EPT[D] Best way to analyze replays
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Boomstik101
United States3 Posts
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allowicious
United States972 Posts
Replays are probably the most helpful tool that you have access to. What I do when I watch replays (of other people), I always watch it from the winner's point of view. That way, you can see exactly what he sees, and how he reacts to certain situations, allowing him to win. One of the most important things when you first start watching and analyzing replays is to watch it on the normal game speed (fastest). Lots of people just grab a replay and speed through it on x3 speed or something, which I don't recommend. Watching it on the normal game speed allows you to get a feel for the actual game timings, and it also allows you to catch things that you would normally miss if you sped through it. Take time to question everything. Why does he put this building here, and how did it affect the rest of the game? Why did he attack now, instead of 5 minutes earlier? Why is he making a bunch of marines now, instead of marauders? Why did he send his starting probe in this specific scouting pattern? Why did he upgrade this CC to a planetary fortress instead of an OC? Why did he transition from mutas to hydras at this specific moment? Why did he place his overlord here? Everything has a reason. Just figure out why. In terms of watching your own replays, you can do it in several ways. Personally, I always watch the replay with only my opponent's view selected, win or lose. If I win, I can see how my attacks/harass affected him. If it was really effective, then I'll keep doing it. It allows me to get a better grasp of what works versus opponents, and what doesn't. If I lose, I also watch from my opponent's view. That way I can see exactly what he saw, which prompted him to attack my natural, or whatever. Good luck  . I personally try to watch at least a few replays each day from sc2rep.com. | ||
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Bair
United States698 Posts
On September 01 2010 09:35 allowicious wrote: To quote myself from another thread... Good luck . I personally try to watch at least a few replays each day from sc2rep.com. While for the most part this is good advice, I think one thing that should be cleared up is that the only time you should really analyze the other players is A.) When that player is generally accepted as a pro player. or B.) When you lost a game not due to a fundamental error on your part, but because your opponent out played you. Aside from that, just look at your own play. It is easy to think "oh he was getting mass marines I should have gone baneling" when your watch a replay, but it is much more effective when you think "oh, I didn't transition to baneling because I didn't scout his mass marines!" | ||
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allowicious
United States972 Posts
On September 01 2010 09:40 Bair wrote: While for the most part this is good advice, I think one thing that should be cleared up is that the only time you should really analyze the other players is A.) When that player is generally accepted as a pro player. or B.) When you lost a game not due to a fundamental error on your part, but because your opponent out played you. Aside from that, just look at your own play. It is easy to think "oh he was getting mass marines I should have gone baneling" when your watch a replay, but it is much more effective when you think "oh, I didn't transition to baneling because I didn't scout his mass marines!" Yea, the first portion was intended for watching pro replays. Sorry if it was unclear ^^ | ||
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SeeDLiNg
United States690 Posts
I always just watched to help cut out extra garbage from build orders. You guys have opened my eyes on the replay subject. | ||
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Heen
Korea (South)2178 Posts
For example, someone 7 rax cheesed me TvP on LT and I lost close to third of my probes and went I finally pushed out to mid to take out the proxy rax, he gg'd. I expected there to be 2 more raxes in his base for transition into standard play but he has way too poor. When I watch pro replays, being a P player, I watch the P player's view at 1x speed (often with player camera view to get a feel of where he spends his APM mostly) and look at what information he could have possibly gathered with his current vision and when he decides to move out. I also try to learn some neat sim city for FE maps especially. | ||
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Soulforged
Latvia936 Posts
Then I find a way to guarantee early enough scouting to add the case into my range of decision makings. Then I look at the enemy build, think if he could make it better and what would be the scariest variation of his build that could come for me. I also look at what kind of sacrifices/risks his build had and if it's possible to abuse/harrass those. Then, I adapt for the new information, too. If I got beaten with something I saw before, usually that means I already know the solution, but I could not execute it well or scout properly. So I just look out for my mistakes, while concidering what threw me off. Mistakes could be misscouting, misinterpreting information, not having map control or a pylon/obs network late game, missing a macro round, late/lack of upgrades, missing timings, getting behind against a greedy build while missing the point where I could put pressure on, micro/tactics errors, etc. Before I had a good variaty of adaptations, I payed more attention to more obvious things like income differential to see if I got behind in macro, or if I was more greedy than neccessary for the win. When I watch pro replays, I first look at the timings, and then try to understand their possible decision making against variety of possibilities opponent could throw at them. It's easy to take an idea out of a pro replay, but copying a style from one replay would take a ton of independent work/testing and most probably result in something different, anyway. | ||
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Emperor_Earth
United States824 Posts
You can't fix what's broke if you don't know it's broke. Post your Replay in this thread and I'll cast it personally at a time that is mutually agreeable. It may help in your specific circumstance to have more than one replay to review so you can find recurring themes to focus on, rather than nitpick. | ||
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amorpheus
Bulgaria2144 Posts
Not saying that you shouldn't watch them of course. | ||
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amorpheus
Bulgaria2144 Posts
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tropical
Germany61 Posts
I understand the basic Idea behind figuring out why someone makes a decision. But what I find pretty difficult as a 'noob' is the obvious randomness of decision making in the lower skill levels. Analyzing a 'pro' or high-skilled replay is way easier just because you can assume that those players mostly know what they are doing. Many players in bronze-gold/platinum league(including me) make more or less random decisions on some things. I know there is always a reason for it like having fear of something, as day[9] told us, but it is sometimes pretty difficult to figure that out. This is why I really struggle with thinking about decision making... often I don't really make a decision but just do anything because I am so scared of losing because of wasting time on thinking about what to do. Starcraft is such a fast game, if you try to improve you often really have to fight with simple things like don't messing up your build order because you just discovered a probe in you base and you begin to panic and look in every corner for proxy gate/pylon/cannon rush. I wonder if there is any way to 'see thru' this kind of randomness and figure out a gameplan anyone has. Like some kind of checklist for noobs or the real basics of match analyzing? I am really thankful for people offering me to analyze my games, but I want the ability to do it on my own and this is actually the hardest part for me while trying to improve in SC2. | ||
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