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Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this blog is to document my efforts in exploring and expanding upon the current and emerging trends in training and practicing for StarCraft 2 play. My initial intent will be constrained to amateur training - that is, bringing a nonprofessional player up to a high Master or GrandMaster level. However, I have also been studying and theorizing about professional-level play and the practice regimens various pros use (or don’t use) and what might change to improve those methods. That will be explored along the way.
Some of the items I analyze or offer theory on will probably be controversial as they go against what is commonly thought to be immutable or sacred. In support of those analyses and theories, then, I will seek to undergo a number of tests to prove my assertions. While none of this can be considered scientific in any serious manner, I will consider the quality and honesty of the work I do to be of the utmost importance, even if the results betray my hypotheses.
The Alpha Test
Now, with that commitment to integrity and truthfulness firmly ensconced as one of the cornerstones of this effort I will undertake, a confession…
I do not play StarCraft 2.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I started following professional SC2 in early 2012 and began playing a few months later. Using guides I found online I was able to briefly get into Silver league as a Terran, but never had the drive to achieve much more than that. Fast forward to a few months ago and my discovery of the academic study of expertise and learning and suddenly I found myself in a place that appreciated high-level SC2 again. Over time I developed some theories on the game, what made people better at it than others, and how anyone could be brought up to a high professional level given time and the right circumstances.
My initial reaction was to immediately go and publish my thin but surely revolutionary assertions all over the internet and ignite a firestorm of change. Thankfully, some time passed and cooler heads prevailed. I committed to improving my knowledge of the game at the highest levels and developing methods to actually test my hypotheses so that I could present what I had discovered with authority.
The result is this Alpha test, the first of probably a handful. And, of course, I will be the first test subject. It occurs to me that I should put my money where my mouth was, in so many words, and prove that my system, study, and research actually did what it claims to do. I will retake the reins of the Bronze Terran know-nothing playing his first competitive RTS. I will start with the very first phase of the program - aptly titled Phase 1 - and will conclude when I have reached a high Master rank.
I will use this first Alpha test to validate my system and to further tune it to make sure it flows in a logical pattern and with the greatest efficiency. It will, in turn, form the basis for other Alpha tests for the other two races, and then Beta tests to confirm my assertions on a greater audience. My ultimate goal with all of this effort is to have a package training regimen, immune to race variations, balance, map, meta or expansion; I want a new user or one seeking to bypass barriers they have encountered to be able to pick it up, understand it, apply it, and achieve whatever they want with SC2. It is my earnest hope to have this completed by LotV’s release.
What Comes Next
This blog, as noted, is mostly to document my efforts with developing, testing, and improving the systems and theories I have brainstormed and begun working on. Other items may find their way into this blog, including match or game reviews, opinions, and strategy analysis. I will try my best to make sure those entries are properly marked so those wishing to skip them may do so.
Any questions or comments can be left on the blog entries themselves; I intend to keep up with them the best I can. For those so inclined you can follow me or ask questions via Twitter, posted below.
Regards,
@eschatolic
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Hmmm. Well considering you don't play at all, how could you know or even intimately understand the mechanical expertise which is needed to create a tournament level player? The requirements to construct a high caliber player (that is not Protoss) become far more complex, and beyond basic systems and builds are not something that you can teach...they are something that the player has to practice. In this regard it's not academic, it's physical. Sure the mapping of the physical and optimization can be partly academic, but execution lies (beyond mindset) entirely in the physical realm.
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Well considering you don't play at all, how could you know or even intimately understand the mechanical expertise which is needed to create a tournament level player?
I know because I study the game. I pour hours into reviewing the highest-level play there is to find online. I pick apart professional play, recognize the fulcrums on which the various outcomes of games pivot, and identify and explore those traits that are common to the best professionals. Make no mistake, I am not an expert, nor do I claim to be. Bear in mind that this is a work in progress, in that respect and in many others. I do however seek to devote as much time as I can to understanding why one player is better than another. I firmly believe being a player myself is not required. This is all moot, of course, as I have started playing.
The requirements to construct a high caliber player (that is not Protoss) become far more complex, and beyond basic systems and builds are not something that you can teach...they are something that the player has to practice.
I agree and disagree. I agree that there can be no textbook answer. The number of permutations in even a single game of StarCraft are huge, nevermind when every map and matchup is considered. There is, however, a formula. A method that can be applied that allows players, starting at a certain level of training, to learn "how to play" the game, as it were. The most difficult aspect of StarCraft, I found ironically, is playing against another person. Boiling the game all the way down to the simplest explanation and that's what you'll find. No build order, no matter how complete, will teach that. So instead, I looked for the patterns that players repeated to overcome that challenge and factored it into the system itself. This will be covered later in my test.
Sure the mapping of the physical and optimization can be partly academic, but execution lies (beyond mindset) entirely in the physical realm.
Indeed, figuring out where the "rubber meets the road" was one of the most challenging parts of this whole exercise. Ultimately, what I found, was that this game is monstrously taxing on the mental level. The key - and this too will be explored later - is figuring out how to offload as much of that mental effort so that players can spend as many mental cycles as necessary on the "physical", as you term it.
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are you sure you are not a robot
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Sweet christ, it's as if this is being written by a high school student who just finished his SATs and college applications having learned the bullshit of excessive writing. So much has been written to communicate so little as if you modified it from the wall of text generator you find in the Internet.
Either good luck with the trolling or good luck with whatever you're doing.
lol @ "Alpha test" btw.
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@biology]major
Pretty sure.
@BirdKiller
Thanks? I don't know, speaking and writing like an adult always struck me as something adults should probably do. I apologize for not including a tl;dr for those who struggle with the English language.
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Birdkiller means that you have no substance to your post. You claim revolutionary formulae and what it takes to make a player pro, but you don't get into even the simplest of equations like build orders or timings. How can one be so great without anything practical.
Starcraft at least takes phsycial parts to master. It would be more plausible if someone did this for chess. I can imagine someone going on the great chess forums and saying "hey guys i figured it all out" I know what makes someone a pro chess player, also I've never played the game before.
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@RedTail
Ah, well, it was hard to tell from his post. In fact, my claim of anything "revolutionary" was meant to be in jest, to highlight the absurdity of my old mindset and the recognition of the need to prove my points instead of just asserting them. Looking back I can tell that such a statement was ambiguous and came off as... arrogant, I guess. To point a point on it in the case anyone gets this far into the comments: I do not claim to know all or even most about how to be become awesome at StarCraft. I do feel strongly that I have sound theories as to that, but understand more effort should be expended in validating those theories before making any sort of claim at all. Elsewise I wouldn't have bothered writing this blog to begin with.
As to the content of your comment - and this will be talked about later on other entries - I should reiterate here that there are two distinct goals from my efforts. One is about bringing someone up to a Master level player and one is about perfecting a player once they are there. As I related to Qwyn above, I agree there is no perfect textbook answer, but there is a formula one can follow that will efficiently bring an aspirant up to Master level. Honestly, this no more grandiose an assertion as those made by other content creators and players of various stripes when they advise learning a build order for each match up and grinding to Master. Is that all there is to it? Of course not, but it is a basic and valid formula for success. As it happens I disagree with the belief that that's the best way to go about it and that's what this blog is (partially) about.
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EPT
