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I think there's two obvious different sides to this issue but neither side wants to concede their point. So I'm just going to give my own opinion on the matter and people can choose to agree or disagree.
I find that the best way to improve is to BE AROUND BETTER PLAYERS. In every way shape and form. Play better players, ask for advice from better players, do anything you can to immerse yourself with really skilled Starcraft players.
I don't mean watch them stream or watch an FPVOD. Actually talk to them or ask them for a game. There is a lot of flawed advice about games in the Strategy forum, but if you ask a really good player, you're more likely to get good advice. Granted, even upper level players will disagree on various strategical decisions, but they all tend to have similar fundamental thoughts and these beliefs can help you analyze in depth where you messed up your timings and minor nuances that slowed you down.
If you test your BOs and play over and over again against D players, and you find a winning formula, you'll come to the conclusion that your strategies DO WORK. The problem is that they may work against players with unrefined builds, late timings, and poor macro, but they may not work at higher levels. When you play against a B- or higher level player, you'll REALLY KNOW for sure whether or not your build works. At those levels, your opponent is going to have very sharp timing and you WILL be punished for late tech/expo.
Don't be afraid to send a PM to a really good player asking for a few games or even asking for advice if you want it. While the more big name foreigners tend to have flooded Inboxes and thus don't have time to respond, there are quite a few REALLY good foreigners in the B- to B+ range that have quite a bit of free time and would be more than willing to play a handful of games with you or give you tips on how to sharpen your build.
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I registered an account on here to try and get some extra help in my game. While I applaud the dedication some have in exhausting their spare time to replay their games over and over again, I simply don't have the time. If someone explains to me what I did wrong in a game, perhaps they'll point out something I might have overlooked, or didn't deem as a problem in the first place (something liquidpedia can never do).
If I didn't see the problem, and liquidpedia can't point it out, what's the use of practicing more and more, getting into a worse habit of whatever my problem is when someone here can inform me straight away that I don't need for example 3 engineering bays? While I'm the only person that can fix my problems, I'm absolutely not the only person that can identify my problems.
People asking for help is the life-blood of the strategy forum. Without newbies like us, there'd be no point in having a strategy forum. If you loathe all the [H] topics, nobody's making you click on them.
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Then if you don't have time to dedicate yourself to the game- why are you trying to take it seriously? Like I have said before, you can only grow so far as a player if you seek to only find a solution to your problem. Finding the answer is pointless if you don't understand the problem in the first place.
I am not hating on [H] topics. I am simply trying to help out new players, that i feel do not understand when to make an [H] topic.
Nor am i attempting to moderate this thread. I am just trying to help out new players. It can be a daunting task to try and learn starcraft. I simply wrote this guide in an attempt to help show new players how one can improve rapidly when they first start playing the game.
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As much as I like losing every Starcraft game I play, I found I get a MUCH better experience if I win every once in a while, which is why I try and improve when I can. Because I'm a casual player, does that mean I shouldn't try and seek out improvement? If I don't understand what my problem is, how can I attempt to search for it on liquidpedia? It would be much better to try and get some peer feedback of my specific problems than guesstimate on my own what those problems might be.
In your guide you don't state when it IS ok to post a [H] topic, which leads me to believe you're implying it's NOT ok to ask for help around here.
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I don't think that the problem that OP is describing has anything to do with people asking for help. The problem is more about the responses.
Of course if people only say "This is what you should have done" then it might only be helpful for that particular game. But if people would say something like this: "You saw him do that and therefore you should do this, but if he would have done that you should have done this" Then the advice could be very helpful.
I really don't see why people asking for help should be a problem.
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On February 16 2010 14:29 Misrah wrote:Meh doesn't really matter. I only play iccup with my shitty builds / ideas. I am sure that you can find out yourself if your really that interested. I am really not that great. Show nested quote +On February 16 2010 14:23 huameng wrote:
Totally disagree with this "guide". For what other game, sport, activity, is not asking for help the best way to learn? "Hi I play soccer. Help me run faster and think better." or- Help my mechanics! (lol yep I am going to come to your house and show you how to type faster. Please don't think about how to improve, just post a question.) Or better yet (How did i lose??? I have no idea. I thought that I did everything right?) is pretty much the gist of all the [H] threads in strategy. The reason why it is never useful, is because most people are asking for help are looking for a solution. they may find it, however they will never come to understand the problem.
Hi I play the violin and I try to learn alone and I will never get anywhere because it's fucking impossible to learn without exterior help.
Now, you can learn starcraft without help, just by copying, it just happens that other people helping you makes you improve faster.
There must be a reason why level in Korea is 7654352 times better than everywhere else. When your best friend is a A+ level gosu, getting from D rank to B+ goes very quickly. He just sit next to you and explain you what to do and how to do it. And how to interpret what you see, how to react to situations etc...
I know because I never had friends who play starcraft, I did absolutely everything by myself, and I am C rank when I know I could be B if some people around me had explained me my mistakes, and how to solve issues.
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I totally agree with Misrah.
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In my mind the strategy forum is a place to come and read up on an interesting BO, a new tactic, a new map strategy, or a helpful guide. Instead it has morphed into a corridor filled with the distraught cries of players screaming the same questions over and over. Perhaps asking a vague question such as "What did i do wrong?" and posting a replay will not help you because you have not taken the time to watch it yourself.
With that said, I do support people pre determining a flaw in their play and asking for ways to correct it. This shows the ability to take time to analyse a play, understand what the goals were, and identify errors. And after a long hard reflection on the toilet it is OK to conclude with the decision to ask for help on team liquids strategy forum.
by the way, Misrah...
If you include more smiley faces in your OP people will be less obliged to react negatively =)
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Having help, as little or even just in the start, helps as with anything in life. Period.
Also, yes you cant find a solution if you don't understand the problem, but people can help you see and understand the problem AS WELL AS help you find a solution
If anything it brings the community together more. Even if (which I completely disagree with) this strat fourm is 100% useless, the community feels stronger with it and bonds are made. Thats something that goes outside the game.
It also depends how seriously you take starcraft. If you want it to be some life's journey with self realization, sure figure it all out yourself. If you just want to play it to get to an acceptable level quickly and own some noobs (owning is enjoyable to certain people) then play it for that. Theres no right or wrong way to look at starcraft. As with learning everything, there are shortcuts. We go to school for a reason, people tell us everything others have already figured out. All of us don't have to refigure out how electricity works or how to multiply matricies etc etc. All of this stuff is fed to us because people have taken long journeys themselves to manually figure it out via trial, erorr, analysis. But those people used things they were spoon fed as well. I mean Einstien spent his life developing so much stuff and figuring out things, but he already used the basic knowledges that he was spoon fed from the great scientists before him. That is how you advance. IF Einstein had to learn from scratch, well he may not even have learned ANYTHING.
The language you speak now, you were taught that. You didnt go by trial and error to make random noises and see how people react. Maybe you did to an extent, but to understand those finer details you need to learn the basics first. I'm sure whoever raised you taught you basic skills in life and let you learn your own on the rest
All, people can help you understand problems, because people do have the same problems (and even if it isnt exactly the same it can give you a very basic understanding if anything), the community is closer, and life is already based off of reading what people have done in the past and modifying or adding onto it.
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So many people are reading too far into my guide. I was simply trying to help new players. I did not say that you should never post a H thread. I am simply offering a system of improving yourself that I feel is better for most players. Peole have become to lazy and rely on the post button too much.
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On February 17 2010 01:06 Misrah wrote:
So many people are reading too far into my guide. I was simply trying to help new players. I did not say that you should never post a H thread. I am simply offering a system of improving yourself that I feel is better for most players. Peole have become to lazy and rely on the post button too much.
your system is better for more experienced players but not new players, read my post above
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very bad post i think
you are right that one should put more own effort into improving but very often you do not see your own mistakes or do not think of ways that you could have played
advices from outside are always helpful but you should still try anything you can to improve on your own and then ask for help
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On February 17 2010 01:06 Misrah wrote:
So many people are reading too far into my guide. I was simply trying to help new players. I did not say that you should never post a H thread. I am simply offering a system of improving yourself that I feel is better for most players. Peole have become to lazy and rely on the post button too much.
i agree, i think something that should be added to the posting "guideline" would be removal of first person writing. (as i write this in first person ofc)
most of the threads on here, even outside of strategy, are all the same and you can see the content of the first post just by the title.
examples: how was your ______ day? post your ______.
it's like when someone asks you how your day is, knowing that you're obligated to ask them back because they want to talk about themselves.
what does this have to do with the strategy forum? people often times think of some idea that they think is clever and propagate it in the same manner, or in other words they want yes-men and argue with most people that say no.
a possible answer is to have objective/3rd person posting as mandatory because it makes posters reevaluate their thoughts, should they have one of those moments. worst case scenario - the guy who refuses/doesn't read or realize this obviously doesn't really want to improve anyway and will have time to think about it.
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On February 17 2010 00:53 PiePie wrote:
Having help, as little or even just in the start, helps as with anything in life. Period.
Also, yes you cant find a solution if you don't understand the problem, but people can help you see and understand the problem AS WELL AS help you find a solution
If anything it brings the community together more. Even if (which I completely disagree with) this strat fourm is 100% useless, the community feels stronger with it and bonds are made. Thats something that goes outside the game.
It also depends how seriously you take starcraft. If you want it to be some life's journey with self realization, sure figure it all out yourself. If you just want to play it to get to an acceptable level quickly and own some noobs (owning is enjoyable to certain people) then play it for that. Theres no right or wrong way to look at starcraft. As with learning everything, there are shortcuts. We go to school for a reason, people tell us everything others have already figured out. All of us don't have to refigure out how electricity works or how to multiply matricies etc etc. All of this stuff is fed to us because people have taken long journeys themselves to manually figure it out via trial, erorr, analysis. But those people used things they were spoon fed as well. I mean Einstien spent his life developing so much stuff and figuring out things, but he already used the basic knowledges that he was spoon fed from the great scientists before him. That is how you advance. IF Einstein had to learn from scratch, well he may not even have learned ANYTHING.
The language you speak now, you were taught that. You didnt go by trial and error to make random noises and see how people react. Maybe you did to an extent, but to understand those finer details you need to learn the basics first. I'm sure whoever raised you taught you basic skills in life and let you learn your own on the rest
All, people can help you understand problems, because people do have the same problems (and even if it isnt exactly the same it can give you a very basic understanding if anything), the community is closer, and life is already based off of reading what people have done in the past and modifying or adding onto it.
there are so many logical flaws in this argument that i don't even know where to begin.
some people might find this game hard (since you didn't ask for my opinion i think it's relatively easy) all the stuff is right in front of you, just as the op stated (namely your brain). if you don't want to use it and instead choose to rely on making half assed questions then you're going to get half assed results.
the op's argument is with the amount and quality of questions, not the act of asking questions.
As with learning everything, there are shortcuts.
you should really really spend a lot of time reevaluating this statement
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Misrah, very good thread and thanks for posting it. I'm also really happy with the discussion that has come out of it.
Dozens of times over the last couple of years I have contemplated making a thread in Strategy to ask why I lost a particular game, or what I could improve to avoid losing several games in the same way. Every time I've made myself sit back, cool off, watch the replay a few times, and think about the game for a day or two; and every time I've come up with enough answers on my own that a thread would have been redundant. I don't believe even a little bit that my ability to do this is unique or special, and I see a lot of threads that I think would be unnecessary if the poster would just put in a bit of work. No one's play is perfect, and anyone, no matter what level they are at, who says "I looked at this game and I don't see a single thing I could have done better" is lazy, lying, or both.
PiePie, your post above is valuable and in no way incorrect but I also think it's near orthogonal to the point of this thread. The problem with typical help threads - at least in my eyes - is that they are made by people looking for quick fixes to specific situations, rather than for tools to fix the problem in general. There is something to be said for helping inexperienced players find the tools to help themselves but that has been done so many times now that it is near trivial for someone to find a related old post.
What I like seeing in the Strategy forum is discussions, not question-and-answer threads. Of course there have been threads started with a question that I've liked. However I firmly believe that the correct way to post a question is to formulate it in a way that invites discussion and then to include some seeds for the discussion in the post.
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Some posters heAr are spending too much time reading I to this. This guide does not need muti paragrph responses. More than half of you have some how come to believe I think making H threads is bad. The oth half are posting arguments far beyond the acope of my guide. the poster above me gets it 
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New players should have already read through liquipedia a lot. When a low level player analyzes their own rep, the most obvious problems they'd see is simply macro and control problems. Those are the obvious problems, and those are what most people will find if they were to look in a rep, but not the more detailed problems that better players can find. The chances of a person losing ONLY because of macro and control is too low. Once they fix their macro and control, they'll still be losing because of another reason that they have no clue about.
For example, lets go back a few months at the times where 4 gate 2 archon would work (before zergs thought of simcity) I can guarantee you with your method, a single zerg alone will never think about having better simcity. They'll either be making more sunkens or earlier hydras, both which will destroy their economy. They'll be making the extra defense, then they see they don't have enough drones to build anything. Well, their hydra control could be perfect, they could see no huge mistakes in their replay, just that their build is wrong. And they have no clue about it.
The reason why clans and progaming teams and even the B teams all play together is this exact reason. To ask for help. That's why you see so many good players all in the same clans, because they learn from each other. There are rarely any people that can get to a good level by themselves. People who play starcraft will play to become the best. They won't say "ok, I'm going to reach C- and then i'm going to stay at this level and never get better". Your method of basically not posting in the strategy section until it's some crazy situation will force them to stop improving at a point once they have their mechanics down.
And yes, we SHOULD be comparing ourselves to the progamers because we are trying to improve just like them, and we may not see it, but I bet Boxer/Oov can find millions of errors in Fantasy's play that he can improve on even if we may believe he's only making small mistakes. In the end, we're all trying to improve and smoothen out the little details we might not notice. Just because you might notice them more than other people doesn't mean they shouldn't be posting.
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On February 16 2010 15:33 Misrah wrote:
Hitting a Plateau is merely a figment of the imagination. No one plays perfect starcraft. There is always something you can do better. Even flash knows this.
The only coaches that actually coach in the true sense of the word, were once pro players themselves. ala boxer, iloveoov and the like.
Your final paragraph is amazing. Practicing over and over blindly is not the way to succeed at starcraft (i found that out the hard way) One needs to understand starcraft while practicing. And the only way to understand the game is to play, and attempt builds on your own.
This is a hugely logically fallacious statement and demonstrates the flaw with your argument. If you need to understand while playing, and the only way to understand is to play, then how is it ever possible to not understand?
...yeah. The answer is, playing doesn't actually teach you to understand the game. Thinking about the game teaches you to understand the game.
I've actually learned something in all the strategy forum threads I've made (like .... 4? or so) because I was looking for something very specific with them. It didn't take even a d level protoss player to tell me that my mistake when I was new to pvp was just poor scouting and neglecting to make zealots vs 3 gate lot, or that vs 3 hatch ling I needed more than 3 cannons.
I've been teaching some of my friends the game recently, and they range from an e rank protoss who didn't use the keyboard until a few days ago to a high d- zerg. The e rank has the best understanding of the game, strangely. The d- zerg just mass games and has triple his apm - but all of them are improving extremely quickly (none of them had played SC before 2 weeks ago). It is a bit aggravating to sit behind a P and tell them how to use hotkeys, but it's not so bad- and doing that saved him a good month of screwing around on his own.
edit : with that said, the worse you are at the game the more useful the strategy forum is going to tend to be.
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On February 17 2010 01:28 wrags wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2010 00:53 PiePie wrote:
Having help, as little or even just in the start, helps as with anything in life. Period.
Also, yes you cant find a solution if you don't understand the problem, but people can help you see and understand the problem AS WELL AS help you find a solution
If anything it brings the community together more. Even if (which I completely disagree with) this strat fourm is 100% useless, the community feels stronger with it and bonds are made. Thats something that goes outside the game.
It also depends how seriously you take starcraft. If you want it to be some life's journey with self realization, sure figure it all out yourself. If you just want to play it to get to an acceptable level quickly and own some noobs (owning is enjoyable to certain people) then play it for that. Theres no right or wrong way to look at starcraft. As with learning everything, there are shortcuts. We go to school for a reason, people tell us everything others have already figured out. All of us don't have to refigure out how electricity works or how to multiply matricies etc etc. All of this stuff is fed to us because people have taken long journeys themselves to manually figure it out via trial, erorr, analysis. But those people used things they were spoon fed as well. I mean Einstien spent his life developing so much stuff and figuring out things, but he already used the basic knowledges that he was spoon fed from the great scientists before him. That is how you advance. IF Einstein had to learn from scratch, well he may not even have learned ANYTHING.
The language you speak now, you were taught that. You didnt go by trial and error to make random noises and see how people react. Maybe you did to an extent, but to understand those finer details you need to learn the basics first. I'm sure whoever raised you taught you basic skills in life and let you learn your own on the rest
All, people can help you understand problems, because people do have the same problems (and even if it isnt exactly the same it can give you a very basic understanding if anything), the community is closer, and life is already based off of reading what people have done in the past and modifying or adding onto it. there are so many logical flaws in this argument that i don't even know where to begin. some people might find this game hard (since you didn't ask for my opinion i think it's relatively easy) all the stuff is right in front of you, just as the op stated (namely your brain). if you don't want to use it and instead choose to rely on making half assed questions then you're going to get half assed results. the op's argument is with the amount and quality of questions, not the act of asking questions. you should really really spend a lot of time reevaluating this statement
Unfortunatly there are shortcuts to everything... If you want to get good or learn things, finding someone who's an expert at it and spending time with him/her/them is faster than just walking out the door and wanting to do it yourself. To start its better to have help. Once you get to a certain level, you are on your own and its better if you learn things.
For new players I do think that they should ask for help and I encourage them. Some people don't think the game is easy, some people do. A person whos first ever game is starcraft will think its hard. A person who has a lot of RTS expirence will probably think starcraft is a bit easier compared to the complete noob. If you say people should just learn starcraft on their own, thats fine. But keep in mind some people just want quick and easy ways to win and get good. I do agree this is less "legit" and probably they wont understand the true underlying things (which is important i agree) but the thing is some ppl just play sc to win. They just like the feeling of beating people and enjoy the interactions. Thats fine with me, I dont play sc for solely that but some people do and its a game so I will let them have their way.
The point is, I am sure everyone has asked for help in things to start out in not only starcraft, but many things as well. It's fine, and it still builds community REGARDLESS. I wouldn't say the help threads are trolls. I mean some may be, but some are also legit and a new player really wants to learn and come in contact with the community.
Also note, A stupid question to YOU may not be one to them. Im very sure at least some of the "stupid" questions ppl ask are legit and innocent.
To all you people out there, keep posting and asking for help. If its justified, people will help you!
PS. Your post seemed a bit condescending, I don't even think the originators post was condescending. I was merely replying to him and I actually spent the time because he is very well organized in his replies. You however seem a tad bit condescending and there is no use for that. For those that disagree with me (which i read another) thank you for being polite and I do agree with some of your points.
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On February 16 2010 14:29 Misrah wrote:
"Hi I play soccer. Help me run faster and think better." or- Help my mechanics! (lol yep I am going to come to your house and show you how to type faster. Please don't think about how to improve, just post a question.) Or better yet (How did i lose??? I have no idea. I thought that I did everything right?) is pretty much the gist of all the [H] threads in strategy. The reason why it is never useful, is because most people are asking for help are looking for a solution. they may find it, however they will never come to understand the problem.
This is well worded. A true solution will not only make a problem go away but prevent it from occuring again.
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