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[D] The secret to High level play - Page 4

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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theconartist
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
62 Posts
May 21 2010 02:52 GMT
#61
watch Flash play
play like he does
not joking
<Patch> You never even hit A, tca <Patch> QQ, sounds like you just suck.
Two_DoWn
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States13684 Posts
May 21 2010 02:55 GMT
#62
Micro is good, but Macro is king. Focus on making stuff all the time. Never not be making something when you could be, and never let your money get high. You will find you can start to win simply by having more stuff than your opponent, and as you get faster and better at macro you can start sparing some time to micro stuff around as well.
"What is the air speed velocity of an unladen courier?" "Dire or Radiant?"
goswser
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States3546 Posts
May 21 2010 03:00 GMT
#63
Reaching high level play (not by cheesing every game) requires you to learn strategies that are responsive to your opponent and are executed with precise micro and macro. It requires an understanding of timings and builds, of unit mixes and transitions, and, like poker, forces the player to have a 'star sense' of things, for example, knowing your opponent is going voidrays because you saw his pylon placement.
say you were born into a jungle indian tribe where food was scarce...would you run around from teepee to teepee stealing meat scraps after a day lazying around doing nothing except warming urself by a fire that you didn't even make yourself? -rekrul
shinjin
Profile Joined January 2010
United States398 Posts
May 21 2010 03:15 GMT
#64
lol play sc1
seriously, its like sc2 but you have to do everything yourself
itll improve your multitasking, hotkeying, apm, macro, micro

really all the best players of sc2 right now are most likely sc1 players...and for good reason
give it one more try because the best things in life dont come free.
nemahsys
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada457 Posts
May 21 2010 04:05 GMT
#65
On May 08 2010 11:57 UnknownSoldier wrote:
What's the best way to determine how many workers you have at a mineral field? I've read up on what's proper saturation and whatnot, but I can't just glance at a mineral field and know how many workers are I've got going.



double click your workers to select them all and then count (8 per row fyi) You will be missing one or 2 that were in the geyser so if you're sitting around 28 (3 rows 'n a bit) you're fine, if not make more.
DJ Wheat, if you read this, plz get Lo3 back on itunes stat!
Darcius
Profile Joined January 2010
Canada16 Posts
May 21 2010 04:29 GMT
#66
You might hear "talent" as an answer to this, but thats absolute shit.
Talent doesn't exist, especially not here.
The most important thing is hard work.
Work hard learning the matchups, work hard learning builds, openings and strats.
Work hard learning techniques, work hard learning timings.

At the end of the day, the person who wins more games on average isn't going to be someone with some bullshit like a "god-given" "talent" "gift".

Its going to be the person who made the sacrifices of time and effort to get as good as possible.
PROJECTILE
Profile Joined April 2010
United States226 Posts
May 21 2010 04:32 GMT
#67
On May 21 2010 10:10 AeroGear wrote:
You cant, I certainly did in WC3/TFT and still do in SC2. My terran play has improved by playing games, ladder will give you tougher opponments the higher you get.

Playing in a bubble would mean facing the same opponment or strategy every time.

I have 15 years of RTS gaming experience to draw from.

I have no idea what the hell you're even trying to say; learn to type. Your original point that watching streams or replays won't help you is still retarded, and nobody cares how many years of RTS games you have under your belt.
0mgVitaminE
Profile Joined February 2009
United States1278 Posts
May 21 2010 04:53 GMT
#68
I think timing is underrated at low levels. Sure macro is also super important, but learning the timings of when to attack/defend/expand can win you a ton of games, especially against abusive builds.
Hi there. I'm in a cave, how bout you?
AmstAff
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Germany949 Posts
May 21 2010 04:57 GMT
#69
no friends
after 2 years i reached it = marine icon
ShaperofDreams
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada2492 Posts
May 21 2010 05:20 GMT
#70
Watching day9 daily IMO.

Today's cast is a great example.
Bitches don't know about my overlord. FUCK OFF ALDARIS I HAVE ENOUGH PYLONS. My Balls are as smooth as Eggs.
onihunter
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
United States515 Posts
May 21 2010 05:26 GMT
#71
On May 08 2010 11:18 Rotodyne wrote:
At low levels, hands down the most important thing is macro. Most players have no idea how to make a large army in a somewhat small time period.


Yeah, macro, easily. You can roll over most people by just building a ton of units and attack-moving them into the opposing army and casting a few spells here and there. Macro really is the key; without macro, any amount of micro won't matter. A solid build order that you can use 100% of the time and adapt based on the opponent's play would also be very useful for improving quickly.
jaedong forever~
Buffy
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Sweden665 Posts
May 21 2010 09:11 GMT
#72
Macro>Micro at low level, once all the "general" strats and this game is out and all people starting to get to know everything about every race build timings and etc, Micro>Macro at least I hope so !
Yes I am
Sieg
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada42 Posts
May 21 2010 11:49 GMT
#73
On May 08 2010 23:29 JohannesH wrote:I'll also link to a good overall RTS guide written by my friend... It's got little parts of specifics of another game, smaller parts of SC reference, but 99% it applies to any RTS. Really basic stuff that a good player understands already but for beginners it should be helpful.
http://www.smuggoat.com/blog/?page_id=148
Good stuff, thanks.
Piy
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Scotland3152 Posts
May 21 2010 11:53 GMT
#74
+ Show Spoiler +
On May 21 2010 11:48 WAAA wrote:
playing playing playing, getting sharper and sharper. Applies to sc2!



This is brilliant and accurate.
My. Copy. Is. Here.
Bubbadub
Profile Joined November 2009
United States156 Posts
May 21 2010 11:56 GMT
#75
multitasking has to be one of the most key aspects. Being able to micro and macro, and keep an eye on what the opponent is doing while you keep mineral count low and make sure you don't suicide units. You must keep an eye on opponent's expansion timing, tech timing, etc so you can counter his build.
Roblin
Profile Joined April 2010
Sweden948 Posts
May 21 2010 12:53 GMT
#76
Im 1400-ish zerg that plays to improve my play, my style of play is macro, macro, macro, Amove, macro, macro, control battle to not get slaughtered, macro, macro, macro.

Use as greedy builds I can get away with.
Never ever ever cheese!
cheese is played to win, standard is played to get good at the game, you can cheese in tournaments if you want, or perhaps if you want to practice your micro.

rule of thumb: use a build that will work no matter what options he has, scout, see my signature, Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst!

have one build for every MU, practice that build, play that build a lot, you will face different opponents, and for every style you play you will find a way to beat that style.

this style will efficiently practice your skill and decisionmaking, you will get better eventually.

practice practice practice, I was born with no left hand, have 60 APM but still manages to actively climb the ladder, if I can get better, you can!
I'm better today than I was yesterday!
s031720
Profile Joined December 2009
Sweden383 Posts
May 21 2010 13:04 GMT
#77
This is how I see it, and it has worked for me.

Basically, Macro, Micro, APM, Information and gamesense. At superhighlvl also metagame. These are the factors that I think is essental for SC. They all interact and you learn them simultaneously, but focusing on one aspect of the game at a time is often a good thing to do. This is what I would to if I started learning the game now.

First off, learning works like a sinus-curve, flat at first then getting steeper and steeper. That means you first have quick progress then it slows down as it gets harder, and also the learning you do in the begining as more relative impact than the more advanced stuff. Best way to learn is to focus on learning the basic lvls of every aspect I mentioned above, then start from the top of the list and try a bit more advanced things.

First learn to macro. No doubt this is the most important aspect of the game. On a basic lvl(the flat part of the sinuscurve) I would just learn to do everything without looking at the keyboard, as I learn that I try to learn a little more advanced stuff like macrotechniques, how to hotkey stuff to make macro as effeciant as possible etc. Then at a higher lvl I would just finetune everything, have good timings and no excess.

Sedondly, APM. Yes, I see this as separate from macro but some people dont. APM is basically your ability to mulittask, but you can have good macro without getting a superhigh APM. Anyways, once you have learnt some basic macro and feel comfortable with that and your learning has stunted somewhat, focus on APM for a while. You know your macro, you know what to do, when to do it, how to do it. Now force yourself to do it quicker; its to easy to get stuck in a tempo thats comfortable, you need to challenge your self to increase APM. Be careful though, if you do this before you learn enough macro, it will only hurt your learning. Macro first. If you get this and macro down, you can win several games by sheer overpowering.

Then I would start practicing more on micro.Basic lvl would be to split your armys and not have them all in one CTRL-group, forinstance having casters on a separate %, or splitting a zerg-army so that you can get a good concave with your swarm; more advance would be to learn how to use those spellcasters efficiently.

The category I labeled information is basically both ingame information and outofgame information; ie scouting to know how to best apply your other skills, and a general knowledge of how to answer to that information, what units are good against what etc.

A gamesense means that you intuitively knows whats going on, and what you need to do, even though you may not have scouted everything. There are some techniques for this but basically experience and playing alot is the best way; and a good way to cut some corners on this and also the above mentioned information aspect; is to watch streams and replays. You get so much knowledge there for free. But you need to play the game and apply those insights for it to settle.

Metagame at higher lvl (not that im there) is pretty much beeing part of the "clique" of best players, you play eachother alot and you always have first hand knowledge of the changes that are going on in the builds and between the MUs. Slight nuances that can win you games.

Well, thats how I would go about if I was starting out fresh for sc2. Other people might have other ideas.
Just another noob
teekesselchen
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Germany886 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-21 13:10:44
May 21 2010 13:06 GMT
#78
Playplayplayplayplayplayplayplayplay... :o

Actually I play few matches but I feel like each of them helps me alot in improving myself mainly by using the same tactic over and over again and adjust to situations that occur. It seems that this really helps to do the same with any tactic I play.

So right now, as a Terran in TvP, I go for a fast factory/Siegetank and an expansion afterwards. Afterwards I go for 1 Starport, 1-2 Factories and many barracks. From there on I try to either push or expand further or make it a harassing heavy gameplay with stimpack drops. So I have this basis that is very adaptable since it already uses a mix of many units, however each game is very similar within only a few variations.
Also, it seems to be a tactic that does not really matters what specific units are beeing made. It feels to be focussed on the overall strategical level much rather.
And imo this is what really counts in the end. Playing a very restricted tactic that predifines every unit to be made because every choice of unit is so important feels like it doesn't really help me out when I switch tactics.
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
Runaground
Profile Joined February 2010
Moldova36 Posts
May 21 2010 13:17 GMT
#79
Motivation, nothing more.
Even if you are a noob, you will be a great player if you won't lose your motivation to train, to improve. Losing motivation is the main reason why people quit cybersport.
Xeln4g4
Profile Joined January 2005
Italy1209 Posts
May 21 2010 13:34 GMT
#80
Hands speed and game understanding (which you achive by playing a huge amount of games which basing on you natural talent can be 1.000 or 10.000 games) ... nothing much more than this. Hands speed is priority anyway in modern RTS competitive play. If you have excellent game understanding but not hand speeds you can't do much nowadays ...
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