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WolfintheSheep
Canada14127 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:17 .Aar wrote: Well you see, usually when people ask for advice, one assumes it's because they're trying to get better. We're not here to tell you how to have more fun. No, they're telling you how they'd have more fun, and you're blatantly ignoring them. Hence why your "advice" is absolutely nothing of the sort. | ||
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.Aar
2177 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:25 Gnight wrote: Read my full post.... really, please. If you are going to reply to anything, then don't just pluck one part from my post and ignore the rest in it. >.< I never ever put forward that macro isn't important, that macro doesn't play a important role or anything alike. Nor have I ever put forward anything forward that deserves this "If a player wants to get better, he needs to do what he needs to get better. If he just wants to have fun or theorycraft, he should be content with bronze. This is not a matter of opinion. It's not different for everyone. It's concrete fact. If you want to be better, you need to get better." this as a reply. If you read through my whole post you know why I (not the I, not saying it's a fact) regard it as a opinion/view. Clearly you failed to do such a thing and just skipped over my words and picked out the part you could critize here (at least that's how you make it seem in my eyes, once again a opinion). What I am concluding is that people can put forward other advice aside "macro better" that can help a lower league player improve. Even if macro is really the main thing one should work on, it still doesn't hurt to work on your micro, your game knowledge, scouting skills, map awareness etc. etc. You'r saying that if people want to improve they need to do things that will actually improve them. I agree, really I do, because that's plain logic. But there are more things then macro that can help, to what extent/size that is, is a other matter. Next time, read my whole post before replying, thanks. ^ ^ I read your entire post. You have been making one singular point. I will say this for the last time. We are not here to have fun. We are here to play better. Because to us, that is fun. Imagine you're trying to learn to dance. You see people doing windmills, air chairs, headspins. And you think to yourself, wow, I want to do that. You have it in your head a vague idea that "balance" will help you. But wait! Your spine's broken. Too bad. Balance isn't going to solve shit. Putting forth other advice is nothing more than coddling. You could be MarineKingPrime times two and you will still lose if you have six marines and your opponent waltzes into your base with eight mutalisks. What you're trying to say as far as I can tell is this: helping players get better in extraneous facets will help them overall. I am flat out disagreeing with you, and telling you that helping players get better in extraneous facets will help them only in regards to those extraneous facets. Learning to micro Marines against Banelings will improve nothing but your micro with Marines against Banelings. Your game sense, your mechanics, your strategizing will be left completely untouched. On October 08 2011 06:28 WolfintheSheep wrote: No, they're telling you how they'd have more fun, and you're blatantly ignoring them. Hence why your "advice" is absolutely nothing of the sort. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Are you trying to say that I'm somehow making a mistake by disregarding how people have fun? Shit, you can take tequila shots and play SC with your feet if that's your thing. Don't crawl over here and ask why you're losing games, because yes, we will "blatantly" ignore your preferences. Because they're irrelevant. If you ask how to win, we're going to tell you how to win. Not give little side tips about how to make it a more enjoyable experience. Guys, this is really simple and not at all controversial. If you want to get better, you need to do what it takes to get better. If you want to just have fun, you need to accept that that doesn't always mean the same thing as getting better. | ||
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AmericanUmlaut
Germany2578 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:28 WolfintheSheep wrote: No, they're telling you how they'd have more fun, and you're blatantly ignoring them. Hence why your "advice" is absolutely nothing of the sort. This whole conversation is really confusing to me. The whole context of this conversation is that there are low level players who post replays in the Strategy section of TL asking for advice, and that those players almost universally are told that the most important thing they could have done to improve their results is to improve their macro. A player whose goal is not to get better but simply to enjoy the game doesn't need Strategy Forum advice. He just needs to accept that he will always lose one half of his games no matter what he does, and do whatever he finds entertaining. A player whose goal is to improve should not complain when Strategy Forum vets look at the replay and note that lousy mechanics explain 90% of the loss. A player whose goal is just to learn which units do well against which other units can do a forum search, spend half an hour on a unit tester map, or check Liquipedia - unit counters are a solved problem. But in most cases, that's not the question presented to the forum. Even the bronziest of the bronze understands that Colossi are good against Marines and Immortals are good against Tanks. A Strategy Forum question, though, is almost always in the form of "how could I have won this game?" If you are floating 3000 minerals when the deciding battle comes, don't complain if the posters don't explain how proper use of Marine patrol micro could have let you trade armies more efficiently. I don't think anyone on TL is opposed to the concept of people playing SC2 just for the hell of it and having a good time. In fact, I think that's utterly awesome! But this asking for advice on how to win games and then complaining that the advice isn't the right flavor of advice really rubs me the wrong way. If you already know what you want to hear, just write yourself a PM. | ||
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Gnight
77 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:43 .Aar wrote: I read your entire post. It was just as fluffy and pointless as this was. I will say this for the last time. We are not here to have fun. We are here to play better. Because to us, that is fun. Imagine you're trying to learn to dance. You see people doing windmills, air chairs, headspins. And you think to yourself, wow, I want to do that. You have it in your head a vague idea that "balance" will help you. But wait! Your spine's broken. Too bad. Balance isn't going to solve shit. Putting forth other advice is nothing more than coddling. You could be MarineKingPrime times two and you will still lose if you have six marines and your opponent waltzes into your base with eight mutalisks. What you're trying to say as far as I can tell is this: helping players get better in extraneous facets will help them overall. I am flat out disagreeing with you, and telling you that helping players get better in extraneous facets will help them only in regards to those extraneous facets. Learning to micro Marines against Banelings will improve nothing but your micro with Marines against Banelings. Your game sense, your mechanics, your strategizing will be left completely untouched. What I am saying is that there is no harm to point out, give out other advice aside macro. I don't see any issue in you pointing to a bronze league player that he should continue to build workers till he is fully saturated, anything but. But does it harm to point out to him that his positioning can also be improved if he did "this" and "that"? And before you go again saying that such advice will only help in certain situations then you clearly are mistaken because of the fact that tank positioning is something that is usefull from bronze to grandmasters league (you can apply this to alot of other units that are similiar to the tank, require positioning to get the full potentional out of them). Scouting properly is usefull from bronze to grandmaster league. Micro'ing properly is usefull from bronze to grandmaster league. Unless you want to claim that none of those things are usefull to have when you are in higher leagues, improving those things (aside improving macro alone) will actually also improve your overall gameplay. If you manage to train yourself to make 20 more units by the 10minute mark, surely it will help you out big time, improve your play and get you (most likely) in higher leagues. But if you manage to train yourself to properly use a army instead of simply a-moving in every time (just a example) you attack (a.k.a. engagement) then it will help out your overal gameplay as well, do you agree with that? Because that is the point I am trying to make here, Sc2 consists of so many things and macro is only one part of it, perhaps a big one, but still only a part of it. Improving the other parts will not make you a worse player and if a person wants other advice then "macro better", then why not give that advice out as well? That way that person has the detailed "macro better" advice and other advice, tips, pointers, critics that he can work on. At that point it's up to that player to decide what he wants to work on, his macro or the other mechanics. Or do you want to make that choice for other people? Ps, I did also point out I never claimed that improving your micro will improve your overall gameplay more then when one improves their macro. Pointed that out (underlined it) in that post you said you read so carefully. So don't go there either please. | ||
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WolfintheSheep
Canada14127 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:44 AmericanUmlaut wrote: A player whose goal is not to get better but simply to enjoy the game doesn't need Strategy Forum advice. He just needs to accept that he will always lose one half of his games no matter what he does, and do whatever he finds entertaining. A player whose goal is to improve should not complain when Strategy Forum vets look at the replay and note that lousy mechanics explain 90% of the loss. Every player wants to be a "better player", in some way, shape or form. The problem is that using a blanket form of advice like "Macro better" only applies to a very select group of people who play a ton of games, and are okay treating their SC2 experience like a statistics experiment. For the player that plays a few hundred games per month, "practice more" and "macro better" works out fine, because they're actually in a position to develop their game sense on their own. For the player that plays a few dozen (or less) games a month, you're basically giving them a 5 year plan on how to improve, and purposefully withholding information because of some misguided notion that it's "to make them a better player". | ||
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CatNzHat
United States1599 Posts
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AmericanUmlaut
Germany2578 Posts
On October 08 2011 07:10 WolfintheSheep wrote: Every player wants to be a "better player", in some way, shape or form. The problem is that using a blanket form of advice like "Macro better" only applies to a very select group of people who play a ton of games, and are okay treating their SC2 experience like a statistics experiment. For the player that plays a few hundred games per month, "practice more" and "macro better" works out fine, because they're actually in a position to develop their game sense on their own. For the player that plays a few dozen (or less) games a month, you're basically giving them a 5 year plan on how to improve, and purposefully withholding information because of some misguided notion that it's "to make them a better player". Request for information: "How could I have won this game?" Analysis: "You were floating 3000 minerals." Response to request for information: "You could have won this game by building 60 more Marines." How is that witholding information? Why do you think that providing situational tactical advice instead of generally applicable advice is giving a player a faster route to improvement? And how is improving one's play in a military game by learning to produce a larger military treating your experience like a statistics experiment? We aren't "witholding information" that could make a player better when we say to change their play so they have 60 Marines instead of a trust fund. We're giving much more practical advice than if we tried to analyse the positional weaknesses of their play. Sure, if your army was standing a little to the left, it might have increased its DPS by a few percent. If your army had been twice as big, though, it could have stood wherever the fuck it wanted. | ||
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Kaitlin
United States2958 Posts
On October 08 2011 07:10 WolfintheSheep wrote: Every player wants to be a "better player", in some way, shape or form. The problem is that using a blanket form of advice like "Macro better" only applies to a very select group of people who play a ton of games, and are okay treating their SC2 experience like a statistics experiment. For the player that plays a few hundred games per month, "practice more" and "macro better" works out fine, because they're actually in a position to develop their game sense on their own. For the player that plays a few dozen (or less) games a month, you're basically giving them a 5 year plan on how to improve, and purposefully withholding information because of some misguided notion that it's "to make them a better player". So, you're saying instead of a "macro better" response, it should be "play more" ? Fact is, if someone's macro is so terrible, giving advice about a particular engagement will be counterproductive, as that might lead the player to focus on army positioning and make macro even worse. | ||
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LagT_T
Argentina535 Posts
On October 08 2011 07:20 AmericanUmlaut wrote: Sure, if your army was standing a little to the left, it might have increased its DPS by a few percent. If your army had been twice as big, though, it could have stood wherever the fuck it wanted. You made me laugh and express the same opinion as I have at the same time. I like you. | ||
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PhuxPro
United States294 Posts
On October 08 2011 06:12 WolfintheSheep wrote: Anyone telling you to "Macro Better" only cares about Leagues and MMR. You'll improve as a player, but only in that you're getting a 50/50 rating against opponents of gradually increasing skill. At best, you'll win half of your games because your A-Move army was better than theirs. The assumption is that every player wants to be a Diamond-Grand Masters play, and they tell you to ignore everything else in favour of that long term goal, regardless of what you actually want from the game. For the people that play 5 games a week, in a good week, that advice is utterly useless. Some people expect to sit in their current league for a good long while, and are interested in enjoying each individual game as much as possible. Sometimes this involves trying out different build orders, sometimes it's about watching your army melting your opponent's, and sometimes it's being able to hold that 6-pool or 4-gate. Whatever the case is, brushing everything aside with a broad brush of "get better macro" is blatantly ignorant of a huge percentage of the player base. I find you hard to take seriously when you call us ignorant and full of assumptions when your whole first paragraph is based on false accusations that are entirely unfounded. On October 08 2011 06:12 WolfintheSheep wrote: Anyone telling you to "Macro Better" only cares about Leagues and MMR. You'll improve as a player, but only in that you're getting a 50/50 rating against opponents of gradually increasing skill. At best, you'll win half of your games because your A-Move army was better than theirs. The assumption is that every player wants to be a Diamond-Grand Masters play, and they tell you to ignore everything else in favour of that long term goal, regardless of what you actually want from the game. How did you deduce that "macro better" arguments are from people who only care about Leagues and MMR? I think the Macro Better argument applies to both people who want to play well for one game AND also to people who want to get better progressively. Just because of the fact that macroing improves after prolonged training does not mean you can try to macro better for the duration of one game. ------------------------ Of your 50/50 rating statement, which outcome do you think would be better: A)A player improving on macro wins 50% of his games but loses the other 50% to micro B)A player not improving on macro wins 50% of his games BECAUSE of micro, but loses the other 50% to macro. I can tell you it will not be possible to even start meeting opponents of gradually increasing skill on the ladder if you don't even know how to execute mechanics correctly. Whereas other players are playing with better macro then you, how would you ever overcome this hurdle if you don't increase your performance of mechanics as well? --------------------- Half of your games only? Where'd you get those statistics? I think you underestimate the difference between an army count of a player who has decent macro and an army count of a player who has exceptional macro. Sure, there are situations where tactics can be applied into, like EMPing a protoss army before fully engaging, or engaging above the ramp instead of below. But there are also situations where you'll lose because your macro fell apart; say you were doing a 4-gate push but forgot to warp in one cycle of stalkers and zealots in your forward pylon. The point is I do not doubt that people can find much more macro situations much like the one I just said previously than they can find micro situations. There is only so much you can do tactics-wise to gain an advantage on your opponent, and once those requirements are fulfilled, you're left with macro. --------------- And last but not least, you assume that the posters in this thread are trying to push the player who needs help into Masters-Grandmasters when that is not at all their goal. Much like my criticism (three sections above) of your first statement, just because someone tells you to macro better does not mean we are trying to make you get better progressively. On October 08 2011 06:12 WolfintheSheep wrote: For the people that play 5 games a week, in a good week, that advice is utterly useless. Some people expect to sit in their current league for a good long while, and are interested in enjoying each individual game as much as possible. Sometimes this involves trying out different build orders, sometimes it's about watching your army melting your opponent's, and sometimes it's being able to hold that 6-pool or 4-gate. How is that advice utterly useless? I believe very much that someone who practices macro would improve better than some person who knows small tricks-of-the-trade that let him save maybe a couple of units in a 200/200 battle. ------------------------------- What is more enjoyable: A) having an equal or higher macro-level than someone else and beating them through the use of micro, or B)having a lower macro-level than someone else and they beat you solely because you never had enough units to trade armies effectively? I know I do not enjoy the feeling that someone else beat me because I failed to acknowledge one crucial aspect of the game. Who am I to think that I, in my skill level, should be able to beat someone else (through micro) with the same skill level as me even though I have 1/4th less of an army that he has? ------------------------ And to end this, I think I should pull out a baller analogy. Hell, it's not relevant, but maybe you can make out some similarities to it. Say you start talking to a girl in the mall. The mall is Battle.net and the girl is the game between your opponent. You remember those pick-up lines that your friends told you to use, which they guarantee should work all the time. Those pick-up lines are micro. So you start off with a little bit of ice-breaking and general talk. The general talk is macro. So after you started off with the general talk you move onto the pick up lines. But shit your pick-up lines could only do so much. Now the girl is looking at you in disgust (which means your micro failed) and you're trying to come back from your loss. Whatever you did before the girl looked in disgust was your build order that you copied from TL Wiki. You only knew how to talk until the pickup lines that your friends guaranteed would work, and now you're in a situation you don't know how to get back from it. (because your macro sucks so bad). And she walks away and you are alone now. Imagine that that whole story was not about a girl, but about a starcraft match. | ||
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BrodiaQ
United States892 Posts
It might seem impersonal or uncaring but in the end you need the mechanics and the macro to carry out the strategies. If a player really wants to actually get better in the long term, and not just win a few games now, then they should dedicate a week or two to perfecting their macro as much as possible. Yeah you're gonna lose a lot of games at first, but after a few hours of just forcing yourself to pump out units with minimal strategic thinking, you'll start noticing huge gains. Anyone in the lower leagues claiming they want to get better should be doing this. I have a friend who started playing when sc2 came out. I had played bw and had decent mechanics by early sc2 standards. He played a ton of 1v1s and was only in bronze. We started playing a ton of team games together. He didn't play a 1v1 for like a month, just 3v3s or 4v4s depending on how many of us were on. The rest of us were plat- masters level and generally carried him, but since all he did was focus on making a ton of units to help us, after a month when he went back to 1v1s he immediately shot up to diamond and started playing masters players very soon after that. Once he learned to macro better he became so much better. On the flip side my friend who didn't practice macroing and did all the flavor of the week stats got demoted to gold and is stuck there since he just tries to improve his strategy. Macroing and mechanics are far far more important and have a much larger role in the game. Strategies are really easy to fix. Mechanics are not. And if you intend to get better its gonna take some hard work. Get the mechanics then build strategies once you have good enough macro. TLDR: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, feed him for life. | ||
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BrodiaQ
United States892 Posts
On October 08 2011 07:33 PhuxPro wrote: Say you start talking to a girl in the mall. The mall is Battle.net and the girl is the game between your opponent. You remember those pick-up lines that your friends told you to use, which they guarantee should work all the time. Those pick-up lines are micro. So you start off with a little bit of ice-breaking and general talk. The general talk is macro. So after you started off with the general talk you move onto the pick up lines. But shit your pick-up lines could only do so much. Now the girl is looking at you in disgust (which means your micro failed) and you're trying to come back from your loss. Whatever you did before the girl looked in disgust was your build order that you copied from TL Wiki. You only knew how to talk until the pickup lines that your friends guaranteed would work, and now you're in a situation you don't know how to get back from it. (because your macro sucks so bad). And she walks away and you are alone now. Imagine that that whole story was not about a girl, but about a starcraft match. That is an absolutely perfect example. | ||
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tuestresfat
2555 Posts
We've heard your arguments, your opinions, and still the consensus amongst master or higher players is to stick to macro. It's fine that you questioned our reasoning. We've given you our reasons. If you chose to ignore them then well, there's not much else we can do. | ||
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EnderSword
Canada669 Posts
You and a friend are setting up a chess board, Instead of taking the time to set it up properly, you both reached into the box and grabbed 2 handfuls of pieces and left the rest in the box. Now you both have 10 pieces on the board instead of 16 because you were sloppy in setting it up. A 3rd friend comes along...and you ask him for advice on where to move your bishop. The Friend smacks you and says 'You left 2 Rooks and a Knight in the damn box, screw the Bishop' That's what not Macroing well is. You can move those 10 pieces as well as you like, but you'd be better off just getting the 6 others. | ||
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kofman
Andorra698 Posts
On October 08 2011 10:01 EnderSword wrote: I find the best example is this: You and a friend are setting up a chess board, Instead of taking the time to set it up properly, you both reached into the box and grabbed 2 handfuls of pieces and left the rest in the box. Now you both have 10 pieces on the board instead of 16 because you were sloppy in setting it up. A 3rd friend comes along...and you ask him for advice on where to move your bishop. The Friend smacks you and says 'You left 2 Rooks and a Knight in the damn box, screw the Bishop' That's what not Macroing well is. You can move those 10 pieces as well as you like, but you'd be better off just getting the 6 others. Lol... I get what your trying to say, but the analogy doesn't really fit... | ||
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1nst1nct
Australia44 Posts
So from the beginning of Season 3 i took a different approach, i just focused on my economy & production. Simply put, get a 200/200 army and a-move your opponent, dont even watch the battle, just continue making units, getting upgrades, taking expansions etc. Look at the minimap 30seconds later - almost always i beat their army in the engagement. I watched the replays to figure out why - during the battle my opponents were constantly trying to micro little things, like blinking some stalkers, landing snipes/emps/fungals etc. Since they had this mindset that they wanted to micro and that with good micro they can easily beat a bigger army they tried engaging my 200/200 3/3 army with their 150/200 1/1 armies. I also read some arguments about strategy - you do not need specific strategy, just something very basic - get AA if they have etc. Strategy plays a minimal role in lower level play - as long as you make semi-intelligent decisions - like not massing collosi when you obvious see they have a lot of vikings, etc. That's as far as strategy goes. Any strategy higher than that, such as build orders, expansion timings is irrelevant at low tiers - just make workers + make units + get tech + get upgrades --> get 200/200 --> 1a their base. Then remake army -> repeat. This is irregardless of race too, almost probably easiest with protoss - which is basically, just warpin stuff nonstop + chronoboost upgrades. | ||
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halpimcat
215 Posts
Thinking about strategy and theory-crafting is just as fun as playing the game; even if it's extremely flawed (which it probably is the lower you go), it's all a learning experience. Discovering that a certain strategy you spent hours thinking about just doesn't cut it in the higher leagues is a part of the evolution in your own SC2 experience, and replacing it with newer builds can be part of what makes you a better player in the end. I remember opening sky terran in TvP when I was in platinum and thinking the strategy was invincible until I hit better players. On the other hand, lower level players should never talk about balance, which is something I'm sick of. Actually anyone not high masters shouldn't be talking about it unless it's glaringly obvious, and as of patch 1.4 I think most of these big imbalances have been fixed. Macroing better is the ultimate way to improve though, and it's what I'm still working on a year after I bought the game. | ||
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Monkeyballs25
531 Posts
http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/(P)Cheprus_vs_(Z)Tamerlane/14234 If someone told me I lost this mainly because of bad macro, I'd be pretty annoyed unless they pointed to something very specific around when that attack comes in. Because that's my A game in terms of macro, and making incremental improvements to that performance seems far less feasible than just fixing the glaring tactical error. | ||
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HaXXspetten
Sweden15718 Posts
On October 06 2011 20:48 Sm3agol wrote: There's a reason every looks down on low tier players, and just tell them to macro(and micro) better, and not worry about strategies as much. Multiple top tier players have shown that that you can basically do WHATEVER you want at low levels, and as long as your macro and mechanics are good, you will win most of the time regardless of unit composition. Players have 4 gated, 6 pooled, mass queened, mass marined, etc all the way to diamond and sometimes even masters, just by simply outproducing and out microing their opponents. Watch Destiny beat tanks, thors, High templar, etc, with queens, even vs people that were trying to stream snipe him, and knew what he was doing, and would still lose. That's why high level players say ignore strategies and unit compositions for right now.....because IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're worrying about unit compositions while you have 3k minerals at 15 minutes into the game, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Having 4 less stalkers and having 3 more zealots and 2 more sentries instead just might possibly win you the game. Converting the 1500 minerals you have at the 10 minute mark to stalkers, and it wouldn't matter what composition you had, you're going to rofl-stomp your opponent. TLDR: It's not that strategy is bad, but improving macro will generate far better results than improving unit composition and tactics. That's generally true, but not very helpful. You pretty much summed up everything he already knew instead of strategizing like he asked for. | ||
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TheGreenMachine
United States730 Posts
Macro (not getting supply blocked, always producing workers and units, not forgetting upgrades) Micro (A+moving with entire army, zealots in front guardian shield basic forcefield type stuff) Strategy (I copied a good player's build, did I lose because I did his build wrong? should I have changed something after scouting?) The people who improve the fastest are those that can figure out whats most important to improve upon or the easiest one thing that will improve your game. If you are mad that we are telling you to not get supply blocked, build more barracks, or constantly check on your production then you are being close minded about getting better. Because the sum of those things is the quickest way for you to get better. | ||
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