There has been one thread in the strategy forum that has stirred up quite the debate. Of course, I am talking about [D] Why us lower level players hate "macro better". I've come to the conclusion that the debate should be addressed in the form of some level of forum regulation otherwise we won't get anywhere.
You see, a lot of replays posted on this website have one player winning simply because he macrod better than his opponent. Obviously, this leads to people saying the solution is the 'macro better' which can be frustrating. Conversely, I also see that when people post replays where macro was even on both sides higher level players still say 'macro better'. While true, it is vacuous advice as this could be applied to any level and the mistake made in game that decided the outcome was not macro.
As such, I'm going to try my best to enforce some standards around replays that are posted for advice. Similarly, I'm going to be warning/banning people who post 'macro better' to replays that need more than that (without any other content in their post, obviously).
To Those Seeking Advice:
Understand that the only way to make significant improvements in Starcraft is to macro better. This means spending minerals, having a fine tuned build, expanding at good timings and building workers. Just because I'm trying to crack down on 'macro better' as advice doesn't mean you can outright ignore it.
If you lost because of macro.... we will permit specific questions about macro. Do not ask for generic advice, ask for specific advice based off of replays.
Example: he was able to get an expansion up and he held an economic lead all game, what should I do in response to this after my opening from the replay?
Example: he was able to keep denying my expansion by doing XYZ, what should I have done to be able to expand?
If you didn't lose because of macro... provide some analysis of the game in question, and if possible pinpoint some areas you think were mistakes. We will view the replay and provide our thoughts on the game. The more specific you are with your questions the better chance you'll get something out of it.
If you claim that the game is an even macro game when it clearly isn't, you will be facing warnings/bans. So please, watch the damn replay before posting it.
The more effort you put into your post the more effort people will put in to help you - why would we bother helping people who put in no time to analyse or assess their own play?
To Those Giving Advice
Please don't respond simply by 'macro better' - if there is a help thread which does not meet the specifications I've set out above then report it or PM me.
Always view the replay.... this should go without saying, generic advice isn't useful. If a user has put in a lot of effort into a thread then please put in the same effort in your response. That way the whole community benefits and the strat forum looks better.
Try to answer the users questions or pinpoint their mistakes... while an entire overview of their play can be useful, first and foremost advice should address the biggest problems in the game. For instance, if there was an even engagement but the user mucked up his micro and that battle decided the game then that would be the problem that needs addressing - not that he was missing probes and being supply blocked - those are supplementary things which can be mentioned but should be able to identified by the user anyway. I know this seems odd, but this will provide better help for people than the generic stuff.
If you have any questions about the above please PM me or comment in this thread.
On October 12 2011 00:42 Zorkmid wrote: I think that "Macro better" is fine as long as specific aspects about how they COULD macro better are pointed out.
Saying "Macro Better" without qualifying it is basically like saying "you suck"
He's saying that it's fine to point out how they can improve their build and macro, as long as you actually answer the questions they ask in the OP, and I agree with him on that.
He's also saying that people need to put thought into their replays before posting to ask for help, and if they see macro mistakes that clearly caused a loss (the game was clearly not an even macro game) then they can't post anymore claiming that they lost because of something else, and they need to ask questions related to how they fell behind economically, which I also agree with.
At least I hope that's what you were saying Plexa =)
On October 12 2011 00:42 Zorkmid wrote: I think that "Macro better" is fine as long as specific aspects about how they COULD macro better are pointed out.
Saying "Macro Better" without qualifying it is basically like saying "you suck"
He's saying that it's fine to point out how they can improve their build and macro, as long as you actually answer the questions they ask in the OP, and I agree with him on that.
He's also saying that people need to put thought into their replays before posting to ask for help, and if they see macro mistakes that clearly caused a loss (the game was clearly not an even macro game) then they can't post anymore claiming that they lost because of something else, and they need to ask questions related to how they fell behind economically, which I also agree with.
At least I hope that's what you were saying Plexa =)
Precisely, both sides of the coin need to be putting in effort. And if you observe people slaking then report it so that it can be dealt with.
On October 12 2011 00:47 Lightspeaker wrote: Good idea for a policy. Should help keep the number of poor quality threads and posts to a minimum.
It's not just about that-- it's also about having these poor quality threads and posts become high quality threads and posts, rather than just go away. If someone wants to take advice, it's much better that they learn the guidelines and make a well-thought-out post than not post at all. And if someone wants to give advice, it's important that they do so in a way that will be helpful.
I'm glad this was posted. It's unfortunate that we live in a world where something like this would need to be specified, but it's fortunate that there is a Plexa in this world to specify it. This mirrors a lot of my thoughts.
Fundamentally, there isn't a difference between someone posting and saying "macro better" and someone posting and saying "play better"-- unsupported by specifics on how to do so, telling someone to improve their macro when they're asking for help is like telling a student that he needs to improve his grades when he's asking for study tips.
I thank you plexa for this I have seen so many posts of new players that want to improve, provide replays, give some semblance of why they lost, even go as far as asking what can they do differently and after checking the posters league a lot of people just say "oh you're in silver/bronze/gold all you have to do is macro better don't worry about anything else" yeah sure but HOW do I macro better ? I've had games where I'm up in supply, up in workers, up in bases yet I can't win; maybe because a bad engagement (attacking with ling/roach against stlaker/collosi in a choke or flying my mutas through a pack of marine/thor for example) and I don't post them here because people will just say "Oh macro better and since you're gold you can literally make whatever unit you want" and those types of posts really discourage new players such as myself to even play the game. Like Ligthspeaker said let's keep the poor quality threads and post to a minimum.
This is good stuff. I largely stopped watching people's replays due to most of them having little to no analysis as well as glaring macro holes. I hope people start posting better replays with better analysis and good questions and also people actually take the time to watch replays and give good, specific advice.
I'm really glad that this was posted. It should help alleviate a lot of the terrible advice people have been getting and it should help lower league players realize that while several things can go wrong, macroing better is always a good course of action to take.
On October 12 2011 01:43 imjorman wrote: I'm really glad that this was posted. It should help alleviate a lot of the terrible advice people have been getting and it should help lower league players realize that while several things can go wrong, macroing better is always a good course of action to take.
Great write up admin :D
I think you may have misunderstood the OP a little bit.
Good call. I see both sides of the arguement and agree that if slightly more effort was put in by both sides before posting it would raise the quality of the forum.
Is there a level at which we actually can just say macro better? Obviously as long as you are making workers, having enough production buildings and expanding at the right time you should get to X league.
I'm guessing this is more about saying "always create workers" to someone that has a [H] thread and is in bronze to help them out. If they say "we had equally bad macro so I'm looking for X strategy to counter their build" the people posting to help can still say you need to do XYZ before being able to worry about strategy portion. Then after that link them to general strategy on Liquipedia if they want to learn more units in relation to each other (in the respective match-ups).
I do agree that people should be more specific though and "macro better" isn't specific at all. Instead of just saying macro better we will just have to point out the amount of time their command centers are idle and how late they expanded or how much they were supply blocked...etc
That thread reminds me of the Karate Kid, except instead Ralph Machio tells Mr. Miyagi to fuck off and wax his own car, and then writes a blog about why he can't ask Ali out because he doesn't want to ruin their friendship.
On October 12 2011 04:26 Demonace34 wrote: Is there a level at which we actually can just say macro better? Obviously as long as you are making workers, having enough production buildings and expanding at the right time you should get to X league.
If its a straight up and down macro loss, then PM a mod/report it so we can close it. I really don't see any situation where 'macro better' without anything else is useful.
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.
This is a very true statement. People are very quick to bash the other player and not pay attention to their own mistakes. I feel like watching replays gives you 90% the awnsers you need. You may of found the problem but all you need is to find the solution
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
I suggest to my fellow low-level players a strategy to get better non-"macro better" advice: post replays where your macro was superior and you still lost. I think that might help others give you advice by focusing on mistakes of micro, positioning, unit composition, etc.
On October 12 2011 04:40 juked wrote: This is a very true statement. People are very quick to bash the other player and not pay attention to their own mistakes. I feel like watching replays gives you 90% the awnsers you need. You may of found the problem but all you need is to find the solution
Generic advice like "macro better" should be forbidden altogether. Its the same as saying "play better", which doesnt help either. Its an arbitrary term that doesnt exactly explain what couldve been done better.
If someone didnt manage to spend all his minerals because he forgot to build units out of his production facilities, then just point out that he has to focus on not forgetting to build units. If he did build units continuously, but his minerals piled up anyways, then point out that he needs more production facilities in order to spend all his minerals.
Dont advice players to expand, UNLESS they can spend all their money off 1 base, otherwise they are using APM on something that doesnt benefit their current game, instead of focusing on spending all minerals from 1 base.
I once made the mistake of trying to explain to my friend (platinum), that he needs to expand faster as zerg. He completely fell apart. His minerals piled up pretty bad and he forgot to build anything at all. Expanding is a way to increase ones income and capability of producing units, but if a player cant spend his minerals from 1 base yet, then he absolutely shouldnt be expanding.
On October 12 2011 04:27 Jibba wrote: That thread reminds me of the Karate Kid, except instead Ralph Machio tells Mr. Miyagi to fuck off and wax his own car, and then writes a blog about why he can't ask Ali out because he doesn't want to ruin their friendship.
I think the point of that thread was that Mr. Miyagi was just telling the kid to clean his car, and then Ralph vacuums and picks up the trash in the back, while spending a little time waxing the car. The waxxing is fine, but Mr. Miyaga can can get the crumbs out of the seems of his chair his own damn self.
I have to say I feel like the 'macro better' thing is often misrepresented in so far as it's typically only quantified as 'spending your money'. Perhaps a reason here is because many of the people who give this advice have done a lot of grinding and copying from better players yet their understanding/analysis isn't really there. However production is only 50% of macro, the more important part of macro that new players need to learn about is how to manage their economy and this isn't talked about quite enough. It's well enough that you need to spend your money, but it paints a more complete picture for a newer player if they also realise how many minerals per minute they are getting from a saturated base or how it influences their build that they have 10 workers too few and so on.
As I'm only a mid-high masters player and feel like my understanding is some-what limited here, I'll hand off the detail to sheths great post there. My main point however is that, regardless of anything, you need to understand how to manage your economy correctly - how/if/when you should grow your economy in X situation - am I droning fast enough, am I getting supply capped and so on. Spending money is the easy part imo. Although, spending is also made easier by having the correct amount of production for your income, which is easier to identify if you know how many minerals per minute your 3base economy is giving you etc.
I think if players are having problems with the production side of macro, then it's just a mechanics thing. My advice there is to look at how good players setup their mechanics for their macroing with regards to hotkeys/habitual behaviour. Perhaps one of the most important things here for terran/protoss and somewhat zerg is Cycling. Constantly cycling through your control groups allows you to be able to constantly check everything, good players often never have stationery units or forces, they are repeatedly tabbing through and issuing commands and checking the status of everything under their command.
Hopefully I'm not talking out of my arse and someone finds something here useful, gl hf!
I read his post, and to be honest, what he said is just 100% wrong. So I find it kind of weird you'd read his post as factual, when in fact it's completely inaccurate. If you read the majority of help topics, they're nothing like what he claimed they are. I looked at 10-15 help posts, and not a single person simply said macro better.
On October 12 2011 04:27 Jibba wrote: That thread reminds me of the Karate Kid, except instead Ralph Machio tells Mr. Miyagi to fuck off and wax his own car, and then writes a blog about why he can't ask Ali out because he doesn't want to ruin their friendship.
I think the point of that thread was that Mr. Miyagi was just telling the kid to clean his car, and then Ralph vacuums and picks up the trash in the back, while spending a little time waxing the car. The waxxing is fine, but Mr. Miyaga can can get the crumbs out of the seems of his chair his own damn self.
Karate Kid analogy aside, there is an abundance of resources available on TL that should get anyone into Masters. The worst posters here have no willingness to work or research on their own and they drag the forum down, by looking for quick outs to win games when their number one problem is that their fundamental gameplay is rotten and needs to be rebuilt.
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. Working on the complete package at once, which is what you're doing when you're delving into strategy and timings as a Gold player, is detrimental to your overall learning and will impede your progress. I think these people are being coddled, as we've seen with numerous threads about people who can't wrap their head around cheese or are intimidated by the ladder. You scout, you macro and you expand. People should be taught how to do those, but beyond that is somewhat superfluous until the upper levels and will be picked up naturally anyways through experience. I think 95% of strategy forum threads would be unnecessary if people used some elbow grease, so to speak.
'macro better' is a low content post that should not be tolerated in the Strategy forums, but likewise the people making threads should be putting a lot more effort in than they usually do, and not become indignant when people tell them that their fundamentals are extremely poor.
I feel like the normal response in Strategy when someone tells them to improve their macro is "yeah, but what about besides that", brushing it off as if it's only a minority share of the problem. The proper response should be "ok, I'll work on that first. Anything else?" taking ownership of their weakness and realizing it's the key to advancement, everything else is tertiary.
Sticky this now. Most people who've been on TL for >2-3 weeks know the deal and, I've see some really well done "help me" threads. It's the newcomers who don't know how to properly post those threads that need this advice the most. Sticky it, just in the hopes that the people with under 10 posts actually read it before uploading their replay and saying "why did I lose".
I am glad that people are realizing that improving your macro isn't something that happens over night, it simply takes good hard practice. People can improve on other parts of their game, while improving their macro. If you just work on your macro and mass zerglings, you are not going to feel comfortable macroing something like roach/baneling drops. Different builds and different strategies rely on very different expansion timings, gas timings, tech, upgrades, scouting, aggressive and defensive play and people can learn these things while improving their macro. It doesn't help very much to learn one without the other.
On October 12 2011 04:27 Jibba wrote: That thread reminds me of the Karate Kid, except instead Ralph Machio tells Mr. Miyagi to fuck off and wax his own car, and then writes a blog about why he can't ask Ali out because he doesn't want to ruin their friendship.
I think the point of that thread was that Mr. Miyagi was just telling the kid to clean his car, and then Ralph vacuums and picks up the trash in the back, while spending a little time waxing the car. The waxxing is fine, but Mr. Miyaga can can get the crumbs out of the seems of his chair his own damn self.
Karate Kid analogy aside, there is an abundance of resources available on TL that should get anyone into Masters. The worst posters here have no willingness to work or research on their own and they drag the forum down, by looking for quick outs to win games when their number one problem is that their fundamental gameplay is rotten and needs to be rebuilt.
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. Working on the complete package at once, which is what you're doing when you're delving into strategy and timings as a Gold player, is detrimental to your overall learning and will impede your progress. I think these people are being coddled, as we've seen with numerous threads about people who can't wrap their head around cheese or are intimidated by the ladder. You scout, you macro and you expand. People should be taught how to do those, but beyond that is somewhat superfluous until the upper levels and will be picked up naturally anyways through experience. I think 95% of strategy forum threads would be unnecessary if people used some elbow grease, so to speak.
'macro better' is a low content post that should not be tolerated in the Strategy forums, but likewise the people making threads should be putting a lot more effort in than they usually do, and not become indignant when people tell them that their fundamentals are extremely poor.
I think that is an issue that this op addresses. He acknowledges that clear macro losses should not be posted, and then diverges from your opinion slightly when saying that in an even macro game we should point out other flaws. My point is this though, just saying macro better, or to work on fundamentals is not helpful. Every player is different and has different hurdles to surpass in their macro. By looking at replays, you can say that they don't cycle enough, so they aren't aware. Or maybe they cycle TOO much and are not processing the information. The point is that macro itself is not 'fundamental' it can be broken down into very distinct parts, where some people will need to have very specific help with. You can't just tell a soccer/football player to juggle the ball better, just practice on juggling to ball. The good mentor will watch their technique and say, your reading the movement of the ball this way, but this other way is correct'. Macro is just as complicated as micro for many people.
On October 12 2011 05:32 CookieMaker wrote: Plexa,
Sticky this now. Most people who've been on TL for >2-3 weeks know the deal and, I've see some really well done "help me" threads. It's the newcomers who don't know how to properly post those threads that need this advice the most. Sticky it, just in the hopes that the people with under 10 posts actually read it before uploading their replay and saying "why did I lose".
I believe this was stickied as it was posted :D
Hopefully, this sticky will lead to a new dawn for our people this board, where all shall feel the grace of good macro and good macro advice, and our darkest nature shall be turned aside by quality posting habits.
A new era is upon us, CookieMaker. May this sticky stand the test of time! *drinks*
I can only hope that people read this sticky, and those that do not are pointed to it until all understand the glory that is good strategy posting.
On October 12 2011 05:35 Camail wrote: You can't just tell a soccer/football player to juggle the ball better, just practice on juggling to ball.
Yes, you can. You don't need a shooting coach to be a good free throw shooter, you just need to practice it over and over, even if your form is bad. Even Day9 talks about it. You improve your APM by playing faster. You force yourself to play faster, and the rest of your brain activities will catch up. A prime example of this with TONS of evidence to back it up is speed reading.
On October 12 2011 05:35 Camail wrote: You can't just tell a soccer/football player to juggle the ball better, just practice on juggling to ball.
Yes, you can. You don't need a shooting coach to be a good free throw shooter, you just need to practice it over and over, even if your form is bad. Even Day9 talks about it. You improve your APM by playing faster. You force yourself to play faster, and the rest of your brain activities will catch up. A prime example of this with TONS of evidence to back it up is speed reading.
I was mistaken in using other sports as an analogy. Because part of my reasoning as that macro isn't just one thing. Your going under the assumption that we can block of this entire thing as 'macro' and we can deal with it all as one thing. For some people this is true, and we can tell them to go off and just play. In fact, that just might work for everyone, but does that mean its the only way? Wouldn't you rather have someone help you? Even if you don't, not everyone wants to rise through the ranks independently, we are a community, and some people learn better if they can have help. If you don't want to help them its fine, but you shouldn't force someone to learn the way you want them to learn.
edit: The last part of that statement is the only important part.
On October 12 2011 05:01 gh0un wrote: I once made the mistake of trying to explain to my friend (platinum), that he needs to expand faster as zerg. He completely fell apart. His minerals piled up pretty bad and he forgot to build anything at all. Expanding is a way to increase ones income and capability of producing units, but if a player cant spend his minerals from 1 base yet, then he absolutely shouldnt be expanding.
This is kinda funny to hear - when my girlfriend started playing, she got through about half the campaign on easy and then started laddering. She lost pretty often and was seated in Bronze. I watched her play, and as protoss she grabbed an expansion around 7 minutes after building a decent army. I asked why she expanded and she said she can build a bigger army if she mines more. Then the opponent comes at her with something like banshees or thors and she doesn't know what to do and dies =(
On topic, I agree that if both players in a replay were equal macro and the OP made strategic incorrect decisions that it's pointless to say 'you would have won if you had better macro'. Macro is something everyone is always developing, you cant disregard all other aspects of the game until macro is perfect.
I remember a while back there was the big thread about posting in the Strategy section with a huge list of dos and don'ts, and everybody was happy about the overall improvement that such a clear outline would have on the section itself.
It is painfully obvious, however, that some people still don't put a lot of thought into why they lose or are actually completely unable to identify their own weaknesses. Sometimes, I feel like people just post arbitrarily seeking solutions that aren't there, since they either lack the macro or multitasking to execute the help you try to give them. Telling them to macro better or to focus on not being supply blocked and making constant SCVs and units is often the best advice you can give. I suppose you could point out the 6 times they got supply blocked in your reply or tell them they stopped researching upgrades after +1 and lost to a 3-3 army later in the game, but they should honestly be able to see that for themselves.
That old thread back in the day seemed to outline the posting guidelines very nicely. I just think some people ignore it and in a way deserve to be shot down, or at least told to go back and practice macro before posting an [H] Thread.
Well, I agree with a lot of that but I think it's mostly a problem of people trying to run before they can walk. I've watched a lot of a stream of an unnamed Gold player in #teamliquid on IRC and he continually tries cute strategies involving HTs or blink stalkers, when he could just make a shit ton of zealots and stalkers and run over 90% of his opponents. I've demonstrated exactly that to him, but he refuses to listen. Basic principles will continually outperform grand strategical theories all the way up to GM, and I've never seen any evidence contrary to that.
Like I said, just saying 'macro better' is insufficient and should be banned. But the basic principles such as creating more production buildings when your minerals float, or keep tabs on your opponent's army or don't expand/tech/macro at the same time, should be the first thing they learn.
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.
As a player who started out in silver league, ( im now a mid mastersplayer) i really found the advice macro better good, As the high level players here previously stated u don´t need to focus on strategy in the lower levels, instead you can win games by simply having more "stuff" . strategy of course matters but only to some extent and i found out that if i watch the pro´s stream and just copy their build orders as best as i can and then mainly focusing on macro you will not only become a better player but you will also rise in the league system quicker as well.
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.
I completely understand that and playing Slamball is fine (if not totally awesome). Like you said though, asking about a new technique to dunk higher is not the secret to winning HORSE.
On October 12 2011 00:42 Zorkmid wrote: I think that "Macro better" is fine as long as specific aspects about how they COULD macro better are pointed out.
Saying "Macro Better" without qualifying it is basically like saying "you suck"
My joke response (elsewhere not on TL) is generally to follow up "macro better" with similar advice. Such as
"Play less bad!" "Do better than your opponent in terms of Starcraft" "Build up an army that is stronger than your opponent while maintaining the potential for superior future armies and utilize those armies in a very efficient manner."
The "problem" is when your execution is off, a build order is not going to solve things and anything else is not a quick and simple fix. "Probes and pylons" sounds simple but its a lot more complicated than building a gate on 12 or 13
This thread is important, but it seems to make at least one other thread redundant for a sticky. Could we have one sticky that links to the other stickies?
On October 12 2011 04:27 Jibba wrote: Karate Kid analogy aside, there is an abundance of resources available on TL that should get anyone into Masters. The worst posters here have no willingness to work or research on their own and they drag the forum down, by looking for quick outs to win games when their number one problem is that their fundamental gameplay is rotten and needs to be rebuilt.
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. Working on the complete package at once, which is what you're doing when you're delving into strategy and timings as a Gold player, is detrimental to your overall learning and will impede your progress. I think these people are being coddled, as we've seen with numerous threads about people who can't wrap their head around cheese or are intimidated by the ladder. You scout, you macro and you expand. People should be taught how to do those, but beyond that is somewhat superfluous until the upper levels and will be picked up naturally anyways through experience. I think 95% of strategy forum threads would be unnecessary if people used some elbow grease, so to speak.
'macro better' is a low content post that should not be tolerated in the Strategy forums, but likewise the people making threads should be putting a lot more effort in than they usually do, and not become indignant when people tell them that their fundamentals are extremely poor.
I feel like the normal response in Strategy when someone tells them to improve their macro is "yeah, but what about besides that", brushing it off as if it's only a minority share of the problem. The proper response should be "ok, I'll work on that first. Anything else?" taking ownership of their weakness and realizing it's the key to advancement, everything else is tertiary.
I really can't add anything, other than this post nails it right on the head.
Thank you plexa for putting this on the front page! I've been seeing too many threads over the past year about lower level players asking for help and being shut down by the "macro better" comment. This should help the community out a lot if they follow your guidelines!
I think more emphasis should be put on those giving advice. I see tons of broad advice that just doesn't really help anyone. There's no real point is saying "macro better" when the person doesn't understand what he/she can do to actually macro better. People just throw out "help" without thinking about the person they are talking to. A low quality OP with high quality posts is far better than a high quality OP with terrible posts.
On October 12 2011 05:35 Camail wrote: You can't just tell a soccer/football player to juggle the ball better, just practice on juggling to ball.
Yes, you can. You don't need a shooting coach to be a good free throw shooter, you just need to practice it over and over, even if your form is bad. Even Day9 talks about it. You improve your APM by playing faster. You force yourself to play faster, and the rest of your brain activities will catch up. A prime example of this with TONS of evidence to back it up is speed reading.
And there are other prime examples with TONS of evidence to back it up that contradict what you are saying. You don't learn to play songs by playing them very fast, you learn by playing them slowly (and in separate parts). Macro isn't APM.
You're talking about practicing it over and over even if your form is bad -- but just playing games is not necessarily a good form of practice. You need more, you need goals, benchmarks, repeatable settings to compare your form against. Shooting a ball is easy to repeat a hundred times; but playing a Starcraft game takes much longer and (if laddering) is much less repeatable, every opponent is different (apart from the very early game).
Just playing is not an efficient way of improving; otherwise there would not be any bronze/silver players with hundreds of ladder games played (ignoring those who just cheese every time).
Practicing macro is not the same as "just playing". Your analogy would be to say that the best way of improving your free throws is to just play normal football games -- but it is not; the best way is to work on free throws specifically, ignoring all the time-consuming hum-ho that comes with actual games. There is no way to play Starcraft while focusing only on macro without paying attention to anything else, especially since it is the "anything else" that throws lower-league players off so frequently (they get distracted and end up not actually focusing on macro). Saying "just macro" is not helpful because you're not removing any of the obstacles they're facing; it's much more useful to point out the obstacles, tell them how to work around them, and then let them work on it.
Alot of ppl don't realize that RTS games isn't for everybody. If you play TONS and still struggle, perhaps play another genre. Starcraft 2 is all about macro, macro and more macro as you only use your micro to get ahead. It's not like you have to fend off dragoons with your factory not even finished yet. :D
This is actually something I've thought about myself. It has become some sort of degrading comment you can give anyone. While it's true that if you macro like MVP, you'll get masters without micro at all, it's not always the easiest improvement one can do in order to improve winrate, which is often what the posters are looking for!
Obviously shitty advice is shitty, but not making units when you can make units and then bitching about how other people want you to make more units is simply retarded. Don't do that.
On the one hand, "macro better" could be a lousy attempt at giving someone help (no specificity), and on the other hand it could be a mantra for every day living. How do I complete all my tasks in a day? Macro better. How can I be a better person? Macro better. How do I show Sally that I really care about her? Macro better.
As a plea, if your going to quote Jibba (or less likely me) in our dialogue please read the entire thing rather than quoting something int he middle. We both made concessions and we don't want to argue anything that has already been argued.
And I haven't thanked you yet plexa, so thank you.
I know a big thing about "Macro better" is that it's a very vague and broad statement for lower league people. Macro better could litterally mean anything from "You need to constantly be producing things from your buildings and structures", to "You could have actually afforded to make more buildings/you had too many buildings and they were idle; you couldn't support doing that in the least bit", to something as simple as "You stopped making probes at 24 and you were on three bases, you NEED to keep constantly making probes/workers (which is semi-inaccurate but if we're talking about just macroing better it's probably the right answer)".
So to me it's not the statement, because the issue very well might be that the person needs to macro better, but that by itself is generally too vague.
edit: at the same time i agree with the argument that in general if people want to improve they need to be researching on thier own, and then asking if they can't find something; simply running to the forum definitely isnt the right answer. the resources are there.
I think a chief problem here is that there are serious and significant reasons people lose other than macro better and those parts of the game people want to have focused on better. It might be as simple as "hot key better" or "scout often, always, and continually" or don't telegraph your build.
A long time ago when I was training with a guy named Sosowac I lost a broodwar game against a map hacker where I should have won the game by all rights. I remember Sosowac's advice wasn't macro better it was "dude, go with a strat that wins when they KNOW it is coming not on one that relies on deception". I was just using my very common constant storm drop harass while expanding and massing...
That advice there was great.
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. He simply spread his guys in an arc on the opposite side of a choke and the protoss player with observer saw that his 3 colossi had an opening before vikings...nope, smaller army with stim and larger arc was able to beat the larger army with better tech without even focusing on the colossi. I seem to remember Artosis or Tasteless pointing out that nada was making a big mistake not focusing down the colossi.
This is the type of thing that players get upset about. They know things other than macro are the difference sometimes. They want to improve those parts of their games too. Or perhaps...if we see macro as improving from silver to gold to plat to diamond to masters then we can say what things improve my play within silver, within gold, within plat.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When people say "macro better", they don´t necessarily mean that you are bad with pressing (if you are zerg you'll understand) "5" (hatches) +sdddddd or 5srrrrrzzzz to make units. It's often that you don't utilize your economy vs. your unit output. If you look at someone like NesTea (3-time -I think- GSL Champion), he mass up drones and get a huge economy. But as soon as the protoss (for example) moves out, he can make 20-30 roaches and hydras that has 2/2 and speed/range and moved burrow.
A lot comes down to always be able to balance it as much as possible, not to get 5000 minerals and 200 gas, or even worse 5000 minerals and 3000 gas, or being starved of resources.
I tried this for a couple of games, and suddenly (in bronze at first) I got a 27-3 win ratio and just massed up a huge army, and as soon as it died, I had in about 30 seconds, a new 200/200 army. Even now in low platinum, I can survive really annoying timing-pushes vs. Terran, just because I balance my macro with scouting.
The only things I can think of that you need to consider while macroing: Cloaked units/burrow Timing pushes from 1-2 bases Cheese Getting out-macroed Flying units
What I'm trying to say is that as long as you scout, have a basic idea of unit composition (not massing zerglings vs. siege tanks and mmm or Collosi) and know a bit what to look out for (going double gas or 2rax, etc.), you should be able to win games up to plat/dia just by macro (and small amounts of micro).
It's all about balancing your macro with economy and unit production depending on what your goal is and what your opponent does.
I've gotten back into SC2 this season with a friend of mine drawing me back in. I was a not-bottom-of-the-barrel player back in S1. I got to high silver and was fighting (and losing) against golds. After coming back in and seeing things like 1-1-1 had become popular with Terrans as a "do everything" I tried it out in my placement matches and got solidly wiped out put back into bronze.
After coming in and reading the strategy section I decided to try something. Every game I'm going to be continually building SCVs except for 16 orbital command. One gas. Every rax should have a unit queue. Every time I get 150 minerals build another rax. Basically run as close to good macro as I can.
5 minutes later I'm sitting there with four raxes, two of them teched, two of them reactor, a MM ball of death and running over to stomp the enemy.
I'm currently 3-0.
To everyone that says "macro better"; thank you. You were right and I'm much better for it. I still have plenty of time to worry about new strategy on my push up through bronze through silver but for now I'm going to concentrate 100% on practising macro until I get to gold or even further (if I get there). Then I can worry about strategies like 1-1-1.
The problem I have with the "work on macro" statement is two fold.
The main issue is that players generally don't learn this way, you will rarely find a player who has impeccable macro but terrible strategy & micro, a player generally doesn't improve one skill at a time but instead develops all their skills in unison, so asking a player to "macro harder" is essentially asking them to be a better player/develop all their skills more - I can't imagine a gold leaguer getting diamond league macro after receiving the advice to "macro harder".
The second issue though is that macro and micro are natural skills that can't be taught, but come with experience, they are the consequence of a good player not the catalyst, you can't 'give' someone good macro for their next games like you can with a strategy or a build, so in conjunction with the first issue by saying 'macro better' you really are simply saying 'play more games' which most semi-intelligent players know already anyway.
So ultimately I think if any advice is to be useful it is game strategy and knowledge because those are things you can learn and take with you in to the next game, where macro & micro are simply natural skills that develop over time and realistically aren't going to be excellent if the player's other skills are lacking due to the way players learn.
On October 12 2011 10:37 karis wrote: 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 am a protoss player so i cannot say anything specific to the terran race, but i can give you some general advice.
Well as any race there are a few "trends" to scouting. You can do any of the following
1. Literally just send a worker/first attacking unit around the map to scout for any bases.
2. By putting pressure on your opponent ( a small force of marines and mauraders for example) you can make an intelligent assumption of his resource spending (I.E if he has a lot of units to defend he won't have money to expand or if he has little units to defend he could be expanding or teching)
3. This is my personal favorite. Drops or air play. This is useful against anyone, but extremely effective vs Zerg. Normally you cannot send out an scv or marine alone without it being picked off by roaming zerglings, or just being spotted by creep spread and overlords. By sending out a medivac with some marines, or a banshee (doesn't even need cloak honestly) you can scout and punish expansions, while being able to retreat and save your units.
Those being said for general scouting techniques, the expanding part on your side is completely situational. When you say normal do you mean "Unless he 6 pools me or cannon rushes me" or "If he doesn't do a fast expand". That is one of the hard parts of this game, being able to read your opponents strategy and adjusting yours accordingly to it. Some games he will do early aggression which should cause you to expand later, and some games he will play super macro causing you to either expand early or set up a timing attack. It really revolves around the each game and map.
You would have to ask a terran on this, but i think that scanning to scout for bases should be a last resort (that is for scouting new bases, i think it is perfectly fine for scouting tech structures in his main).
At your level DO NOT be afraid to throw away 200 minerals worth of marines thoughout the game to scout an opponents base, sub masters if your mechanics are alright then it won't even be close to losing you a game.
If you would like to post the replay then i would be happy to look at it and give tips regarding that game in particular.
I had posted a bit earlier in this thread, and recently at a Toronto BarCraft had the opportunity to met a player who had just started playing, he was literally doing his placement matches the day of the NASL Finals.
In just 1 week He's already playing with a lot better macro and winning games over other bronze players just due to out producing them.
I just today did a commentary video noting areas for improvement and stuff on his game, but I wanted to show this since it really does to me demonstrate how better macro wins.
I think the unit composition in this game is wrong, the engagements are not ideal, and he's behind a base basically the whole way. His macro is far from perfect, but I think this just shows the benefits of out-producing your opponent.
On December 30 2011 03:47 Shruikan998 wrote: Could someone please type me out a decent protoss build strategy? including when to expand and when to attack? ?
EPT
Should help keep the number of poor quality threads and posts to a minimum.
haha
