that in this environment I cannot really use my strengths to compensate for my weaknesses and I'll never be really good because of that handicap.
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I used to be bronze but i improved to gold slowly because at first i blamed everything on my opponents being cheesy and not me changing my macro to be better, its about realizing you are bad and improving from it, i improved slowly cuz i can't play too too many games a week, but still steadily improved. I guess what creates the cognitive dissonance, is that Blizzard has created an environment where we do not associate actual play level to league. Since it doesn't show losses, since it doesn't show your relation to the other leagues and since B.Net focuses on playing the story line and getting points and pics rather than being better.
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Five stars for you, good sir! Keep up the good/hilarious work. :D
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United States5162 Posts
On February 21 2012 07:42 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 06:50 Myles wrote:On February 21 2012 06:37 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 06:01 Myles wrote:On February 21 2012 05:43 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 05:15 Myles wrote:On February 21 2012 05:00 imbecile wrote:On February 21 2012 03:44 RyN wrote: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 a 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 ad selection.
etc.
This post actually makes a lot of sense. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't true in the majority of these cases - what we (as relatively seasoned gamers) perceive as a mental inaptness could probably very well be physical - for us using the mouse and keyboard in the fashions that we do has long become second nature. This is not the case for everyone though - there's bound to be people like that that managed to get their hands on a copy of SC2 as well. Another indicator that the main difference between the different skill levels is not strategy and game understanding but basic button pressing is that I used the same builds and strategies that I used in bronze in diamond too, just as successful (or unsuccessful, if you like). People use 4gates, 6pools, cannon rushes in all leagues on all servers. The difference is not that one 4gate or 6pool or cannon rush is smarter than the other. The difference is one of them can press the buttons faster and more precisely. I have seen professional playes say the most oblivious, uninformed and stupid things on basic game mechanics and unit abilities of their own races. The reason those are up there is not because they are smarter and more knowledgeable, but because they can press buttons better. While your point has some merit - there's a reason that mechanics are drilled into every noob - mechanics alone don't mean everything. A GM's 4 gate doesn't show up 4 minutes earlier then a bronze's just because he clicks faster. What build you choose is almost as important as how you execute it. Sorry, gotta disagree here. When both players go gateway, assimilator, core, warpgate, all time differences are execution. There is no real room to rearrange or shift. And if you do, it always comes at some price and is a gamble. You can alleviate those risks by having good scouting and delaying your opponent: but both are things that require you to step up your mechanics several levels if you wanna do those and not fuck yourself over more than your opponent. Now, I do agree that good strategy and smart risk taking can win you games. That's why my ZvZ was by far my best matchup depsite having dismal unit control and reaction times. I know I will never be able to consitently go above 30APM, simply because despite the thousands of games I played since the release, I only improved from about 15-20APM at the start to 30 in 2 weeks, and then was stuck there, no matter how much more I played and how much I tried. Not at my age. So eventually I started trying to find strategies that allow me to get away with this handicap most of the time. That's exactly most bronzes problem, they shouldn't rearrange or shift, but they do, probably without even realizing it. They don't properly choose OR execute a build, if they even have one in mind. And even if they have the proper 4 gate build, things like forgetting when to build/cut workers, forgetting to click warpgate, forgetting a forward pylon, none of these things require even average mechanics. I could execute a proper 4 gate with 15 apm, it just comes down to knowing when and where to place your attention. Sorry, it's not just know whem and where to place your attention. It's actually being able to shift that attention. The simplest worker harrass or just the pressence of a worker can completely fuck any one over who has to dedicate most of his consciousness to just selecting a worker at the right time. There is a reason cheese is so comon in the lower leagues: even if it was dismally executed and doesn't even kill much, it derails anyone with bad mechanics to a degreee they can't really recover from. Getting cannon rushed at that level means choosing between dying because the cannons get up or dying because you forgot to make an overlord or your queen or the pool or ling speed, simply because you are not able to take care of all this at the same time, because each of those takes you ages. There was a time when I consciously let my first scouting SCV die a lot of games because I simply couldn't look at it, save it and build my 3rd depot in time. Or how often I lost because I accidently made a drone too much, pressing the wrong key and my pool was too late because of it. Making an evo chamber instead of a pool happened a few times too. In an environment where more than 60% of the players cheese you within the first 5 minutes, any one of those little control errors can cost you a game immediately. And every low level player makes several of those every minute. Not because they don't know better. Most of them have read forums, watched games and know build orders. A lot of them go even around asking on forums before they ever touch the game in multiplayer. You see several of those posts every day if you look. They just can't do it properly. To you it is trivial to make depots and scvs on time- you don't even think about it. To a bad player this is already too high level. They struggle already with selecting an SCV. They struggle already with sendign an SCV to a proper building place. They struggle already hitting build and build depot button. Or they use the mouse for it and take several seconds just to find the right icon. They can't worry much about hitting SCV and depot timings, because they have to worry about hitting keys. If they struggle just to select an scv and move it one place to another, then I question how they get anything done in life at all without having their hand held the entire time. I say this because I was one of the bronze noobs. I started off in the beta with no previous rts experience. Over about 6 months I learned what was necessary to get me to borderline masters. I did this with about 60 apm. I see no reason why any normal human being can't do the same. Learn for your mistakes, develop a little bit of muscle memory, and learn to multitask a bit. It's one thing to be losing to this kind of stuff your first few weeks, but after a while you should adapt. If you're still losing to bronze players doing horrible builds after hundreds of games, well, I think you need to take a hard look in the mirror because you either don't care enough to learn, or you have some other handicap that should probably be addressed. And I find it hard to believe that all these bronze players are handicapped. Well, of course not everyone cares enough to play several hours a day over weeks and months. Doesn't mean they don't enjoy the game. When it comes to the total population the ones that actually bother to try SC2 ladder are probably already in the upper third of basic computer control skills. You played intensively over several months and got better. Not everyon wants or can play that much. And the thing that will lag behind the most from that is basic control and mechanics. People have different talents. Idra was immersed in Korea for years, took lessons, and his Korean is still not very good as far as I know. I don't call him stupid or handicapped because of that. Most people never are able to learn languages properly if they don't learn it as children. Your whole wiring for hearing and the tongue and larynx muscles is set. Similar for music instruments, most sports and any activity that requires some kind of unusual motor control: if you don't acquire the abiltiy as a child, you will have a very very hard time as an adult and a lot are never able to. I touched my first computer when I was 13. And the first time that I had actually access to a computer on a regular basis I was 16 (imagine how old I am!). I became a good programmer and developer. But just basic typing is still something I can't really do reliably and without errors. Luckily the bottleneck for my job is analysis and thinking and not typing, because you can automate and write your own tools and automatically check and test. And using your time to do that is more productive and beneficial than practicing to type faster and better and get better at manual repetitive tasks yourself. That's what computers are for. Using macros in starcraft is cheating. I still enjoy the game. I just had to accept that in this environment I cannot really use my strengths to compensate for my weaknesses and I'll never be really good because of that handicap.
I don't really disagree with any of that. I just don't think it takes any special training to be able to adequately select your units and click hotkeys. It's not like we're talking about moving your army while doing drops and macroing back home; just boxing your workers and a-clicking. But I guess we disagree there.
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This is the very definition of a five star thread. You continue to improve on what was already brilliance.
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On February 21 2012 08:37 Myles wrote:
I don't really disagree with any of that. I just don't think it takes any special training to be able to adequately select your units and click hotkeys. It's not like we're talking about moving your army while doing drops and macroing back home; just boxing your workers and a-clicking - but I guess we disagree there.
Yes, just simple attack-moving is a string of actions that I horribly screwed up so many times I don't really wanna say, and took me longer to do than typing the word now. It can go wrong when selecting, if by dragging or hotkey (using hotkeys without looking at the keyboard is a whole different problem that even predates that). It can go wrong while pressing 'a', which can result in having to cancel, where the cancel in return can result in pressing ctrl-ESC, which means you leave the game. If you actually select and press a properly, then there is the difficulty of not clicking on anything that belongs to you. Those are the main troubles I had when i started playing. For weeks and months. And still occasionally today. And it is/was even worse for most other beginning players I imagine.
And that is even before any multitasking on multiple places on the map comes into play, yes.
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Ehh... I think it's an invalid assumption that everyone that plays the game does so to improve. I know when I first started playing SC1, the only thing I cared about was watching huge ass battles unfold. My intent was more along the lines of setting up some kind of elaborate combat scenario to then pit against my opponent elaborate combat scenario and only *then* duke it out to the bitter end. I was incredibly naive to think that other people played the game for any other reason. Hence I would have outbursts of rage against anyone I ran across that tried to "cheapen" the experience by attacking or harassing for a quick win.
Part of me still still gets irked by any kind of early pressure, because even though I've somewhat matured in my outlook on the game, I still don't play matches "just to win". Win or lose, if I don't have (what I find to be) fun in the process then it's a waste of my time. As a result, I most often play coop games with like-minded friends.
Full disclosure: in SC2 I've only played a very small number of ladder games, and the highest I ranked was Gold.
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Fucking brilliant series. Uncontrollable laughter.
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ur not supposed to play this way!
perhaps that's true
5/5
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I don't think you accurately described cognitive dissonance, but otherwise a really great blog. I think you described bigotry or hmmm...just a delusional dissonance (seeing contrary evidence but still believing something else). Cognitive dissonance is when you know something that is bad for you (dissonance) and your cognition (mental feelings toward that dissonance) feels as though you can keep doing it. IE a smoker that continues smoking despite knowing that smoking will kill them. What level of dissonance towards smoking will change your cognition to the point that you actually change your behaviour?
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On February 21 2012 05:41 HackBenjamin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 04:32 Silv.user wrote:
Idont get it, u make bronze league more crappy with BM cocky vs opponents. And you clearly dont belong in bronze.
I'dont get it, your an jerk and people applaud? Check out the following definitions: Satire Comedy Social Experiments Thanks
I'dont see the fun in people who has the guts trying to get better, most bronze players is people who never ever played this game before most never watched a replay whatsoever. Hurting the community by acting like a prick nothx, if u wanto be useful pm them aftergame with some decent advice.
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your blog is amazing, I don't even know what else can I say. Very well written, very good layout and organised.
I don't know what can you do to actually lose anymore lol
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Gheed. You Are Awesome. 9001/5
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5/5, mind boggling. The best part of this thread is the bronzies you scared into getting better.
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United States36 Posts
Great read, your sense of humour is superb.
How do you think your journey through Bronze has helped you or been a detriment to your gameplay?
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I think it would have been better if you first moved your workers to the base of an opponent and THEN give the warning followed by the attack.
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This blog is one of my favorite things on the internet.
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Italy12246 Posts
On February 21 2012 12:40 Silv.user wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 05:41 HackBenjamin wrote:On February 21 2012 04:32 Silv.user wrote:
Idont get it, u make bronze league more crappy with BM cocky vs opponents. And you clearly dont belong in bronze.
I'dont get it, your an jerk and people applaud? Check out the following definitions: Satire Comedy Social Experiments Thanks I'dont see the fun in people who has the guts trying to get better, most bronze players is people who never ever played this game before most never watched a replay whatsoever. Hurting the community by acting like a prick nothx, if u wanto be useful pm them aftergame with some decent advice.
This has been posted thousands of times in Gheed's blogs but i will try again: the poeple he's making fun of aren't the new players that are just going through their placement matches, they are the forever bronze players that after hundreds of games they still can't defend a worker rush because their pf isn't done in time.
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EPT
