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I have three suggestions, but first I must say that there are times when I feel that SC2 isn't fun. It's for different reasons (getting cheesed every other game), but you just have to push through it and learn to not let it affect you.
First, is keep playing. If your MMR is too high for your skill, you WILL be readjusted quickly. If I don't play for a long time and come back, I will lose a lot of games while I readjust. Usually, I will then have a long and happy winning streak as my skills catch back up. Then it's pretty much 50/50 from there.
Second, plan your builds out further. Having a solid opener is critical, and you say you already know how to hash a good one out. Take it a step further and plan out the next step. It might take you an hour to figure out the next steps in your build, but it will make a huge difference. For example, in TvT (I didn't catch what race you play), you might choose to do a tank/marine push (but I don't suggest it :p). Then you say, okay, my next step is to expand before I do anything else (assuming you're not about to die). Then you might say, okay, I want 2 factories making tanks, 1 reactor and 2 tech lab barracks making marines and getting stim and shield, and a reactor starport making vikings/medivacs. Then you figure out how quickly you can get to that point without cutting units or economy and practice it a few times. In a real game, you have a plan and you know what the end result looks like. It doesn't matter if you get there sloppily, as long as you get there. From there you can just wing it until you can get there consistently. Then you plan the next step for further games. Watch pro reps just to see what they look like at specific points in a game, or figure it out by trial and error.
And third, watch your replays. If you use the reps as a learning tool, you can find something you could have done better every time, I promise. Then you can isolate it and work on it briefly, or remember to react better the next time, etc. This might take a while at first as it takes a while to learn what to look for, but eventually, you'll be able to blast through replays and say "I did this wrong, I could have done that better, I should have scouted then, etc." It's valuable for two reasons. First, you can never say "I don't know what to do better," if you can always find something in every game. Second, it actually becomes satisfying to say "I was that close, all I had to do was do this differently. I'll know to do that next time." When you start getting satisfaction out of the act of improving, as slow (or as fast) as it might be, you'll begin to have more and more fun.
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If you haven't already, definitely should check out Day9's archives ( day9.tv ) for all the Newbie Tuesday stuff, which can give you a lot of different tips on how to improve, which, hopefully, will put you back into having fun.
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On June 29 2011 15:34 OSM.OneManArmy wrote:
I don't really understand how nobody here does not feel satisfaction and joy in winning haha, StarCraft, and tons of other games, are fun when you WIN. Start getting better and improving, do some customs, and when you dominate people, you'll smile and grin like a chessycat when you win matches.
Ty for this. You and the others who brought this up (Thanks Torte!) really turned things around. I was kinda getting bummed out seeing all this "Laddering is unbearable time to slit my wrists" stuff (I can understand that, though). I feel like I'll have more fun in Ladder once the turbulence from my noobishness is ironed out and I get a few legit wins. I also feel like this game will be awesome if I somehow manage to never look at my profile.
Thanks for all of your suggestions so far! As I expected, the 'legitimate things to do in order to improve' outweighs the 'completely not feasible things to do that are fun', but thats okay. I like suggestions. Please?
I also like having friends. So if you can get past the fact that I'm a noob, I probably can't help you hone your strategies too much, and that I'm a noob (as well as all the other stuff I've said which may have angered tons of people) then perhaps friends?
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Practicing for 6 hours a day against a computer? I don't think anyone's ever done that. Just watch huk's stream and note the basics of what he does in his games, and try to incorporate them into your future games
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Well, since you said that you are constantly losing, I would say take the loss of pride and just keep losing down to silver or so, to a point where you can comfortably play versus your opponents. Then grind your way back up, which will help you improve your skills more gradually. Should help, but ladder does get depressing. Try SOTIS or some other custom, or take a break and play an FPS or something for a while.
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On June 29 2011 16:02 Grr Arr Rawr wrote:
If you haven't already, definitely should check out Day9's archives ( day9.tv ) for all the Newbie Tuesday stuff, which can give you a lot of different tips on how to improve, which, hopefully, will put you back into having fun.
<3 Day9. Newbie Tuesday and TB's series are the whole reason that I was able to get my solid opening by just playing against the AI. They are also the entire reason why I decided to play multiplayer (in addition to the fact that walling off an AI basically puts it into shutdown). Funday Monday is where I kind of latched on to this whole "I want to actually have fun in this game" thing that I've been going on about. Watching them play before I played helped me solve tons of problems before they started (to think that queued up units are just wasted money!). Of course I'm still a massive noob... but let's gloss over that minor detail for the time being.
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I found this dude's blog entry and tried his method: http://brotosterone.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-i-learned-to-macro-and-go-from.html I used to play protoss, but I got bored and switched to zerg and started doing this for practice. I thought the #1 goal was really easy, so I just did it a few times and got on the ladder with one idea: macro. It felt so good to actually win games due to superior mechanics. Just concentrate on mechanics and practice a decent build for each matchup. At least that's what I do, I don't know, I get a kick out of seeing my improvement.
BTW, I started at exactly the same spot as you. I bought the game at release, got to platinum through placement matches and ended up playing bronze-gold leagues very fast. I fell to silver and bronze and am now back to silver again.
EDIT: Oh and watch streams and vods. You'd be surprised how much you learn by just watching good players :D
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I've been stuck at top diamond for a really long time now. I'm not enjoying myself at all, only 20% of my games are a challenge to play against. the rest are just faceroll bullshit against other diamonders.
I have fun when I get rolled, that's where I learn and that's where I can see myself improve. It's hard to keep me motivated, but the more masters and the more challenge I get the more motivation I get. I think it's a good mindset to have
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It's very hard for me too to stay motivated to play a game where I get stomped most of the time...However, I find it pretty fun to play unladdered games, just relax and play  Win or lose, you won't feel bad when a build doesn't work 10 times in a row :D...and it's good practice too.
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1v1 is pretty much struggling to get better in ladder.
I can agree that Platinum/Diamond ladder pretty much sucks because there aren't any really good games spare few. Mostly it's just ball against ball and 1a to see whose ball is better.
I'm in the same situation as many of you: Platinum/Diamond level. I was on the verge of getting promoted to Diamond but I decided to change my race to Terran and practice it because it seems like far more exciting than Zerg.
And so far, it is.
I love the amount of APM I can put into Terran macro and micro. I love the aggressive feeling of Terran. TvT is totally awesome because it's NOT a matchup of ball formations. It's a matchup of "Special Tactics" and Tactics in general.
On-topic: Custom 1v1s on ladder maps are much more exciting and fun than ladder and cheeses feel allowed.
People don't threat to kill you when you cheese your practice partners. It's not good to cheese the first game you play against someone, but I have cheesed in practice games and I will continue doing so from time to time. Custom games are much more relaxed.
You can also try playing some custom maps that aren't necessarily "Starcraft 2", like Star Battle and stuff like that.
The higher you get in the ladder/the more skill you have, the more fun you might have. At least this is true on my part and I want to struggle to get better to achieve this fact.
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Team games > customs 1v1 > ladder.
Team games are like the setting to develop good macro. This is where I first started. I didn't even bother to ladder 1v1 games until I was diamond league in 2's, 3's, and 4's. Once I hit the ladder, I just thrashed the opposition until I made it to diamond league.
The pressure is still on when you play with your friends, but you always have help from your allies if it gets too dicey. I think of it as training wheels until you can ride solo. Your multitask is also tested more in team games. You have to be aware of so much if you want to play at a high level.
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For me SC2 hasn't been fun to play in the last couple of month (In season 2 I have made about 10-20 ladder games and about the same amount of custom games). My problem was that I just hate every map in the ladder pool and playing custom games on fun makes is most of the times boring (either you are way worse or way better than your opponent) - also it's not as easy to find opponent on iCCup or GSL maps.
So I stopped playing for a while, but after watching GSL ST, Dreamhack and HSC3 last weekend I found some motivation and played a few games and even though I still hate this fuckin old and/or bad maps I kinda enjoyed it again.
I personally think: if you dont enjoy sc2, dont play it!
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On June 29 2011 14:47 Kfcnoob wrote:
the system tried to make a statistical conclusion of your skill off only 5 placement matches. in statistics, at least 30 samples is usually required for a strong conclusion. basically, the system can't make very good predictions after only seeing you play for 5 games.
Since you lose mostly all of your recent games, you probably don't belong in platinum. yes you win the 6 minute games versus cheesy players, but your platinum opponents are probably beating you in anything past that.
i know you may be proud of a high starting rank, but dont let it give you a false ego where you fear getting demoted.
not all hope is lost, as the system knows its conclusion of platinum is a risky conclusion, and u will be properly re-categorized within enough games played. eventually, u and the ladder will get to a point where u win/lose 50/50.
This person put it the best. My friend got placed in Gold and then managed to win a couple games somehow and got promoted to Platinum without even knowing the standard Terran opener when I had to crawl up from Bronze to get to that level. The placement system is not entirely accurate because it bases you off of such a small pool of games.
The best option for you in my opinion would be to swallow any pride and intentionally tank your league down to Bronze or Silver. The people there might seem *really* easy and if so you'll move back up, but the system will eventually have an easier time evening out your MMR so that you're placed against opponents with a similar skill level. This is being said with reading that you're new to the game, so if that's the truth you really shouldn't be up in the Platinum league anyone. Also keep in mind that realistically no one cares about what league you're in until Masters, so don't feel like people are going to judge you in any way when being in anything other than Masters really means "I'm still learning!"
Laddering by far is the best way to improve macro and mechanics, so don't waste your time playing custom games or something like that if your goal is to improve. When you spend lots of time laddering you'll discover things that you'll think were previously impossible to stop and after learning the proper response seem trivial, and along with that you get the constant practice of keeping up with your macro.
Day9 made a good video about how to get into Starcraft 2 that I think might interest you. You obviously seem interested in the game already, but he lays down some rules about how much to play and what to aim for. You can find that here.
Don't be afraid to take breaks every 5 games or so with a fun custom map as well. The last thing you want to do is burn yourself out grinding out 50 games a day, so take it easy on yourself and when something frustrates you take a little time to learn what happened and what you could have done to prevent it. Knowing the cause of why something happened and what I should have done in response always calms my nerves slightly because I can at least recognize that it's something I can fix instead of being an intangible loss.
The last thing I could recommend to you is finding a friend that you can play with. Whether it be someone you know in real life or someone from the teamliquid channel in-game, having someone with similar goals that you can talk to and practice with makes a large difference. When I got started my friend absolutely dominated me because he had far more experience than myself, so it drove me to learn and improve until I could finally start taking games from him. Having that person who can be there along the way can make the experience much more enjoyable. Starcraft 2 is a social game, so finding someone who is wanting to get into Starcraft 2 as well will be mutually beneficial.
Best of luck
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On June 29 2011 14:32 DesertedPanda wrote:
I can beat cheeses, but I hate playing against them. I like to play real matches. The problem is that I can't win any games that go past my opening because I just don't have good macro or multitasking yet. But it's not that I don't want any challenge, it's that the game isn't fun for me. It's even less fun because all of my friends are afraid of Starcraft, so I'm flying solo.
I am so sick of losing every single game. I don't feel like I'm improving very much at all when I prolong a game by building a futile army, but at the same time I don't want to just give up every time my macro falls apart. Sure, practicing would help me stay in platinum eventually, but I started multiplayer because I just want to have fun now. Good.
Try out teamgames, even with your friends who are afraid of Starcraft. Don't boss them around in the game, ask them to do a certain thing but tolerate poor execution. Be open to their strategy suggestions even if you know it won't work out well. Sometimes, let them even be in command and just act as an asset to them. Party and get excited if you win.
Also watch replays / VODs together (in person or via Skype.)
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On June 29 2011 14:36 Xova wrote:
Its extremely difficult to play this game and actually have a good time, unless you're playing team games with friends. As for 1v1 I don't think there is much fun to be had while learning.
All I play is 1v1 and by the end of the day I feel like going into baby punching mode, but yet I do it again the next day...
This.
But i don't play alot of 1v1 because of the baby punching, i play alot more team games
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honestly.. it's like working out to me. Working out isn't always fun, but improving and seeing the end results are the reason I do it. I keep playing SC2 to improve and get better (and win more). Winning is fun. Also having a buddy or two along helps.
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if you can beat cheese you should be pretty save on ladder
what takes away fun for me is that the games aren't really fun on ladder caust most of the time its one push and the game is over
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Whether or not starcraft is fun depends completely on your mindset. If you are in a mindset where losing frustrates you then you are going to hate the game.
Just change your goals of playing and it will be fine. There was a point where I just was not enjoying the game and hadn't played in weeks, but now I have played roughly 400 games this season (Cannot see loses so I assume in going at 50/50). All that changed was why I was playing.
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I don't know if it's already been said, but you should really get YABOT. The AI is harder and actually does builds (sometimes correctly) that you can practice against. I do it all the time to hash out a new build I saw or thought up and when I don't feel like laddering. It really will improve your macro game because those attack waves come fast and often. It's a good base to start with for practicing and If you lose, oh well it's just the AI
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iNfeRnaL
Germany1908 Posts
smoking weed does the trick for me.
high = starcraft is awesome.
sober = i don't play starcraft at all.
edit: at the guy 2 posts above who said if you hate losing you're going to hate starcraft... not exactly true!
I used to have 0 frustration tolerance, but that just made me want to try harder back then so I'd lose less.
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EPT
