EPTPeople don't say "focus on your macro" without a reason.
[D] "Diamond on macro only" tested by redditer - Page 2
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zatic
Zurich15310 Posts
People don't say "focus on your macro" without a reason. | ||
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Tomo009
Australia96 Posts
On January 24 2011 14:46 Linconis wrote: I don't doubt this is accurate, but its almost seems the same as if tiger woods played a round with only his 5 iron and then was like "See, You can get into the PGA just by having a good swing" This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well. Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful. We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further. That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc. | ||
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WakaJawaka
United States14 Posts
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Orome
Switzerland11984 Posts
On January 24 2011 15:21 Tomo009 wrote: This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well. Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful. We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further. That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc. The problem is that for the vast majority of low level players, their macro flaws are infinitely more important than any other problems they might have. No sane high level player is going to look at a silver league player and point out a building placement flaw when he had 4k minerals and 2k gas after 10 minutes. Things like building placement or even timing really just don't matter if you can't macro decently. I've hung around in a few low level channels recently and tried to help people out a bit. It amazes me every time how off they are in their analysis of their own flaws. Almost every single time they'll type something like 'I should have gotten a warp prism and harrassed more'. No, you had 4k gas. Make some freaking units. Low level players seem to treat their games as if they were playing chess, trying to outwit their opponents, where really, until you reach a high level, SC's a very very simple game of just making some goddamn units. edit: Another thing is that things like timing really just can't be taught unless the player has a basic grasp of macro. How am I supposed to tell someone when to put down his forward pylon for a 4 gate when his warpgate upgrade is delayed by a minute because he forgot to chrono boost and his gates aren't even finished when warpgate finishes? Concepts like timing assume reasonably tight build orders from both players to have any meaning. edit2: There ARE some other things that are important. Scouting for instance is important even at a very low level. However I'm confident I can beat any platinum and below player easily with nothing but roaches just by scouting and macroing well. | ||
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Azzur
Australia6252 Posts
On January 24 2011 14:46 Linconis wrote: I don't doubt having extremely good macro would get you up to diamond. However, I look at the game a bit differently. Yes, macro is important to the game, but that doesn't overshadow the other fundamentals. It's like any other complex activity. All the fundamentals matter. I'd rather be medicore and well rounded with the ability to improve all of those skills than just be a macro monster who has to go back and relearn all the other fundamentals. I don't doubt this is accurate, but its almost seems the same as if tiger woods played a round with only his 5 iron and then was like "See, You can get into the PGA just by having a good swing" But to each his own. I just play this game for fun. Well, this is just it. How does someone get better at golf? By having good mechanics (swing and putting well). Anything else is really superflous at their level. I'll argue that macro is the only true fundamental. All others are more easily learnt than it. | ||
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Tomo009
Australia96 Posts
On January 24 2011 15:57 Orome wrote: The problem is that for the vast majority of low level players, their macro flaws are infinitely more important than any other problems they might have. No sane high level player is going to look at a silver league player and point out a building placement flaw when he had 4k minerals and 2k gas after 10 minutes. Things like building placement or even timing really just don't matter if you can't macro decently. I've hung around in a few low level channels recently and tried to help people out a bit. It amazes me every time how off they are in their analysis of their own flaws. Almost every single time they'll type something like 'I should have gotten a warp prism and harrassed more'. No, you had 4k gas. Make some freaking units. Low level players seem to treat their games as if they were playing chess, trying to outwit their opponents, where really, until you reach a high level, SC's a very very simple game of just making some goddamn units. edit: Another thing is that things like timing really just can't be taught unless the player has a basic grasp of macro. How am I supposed to tell someone when to put down his forward pylon for a 4 gate when his warpgate upgrade is delayed by a minute because he forgot to chrono boost and his gates aren't even finished when warpgate finishes? Concepts like timing assume reasonably tight build orders from both players to have any meaning. edit2: There ARE some other things that are important. Scouting for instance is important even at a very low level. However I'm confident I can beat any platinum and below player easily with nothing but roaches just by scouting and macroing well. Most players I play do have reasonably tight build orders, some of course don't and those are often the ones that throw me off and cause me to get crushed by some out their strategy. It's not very often I get out-macroed, but when I do it is usually due to my opponents ability to contain me, though some platinum players do just straight outplay in every way. You are definitely right in most regards, but what you are giving is a really extreme example, floating 4kgas is massive, I really doubt that ever happens. As a zerg I'm constantly annoyed at "we need more vespene gas" while I'm on 3/4 base, later into the game I know my queen injects and spending starts to fade away, that's what I'm working on now. But usually on 2 base or even 3 base I'm not really missing many injects at this point and my resources are quite low, though sometimes I over-gas for a while and have to transfer some drones over to minerals. | ||
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phyren
United States1067 Posts
There were other things, such as my battle micro and attack timing that I could have improved on, but still, macro is something you can pretty much always improve in. Just to elaborate, my avg unspent resources were far lower than my opponent (probably because he spent a long time at max), but macro includes aggressively expanding as well as unit production and worker production. TL;DR macro is a weakness of players all the way up and is probably the single most important skill to work on. | ||
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Orome
Switzerland11984 Posts
On January 24 2011 16:11 Tomo009 wrote: Most players I play do have reasonably tight build orders, some of course don't and those are often the ones that throw me off and cause me to get crushed by some out their strategy. It's not very often I get out-macroed, but when I do it is usually due to my opponents ability to contain me, though some platinum players do just straight outplay in every way. You are definitely right in most regards, but what you are giving is a really extreme example, floating 4kgas is massive, I really doubt that ever happens. As a zerg I'm constantly annoyed at "we need more vespene gas" while I'm on 3/4 base, later into the game I know my queen injects and spending starts to fade away, that's what I'm working on now. But usually on 2 base or even 3 base I'm not really missing many injects at this point and my resources are quite low, though sometimes I over-gas for a while and have to transfer some drones over to minerals. I've watched quite a few gold and below matches recently and 4k gas is pretty normal. I've seen 3k/2k off 1 base from a silver Zerg. He had no idea why he lost. If you're in platinum, I do agree that many more things start to become important. Some platinum players I've seen play had reasonable macro, but needed help with things like unit composition, expansion timings and the like. I was mostly talking about silver and below, although many gold players still have terrible macro. | ||
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terranghost
United States980 Posts
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Orome
Switzerland11984 Posts
On January 24 2011 14:46 Linconis wrote: I don't doubt having extremely good macro would get you up to diamond. However, I look at the game a bit differently. Yes, macro is important to the game, but that doesn't overshadow the other fundamentals. It's like any other complex activity. All the fundamentals matter. I'd rather be medicore and well rounded with the ability to improve all of those skills than just be a macro monster who has to go back and relearn all the other fundamentals. Macro's far and away the most important fundamental to master because all other fundamental skills require macro to be of any worth. You can have great micro, if you've got 20 roaches less than your opponent, you're just not going win the battle. You can have great timing, but if you only have half the units you're supposed to have at that timing, it's not going to matter. This is something most low level players just don't seem to grasp. A lot of them are actually more strategically-minded than some master players, many of whom play extremely standard and uninspired, but none of those things is going to matter if you don't have macro to back it up. You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level. It's the same with macro. You can become a decent player off macro alone even if that'll never be enough to be a great player, but you'll remain forever terrible if your macro's terrible, no matter how good your other SC qualities are. | ||
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Turo
Canada333 Posts
got a new account for my off race, and was playing agains silver/bronze at first. it is very obvious you're playing a weaker player when they just don't have as much stuff as you. starcraft is a game about making units and multitasking. i would say most gold and below players have no idea what that actually means. i am speaking from experience here. i was in gold to start, until i had my epiphany: make as many units as you can, and do a lot of things at once. with these two skills you will go high on the ladder. really, things like "strategy" and such are more for BoX series. a 4 gate won't work if they know it's coming, cloaked banshee's every game will get countered etc. people on the ladder have no idea what you're going to do. | ||
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Irre
United States646 Posts
P.S. Also I dont think at high platinum level racing to 200 is viable often. (Ie. 200/200 bio ball ( medivacs assumably) vs a charge lot/stalker/collosi army and im pretty sure even with a 30ish supply lead you woudl not be able to kill your opponent). | ||
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legatus legionis
Netherlands559 Posts
 Or I see him spend 30+ seconds guiding a medivac around the map and does 0 macro. I ask him do you really think that drop will win you the game? Anyway what I think is part of the reason people in the lower league can have a hard time advancing is because they are cluttered with all these different things they could do and don't know how to incorperate everything perfectly. Which is exactly my point, you shouldn't even try to, you just gotta build a solid foundation so later on you will actually have the ability to try and incorporate all the things. | ||
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snazbaz
40 Posts
On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: . Macro is obviously the most important thing there is...however as one of those struggling very high gold players I find that the biggest thing that makes me hate the people that say "only macro to diamond" is, you really have to have good knowledge and unit comps to continue to macro On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: I can handle macroing well on a fast expansion now for example...but taking bases implies you can handle attacks, timing pushes and the like. On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: I can do certain builds with very good macro, some strategies way better than others This is exactly the attitude that the OP link is talking about when demonstrating this concept. You've said that "you can do certain builds with very good macro". If this was true even if other aspects of your play were bad you'd not be in gold, as demonstrated by the replays in the OP link. If you look at the replays you will realise that the reason it works is because he always has a lot more stuff than his opponent at all stages of the game. It doesn't matter if he's attacked, cheesed, dropped, etc, the point is he always had significantly more stuff just a-moving into them. Timings and unit composition did not matter because the gap in army sizes and economy was always so large. | ||
Poopi
France12757 Posts
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michaelhasanalias
Korea (South)1231 Posts
Too many people just don't believe you. It's not a problem of reddit, but rather speaks more of the large number of casuals that play that game. The typical redditor is a casual silver/gold player who watches GSL. This in turn seems to qualify them for stuff like "I should be in master league but I inexplicably lose with the best economy." /r/starcraftfeedback however, I've found to be a pretty decent subreddit. | ||
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TehForce
1072 Posts
I realised you really only have to teach one basic build per matchup and the importance of macro and really get them to understand (!!) that macro will win them the game and they easily get into diamond. That understanding is really important. I can talk before the match as long as i want that they have to constantly build workers and especially build drones. In the match they will ignore it again and fall into bad habits. You have to force them to build workers, production facilities and (for zerg) more drones than they are comfortable with. So they get to understand how powerful their mid and endgame can become. So for every platin and below who is complaining that macro alone doesn't get you into diamond... Try it again. And check if you are really macroing... (Of course i am implying some normale intelligence in gameplay, so i expect them to know that blue flame hellions are not the right way to fight mass marauder) | ||
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Deleted User 124618
1142 Posts
Macro is what gives you the ability to execute strategies. If you have 75% the income of enemy, whatever you do is going to be only 75% effective versus him. The longer the game lasts the further behind you fall and no matter how good strategic mind you have, you will lose to a player that has only 1/3 of your APM. | ||
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Sockpuppet
119 Posts
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Noxie
United States2227 Posts
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