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Inspired by some reading in a "why am I stuck in bronze thread..."
People are unhappy because they want something they can't have. Call it a product of the quick fix, instant gratification, everything downloaded for free off the internet generation, which by the way: I'm a part of.
I've played maybe 100 odd 1v1's total in SC2 and when I bother to play at all, I get thrown into Diamond league: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/473485/1/Starfire/achievements/
So what do I have that most bronze players don't? Some philosopher's stone? Some innate talent...? Not a chance. ---I paid my dues playing Brood War... Thousands of games, Big Game Hunters, Fastest Map Ever, then eventually ventured off into the unforgiving world of WGTour. Countless nights spent up until 3AM, sleeping through high school classes the next day then doing it all over again.
So what? Well the harsh reality is if you're not a kid with unlimited free time you don't have a prayer of "catching up" let alone improving comparatively to your opponents. Stuck in bronze league? The 2 hours a week you spend playing and 10 hours a week you waste watching videos isn't going to get you anywhere vs. the other stay at home dads doing the same thing.
If you enjoy playing, great. It's a hobby like any other. But how many guys do you know who spend more than 5 hours a week on their hobby? Is your buddy at work who plays football on the weekends watching instructional vids on football and agonizing over trying to get better? Looking forward to the weekend his wife goes away so he can go play in a tournament all weekend long?
It's so hard to see people putting forth effort and not getting the results they want. Most of all it’s frustrating to see their goals just aren't realistic for the time invested. I wish there was some way to help them understand that their struggle in this particular discipline is meaningless. Starcraft isn't life, the time you invest in it is time where on gains very few new skills. Failure at Starcraft does not reflect poorly on your life.
Every day is an opportunity to explore new interests, new hobbies, meet new people and improve one's skills. Never give up the things you enjoy, but at the end of the day be sure you're not continuing simply because you're addicted. Being friendly, being interesting, being in shape, all of these things pay dividends in any activity you pursue.
Interesting fact: The average paper I write once proof-read and revised has Flesch-Kincaid reading levels in the area of Grade 14, that is to say the language and content is designed for someone in the 2nd year of university. This entry has a level of 6.7 making it more suitable for a 6th grade essay contest. Is it the content? The tone of the writing? Perhaps it's just a general lack of polish but draw whatever conclusion you will.
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On March 31 2012 01:53 Eclipse.fX wrote: If you enjoy playing, great. It's a hobby like any other. But how many guys do you know who spend more than 5 hours a week on their hobby? Is your buddy at work who plays football on the weekends watching instructional vids on football and agonizing over trying to get better? Looking forward to the weekend his wife goes away so he can go play in a tournament all weekend long?
I found this to be the most interesting point.
There are times when I start thinking as though I'm a pro gamer, and that this game is all that matters to me and I HAVE TO GET BETTER OR ELSE SOMETHING. Then I remember that this game is not my life, and that there are other things that come first. This thought alone is enough to console me when I'm on losing streaks, or even if I lose 1 bad game where my play is awful.
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There are surely many counterexamples to your claim o.O
You also sound incredibly egotistical.
And while I agree with you that some bronze league players won't ever hit master league no matter how hard they try, because sometimes they're just too mechanically slow (the execution just can't be there, regardless of the knowledge of strategy), I don't think it's impossible for drastic improvement to still occur for plenty of players.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
It's no coincidence that pretty much every top sc2 player has a background in some other competitive RTS game (at least in the beginning months, dunno about now). You're playing against years of experience and practice.
That said, I think anyone can be in diamond at least if they had a proper coach.
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The 2 hours a week you spend playing and 10 hours a week you waste watching videos isn't going to get you anywhere vs. the other stay at home dads doing the same thing.
I find this to be highly inaccurate.
We aren't talking about starting off in Bronze and wanting to become a Pro. I played SC:BW, but all I did was the campaign and tower defense games (sometimes NR20s on 'hacked' maps, lewl). I had no previous experience in ladder. I started off my ladder career in SC2 as Gold. Before that all I did was comp stomps and custom games, so I even had bad habits from those comp stomps. I am currently Plat and well on my way to Diamond. You don't even need a coach to get to Diamond (or even Masters for most people).
Edit: There are definitely people who won't progress, but for most (if not all) of them, it isn't a time constraint. It is a dedication thing. 2 hours a week can be highly productive if you make it so, most people don't.
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Interesting fact: The average paper I write once proof-read and revised has Flesch-Kincaid reading levels in the area of Grade 14, that is to say the language and content is designed for someone in the 2nd year of university. This entry has a level of 6.7 making it more suitable for a 6th grade essay contest. Is it the content? The tone of the writing? Perhaps it's just a general lack of polish but draw whatever conclusion you will.
Why is this interesting? You want an opinion on your writing? Well, judging from this post, it's not above average at all, and that's taking the average blog on teamliquid as the average.
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Wow.
Good at SC2, writing and humble enough to care for the peons below him. What a keeper.
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It's baffling how he writes an entire post about not using arbitrary measuring sticks to determine self worth and then ends it with a masturbatory paragraph using an irrelevant statistic to show how awesome he feels he is.
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On March 31 2012 03:17 Seiuchi wrote: It's baffling how he writes an entire post about not using arbitrary measuring sticks to determine self worth and then ends it with a masturbatory paragraph using an irrelevant statistic to show how awesome he feels he is.
Isn't that the irony of human beings? People write cynical shit on TL just to tell themselves that they're superior to some person on the internet. Oh wait...
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I think anyone can be grandmasters if they have a proper coach or the right way of thinking
Well, at least, get to current grandmaster level, seriously
I played like, 10 games of SC2 after being C- in BW to get to plat (beta plat) and then form then on stayed in the top league until season 1 GM Played a total of maybe 300 games of 1v1 sc2 total for that? It doesn't take forever really
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On March 31 2012 03:34 BrTarolg wrote: I think anyone can be grandmasters if they have a proper coach or the right way of thinking
Well, at least, get to current grandmaster level, seriously
I played like, 10 games of SC2 after being C- in BW to get to plat (beta plat) and then form then on stayed in the top league until season 1 GM Played a total of maybe 300 games of 1v1 sc2 total for that? It doesn't take forever really
Cool story bro
It took me 400 games to get to masters without playing 1v1 in bw. And it's taken me thousands from then to play a decent game that I could be even a little content with. People who undermine sc2 after playing season 1 (considering the map pool and the lack of patching) are pretty near-sighted.
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On March 31 2012 03:17 Seiuchi wrote: It's baffling how he writes an entire post about not using arbitrary measuring sticks to determine self worth and then ends it with a masturbatory paragraph using an irrelevant statistic to show how awesome he feels he is.
Hahaha. Spot on.
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On March 31 2012 01:53 Eclipse.fX wrote: If you enjoy playing, great. It's a hobby like any other. But how many guys do you know who spend more than 5 hours a week on their hobby? Is your buddy at work who plays football on the weekends watching instructional vids on football and agonizing over trying to get better? Looking forward to the weekend his wife goes away so he can go play in a tournament all weekend long?
I agree, this is a great point. I spent ladder season 1 and 2 struggling through platinum trying to be as good as I can, with frustrating and nerve-wracking results. Then school picked up, and I have not played since, though I continue to watch streams and tournaments when I get a chance. I didn't play my placement matches in later seasons since I didn't want to be playing even more poorly than before. But I recently realized that there's no reason to care that much. What difference does it make if I'm good or not, this is a game. If I want good games, I'll watch pros play them. As for me, dicking around in silver or whatever to play one game a week and make 150 supply of chargelots sounds like a great fucking time.
On March 31 2012 01:53 Eclipse.fX wrote:Interesting fact: The average paper I write once proof-read and revised has Flesch-Kincaid reading levels in the area of Grade 14, that is to say the language and content is designed for someone in the 2nd year of university. This entry has a level of 6.7 making it more suitable for a 6th grade essay contest. Is it the content? The tone of the writing? Perhaps it's just a general lack of polish but draw whatever conclusion you will.
Probably just a byproduct of the informal nature of the writing. F-K reading level is just a linear combination of words per sentence and syllables per word (higher ratios give higher levels in both cases, with syllables per word counted much, much more heavily). Looking at the first two sentences I quoted from you, they are mostly all one syllable words with some two syllable words and very rare 3+ syllable words. That's all. It's stupid to read too much into machine-calculated reading levels.
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On March 31 2012 01:53 Eclipse.fX wrote: I wish there was some way to help them understand that their struggle in this particular discipline is meaningless.
Nothing is inherently meaningful. It all depends on what you put into it. People can be excessively competitive and SC2 is a good outlet for that.
Also, your question of "how many guys do you know who spend more than 5 hours a week on their hobby?" clearly has no perspective of just how much time some people let march madness/fantasy football/television/whatever else take out of their lives.
5 hours a week less than an hour a day - if you're trying to make the case that this is an unhealthy habit, you've got a tall order in front of you - one you haven't yet lived up to.
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I don't know if you meant your piece to sound as harsh as you phased it but... you sound like a dick lol. Who are you to tell someone they can't get better even if they play only a few hours a week. Let people have their goals I don't know why that would get you "frustrated"..
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The narcissism is blinding...I honestly don't know how you wrote this without closing out the window before hitting the post button.
By the way, if your hobby is competitive, you will put in effort outside of the competition itself. If you just play some recreational sport on the weekends but the point isn't to win then you probably won't care to prepare during the week. A game like this is competitive by nature which means you have to put in effort to be good. Saying that some people have no chance, however, is useless and overly negative. Anyone can be decent at this game without sacrificing everything else for it. Another thing that you say is that it's a waste to play for only 2 hours a week and watch 10 hours of streams. If you enjoy it, it isn't a waste even if you will never be good.
I'm honestly just speechless at how much negativity and egotism is evident here...you're free to say it but I think you need to reevaluate your motives.
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I don't think you sound like a dick. You are mostly correct.
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The op is right though, not many people will get to masters by playing a couple hours a day, at least not for a long period of time. I know a friend who just started playing SC2 around ~2 months ago and he's only moved up from bronze to mid platinum during that time (playing like a good 4-5 hours a day the first 2-3 weeks he got the game). And this is a friend who has experience playing strategy games, although perhaps not on a competitive level. Most of the prodigy's you see making masters within a couple hundred games have some sort of coaching / previous experience to help them. It takes time to be good at sc2 so the people who can't put in the time should only expect so much.
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You have a lot of interesting points, but I think it's important to point out that practice time and inherent skill isn't the only thing separating the higher level players and the lower level players. People should consider changing their practice efficiency. Some people tend to convince themselves that they are learning something or that they understand something when they clearly do not. When they do, it makes it harder to learn since they think they already know something they don't. Also people seem to throw random amounts of time invested as if it means something. There are so many factors that determine how much you will improve by investing time into the game. For example I would argue that 7hrs of practice in a week is better spent all in a single day while resting for the remaining 6 compared to playing playing 1hr a day for a week. Also dicking around with new builds every game only makes it harder to improve since you are changing more variables. All in all people are too focused on convoluted factors when discussing how to improve and it happens so often that people seem to try to draw concrete conclusions off of each others' bull. This is not to say good advice and discussion isn't happening, but that a lot of people just like to wing it and give half-ass tips and comments.
You seem to be suggesting that rising in the SC2 ranks requires a faster rate of improvement relative to the general populace at your skill level. I think that is a fantastic point that should be shouted from the rooftops at every "QQ why am I so bad why did I lose I should be promoted" thread.
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My professors in school mostly graded my papers based on Fleish-Kincaid reading level.
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