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On October 07 2011 22:18 Freud wrote:
Given that all players in Silver League macro just as bad/good. Its quite obvious that being good at the strategy part will de facto make you better than a player who is not good at the strategy part.
If you are never interested in moving past Silver League, then you can approach the game with this attitude.
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On October 07 2011 22:23 SnuggleZhenya wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 22:18 Freud wrote:
Given that all players in Silver League macro just as bad/good. Its quite obvious that being good at the strategy part will de facto make you better than a player who is not good at the strategy part.
If you are never interested in moving past Silver League, then you can approach the game with this attitude.
Look, this sort of stuff is just not helpful. So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything. So you tell him, "Look man, if your scv sees gas first in tvt you should do a safe build like 1-1-1 yourself" and "6:20 is a good time to scan your opponents base, if you see a starport with techlab reseaching cloak, you can get a raven first out of your port and be safe." This is the stuff people need to hear, I have a younger brother who is not good at this game and yes; they need to be reminded to scout, told what to scout, what it means, and what a response is. (this is often complicated by their oponents in lower leagues doing things that make no sense lol, but there is not so much you can do about that. Teach them how to play against good people, not bad people)
Telling them, "just macro better" is the most worthless thing. They know they macro bad, but unless you look at a replay and tell them specicific points macro advice will not be useful. ie. "you missed your third depot and it delayed your raven by 20 secs." "You could have had 4 more scv at the 6 min mark if you produce constantly" "You got your gas to late (or early) for what you were trying to do"
One line "macro better and it will solve your problems" should be at least warning worthy imo. (of course.... there are those bronze league players who make such retarded posts that there literally is no other answer  )
But really, you have to play games to improve your macro. You will never be able to do that if you get repeatedly build order stomped game after game and most importantly it adds nothing to the forum and helps no one.
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So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything.
Yeah this is true, but can't you just learn to execute a really safe build and then focus on improving whatever thing that you want to improve at? I get what you mean, though. Macro just by itself won't win games, but a safe build with good macro should get people up into higher leagues.
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On October 07 2011 22:43 LaduxB wrote:Show nested quote +So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything. Yeah this is true, but can't you just learn to execute a really safe build and then focus on improving whatever thing that you want to improve at? I get what you mean, though. Macro just by itself won't win games, but a safe build with good macro should get people up into higher leagues.
Yeah, but executing any safe build still require adjusting to your opponent. ie. 1-1-1 in TvT or 2gateRobo in PvT, there are so many decisions that a decent player makes based upon the specific game.
I've emphasized this ridiculously, but I never said straight up improving your macro is not the most important thing to advance your play. It obviously is, nobody should really argue that. It is just the least helpful thing to tell someone.
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The "macro better" answer is thrown around a lot... I think there are some situations where this is definitely 100% the best advice... Say they lose a huge colossus stalker ball game because they took expansions 5 min later than opponent every time, or floated way more minerals. Sure neither player was perfect but what matters is that they lost because their opponent "simply had more." macro better is good advice here.
What if it's a game where they lose to the aforementioned banshee? "scout better" is the better advice.
How about where their macro was similar to opponent and nobody got owned by a timing, but they mismicroed and lost 5 infestors infront of their army? Macro better doesn't help that at all.
Yeah you can win if you just "macro better and have more" but the same can be said for micro, or having better "strategy" in timings, scouting and response.
Yeah a pro can win just massing queens but that same guy can also just drone rush and win with micro just the same...
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It's so true though. I recall jumping up 3 leagues by macro alone.
Even now my unit control is still terrible; I lose every single battle despite often having double the food. And my overall strategy has as many holes as swiss cheese.
But I still win half my games because it doesn't matter how many units I lose when I can re-max my army before my opponent gets close to my 4 bases.
Macro isn't the be all and end all of sc2 but when you have low apm it is the only way to ascend to the higher leagues.
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Having read every post in this blasted thread <3 I think I've figured out the underlying issue here, apart from everybody thats partaken (myself included) having an Oedipal complex.
BUT REALLY
I think the issue is lack of discipline. Low level players play for funsies, not to actually play the game. The players that stick with it and improve over time or in spurts, however it works for those individuals, do have that discipline. Koreans have better discipline in training, which is why they are on top. Foreigners that undergo that kind of intensive training get better. They just do. When I did martial arts, my instructor had me do the same movement/pattern over and over and over. It was boring as hell, but I got really good at it. It built discipline. People in general, however, don't seem to share the discipline to be able to get good at stuff that isn't inherently fun. I have a friend thats this way, and is now realizing that that isn't viable, like at all. Needless to say when he applies that to SC2, he gets better. Whenever you're in doubt about whether or not you can do something, just know that if you have the discipline to prepare for it or just to do it, then you can likely do it or do it better.
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It's definitely not the only thing for sure.
There's just a huge amount much stuff to learn for a new RTS player, even stuff that seems ridiculously basic to experienced players. I know when I started I didn't know a thing at all - didn't even know what half the protoss units were, didn't know anything about macro or micro, had no idea about cloakied banshees or expanding or anything. From no RTS background I can say that there is so, so much stuff to learn.
I guess telling a bronze player to always make workers and to learn a really standard build is at least a decent place to start. The first Day9 newbie tuesday must seem really basic to most people here but it was a revelation to me. But yeah, saying 'macro better' with no further explanation is really a terrible reply to a low level player asking for help. Not really sure how good players should go about helping out newer players, though.
For sure I think that being focused on improvement, disciplined and not getting upset about losses is the attitude to take towards it.
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On October 07 2011 22:46 Atreides wrote:
I've emphasized this ridiculously, but I never said straight up improving your macro is not the most important thing to advance your play. It obviously is, nobody should really argue that. It is just the least helpful thing to tell someone.
I think this is a good point. "Macro better" is both the most important thing you can do to improve and the least helpful thing you can hear.
Also I think that the attitude of "Strategy doesn't matter until masters, just macro better", while not necessarily an invalid point, really sucks the fun out of the game. Some people don't have dreams of being a GM, they just want to know how to handle a specific situation they've encountered, and to tell them "just macro better" is pretty condescending IMO.
For me, the most exciting game play is when you pull off a great strategy or narrowly survive a push by thinking on your feet or get a great drop off. Turtling for 15 minutes and attack-moving into your opponents base with a 20+ supply lead isn't as fun IMO.
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TBH, I have only been playing SC2 for about 6 months now.
For a month now I have still been trying to work on my 2 rax pressure into FE MMM against Protoss. I must admit, trying to keep up the macro in this build is REALLY hard!
What I mean by this, is having the same amout of units by the time I pressure at a given time as say QXC does.... this is not an easy feat considering you don't want to delay the FE and you always have to remember to get concussive shells and stim. Also just other small things like swapping the reactor on the factory to the starport.
It seems easy when you think "macro." Simply put IMO, it's fucking hard considering;
1. I don't want to lose all my units when I just want to "pressure"
2. I'm trying to expand, build a factory... addons + starport when pressuring.
Not to mention, I have no idea before the match what is going to come my way and how I'm meant to adapt to what my opponent is going to throw at me. PLus at the very start I'm trying to kill that damn probe thats trying to kill my rax building scv.
I always compare what I do in this build as to how well pros do it when they do the build. Guess what..... I still can't execute it as well as they do in the "Macro department." Not to mention I haven't even gotten to the part where I myself have enough time to "micro" effectively.
I'm a lower league player, and for the most part... in the past few days, since I've started comparing my BO's to the pros BO's (like matching up in game time as to what I have in unit count as to what they have in unit count), I've just started realising really just how BAD my macro is.
I also fully understand how a BO is useless if you can't macro it effectively for starters..... let alone execute it well with micro....
Guess what, all this.... and I'm still yet to get to the part where I need to react apprpriately as to what I scout in their base.
Although I try hard, I still can't get at least 60 scv's before 15 minutes due to all the multi-tasking I have to do.
I think the biggest problem with players around my level is that they try to execute too many builds and/or cheeses and when they lose they'll post on TL asking what they did wrong. IMO, it's just the fact they haven't practiced the build enough for it to become second nature maximising the greatest amount of units at a specified time whilst trying to also get xyz.... Hence, what I'm saying.... BAD MACRO!
I always laugh when someones says they do such xyz build and I spectate it, and really it looks like dogshit because they macroed the build like crap. They might have a 5 win streak off it, but as soon as they lose, they think..."hmmmm I need to know another build." They don't realise they still could have won that lose if their macro was simply better.
In my situation, I will know my macro is good with a certain build when I can get the same amount of army, workers and buildings being produced at the same game time as a pro. If I'm still losing at that point, I will then look at how I can improve my micro for that build, how I could react more better to what I scout ect.
Sorry if much of this dosen't make sense... but I'm well into my beers atm!  peace xoxoxoxo
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Well, my reasoning goes like this:
If you were posting on some other forum, then I would treat you as I do my newbie friends when playing 2v2 with them: give some quick band-aid advice such as "siege your tanks on the high ground", or "if you see him on one base get observers". However you are posting on TL, which makes me feel that you aim to be a gosu of gosus and so I feel the compelling urge to tell you to
MACRO HARDER.
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On October 07 2011 22:38 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 22:23 SnuggleZhenya wrote:On October 07 2011 22:18 Freud wrote:
Given that all players in Silver League macro just as bad/good. Its quite obvious that being good at the strategy part will de facto make you better than a player who is not good at the strategy part.
If you are never interested in moving past Silver League, then you can approach the game with this attitude. Look, this sort of stuff is just not helpful. So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything. So you tell him, "Look man, if your scv sees gas first in tvt you should do a safe build like 1-1-1 yourself" and "6:20 is a good time to scan your opponents base, if you see a starport with techlab reseaching cloak, you can get a raven first out of your port and be safe." This is the stuff people need to hear, I have a younger brother who is not good at this game and yes; they need to be reminded to scout, told what to scout, what it means, and what a response is. (this is often complicated by their oponents in lower leagues doing things that make no sense lol, but there is not so much you can do about that. Teach them how to play against good people, not bad people) Telling them, "just macro better" is the most worthless thing. They know they macro bad, but unless you look at a replay and tell them specicific points macro advice will not be useful. ie. "you missed your third depot and it delayed your raven by 20 secs." "You could have had 4 more scv at the 6 min mark if you produce constantly" "You got your gas to late (or early) for what you were trying to do" One line "macro better and it will solve your problems" should be at least warning worthy imo. (of course.... there are those bronze league players who make such retarded posts that there literally is no other answer ) But really, you have to play games to improve your macro. You will never be able to do that if you get repeatedly build order stomped game after game and most importantly it adds nothing to the forum and helps no one.
The problem is that if you spend a bunch of time learning "silver league" strategies, then you are wasting your time because the timings are going to be nothing close to what you'll need to learn anyway. If you are dying to cloaked Banshees all the time, you don't need to come on to Team liquid, you just need to build an engineering bay, thats not a "strategy" thats just, build an engineering bay in TvT until you can figure out the timings better. To me "strategy" means, should what unit composition should I be working towards, when should I take my second and third bases, which bases on the map should I take for the style I'm playing, etc. Those are things that are way less important than just building a lot of stuff, and if you are losing to the occasional simple thing like cloaked banshees, that isn't a "strategy" problem, you just aren't paying attention.
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I think that information management (scouting, denying scouting, reacting) and general mechanics are far and away the most important skills to have, assuming of course a working knowledge of the game. I guess the priorities might shift upward with league as builds become more refined and 'standard.'
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Strategy, which you complain is why you lose, is how you beat people who have similar macro to you, macro will always crush any strategy executed by a player with worse macro.
Macro > Micro
please note that the macro is inductive to the point in the game, before 8 mins, almost all players have near perfect macro, so strategy and scouting are your key to winning this part of the game. this is the point in the game where silver players can play at a diamond level, but when the macro gap widens, the player with better macro will win.
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Master league player here.
There are games that you lose actually because of strategy in the lower level, it's true - but the portion of those games are so tiny compared to the number of those games you lose simply because of getting outmacroed. You'll eventually need the strategy and intelligence, but that could wait a little bit. I believe that's why you're given 'macro better' type of advices every time.
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On October 08 2011 00:57 KimJongChill wrote:
I think that information management (scouting, denying scouting, reacting) and general mechanics are far and away the most important skills to have, assuming of course a working knowledge of the game. I guess the priorities might shift upward with league as builds become more refined and 'standard.'
personally i think that if your macro is bad you can scout all you want, you will only forsee your own demise.
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On October 08 2011 00:55 SnuggleZhenya wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 22:38 Atreides wrote:On October 07 2011 22:23 SnuggleZhenya wrote:On October 07 2011 22:18 Freud wrote:
Given that all players in Silver League macro just as bad/good. Its quite obvious that being good at the strategy part will de facto make you better than a player who is not good at the strategy part.
If you are never interested in moving past Silver League, then you can approach the game with this attitude. Look, this sort of stuff is just not helpful. So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything. So you tell him, "Look man, if your scv sees gas first in tvt you should do a safe build like 1-1-1 yourself" and "6:20 is a good time to scan your opponents base, if you see a starport with techlab reseaching cloak, you can get a raven first out of your port and be safe." This is the stuff people need to hear, I have a younger brother who is not good at this game and yes; they need to be reminded to scout, told what to scout, what it means, and what a response is. (this is often complicated by their oponents in lower leagues doing things that make no sense lol, but there is not so much you can do about that. Teach them how to play against good people, not bad people) Telling them, "just macro better" is the most worthless thing. They know they macro bad, but unless you look at a replay and tell them specicific points macro advice will not be useful. ie. "you missed your third depot and it delayed your raven by 20 secs." "You could have had 4 more scv at the 6 min mark if you produce constantly" "You got your gas to late (or early) for what you were trying to do" One line "macro better and it will solve your problems" should be at least warning worthy imo. (of course.... there are those bronze league players who make such retarded posts that there literally is no other answer ) But really, you have to play games to improve your macro. You will never be able to do that if you get repeatedly build order stomped game after game and most importantly it adds nothing to the forum and helps no one. The problem is that if you spend a bunch of time learning "silver league" strategies, then you are wasting your time because the timings are going to be nothing close to what you'll need to learn anyway. If you are dying to cloaked Banshees all the time, you don't need to come on to Team liquid, you just need to build an engineering bay, thats not a "strategy" thats just, build an engineering bay in TvT until you can figure out the timings better. To me "strategy" means, should what unit composition should I be working towards, when should I take my second and third bases, which bases on the map should I take for the style I'm playing, etc. Those are things that are way less important than just building a lot of stuff, and if you are losing to the occasional simple thing like cloaked banshees, that isn't a "strategy" problem, you just aren't paying attention.
Well, yeah you can classify that as whatever. But it certainly isn't a macro problem. And I definitely think its better for a silver league player to try and do a "real" build rather than just "build an engineering bay blindly". That seems like the stupidest most counterproductive thing, how the hell are they going to "figure out timings better" with that? That is PRECISELY the point.... You don't figure out timings better by focusing on continuous worker production either.
You start out your post by saying "don't learn silver league strategies" then you bash my post that recommended teaching legitimate strategies. Then you reccomend a silver league strategy. Yeah....
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On October 08 2011 01:07 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2011 00:55 SnuggleZhenya wrote:On October 07 2011 22:38 Atreides wrote:On October 07 2011 22:23 SnuggleZhenya wrote:On October 07 2011 22:18 Freud wrote:
Given that all players in Silver League macro just as bad/good. Its quite obvious that being good at the strategy part will de facto make you better than a player who is not good at the strategy part.
If you are never interested in moving past Silver League, then you can approach the game with this attitude. Look, this sort of stuff is just not helpful. So a player dies a lot to cloak banshee openings in TvT. It doesn't matter that his opponent macro terrible, if he dies because a cloak banshee shows up when he has no scan and kills everything. So you tell him, "Look man, if your scv sees gas first in tvt you should do a safe build like 1-1-1 yourself" and "6:20 is a good time to scan your opponents base, if you see a starport with techlab reseaching cloak, you can get a raven first out of your port and be safe." This is the stuff people need to hear, I have a younger brother who is not good at this game and yes; they need to be reminded to scout, told what to scout, what it means, and what a response is. (this is often complicated by their oponents in lower leagues doing things that make no sense lol, but there is not so much you can do about that. Teach them how to play against good people, not bad people) Telling them, "just macro better" is the most worthless thing. They know they macro bad, but unless you look at a replay and tell them specicific points macro advice will not be useful. ie. "you missed your third depot and it delayed your raven by 20 secs." "You could have had 4 more scv at the 6 min mark if you produce constantly" "You got your gas to late (or early) for what you were trying to do" One line "macro better and it will solve your problems" should be at least warning worthy imo. (of course.... there are those bronze league players who make such retarded posts that there literally is no other answer ) But really, you have to play games to improve your macro. You will never be able to do that if you get repeatedly build order stomped game after game and most importantly it adds nothing to the forum and helps no one. The problem is that if you spend a bunch of time learning "silver league" strategies, then you are wasting your time because the timings are going to be nothing close to what you'll need to learn anyway. If you are dying to cloaked Banshees all the time, you don't need to come on to Team liquid, you just need to build an engineering bay, thats not a "strategy" thats just, build an engineering bay in TvT until you can figure out the timings better. To me "strategy" means, should what unit composition should I be working towards, when should I take my second and third bases, which bases on the map should I take for the style I'm playing, etc. Those are things that are way less important than just building a lot of stuff, and if you are losing to the occasional simple thing like cloaked banshees, that isn't a "strategy" problem, you just aren't paying attention. Well, yeah you can classify that as whatever. But it certainly isn't a macro problem. And I definitely think its better for a silver league player to try and do a "real" build rather than just "build an engineering bay blindly". That seems like the stupidest most counterproductive thing, how the hell are they going to "figure out timings better" with that? That is PRECISELY the point.... You don't figure out timings better by focusing on continuous worker production either. You start out your post by saying "don't learn silver league strategies" then you bash my post that recommended teaching legitimate strategies. Then you reccomend a silver league strategy. Yeah....
Banshee's are a terrible example really. To properly hold off Banshee's requires good game sense, macro, and micro. There is no real answer to people who don't have the skill required other than to build static defense/detection until their mechanics are better.
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The problem here is that all the low level players who think that macro won't save them because "oh, I'll have 4 extra scvs, so what?" don't realize that the difference is more like having 100 supply at 10mins as opposed to 40 supply.
Yes, knowing how to recognize build is important, as is doing a build that is not completely terrible, but the bottom line is that most low level players I watch have maybe 25% of what they COULD have, if they were only executing/macroing correctly.
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On October 08 2011 01:07 Atreides wrote:
You start out your post by saying "don't learn silver league strategies" then you bash my post that recommended teaching legitimate strategies. Then you reccomend a silver league strategy. Yeah....
My point is that the solution to that isn't a "strategy" solution at all. Strategy is way too big a term for figuring out how not to lose to something really specific. The answer isn't that you need to overhaul your strategy to stop losing to certain pushes or unit compositions. If you are going 3 barracks, going 3 barracks and adding an engineer bay isn't a strategy change. If you suddenly have enough cloaked banshees in your base to outright lose the game, this isn't a strategy problem, this is a you weren't paying attention problem.
To take it out of the banshees context though, often times someone will lose at 20 minutes to a huge push of stuff, and their stuff will lose to it, and you know what, MOST of those losses are macro better type losses. Yeah, you could scout and switch your tech and try to hard counter their units or something, but that isn't solving the REAL problem, which is that you got supply blocked 10 times, had idle command centers instead of building scvs, and so forth.
So yes, IN THAT PARTICULAR GAME you might have been able to win it by doing something else like tech switching, but that isn't really the point if you want to improve your chances of winning FUTURE games. And that is what people are really asking about when it comes down to it.
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EPT
