The PiG Daily - Thinking critically about SC - Page 17

Sometimes we get so focused on being solid in Starcraft, we forget to stay flexible. We’ve seen it happen so many times, especially with non-korean players, especially with unseasoned macro-centric players. The reason for this is best explained with a quote from the film, “The Big Short”

“People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood.”

Today I’ll explain just how valuable a tool, knowing your weakness is, and how not taking the time to find and recognise it, holds many of us back.


Recognising weakness in your playstyle and build-orders is especially important to understand the most important strategic crossroads in your games. Crossroads isn’t a term I’ve used before so I’ll explain what I mean. A Crossroad in Starcraft is a moment of interaction. It’s a point where you can respond to the game state or the situation you’re in, in relation to your opponent.

The replay on screen is one of my ladder games from when I was figuring out a unique opening for PvZ. I’ll be referencing this style in general as we go, as it’s something I understand really well. However the player you should all have in mind when you think about today’s topic is sOs.

sOs is the most consistent pro player to show an absolute hunger for understanding his own weakness. Looking at his play even other pros are often stunned at how quickly he must be adjusting and making decisions in game. He embraces styles that are inherently filled with weakness and gambles. But he’s studied his opponents’ reactions so well, he recognises crossroads and has many paths mapped out far beyond most players mental roadmap. He hides his tells with master precision, reacts and shifts his entire style based on the smallest piece of scouting, and is a master of playing around an opponent that has the counter to him. He will dance around the map, buying time, hiding his transitions and adjusting those transitions as he tracks his opponent's’ line of play. Watching him play is both beautiful in it’s variety and perplexing in its obscurity. As onlookers the many crossroads sOs finds are filled with shadows, we can only guess why and how he’s making the choices he is. Hopefully by the end of today, things will be a little clearer.

Ingame Weakness

When I come across a player who’s serious about learning Starcraft, I like to put them on the path of macro. I’ll give them a very generic solid opening and a few simple goals that allow them to focus on learning the basics whilst being generally safe. The idea is if they spend their money well and do their basic tasks properly, they will beat almost all their opponents in the lower leagues. The reason they’re winning is they’re building more workers, not getting supply blocked as much, and just overall getting more stuff than their opponents. However is their play really solid? Is this how high level players play?

The answer is not at all. This only reason this works is because their opponents in the lower leagues aren’t as effective at their basic tasks. If you try to blindly follow a generic build in Masters or GM, your opponent will have many opportunities to scout you and react by being greedy against you, to counter your composition, or to attack you right at a moment where you’re weak. There’s no such thing as a static solid build - because if you’re committing to being safe by blindly building defence, you give your opponent an opportunity to build their economy faster, make a much larger army, and roll over you later in the game. This is why truly solid play is inherently reactive and flexible. You need to be able to constantly adjust to the situation you’re in, and change your play to suit your goals.

The real secret to absolute mastery of Starcraft Strategy is inseparable from this flexibility. The most important tool is understanding more crossroads than your opponent and how to use them. As you learn to recognise more and more of these crossroads and their impacts on the game, you can then make an adjustment to improve your position. This could be seeing your zerg opponent didn’t take any gas early so can’t attack you, and therefore you can take a very fast 3rd base. Another scenario would be scouting an army that you can’t defeat in frontal combat so you place your units ready for a basetrade when they push out. There’s no limit to your responses in Starcraft.

The more knowledge of the game you have, the more you study it and understand your opposing races play, the more crossroads you will recognise. This is why players who spend a lot of time studying the game, thinking about it and searching to understand the core concepts are often the ones who continue to learn and improve.

We could talk about dozens of different ways to recognise new crossroads, to identify cool and interesting ways to react in-game. I’m sure I’ll do shows covering some of these in depth in future. For now though I want to talk about how recognising your weakness is a powerful tool.

What I mean by recognising your weakness is being able to look at a build or style you’re playing and identify the worst situations for you. Usually you can simply think of a matchup - think of that one thing you suck against, and BAM, you’ve found a weakness.

An example from my own experiences was using my chargelot opening in PvZ. It’s the same as an adept opening except with chargelots instead of adepts. I really like it, but many people were quick to point out that banelings absolutely destroy chargelots in big fights. So early on I already was aware that any big push involving banelings that hits me could be very deadly. My first response was going for stargate units after my zealots and using the oracles and voids to handily defend any early pushes. However once Hydras hit the field I would often get crushed by a fast hydra-bane push. Now that I knew this was a weakness and focused on that - I thought about ways to work around it. I started getting my robo and a prism out earlier and earlier so I could buy time with chargelot counterattacks. I started hiding big chargelot counters on the map, to pull them home when they try to push me. If I scouted hydras I’d also really focus on rushing out that storm tech.

The style worked insanely well, I had a really sick winrate for quite some time with it in mid GM. The reason wasn’t that it’s 100% solid or perfect - but it’s because I looked at the weaknesses of it, and used that to inform my strategy. Whenever I see baneling tech I would get the counterattacks and prism ready ASAP, when I’d know hydras might be an option, I’d really focus on that storm being done early. Looking at your weakness teaches you not only some cool reactions but more importantly what your focus should be prioritised on.

Rather than just looking at your weaknesses in terms of composition or attack timing, you can also look at what informs your opponent to go for those compositions and those attacks? You can easily recognise what “tells” there are of your specific strategy. The earlier your opponent sees these tells, the sooner they can react with something you’re weak against. In my case I realised that going for 4 oracles before voidrays was an awesome way to deal big damage and really get some momentum. However in games where my opponent scouted the oracles coming out of 2 stargates, they’d have plenty of anti-air and I couldn’t get much value out of these oracles. It was a pretty gambley move. But now I knew that, I knew how important it was to hide it. If there were any overlords around, I’d specifically focus on getting a voidray or phoenix or 2 out first to clear them up, and only then go into oracle production. I’d really focus a lot more apm on denying that scouting once I realised how key hiding my oracles were.


So right from the beginning, knowing what the important tells are, you now know what to try and hide from your opponent. How to obscure their knowledge of your strategy, and delay any counters entering the field. You don’t need to just fight directly against your weakness, sometimes understanding it allows you to avoid it entirely.


As you start to understand scouting and adjustments against your style you should also look at the nitty gritty details of how they get there. Rather than just looking at “Oh if he has hydras and banes he’s gunna hit me with that attack” - I would start to look at exactly how my opponent got to those hydra baneling attacks. I quickly realised there was a vast difference between someone attacking me off 3-bases with 16 hydras and 20-30 banelings as opposed to a 4-5 base guy who spreads creep across the map and makes 30 hydras and 100 banelings. I looked closer and saw not only was the base count the difference but I could see creep-spread was more of a priority for the big macro guys. They would drone a lot faster and saturate that 3rd and drop their 4th nice and fast. Their Lair would often be quite a bit later. So as I traced my weakness - dying to hydra-bane backwards, I started to decipher the different reactions and recognise the separate types of them. Looking for drone count, Lair timing, creep-spread as well as expansion timing gave me many tells outside of just “there’s a hydra den, there’s a baneling nest”. I recognised that prism harass and chargelot counters had to get in position a lot earlier to pull back these faster, harder-hitting attacks. I needed to really rush straight to storm to be able to defend. Likewise against the macro styles - having storm wasn’t just automatically a GG. Early on I’d treat it that way thinking all hydra-bane was the same shitty stuff - I’d counterattack after killing an army, and get surrounded and destroyed on creep. It turns out zergs with 85 drones can rebuild stuff pretty fast and you’ve gotta slow your play down… who woulda thought hey?

Summary:
Wait a second… rather than saying “understand your weakness”, why not just say “understand your goals and game-plan, and focus on the key points to make that work.” - why should we try to understand it in this backwards way?


I experience this very resistance where I don’t want to look at a game for my weaknesses. My ego doesn’t to be exposed and my human nature wants to avoid dwelling on misfortune.
As a progamer, I would rarely make the effort to analyse problems in my play. Rather than spend hours poring over vods for intelligent decisions, I chose to simply see X build vs Y build. This is good vs that. This composition “doesn’t work”. Even watching players far better than myself, I would dumb down the game to generalisations and partial truths. I would stop looking deeper, or would only look at a problem from one player's perspective. I sometimes see this sort of attitude echoed, especially in younger progamers, and I really think we should all spend more time analysing our opponents builds, reactions, and responses. Look at pros of your own race not through your own mindset, but try to get in the mindset of those you’re spectating, try to understand their win conditions and their preferences rather than only seeing through your own bias.
Funnily enough, learning a few basics of Chess has helped me with this. In order to understand the options the absolute best way is to simply think from my opponent's’ view about how, if I were in their shoes, I would take advantage of my play. It’s a habit now to hop on the analysis board and look at all the possible moves that will ruin my day.
This process is way easier as a beginner in Chess than it is as an expert in Starcraft. The pieces are set in how they move, there’s only so many options, and so it’s not hard to simply try a bunch of things mindlessly until I come across some deadly combinations. In Starcraft it’s a little more complex as there’s so many moving pieces, but looking at the game the way I’ve talked about today has been a great help for me to look at the whole scope of it.

In Starcraft we’re always seeking solid styles. Strong strategies that are flexible but also try to simplify the game by giving us more consistency across a wide range of situations. However It’s easy to fall into the trap of becoming inflexible as we delve deeper into these solid styles. If we stop embracing weakness as a part of every build then we forget that the only thing that makes a build perfect is our very ability to change our decisions at a moment’s notice.
Truly understanding how to use a build well and refine it to its best quality, sometimes that’s all about recognising the inherent weaknesses of what you’re doing. Understanding your flaws and looking for ways to pick yourself apart is the hardest thing to do. It takes real discipline and critical thinking, but it provides such a clear focus on the most important crossroads, the most important strategic points of focus for both you and your opponent. Looking at your weakness ensures you will always be one step ahead.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s discussion. I’m really enjoying these topics, and even though it takes a lot of time to prepare and think this through in detail I aim to keep putting out a daily like this at least once a week. I’ve been thinking about giving them a separate playlist but just need to think of a clever name that points towards SC theory and the podcast-style I’m going for. Let me know any suggestions you have!

Don’t forget to hug a watermelon, kick a walrus and of course punch garden gnome in the gonads!

16 - Hopping Into 1v1 for the First Time:

10 - Fundamental Mechanics of SC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EEv2pw94WQ

Referenced Dailies:

16 - Hopping Into 1v1 for the First Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMBgp-OA9Jc

10 - Fundamental Mechanics of SC:

110 Walling off in PvZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WbIhB2hryU

Main topics:

So the main idea with this show is showing 1) SC isn’t that scary 2) It’s simple to improve at SC 3) How to choose the right things to focus on improving since there’s so many!

False culture/ideas about SC as super hard/indefatigable/
high barrier to entry
Not really that hard - just a bit unfamiliar to get into at first.
Wide set of choices isn’t bad its just more obvious in a strategy game
It’s easier to ignore how bad you are in other games
Need to be comfortable just plodding around without that much direction - enjoy just trying basic plans and figuring them out
Since its a competition our opponents struggle just as much as us with the same conditions so remember it’s meant to be hard and you’re both battling the same situation -

Embracing the reality that we all don’t fully get it
No magic barrier where you suddenly just understand everything there is to know about Starcraft
Once you get this it’s easier to just realise you just need to constantly choose 1 thing to improve at and work at it it a little bit if you want to get better
You can still have fun not improving - just accept your losses - ignore ego

Don’t get thrown off by the vast choices - just choose something. Indecision and being afraid to focus on small areas is one of the biggest parts that holds people back
Skewed skillsets
Confusing winning with fun
Only improving what wins them games and stretching that to a big area

In competitive gaming culture Starcraft is revered as the hardest, fastest and most challenging game. The hardcore players hold it up as a badge of pride. They’re the ones who flagellate themselves night after night, fighting viciously to maintain their position on the ladder. An elite caste of gamers that are on a constant mission to prove they’re better than everyone else. Energy drinks might keep them playing through the wee hours of the night, but the only true nourishment they get is from the tears of their enemies. And a Starcraft player’s hunger is not easily sated.


I’m introducing a new series of shows about how to improve at Starcraft. Over the next week I’ll be going through the nitty gritty of how to work on each area of the game in isolation. However in this introduction I’m going to focus more on the mental attitude you need as a player to improve, and some common misconceptions. That’s actually the reason I opened with the silly intro - I’ll be explaining why SC isn’t as scary hard and elite as it’s made out to be. Then I’ll show that it’s actually really simple to improve at Starcraft and lastly I’ll tell a story about why having GM level drop play might actually be what’s holding you back.

Rec Break

Even fans who watch a lot of SC but don’t play that much are often indoctrinated into this culture of “Starcraft is so incredibly hard”. I get that games hold people’s hand these days and in some cases literally make it impossible to lose - (any game with instant respawn checkpoints every 2 metres I’m looking at you) but it’s not like Starcaft will just take a giant dump on you the moment you start playing. There’s an awesome single player campaign as well as a plethora of arcade and Co-Op missions that all provide great entry points into figuring out the basics of how to play Starcraft in a fun and friendly environment.

I can already hear some people saying in response: “Yeah but the multiplayer is incredibly challenging pig!” Well yeah, if you haven’t played anything else and you hop right into multiplayer - yes it’s quite hard, go back and play the other modes first! If the competitive modes are all you’re interested in, then hop on the forums and ask for some advice. If you want to skip the normal learning path you best go look for some advice, and the forums are a great place to start.

The broad idea about Starcraft that runs rich through gaming culture and really misleads people is very simple. It’s that Starcraft is overwhelming. It is complex. It is stressful. And that it constantly punishes you for the smallest mistakes. These all sound kind of accurate, but let me break down why taken at face value this doesn’t paint a complete picture of Starcraft.

Next Rec

Other games have a smaller limit on mechanical and strategic options, they limit the number of ways you can improve. Because it’s not as obvious what you’re screwing up in other games, players like to live in a fantasy that they’re “good” compared to everyone else. In Starcraft you’re constantly aware of how hard it is to make everything work the way you want it to - so players have a much harder time imagining they’re amazing compared to everyone. The moment you start looking to improve in SC you realise just how bad you are.


But that’s what should relax you! You don’t need to try and improve every thing you’re doing wrong.
You can literally choose ANY area of the game to improve on - and even just getting a little bit better at that one area will give you more success. There’s so much choice in how you improve, what you focus on learning and getting better at. You get to express yourself in how you learn to play this game
Everyone is in the same situation, having an insane amount of things they COULD do to play better, even in pro play this is so clear. Europeans play a defensive strategic style that “should win” if they play perfectly. On the other hand Korean players constantly play aggressively, mixing rushes that should fail vs perfect play. Yet the Koreans are way more dominant
If there’s no perfect play even for pros - then we’re all just constantly in a cycle of fucking up our play. We’re not trying to reach some invisible barrier that makes us “good” or “respectable” it’s all just a quest to be better than ourselves.
Over the years I’ve seen so many players start out saying “one day I want to be diamond so I’m actually good at the game”. Then when they hit diamond it’s “wow I’m still terrible”.
It might seem like I’m pointing out how pointless it is to try and improve at this game, but it’s the opposite.
We play the leagues, the ladder, our friends, our ladder and tournament rivals. We use all of these as motivation to press forward, but at the end of the day it’s just about putting one foot in front of the other. Finding one small thing at a time to do just that little bit better. We don’t learn a few things and suddenly it all clicks and we play like a god. It’s an intensely personal journey of self-improvement where we’re constantly choosing something and just saying “hey, let’s do that better, let’s demand more of ourselves”.
I remember playing overwatch, getting to diamond league and feeling like I’d done “enough” improving and from there it was very easy to just hover at the same rank ignoring faults in my play and blaming my team for our losses rather than any shortcomings of my own.
But you can’t do that in Starcraft, it’s not as easy to rest on your laurels. You can’t just improve to a certain point and then imagine you’re amazing at the game. No matter how much you improve you’ll constantly be taught humility when you lose. You’ll constantly face the reality of your own inability to choose the correct strategy. You’ll constantly see yourself unable to properly execute your grand plans as you make errors.
At the end of the day you don’t need to be constantly improving at Starcraft, you can stay at the same level and just play for fun, with your current skillset and have a hell of a lot of fun, you just have to take responsibility for your losses. You lost, the other dude played better, that’s it. If we could all just stop being egotistical pricks this wouldn’t be that hard.


The important thing is that the game gives you many options, it provides a platform for near limitless innovation. The variables that make the game hard, all come from yourself and your opposition. A multiplayer game can not in of itself be hard. It can just be. Your opponent is the only thing you’re playing against. Whilst we often talk about playing against the games mechanics - that’s simply the playing field - and whilst a lot of Starcraft is decided by who’s mastered that field the most - you and your opponent are both in the same spot. If it’s hard for you, it’s also hard for your opponent.

Rec Break

Most gamers have this idea that strategy is just this thing where a clever or intelligent person is naturally good at strategy. Yet even great minds will be terrible at the great strategy games when they first start out. Their only advantage is the ability to learn a bit quicker - however they still need to put a vast amount of time into learning how to play. In chess it takes thousands and thousands of hours of practice to recognise the ridiculous number of patterns, moves and plays before the human brain can make sense of what’s going on and make correct decisions. This is necessary barrier to all strategy games. For them to be complex and have constant room for innovation, creativity and problem solving, they NEED to create a complex set of a rules that must be grappled with first of all.

Don’t get thrown off by these vast choices that the game gives you - just choose some small area to focus on and do that. Be happy to fumble through the rest of the game and only become more focused on the other areas as you free up brain power to do so. Be confident and just do stuff. Indecision when faced with many options is a huge factor in halting players progression.

Rec Break

Skewed Skillsets in Starcraft

I always tell players they should play the styles and strategies that THEY find entertaining and enjoyable. To express themselves through Starcraft. However there are some cases where players start to mix up “fun” with “winning”.

There definitely is some overlap between fun in Starcraft and winning. Winning feels good, it’s satisfying, and therefore fun. However sometimes players get so focused on that one area of the game they’re good at, that they ignore other areas. This can lead to a very skewed skillset that really hinders any sort of progress going forward.

I was coaching a player the other week, Utriple, he’s a diamond 2 Terran and I was astounded when I watched him in action. Our first session he was fighting a zerg and it felt like I was watching Alive. There were drops flying in from 3 directions at once, always timed out to hit simultaneously and overload the zerg. He was inflicting massive damage consistently and I honestly thought I was being trolled that this guy was supposedly in diamond…

Then I looked at his macro. Ok there were quite a few mistakes here, not quite as consistent with barracks count, depots, etc as he could be. But still pretty ok since he was doing so well with drops. Then he moved across the map and was at double the zergs supply. This is where I said

“Ok he can work on his macro but this game is literally over, he’s so far ahead, all he needs to do is push onto creep, do some half-assed splitting and he’s got it…”

Of course this was immediately followed by him move commanding his entire 80 marine army onto creep and into speedbanes.

“Holy shit wtf did I just watch?”

I was utterly stunned. I couldn’t believe a guy with such sick drop control could do that. I thought maybe it was just some freak human error. Then on his next push he tried to micro his units. Immediately regrouped them in a clump and when the lingbane rolled in he just stimmed and tried to run backwards. There was almost no attempt to split his units.

I quickly realised why my student was where he was. He had worked so hard to improve his drops that he had perfected his timing and control on them to a high master level. But his macro was a little weak, and most importantly of all his army control in big fights was somewhere around silver-gold level.

Players often focus too much on the areas they’re strong at and grow even stronger
There ends up being such a difference between their strengths and weaknesses that they don’t want to go back and work on their weak areas because they will get destroyed on ladder every game whilst they try to bring their other skills up to par
Even though you will often screw up whenever you’re first improving at something new. Don’t mistake losing a few games with being unfun. The moment it feels terrible to lose and you can’t handle it - you’re probably slipping into a poor mindset. Check your ego before you turn toxic.
Accept a few losses and you’ll find you learn new things very quickly and they open up new completely different ways of winning the game. The joy of learning and playing these is incredible, and well worth a few losses in the process.

Rec Break

Ok guys so that about wraps up today’s discussion. Don’t forget to help me protect the ozone layer with this weeks ICYFAR Challenge - we’re only allowed to take 1 gas per base to limit vespene emissions! I’ll be hiking next week so you’ll have a full week from today to get your replays in for your chance to have them cast on the show!

Alright thanks for hanging out. Don’t forget to hug a watermelon, kick a walrus and of course punch garden gnome in the gonads!

I’ll see you guys next time goodbye and goodnight