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To Those Seeking Strategy Advice - Page 4

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
109 CommentsPost a Reply
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Attiicus
Profile Joined November 2010
United States84 Posts
October 11 2011 23:57 GMT
#61
Plexa's macro > my macro haha

I have been guilty of asking for advice before looking threw the replay in its entirety before. So i can understand how its a kneejerk reaction to just not think about it and ask. But i can agree that this needs to be posted. Even if just to remind people that losing is a part of the game, and all you did was make a mistake somewhere. Find it. Its what will make anyone grow to understand the game better.
skatbone
Profile Joined August 2010
United States1005 Posts
October 12 2011 00:05 GMT
#62
Seriously cool of you to formally address this, Plexa. I'm not one of frustrated parties, but I believe in this kind of moderation. Thanks for your work here.
Mercurial#1193
E.H Eager
Profile Joined August 2011
United States227 Posts
October 12 2011 00:15 GMT
#63
Thank you. This will hopefully make the strategy forum a lot more helpful of a place for all.
turdburgler
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
England6749 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-12 00:16:59
October 12 2011 00:16 GMT
#64
On October 12 2011 06:06 NM wrote:
Show nested quote +
It's the exact same as every sport. When you're at soccer practice, you run basic drills and conditioning all practice long to work on specific things, and at the very end you scrimmage. You can go down the line from sport to sport and the fundamentals are what you MUST emphasize first, strategy last.


I think the issue for the lowest level players is that they approach SC2 as a game to have fun and not a competitive sport. Maybe the problem is asking for help in the first place. For some of us we're having fun and our time is limited. I don't want to get out of silver by building a bunch of marines on 2 bases every game even though I can. I want to drop nukes.

So maybe the issue is people having fun playing who don't want to approach the game as a competitive sport. We don't want to learn how to pass the ball or make free throws; we want a trampoline so we can dunk.


but if you are playing purely for fun, and aiming to win as your main objective isnt you're source of fun, wtf are you doing making strat threads asking for help. you're whole mind set is that you dont give a fuck so why are you basiclly trolling people into helping you?

also jibba, wtf is a "free throw shooter" in soccer? :D
qrs
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
United States3637 Posts
October 12 2011 00:27 GMT
#65
On October 12 2011 00:39 Plexa wrote:

Try to answer the users questions or pinpoint there mistakes...
In this spirit...
'As per the American Heart Association, the beat of the Bee Gees song "Stayin' Alive" provides an ideal rhythm in terms of beats per minute to use for hands-only CPR. One can also hum Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust".' —Wikipedia
price
Profile Joined December 2010
United States297 Posts
October 12 2011 01:13 GMT
#66
On October 12 2011 08:19 Eliezar wrote:
I wish I had a vod of the Nada GSL game where he got totally outmacrod by a protoss player...was behind an expo, had no vikings, and was facing a larger protoss army with all marine/marauder and like 3 medivacs and yet he beat the army.


Not to beat up on Nada, but he played Kas in the TSL3 (I believe) and was completely outmacroed by Kas, too. In that case, Nada did not do so well. To me (in my simplistic view) it seems like the mistake there came from the late timing of taking a 3rd, but I have not seen these games since they aired.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Flamingo777
Profile Joined October 2010
United States1190 Posts
October 12 2011 01:18 GMT
#67
This needed to be done. Thanks Plexa!
Karis Vas Ryaar
Profile Blog Joined July 2011
United States4396 Posts
October 12 2011 01:37 GMT
#68
how do you scout for expos as terran and how often should you do it?

I lost a game because I got an early lead and took the gold as my 3rd then just macro'd and he took his entire side of the map.

also how fast should the third and later bases be put down in a normal game where nothing weird happens?

"I'm not agreeing with a lot of Virus's decisions but they are working" Tasteless. Ipl4 Losers Bracket Virus 2-1 Maru
J.E.G.
Profile Joined May 2010
United States389 Posts
October 12 2011 01:37 GMT
#69
Thanks. Somehow missed to replay analysis thread, so thanks for linking to that, if anything.
Do or do not; there is no try.
Emporio
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States3069 Posts
October 12 2011 02:47 GMT
#70
While we're on the subject of improving topic quality, there's been a large rise in the "I'm T work so I can't watch your replay" type posts. I know that this got cracked down on, but now I don't see any moderation for it anymore. I mean, sometimes I think it's okay to simply add in your thoughts without watching the replay be because there's some question the OP asked or some topic under discussion, but I feel like the phrase, "didn't watch the replay" should be taken as seriously as martyring. Just post what you're going to say without the quantifying remark is what I think is best.
How does it feel knowing you wasted another 3 seconds of your life reading this again?
Fakie
Profile Joined October 2010
Canada62 Posts
October 12 2011 03:11 GMT
#71
I was nodding my head in agreement the whole time until I saw you misspelled "their" with "there".

The head nodding turned into a facepalm.
Silentness
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States2821 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-12 03:26:50
October 12 2011 03:18 GMT
#72
On October 12 2011 04:47 AGIANTSMURF wrote:
Did anyone catch the panel at IPL3 with huk, stephano idra and whitera?

There was a guy who asked how to improve and later asked if there were any "Tricks" to improving on macro such as getting workers to mine faster etc.......

I feel like there is just some common misconception from lower league players where they think we are hiding special combo moves or are using tactics other then micro to achieve higher level's of skill.

honestly i dont think there is a way to get them to understand outside of just saying the same thing and hoping they get it eventually.

The lower league players who do understand that the game is about macro imo have already been following the OP guideline and dont need any extra lecturing


This reminds me of when I first started playing Brood War in Korea. A Korean guy was trying to teach me Terran and he would always tell me always keep making SCVs and stuff.

Basically there really is no special trick and some lower league players don't realize that. They just need to keep making worker units. Saturate your bases, saturate your bases, and repeat that over and over. Sharpen your build orders, get the timings down one build at a time, and keep up with production buildings, upgrades, and army production etc.

I know I keep bringing up BW which is different from SC2, but the big thing about BW was that you should never really be focusing 100% on the battles going on in game. Your camera should be constantly alternating from production buildings, multi tasking at mutiple areas on the map, and etc. You can tell this by just watching some of the SC2 pro games. You'll see Puma or another Korean terran player doing multiple drops at different expos on the map and stimming two different groups of marines to try and overwhelm the Zerg opponent. You can't really just focus on one thing at once... you have to keep up with production, rallying army, and micro all at once.

I agree though that saying macro better is a poor response. Someone could probably have incredible macro, but just have a really bad army composition. Hopefully the responses in strategy threads will not result back to "oh your platinum league, you just need to work on your macro and you can instantly get diamond." That doesn't help anyone... Look at the replay and point out exactly what is wrong. They don't have their 3rd expo out in time, their army size is too small, upgrades are lagging behind etc, not enough production buildings at a certain point in the game.
GL HF... YOLO..lololollol.
Azzur
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Australia6259 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-12 03:31:47
October 12 2011 03:30 GMT
#73
I think a major consequence of enforcing this forum policy is that the [H] posters will need to up their game. Many times I see a replay where there are glaring execution (or macro) mistakes. And then many posters will then say, "yes, I know I macro'ed bad, but what else can I improve on?"

I'll go through the replay and will point out the mistakes:
- supply block at XXX, YYY and ZZZ.
- non-production of workers
- idle production buildings
etc

In reality, these mistakes are very obvious and the poster themselves should be able to pick them out. If all the low-level posters followed the [H] guidelines, in reality, 90% of the posts won't even need to be posted.

However, to be fair, I've seen a few replays where the "macro better" didn't apply:
- There was a game where the terran made 90+ workers in a 4-5 base vs 4-5 base long macro game.
- Another game I saw the terran with 5000+ gas at the end and very very very few medivacs.
Silentness
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States2821 Posts
October 12 2011 03:34 GMT
#74
On October 12 2011 12:30 Azzur wrote:
I think a major consequence of enforcing this forum policy is that the [H] posters will need to up their game. Many times I see a replay where there are glaring execution (or macro) mistakes. And then many posters will then say, "yes, I know I macro'ed bad, but what else can I improve on?"

I'll go through the replay and will point out the mistakes:
- supply block at XXX, YYY and ZZZ.
- non-production of workers
- idle production buildings
etc

In reality, these mistakes are very obvious and the poster themselves should be able to pick them out. If all the low-level posters followed the [H] guidelines, in reality, 90% of the posts won't even need to be posted.

However, to be fair, I've seen a few replays where the "macro better" didn't apply:

- Another game I saw the terran with 5000+ gas at the end and very very very few medivacs.


In a way you can say that is poor macro. They aren't producing enough medivacs even though they have a surplus of gas.
GL HF... YOLO..lololollol.
Zdrastochye
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Ivory Coast6262 Posts
October 12 2011 06:30 GMT
#75
Well to be fair, some people do need (inb4 general term) "better macro". Some people just need to play more. Assuming the average TL user at least watches SOME professional play, or even the play of a masters level player, they're bound to see what to shoot for. I know better macro is really a term for just better play overall (obviously excluding micro) but sometimes that is what a person could use the most. I mean, how do you focus on just the bad things a bronze level player does? It's enormous and overwhelming.
Hey! How you doin'?
Treadmill
Profile Joined July 2010
Canada2833 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-12 06:59:34
October 12 2011 06:58 GMT
#76
I think a big part of the problem with "macro better" has to do with a flaw in how we understand things - we tend to mistake something simple for something easy. I think that may be the main reason there was such a shitstorm in the other thread. When people are told they should do something simple they'd take offense because they think if there was such an easy answer they'd already be pros; when people give the advice they may forget that "macroing better" is not easy, it's what professionals spend hours every day working on.

Insisting on more detail is a good move. Not only because it'll mean better (and less confrontational) help and advice, but perhaps because it'll foster better awareness of the level and depth of skill that is involved in this game. There may be simple answers but there are seldom easy ones.
Chaosvuistje
Profile Joined April 2010
Netherlands2581 Posts
October 12 2011 07:07 GMT
#77
I like the initiative

I'll go from 'macro better' to 'understand the metagame' :D confuse them some more. Just joking of course.
CatNzHat
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1599 Posts
October 12 2011 11:12 GMT
#78
I think that low level players are probably not good enough to be able to tell when a game was equally horribly macro'd on both sides, so I don't think this thread will have too much of an impact on the strategy forums, but the big problem is that the low level players aren't going to be focusing on mechanics, and therefore they're still gonna be losing purely because of "bad macro". Holding an expansion has very little to do with the discussion of how to "macro better", as someone who macros well on 1 base can usually just walk up with whatever and a-move through you even if you've already outmined them by more than the expo cost.

People who know their mechanics are poor should be asking for build orders and mechanical help, not "strategy" help, as if they execute a high-level build well, they will not lose with it at a low level of play.


All of this of course is assuming that the person posting a help me thread actually wants to improve as best as they can.


That's just my thoughts on the sc2 learning process, I was in bronze league in January, having never played an RTS game before in my life, and now I'm sitting at 1400+ masters, I got here on mechanics and pro builds, and I only delved into strategy when I was starting to figure things out at around high diamond, before that I just worked on executing my build orders well.
-Celestial-
Profile Joined September 2011
United Kingdom3867 Posts
October 12 2011 11:15 GMT
#79
To add to the analogies:
Lets say you've got a football player (soccer to you americans); lets make him a striker. Now you find that his team is losing a lot and you watch a couple of games of him and they keep losing because he isn't scoring goals. So you say to him "you need to score goals better, practice scoring goals" and nothing else.

Your player isn't going to get any better and is just going to get frustrated because its fundamentally unhelpful to just say "score more goals" because its so generic. Now if you point out to the player that he's getting lots of shots but not many on goal and that its his accuracy thats the problem then he can work on that. Perhaps its his positioning, or his speed, or any of a number of other aspects that a striker needs to score a goal. If you're specific the player can work on it, if you're not then they have no idea exactly whats going wrong and so actually improving is going to just take a lot of guessing to see what works. In which case you've done absolutely nothing to help.


To take this to Starcraft 2; you've got a player who keeps losing games. You look at his gameplay and finds its because his macro is bad. You say "your macro is bad, practice your macro". Thats not going to help anyone. However if you point out he stops producing workers after a few minutes, or forgets to chronoboost or has inactive production structures then these are specific aspects of his game that are a problem. And consequently gives him something to actually focus on and get better. Otherwise they're going to be left just guessing to see what they need to do their macro that works.
"Protoss simultaneously feels unbeatably strong and unwinnably weak." - kcdc
Plexa
Profile Blog Joined October 2005
Aotearoa39261 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-12 11:31:23
October 12 2011 11:30 GMT
#80
On October 12 2011 20:12 CatNzHat wrote:
I think that low level players are probably not good enough to be able to tell when a game was equally horribly macro'd on both sides, so I don't think this thread will have too much of an impact on the strategy forums, but the big problem is that the low level players aren't going to be focusing on mechanics, and therefore they're still gonna be losing purely because of "bad macro". Holding an expansion has very little to do with the discussion of how to "macro better", as someone who macros well on 1 base can usually just walk up with whatever and a-move through you even if you've already outmined them by more than the expo cost.

People who know their mechanics are poor should be asking for build orders and mechanical help, not "strategy" help, as if they execute a high-level build well, they will not lose with it at a low level of play.


All of this of course is assuming that the person posting a help me thread actually wants to improve as best as they can.


That's just my thoughts on the sc2 learning process, I was in bronze league in January, having never played an RTS game before in my life, and now I'm sitting at 1400+ masters, I got here on mechanics and pro builds, and I only delved into strategy when I was starting to figure things out at around high diamond, before that I just worked on executing my build orders well.
Issues with understanding can be resolved quite simply. There is a comprehensive guide to analysing replays which is linked in the OP. If people read that and follow its advice then they will have a much better grasp on when things were equal or not. And if the game wasn't equal and the person thought it was, that's okay. We're not here to punish lack of understanding, we're here to punish laziness.
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