EPT
time to give up trying to make it to masters?
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HelpMeGetBetter
United States764 Posts
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BigFan
TLADT24920 Posts
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Thaniri
1264 Posts
One thing that I note is that masters league is not particularly special. I actually think that anyone can get to masters league because low masters league players are bad. With 2-3 hours a day of real, dedicated practice (read the books), I think anyone can be a GM. Ask yourself, how much are you actually willing to commit to this game. I gave up trying to be good 6 years ago because I watched Maru play and realized that I will never, ever be that good. And he was 14. At the time according to some online SC2 ranking website I forget the name of, I was something like top 5,000 in the world on ladder. I was proud of that. lol. | ||
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ZombieGrub
United States693 Posts
I would go into more detail but I don't know much about you. I do suggest the same books as the poster above me too, as understanding progress is a good way to control the inevitable downward spiral of a losing streak. I hope you don't give up, as I do believe Masters to be very attainable. Good luck. | ||
NonY
8748 Posts
Take care of your body, relax your mind, focus. Take breaks when you get mentally fatigued and stressed. Make sure they're actually rejuvenating mental breaks and not just busying yourself with something else for a while. I think it's pretty likely that you already have the knowledge and skills necessary to reach masters but you are not performing as well as you could. So by focusing on getting a better performance out of yourself rather than focusing on getting better at SC2, I think you'd play better and get there. For specific starcraft advice: veto 3 maps, decide how you're gonna play each remaining map for each matchup. You want to severely limit the variety of your play and instead have an extended (month or longer) focus on perfecting just a handful of strats. Stop spending any time at all on ongoing research. All the time you spent on watching streams, events, and pro replays, charting losses, etc, you should now either practice or be taking mentally relaxing breaks from practice. When you lose, if you don't know the biggest mistake you made that was the greatest contributor to your loss, then immediately watch the replay to determine your biggest mistake. If you already know your biggest mistake, then don't watch the replay. Don't focus on small mistakes. You can't effectively make 10 mental notes. Make 1 mental note and move on. If you are repeatedly forgetting your plan, then practice against AI until it's second nature. You're wasting your time playing ladder without knowing your own plan. If you repeatedly get lost at some point in a matchup, don't keep playing games and getting lost. Always go into a game with a full plan and decision tree. If you discover your decision tree has a gap, then after the game make your best guess for filling it and then try to make it work in future games. But absolutely do not just leave it blank and think "when i get in this situation again i'll do the best i can and figure it out." Always know what you're gonna try to do ahead of time. Try your best to do it, and if it proves to not be a good answer, then change your plan for next time. But keep the base of your decision tree the same. I assume you know the meta well enough to sensibly choose some solid builds and basic approaches to early and mid game and late game. So just pick what you like, stick to your choices, fill out the gaps. Minimize the decisions you make in-game. Playing games is about execution only. You don't do any thinking in them at all. You just observe what your opponent is doing and follow your script. Thinking is for between games: figure out 1 thing to improve upon after each game. Keep yourself mentally alert with breaks as needed and just execute. ezpz gl | ||
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docvoc
United States5491 Posts
On July 17 2018 12:01 NonY wrote: I agree with BigFan. It sounds like you are too stressed about it at this point. Taking a break would be good, but you will likely return and soon sink back into the same patterns of thought, especially when dealing with rusty skills. The important thing is to forget about getting better at SC2 in particular, and instead think about how you can get better at doing any mentally demanding task. When you sit down to practice and compete on the ladder, are you really in the best state for performance? After 1 hour, are you still? Take care of your body, relax your mind, focus. Take breaks when you get mentally fatigued and stressed. Make sure they're actually rejuvenating mental breaks and not just busying yourself with something else for a while. I think it's pretty likely that you already have the knowledge and skills necessary to reach masters but you are not performing as well as you could. So by focusing on getting a better performance out of yourself rather than focusing on getting better at SC2, I think you'd play better and get there. For specific starcraft advice: veto 3 maps, decide how you're gonna play each remaining map for each matchup. You want to severely limit the variety of your play and instead have an extended (month or longer) focus on perfecting just a handful of strats. Stop spending any time at all on ongoing research. All the time you spent on watching streams, events, and pro replays, charting losses, etc, you should now either practice or be taking mentally relaxing breaks from practice. When you lose, if you don't know the biggest mistake you made that was the greatest contributor to your loss, then immediately watch the replay to determine your biggest mistake. If you already know your biggest mistake, then don't watch the replay. Don't focus on small mistakes. You can't effectively make 10 mental notes. Make 1 mental note and move on. If you are repeatedly forgetting your plan, then practice against AI until it's second nature. You're wasting your time playing ladder without knowing your own plan. If you repeatedly get lost at some point in a matchup, don't keep playing games and getting lost. Always go into a game with a full plan and decision tree. If you discover your decision tree has a gap, then after the game make your best guess for filling it and then try to make it work in future games. But absolutely do not just leave it blank and think "when i get in this situation again i'll do the best i can and figure it out." Always know what you're gonna try to do ahead of time. Try your best to do it, and if it proves to not be a good answer, then change your plan for next time. But keep the base of your decision tree the same. I assume you know the meta well enough to sensibly choose some solid builds and basic approaches to early and mid game and late game. So just pick what you like, stick to your choices, fill out the gaps. Minimize the decisions you make in-game. Playing games is about execution only. You don't do any thinking in them at all. You just observe what your opponent is doing and follow your script. Thinking is for between games: figure out 1 thing to improve upon after each game. Keep yourself mentally alert with breaks as needed and just execute. ezpz gl This isn't just fantastic advice for SC, this is fantastic advice for any activity that causes you stress because it is so demanding. I would like to add though that perhaps one of the greatest assets of TL is that it has so many minds locked into solving video game issues, but this same issue presents itself in many types of competitive (and non-competitive) activities. A great example of this is non-E-sports. It sounds plainly obvious, but the same issues you describe are felt by competitive athletes who are not yet at the talent level they know they are able to achieve in terms of status, but clearly there in terms of raw ability. Focusing on the goal more and more does not help them - in fact it makes them perform poorly. They fail to recognize how they have shifted their focus onto an object and away from the process that gets them to the object. You can most likely achieve your goal, but you need to stop playing for the goal. The goal assumes that's where you'll be satisfied - but I'm sure you'll continue playing SC afterwards. Instead think about practicing the basic parts of the game you feel you're missing, don't ladder - play friendlies against talented players. That's a solid method that's analogous to modern competitive sports development theory. | ||
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Jan1997
Norway671 Posts
My 1 advice I always follow is, "Not having fun? Go play something else" | ||
Poopi
France12770 Posts
My piece of advice for someone who got stuck at a plateau for a long time as well: take care of your body (for starcraft and me in particular I'd say wrists). Take a sufficiently long break from the game and be sure that your body is ok before returning, because it's the most important thing in the long run. Other advice: focus on pleasure. Instead of overthinking how to get better, just try to enjoy the game. For me, I really like building units / buildings while doing stuff, that feels relaxing. Killing stuff when harassing is fun too. Once you can focus on the journey instead of the goal, things get easier. Good luck | ||
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virpi
Germany3598 Posts
For specific starcraft advice: veto 3 maps, decide how you're gonna play each remaining map for each matchup. You want to severely limit the variety of your play and instead have an extended (month or longer) focus on perfecting just a handful of strats. Stop spending any time at all on ongoing research. All the time you spent on watching streams, events, and pro replays, charting losses, etc, you should now either practice or be taking mentally relaxing breaks from practice. Money quote. This is what took me to Masters. I stopped thinking about all possible strategies and focused on the aspects of the game I was already decent at, while improving one lacking element of my play at a time. I also stopped worrying about the MMR and forced myself to watch every single loss to take notes. A ladder session would mostly revolve around executing one particular build per matchup. Hitting crisp timings while defending harass is really crucial to break the barrier between D1 and M3. Once you're comfortably defending all the bullshit, you're set to move on. Generally, playing Starcraft competitively revolves a lot around having a well fleshed out plan in your mind BEFORE the game starts. Just queueing up without that will result in lots of rage, because you're going to be surprised a lot. You want to minimize randomness in your games. (Even someone like Has, whose style is looking very "random" at first, actually does have a very streamlined style, i.e. he knows exactly what to do when.) | ||
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brickrd
United States4894 Posts
the second person who replied, Thaniri, said "master players are bad," and i disagree with his mindset so much. i understand the perspective: a lot of people are very much into professional SC2 and what they consider "good" is tournament-winning play. however, calling anything short of being in a worldwide elite "bad" is psychologically really damaging and creates shitty, toxic environments. part of why ladder can be such a bad time is because you have thousands of players in leagues like diamond and master who think they're "bad," they feel so bad about themselves for not having more starcraft skills that they insult people and say things like "you're a trash diamond player." let me tell you, man, most random people you take off the street if they saw you playing even plat level starcraft would think you're some kind of wizard. anyone who competes at starcraft is pretty fucking good at the game to begin with! i'm actually kind of baffled why someone would reply to a help thread from a diamond player saying "master players are bad"! do you not see how that would be extremely discouraging to someone looking for encouragement? it's people who say "you're bad if you're diamond, you're bad if you're plat, you're bad if you all-in, you're bad if you cannon rush, you're bad if you play that race" who make the game not fun, and when you hear that shit all the time you start repeating it to other players too. i blamed a guy today for doing a lurker timing because it wasn't how people play in the standard meta. i don't even play standard myself, why am i getting mad at someone else for it? it's just a culture of shitty attitudes toward gaming and toward each other, and it's unfortunate. no one is "bad" for how they play a game, and if you're having fun you're playing the game right. if you want to know where you rank then we have MMR and leagues, but no one is bad. identifying opponents as "bad" can also lead you to blame your losses on the game accommodating "bad players" rather than your play having been a failure, which is counterproductive to practice and study anyway, i can identify with you as i'm a career high diamond Z/P player who's always getting matched against low masters but never quite makes it there. why? a lot of reasons i've identified. -emotional player, i ragequit lots of games that can still be won and tilt myself by reacting badly to incoming cheese before i've even tried to defend it -cheesy player, i do builds that i know shouldn't work because i find them fun -impatience and deficit in attention to my game plan, which results in more instinctive play, overmicro, trying to force fights, etc. basically, i play as if i'm life or byun without having their skill or practice (i actually think having poor attention is a very overlooked part of struggling to improve in starcraft - people want starcraft to be about "intelligence" but it's much more about attention) -sometimes i frankly just don't care that much and i leave games because i don't like the matchup or i scout something like mech and don't feel like playing against it -i only watch my replays when i win, which is the opposite of how you're supposed to review when practicing. watching losses is educational but boring, watching your own wins feels great though given all the information i have, there's no doubt i could make it to master league if i applied myself and used a tight practice plan like nony or a higher level pro could have offered. why don't i? partly because of emotions and mostly because i just play the way i want to play. everyone enjoys SC2 differently. some people, like Avilo, literally just want to play sim city and think they should be rewarded with wins because they constructed buildings efficiently. for me, though, a huge percentage of what i like about SC2 is the action. i like microing, attacking - hell, i like clicking. the clickfest meme about starcraft? that's me. i want to click fast and fight battles. that's why i cheese a lot, because i want to get into the action and start microing my units. i don't get excited about hitting pylon timings. i straight up do shit like 12pooling a terran and just leaving the game when his supply depots are up am i saying "i would be GM if i practiced better"? no. i'm not saying that i'm some special player who just "doesn't feel like being good," but i am saying i've identified flaws in my play that i don't care to fix. my skill level was reached by mass gaming and muscle memory. if you play instinctively, without a plan, like me, high diamond is about as far as that's probably going to take you. and i'm kinda fine with that. would i enjoy being able to say i'm in master league? sure, everyone has an ego. but i get a lot more enjoyment out of winning 10 5-minute cheesefests than i get out of playing 2 solid macro games and then spending time reviewing my replays or whatever and honestly, the ways you get good are pretty boring. minimap awareness and map awareness can take you up a league. seriously, an insane percentage of games in diamond and below are lost because one player had no idea where his opponent's army is. people like to forget this for some reason, but positioning actually matters a lot in SC2, and especially in LOTV with the introduction of stuff like liberators and ravagers. nothing feels worse than losing with a proper build because you fought in the wrong part of the map. in diamond specifically a lot of your losses are going to be to other diamonds who do aggressive builds every game and are only really good at those builds, but because you're less practiced and less prepared in the game scenario they've created you get rolled. so to rank up you have to spend a lot of time doing really boring, diligent scouting rituals and playing with your back against the wall for example, for a while i was struggling badly in PvZ dying to 2 base allins because i had no scouting after the first probe. i whined and complained that it was too hard for a while, then i came to teamliquid and saw someone explaining how you have to keep your adept alive and use it to count drones. eventually i admitted it was my own fault i wasn't playing properly and i just incorporated more scouting into my style. that's another thing about improvement: never think you're "done scouting." when i was in gold league i thought scouting meant flying an overlord over their base once. scouting is a nonstop thing in SC2. if the pace of the game ever slows down and you've already hit your macro, strongly consider just spreading out units to scout, spawning hallucinations, or even just moving your army out so you're at least doing something with it instead of sitting around making money and knowing nothing. i know that in diamond it feels like if you don't click your army onto the ground 20 times in a row you're not playing "hard" enough, but you have to step back into your own mind and think about what you know before worrying about army movement. you might lose a couple of games being "slow" while you're thinking, but the experience you gain in understanding game scenarios will get you wins later. that's what makes professional players professional: they have hours and days and months of experience in every single game scenario, and when they have an experience they review it and refine their response basically i think you need to zero in on the question of how motivated you are to "git gud." do you want to get better because... why? are you deeply invested in the game and your personal pride depends on it? if it is, why is starcraft really that important to you? are you going to compete in tournaments? or is it that you have a genuine, intellectual desire to refine your play? if you do have that genuine desire then like others have said i have no doubt you can make master league just by focusing on how you practice, identifying your flaws as a player, etc. but if you're just trying to be a master level player as some kind of bragging right that entitles you to an opinion... i dunno. seems like a waste of energy to me. it's a bit paradoxical to be a non-competitive person in a hyper-competitive scene, but as long as you know who you are and don't waste energy trying to please anyone but yourself you should be fine. finally, if you really really are serious about getting better and want to do it for your own happiness but can't quite seem to figure out how to improve, maybe even consider working on your real-life environment. are you played tired? hungry? thirsty? horny? depressed? you might laugh, but humans are mental creatures and all of these things will affect you. if you're playing tired and your opponent never plays tired, well, his peak will be better than yours. if you want to get serious about getting better then you can always put together a schedule and routine to ensure you're fed, hydrated and in a good state of mind | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
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Starlightsun
United States1405 Posts
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Poopi
France12770 Posts
On July 18 2018 05:33 Starlightsun wrote: May not be a bad idea to try out cheesing. If OP is one of those "only macro games count" players then it could be what he needs to round out his skills. It is pure execution and no thinking like Nony was saying, though I'm not sure he had cheese in mind. Cheesing requires a lot of decision making for a human, but it could be solved by an AI rather easily compared to the whole game, since the scope of possibilities is rather limited so early in the game. In WoL I gave my ultimate TvP allin (worked in bo1 competitions against top level EU protosses such as HasuObs) to a fellow frenchman in gold league, he could not beat another gold leaguers with it, even tho the build seemed very simple to understand. Many situations can occur depending on how the opponent reacts and what he saw during scout. The real problem here however, is that OP is probably chasing a chimera. When you invest that much emotionally into a starcraft goal, it's often a symptom of a more serious issue. Like he could finally become master, but he'll probably not be satisfied with it and then start chasing grandmaster, only to be miserable again. edit: also, the execution only is not only for cheesy games. Except in super lategame where you have a lot of time to think and not that much to do macro wise, most of the decisions you'll have to take in a sc2 game will be reactions from experience / knowledge and not from active thinking. The real active thinking is in between games as some posters have said, because that's when you have time to think instead of "acting". That's also why a lot of tips given for "beginners" competitors (like your first go4sc2 or whatever) is that you should only do builds you are very comfortable with during competitions. In practice it often yields far greater results to indeed apply your comfort builds / game plans, no matter the level of the opponent. | ||
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Majick
416 Posts
On July 17 2018 12:01 NonY wrote: I agree with BigFan. It sounds like you are too stressed about it at this point. Taking a break would be good, but you will likely return and soon sink back into the same patterns of thought, especially when dealing with rusty skills. The important thing is to forget about getting better at SC2 in particular, and instead think about how you can get better at doing any mentally demanding task. When you sit down to practice and compete on the ladder, are you really in the best state for performance? After 1 hour, are you still? Take care of your body, relax your mind, focus. Take breaks when you get mentally fatigued and stressed. Make sure they're actually rejuvenating mental breaks and not just busying yourself with something else for a while. I think it's pretty likely that you already have the knowledge and skills necessary to reach masters but you are not performing as well as you could. So by focusing on getting a better performance out of yourself rather than focusing on getting better at SC2, I think you'd play better and get there. For specific starcraft advice: veto 3 maps, decide how you're gonna play each remaining map for each matchup. You want to severely limit the variety of your play and instead have an extended (month or longer) focus on perfecting just a handful of strats. Stop spending any time at all on ongoing research. All the time you spent on watching streams, events, and pro replays, charting losses, etc, you should now either practice or be taking mentally relaxing breaks from practice. When you lose, if you don't know the biggest mistake you made that was the greatest contributor to your loss, then immediately watch the replay to determine your biggest mistake. If you already know your biggest mistake, then don't watch the replay. Don't focus on small mistakes. You can't effectively make 10 mental notes. Make 1 mental note and move on. If you are repeatedly forgetting your plan, then practice against AI until it's second nature. You're wasting your time playing ladder without knowing your own plan. If you repeatedly get lost at some point in a matchup, don't keep playing games and getting lost. Always go into a game with a full plan and decision tree. If you discover your decision tree has a gap, then after the game make your best guess for filling it and then try to make it work in future games. But absolutely do not just leave it blank and think "when i get in this situation again i'll do the best i can and figure it out." Always know what you're gonna try to do ahead of time. Try your best to do it, and if it proves to not be a good answer, then change your plan for next time. But keep the base of your decision tree the same. I assume you know the meta well enough to sensibly choose some solid builds and basic approaches to early and mid game and late game. So just pick what you like, stick to your choices, fill out the gaps. Minimize the decisions you make in-game. Playing games is about execution only. You don't do any thinking in them at all. You just observe what your opponent is doing and follow your script. Thinking is for between games: figure out 1 thing to improve upon after each game. Keep yourself mentally alert with breaks as needed and just execute. ezpz gl This is so true and so well written. Probably the best quality StarCraft advice I have ever read. In just a few paragraphs! The best thing is that it applies to getting better at basically anything you want. I wish I always remembered those things when trying hard at many activities. | ||
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LOcDowN
United States1014 Posts
Besides the above point, you must also have standard play build order that are solid and that you can execute well. Like Nony said, you need to really polish and feel out the build. Good luck! | ||
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etofok
138 Posts
Look at your Match-up winrates - which one is the weakest? Fix that. Repeat. Thank me later. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16661 Posts
On July 17 2018 10:31 HelpMeGetBetter wrote: I watch every event, replays, streams, I organize builds in excel and chart my losses. trying to figure out how to improve. ive paid for coaching. it has been almost 8 years now. I keep lowering my goals and i still can't reach them. its very clear to me low diamond 1 is my ceiling. i think im finally accepting im just not good enough to make it masters. i think its time for me to find some other goal in life... You are probably better than you were in the past and don't know it. All RTS games slowly bleed all the guppies and goldfish and end up only with sharks in the tank. I can't play Red Alert 3 any longer because i'm just not good enough. I was a shark in 2009 and i slowly devolved into a guppy by 2014. I didn't get worse at the game. All the guppies left. All that's left is Technique, DasDuelon, Tingu and guys like that. They're the sharks and i'm the guppy LOL  | ||
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Uzikoti
16 Posts
Hitting your timing right is enough to get to master. Just get good builds and make sure you're copying the build scrupulously. Have 1 per matchup. GG. (That's my short and incomplete, answer, there's a way longer version but yea) | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
Then keep playing. At the end of the day, go through your backlog of notes that you made and begin mentally sorting out things to try. Fill in gaps, make little adjustments. Then on the next day of practice, use your updated plan as the roadmap for your play. There's an old addage that Day9 has said that I will never forget: "The most beautiful builds, have nothing left to take away from them." Try to adopt that sort of mindset when you play. - What I really want to emphasize is that you only have a limited amount of mental energy to spend each day. If you devote too much of that up front to "bookkeeping" and mental preparation, then you're not going to have enough energy left to devote to honing your mechanics. Thinking hard about things, writing detailed notes and logs, these both take a lot of mental effort and exertion. Do less bookkeeping, and MORE playing. Spend the majority of your time internalizing and optimizing the execution of your build orders, because that is what is going to pay the most dividends. Try to delay your "mental bookkeeping" until the end of the day, rather than diluting your practice. | ||
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