On October 12 2011 20:15 Lightspeaker wrote: 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.
Your analogy is, to be frank, terrible.
In soccer, you have one goal, get the ball into the net, the mechanics of how you do that involve running, passing, communicating with your team, etc...
In SC2, the mechanics of how you meet your goals are by mining resources, spending them effectively, etc... When we say "macro better", we mean focus on mechanics, and learn to spend that money! :D
If you go to a soccer player, and tell them to focus on their passing, and running lines, you'd be giving them the same advice as their coach. You could also get more specific and say something like when you have someone guarding you on the left you tend to over-shoot your mark.
The starcraft version of this would be something along these lines: You stop producing out of your barracks when you're distracted by a big battle. Or you don't notice anything on your minimap when you're building supply depots.
If a player had consistently poor macro throughout the game then the best analysis would be: "Your macro was bad, he built more shit than you and you died."
Let's say both people do the exact same build order, one of the executes it a full minute faster than the other player, who's gonna lose, and why?
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.
This is a different use of the word macro, when applying it to low level players, when we say macro, we really mean mechanics (spending the money, not necessarily collecting it).
In the Nada vs Kas game, you say taking a late third cost him the game, and that is not "macro" decision, that is a strategy decision, he has to have enough units to defend his third. Nada's mechanics are super super good, his "macro" was impeccable, but he got out mined so even though he was spending his money efficiently, his opponent had too much stuff.
Making a distinction between these two uses of the word macro is a must.....
On October 12 2011 20:15 Lightspeaker wrote: 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.
Your analogy is, to be frank, terrible.
In soccer, you have one goal, get the ball into the net, the mechanics of how you do that involve running, passing, communicating with your team, etc...
In SC2, the mechanics of how you meet your goals are by mining resources, spending them effectively, etc... When we say "macro better", we mean focus on mechanics, and learn to spend that money! :D
If you go to a soccer player, and tell them to focus on their passing, and running lines, you'd be giving them the same advice as their coach. You could also get more specific and say something like when you have someone guarding you on the left you tend to over-shoot your mark.
The starcraft version of this would be something along these lines: You stop producing out of your barracks when you're distracted by a big battle. Or you don't notice anything on your minimap when you're building supply depots.
If a player had consistently poor macro throughout the game then the best analysis would be: "Your macro was bad, he built more shit than you and you died."
Let's say both people do the exact same build order, one of the executes it a full minute faster than the other player, who's gonna lose, and why?
And, to be frank, you're missing the entire point.
In football you have overall one goal - to win. In Starcraft 2 you have overall one goal - to win.
How you go about that can be broken down into specific areas. In football this is broken down into your strike team, midfield, defence and goalkeeper. In Starcraft 2 this is broken down into (to throw a random example together, no idea if this covers everything) macro, mechanics, micro and game awareness/metagame.
However, each of those areas has specific aspects to it. A team might be losing because their defence is terrible. But if the manager turns around and says "defence is bad, defend better" thats not going to help the team win a game because its nowhere near specific enough; he is pointing out the problem area but not the actual problem. If he specifies that the marking isn't good enough, or they're not going for enough tackles, then the team knows what they need to concentrate on.
By the same token if a Starcraft player asks for advice on a replay and the reply is "macro better" thats not going to help them get better and win a game because its not specific enough. If the reply specifies "you got supply blocked at 5 minutes and stopped building units after the 8 minute mark and had poor saturation on your natural" then they're all specific problems that can be addressed.
The fundamental issue is if problems aren't actually pointed out then you can't address them. You might as well just say "play better and win". As a piece of advice its completely accurate, but its not exactly going to help anyone.
And I've got absolutely no idea where you're going with the last point. In that case you'd say: "you need to learn to execute your build order faster", or is that really so difficult compared with typing "macro better"?
There's no need to site specific reference to help someone out with there macro. Not producing from your barracks and food blocking all fall under the general sense of macro. You can tell him, your macro is bad, if he understands what that means he'll know, oh he is saying I'm not macroing well, it means I'm slack in so and so areas, and if he's determined enough, the player will go and look to spot when he's not macroing well. If we can't safely assume that the player understands the concepts of macro, that is when you give him examples to prove. Professional soccer players don't need to be told every little detail they often pick up on those themselves , when told something general like " oh you're not scoring on opportunities " . The player himself will then look for the little details that hace the overall, general, big impact. You only need to tell them where to look, and If they learn to spot their mistakes, its much better than telling them each and every mistake.
Tl;dr you can be general If the player can go spot his mistakes. If not then give them examples.
On October 13 2011 02:20 Smoodish wrote: There's no need to site specific reference to help someone out with there macro. Not producing from your barracks and food blocking all fall under the general sense of macro. You can tell him, your macro is bad, if he understands what that means he'll know, oh he is saying I'm not macroing well, it means I'm slack in so and so areas, and if he's determined enough, the player will go and look to spot when he's not macroing well. If we can't safely assume that the player understands the concepts of macro, that is when you give him examples to prove. Professional soccer players don't need to be told every little detail they often pick up on those themselves , when told something general like " oh you're not scoring on opportunities " . The player himself will then look for the little details that hace the overall, general, big impact. You only need to tell them where to look, and If they learn to spot their mistakes, its much better than telling them each and every mistake.
Tl;dr you can be general If the player can go spot his mistakes. If not then give them examples.
I do agree, but it is helpful for lower level players, and even high level players, if you point out more specific mistakes.
I, for example, have pretty good mechanics, and my macro rarely slips, so saying in general my macro is bad would be inaccurate and unhelpful, but whilst dealing with muta harass, I tend to forget my supply depots, and that is something that is helpful and I might not pick up on myself if you made a general comment like "you get supply blocked a lot".
yea of course, i was typing on my phone so i didnt want to add that but, so i'll go ahead and do it. BUT, if you have a good enough player who has good macro, you do have to help them out with more specific things, like stopping workers at certain moments, timings of 3'rd base, pointless/irrational things in build and unit composition. At higher levels is only when u need to worry about the really in depth specific details.
As far as the debate goes on the issue of whether "macro better" is a valid point of advice by itself, I don't think there's anything worth discussing. If someone says "macro better" and nothing else, they're being useless and demeaning. There are obvious factors external to this that has to be considered, like being able to defend while expanding, tips like not queueing, working on multi-tasking and speed, or even working on your client settings.
I agree with this totally. I have seen posts where someone is asking specific advice about a specific problem and all they get from a heap of posters trying to get post counts up is "Macro better". At times and in certain situations, especially longer games this can be valid but does not look at the specific problems - and often in shorter games is it is just not relevant.
People forget that in lower leagues there is a massive amount of cheese and one of the things a new player needs to learn is how to overcome that cheese. You can macro all you want but if the game is not going to last any longer than 6 minutes, then macro just does not come into it.
For me, getting out of Bronze was learning how to scout and then researching or talking to people about specific situations to know how to react to what I was seeing, especially the range of cheese that one constantly hits at that level. Once I could overcome a range of situations, I was suddenly turning quick losses into longer wins. At the same time I was learning to keep production of both units and workers going.
When I did get help from a grandmaster at one stage, having someone point out the specifics of where I thought my macro was good but where I was failing badly was the most helpful advice I ever received. If he had said at the time to "work on macro" it would have been absolutely no help at all to me.
Hi there guys, and thanks for posting this thread Plexa!
I have a quick more general question. To put it simply, I know my problem, and I am wondering if anyone else faces the same problem with success. I have A.D.D., and it really makes it hard for me to focus on my macro throughout the game. I lose focus a lot and forget to produce SCVs or expand, especially later in the game. I want to improve and get better though, and I think I can. I was just wondering if anyone else has the same issue and conquered it?
On October 13 2011 21:51 simian_sc wrote: Hi there guys, and thanks for posting this thread Plexa!
I have a quick more general question. To put it simply, I know my problem, and I am wondering if anyone else faces the same problem with success. I have A.D.D., and it really makes it hard for me to focus on my macro throughout the game. I lose focus a lot and forget to produce SCVs or expand, especially later in the game. I want to improve and get better though, and I think I can. I was just wondering if anyone else has the same issue and conquered it?
If not, feel free to ignore this post.
Don't even think about it or let it be used as an excuse. Just keep at it, like everyone else. If you take meds, make sure you use them. There's also a great thread on this:
Thank you Plexa. I am but an unhatched zergling egg (which is odd, since I play Terran currently), and have not yet ventured into posting replays for dissection and post-mortem largely because I know where my major weaknesses lie, and can find other resources inside and outside of TL to get tips and suggestions.
The thing that really bothers me about "macro better" or "constantly build SCVs, expand more" kind of replies (where there is no actual suggestions of how to do so) is a glaring lack of content. The thing that gets to me about "play more games and you'll get better" however is something very different. The idea that simply practicing more or playing more ladder games (without the benefit of giving suggestions on how to change play for the better) flies in the face of very well established basic learning theory. If you practice something over and over, yes you do get better at doing it; however, if you practice doing something the wrong way over and over, you only get better at doing it wrong. Being told to just play more games without any suggestions on how you can improve your mechanics, or how to eliminate a mistaken methodology/sequence, can help to solidly reinforce bad habits or mistakes and deeply entrench them. As a personal, bona fide SC2 example - "Macro better, make more SCVs, build production buildings, expand faster" are words I try to live by. And I practiced that for a few months but did it in a suboptimal way. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting faster until I came across the thread about how to improve APM if you are physically disabled. (I'm not.) I had never really realized the importance of positioning when it comes to hotkeys - I started from the right with a CC on 0, Rax on 6, fac on 7, etc. In my specific case (ymmv), having been taught a certain style of touch typing, it was a significant impediment to my macro - constantly dragging my hand out of position to make SCVs. I got faster at it, but identifying this one problem and (over a few weeks) changing my default hotkey arrangement made a significant improvement in the basic physical mechanics. But I'm still working to increase the speed, because my hand starts to drift over from reinforced physical habit when I think "CC - SCV". It'll change, in due time. (Okay, that's a bad example for improving game play, but a good example for "practicing something the wrong way only reinforces that wrong way".
TL;dr: Thank you Plexa. Not only will this help people posting for help, but it will also help people lurking and culling help from other people's threads. (Aka, don't have to sift through 50 "lol macro better nub" to get to "what you really should do is..." or 50 "help I can't beat X! Tell me how!")
On October 12 2011 20:15 Lightspeaker wrote: 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.
Dude, check out this guy's channel. That's what people need, basically. Now we need a T and Z analyst...
On October 12 2011 04:32 EnderSword wrote: A bit self promotional here, but fairly on topic,
Because I saw this sort of 'Macro Better' advice I started a YouTube channel looking at replays of Bronze/Silver/Gold games, with the intent of pointing out the actual lapses in Macro and basic strategy that occur during a game.
I certainly think saying Macro Better is valid, but I'm trying to very specifically point out when people seem to have macro trouble, why they seem to have trouble and how to actually improve it.
I think this is really the way people should be addressing lower level games, not just saying 'you did this wrong' by trying to give people techniques for remembering to do it right, showing them physically how to do it, highlighting the importance of it etc...
I also tend to mix in basic strategy stuff, because I think there are instances where games are not lost due to Macro alone, or are lost to a high order of Macro, such as failing to tech up, or failing to expand in time.
I also believe one of the largest deciders in low level success is based on how aggressive someone is. I try and point out differences between Attacking for a purpose and being aggressive for no reason, as well as the difference between Defending to gain an advantage long-term vs. Just being too Passive and defending with no plan.
While Macroing better is certainly the main building block, there's also no point in someone getting to Diamond on Macro alone and then learning strategy for the first time.
Okay, i havent read it all so just say if its already here, but im a masters protoss who rly cant see how to beat terran 111 build and apparently no terrans know how to do other builds. Im have started to get a bit frustrated over little the terran is doing while its a huge micro wars for the toss. I have tried with fast collussi, dts, blink stalkers/chargelots and immortal sentry but nothing works. Would love to know if any1 has the same problem and a solution or its just me.
On November 01 2011 03:09 Slashwhine wrote: Okay, i havent read it all so just say if its already here, but im a masters protoss who rly cant see how to beat terran 111 build and apparently no terrans know how to do other builds. Im have started to get a bit frustrated over little the terran is doing while its a huge micro wars for the toss. I have tried with fast collussi, dts, blink stalkers/chargelots and immortal sentry but nothing works. Would love to know if any1 has the same problem and a solution or its just me.
Idn how on topic this is but.... I'm only low master and but i think 1/1/1 has really lost its luster except on xel naga imho. Here's how i handle it
1 gate(robo) expo into 5 gate (4-6 stalkers 1-3 sentry rest zealots) and new sexy range 6 immortals(as many as you can chrono out) while trying not to get above 30-35 probes and staying on 2 gas seems to at least let the scenario come down to control. Trying to force sieges on the map is good too.
I've seen some players (tsl Killer iStime) try and go with blink to hold 1/1/1 but idn.
fast collosi is eh cause you stay even base which is just bad from an economics perspective
dt- he can get a raven relatively easily from his tech lab starport
blink- I've seen it but I feel like you need to outplay your opponent with it, but idn
immo/sentry- i believe the general rule is to not get above 2 or 3 sentries against a 1/1/1. The reasoning being that siege tanks hard counter FF play so the only use of sentry is guardian shield.
Yea, but the problem is that it is on xel'naga caverns and i like the map in other match ups so rly dont want to down vote it but thanks for the quick and good response.
EPT
but thanks for the quick and good response.
