EPTFrom http://eriktheredtv.wordpress.com/
To kick things off I’m going to go over a topic that a lot of StarCraft players talk about but may not fully understand — ladder mindset. I consider myself a mass-gamer, which means that I ladder for large chunks of time but not necessarily with a consistent schedule. The way my classes/internships/obligations line up tends to leave me with a few 3+ hour segments during the week that I can fully devote to laddering. For the last few months I’ve just sort of assumed that playing more games would directly correlate to an increase in skill– I always took it upon myself to watch my losses, tweak my builds, watch pro games, etc. I felt that my mechanics were getting quite decent, and that my game understanding was also developing at a pretty good rate. So why was my MMR not steadily increasing from low-mid Masters NA? I began to notice it was even decreasing to some degree which was just making me really frustrated.
Last night I was assembling a replay pack for someone which required watching about 50+ of my replays from the last 3 months at 8x speed. This is something I’ve never really done before, because I didn’t think it would yield any significant analysis. I mean, my mechanics are solid– I’m not going to suddenly realize that I never build workers after 9 minutes. I always analyze my games under the microscope and think about things like, “If I can get away with one less sentry before my stargate and not die, I can get my robotics a few seconds sooner”, etc. If you were to ask me yesterday why I lose most of my games, I would have listed the following reasons: losing to cheese because I’m tired, macroing/microing poorly when I’m trying a new build, getting supply blocked for a few seconds before hitting a timing. And while these things actually do happen to me from time to time, those reasons account for far fewer losses than it seemed. It turned out that there was another more serious problem with my playstyle that I have always overlooked.
What I realized is that my kill timing SUCKS. In SO MANY GAMES I’ll get a decent advantage and instead of taking another expo and scouting for hidden bases I’ll just keep pushing into shitty positions. For example, in so many PvTs I will be ahead in econ, hit a storm timing and deny the terran’s 3rd base but then keep swarming in units to the natural when it’s like 120 supply vs 100 supply. Suddenly he stims and pulls SCVs and I have to rebuild all my expensive units, sans an extra base that I could have easily taken. the rest of the game is either me losing to a good counterattack or me barely holding on due to my superior mechanics at my MMR range.
So why the heck was I not remembering any of these losses? I could have sworn I was losing to more specific things — getting supply blocked, not getting a zealot flank on a 1/1/1 push, missing a forcefield vs a roach rush. The thing is, when you play a bunch of games at a time you tend to remember the most painful losses and not the ones where you slowly gave away an advantage.
I think the lesson to be learned is that if you deeply analyze any one replay you can always find minor things to improve on. While these small things are important, it’s not until you step back and watch a ton of replays at 8x speed that you will start to notice the broader flaws in your playstyle and can begin improving at a much greater rate.
Hope that was helpful!
Please follow me on Twitter @ErikTheRedTV and tune in to my live stream at http://www.twitch.tv/eriktheredtv!
Last night I was assembling a replay pack for someone which required watching about 50+ of my replays from the last 3 months at 8x speed. This is something I’ve never really done before, because I didn’t think it would yield any significant analysis. I mean, my mechanics are solid– I’m not going to suddenly realize that I never build workers after 9 minutes. I always analyze my games under the microscope and think about things like, “If I can get away with one less sentry before my stargate and not die, I can get my robotics a few seconds sooner”, etc. If you were to ask me yesterday why I lose most of my games, I would have listed the following reasons: losing to cheese because I’m tired, macroing/microing poorly when I’m trying a new build, getting supply blocked for a few seconds before hitting a timing. And while these things actually do happen to me from time to time, those reasons account for far fewer losses than it seemed. It turned out that there was another more serious problem with my playstyle that I have always overlooked.
What I realized is that my kill timing SUCKS. In SO MANY GAMES I’ll get a decent advantage and instead of taking another expo and scouting for hidden bases I’ll just keep pushing into shitty positions. For example, in so many PvTs I will be ahead in econ, hit a storm timing and deny the terran’s 3rd base but then keep swarming in units to the natural when it’s like 120 supply vs 100 supply. Suddenly he stims and pulls SCVs and I have to rebuild all my expensive units, sans an extra base that I could have easily taken. the rest of the game is either me losing to a good counterattack or me barely holding on due to my superior mechanics at my MMR range.
So why the heck was I not remembering any of these losses? I could have sworn I was losing to more specific things — getting supply blocked, not getting a zealot flank on a 1/1/1 push, missing a forcefield vs a roach rush. The thing is, when you play a bunch of games at a time you tend to remember the most painful losses and not the ones where you slowly gave away an advantage.
I think the lesson to be learned is that if you deeply analyze any one replay you can always find minor things to improve on. While these small things are important, it’s not until you step back and watch a ton of replays at 8x speed that you will start to notice the broader flaws in your playstyle and can begin improving at a much greater rate.
Hope that was helpful!
Please follow me on Twitter @ErikTheRedTV and tune in to my live stream at http://www.twitch.tv/eriktheredtv!
