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On April 24 2012 04:13 Opec wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:05 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 03:52 nttea wrote:
Jingle, that is true for EVERY level of play though, it's harder to get better than the players you face since you can't face anyone better than that to learn from. Bronze is still the EASIEST of all leagues to advance from, and since you read gheed's blogs he claims all you need to do is learn how to fucking play the game.
I don't really see what's wrong with being bronze though as long as you are having fun it shouldn't bother you! but don't try to blame your incompetence on some fictional elo hell, if you really think playing against better opponents would help (it probably would) can't you find some? through teamliquid or chat channel or something. I'm working on finding people to work with, actually. I'm curious where you got this impression of "blaming incompetence on some fictional elo hell". I pretty clearly own my part in sucking. However, if you aren't actually smart enough to recognize that you pretty blatantly contradict yourself, you probably shouldn't be attacking me based on a gross misperception of what I said. I'm not claiming to be better than the people I play. I'm claiming that they're so bad that I don't improve much by playing against them. You seem to agree this is entirely possible, and since this is the only definition of MMR hell being used in this blog, you should probably try thinking a bit before trying to sound all superior. On April 24 2012 03:56 Bobbias wrote:
This is exactly how I feel.
I'm a bronze player almost entirely because I suck at playing the game. I watch enough high level play that I know what to do, but I don't have the mechanics down. I have out-micro'd basically every player I've ever played in bronze because I can actually micro zealot-stalker (at least passably enough to count as micro vs another bronzie anyway), but I don't have any build orders drilled in because I have trouble actually remembering them (or remembering to check my food to do things at the right time), I get supply blocked far too often, and am basically incapable of macroing up while I attack. Supply blocks are actually getting kind of rare for me, without going overboard on overlords. Macro while attacking also isn't usually too bad. I just screw up so bad managing my economy, scouting, and injecting that it kicks my ass. My micro is getting better though, especially by Bronze standards. Don't play the player so much. Play against yourself. Benchmark your worker count and supply at different times and try to exceed them. It's possible to improve a lot even against the AI.
I'm not entirely sure how much I can improve trying to practice against a non-existent opponent at this point. Enough of the basics that I really need to work on involve information and using it. That's why I decided to use the coaching thread.
I really wasn't wanting this thread to turn into this sort of discussion, though, I was shooting for it being an entertaining discussion of the... erm... Bronze metagame.
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On April 24 2012 04:12 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:10 ReketSomething wrote:On April 24 2012 03:29 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 03:25 Th1rdEye wrote:
You're thinking about it wrong. It's a totally different game because people don't follow build orders, don't know how to macro, and don't know how to micro
Learn all of the above and you will EASILY move out of bronze.. those 45 minute carrier pushers will die at 12 minutes to your 200/200 army. As it turns out, 200 food of Roach/ling doesn't break 30+ cannons at the top of a ramp. By the time you have a decent muta pack, there's carriers on the field. I could try cheesing every game to get out of Bronze, but I'm entirely not convinced that the rest of my play would be up to par for staying safely out of Bronze if I did that. I can't believe you are arguing this. You clearly don't understand. Just practice mechanics and how to defend early allins (by scouting and reacting properly) and you will easily get out of bronze. Yknow, I hear this a lot, but I'm curious just how many of the people saying that have spent much time in Bronze league? There's a significant difference between a Diamond/Masters level player tanking to Bronze and then working their way back out, and trying to gradually improve across the same difference when there's literally no sane metagame.
I've spent zero time in bronze league but I've convinced all my suitemates to play the game. 3 of them started in bronze (some in silver and one got into plat) and now NONE of them are in bronze. I've more or less "trained" them all to get out of bronze league.
(I got placed into diamond on release [highest] because I played a lot of BW)
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the reason why "standard" is called "standard" is because if you deviate it from it without a real plan behind it, you will get crushed by someone who knows what they're doing because they know how to follow up.
you don't need a special skill set nor explicit practice to get out of bronze. you just lack fundamentals as well as the skills to exploit the large timing windows that open up when they screw up somewhere.
On April 24 2012 04:12 JingleHell wrote:
Yknow, I hear this a lot, but I'm curious just how many of the people saying that have spent much time in Bronze league? There's a significant difference between a Diamond/Masters level player tanking to Bronze and then working their way back out, and trying to gradually improve across the same difference when there's literally no sane metagame.
i played BW.
i played standard builds and lost to really bad players with slow, aimless build orders. it's because i was really bad, not because i didn't develop special tactics to counter bad players. once i learned how to play and knew exactly why the standard build orders were so powerful and how to take advantage of it when people deviated, i stopped losing to them and i took the honorable borderline position between iCCup D- and D.
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On April 24 2012 04:27 kainzero wrote:
the reason why "standard" is called "standard" is because if you deviate it from it without a real plan behind it, you will get crushed by someone who knows what they're doing because they know how to follow up.
you don't need a special skill set nor explicit practice to get out of bronze. you just lack fundamentals as well as the skills to exploit the large timing windows that open up when they screw up somewhere.
This is quite true, in fact. But I'm sure you can at least appreciate the difficulty of practicing effectively against a random ass selection of things that don't make sense.
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Constant production is important whether you are being rushed, cannoned, or facing a turtle.
If you're in bronze chances are you deserve to be there for multiple reasons and really fixing any of them should get you out of bronze.
A great example is your own protoss cannon/carrier example.... you talk about seeing cannons on one base when it's 30 cannons then having carriers to deal with, but there's a lot more steps there that you're not missing. It doesn't matter how he beat you on one base, the fact that your economy wasn't so powerful as to utterly crush him means you screwed macro up big time.
The lack of worth of those types of games is just mental. They're worth your time just as much as the guy who plays 'standard' and if you aren't finding improvements from those games it's because you're choosing to dismiss them as worthless rather than improve.
Not even close to a fight. At this point, I have a few surviving drones, and 2 lings
Just as example that's probably a close fight compared to what it should be. It was an x-position 7 pool which should be utter trash vs someone who goes 14 pool and scouts it.
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On April 24 2012 04:23 JingleHell wrote:
I'm not entirely sure how much I can improve trying to practice against a non-existent opponent at this point. Enough of the basics that I really need to work on involve information and using it. That's why I decided to use the coaching thread.
I really wasn't wanting this thread to turn into this sort of discussion, though, I was shooting for it being an entertaining discussion of the... erm... Bronze metagame.
The things to practice are: making sure you're injecting on time, making sure that you're making overlords before you get supply capped, spreading creep, scouting, making stuff, etc. Those are things that you can practice whether or not you have an opponent. Since you're Zerg and in bronze, you can get away with checking their army composition periodically and making units or workers accordingly, and you can learn whether or not the stuff you made based on how much army you saw can hold. You can improve a lot simply by practicing checking injects, supply, and resources, until you do it automatically.
I think it should be easier to practice against a nearly non-existent opponent, because they give you more time.
I do agree that lower leagues is quite different from higher leagues, because you can get away with a lot more, and there are less assumptions about whether or not something goofy would work, so you see more goofy strategies as well.
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i like to read these for fun every now and then, but as a bw player, have you considered working on your mechanics in single player? it boggles my mind that if you don't have something as fundamental as managing larva production down, you'd try to work on that in an actual game. maybe it's not as exciting to do, but if you wanted to improve your mechanics without the stress of being rushed, that's what i would do. then again, i'm asian so ... yeah.
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On April 24 2012 04:23 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:13 Opec wrote:On April 24 2012 04:05 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 03:52 nttea wrote:
Jingle, that is true for EVERY level of play though, it's harder to get better than the players you face since you can't face anyone better than that to learn from. Bronze is still the EASIEST of all leagues to advance from, and since you read gheed's blogs he claims all you need to do is learn how to fucking play the game.
I don't really see what's wrong with being bronze though as long as you are having fun it shouldn't bother you! but don't try to blame your incompetence on some fictional elo hell, if you really think playing against better opponents would help (it probably would) can't you find some? through teamliquid or chat channel or something. I'm working on finding people to work with, actually. I'm curious where you got this impression of "blaming incompetence on some fictional elo hell". I pretty clearly own my part in sucking. However, if you aren't actually smart enough to recognize that you pretty blatantly contradict yourself, you probably shouldn't be attacking me based on a gross misperception of what I said. I'm not claiming to be better than the people I play. I'm claiming that they're so bad that I don't improve much by playing against them. You seem to agree this is entirely possible, and since this is the only definition of MMR hell being used in this blog, you should probably try thinking a bit before trying to sound all superior. On April 24 2012 03:56 Bobbias wrote:
This is exactly how I feel.
I'm a bronze player almost entirely because I suck at playing the game. I watch enough high level play that I know what to do, but I don't have the mechanics down. I have out-micro'd basically every player I've ever played in bronze because I can actually micro zealot-stalker (at least passably enough to count as micro vs another bronzie anyway), but I don't have any build orders drilled in because I have trouble actually remembering them (or remembering to check my food to do things at the right time), I get supply blocked far too often, and am basically incapable of macroing up while I attack. Supply blocks are actually getting kind of rare for me, without going overboard on overlords. Macro while attacking also isn't usually too bad. I just screw up so bad managing my economy, scouting, and injecting that it kicks my ass. My micro is getting better though, especially by Bronze standards. Don't play the player so much. Play against yourself. Benchmark your worker count and supply at different times and try to exceed them. It's possible to improve a lot even against the AI. I'm not entirely sure how much I can improve trying to practice against a non-existent opponent at this point. Enough of the basics that I really need to work on involve information and using it. That's why I decided to use the coaching thread. I really wasn't wanting this thread to turn into this sort of discussion, though, I was shooting for it being an entertaining discussion of the... erm... Bronze metagame.
I wouldnt be so fast to dismiss it. Playing against the very easy AI is a valuable tool. A debilitating problem when trying to improve is the voice in your head that keeps asking, "how do I win right now." this avoids that completely and lets you practice builds without distraction. That being said you still need to go out and ladder. SC2 is meant to be played against live opponents.
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On April 24 2012 04:38 Lousy! wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:23 JingleHell wrote:
I'm not entirely sure how much I can improve trying to practice against a non-existent opponent at this point. Enough of the basics that I really need to work on involve information and using it. That's why I decided to use the coaching thread.
I really wasn't wanting this thread to turn into this sort of discussion, though, I was shooting for it being an entertaining discussion of the... erm... Bronze metagame. The things to practice are: making sure you're injecting on time, making sure that you're making overlords before you get supply capped, spreading creep, scouting, making stuff, etc. Those are things that you can practice whether or not you have an opponent. Since you're Zerg and in bronze, you can get away with checking their army composition periodically and making units or workers accordingly, and you can learn whether or not the stuff you made based on how much army you saw can hold. You can improve a lot simply by practicing checking injects, supply, and resources, until you do it automatically. I think it should be easier to practice against a nearly non-existent opponent, because they give you more time. I do agree that lower leagues is quite different from higher leagues, because you can get away with a lot more, and there are less assumptions about whether or not something goofy would work, so you see more goofy strategies as well.
I don't agree with this very much. It helps a bit to practice the macro and run through the mechanics to build up an internal timer, but doing these things with no opponent is way easier than vs an opponent and it doesn't really transfer fully. Not even the lack of an opponent meddling, just the stress/mental state difference makes it harder. Though if you can't do it vs no opponent then you 100% can't do it vs an opponent.
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On April 24 2012 04:41 ToFu. wrote:
i like to read these for fun every now and then, but as a bw player, have you considered working on your mechanics in single player? it boggles my mind that if you don't have something as fundamental as managing larva production down, you'd try to work on that in an actual game. maybe it's not as exciting to do, but if you wanted to improve your mechanics without the stress of being rushed, that's what i would do. then again, i'm asian so ... yeah.
As much as I want to improve, I want to improve by playing the game, at least at this point. I enjoy playing it, but I'm not good enough to enjoy solo practice much yet.
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On April 24 2012 04:45 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:41 ToFu. wrote:
i like to read these for fun every now and then, but as a bw player, have you considered working on your mechanics in single player? it boggles my mind that if you don't have something as fundamental as managing larva production down, you'd try to work on that in an actual game. maybe it's not as exciting to do, but if you wanted to improve your mechanics without the stress of being rushed, that's what i would do. then again, i'm asian so ... yeah. As much as I want to improve, I want to improve by playing the game, at least at this point. I enjoy playing it, but I'm not good enough to enjoy solo practice much yet.
If you want that, you have to treat ladder as solo practice when conditions are appropriate, and atop caring about losses, and analyzing every replay and coming away with one thing to improve from there.
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On April 24 2012 04:49 Vod.kaholic wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:45 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 04:41 ToFu. wrote:
i like to read these for fun every now and then, but as a bw player, have you considered working on your mechanics in single player? it boggles my mind that if you don't have something as fundamental as managing larva production down, you'd try to work on that in an actual game. maybe it's not as exciting to do, but if you wanted to improve your mechanics without the stress of being rushed, that's what i would do. then again, i'm asian so ... yeah. As much as I want to improve, I want to improve by playing the game, at least at this point. I enjoy playing it, but I'm not good enough to enjoy solo practice much yet. If you want that, you have to treat ladder as solo practice when conditions are appropriate, and atop caring about losses, and analyzing every replay and coming away with one thing to improve from there.
I don't mind losses much, I just wanted to rant about the fact that it feels like a completely different game from the one I watch.
Losing, no biggy. Seeing mind-boggling shit occur? Brain hurts.
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This might depress you even further, but things are really no better in Silver imo. Scouting is still completely pointless. When you get to Gold, your opponents will start doing things that make more sense but only slightly. When you get to plat, you finally get to play sorta competent opponents. (I say "competent" by which I mean things will start looking more like very unrefined pro builds instead of random shit like 30-40 cannons.)
I do recommend solo practicing too and just trying to max out by 13 minutes and a-moving. As you can tell I empathize with you on the cannons; what's even worse about the cannon-spam is that even when you've won it takes you forever to close out the game, so you're just better off quitting. I think there is a custom that lets you set the AI opponent's strategy (say, 6-pool), which should help in helping you practice fending off early cheese and such.
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The argument that people can't get out of bronze because the only people they play are other bronzies is basically the "Elo Hell" argument transposed to a single player game, and it's fallacious for the same reason. People blame their Elo on leavers/griefers/noobs just like you're blaming your losses on people playing SC2 poorly. Even if you lost to everyone who did something so retarded that it caught you off guard, there are enough players that will not catch you off guard and lose to solid, standard play that, over time, you would still rise out of bronze. If you're not beating those players, it's because your standard play is not good enough, not because it won't work against bronze players.
In 2010, I took my account from bronze to plat to learn zerg because at the time, I had no idea how zerg worked. I lost a game to a terran who played incredibly turtly. I kept trying to attack him and eventually after I suicided a bunch of lings and banelings into tanks/planetaries, he counterattacked and won because I was too cocky to think I would need to expand beyond my natural. So, I lost a game to a bronze player. But after that I beat literally every other player until I got back up into the gold range. Just like a LoL player will rise to their actual Elo given enough games, an SC2 player will rise to their actual league given enough games.
Yes, bronze is a completely different game, and this is something I intend to cover in a future blog, but it's different because it's inferior.
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On April 24 2012 04:12 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:10 ReketSomething wrote:On April 24 2012 03:29 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 03:25 Th1rdEye wrote:
You're thinking about it wrong. It's a totally different game because people don't follow build orders, don't know how to macro, and don't know how to micro
Learn all of the above and you will EASILY move out of bronze.. those 45 minute carrier pushers will die at 12 minutes to your 200/200 army. As it turns out, 200 food of Roach/ling doesn't break 30+ cannons at the top of a ramp. By the time you have a decent muta pack, there's carriers on the field. I could try cheesing every game to get out of Bronze, but I'm entirely not convinced that the rest of my play would be up to par for staying safely out of Bronze if I did that. I can't believe you are arguing this. You clearly don't understand. Just practice mechanics and how to defend early allins (by scouting and reacting properly) and you will easily get out of bronze. Yknow, I hear this a lot, but I'm curious just how many of the people saying that have spent much time in Bronze league? There's a significant difference between a Diamond/Masters level player tanking to Bronze and then working their way back out, and trying to gradually improve across the same difference when there's literally no sane metagame.
I was at the low end of silver when I first started (legitimately silver) and managed to make it to master's in a month and a half by just focusing on mechanics. I don't tell people to focus on mechanics because it's the norm, it really does help. You WILL lose games doing it, but you'll improve and eventually be crushing bronze players.
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On April 24 2012 04:43 Logo wrote:
I don't agree with this very much. It helps a bit to practice the macro and run through the mechanics to build up an internal timer, but doing these things with no opponent is way easier than vs an opponent and it doesn't really transfer fully. Not even the lack of an opponent meddling, just the stress/mental state difference makes it harder. Though if you can't do it vs no opponent then you 100% can't do it vs an opponent.
Even though you disagree with me, I actually agree with everything you said, especially the bolded part. With strange bronze plays, isn't it kind of like having no opponent for a while except you still have the stress because you know your opponent is out there somewhere, plotting your demise? And a lot of this game is getting down basic macro, so if you can improve there, well, that's good improvement.
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On April 24 2012 04:12 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:10 ReketSomething wrote:On April 24 2012 03:29 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 03:25 Th1rdEye wrote:
You're thinking about it wrong. It's a totally different game because people don't follow build orders, don't know how to macro, and don't know how to micro
Learn all of the above and you will EASILY move out of bronze.. those 45 minute carrier pushers will die at 12 minutes to your 200/200 army. As it turns out, 200 food of Roach/ling doesn't break 30+ cannons at the top of a ramp. By the time you have a decent muta pack, there's carriers on the field. I could try cheesing every game to get out of Bronze, but I'm entirely not convinced that the rest of my play would be up to par for staying safely out of Bronze if I did that. I can't believe you are arguing this. You clearly don't understand. Just practice mechanics and how to defend early allins (by scouting and reacting properly) and you will easily get out of bronze. Yknow, I hear this a lot, but I'm curious just how many of the people saying that have spent much time in Bronze league? There's a significant difference between a Diamond/Masters level player tanking to Bronze and then working their way back out, and trying to gradually improve across the same difference when there's literally no sane metagame.
Well this is how I see it from platinum:
Metagame shouldn't matter. The game isn't about practising one build and knowing that your opponent will only play one or two builds. You have to react to what you see; if someone is doing a planetary fortress rush, you just need to have map awareness that its coming, and then build units to stop it. If they're sitting in their one base building carriers, you should have 20 minutes to figure out what's going on and counter it, while simultaneously expanding.
The only thing you need to do is practise thinking (don't mean that pejoratively!). And when you decide on an action to take, logically figure out what steps are needed to accomplish that. Can I expand and take an economic lead? Okay, what do I do. Is this guy triple expanding? Okay, maybe I'll just baneling bust him. Okay what do I do. Build a baneling nest, make sure I have supply, get zerglings. Inject.
In each of your decisions you will practise mechanics, it doesn't matter what it is. You don't need build orders in bronze, you just need to build what seems appropriate at the right time, while droning when you have a chance. Then when you progress to higher leagues, you'll be able to react to whatever they throw at you - and when you fail you'll know that your thinking was ok, but your mechanics needed some work.
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On April 24 2012 04:50 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:49 Vod.kaholic wrote:On April 24 2012 04:45 JingleHell wrote:On April 24 2012 04:41 ToFu. wrote:
i like to read these for fun every now and then, but as a bw player, have you considered working on your mechanics in single player? it boggles my mind that if you don't have something as fundamental as managing larva production down, you'd try to work on that in an actual game. maybe it's not as exciting to do, but if you wanted to improve your mechanics without the stress of being rushed, that's what i would do. then again, i'm asian so ... yeah. As much as I want to improve, I want to improve by playing the game, at least at this point. I enjoy playing it, but I'm not good enough to enjoy solo practice much yet. If you want that, you have to treat ladder as solo practice when conditions are appropriate, and atop caring about losses, and analyzing every replay and coming away with one thing to improve from there. I don't mind losses much, I just wanted to rant about the fact that it feels like a completely different game from the one I watch. Losing, no biggy. Seeing mind-boggling shit occur? Brain hurts.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You see the same mind-boggling shit on pretty much all levels. The difference is that people in higher leagues are better at pulling it off. Take that 7 pool drone/ling rush in your example. If you said you both were in diamond I would have believed. anyways you are not going to escape it by ranking out of bronze.
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On April 24 2012 04:12 JingleHell wrote:
Yknow, I hear this a lot, but I'm curious just how many of the people saying that have spent much time in Bronze league? There's a significant difference between a Diamond/Masters level player tanking to Bronze and then working their way back out, and trying to gradually improve across the same difference when there's literally no sane metagame.
I will tell you from experience that it doesn't really require anything special to get out of bronze. I started SC2 with absolutely zero RTS experience (or really any competitive game at all), got stuck in bronze, learned when to build a bunker and when to expand, and found that I had way more shit than everyone else in my league for a while (when I still played terran). Then I switched to zerg after getting promoted to silver and went up to plat over the course of the next few months. All it took was learning to build a few extra bunkers and expand a bit. It didn't take any real paradigm shift in the way I played, nor did it take a different set of skills than the ones I refined to jump from silver - platinum. Just keep practicing =)
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Bronze players are bad, but it's entirely their OWN fault. I know that this might sound harsh, and I don't want to insult anybody, but you have to face the truth. I still remember when I started playing BW - I hadn't played any RTS games before and I sucked completely. It took me about 500 games to actually get half-decent at the game, and by saying "half-decent" I actually mean "not terribad, but just bad." Don't expect getting good by playing 10 games a week. Don't overthink your so-called "strategies", just focus on basic execution and (evil word incoming) macro. Only practice will help you to finally deal better with all kinds of shit people are throwing at you in ladder.
You also should never forget that basically everyone sucks at Starcraft. A normal master player will probably lose 49 of 50 games against a top tier pro, so out of the pro's perspective the master player is god awful. There's no such thing as "now I'm good!". There's only "now I'm better than I used to be." Finally, it's not just you, who's improving - everyone does.
Saying it with Nony: Just chill man. And play.
PS: Retarded all-ins exist in every league. They only differ in execution and are an important part of the game.
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