EPT[G] Self-Improvement - Page 6
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Espers
United Kingdom606 Posts
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gumbum8
United States721 Posts
On October 01 2009 07:42 Espers wrote: When do you draw the line with mechanics anyway? It's not as if you can ever perfect them. I mean unless you mean just learning how you should be micro'ing, macro'ing but not perfecting the execution. I don't understand: you said yourself you can never perfect them, why do you ever have to draw a line? | ||
Manifesto7
Osaka27158 Posts
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Espers
United Kingdom606 Posts
I also believe if you focus on being a mechanic based player it's going to be very hard to keep your skill level up, and inactivity will really hurt you Think he mentions this somewhere in the OP too | ||
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Another_Pro
United States66 Posts
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introduction-to-the-art-of-war.html Here is the whole thing http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ Does nobody know about this? I dont see any links to it in recommended thread or anything so i assume people dont. Its a good read and especially helps with your mindset and stuff. | ||
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Espers
United Kingdom606 Posts
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Chill
Calgary25991 Posts
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sunama
United Kingdom13 Posts
On October 01 2009 05:05 Chill wrote: It's up for debate. I've since changed to the mechanics-first approach, because you can win games with mechanics alone, whereas that is much, much more difficult with strategy alone. I think it's also a nicer position to be in where you lose and wonder why, than losing and knowing what you should have done but simply weren't able to do it. Some people prefer the other way. Wouldn't this style of learning just make you horrible inconsistent? Especially on iCCup where they're so many styles and to get far knowing how to adapt is so important. Like say it's ZvP and Protoss goes Stargate into a +1 rush or speed Zealot opening, a guy who's been focusing on mechanics constantly will usually just get steamrolled because he won't know how to scout an opening like this. I guess it's a case of winning versus improving playing with a solid understand is way way way more consistent. That's how I'm trying to learn the game anyway. | ||
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Gliche
United States811 Posts
On October 04 2009 06:26 sunama wrote: Wouldn't this style of learning just make you horrible inconsistent? Especially on iCCup where they're so many styles and to get far knowing how to adapt is so important. Like say it's ZvP and Protoss goes Stargate into a +1 rush or speed Zealot opening, a guy who's been focusing on mechanics constantly will usually just get steamrolled because he won't know how to scout an opening like this. I guess it's a case of winning versus improving playing with a solid understand is way way way more consistent. That's how I'm trying to learn the game anyway. Winning with just strategy is only consistent up to a point too. As you play against better and better players whose mechanics are naturally better, you'll realize that even as you scout him and know what you're supposed to do, you can't do it because of your horrible mechanics. You simply end up watching yourself lose. If you emphasize mechanics first, you'll be able to scout him correctly while macroing, and transition smoothly into a counter. Better to learn strategy so you can apply it, instead of learning it but bring unable to do anything with it. | ||
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meteorskunk
Canada546 Posts
Practicing a BO that you don't completely understand the theory of is fine in my opinion because it eliminates hesitation/thought for the next action you will input thus allowing you to execute these actions more cleanly. theres seriously nothing worse than having someone own you and then talk your ear off about what you should have done, when you know exactly what you could have done/would have done if you had the actions. Even though i'm no NoNy (im a d player in the midst of a my first sc growth spurt) i would say if you have 6 hours to improve your playing, I think 2 of them would be well spent watching VODs in the mindset chill explained, to accumulate "scenarios" of how pros have played things out so you will eventually have a pretty good idea of how to deal with a variety of things as tey come at you. | ||
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Jonoman92
United States9106 Posts
On October 01 2009 05:05 Chill wrote: It's up for debate. I've since changed to the mechanics-first approach, because you can win games with mechanics alone, whereas that is much, much more difficult with strategy alone. I think it's also a nicer position to be in where you lose and wonder why, than losing and knowing what you should have done but simply weren't able to do it. Some people prefer the other way. I think it needs to be clarified who the target audience is. For a total newcomer to sc or a D skilled player they probably need to learn strategy first becase at that level they still need to learn the basics of what they should be doing at various points in the game. Maybe once you have a solid grasp of basic strategy and mechanics you can start focusing more on execution and less on your strategy, but I think without a solid groundwork of strategy it's impossible to have good mechanics becase you won't know what you should be doing. I think it's better to learn strategy and then work on execution because you generally learn execution through raw repetitive practice and being disciplined. Strategy however is a more delicate, thoughtful process so if you get that done first, you can grind your execution as much as you want being assured your efforts are being done for the right reasons (becuase you know the strategy and the thought process behind them.) | ||
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gumbum8
United States721 Posts
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Cloud
Sexico5880 Posts
On October 01 2009 05:05 Chill wrote: It's up for debate. I've since changed to the mechanics-first approach, because you can win games with mechanics alone, whereas that is much, much more difficult with strategy alone. I think it's also a nicer position to be in where you lose and wonder why, than losing and knowing what you should have done but simply weren't able to do it. Some people prefer the other way. That doesnt make a lot of sense to me. Its better to not know why did you lose than the opposite? Obviously you lost in both cases because of something you werent able to do, but in the latter case, you already know what to focus your practice on | ||
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Lumi
United States1616 Posts
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meteorskunk
Canada546 Posts
That doesnt make a lot of sense to me. Its better to not know why did you lose than the opposite? Obviously you lost in both cases because of something you werent able to do, but in the latter case, you already know what to focus your practice on Even though this probably isn't the most important debate on the forum, because like chill said everyone has their own approach. But i think what he means is its more fun to spot small strategical errors that you can easily correct next game than to know exactly what you should be doing but not have the ability. | ||
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Chill
Calgary25991 Posts
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
On February 05 2008 14:08 skyglow1 wrote: Agree with everything except this: I prefer to focus on mechanics first and get them top notch before attempting to start thinking about the strategical aspect of the game. My reasoning is that in every game you play with poor macro and poor micro etc, you are drilling in bad habits which I found were REALLY hard to change once I realised what I was doing wrong. On the other hand, it isn't as destructive when you're not fully engaged strategically in every game (because you're concentrating on getting your mechanics better). I've found personally that after I built a fairly solid base of mechanics into my game play, it wasn't very difficult to tell myself "now I really need to start thinking about the game and what's going in and looking it at in a deeper level" because the mechanics aspect had become second nature, leaving me to concentrate on strategy easily while still maintaining my decent level of mechanics. When I tried to reverse my bad habits in respect to mechanics, I found it so difficult to force myself to look at the minimap for instance, because after playing so many games without paying that much attention to the minimap I was so used to not really looking at it. I must admit this is also partly due to my favourtism towards mechanics (anti MBS ftw) but it really has worked for me. | ||
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sunama
United Kingdom13 Posts
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Another_Pro
United States66 Posts
On October 10 2009 07:22 sunama wrote: Mentioning the minimap.. did you force yourself to try and hit spacebar everytime it pings? Spacebar isn't very reliable. If you hit it to jump to a battle after hearing the you are under attack, If a unit finishes immediately after you'll only jump to your barracks and waste time, when you could have just hotkey your units and double tap that key. You should try and keep track of when/where you send units and subconsciously know what group or groups is getting attack and then tab that key quickly. If your base gets attacked I'm not really sure but it might be fast enough to just click the minimap.  | ||
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
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