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drop271
New Zealand286 Posts
Its not unreasonable at all for posters to respond with 'macro better' when in most cases the OP hasn't bothered to search for simple, easy to practice steps to improve. edit: and maybe said players just want to have fun and don't want to practice. Thats fair enough, and no one should dare tell them thats wrong. But isn't it a bit rich to come on a forum and ask for help to improve when you don't actually want to improve? Do you want people to just teach you to improve your 6 pool? | ||
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Atreides
United States2393 Posts
On October 08 2011 01:26 SnuggleZhenya wrote: 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. Look, anybody who 20 mins into the game loses an a-move battle because they have 30 less supply and then asks about it on the forums deserves to be told "macro better". You are right, there is no other legitimate response. At the same time, its not actually going to help them because anyone actually willing to try and macro better would allready be aware of it. However they are a tool and thus deserve it. In general, those sorts of threads are just deleted. (rightfully). The only time they aren't deleted is when there is a replay, at which point you can give them something useful. ie "you should focus on not getting supply blocked, you missed depots here here and here". or w/e. Specific advice. Which is back to my ENTIRE POINT of there pretty much is never a point to just telling someone "macro better". I literally said it in every post I made in this thread I think, its allways true obviously, its just not helpful. As to your definition of what counts as strategy, I don't really care. Its not the point. Call it what you want, its not macro. Helpful advice as to timings/scouting\whatever is the most that someone who wants to improve can really get out of a forum. | ||
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yarkO
Canada810 Posts
If you want to play hockey in the NHL, it's assumed you will be a good skater. In fact ice hockey, by definition, requires you to be able to do it! All pro hockey players are excellent skaters; some are better, but they are all good. In our example here, skating will represent 'macro'. Now, if you wanted to be in the NHL, and all you ever practiced was your wrist shot in your driveway, you would find yourself in a hard spot. Sure, you can hit the top corner every single time, but if you can't do it while skating, then the NHL is not where you will end up. The wrist shot, in this scenario, describes 'strategy'. If you can't skate (macro), then it doesn't matter how accurate your wrist shot (strategy) is. | ||
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Monkeyballs25
531 Posts
On October 08 2011 00:48 targ wrote: 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. Is TL really seen as a particularly elite place? I just use it for replay advice because its not full of trolls like the SC2 official forums. | ||
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Asday
United Kingdom388 Posts
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL329BDD535CB76B3A | ||
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EnderSword
Canada669 Posts
I used to try and respond to people's replays with those lists people do, like: 4:20 - You stopped making probes here 5:45 - your warp gate finished but you're supply blocked 6:36 - You forgot to put 3 guys on your 2nd gas etc... Now I do little videos, trying to point out to people exactly where and when these mistakes are happening, try to find out Why they're happening, and suggest fixes for it. I do little stuff like this for people: In this one, I focus a lot on no only the fact that his macro slips, but I show when it happens and why its happening (In this case, being distracted by fights and his own army movements) I also then discuss things like transitioning In this one: I'm pointing out how his economy got way beyond his ability to produce units due to not building enough facilities and forgetting production cycles etc... but also include things on how and when to attack, and the idea of being aware how far along in a game you are. In almost every video or analysis I've done for anyone, 'Macro Better' is like 95% of the time the thing that won or lost then that game. However I think that's not very useful unless you're showing people how, when and why its slipping. I know for myself, someone going over a replay and saying I just never made enough gateways really improved my game. If i had like 6-8 Gates, and was floating money, I'd just try to add more tech to spend it. Finally someone said 'Just add like 8 more Gates' so I started doing that and winning games on sheer reinforcement power with weaker units. In each league I've been in, and I started in Bronze, there was a little 'revelation' type thing that I saw, that as soon as I realized it, I'd just go on a win streak and get promoted. And as a Random player, I found the realizations were always something macro oriented that applied to all 3 races. So it really is 'Macro Better' but just saying that is like teaching someone to juggle by saying 'Throw the balls, then catch them' you have to point out how to do it and where they're going wrong. Ok, the first sentence of the second paragraph of the OP was all I read, and that's all I need to. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL329BDD535CB76B3A While I appreciate the sentiment behind this mass queen thing, Did he ever actually get anywhere with it? Last I heard from it he never actually did get out of Bronze doing this. I think Mass Marine or Mass Stalker might be viable, in fact I know they are, but I think Mass Queen was just too silly to actually function. | ||
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ShadowWolf
United States197 Posts
On October 08 2011 01:37 Atreides wrote: Look, anybody who 20 mins into the game loses an a-move battle because they have 30 less supply and then asks about it on the forums deserves to be told "macro better". You are right, there is no other legitimate response. At the same time, its not actually going to help them because anyone actually willing to try and macro better would allready be aware of it. However they are a tool and thus deserve it. In general, those sorts of threads are just deleted. (rightfully). The only time they aren't deleted is when there is a replay, at which point you can give them something useful. ie "you should focus on not getting supply blocked, you missed depots here here and here". or w/e. Specific advice. Which is back to my ENTIRE POINT of there pretty much is never a point to just telling someone "macro better". I literally said it in every post I made in this thread I think, its allways true obviously, its just not helpful. As to your definition of what counts as strategy, I don't really care. Its not the point. Call it what you want, its not macro. Helpful advice as to timings/scouting\whatever is the most that someone who wants to improve can really get out of a forum. There are many examples of threads where people are asking about dealing with a specific composition when the core issue they run in to is their macro. Now, if I'm asking how to not die from a cannon rush or not die to 2 port banshee rushes and someone responds with "just macro better" then I think that's a legit complaint. However, I haven't seen that with great frequency unless the opposing players' build was legitimately bad ( e.g. 3 port banshee on 1 base ). It's an example of trying to use a specific case of Y to disprove that the general case X is valid ( it doesn't ). For examples of what I think are good "just macro better" responses I give you: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272615 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272668 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272673 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272310 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272594 ( opposite problem. overthought it - tried to engage well but I'm pretty sure he could've a-moved to win ) And there are many more :-) On the other side, I think there's a lot of danger in the stuff you're saying. If I'm playing in whatever low league and someone says "Scan at 6:20 for banshees" then what does that do for me? There's no value in that statement because there's no guarantee that the starport is to a point where you can know it's banshees or not. If the starport is not quite finished, you scan, and you're like "OH, this is banshee!" and it's a reactor hellion drop then that player could be hosed. The problem is that specific timings don't work at lower levels. I've accidentally done this with friends of mine that play zerg at lower levels - they ask me questions, I give them sensible ( to me ) answers, and they don't win a single game because of it. There's a fundamental issue with giving advice in that advice is both contextual and carries implicit instructions that aren't always intuitive. I don't really give a lot of advice on the strategy forums because it takes a ton of time to really give a good answer to someone without being confusing. To take an example in BW, I used to get annihilated by lurkers in PvZ. I had asked someone once who was pretty good, C-/C on iccup, and they said "Get an observer out and move with that". I still lost because that's an over-simplification of the solution. What you really want is to get a composition of units sufficient to mow down lurkers without taking excessive losses and get an observer out on 2 base to secure your 3rd or perform a timing attack to hopefully break the Zerg. Of course, I still constantly died to lurker contain after lurker contain in the meantime because I just never put the pieces together. At some point, I watched some cast someone did where they talked about delaying the observer until you had the unit count to pressure Z ( I think they were promoting zealot charge or something ) and suddenly I understood what he meant! The core issue is that giving advice is hard and receiving advice isn't very easy either. I think both sides should be understanding of the inherent communication problems ( i.e. an answer that's just "BUILD MOAR STUFF" is just as useless as someone getting pissed because they're told their macro is bad ). To tie in to the OP, I think he makes a legitimate point. People should avoid posting generic "You had too little stuff" type of responses because those are completely impossible and too obtuse for a player at that level to understand. On the flip side, if you get a response like that, the poster should request specific help in a courteous and reasonable way. This way someone else not that poster can more easily post some specific comment, such as "You should have 60 drones on 3 base at the 8 minute mark against a FFE before you build units". | ||
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megaBICEPS
Canada79 Posts
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Crow!
United States150 Posts
The tool set I had available to me was completely alien to the "always always 4-gate, then go 1-base twilight or robo if the game didn't end on the spot" metagame that Masters and higher level play was locked into - they couldn't give me strategic advice for how to hold better or how to follow it up even if they wanted to. IMO us lower level players can work on our strategies even as we work to get the basics down. However, we have to do that portion on our own or with each other - players substantially higher than us simply don't know how strategy actually works out down here. | ||
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Asday
United Kingdom388 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:02 EnderSword wrote: While I appreciate the sentiment behind this mass queen thing, Did he ever actually get anywhere with it? Last I heard from it he never actually did get out of Bronze doing this. I think Mass Marine or Mass Stalker might be viable, in fact I know they are, but I think Mass Queen was just too silly to actually function. A redditor did mass stalker, and climbed all the way up the ladder. Search around for "macrostomping". Destiny only dropped 2 games out of like 30 (I'm guessing, haven't watched the vids for a while), and was facing golds and platinums by the end of it. Don't know why he wasn't promoted. Just watching the videos should be proof enough, though. He keeps his money low, makes queens, and wins. That's fucking stupid, no-one should make queens and win; demonstrating strategy has nothing to do with winning in the lower leagues. | ||
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2plusthree
Russian Federation43 Posts
Here's the first 5 help me threads I found... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272734 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272473 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272701 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272743 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=272698 None of these posters simply said macro better. They gave micro tips, scouting info, strategical help, and TONS more. Your entire post is simply misleading and incorrect. If you have a specific question about strategy you're unsure of, ask it or search for it and I'm sure TL would help you. | ||
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skipgamer
Australia701 Posts
the TLDR (as I understand it) for others: While there is strategy at lower levels, and you can be a better player by learning strategy, or tactics; the best advice if you want to have a solid foundation for being a better player is indeed to macro better, because when you have solid macro, mastering certain strategies or tactics will be infinitely better than mastering a certain strategy, or certain tactics while having horrible macro. | ||
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Ignorant prodigy
United States385 Posts
Having macro doesn’t mean sit in your base and mass up units as quickly as possible.. it’s more or less spending the resources you have at ALL times unless intentionally saving them for something.. like when your spire pops and you want to build 10-11 muta’s. Watch a recent replay and follow your vision.. How much time do you spend looking at your base? If the majority of the game is just you looking at your base.. that's a critical problem IMO. Also bring up your production tab and watch what gets produced during an engagement and during harassment. Are you building anything? Or worse yet did you leave the battle to go build units and not even watch what happens? Can’t micro if you are looking in your base…. Here’s my solution.. Control group all of your hatches to one number If you play P or T then control group your nexus/command center to one number and your unit producing buildings to another When I was in silver I’d watch my replays and my opponents never had these things control grouped. NEVER. They would select each hatchery independently and produce a worker. And Terrans are worse even as they would click each barracks/factory… This sort of forces you to go to your base constantly to produce units. If you stay active around the map and in or around your enemy’s base the scouting information you gain will often win you games.. you will spot a drop before it reaches your base.. or you will see dark shrines/tech labs on starports... Army compositions… know when they try to expand….etc In order to stay that active you need to produce units while you poke around.. that’s where the control groups come in… While strategy is important and knowing what counters what is good knowledge to have.. I’m pretty sure if you’re on team liquid you know these things already. If you’re Protoss and your enemy is Terran.. you poke up his ramp and you see a fast techlab right as the game’s starting.. how do you counter that? I bet you know the answer… but I also bet you decide right at that point to go straight for the counter and don’t scout again… and then he shows up in your base with a banshee and you have no obs.. because you got a voidray instead of a robobay. Now if you spent the whole time poking around with your probe and watching the outsides of his base you would have more info and be more prepared for what’s coming your way. But in order to effectively do that you need to be able to do that as well as build units while not looking at your base. Don’t just rally your probe to patrol outside his base.. because we both know you’re not watching it. | ||
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lvent
United States140 Posts
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EnderSword
Canada669 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:57 lvent wrote: Honestly, if I was playing against another plat person right now, and we had 2 coaches "training" us. My coach teaching me a build/timing attack/strat; my opponents coach teaching him proper "macro". I would be willing to wager that a well executed strategy would overwhelm the macro at the early levels. Yea that's great you got your optimal probe count/not floating insane amounts of minerals etc; but if you dont see or are properly prepared for what I am building you are done, especially at the lower levels. A properly executed strat is brutal. A 'Properly executed strat' already implies good Macro. If you do a good strategy, but just don't have enough units, or do it slow, you are going to lose to just having your opponent have way more stuff than you. | ||
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SnuggleZhenya
596 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:57 lvent wrote: Honestly, if I was playing against another plat person right now, and we had 2 coaches "training" us. My coach teaching me a build/timing attack/strat; my opponents coach teaching him proper "macro". I would be willing to wager that a well executed strategy would overwhelm the macro at the early levels. Yea that's great you got your optimal probe count/not floating insane amounts of minerals etc; but if you dont see or are properly prepared for what I am building you are done, especially at the lower levels. A properly executed strat is brutal. Your "properly executed strategy" has good macro built in, thats what people don't seem to understand. | ||
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Rabid Wookie
United States68 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:57 lvent wrote: Honestly, if I was playing against another plat person right now, and we had 2 coaches "training" us. My coach teaching me a build/timing attack/strat; my opponents coach teaching him proper "macro". I would be willing to wager that a well executed strategy would overwhelm the macro at the early levels. Yea that's great you got your optimal probe count/not floating insane amounts of minerals etc; but if you dont see or are properly prepared for what I am building you are done, especially at the lower levels. A properly executed strat is brutal. There is no "properly executed strat" in the lower leagues. They just don't have the mechanics for it even with coaching. Most Master's would have a hard time perfectly executing a strategy which is why they aren't proffessional players. | ||
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lvent
United States140 Posts
On October 08 2011 03:11 Rabid Wookie wrote: There is no "properly executed strat" in the lower leagues. They just don't have the mechanics for it even with coaching. Most Master's would have a hard time perfectly executing a strategy which is why they aren't proffessional players. If i mimic a build that has a timing attack at xx:xx time and pull it off with a variable of +/- 20secs at the lower leagues its deadly; the problem I come across with personally is transition out and moving on the the next phase, and thats where *me* personally needs to get better with my macro. And that is something I realize that my macro game needs to work on. My point I still stand by is if Pro A is teaching a bo/ta to student A while Pro B is working on perfecting the macro of student B, I say student A wins 70%+ of those games at > diamond. | ||
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lvent
United States140 Posts
On October 08 2011 03:09 EnderSword wrote: A 'Properly executed strat' already implies good Macro. If you do a good strategy, but just don't have enough units, or do it slow, you are going to lose to just having your opponent have way more stuff than you. And I feel that you can have good macro early game, its the later game stages where I personally get stung some games. I think the problem is newer people(myself included) need a baseline of where to start. I dont think there is anything wrong with focusing on specific bo/ta's to get comfortable with and use those as launching pads for further developing their games. Other people insist that its wrong; i just disagree with that notion. | ||
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EnderSword
Canada669 Posts
On October 08 2011 03:49 lvent wrote: If i mimic a build that has a timing attack at xx:xx time and pull it off with a variable of +/- 20secs at the lower leagues its deadly; the problem I come across with personally is transition out and moving on the the next phase, and thats where *me* personally needs to get better with my macro. And that is something I realize that my macro game needs to work on. My point I still stand by is if Pro A is teaching a bo/ta to student A while Pro B is working on perfecting the macro of student B, I say student A wins 70%+ of those games at > diamond. But that's a non-sensical comparison...if you exactly copy a build and timing attack hitting at a certain time, then you are copying Good Macro. What do you think a Timing push IS? It's using Macro to hit a critical number of units or tech that is able to strike an opponent at a moment they're unprepared for it. If your timing push was supposed to be 6 marines, 4 marauders and 3 Tanks... But your macro slips and you've got 4 marines, 3 maruaders and 2 tanks...you might lose. But if you've actually copied the timing build and have all those units...you copied the Good Macro too. | ||
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