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More updates: Totally sweet G+ page created!
Updated again: Had to change email address for submissions.
Updated: I've added some answers to questions at the bottom of the OP.
To rehash what I wrote in a post here:
I'm genuinely, intellectually curious about what - since reading Gheed's blogs - I've come to think of as the 'permabronze' phenomenon: players who seem not to improve despite enduring hundreds of games; players for whom the feedback loop of experience just isn't working.
The principle motives for my curiosity are:
1. My nephew.
My nephew is 14 years old. He's bright (top of his classes) and has the kind of reflexes I used to enjoy 20 years ago, as well as ample free time. Nevertheless, I - a lowly gold leaguer - can reliably defeat both him and his sister simultaneously, despite none of us having played competitive RTS before SC2. This baffles me.
2. My own limitations.
Ever since release, I've been bumping my head on what feels like a glass ceiling, occasionally rebounding into silver league, despite feeling like I'm improving. Am I, too, permabronze - just a league or two higher up? Am I permabronze at something else in my life, without realising it?
Unfortunately, I have no useful data to analyze. That's where you come in.
I want 50-100 consecutive 1v1 ladder replays from someone stuck in bronze. I will pay $50 by Paypal for the best (and most honest - no smurfs please) submission.
I will then watch all the replays to look for patterns. I have some hypotheses but I don't want to pollute the test by listing them here.
There's no need to make any special effort, beyond saving all your replays (preferably in numerical order). Don't rush to get to 50 or 100 - remember, your submission might well not be picked so don't go out of your way. Ideally, don't change anything about the way you approach playing the game.
That's it - if you're interested, and you were planning on playing that many games anyway, save your replays, zip 'em up and let me know. Or if you know someone who fits the bill, pass the message on!
And don't forget to keep tabs on the study via the Permabronze G+ page!
Thanks for reading.
Thread Questions Answered:
'Watching the replays and looking for patterns' doesn't sound terribly scientific. What gives?
I have some hypotheses to test and some fun ideas for setting up the experiment, but I can't divulge them without risking skewing the results.
What exactly does 'best' mean?
I can't tell you, again because imposing any kind of constraints or incentives will cause people to play differently to the way that has left them stuck in Bronze. Think of it as a lottery.
How do I submit my replays?
1. Please, please, name or rename your replays in chronological order (001.SC2replay, 002.SC2replay etc)
The easy way to do this is with a bulk renaming utility.
2. Zip 'em up
3. Send 'em to PermabronzeSC2@gmail.com
When will I get paid, if I'm chosen?
I'm (hopefully) going to have a lot of replays to look through, and I specifically don't want people grinding out more games than usual, so it's going to be a fairly laid-back process. I'll let you know when I have enough to be getting on with, and announce the 'winner' along with the results of the study.
 
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you should read gheed's blog first. he might already answer a ton of questions you have.
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I think you might be in the wrong about being stuck in a league higher than bronze. People in those leagues are slowly improving and gold now is better than a year ago. You are improving but dont notice it since it's slow and you win 50% of your games and stay in the same area of the ladder.
I'd say you can only be truly stuck and not improve in bronze.
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On March 14 2012 00:13 MisterD wrote:
you should read gheed's blog first. he might already answer a ton of questions you have.
you should read the op. he already read gheeds blogs. its why he's doing this in the first place.
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On March 14 2012 00:16 Eatme wrote:
I think you might be in the wrong about being stuck in a league higher than bronze. People in those leagues are slowly improving and gold now is better than a year ago. You are improving but dont notice it since it's slow and you win 50% of your games and stay in the same area of the ladder.
I'd say you can only be truly stuck and not improve in bronze.
That's exactly the kind of hypothesis we need to test!
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On March 14 2012 00:17 eu.exodus wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 00:13 MisterD wrote:
you should read gheed's blog first. he might already answer a ton of questions you have. you should read the op. if already read gheeds blogs.
Gheed has a profound sense of the breadth of the phenomenon, but can't drill deep because he has only fleeting contact with each denizen. Also, the strategy he uses skews the results - Permabronze players in the wild aren't playing against worker rushes all the time (another useful bit of data will be just that: what they face on a daily basis).
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oops read too fast, sorry^^
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There's no such thing as being stuck in a league, it's all about wanting to improve and knowing how to do it. I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of money that I could coach anyone in bronze into silver if they really wanted to and had the physical capability. It wouldn't even take long.
I'm sure the same could be said at most levels.
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He either doesn't want to improve, or doesn't know how to improve. Seeing as you say how your nephew is bright, has the reflexes, he should be able to be better then bronze at Starcraft, right? However, many people just play without a goal of improvement each game. They are like, IMPROVE MACRO, without having a clear goal of what to improve from their macro. They want to improve, but usually they aren't willing to put in the brain power to improve. Learning to play Starcraft is like learning to drive(on an extremely complex road where the other drivers want to bash you off the road lol). When you drive, do you do this conciously? Probably not, almost all actions are unconcious. What you have to do with Starcraft is consistenly, every game focus on improving one aspect, until you have mastered it. I'll give you an example. The first time I played I was told by day9, always build workers. The next games I almost exclusively focused on building workers, after a while I got so good at it, I didn't have to think about doing it anymore and could focus my attention elsewhere. This isn't easy, you must break out of your own old habits and actively focus on your objective which most people I know(friends) just aren't willing to do. Altough sometimes, when people do want to improve and direct their attention to improving they just don't know how. When trying to improve their macro, they are trying to do everything at once instead of breaking everything down into small steps. This is how somebody bright can be great at school, yet fail at starcraft. At school, everything is broken down into small steps for you already. With Starcraft you have to force yourself to do this on your own, with help off somebody like Day9.
The only thing you will gather from those 100+ replays is that they will have made little improvement from the earliest replay to the latest replay. They will have improved, just not enough to get out of bronze. Other players are improving aswell.
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On March 14 2012 00:28 Tobberoth wrote:
There's no such thing as being stuck in a league, it's all about wanting to improve and knowing how to do it. I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of money that I could coach anyone in bronze into silver if they really wanted to and had the physical capability. It wouldn't even take long.
I'm sure the same could be said at most levels.
Ah, but that's not the point. I'm (almost) sure you're right, but coaching would defeat the object of the study. I didn't need coaching out of copper. But I'd be interested to know if I do need coaching out of Gold because my Permabronze blind spots have just kicked in at a (very) slightly higher level of play.
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On March 14 2012 00:30 Recognizable wrote:
He either doesn't want to improve, or doesn't know how to improve. Seeing as you say how your nephew is bright, has the reflexes, he should be able to be better then bronze at Starcraft, right? However, many people just play without a goal of improvement each game. They are like, IMPROVE MACRO, without having a clear goal of what to improve from their macro. They want to improve, but usually they aren't willing to put in the brain power to improve. Learning to play Starcraft is like learning to drive(on an extremely complex road where the other drivers want to bash you off the road lol). When you drive, do you do this conciously? Probably not, almost all actions are unconcious. What you have to do with Starcraft is consistenly, every game focus on improving one aspect, until you have mastered it. I'll give you an example. The first time I played I was told by day9, always build workers. The next games I almost exclusively focused on building workers, after a while I got so good at it, I didn't have to think about doing it anymore and could focus my attention elsewhere. This isn't easy, you must break out of your own old habits and actively focus on your objective which most people I know(friends) just aren't willing to do. Altough sometimes, when people do want to improve and direct their attention to improving they just don't know how. When trying to improve their macro, they are trying to do everything at once instead of breaking everything down into small steps. This is how somebody bright can be great at school, yet fail at starcraft. At school, everything is broken down into small steps for you already. With Starcraft you have to force yourself to do this on your own, with help off somebody like Day9.
The only thing you will gather from those 100+ replays is that they will have made little improvement from the earliest replay to the latest replay. They will have improved, just not enough to get out of bronze. Other players are improving aswell.
It's a great hypothesis - but what I'm after is data to support or refute that kind of belief.
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On March 14 2012 00:33 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 00:28 Tobberoth wrote:
There's no such thing as being stuck in a league, it's all about wanting to improve and knowing how to do it. I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of money that I could coach anyone in bronze into silver if they really wanted to and had the physical capability. It wouldn't even take long.
I'm sure the same could be said at most levels. Ah, but that's not the point. I'm (almost) sure you're right, but coaching would defeat the object of the study. I didn't need coaching out of copper. But I'd be interested to know if I do need coaching out of Gold because my Permabronze blind spots have just kicked in at a (very) slightly higher level of play.
Well, that's more interesting.
Still, what would be the point? It's very easy to see if you're improving or not, just check your win ratio, the game will slowly work to get you in the 50% area where you're matched against people of equal skill. If that continues for a longer period, that means you're stuck at that level of skill, if you're improving you should have a slightly better win ratio. When you notice this happening, it's easy: Just check what you're not doing well enough and if you can't figure that out: there you go, you need coaching.
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This is a great idea, but I suggest you split your 'prize' into 5 or 10 parts to get a realistic sample. Either someone has 50 replays or not, and for them $10 would equally well get them to submit as $50.
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On March 14 2012 00:35 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 00:30 Recognizable wrote:
He either doesn't want to improve, or doesn't know how to improve. Seeing as you say how your nephew is bright, has the reflexes, he should be able to be better then bronze at Starcraft, right? However, many people just play without a goal of improvement each game. They are like, IMPROVE MACRO, without having a clear goal of what to improve from their macro. They want to improve, but usually they aren't willing to put in the brain power to improve. Learning to play Starcraft is like learning to drive(on an extremely complex road where the other drivers want to bash you off the road lol). When you drive, do you do this conciously? Probably not, almost all actions are unconcious. What you have to do with Starcraft is consistenly, every game focus on improving one aspect, until you have mastered it. I'll give you an example. The first time I played I was told by day9, always build workers. The next games I almost exclusively focused on building workers, after a while I got so good at it, I didn't have to think about doing it anymore and could focus my attention elsewhere. This isn't easy, you must break out of your own old habits and actively focus on your objective which most people I know(friends) just aren't willing to do. Altough sometimes, when people do want to improve and direct their attention to improving they just don't know how. When trying to improve their macro, they are trying to do everything at once instead of breaking everything down into small steps. This is how somebody bright can be great at school, yet fail at starcraft. At school, everything is broken down into small steps for you already. With Starcraft you have to force yourself to do this on your own, with help off somebody like Day9.
The only thing you will gather from those 100+ replays is that they will have made little improvement from the earliest replay to the latest replay. They will have improved, just not enough to get out of bronze. Other players are improving aswell. It's a great hypothesis - but what I'm after is data to support or refute that kind of belief.
What do you want to substract from those replays? What are you exactly looking for? I can't think of anything:/
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Sounds interesting, I'll be interested to see what you do with the data. Your plan to "watch the replays and look for patterns" doesn't sound all that scientific! 
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On March 14 2012 01:08 ziggurat wrote:Sounds interesting, I'll be interested to see what you do with the data. Your plan to "watch the replays and look for patterns" doesn't sound all that scientific!
As I said, I have some hypotheses to test, but I don't want to pollute the results by announcing what I'm going to be looking for.
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What exactly is "the best" submission?
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I could salvage all my replays that I didnt self save from season 4,5, and 6 :3
Edit: they arent there 
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On March 14 2012 01:31 Sejanus wrote:
What exactly is "the best" submission?
There are two reasons I'm not going to define it more precisely.
First of all, it's a catch-all statement to, in effect, say "I'll decide who gets the money." I reserve the right to disqualify anyone I suspect of smurfing or otherwise manipulating the results.
Secondly, I really don't want to influence anyone into trying to play other than they would normally. I don't want to steer people towards or away from any style of play OR any method of learning and improving. Nor do I want to motivate any supplementary behaviour that might accidentally lead to them improving more or less than they would have.
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For $50 you might wanna tack on some kinda problem-solving test for the player themselves.
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I certainly can't speak for your younger family members but in my personal experience I stalled out playing chess when I was much younger because I mainly wanted to win games and see the variants of the moves as the game played out. I was "stuck in bronze" for a good year before I asked a fellow at a chess club how he thought I should improve. He gave me a book that opened with the concept of thinking of the wooden pieces as actual mini-armies.
I didn't read past that point because it intrigued me so much. I immediately started playing games with this new perspective of actually caring about my "little guys" instead of my "pieces." I immediately improved by a fair bit. After a month I went back and read the rest of the book about strategies, openings, gambits etc which helped also but my initial improvement came simply from thinking of the game differently.
I think bronzies are so focused on minor basic things like winning, or using a battlecruiser, etc that they basically forget/never realize the game is about trades, economy, supply lines, etc etc. They get stuck in a rut of mono-perceptive thinking and therefor never improve.
I would venture to say the replay packs you view will show one main thing. Repetitive, non-adaptive thinking. I would venture to say this is the reason many bronzies blame the game or the noob strategy of the other player on their losses. They literally aren't trying to adapt but are stuck in a rut of thinking the repetitive things they are doing should work and thereby never adapt or change their perspective on the game.
In most thought competition type games the first thing that will improve a very low level player is them learning how to think about the game rather than just play it. After they begin to actively think then other things such as mechanics, memorization, practice, come into play but usually the initial block on very low level play is simply a matter of perspective.
All of the above is said regarding players stuck in a low level rut, it isn't meant to refer to very little kids, brand new to rts people, or people that have no interest in improving but play for the simple joy of it.
Anyway, looking forward to what you find!
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it's either cause of a learning disability or no real desire to improve/google skills. So many resources out there these days
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^ I was about to post that.
How could you genuinely believe every one wants to improve? I sure can name a few of my friends that just play for fun, rage when they lose, don't understand why, still launch a new game knowing they will likely lose, lose it, and the cycle continues.
They, imo, never looked to improve. Never put any extra time into the game than just the time when they play, and that's it. No replay, no VODs, no stream, no forum browsing, nada. Just play, then do something else.
Casual gamers.
Edit : my friends were terrible when I think about it... I can remember at least 3 playstyles clearly (SC:BW) :
One was always, every game, every map, going for carriers on 2 bases. Mass cannons into mass carriers, guaranteed (No other units, because only carriers are good ; and you need cannons to delay things).
Other one was always playing Terran and turtling like a madman on a single base (and making the worst excuses when asked for help). Would eventually get a second base after a while, and spend rest of the game turtling both of those bases. Yes it was somewhat hard to kill him early to mid-game, but you could also ignore him and kill his 2 bases last.
Another would be your typical casual gamer : making a little bit of everything (and a very little bit of workers...) and then attack random things with 10ish units, without micro, into failure.
Oh my god, I was like a Korean in our LANs...
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Ok, the email address for submissions and a G+ page for keeping tabs on progress have been added to the OP.
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You might like to split the prize up into smaller portions. $50 might be incentive to tryhard, say $10 each is just "Hey I take some time zip replays up np"
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On March 14 2012 20:52 cascades wrote:
You might like to split the prize up into smaller portions. $50 might be incentive to tryhard, say $10 each is just "Hey I take some time zip replays up np"
I'll leave it as it is. I may run another of these and change the way it works next time, though.
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On March 15 2012 08:10 Laertes wrote:
Hi, I posted in the other blog by Gheed but wanted to respond to a post about chess. I was once a bronze player(I no longer consider myself part of the "starcraft 2 league" complex), but I have been stuck for 1000 games in bronze, and don't care much anymore, I don't do melee, aside from the occasional macromicro on the shattered temple(cause i'll admit it, that shit is FUN), but so too, am I a rather amazing chess player. I'm almost master level in rating, but I just suck hard at Starcraft 2, go figure. Anyway, regardless, I want to note that Starcraft is a strange monster, I honestly don't know if being in bronze means your stupid or anything, but being as good as I am in chess, I would that there is some intelligence in me. Anyway, I never went back to Starcraft 2 league...I roll with a different crew now, and I think I'm rather decent at this LoTRish that I play, anyway, I hope this helps dispel any rumours about bronze players being "unintelligent"
You're the guy that spent the time to insult and criticize his blog but denied being drone rushed.
Masters level chess player indeed.
I'm pretty sure this post explains exactly what Gheed spent so many blogs pointing out. People that play hundreds of games in bronze but refuse to learn simply can not understand they are delusional.
I played "masters" like you in chess too.
ps its rumors not rumours
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On March 15 2012 11:11 Laertes wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 09:26 Synwave wrote:On March 15 2012 08:10 Laertes wrote:
Hi, I posted in the other blog by Gheed but wanted to respond to a post about chess. I was once a bronze player(I no longer consider myself part of the "starcraft 2 league" complex), but I have been stuck for 1000 games in bronze, and don't care much anymore, I don't do melee, aside from the occasional macromicro on the shattered temple(cause i'll admit it, that shit is FUN), but so too, am I a rather amazing chess player. I'm almost master level in rating, but I just suck hard at Starcraft 2, go figure. Anyway, regardless, I want to note that Starcraft is a strange monster, I honestly don't know if being in bronze means your stupid or anything, but being as good as I am in chess, I would that there is some intelligence in me. Anyway, I never went back to Starcraft 2 league...I roll with a different crew now, and I think I'm rather decent at this LoTRish that I play, anyway, I hope this helps dispel any rumours about bronze players being "unintelligent" You're the guy that spent the time to insult and criticize his blog but denied being drone rushed. Masters level chess player indeed. I'm pretty sure this post explains exactly what Gheed spent so many blogs pointing out. People that play hundreds of games in bronze but refuse to learn simply can not understand they are delusional. I played "masters" like you in chess too. ps its rumors not rumours Alright man, you don't believe I'm a near master rated chess player, that's your beef, but honestly, I don't think too much depends upon a real time strategy game, I'm musical too you know, I write amazing songs . But I guess you don't believe that either though right? cause I'm a bronze player. sickening.
Bronze has nothing to do with it but the smell of certain bodily excretions certainly does.
Make em musical though!
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On March 15 2012 09:26 Synwave wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 08:10 Laertes wrote:
Hi, I posted in the other blog by Gheed but wanted to respond to a post about chess. I was once a bronze player(I no longer consider myself part of the "starcraft 2 league" complex), but I have been stuck for 1000 games in bronze, and don't care much anymore, I don't do melee, aside from the occasional macromicro on the shattered temple(cause i'll admit it, that shit is FUN), but so too, am I a rather amazing chess player. I'm almost master level in rating, but I just suck hard at Starcraft 2, go figure. Anyway, regardless, I want to note that Starcraft is a strange monster, I honestly don't know if being in bronze means your stupid or anything, but being as good as I am in chess, I would that there is some intelligence in me. Anyway, I never went back to Starcraft 2 league...I roll with a different crew now, and I think I'm rather decent at this LoTRish that I play, anyway, I hope this helps dispel any rumours about bronze players being "unintelligent" You're the guy that spent the time to insult and criticize his blog but denied being drone rushed. Masters level chess player indeed. I'm pretty sure this post explains exactly what Gheed spent so many blogs pointing out. People that play hundreds of games in bronze but refuse to learn simply can not understand they are delusional. I played "masters" like you in chess too. ps its rumors not rumours
I dont disagree with your main point but I'd like to point out that some of us spell rumours with a U.
Edit: Removed what I suppose could be seen as a country bash. Wasn't my intention, just kinda irks me >_>
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Ok, we're veering a little out of the "let's do something fun together" zone I'd envisioned. Keep it civil, guys.
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EPT
