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So, unlike Gheed, I'm a legit Bronze. I tend to agree with him that there's some serious problems with Bronze league. In fact, I think you can't even consider the majority of Bronze games to be SC2, which I think is partly to blame for me still being there. (Along with not practicing and sucking.)
Let me give you an example. This is from a game I played on the ladder last night.
As you can see, my opponent throws down a 7 pool. I'm opening 14 pool personally.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7bPFe.jpg)
That's a 7 pool. Cross on Metalopolis.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6yTwa.jpg)
That's my 14 pool.
Since I did the utterly unthinkable, and used one of those super cheesy drones to scout (hax, clearly), and knew he had a stupidly early pool, I don't expand yet, rush out a queen, and pump some more drones. My enemy goes all-in (by sane standards) with 6 lings, and 7 workers.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9hb1G.jpg)
The... dreaded?... 6 ling, 7 worker rush
One of his workers starts morphing to a spine, one goes for my pool, and the lings and remaining drones go after all my drones. Around this time he realizes he has extra minerals, so he kicks out a couple of drones, which he leaves mining...
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kIUmx.jpg)
Queen, lings, drones.
Anyways, a spine, queen, a few lings, and my drones easily hold off the rush. Not even close to a fight. At this point, I have a few surviving drones, and 2 lings. My opponent has gotten up to 4 drones, a hatch, and a pool. He then proceeds to stay in until I show up and start killing his drones by microing 2 lings. I tried to ask how often it works, but he instantly ignored me.
Now I have to ask. Is this even the same game that I regularly watch? I'm not convinced. I'm sure if I played like a Bronze, I could probably get out of Bronze faster, but I want to actually be playing Starcraft 2 when I get out, instead of some bizarre bastardization that has me having to backtrack and learn how to play the game later.
Unfortunately, when you go up against people who make 37 cannons and 1-base carrier push at the 45 minute mark, playing standard SC2 with lowish skill at mechanics doesn't do much. So I try to practice the right skillset, and it holds me back.
In short, while I agree with Gheed that Bronze has issues, I think that some of those issues are self-perpetuating, in that there's a totally different game being played. You can't actually fix Bronze one player at a time, because it's literally MMR hell. Once you're trapped there, if you try to improve properly, there's a good chance you'll stay trapped for quite a while, because escaping would require playing a totally different game.
Now hopefully I'll be escaping soon, and I intend to keep bringing up my progress, streaming when I have time, hopefully phase into casting some, but in the meantime... well, consider trying this strange game called Bronze out. It will blow your mind.
Ok, since nobody seems to be capable of reading past the OP before a moronic knee-jerk reply that has nothing to do with what the fuck I'm talking about: THIS BLOG IS NOT ABOUT COMPLAINING. IF YOU READ MY OTHER SHIT, OR MY OTHER POSTS IN HERE, OR THE WHOLE FUCKING OP, YOU'LL REALIZE I KNOW THAT I SUCK AT THIS GAME. THIS BLOG IS ABOUT THE RATHER HUMOROUS FACT THAT PLAYING AT THE LOWEST LEVELS IS LIKE PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME. THANK YOU!
 
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Can't you just 6pool every game to get out of bronze pretty fast? It would make for some sucky days while you do it, if you don't enjoy it that is, but it shouldnt be too hard to get out of bronze that way i wouldn't think?
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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.
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Here's how I see it:
If you improve properly and have all the skills you need to play decent SC2 that approximates optimal/pro play, you can get out of bronze MMR hell because those skills are pliable enough to allow you to exploit what bronzies are doing. My suggestion is to keep improving by playing against slightly higher people (silver/gold/plat) for now, and adapt to the bronze "metagame" while you're still down there.
Once you master basic skills, adapting to the bronze metagame or being good enough to ignore it entirely is fairly easy.
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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.
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Play safe, scout a lot, react to what you see. That's all there is to it. If you're good enough to get out of bronze, that will do it. Do you think there's no cheese outside of bronze or something? No weird builds? There's people who have gotten to GM with only 6 pools, 4gates or 3rax scv all inns.
If you're actually playing against people who go 30 cannons into carriers on 1 base, you expand fucking everywhere and destroy his army once he moves out. He has no abilty to pressure or punish at all. If he somehow manages to beat your army, you have enough money to make it 3 times over.
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On April 24 2012 03:29 Opec wrote:
Play safe, scout a lot, react to what you see. That's all there is to it. If you're good enough to get out of bronze, that will do it. Do you think there's no cheese outside of bronze or something? No weird builds? There's people who have gotten to GM with only 6 pools, 4gates or 3rax scv all inns.
No, I'm aware there's more to the game. It's just frustrating to try to improve in Bronze, because I'm playing against things that really make so little sense that it's hard to get functional improvement out of my games.
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On April 24 2012 03:29 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Admission: Played a Bronzie a while back, a-moved marines around, destroyed his main and his nat @ 10 minutes 'cause he didn't have jack shit, realized he'd had another probe escape and had moved it down to another corner of his map, a-moved 200/200 marines there 'cause what the hell, he's dead right? Met what must've been 60 goddamn cannons. Cue me trying to break his 60 cannons for the rest of the game, then he has a huge voidray/colossi deathball that stomps over me and my bio.
I literally had every other base on the map and had mined out what must've been five bases as I tried to break those cannons to no avail.
//shame
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On April 24 2012 03:33 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +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. Admission: Played a Bronzie a while back, a-moved marines around, destroyed his main and his nat @ 10 minutes 'cause he didn't have jack shit, realized he'd had another probe escape and had moved it down to another corner of his map, a-moved 200/200 marines there 'cause what the hell, he's dead right? Met what must've been 60 goddamn cannons. Cue me trying to break his 60 cannons for the rest of the game, then he has a huge voidray/colossi deathball that stomps over me and my bio. I literally had every other base on the map and had mined out what must've been five bases as I tried to break those cannons to no avail. //shame
If he spent 9000 minerals on cannons after losing his base you could probably have afforded to make a couple of siege tanks 
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On April 24 2012 03:33 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +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. Admission: Played a Bronzie a while back, a-moved marines around, destroyed his main and his nat @ 10 minutes 'cause he didn't have jack shit, realized he'd had another probe escape and had moved it down to another corner of his map, a-moved 200/200 marines there 'cause what the hell, he's dead right? Met what must've been 60 goddamn cannons. Cue me trying to break his 60 cannons for the rest of the game, then he has a huge voidray/colossi deathball that stomps over me and my bio. I literally had every other base on the map and had mined out what must've been five bases as I tried to break those cannons to no avail. //shame
And that's what I'm talking about. Stuff that CAN be stopped by a certain level of play, but the level of play needed to stop it is outside the realm of a Bronzie. And that keeps my MMR low enough that I'm playing against more of the same, which keeps me from really getting the chance to work on my mechanics.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to own my part of my losses. I'm aware, I suck, my mechanics suck, I forget to scout, I forget upgrades, I take gas too early, I forget to spread creep, I miss injects. I fuck up enough things per game that IF I got it all down perfect, I'd be playing a totally different game. But right now, working on it is tricky, because you run into people with more turrets than Barracks. You see a nearly unbreakable front on 1-2 bases that's turtled up insanely, and they just wait and wait. Eventually you might win with Broods/Corrupters against that sort of thing, but it's so damned random it makes practicing tricky.
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On April 24 2012 03:37 Opec wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 03:33 babylon 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. Admission: Played a Bronzie a while back, a-moved marines around, destroyed his main and his nat @ 10 minutes 'cause he didn't have jack shit, realized he'd had another probe escape and had moved it down to another corner of his map, a-moved 200/200 marines there 'cause what the hell, he's dead right? Met what must've been 60 goddamn cannons. Cue me trying to break his 60 cannons for the rest of the game, then he has a huge voidray/colossi deathball that stomps over me and my bio. I literally had every other base on the map and had mined out what must've been five bases as I tried to break those cannons to no avail. //shame If he spent 9000 minerals on cannons after losing his base you could probably have afforded to make a couple of siege tanks
I didn't know it was a bajillion cannons at the time, so I was like "LOLOLOL NOOB, I'LL JUST OVERRUN YOU WITH MARINES AND MARAUDERS." After my attack failed for like the 3rd time I was all, "Oh fine, guess I gotta make factories." So I did. Problem was by then he had a lot of VRs and colossi. I tried to get a bunch of vikings out but was too slow on the uptake. T_T
I still had five mining bases when I left the game, but at that point, even if I'd killed his deathball, it would've taken goddamn forever destroying his cannons and (new) main+nat.
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On April 24 2012 03:40 JingleHell wrote:
And that's what I'm talking about. Stuff that CAN be stopped by a certain level of play, but the level of play needed to stop it is outside the realm of a Bronzie. And that keeps my MMR low enough that I'm playing against more of the same, which keeps me from really getting the chance to work on my mechanics.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to own my part of my losses. I'm aware, I suck, my mechanics suck, I forget to scout, I forget upgrades, I take gas too early, I forget to spread creep, I miss injects. I fuck up enough things per game that IF I got it all down perfect, I'd be playing a totally different game. But right now, working on it is tricky, because you run into people with more turrets than Barracks. You see a nearly unbreakable front on 1-2 bases that's turtled up insanely, and they just wait and wait. Eventually you might win with Broods/Corrupters against that sort of thing, but it's so damned random it makes practicing tricky.
Well then pick one thing to improve on and do that, e.g. 'my injects are terrible' then work on maximising your larva in each game and work on one of the more important aspects of the game at the same time, which is to adapt to what your opponent is doing. Especially playing zerg, which a lot of the time is played as a reaction to what your opponent is doing
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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.
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On April 24 2012 03:49 Smartyz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 03:40 JingleHell wrote:
And that's what I'm talking about. Stuff that CAN be stopped by a certain level of play, but the level of play needed to stop it is outside the realm of a Bronzie. And that keeps my MMR low enough that I'm playing against more of the same, which keeps me from really getting the chance to work on my mechanics.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to own my part of my losses. I'm aware, I suck, my mechanics suck, I forget to scout, I forget upgrades, I take gas too early, I forget to spread creep, I miss injects. I fuck up enough things per game that IF I got it all down perfect, I'd be playing a totally different game. But right now, working on it is tricky, because you run into people with more turrets than Barracks. You see a nearly unbreakable front on 1-2 bases that's turtled up insanely, and they just wait and wait. Eventually you might win with Broods/Corrupters against that sort of thing, but it's so damned random it makes practicing tricky. Well then pick one thing to improve on and do that, e.g. 'my injects are terrible' then work on maximising your larva in each game and work on one of the more important aspects of the game at the same time, which is to adapt to what your opponent is doing. Especially playing zerg, which a lot of the time is played as a reaction to what your opponent is doing
If I sit down planning to focus on maximizing larva, I tend to run into a string of players who rush. Universe is a spiteful little shit that way.
That's why I've been trying to improve my play as a general thing, rather than specific elements at once. It's all so bad that it's not like just getting one skill will make me good enough to escape bronze. I think that's one thing a lot of higher league players don't understand.
When you play THAT bad, focus on one thing doesn't help much. If someone has never driven a car, and they hop into a rear wheel drive stick shift on icey roads, is focussing on proper clutch control going to keep them from wrecking?
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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.
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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.
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On April 24 2012 03:29 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On April 24 2012 04:10 ReketSomething wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On April 24 2012 04:05 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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.
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On April 24 2012 04:05 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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.
Well, as a toss I actually have to place buildings, so I can't just spam a few larva into overlords at once but yeah, I don't get supply blocked THAT often, but when I do, it's usually sometime that it's important not to :/
On April 24 2012 04:10 ReketSomething wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Scouting in bronze? That works like this "Oh, that terran took double gas early, must be tech coming..." And then he makes 7 barracks and pumps non-stop marines.
"Oh, that zerg got an early pool, pressure incoming!" And then the zerg techs up to hydras and stays on 2 base hydra all game.
When your scouting mechanics are bad to begin with, it's impossible to actually make sense of what your opponent is doing in bronze without actually seeing their army. Even seeing buildings doesn't necessarily mean anything. Because some bronze players just build the building because they feel like it and can afford it.
Now, if I could actually get my mechanics to the level I'd like, I'm sure simply knowing what my goal is would be enough to beat these people, but I am so damn bad at actually doing things that everything else suffers. Here's an example of how my mechanics being so bad causes so many problems: say it takes me 2 or 3 seconds to successfully hotkey something because I missed the ctrl key, and because of that I end up forgetting to check my food, so I get supply blocked, and then I forget to check my minimap and deal with my army being attacked while I'm in the base trying to clear my supply block, and before you know it I've lost my army because I couldn't hotkey something right. Say I'll be trying to macro 2 or 3 bases, but I screwed up and didn't hotkey my nexuses together like I planned, and now I've queued up a bunch of probes off 1 base while forgetting to build any at my other bases. Crap like that happens way more often than it should, and holds me back from playing at the level that I could if my mechanics were better.
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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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On April 24 2012 05:06 Cyx. wrote:Show nested quote +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 =)
I'll second this. I picked up SC2 a few months ago, also with zero RTS experience. I don't play very frequently, I play on a laptop keyboard, and I like to play when I'm drunk, so I was in bronze for longer than anyone should be (about 200 games, and most of two ladder seasons). But I got out eventually, just by doing the same build every game and improving my mechanics.
One thing I'd add is that I think low level players under-appreciate the virtues of using "cheesy" or "all-in" builds at lower levels, because they misconstrue what constitutes cheesy or all-in play. I got out of bronze with a 3-rax build (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=299901), which would be pretty all-in at higher levels. But at bronze, it's just a solid early aggression build that transitions into an expansion at about 7:30--which is still earlier than most bronzies expand. And you have lots of early army, so you're safer against weird early rushes. It was only when I started to meet opponents who could early expand and hold my aggression that I started to work on fast expand builds myself.
I agree that you shouldn't worry about scouting in bronze though, beyond checking army compositions. You can't read those players the way you would with someone who knows what they're doing.
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This blog got me into perspective at my poker play. Now I'm ashamed about everything I said @ playing microstakes  .
Geez, how stupid my posts must've looked to people who were beyond micro's. I guess bluffing into a calling station is the equivalent of shoving a roach max into 1base 40 cannons on ramp.
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P.S.> No, it's okay that they're playing 'a different game'. You can still own them with a standard strategy, superior mechanics, and a reactive approach to their bullshit strategies. Keypoint is that "you'll always have much, much more stuff". This applies way past bronze, too.
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I have updated my OP. I suggest reading that bit for perspective. This was NOT intended to be some sort of bad strat forum post outside the strat forum. It wasn't for discussion of how I can improve, and it wasn't for tired rhetoric about how to improve.
All further responses operating under these assumptions will receive a blog ban, because quite frankly, it's easier than trying to explain 3 times per page which parts of the OP the people replying had to have skipped entirely.
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when i was coaching my roomate, i made him play like he was playing dimaond players ( he was orginially in bronze moved up to gold!, macros like a boss but has absolutley no micro, but i made him focus on reacting to his opponent. I emphasized scouting scouting scoutin because bronze players do the weirdest things, but i reminded him that if you know what your opponent is doing then you can counter their builds, if they turltle expand everywhere, and try to understand how many units they have.
masters level (:
i dunno if i helped :O
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On April 24 2012 04:45 JingleHell wrote:
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. Playing in bronze is as close as you can get to solo practice without it actually being solo practice. It's like playing squash against a baby.
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On April 24 2012 03:15 JingleHell wrote:
I'm sure if I played like a Bronze, I could probably get out of Bronze faster
This statement exemplifies the type of thinking that seems to go on in bronze league.
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I found it helpful when I was in your situation to simply ignore the ladder and find people to practice with that won't do ridiculous all-ins or build 40 cannons every game. Play enough with like minded individuals around your skill level or slightly higher and it will do wonders for your play. By the time you come back to ladder you will be good enough to get out of bronze simply by having far superior mechanics and game sense.
Maybe start a practice group of 3 or 4 people and rotate playing games and obsing. Copy some good builds and learn from each other.
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On April 24 2012 05:42 HardlyNever wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 03:15 JingleHell wrote:
I'm sure if I played like a Bronze, I could probably get out of Bronze faster This statement exemplifies the type of thinking that seems to go on in bronze league.
Indeed.
There is no "Bronze hell"
You can do ANYTHING in bronze league and win, as long as you do it well and have a plan.
You don't have to prepare or practice for "random or dumb stuff" because things like that instantly lose, to anything.
You think pros know how to deal with a guy who goes 10 cannons in main into 4 stargate carrier specifically? NO
They just make stuff and go LOL and kill him.
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I rate this blog a 5 and every single comment a 1.
The level of pompous-asshole-ness in this thread is astounding. "I don't wanna insult you but.... BLAH BLAH BLAH I DIDN'T READ JACK SHIT let me spew unrelated nonsense."
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I have faith in you Jingle, you can make it out of bronze, i know you can.
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You're playing the same game in bronze. I don't mean to insult anyone but if you're having trouble in bronze then you probably should be there until you improve through ladder or customs. These silly stories about 30 cannons or 1 base carrier games... it is still your fault if you don't respond correctly. That stuff is incredibly easy to counter.
On a side note, it'll be interesting to see how the lower leagues improve as time goes by. You can improve and still be in a lower league since over time people do improve at different rates.
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If you think I never get 7 pooled or play against drunk people in diamond then you are mistaken
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perhaps you should value scouting and playing to win higher than playing 'right'. basically its idra syndrome, albeit at a much lower level. you have preexisting ideas about what correct play is and you have ideas about how that should be beaten, when in reality a more useful skill is identifying the flaws of anyones play. if they are going 1 base carrier? go fucking kill them. thats always the correct response no matter if you are in GM or bronze. you can only macro in games that are indusive to macro, hes going 14 pool? well you can 14 hatch to take advantage of that, but dont 14 hatch every game then demand they play in a way that your hatch makes sense.
its all about perspective really.
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On April 24 2012 05:52 Clarity_nl wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 05:42 HardlyNever wrote:On April 24 2012 03:15 JingleHell wrote:
I'm sure if I played like a Bronze, I could probably get out of Bronze faster This statement exemplifies the type of thinking that seems to go on in bronze league. Indeed. There is no "Bronze hell" You can do ANYTHING in bronze league and win, as long as you do it well and have a plan. You don't have to prepare or practice for "random or dumb stuff" because things like that instantly lose, to anything. You think pros know how to deal with a guy who goes 10 cannons in main into 4 stargate carrier specifically? NO They just make stuff and go LOL and kill him.
Speaking from experience as a guy who was once Bronze and got promoted, I have to completely agree. I sorta had the same problem, when I saw people doing stupid stuff, I thought to all-in to punish their bad play. Sadly, my all-ins were just as bad and I did not succeed all of the time. I did eventually learn how to macro and that helped me escape bronze league.
Again speaking from experience, I don't think that the game being played so much differently was such a large problem in bronze. For the most part, at least for me, players did play "correctly" but what made them so bad was kind of how exaggerated their mistakes were. For example, queuing up several workers.
I soon learned if you play enough games, and play straight macro each game, you will occasionally play those weirdos in those strange games, but your macro will handle it fine. The few games that are so strange that seem like "a different game" won't occur enough for it to make a big difference. You may lose say 10 of those, but the games that were played non-cheesy, just "exaggerated standard" you will win easily.
This is how it worked for me at least. It's really hard to explain, I don't think I did such a good job of it really.
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I read your whole blog, ok? Don't get mad at me.
You have a misunderstanding of what 'standard' StarCraft is. In SC2 or in BW it doesn't matter, you are reacting to your opponent. Do you play super safe and play a practiced build order vs someone who spent their first 1k minerals on cannons in their main? No. You expand twice and take advantage of their lack of offensive ability. That's not gonna make you worse at SC2 when you move up a league, that's gonna give you a brain to think with when you play.
At bronze league we are talking about people who hardly know how to use the interface, who don't know the priorities of what to do with their limited apm, and who are just generally experimenting and using strategies that helped them to beat the computer in single player. Imagine a 6 year old playing a video game for the first time and you have to explain to them how the d pad corresponds to moving Mario left and right. That is bronze SC2. I guess that's more of a response to Gheed's 15 blogs, but you might as well hear it too.
It has nothing to do with mechanics or metagame and everything to do with just learning what strategy in an RTS is. Your opponent's offense is hindered? Expand / tech, take adv of it somehow. Your opponent uses all his workers and lings to attack? Build defensive structures that will deflect it easily and come out with a superior economy because you saw it coming. Two spines or whatever it is in SC2. IT'S OK. Cheese will exist at all levels of the game and it isn't different in bronze, it's just not as intelligent. The concepts you learn to defeat these strategies will hold thru into Masters and beyond, they just become better executed and more intelligent.
I guess you are thinking 'well if I just 6pool every game I will probably make it out of bronze' and you're thinking that's the only solution and you won't learn anything or get better at mechanics. Erase that thought from your mind and think about beating the individual you are playing, not the entire league.
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On April 24 2012 06:30 Chef wrote:
I read your whole blog, ok? Don't get mad at me.
You have a misunderstanding of what 'standard' StarCraft is. In SC2 or in BW it doesn't matter, you are reacting to your opponent. Do you play super safe and play a practiced build order vs someone who spent their first 1k minerals on cannons in their main? No. You expand twice and take advantage of their lack of offensive ability. That's not gonna make you worse at SC2 when you move up a league, that's gonna give you a brain to think with when you play.
At bronze league we are talking about people who hardly know how to use the interface, who don't know the priorities of what to do with their limited apm, and who are just generally experimenting and using strategies that helped them to beat the computer in single player. Imagine a 6 year old playing a video game for the first time and you have to explain to them how the d pad corresponds to moving Mario left and right. That is bronze SC2. I guess that's more of a response to Gheed's 15 blogs, but you might as well hear it too.
It has nothing to do with mechanics or metagame and everything to do with just learning what strategy in an RTS is. Your opponent's offense is hindered? Expand / tech, take adv of it somehow. Your opponent uses all his workers and lings to attack? Build defensive structures that will deflect it easily and come out with a superior economy because you saw it coming. Two spines or whatever it is in SC2. IT'S OK. Cheese will exist at all levels of the game and it isn't different in bronze, it's just not as intelligent. The concepts you learn to defeat these strategies will hold thru into Masters and beyond, they just become better executed and more intelligent.
I guess you are thinking 'well if I just 6pool every game I will probably make it out of bronze' and you're thinking that's the only solution and you won't learn anything or get better at mechanics. Erase that thought from your mind and think about beating the individual you are playing, not the entire league.
You didn't read the blog I wrote, and especially not the replies (mine included), if you managed to think this is somehow applicable.
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I actually think you are pretty right, when I was in bronze (oh those dark days of yore...) I learned strategies to win in bronze but as I was promoted out into silver, and eventually into diamond, I found those strategies no longer worked. The way I thought the game should be played was not how it could be played.
These stopped working not because of the change in my skill level but in the 'meta-game' I find in the middling leagues, plat and diamond, the meta-game reflects the professional one (as much as it can) while in lower leagues, and bronze in particular, the meta-game reflects the ideas I hear people suggest when they are so high they don't know their own names. "What about a one base broodlord all-in?" anyone who seriously plays at higher levels would laugh at that but I've seen it happen in bronze and, incredibly, at the time I could lose to it.
Bronze is its own animal, one I'm glad to have left behind.
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On April 24 2012 06:39 Promethelax wrote:
I actually think you are pretty right, when I was in bronze (oh those dark days of yore...) I learned strategies to win in bronze but as I was promoted out into silver, and eventually into diamond, I found those strategies no longer worked. The way I thought the game should be played was not how it could be played.
These stopped working not because of the change in my skill level but in the 'meta-game' I find in the middling leagues, plat and diamond, the meta-game reflects the professional one (as much as it can) while in lower leagues, and bronze in particular, the meta-game reflects the ideas I hear people suggest when they are so high they don't know their own names. "What about a one base broodlord all-in?" anyone who seriously plays at higher levels would laugh at that but I've seen it happen in bronze and, incredibly, at the time I could lose to it.
Bronze is its own animal, one I'm glad to have left behind.
Yeah, I've seen so many random-ass things lately. A protoss expanding to my natural third with blink stalker play that never went anywhere, Voidray harass with 0 cannons, no wall, no units, and no expo, a 12 Evo, 14 spore, 14 pool, no expand build.... That last one GGed when I showed up inside his base with speedlings at the 5 minute mark for some reason...
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Hey JingleHell, how many games do you tend to play a season? And I'm not asking for MMR purposes
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On April 24 2012 06:47 Hulavuta wrote:
Hey JingleHell, how many games do you tend to play a season? And I'm not asking for MMR purposes
Uhhh, until a few days ago, I hadn't played since... season 2?
And 1v1 games, not a whole lot. I've kept getting distracted by other shit releasing, and now there's nothing good out to play, I'm finally starting to play. I think the last week or so may be my highest concentration of 1v1 games ever, at around 30ish.
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What's your name and code?
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On April 24 2012 03:15 JingleHell wrote:
Now I have to ask. Is this even the same game that I regularly watch? I'm not convinced. I'm sure if I played like a Bronze, I could probably get out of Bronze faster, but I want to actually be playing Starcraft 2 when I get out, instead of some bizarre bastardization that has me having to backtrack and learn how to play the game later.
You seem familiar with Gheed's posts. This is why I'm surprised you're making a major mistake he's pointed out a few times. I The area of interest is set bold in the quote.
There's something seriously wrong with your mindset if you think a bunch of wildly bizarre play ISN'T starcraft. Gheed mentions this several times when victims of the worker rushes complain about "not being able to play the game" when the game, in fact, is being played. I play on my little brother's and girlfriend's bronze accounts from time to time and yes, you see a TON of crazy, nonstandard play that should never, ever work. Don't fall into the trap where you feel like "standard" play is the ONLY way to play.
You seem to want to learn standard play, so go look up so practice partners in the practice partner thread and agree not to cheese each other. It's hard, especially as zerg, to learn how to alter standard play in response to something weird, so practicing the crap out of it is your best bet. A BW caster a long time ago once said "the response to nonstandard play is standard play" - do that the first time around. You'll be surprised how often it works.
The ridiculous strategies also don't go away. I buddy of mine is a low masters zerg who zergling all-ins every zvz, does nothing but timing attacks in zvt, and regularly proxy hatches in his opponent's natural every zvp. He has no late-game plan and still manages an MMR that's top 2% of the NA server. Read: ridiculous crap is everywhere - deal with it!
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Ok, since nobody seems to be capable of reading past the OP before a moronic knee-jerk reply that has nothing to do with what the fuck I'm talking about: THIS BLOG IS NOT ABOUT COMPLAINING. IF YOU READ MY OTHER SHIT, OR MY OTHER POSTS IN HERE, OR THE WHOLE FUCKING OP, YOU'LL REALIZE I KNOW THAT I SUCK AT THIS GAME. THIS BLOG IS ABOUT THE RATHER HUMOROUS FACT THAT PLAYING AT THE LOWEST LEVELS IS LIKE PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME. THANK YOU!
Well someone blew a gasket.
Look, that may have been your intended point, but I'm willing to bet that most of us thought that there was a large degree of complaining going on there, complaining that had little basis in reality. When you make complaints that have little basis in reality, most TLers will point out that your argument is invalid.
Remember, we aren't you. We can't divine your intended point from your mind. We can only do that with your words.
Anyways, your statement that Bronze is a different game is quite accurate. Speaking from experience, almost every time I made a read that didn't come from the most direct scouting methods (i.e. scouting army comp.) I was wrong.
This is due to the fact that in every read you make, you have three outcomes:
A: Your read was right, and you are on the path to victory.
B: Your read was wrong, and you are in trouble.
C: Your opponent is flat out stupid and has no idea what he was doing when he did whatever he did that made you make that read. This can or cannot be troublesome for you, depending on how retarded he is, but more often than not, it is frustrating as hell but can be countered by not being as retarded as him and recognizing that option C exists.
In the lower leagues, ALWAYS pick option C. People are stupid, have no idea what they are doing and suck up until around masters.
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"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him." -Mark Twain
That said I feel for you, the only way I've found to combat this is play standard and play lots of games. Good luck.
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On April 24 2012 07:13 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:Show nested quote +Ok, since nobody seems to be capable of reading past the OP before a moronic knee-jerk reply that has nothing to do with what the fuck I'm talking about: THIS BLOG IS NOT ABOUT COMPLAINING. IF YOU READ MY OTHER SHIT, OR MY OTHER POSTS IN HERE, OR THE WHOLE FUCKING OP, YOU'LL REALIZE I KNOW THAT I SUCK AT THIS GAME. THIS BLOG IS ABOUT THE RATHER HUMOROUS FACT THAT PLAYING AT THE LOWEST LEVELS IS LIKE PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME. THANK YOU! Well someone blew a gasket. Look, that may have been your intended point, but I'm willing to bet that most of us thought that there was a large degree of complaining going on there, complaining that had little basis in reality. When you make complaints that have little basis in reality, most TLers will point out that your argument is invalid. Remember, we aren't you. We can't divine your intended point from your mind. We can only do that with your words. Anyways, your statement that Bronze is a different game is quite accurate. Speaking from experience, almost every time I made a read that didn't come from the most direct scouting methods (i.e. scouting army comp.) I was wrong. This is due to the fact that in every read you make, you have three outcomes: A: Your read was right, and you are on the path to victory. B: Your read was wrong, and you are in trouble. C: Your opponent is flat out stupid and has no idea what he was doing when he did whatever he did that made you make that read. This can or cannot be troublesome for you, depending on how retarded he is, but more often than not, it is frustrating as hell but can be countered by not being as retarded as him and recognizing that option C exists. In the lower leagues, ALWAYS pick option C. People are stupid, have no idea what they are doing and suck up until around masters.
Read the replies that led up to me blowing the gasket. It will make more sense. Because while I may not have put in a 3 page long caveat that I know I suck, a reference to that fact DID make it to the very top of the OP.
And yeah, scouting in Bronze is a nightmare. When I remember to do it, I tend to assume maximum incompetence, but sometimes it's not even possible to think on the right level to understand what's going to happen.
And I didn't make any complaint with little basis in reality. I just mentioned that playing at the bottom and watching at the top, you see two entirely different games, a point you seem to agree with. And you also seem to understand that it affects your play. Since those were the things that most people were trying to "correct", I don't see where you were going with that first bit.
On April 24 2012 07:19 UltimateHurl wrote:
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him." -Mark Twain
That said I feel for you, the only way I've found to combat this is play standard and play lots of games. Good luck.
I love this quote. Even though I'm nowhere near the best, this sums up what it feels like, with my brain conditioned to one thing, and seeing stuff that doesn't fit that.
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Im going with the standard "learn how to macro" and you will get out of bronze not even knowing build orders. I was placed in gold on my other account never having played zerg, i just winged every build order and macrod. When i was 200/200 on 5 bases, my terran opponent was on 60 food and 2 bases. Macro gets you out of bronze even if u have no micro or builds.
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Playing the Very Hard AI works really well to beat basically everyone up to Gold. Even if you don't get all-in'd, the count of units you have will be far superior to the count that most everyone in Bronze and Silver have at that point and you'll do enormous amounts of damage if you don't win the game outright.
I placed in Bronze in the beta and got to Diamond just doing 2 Gate Robo expands every game. While I scouted, I chose to focus primarily on macro and only looked for very specific things - e.g. at the time 3 rax, really awful versions of 'the tasteless build', and cannon rushes were very popular.
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You just seem to be contradicting everything people are saying, as if you want to stay in bronze.
Truth is, learn to micro, macro, and multitask and you will get out of bronze.. I'll repeat myself again.
I don't care if it's hard to understand what the opponent is doing, I don't care if they don't know strategies.. Learn one of your own, and they will die.
30 cannons on a ramp? Nydus him. Drop him. Out expand..
Carriers? Get fucking corruptors. Send an overseer in before he gets 30 carriers?
Just saw your edit for your blog.. look..if you took our advice you wouldn't even be writing a blog about being in bronze
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On April 24 2012 04:05 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +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.
how am i contradicting myself, I'm saying your issue extends to every level of play and there's nothing inherently different in bronze, just lower level play. So that would mean we are all in your definition of elo hell.
Also, i do find it obnoxious whenever some dude mentions he's bronze people immediately jump on telling him where he's going wrong even though that was never the point of their posts/blogs in the first place however yours did come off as a little bit of a rant/whine which is why i responded that way. But i do disagree that bronze is a different game, people do random shit in master league as well, just better executed.
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Yes the lower leagues are a completely different game but out of all honesty, its not about your lack of APM skill etc.
I got from bronze to diamond in 2 months just by looking at the Global Hotkey menu and picking out and rebinding keys that would make it easier for me to play. Simple as that.
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First off:
Ok, since nobody seems to be capable of reading past the OP before a moronic knee-jerk reply that has nothing to do with what the fuck I'm talking about
What the hell are we supposed to respond to if not your OP? Are we supposed to scour TL and the entire internet looking for your sage words before we deign to reply to your post? Hey, if you just wanna let of steam and don't want anybody to reply, then maybe create your own little unknown blogspace somewhere that nobody will read and have it. If you're going to post on TL, you're going to get responses. This might be a blog, but it isn't a lecture.
Now having said that, I disagree with your premise. Like so many bronze players you are WAY over-analyzing the situation. If you want out of bronze, you need to practice your fundamentals and that's all. It doesn't matter what wacky, off-center stuff your bronze level opponents do, if you just improve your mechanics and ignore whatever they are doing you will get out of bronze. Guarantee it.
Specifically:
Once you're trapped there, if you try to improve properly, there's a good chance you'll stay trapped for quite a while, because escaping would require playing a totally different game.
Is completely wrong. Let me ask you a question: If Idra tanked an account to the absolute bottom of the ladder, by say, losing 100 matches in a row after failing all placement matches, do you think he'd have to "[play] a totally different game" to rise out of bronze? No, of course he wouldn't. He would just fall back on his solid mechanics and would immediately start progressing.
You don't need to play a different game to get out of bronze, you just need to play this one better. I know you say that you know this, but your insistence that you have to play another game to get out of bronze implies otherwise.
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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.
This is honestly a silly argument. Everybody who came out of bronze stayed in bronze just enough to learn how to get out of it, and that's it. Especially people who never or hardly ever played brood war before. I spent less than a month in bronze with nearly no experience (only single player) of SC1.
You do get some absurd games in bronze because people play in an extremely weird fashion, much different than what you see in high level games, but it's definitely not true that you need to be outside of a bronze skill level to beat that kind of weird plays, quite the contrary, you need to beat that kind of weird play to get outside of bronze skill level.
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On April 25 2012 03:20 SCbiff wrote:First off: Show nested quote +Ok, since nobody seems to be capable of reading past the OP before a moronic knee-jerk reply that has nothing to do with what the fuck I'm talking about What the hell are we supposed to respond to if not your OP? Are we supposed to scour TL and the entire internet looking for your sage words before we deign to reply to your post? Hey, if you just wanna let of steam and don't want anybody to reply, then maybe create your own little unknown blogspace somewhere that nobody will read and have it. If you're going to post on TL, you're going to get responses. This might be a blog, but it isn't a lecture. Now having said that, I disagree with your premise. Like so many bronze players you are WAY over-analyzing the situation. If you want out of bronze, you need to practice your fundamentals and that's all. It doesn't matter what wacky, off-center stuff your bronze level opponents do, if you just improve your mechanics and ignore whatever they are doing you will get out of bronze. Guarantee it. Specifically: Show nested quote +Once you're trapped there, if you try to improve properly, there's a good chance you'll stay trapped for quite a while, because escaping would require playing a totally different game. Is completely wrong. Let me ask you a question: If Idra tanked an account to the absolute bottom of the ladder, by say, losing 100 matches in a row after failing all placement matches, do you think he'd have to "[play] a totally different game" to rise out of bronze? No, of course he wouldn't. He would just fall back on his solid mechanics and would immediately start progressing. You don't need to play a different game to get out of bronze, you just need to play this one better. I know you say that you know this, but your insistence that you have to play another game to get out of bronze implies otherwise.
Are you actually dumb enough that you think that I'm as good as IdrA and somehow stuck in Bronze anyways? That would be pretty fucking sad, honestly.
Now if you'd like to teach me the trick of making a succesful montage, so I can go from a beginner to a pro in just a couple of minutes, that would work, but otherwise, I'd guess you don't have the slightest fucking clue what I'm talking about.
Anyways, nobody read the whole OP, let alone any replies, so don't get all tearful defending all the other people that are better at running their mouths than making sense. Tell you what. Go to the next MLG, and win from the open bracket. Then tell me that all I have to do is magically be better at the game without actually practicing. Until then, you're just full of shit like every other assclown.
As it turns out, yes, Bronze is a different game. Some of the shit you play against feels more like some sort of custom map designed on acid. This means that if you want to improve, you either play a lot of games that feel pointless due to the bizarre shit, or you play vs the AI, which happens to not be fun when you're not that good. (Yes, some of us play games for fun.)
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you either play a lot of games that feel pointless due to the bizarre shit, or you play vs the AI, which happens to not be fun when you're not that good. (Yes, some of us play games for fun.)
I know this isn't the point of your blog but it's something I wanted to address anyways because I strongly disagree. Playing vs the AI or vs no opponent at all can be lots of fun, you just have to know where to look to get satisfaction. Work on running through your build as smoothly as possible. No supply blocks, no idle larvae, low minerals, low energy on queens, creep constantly spreading, drones on gas the second the geysers done, etc. All of the standard "maintenance" tasks that go along with a normal game of SC2. When you line up everything perfectly and efficiently and you're hands are moving fast it's a pretty cool feeling.
The tangible benefit is that you can run through your build like it's second nature and you will find it a lot easier to dedicate time to scouting and controlling your army when you instinctively know what to do next with your normal build.
Of course this doesn't teach you anything about reacting to scouting information and making adjustments to your build or anything but the benefit is real and it's a very useful technique for beginning and advanced players alike.
Once again I know I didn't address your main point so feel free to ignore this post if you will but give playing vs the AI (or vs no opponent) another chance because it can be lots of fun to straighten out all the irregularities and to bring all of your orbs into alignment.
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On April 25 2012 04:21 -Frog- wrote:Show nested quote +you either play a lot of games that feel pointless due to the bizarre shit, or you play vs the AI, which happens to not be fun when you're not that good. (Yes, some of us play games for fun.) I know this isn't the point of your blog but it's something I wanted to address anyways because I strongly disagree. Playing vs the AI or vs no opponent at all can be lots of fun, you just have to know where to look to get satisfaction. Work on running through your build as smoothly as possible. No supply blocks, no idle larvae, low minerals, low energy on queens, creep constantly spreading, drones on gas the second the geysers done, etc. All of the standard "maintenance" tasks that go along with a normal game of SC2. When you line up everything perfectly and efficiently and you're hands are moving fast it's a pretty cool feeling. The tangible benefit is that you can run through your build like it's second nature and you will find it a lot easier to dedicate time to scouting and controlling your army when you instinctively know what to do next with your normal build. Of course this doesn't teach you anything about reacting to scouting information and making adjustments to your build or anything but the benefit is real and it's a very useful technique for beginning and advanced players alike. Once again I know I didn't address your main point so feel free to ignore this post if you will but give playing vs the AI (or vs no opponent) another chance because it can be lots of fun to straighten out all the irregularities and to bring all of your orbs into alignment.
Fun is subjective. Once I'm a bit better at the game overall, I think, knowing me, I'll be able to have fun that way. But at this point, it really isn't fun for me to do that.
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On April 25 2012 04:22 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 04:21 -Frog- wrote:you either play a lot of games that feel pointless due to the bizarre shit, or you play vs the AI, which happens to not be fun when you're not that good. (Yes, some of us play games for fun.) I know this isn't the point of your blog but it's something I wanted to address anyways because I strongly disagree. Playing vs the AI or vs no opponent at all can be lots of fun, you just have to know where to look to get satisfaction. Work on running through your build as smoothly as possible. No supply blocks, no idle larvae, low minerals, low energy on queens, creep constantly spreading, drones on gas the second the geysers done, etc. All of the standard "maintenance" tasks that go along with a normal game of SC2. When you line up everything perfectly and efficiently and you're hands are moving fast it's a pretty cool feeling. The tangible benefit is that you can run through your build like it's second nature and you will find it a lot easier to dedicate time to scouting and controlling your army when you instinctively know what to do next with your normal build. Of course this doesn't teach you anything about reacting to scouting information and making adjustments to your build or anything but the benefit is real and it's a very useful technique for beginning and advanced players alike. Once again I know I didn't address your main point so feel free to ignore this post if you will but give playing vs the AI (or vs no opponent) another chance because it can be lots of fun to straighten out all the irregularities and to bring all of your orbs into alignment. Fun is subjective. Once I'm a bit better at the game overall, I think, knowing me, I'll be able to have fun that way. But at this point, it really isn't fun for me to do that.
I guess my point is that you have to sacrifice a little bit of fun now so that you can have even more fun later. Picking up something really difficult always kind of sucks at first but when you've put in the work and have improved it becomes a lot better. I hope you give what I said a try and see if you can find the joy in making something really difficult work well.
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On April 25 2012 04:28 -Frog- wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 04:22 JingleHell wrote:On April 25 2012 04:21 -Frog- wrote:you either play a lot of games that feel pointless due to the bizarre shit, or you play vs the AI, which happens to not be fun when you're not that good. (Yes, some of us play games for fun.) I know this isn't the point of your blog but it's something I wanted to address anyways because I strongly disagree. Playing vs the AI or vs no opponent at all can be lots of fun, you just have to know where to look to get satisfaction. Work on running through your build as smoothly as possible. No supply blocks, no idle larvae, low minerals, low energy on queens, creep constantly spreading, drones on gas the second the geysers done, etc. All of the standard "maintenance" tasks that go along with a normal game of SC2. When you line up everything perfectly and efficiently and you're hands are moving fast it's a pretty cool feeling. The tangible benefit is that you can run through your build like it's second nature and you will find it a lot easier to dedicate time to scouting and controlling your army when you instinctively know what to do next with your normal build. Of course this doesn't teach you anything about reacting to scouting information and making adjustments to your build or anything but the benefit is real and it's a very useful technique for beginning and advanced players alike. Once again I know I didn't address your main point so feel free to ignore this post if you will but give playing vs the AI (or vs no opponent) another chance because it can be lots of fun to straighten out all the irregularities and to bring all of your orbs into alignment. Fun is subjective. Once I'm a bit better at the game overall, I think, knowing me, I'll be able to have fun that way. But at this point, it really isn't fun for me to do that. I guess my point is that you have to sacrifice a little bit of fun now so that you can have even more fun later. Picking up something really difficult always kind of sucks at first but when you've put in the work and have improved it becomes a lot better. I hope you give what I said a try and see if you can find the joy in making something really difficult work well.
I have given it a try. It's dull, because with so much stuff that goes bad in my play, it's kinda like trying to kill an ant infestation with a magnifying glass.
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Ares[Effort]
DEMACIA6550 Posts
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