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On September 15 2008 05:30 onepost wrote:This debate is as old as the world and has been settled millennias ago. The equivalent for the game of Go would be joseki. Everybody agrees that learning josekis (sequences tested by professional Go players; equivalent to SC's standard build orders) is good, but learning when to use them is better. Those who play by the book (joseki) without looking at the whole board get raped by those who do. This is what happens with amateur players, almost regardless of their rank: they know build orders, but have no clue when to use them, resulting in bizarre, head-scratching build orders. The issue of the game rests mostly on micro and luck. My favourite example: IefNaij vs Kal. He stuck to his FE build plan despite Kal's rush. He knew he'd be late, he should have known that he needed units ASAP and pressure lest he'd get raped, hence delay his natural expo. The coach had the very same reflex: DON'T EXPAND! Obviously an S-class player wouldn't forgive a mistake of this magnitude. Making matters worse, IefNaij went for a THIRD base right after, a fatal mistake he didn't even survive. IefNaij is the perfect example of an amateur player with good mechanics, good micro, but poor judgement when facing the unexpected. This is what top-class korean pros have but amateurs haven't. The equivalent is fuseki, joseki is more like micro sequences. :[
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Everything artosis said in this thread seems blatantly obvious if you have watched any of the Spirit VODs where in the first significant engagement the korean has more units wihout being behind in any other facit of the game if not ahead. No amount of strategy can overcome the pure advantage they are getting from having better mechanics and more solidly executed builds on a consistent basis.
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On September 15 2008 00:48 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
I'm glad to hear what I'm thinking from a top foreigner.
And it's also the reason why I stopped playing a few years ago - SC just didn't seem much about anticipation/strategy/micro anymore, although some people still believe that's not true.
But when (at the higher levels) you can follow $goodbuildX and be prepared for just about anything the enemy might throw at you if you only execute it well enough (multitasking/speed), then something elementary is not right anymore. In a strategy game, every strategy should have a weakness - in StarCraft however, there's a standard strategy for each matchup or map which doesn't *have* a particular weakness. It's just all around solid vs. everything, and this means that better mechanics will decide.
I, too, feel bad for people who haven't played the game before 2004 or 2005. It was indeed different.
I still watch progamers play (VODs with commentary only), but active competitive gaming or more generally the will to become a lot better at this - hell no.
This is why many old timers quit 
+ Show Spoiler +
Thanks to Artosis for pointing out the obvious.
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I think there is an element of BS to people who may have raw talent for SC, but complain that SC doesn't allow them to utilize it properly. It's the same with many sports, where there are so many just as talented people who work for it, and you sit there wondering why they are beating you.
Say there is a race called "Starcraft." It looks like fun and you are the fastest person alive. You breeze past the competition so far with your 50-10 record, but a mile in you stop. Ahead of you is this huge wall with a big sign next to it that reads "Mechanics(and-such)". Below it you read "Affter you climb this wall, there is a down-hill slope and whoever gets the furthest wins." Now, you are not a fantastic climber, but you can totally climb this wall given time. As you wonder if you will climb, others start to catch up. Some immediately read the sign and climb up while others stick around thinking about their options. You start to realize that you are much faster than all these people starting to climb, and certainly if you were up there, you could easily run past any distance anyone would hope to reach. Well aren't you the little Bolt? Are you going to start climbing now? ARE you going to climb at all? If you don't climb up, do you think someone who gets the furthest deserves it. Well of course he does! But, even though you could have gotten further? O_o hmmm
Well yes he does, because the fact that you won't take take the time out to climb that one wall, or you simply don't have the time to isn't his fault. C'est la Vie? Non?
If another race called "Starcraft 2" comes out with a much smaller wall or some tiny hill you can run up, how will that make you feel about the first wall?
I'm just saying that if your a talented lazy american (like myself ;D), you can't master mechanics because you won't. Whether or not your "life" gets in the way. Or you truly aren't the fastest so you won't bother trying, right?
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On September 15 2008 05:49 Kula wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2008 05:30 onepost wrote:This debate is as old as the world and has been settled millennias ago. The equivalent for the game of Go would be joseki. Everybody agrees that learning josekis (sequences tested by professional Go players; equivalent to SC's standard build orders) is good, but learning when to use them is better. Those who play by the book (joseki) without looking at the whole board get raped by those who do. This is what happens with amateur players, almost regardless of their rank: they know build orders, but have no clue when to use them, resulting in bizarre, head-scratching build orders. The issue of the game rests mostly on micro and luck. My favourite example: IefNaij vs Kal. He stuck to his FE build plan despite Kal's rush. He knew he'd be late, he should have known that he needed units ASAP and pressure lest he'd get raped, hence delay his natural expo. The coach had the very same reflex: DON'T EXPAND! Obviously an S-class player wouldn't forgive a mistake of this magnitude. Making matters worse, IefNaij went for a THIRD base right after, a fatal mistake he didn't even survive. IefNaij is the perfect example of an amateur player with good mechanics, good micro, but poor judgement when facing the unexpected. This is what top-class korean pros have but amateurs haven't. The equivalent is fuseki, joseki is more like micro sequences. :[
Good point. The argument still stands though.
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yeah basically
I talked to Skew a while back and he basically told me the same exact thing and so I did exactly like that (play standard every game nearly) and my play improved like 20fold
sure, i play a shitton of fun games where I do weird shit because tbh I'm not ALWAYS that concerned about getting better. I'd love it, but it's not the biggest deal to me. but when i'm learning, I play standard. 1rax FE, or FD terran or whatever. I mean yeah, sometimes you gotta 2port wraith those zergs just for fun like Lomo[Fou] (except he has the mechanics), but playing standard will get you the skill to do that weirdass 2port build. I like cheese, it's a beautiful part of the game of starcraft, just like standard play. and yeah, i'll always be slower than the C- or D+ guys with all the mechanics because i think too much, but i mean, whatev, that's cool. I mean sure, many of you don't seem to know this, but Flash was known as "cheese terran" before he was the macro monster that he is now, always proxy BBS or someshit. But I bet in the KTF practice house he was 1rax FE every game. Everyone always says he's a "boring macro player" when in 2007 I'd say he was one of the most micro-intensive terrans out there.
I notice a lot of times I have a lot of times better scouting than players otherwise better than me, even sometimes progamers. It's because they don't need it.
tbh i still don't know what "standard play" is in TvT though... I suppose I'll make a thread about it.
basically, learn standard play and then learn cheese.
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Braavos36379 Posts
well, the difference for BW is that knowing a build order is far different than executing it well. we all know the bisu build order against zerg but the level of execution for it varies tremendously.
it's a very advanced strategy that is "easy" to conceptually learn, but the baseline there is still mechanics. if you don't have the mechanics you can't do it, making raw speed and multitask even more important, as it allows you access to more difficult strategies. the bisu example comes to mind and the various 2-hatch aggro zvt strategies that are only made viable by the absurd early game speedling control of jaedong or july.
its hard for me to find an analogy to this, because other non-sports games the physical side of it is entirely accessible to the wide population. ie i can move the pieces just as well as a grand master. exporting this to chess would be that a really good player's pawns somehow can move two spaces instead of the usual one, allowing them strategies and openings that i can understand but can never execute.
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Braavos36379 Posts
another example would be savior vs nal_ra on longinus, nal_ra 9/10 forward gates and savior 12 hatches, myself and just about any other zerg in this situation is forced to build a sunken and defend but savior manages somehow to only use drones and lings to stop the rush with little to no losses, allowing him to eventually win with mutas that are just a few seconds earlier than ra expected.
this sort of strategy is easy to understand and the build order is simple enough. however, its level of difficulty to pull off mechanically is so hard that only a handful of zergs have the early game micro to support it.
yet another example is jaedong versus lucifer, where lucifer 9/10 proxy gates and jaedong sends his first 6 lings to lucifer's undefended main and drone+sunken defends the zeals. yeah its a strategy that is conceptually as simple as it gets, and one that even the most newbie player can understand and practice, but theres no way in hell people will be able to pull it off like jaedong did. it's a creative and risky strategy thats only made possible by mechanics.
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About that "people think they could win against a mechanically better enemy by using superior strategy": they won't, and that's the problem. The problem is part of the game (or maybe just the modern maps, or both).
Say I use Artosis' "best" build order for TvZ. Now my opponent can be a strategic genius, he simply won't be able to think of anything against this build because there IS NOTHING he can do against it. And that's the problem. The strategically minded people simply can't do it because it's not possible to win (anymore) vs. a solid build. So the only thing you can do is to use that solid build for yourself and try to win through superior mechanics.
It was possible several years back when people haven't found the best build yet (it wasn't even sure that such a thing existed - there were multiple builds to choose from, much more than are used today). With increasing mechanical skill however, some of these builds became obsolete, because you could suddenly get away with much greedier/riskier builds without having to fear that something like a ling all-in would kill you (it is of course possible sometimes, but most often it doesn't work).
Starcraft has *in theory* all the ingredients necessary to be a complex game with lots of possible strategies (since there many very different units which are all designed to have a strength and a weakness), but in practice only a few units matter, only a few builds matter, and everything else is inferior. That's also why Boxer, rA, Yellow or Casy suck these days: they all are strategically clever players with TONS and TONS of experience (doesn't matter much anymore, too) but they have no chance against the current best solid build order - whatever strategy they come up with, it's automatically inferior. And when they use the standard build, they lose too because they're not as mechanically good as some of the younger progamers.
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Come on, guys, you are talking about different things:
Artosis talk about how to practice, Nergal about what makes a good player. And both are right, imho.
I'm a musician. What I do is basically the same than programmers: I practice one same piece as many hours a day as I can to play it better and better. And I practice exactly the same way Artosis said: repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. And more you repeat, more you master every detail (even if after, a week, it was good enough for you) and, finally, you get much more flexible which give you the possibility of changing something cuz you feel inspired or to deal with unexpected situation, like stress. Some player play amazing in their room, then they go on stage and fail miserably. Why? Cause the situation was a bit different, and because they had not practice enough, they couldn't react properly. You want to change somthing? It's ok, cuz you know so perfectly your piece because of the fucking huge amount of hours you have spend on it that nothing can happen to you.
Then, a good player is not someone who plays always the same, but the most intelligent, the most sensitive etc etc... To be able to do something with your intelligence and sensitivity, however, you have to practice a shitload of hours, doing the same and the same.
For Starcraft it's a bit the same. You have repeated a game map with the same BO three thousand times, then you don't even think about it. You want to change something? To make a variation? To harass differently? To react to an odd build? No problem, cuz beacuse you have done the exact same game 3000 times, you won't make any mistakes by changing something on which you can concentrate.
Now, if you havn't practice a lot the same build what will happen is that, yes, you know how to react to this DT rush, but while doing it, you'll forget about building a SD at 36, you won't build scv or, if your opponent is smart, you won't find the time to deal with another threat, and you won't harass during this time. Or you will wanna make an odd build, but you won't know very well when to take your second expo.
Then, and where Nergal is perfectly right is that what makes the difference between a very solid player and a champion is that the champion will have this solidity through practice, but will also be able not to be expected in his move, to show imagination and smart tactic etc etc...
That's called talent. For being really good, you need both: practice and talent.
Menhuin, a great violinist said: "Art is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration."
I guess Starcraft is an art.
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What are you talking about? if the strategy player's mechanics are just slightly worse he can definitely win many games. If you call cheese strategy, then boxer is a perfect example of beating better mechanics by doing something unexpected. No amount of mechanics will allow you to kill dark templars if they catch you off guard but then going dark templars doesn't take a genius. You can't possibly expect to go up against someone who practices 10 hours a day and think to yourself you're better at either strategy or mechanics because that's just not true. You have to put at least half the effort to win and if you do then you probably will, just not very often.
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the difference between a korean and a foreigner is like the difference between bill clinton and monica lewinsky.
putting 2 of em in a starcraft game is a sad 1 sided affair. bill doesnt really care, but monica loves to get banged.
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Artosis is probably right. Like any sport, the best players spend enormous amounts of time practicing stuff that seems boring and tedious. Only when their mechanics are super strong do they then start dominate with unique strategies. It's analogous to game design maybe... everybody has ideas that they think are super awesome (strategy, innovation), but to actually make something great they have to take care of programing, interface design, sound, script etc etc (mechanics, experience). Doesn't matter how brilliant your ideas are if you're unable to execute them.
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What's wrong with having a solid build that can't be countered early game? It just means you can't find the counter and kill someone early. I don't like the idea of every build having a counter-build early on because that could put the game more to luck, whether it be scouting positions, or just randomly picking a better build.
Besides, if the game lasts into the mid-game, isn't that where the beautiful tactics of Starcraft really start coming in? I mean, I'm sure we can all agree we'd rather have Boxer and Yellow play straight up 20+ min games than just bunker rushes. I guess for variety's sake you could argue that having early game madness every so often is nice. But we have that from time to time, even with the "best" TvZ build being discovered.
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On September 15 2008 08:20 teh.pwnerer wrote:
What's wrong with having a solid build that can't be countered early game? It just means you can't find the counter and kill someone early. I don't like the idea of every build having a counter-build early on because that could put the game more to luck, whether it be scouting positions, or just randomly picking a better build.
Besides, if the game lasts into the mid-game, isn't that where the beautiful tactics of Starcraft really start coming in? I mean, I'm sure we can all agree we'd rather have Boxer and Yellow play straight up 20+ min games than just bunker rushes. I guess for variety's sake you could argue that having early game madness every so often is nice. But we have that from time to time, even with the "best" TvZ build being discovered.
Every build does have a counter hence build order wins. Some are just OKAY against everything.
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Would be nice with more build orders like the one mentioned by artosis in order to practice like this.
If anyone could snatch someone from the korean forums or something, that would be great.
Thinking about third nexus timing, gateway timings and such in PvT, PvZ etc.
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On September 15 2008 08:26 freshtowers wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2008 08:20 teh.pwnerer wrote:
What's wrong with having a solid build that can't be countered early game? It just means you can't find the counter and kill someone early. I don't like the idea of every build having a counter-build early on because that could put the game more to luck, whether it be scouting positions, or just randomly picking a better build.
Besides, if the game lasts into the mid-game, isn't that where the beautiful tactics of Starcraft really start coming in? I mean, I'm sure we can all agree we'd rather have Boxer and Yellow play straight up 20+ min games than just bunker rushes. I guess for variety's sake you could argue that having early game madness every so often is nice. But we have that from time to time, even with the "best" TvZ build being discovered. Every build does have a counter hence build order wins. Some are just OKAY against everything.
What I'm getting at is that early game build order wins don't do much for the art of SC gameplay, and hence why I have no problems with solid builds extending into the midgame.
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Does this thread mean that mods can finally start perm banning people who post APM questions adn threads? 
Oh, and there is no strategy at a high level, just mechanical decision making based on what you can and can't scout. Thats why pro's who get caught off guard by innovative strategies can look pretty foolish.
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On September 15 2008 06:11 baronsb wrote:
Everything artosis said in this thread seems blatantly obvious if you have watched any of the Spirit VODs where in the first significant engagement the korean has more units wihout being behind in any other facit of the game if not ahead. No amount of strategy can overcome the pure advantage they are getting from having better mechanics and more solidly executed builds on a consistent basis.
Wrong. Modern Starcraft strategy is all about hindering and delaying the opponent's macro until either:
=>he collapses under the sheer weight of harassment (think Jaedong's mutalisks ZvT in 2007, when the terran player just braced himself and tried to last as long as he could);
--or--
=>you get ahead and outmacro him (think Bisu's corsairs+dt PvZ, where the objective isn't necessarily to go for the kill but to get ahead in tech while reigning the zerg's).
This is why we focus so much energy upon contains, killing harmless units like workers and overlords, and denying expansions: to delay mining, tech and unit production. In short, to hinder the opponent's macro. The basics.
Most Spirit VODs against korean pros feature amateurs that either invested a lot into harrass yet were unable to make it pay off, or didn't invest nearly enough, hence the predictable macro steamrolling. Watch these games again.
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first of all sorry for my bad english .
honestly after watch replay from foreigner and the spirit vod foreigner vs pro gamer . most of the foreigner are NOT playing that smart , people alway say foreigner are slow but they play realy smart . sorry but that just stupid , in many game they just do stupid shit or dont fucking know what they are doing . i mean some of them do mistake worst that me ( im only b+ player )
in fact korean play way more smart that most foreigner .
and yes artosis right about what he say , seriously you can watch some foreigner replay and they never did the same build order , most of them got like 10 build order for every matchup , sorry but again that realy stupid , how you can pratice that much build order ? what you think you are doing? korean pratice the most know and good build order over and over and become better .
also top foreigner got worst mechanics that the B team pro gamer player .
foreigner need :
1- keep 1-2 bo each matchup max and mass pratice them , again and again .
2- try to think , about what you are doing plz , stop think you are playing so smart , you are not.
3- pratice your apm , you will never become good using 100-150 apm
4- starcraft = all about mechanics now , if you dont agree look how boxer suck now . he played smart and got owned .
5- reduce your ego , you suck at starcraft , you are nothing . seriously that crazy how many top foreigner think they are some hot shit ect .
sorry for sound bm here , but that realy what i think 
still hope that some foreigner will do well in korea one day again , im keeping my hope up .
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EPT
