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For the record, I agree with the OP's general point about the uselessness of the phrase "macro better". If you really want to say "macro better" to someone then take time to watch a replay of them playing and point out where their macro is going wrong (mineral saturation or supply blocking or not producing or whatever). "Macro better" could mean ANYTHING.
That said, "macro better" is still a completely legitimate principle to work on. As a simple example...I was playing against a low-league Terran a week or so ago. He first came up with a group of something like eight reapers which he used to blow away half my workers as well as sniping some pylons and even killing a freshly-built robotics facility. Then he went tank/marauder against me and hurt my workers again as well as my army.
However I still won. How? Because I'd fast expanded right at the start of the game so I had more income than he did, I had more production structures then he did, I had more workers than he did (even after he killed literally half of them I STILL had a couple more than he did, I checked the replays) and generally was just out-producing the hell out of him. So despite his siege tech tanks and marauders hurting my army and nitro reapers tearing chunks out of my infrastructure I still had more stuff than he did. I denied his late expansion and then just did mass warp ins from a proxy pylon off six gates and kept a-moving into his base. He just couldn't keep up with my income and production and after I killed his last-ditch attempt to hit my base with some hidden marauders he just ggd out.
In this case army composition meant very little. I just had more stuff.
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I'm gold myself and it it so clear for me that all I need to win on this level is "macro better", so why anyone even argue with that statement?
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Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine.
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On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine.
Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words.
Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific.
There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ...
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On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine.
Sure, but this whole argument is just a straw man. The simple statement "macro better" is not advice commonly found in the Strategy Forum. This whole conversation consists of people looking at wide-ranging and game-specific advice on how to improve economic and production efficiency, is oversimplifying that advice to the statement "macro better" and then bitching that "macro better" is bad advice.
Seriously, link us to the thread where a low-level player posted a replay, and the forum's response was "macro better." This whole conversation is ridiculous. One side is trying to explain their position, and the other side is trying to argue that that position is a different, stupid position that no one on TL represents.
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On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ...
Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
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On October 10 2011 23:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Sure, but this whole argument is just a straw man. The simple statement "macro better" is not advice commonly found in the Strategy Forum. This whole conversation consists of people looking at wide-ranging and game-specific advice on how to improve economic and production efficiency, is oversimplifying that advice to the statement "macro better" and then bitching that "macro better" is bad advice. Seriously, link us to the thread where a low-level player posted a replay, and the forum's response was "macro better." This whole conversation is ridiculous. One side is trying to explain their position, and the other side is trying to argue that that position is a different, stupid position that no one on TL represents.
Once again, I'm guessing you didn't read the OP.
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On October 10 2011 23:47 hangarninetysix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ... Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
The OP did not link a thread as an example of this supposedly common behavior. Can you?
Edit: Also, don't accuse people of failing to read (as you've just done to me) just because you disagree with their opinion. I happen believe that the OP is wrong and that he failed to support his position with any useful examples other than a strawman quote that is not attributed to any conversation that has actually taken place on TL. I think that the result has been a conversation in which one side is complaining categorically about the advice being dispensed to low-level players without referencing any said advice. That's disagreeing, not failing to read.
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On October 10 2011 23:49 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:47 hangarninetysix wrote:On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ... Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!" The OP did not link a thread as an example of this supposedly common behavior. Can you?
No. Is this relevant? He posted something that he hates when people tell him, I provided an explanation as to why it might not be helpful: the specific response he cites seems to be extremely broad.
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On October 10 2011 23:52 hangarninetysix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:49 AmericanUmlaut wrote:On October 10 2011 23:47 hangarninetysix wrote:On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ... Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!" The OP did not link a thread as an example of this supposedly common behavior. Can you? No. Is this relevant? He posted something that he hates when people tell him, I provided an explanation as to why it might not be helpful: the specific response he cites seems to be extremely broad.
Yes, of course it's relevant. Absent the thing he hates actually having been said to him, this whole conversation is just a hypothetical about how horrible it would be if a bad thing were to happen. If you think the forum is full of high-level players posting "macro better" to lower-level players, and want to complain about it, then copy and paste a few examples so we can all see what it is we're talking about.
Edit: For the record, OP has a grand total of 5 posts, none of which is asking for advice in the strategy forum. He has never been told to "macro better."
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On October 11 2011 00:03 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:52 hangarninetysix wrote:On October 10 2011 23:49 AmericanUmlaut wrote:On October 10 2011 23:47 hangarninetysix wrote:On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ... Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!" The OP did not link a thread as an example of this supposedly common behavior. Can you? No. Is this relevant? He posted something that he hates when people tell him, I provided an explanation as to why it might not be helpful: the specific response he cites seems to be extremely broad. Yes, of course it's relevant. Absent the thing he hates actually having been said to him, this whole conversation is just a hypothetical about how horrible it would be if a bad thing were to happen. If you think the forum is full of high-level players posting "macro better" to lower-level players, and want to complain about it, then copy and paste a few examples so we can all see what it is we're talking about. Edit: For the record, OP has a grand total of 5 posts, none of which is asking for advice in the strategy forum. He has never been told to "macro better."
I don't recall complaining about it at all. Feel free to disregard my response on the subject that the OP put forth if it happens to offend you. I am commenting on something the OP said, but it's irrelevant to the thread because I can't conjure up a post somewhere? C'mon...
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On October 10 2011 23:47 hangarninetysix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 23:43 aebriol wrote:On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine. Well, normally when people ask for help, they will get some feedback about what they are doing wrong not just two words. Personally at least I try to be a bit more specific. There's a reason why you are not allowed to comment on help threads without having watched the replay... part of forum rules. And why you are not allowed to create a help thread without replay ... Did you even read the OP? The type of response he is specifically referring to is "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
Check out page 17 in this thread, there's an example there of the response you should get when asking for help ...
Yeah I did read the whole thread ...
My point is, I don't really see many threads on this forum where the poster isn't helped when making a good help thread ... I see the opposite, them receiving a lot of good advice on how to improve.
And spending 90 minutes on improving your opening, will help you more than 6 hours of laddering if your main wish is to improve.
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I played against a silver protoss in a PvP yesterday. He literally was so bad that my cyber core was completed when his had just started, and he didnt mine gas for as long as it took me to mine 100. The reason we say "macro better" is because its true. If you are this silver player, I dont care how good your battle sense, micro or anything is; i nearly killed him with my first zealot and stalker because he only had 1 zealot for a long time. This sort of thing happens all the time in higher league matches. Even if your strategy should "counter" theirs, if you mess up your build in some way you straight up lose. I am high diamond and half of my losses I just tell myself I need to execute my build better.
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On October 10 2011 21:53 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 21:20 secretary bird wrote:On October 10 2011 20:40 AmericanUmlaut wrote:On October 10 2011 20:37 secretary bird wrote:Why would a casual player need perfect macro when he plays in silver league?
I am experiencing an incredible, almost magnetic attraction between my face and my palm. Thats because you dont understand. Yes if he would practice more and his macro was better he would beat most of his current opponents and get promoted eventually. The fact remains that the players he faces have shitty macro as well so other things can and do make the difference between winning and losing on his level. I hope that wasnt too hard to comprehend for you. I didn't understand, you're right. I thought the whole premise of this discussion was people who want to get better at Starcraft and are asking stronger players for advice. If you don't want to get better, you wouldn't be posting in the Strategy Forum and no one would be telling you how you could get better. And then you come along and basically say "but why would a casual player need to get better if he's not good?" And then words fail me, and my forehead and both palms experience a sudden explosion of pain. Because... well... that sounds kind of dumb. And then you post more! If he got better macro, he'd get better, and he'd win! Sweet. I totally agree. But he wants a way to beat his current opponents, but not get better (because he just wants to stay in Silver). Also, we have to stick to ways to improve in the game that don't involve playing the game, because our hypothetical student doesn't want to practice but we still need to help him get better. Even though he, again, doesn't care about getting better as long as he can just win more. And we should steer away from big, easy fixes to his overall play and find detailed, nitty gritty fixes to very specific situations, because our goal in the Strategy Forum is to help you get a 1% advantage over an equally skilled opponent, and if we try to help you get a 73% advantage instead, we are douchey douchey douchebags. And now I understand! Thank you for the clarification! This thread has been a total eye-opener to me.
You used a whole lot of words to say nothing new so let me sum up your post:
1. Apparently you think that facepalm joke is hilarious.
2. You called my opinion stupid again because thats how you win arguments in Kindergarten I suppose.
3. You think that telling people to macro better is brilliant, it will magically make them win all of their games as most people in silver are really arrogant and think they are great at this game.
4. Giving them specific advice and ways to realistically improve their play and beat the strategy they were up against is pointless in comparison to your genius solution to all of their problems.
5. If someone doesnt have at least diamond level macro he shouldnt post in the strategy forum, if he does giving him a generic answer is the best response as ignoring a thread isnt a viable option.
I mean honestly you didnt even mention what part of my opinion is wrong and why, if you're going to respond like that again dont even bother we will agree to disagree then.
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The problem, I think, is for the most part newer players don't really realize how bad their macro is.
Yes. The disparity is that big. Yes in theory if you and your opponent have similar levels of macro, him going voidrays and unit countering your roaches would be a bad thing. But if you're good enough that you simply don't have the option of macroing better then you wouldn't be here asking about stupid questions.
No. If you are here complaining about getting other advice, then you have a huge self-inflicted macro failure that is severely limiting your ability as a player. There is no point trying to give you specific advice when your execution will be 10 units short in a designed 15 unit attack. You're better off having 10 more of the wrong unit than 5 more of the right unit.
There's the Destiny example of winning with almost pure queen. There's the countless I'm going to make only roaches/stalkers/marines/[insert random base unit here] to masters examples. But I guess alternatively you can keep self-righteously be indignant and believe that you have a better understanding of the game than someone who has actually succeeded at a far higher level than you have.
I play diamond-masters players. My macro is awful. Just to give some perspective.
When I practice my macro by just bumrushing 4 bases, I float 1k in a matter of a minute after muling and trying to be fancy with multipronged attacks and kiting. I didn't even let my production buildings stop lighting up or queue past 2. But I could have making another 5 production buildings or taken another expo. I didn't cause I'm bad. The problem is, you're worse and while you know you're worse, you don't realize how much worse and how you are worse.
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On October 10 2011 21:47 Monkeyballs25 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 20:59 D u o wrote:On October 10 2011 07:08 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 10 2011 06:17 terranghost wrote:
Say you lose to a random strategy that involves voidrays which for the sake of this example is not something commonly seen in lower levels and you say well what other composition could I have gone. But then you throw the suggested compositions into your hat of strategies and now your macro slips more because now you have to scout more to find out what they are doing. Now you see another build/composition that is also not common that you want help against and you take more strategy suggestions and your macro slips even more. But if you had just durning the banshee problem had converted the 2k/1k trust fund you had into roaches and just fucking attacked you would of won and roaches can't even attack voidrays.
You can't completely ignore scouting unless you're doing some sort of aggressive early attacking play, because then you get to scout with your first attack 7RR style. After all there's not a massive window where your roaches can kill all his base before his voids kill all of your roaches.Not that I think that's bad advice, I absolutely love the idea of one build and unit comp that works perfectly for each matchup. I've got a rough build that works out that way for ZvZ, still trying to settle on ones for the other two matchups. I suppose ling/roach should work in the vast majority of situations in ZvP, and just try to end the game with superior macro and an all-in before you need other tech to deal with voids or colossi. I've seen some talk about a mass ling approach for ZvT, but I can't imagine that works against full mech. You can ignore scouting completely. You just have to prioritize a standard sort of play over scouting. Scout for his position early on. Bring worker back and do marine marauder medivac, or do zealot stalker colosus, or do roach hydra corrupter. Because all three if you're just out macroing your opponent is basically just a click or t a click and then you're just back to macroing. Not watching fight not focusing his important units becuase if you're just better than your opponent at macroing and the base sort of aspect of the game you'll do an attack and take an expansion and probably still trade roughly even for your opponent. Did you actually read my post or just the first line? I already said I play zerg, so let's look at roach/hydra/corruptor as the "standard play" you suggest. Then you suggest studying and copying a pro build. So two points come up immediately -I don't know *anyone* who goes roach/hydra/corruptor against Terran since maybe season 1. If you can find someone who does, please let me know. Maybe its common against Protoss still but I doubt it. -All the pro Zergs I do watch rely heavily on scouting, and tend to build nothing but drones until absolutely necessary. So either I ignore scouting and still make lots of drones and then proceed to DIE. Or I ignore your advice and learn to scout like they do and make the drones/army decision. Or go for a "make drones then blindly make army and do an early attack that at worst will collide with his early attack" approach. I get that you play two races that can make all purpose deathballs while also building their economy. But you don't seem very knowledgeable about the zerg equivalent, if one exists. In fact yours is probably the perfect example of a bad "macro better" kind of post that you really should avoid making entirely.
Yes its true that zerg relies the most heavily on scouting but the reason why I suggest doing a roach hydra corrupter build is because its a non micro army you can literally just a click with it and if your macro is better come out at least even with your opponent. Again you go back to "that is a bad strategy" but i've beat players without using any strategy when I've played against them helping them. So you going back to "no pro players use that strategy" and "pro players rely on scouting to counter what your opponent does." Most of the lower zergs can't get away with the bare minimum and over react anyways and then they die 10 minutes after. Zerg is the hardest race to learn early on because there is that extra resource [aka larve] I've seen zergs at pro levels do roach vs terran i've also seen pro's add hydra into their play vs terran as well. the corrupter addition is namely for toss but lower tier players cant use mutas efficiently and macro they can't use bling properly and half the time they just fly their muta overtop of a shit tonne of stalkers or marine and lose them all anyways. A bulkier army like roach hydra is yes a lot weaker but you're not relying on an army composition to be strong you're relying on your mechanics to just be better than your opponent. You shouldn't start off scouting if you don't know what to look for and you shouldn't go looking for strategies if you don't have the apm for it.
For example ling bling muta is a very technical thing if you fuck up with your muta you don't have the gas to replace them because you need the gas for teching to blord and for bling, you need your lings to wrap around and your bling to impact on nothing but marines. Sure you could do this with pure mechanics but most players in lower tiers cannot do those sorts of things AND INJECT AND SPREAD CREEP AND MAKE SURE THEYRE PRODUCING AND NOT GETTING SUPPLY CAPPED AND MAKING SURE THEIR ECON IS PROPERLY SET UP. That style you have to focus on the battles and that in itself is a the biggest problem lower tier players have, they focus too much on the battles and don't inject and they don't make sure they're upgrading and they don't do all these other more important things. Sure killing an army will get you ahead but IF you don't kill that army then you've invested EVERYTHING into one attack and that is all in.
Up until mid or high plat any strategy doesn't matter. I can kill people doing voids if i go roach. I can kill terran with pure stalkers. I can do pure marine and win vs bling or roach. Thats the point im getting across since terran and toss is 66.666666 repeating percent I bais a post closer to both of those races because I don't really want to have to type all of this shit for something that I can just type into "Make roach and hydra and if needed corrupter and get into plat then focus on strategies."
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On October 10 2011 23:19 lynxdaftpunk wrote:
I'm gold myself and it it so clear for me that all I need to win on this level is "macro better", so why anyone even argue with that statement?
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On October 11 2011 00:34 Emperor_Earth wrote:
There's the Destiny example of winning with almost pure queen. There's the countless I'm going to make only roaches/stalkers/marines/[insert random base unit here] to masters examples.
Destiny's mass queen is actually a pretty bad example since they're micro intensive. He says himself in his first game that mass stalker would be a better example since unmicroed queens are weak but unmicroed stalkers are actually pretty good.
Mass roach or roach/corruptor sounds like a much better macro build for Zerg.
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Macro harder was true in brood war. Right now it should be macro harder + get AoE damage + don't get owned by AoE damage.
(also have detection + a way to deal with air units)
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On October 10 2011 23:39 hangarninetysix wrote:
Sure it's true, but you might as well just say ' play better '. It's just such a broad stroke, that while definitely true, isn't specific enough to be that helpful to them i imagine.
Except people usually post their replay along with like "I really need help in ZvP, I have NO IDEA how to beat 6gate! What is a good strategy to beat six gate? And then you watch the replay and they missed like 8 larva injects and got supply blocked 4 times. Trying a "new strategy" which is often what these kinds of posts are asking for, isn't going to do a damned things when you are making that many mistakes, hell I know myself. I had a TERRIBLE run of games at the end of last month and it was mainly because I was trying out a bunch of new strategies and kept getting supply blocked because the timings were a bit off what I was used to. After getting really fed up and finally reflecting on that batch of 20 games or so I realized I needed to go back to the drawing board and fix the basics, low and behold, I turned myself around. So yes, all I had to do was MACRO BETTER!
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EPT
