EPTSure, hypothetical joey bronze could get all the way to diamond/masters making just Marines, as long as he had solid macro. But he doesn't have solid macro. Obviously he's working on that, but he wants to know what else he can do to improve. Like for example, discovering that Marauders are pretty good in TvP. That's the kind of advice most low level players come looking for. They're looking for specific advice, not fortune cookie wisdom.
[D] Why us lower level players hate "macro better" - Page 6
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RoboBob
United States798 Posts
Sure, hypothetical joey bronze could get all the way to diamond/masters making just Marines, as long as he had solid macro. But he doesn't have solid macro. Obviously he's working on that, but he wants to know what else he can do to improve. Like for example, discovering that Marauders are pretty good in TvP. That's the kind of advice most low level players come looking for. They're looking for specific advice, not fortune cookie wisdom. | ||
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Eps
Canada240 Posts
On October 06 2011 21:23 Plexa wrote: Also the "macro better" attitude isn't always the most useful attitude to have in the strategy forum. That could be applied to every single level and still be true!! It's an empty truth in this regard. So while the strategy forum can be used to get advice on how to macro better, there are also many other things that you could be learning from there - What unit composition beats what (this really is bronze information, and should be contained in liquipedia) - How to engage battles properly - How to make better decisions in game - How to gauge what your opponent is doing with minimal information Things like refining a build order, having a build order (-.-; ), this is my awesome new build order please rate it!!!!! and whatnot are all examples of bad questions to ask in the strategy forum. Once infinity's guide is out that should help with this though! ^Paraphrasing the quote but This. Macro isn't the only aspect of a RTS game. For players in the lower league that do not have a well developed game sense, many of them may even fail to know what to do. By game sense I mean army compositions, engagement tactics, positioning and scouting. Sim city is also an important skill to have for all races. My example, I watched a lower league (I think Silver or Gold) Terran player start off a game with this build. 10 supply 10 refinery 11 barracks I have to note that this person was not doing any sort of fast Reaper or Banshee build that required gas. It was a normal Marine-Tank composition. Compared to the standard 15OC opener, they're putting themselves behind economically and unit count right from the start. Build orders I believe fall in the category of Strategy and game sense, just generally knowing what to do. There's nothing wrong with someone asking how to learn certain builds orders, unit strategies and engagement tactics early on and refining them as they go a long. All this emphasis on Macro understates the importance of other aspects of SCII - Micro in particular. A-Move some Stimmed Marines in to an equal cost Baneling ball. What's likely to happen? Split and control your Marines and the results can differ drastically. Players don't suddenly gain engagement tactics right when they hit Diamond/Masters, it's something they have to work on continually. It's something that should be told to lower-leagues as well so they learn and improve that aspect of the game. | ||
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sleepingdog
Austria6145 Posts
On October 06 2011 22:08 Plexa wrote: Eh? I don't agree. If people are posting reps here for advice they should have a) read this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=195389 b) followed its advice c) posted a rep where yes better macro could have won the game, but lost the game because of another error When players macro equally bad what puts the other players ahead is doing all the other things right. And if you only focus on macro, you'll run into someone with equal macro but with better overall play and lose. And in those cases people should be asking for help. Let's be real here, even at Masters level the advice "macro better" is true - vacuous advice isn't useful. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough...so I'll give it another try  When somebody is in bronze-gold league then he MUST have some rather obvious macro-flaws. What I definitely agree is that those general "macro better" advices I bad. But if this player fails to accurately identify what his macro flaw that is holding him back is, then focussing on strategy-related aspects would be the wrong approach, imo. Say, someone has platinum-ish macro, but makes ONE terrible macro-mistake that is the reason why he regularly loses games. Helping the player identify this exact mistake is the best approach, in my opinion. If he has reached platinum/diamond, then yes, thinking about strategy starts making sense. But on the low levels, I don't quite get why you wouldn't want to fix the painful, huge macro-flaws that are the reason why you are in bronze-gold first before moving on to more sophisticated topics. On October 07 2011 03:23 Eps wrote: Players don't suddenly gain engagement tactics right when they hit Diamond/Masters, it's something they have to work on continually. It's something that should be told to lower-leagues as well so they learn and improve that aspect of the game. This is something I disagree in particular. Countless brain-research has shown that we learn way better when we focus on improving one thing at a time. Nobody learns playing the piano by just...playing the piece again and again, trying to play it as perfectly as possible. No, you start with one hand and study it piece by piece. If you have troubles with a certain passage, you focus on that passage only until you have it down. This holds true for each and every area of practice. You can't practice everything at once - even if it sounds good on paper, our brain simply doesn't work that way, you have to approach it step by step to achieve the best result. This is exactly why people like day9 tell the new players to play, say, 20 games where they should only try to keep their money low...then 20 games where they should try to not get supply-blocked etc. | ||
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Qntc.YuMe
United States792 Posts
By increasing the effectiveness of your execution, the build that you are performing gets stronger and stronger to the point where you can decide (as the OP suggest) "the right strategy and such". Its usually pointless UNLESS you understand if you can macro and execute very well behind it or the effectiveness of that "very good strategy" will be utter crap. | ||
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HardMacro
Canada361 Posts
On October 07 2011 03:08 Monkeyballs25 wrote: You're really overestimating the amount of time they spend on watching strats and underestimating their general macro efficiency. A gold level 4gate or 4rax mass marine push might hit 10-20 seconds later and with 1 or 2 less units, but it'll still be plenty difficult to hold off. And Zerg don't *have* an all-purpose build order to practice apart from cheese plays. Edit : Also one nice thing I like when getting advice, is when I'm given info that lets me seperate "your strat is fine, just macro better so you have more stuffs" and "that's a bad strat, you'll probably lose unless you have WAAAY better macro". We might have to find the middle ground here, although it's not terribly important anyway. I know because I'm currently smurfing the plat. ranks doing retarded builds for fun. Against 4 gate, generally plat. level players will have the correct build order, but the 4 gate hits way slower than just 10-20 seconds (usually ~30 secs or later than the a well-executed 4 gate cutting probes at ~20 supply), or they hit at the right timing with zealot/stalker + 4 warped stalkers, but can't even produce the next round because they only have ~15 probes mining. It just seems ridiculous to me that perfect early game macro requires VERY little APM, yet even platinum or sometimes even diamond players (who have played hundreds if not thousands of games) fail their macro early on; it's always the small things, such as chrono boosting a few secs too early, getting a gas a few secs too late, stopping worker production for a few secs, etc. that adds up and snowballs into a weaker mid-game. Also, although debatable, surely a decent "all-purpose" opener for zergs would be 15 gas 14 pool into an expansion off speedlings? Of course it's ideal to hatch first zvt, but that's just 1 more slightly varied build order that a zerg player needs to learn. Once the natural is up, it's just OL sacrificial scout, then defending as needed with the ultimate goal of droning to ~50 on 2 bases, then pumping a unit composition of choice to pressure/kill while taking a third. In fact, zerg is probably the easiest race for improvement with the proper training because the mindset of the zerg player is pretty much the same in every matchup. | ||
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Monkeyballs25
531 Posts
Fair enough, I'm underestimating the macro differences between the leagues and you've got way more experience in both areas. And yeah 15 gas 14 pool sounds good in theory. But even the two things you mentioned off-hand -defending as needed and -pumping a unit composition of choice to pressure/kill Those are both MASSIVE aspects of the game for me that I've made loads of mistakes in. For example against Protoss. If they 4gate you probably need to cut drones in the mid 20s. If they FFE you probably need to drone to 50+. And unless you outmatch the opponent greatly in other areas then making the wrong choice will get you killed. Unit compositions also seem to vary tremendously across matchups. | ||
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Hipsv
135 Posts
What you are saying is basically if you had $100 and asked how you could get $2900 more to get a car, everyone would say get a job, and you are saying "But that's boring I want to make money on the stock market and investing instead". | ||
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Eps
Canada240 Posts
On October 07 2011 03:30 sleepingdog wrote: This is something I disagree in particular. Countless brain-research has shown that we learn way better when we focus on improving one thing at a time. Nobody learns playing the piano by just...playing the piece again and again, trying to play it as perfectly as possible. No, you start with one hand and study it piece by piece. If you have troubles with a certain passage, you focus on that passage only until you have it down. This holds true for each and every area of practice. You can't practice everything at once - even if it sounds good on paper, our brain simply doesn't work that way, you have to approach it step by step to achieve the best result. This is exactly why people like day9 tell the new players to play, say, 20 games where they should only try to keep their money low...then 20 games where they should try to not get supply-blocked etc. This may be true on some level, but the problem with the advice I see given is "work on Macro skills and do not care about other aspects of the game until you're Diamond/Masters. Then begin to look at Macro, Engagement, Builds and Strategies". It's as if the mentality of a lot of the players that the only thing that matters is Macro on the lower leagues and don't touch the other aspects of the game until you refined your Macro skills. I also dislike the examples of X-Pro player got into Diamond just Macroing and using X unit. They already have developed strategies, engagement techniques and know when to pull back and not overextend themselves. You can't compare a developed Pro-player's skill set to your regular bronze-plat level player that is still working on these categories. | ||
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DoctorFunk
160 Posts
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Soulriser
United States192 Posts
strategy<then macro. but when someone says "macro better", it means dick to a lower level player. you wouldnt have a coach tell his basketball players "oh, just practice everything a lot more". the coach would find the largest weakness in a player and then point it out, and then give him a suggestion on how to improve it. to the OP, theres a way to learn to macro better by finding a flaw(missing larvae, no creep spread, not using chronoboost or mules enough), and then working on correcting that flaw until you can do whatever it is consistently. Day9 did videos about that recently, and thats probably the best way to steadily improve your macro. | ||
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Zergnub
Sweden26 Posts
This obviously goes out the window when all of this is 'flawed'. What SHOULD work (for a pro) might not work at all for a nub like me. For example, countering muta play with infestors is something I find REALLY difficult, but Catz can routinely shut down all harassement with a few infestors. What is a working strat for him just blows for me, since I can't even micro the infestors properly, nor multitask good enough. Having said that though, just churning out roaches until I die is just plain boring, so I try to mix it up a bit regardless. That's fine, but I don't really expect anyone to be able to help me with the finer details until I got the macro issues down properly (no supply blocks, creep spread + injects). It's the same with anything, really... if you ask a world renowned violinist on how to play a certain classic piece when you've just started, I'm sure he would say something like "stop playing it like a f-ing banjo, and practice your scales". Might not be fun, but true, IF you want to get better as quickly as possible... | ||
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Hossinaut
United States453 Posts
Macro is something you wont get better at fast enough to keep getting better on ladder. Its not hard to practice macro. Load up a game with you only on a map and see how fast you can hit max, without supply block and without missing SCVs/Probes until like 80 and always using your larvae/production facilities AS SOON AS they're available. Macro is the easiest to practice, because its the lowest level of foundation for play in SC2, like any other RTS. Also, As soon as this timing push begins to stop killing your opponents outright, you'll be able to focus more on transitioning and macroing hard. theres no way to know how to transition and macro hard unless you have the foundation of macro-oriented play or at least practicing your macro. I taught a bronze friend of mine a macro drill, he instantly jumped a league. My winrate against P went north of 45% (which was well above where it was D: ) when I learned it. | ||
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Amaterasu1234
United States317 Posts
Higher level players will inevitably note your macro (it's something we look for because bad macro is huge) but, people will answer your question. Sure, it'll be convoluted with advice you don't want...but...it'll be answered nonetheless. | ||
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Rabid Wookie
United States68 Posts
Mechanics and Macro are completely intertwined and generally will grow at about the same rate. Strategy can't be optimalized without solid mechanics/macro. Game sense ("Star Sense") is only learned via experience. Having good mechanics and macro are required to use effective strategies. Beyond as I said earlier blatant poor unit composition choices or lack of detection strategy doesn't really come into play until your mechanics are solid. You can literally make a relatively short list of things that lower league players did wrong and just copy and paste it into each new topic asking why they lost and it will apply 99% of the time reguardless of what actually happened in the game. That is most of the reason why people just say to "Macro Better". If a bronze level Terran asked me how to deal with cloaked Banshee's the proper pro level player answer is Scout, is their a possibility of Banshee's? Yes then Either save up a scan or two and rely on micro until they can get a Viking/Raven out or start an Engineering Bay and rely on micro to hold off the Banshee's unless they're really commiting to them and then put down Turrets. That is the correct response but it's entirely reliant on game sense, micro, and macro to be effective as optimal means cutting as many corners in your build as possible. So do you just tell them to blindly put up Turrets if they see Gas when they scout, what if they don't scout, know the right time to scout, know what information to glean from scouting so you just tell them to always build an Engineering Bay and Turrets early on which can and will hurt them in any game someone's not going Banshee's against them. Now answering their question correctly isn't as easy as you'd think based on the bad level of play. Working on their macro though will help against the Banshee's letting them have more money to put up defenses or more units to defend so sometimes that is the only answer worth giving. Sure there are exceptions and even when macro is the problem people could actually tell them where their macro is failing and what the flaws in their strategy, but the strategies they're doing are rarely the problem and when they are it's often a very easy answer at that level such as don't go mass Hydra's agaisnt mass Collossi/Tank/Infestor. | ||
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Fishgle
United States2174 Posts
On October 07 2011 04:20 Amaterasu1234 wrote: Simple solution: phrase your question as "what counters the following strategy?" rather than "what did I do wrong?" when you provide a replay. Higher level players will inevitably note your macro (it's something we look for because bad macro is huge) but, people will answer your question. Sure, it'll be convoluted with advice you don't want...but...it'll be answered nonetheless. yea, usually i've found when lower league players ask for help, they just want to know how to win in that one specific instance, and not improve in general, which is why "macro" pisses them off. | ||
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mrsstinsfire123
13 Posts
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terran151
Canada103 Posts
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Soulriser
United States192 Posts
On October 07 2011 04:34 Rabid Wookie wrote: When I give advise it's normally in the realm of work on your macro and mechanics. While you're correct in that telling someone to Macro better isn't 100% the right answer it is often times the correct answer. There is plenty of information out there to help people understand the basic strategy of the game, X unit composition is a good idea against Y, there is no shortage of that information available so when someone posts why did I lose this and it's a blatant terrible unit composition against their opponents not only is that so very clear but for the amount of time they spent asking for help they could have looked up the answer themselves. Mechanics and Macro are completely intertwined and generally will grow at about the same rate. Strategy can't be optimalized without solid mechanics/macro. Game sense ("Star Sense") is only learned via experience. Having good mechanics and macro are required to use effective strategies. Beyond as I said earlier blatant poor unit composition choices or lack of detection strategy doesn't really come into play until your mechanics are solid. You can literally make a relatively short list of things that lower league players did wrong and just copy and paste it into each new topic asking why they lost and it will apply 99% of the time reguardless of what actually happened in the game. That is most of the reason why people just say to "Macro Better". If a bronze level Terran asked me how to deal with cloaked Banshee's the proper pro level player answer is Scout, is their a possibility of Banshee's? Yes then Either save up a scan or two and rely on micro until they can get a Viking/Raven out or start an Engineering Bay and rely on micro to hold off the Banshee's unless they're really commiting to them and then put down Turrets. That is the correct response but it's entirely reliant on game sense, micro, and macro to be effective as optimal means cutting as many corners in your build as possible. So do you just tell them to blindly put up Turrets if they see Gas when they scout, what if they don't scout, know the right time to scout, know what information to glean from scouting so you just tell them to always build an Engineering Bay and Turrets early on which can and will hurt them in any game someone's not going Banshee's against them. Now answering their question correctly isn't as easy as you'd think based on the bad level of play. Working on their macro though will help against the Banshee's letting them have more money to put up defenses or more units to defend so sometimes that is the only answer worth giving. Sure there are exceptions and even when macro is the problem people could actually tell them where their macro is failing and what the flaws in their strategy, but the strategies they're doing are rarely the problem and when they are it's often a very easy answer at that level such as don't go mass Hydra's agaisnt mass Collossi/Tank/Infestor. and this is exactly what the OP is talking about. "macro better" doesnt mean shit to anyone. people need to point out specific things for the person seeking help to work on. when my band writes a song, we dont just play it over and over until we think it sounds good, we work on one piece at a time until the whole thing comes together> macro better is the shittiest answer that anyone can have. even pros can macro better but no one says that. they say things like, "oh his creep spread wasnt that great" or "man he overdroned!". no caster just says, "god that Huk, he wouldve won that if he just macroed better!" when you tell someone to macro better, they dont know what to work on. if people gave specifics, then threads like this wouldnt happen. [im not flaming you or anything, you just happened to give a great example of what pisses everyone off] | ||
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machinations
United States25 Posts
Balance and metagame will make strategies change a ton, but if you have good fundamentals no balance or metagame shift will detract from your good macro. If you want to improve at this game and you're below diamond, the first place to look is your mechanics. If you really want to improve, you'll spend time specifically working on your mechanics instead of going on forums and looking for a new cute strategy to carry you through the lower leagues. Mechanics are the skeleton of your play, unless you have good mechanics, no amount of strategy will ever give you a strong win. Doing high level strategical analysis on sub diamond level mechanics is like trying to hang a painting on the wall drunk. No matter how straight and level you think you got the painting while you were intoxicated, you'll come back later to find that all the data you used to level the painting is invalid because your perceptions were skewed. | ||
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Birchling
Finland11 Posts
I feel like the true advantage I have is that i have a plan for mid-game so my macro doesn't fall apart as bad as my opponents so at the 17-23 min mark i usually just destroy them because i have more and better upgraded stuff. | ||
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