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On February 16 2012 11:21 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 11:15 Fencer710 wrote:You never really know if you can or can't get to masters until you try. I didn't know that in less than a year, I could go straight from bronze>masters. Background doesn't matter too much if you're focused on improving, though it will give you a boost. I actually did play RTS games before SC2, though none quite like this one. They were Majesty, Majesty Gold Edition, Star Wars Empire at War, and the Empire at War Forces of Corruption expansion. Oh yeah, I also did cheeze from Bronze>Platinum; the 6-rax all-in. After that, I started doing more standard builds, usually macro oriented. So lets see, Season 1: Bronze. Mostly played Custom games, didn't know about the pro scene or teamliquid. Season 2: Top 2 gold. I have discovered HuskyStarcraft and Liquid TLO's 6 rax. Season 3: Top 1 Platinum. Discovered Day9 and his awesomeness. Season 4: Diamond. Started watching Day9 a lot more, rather than HuskyStarcraft. Season 5: Top 2 Diamond. Switched hotkey setups from Standard to Optimus 1.3, had a slight tilt period because of that. Season 6 so far: Master league, refining builds and attempting to not get supply blocked. I also didn't play very many games during all this; only a few hundred total.  Fencer you're my bro but I think it's worth noting that breaking this stuff down by season isn't helpful. I haven't really improved in Season 5 but I only played like 20 games! In fact, I think that's a flaw in the OP as well. Look at it this way, lets say from seasons 5 through 8 you play: S5: 300 games S6: 300 games S7: 50 games S8: 50 games And in season 5 you go from Gold to Plat, and in Season 6 you go from Plat to Diamond. Then in Seasons 7 and 8 you get stuck in diamond. Have you peaked? No, you're playing way less now (though still like playing a game every day), it'll take a long time to get better like that. You could like go a week without playing a TvZ without even noticing! These things take times and tons of games. Don't watch streams. Pick some standard builds and play like a beast. Macro like a mofo and crush your opponents under the weight of your massive armies! Make their women cry and their children ophans! Nobody became a tennis champ by sitting at home and watching wimbledon
whoops, I play slightly more each season, but there's not that much of a difference between seasons as far as amount of games goes until extremely recently. Aside from -maybe- season 2 and season 3.
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I think that it isn't about getting to Masters league. Sure you get boosting rights but if you want to play competitive, I would say that the basics are the most important. Proper decision making and good observation as well as learning from your mistakes makes a good player. Not some rank based on how well you can execute your 6 pool 
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On February 16 2012 11:31 HexSCII wrote:I think that it isn't about getting to Masters league. Sure you get boosting rights but if you want to play competitive, I would say that the basics are the most important. Proper decision making and good observation as well as learning from your mistakes makes a good player. Not some rank based on how well you can execute your 6 pool
^ This haha.
I got from bronze to top 8 masters by doing nothing but 4 gate against all 3 races before the WG nerf.
After the nerf it no longer worked, or at least, didn't work as well. I immediately dropped to low diamond and had to work from there. Now I am at best a solid mid masters player. At least no more 4 gates!
Much more important IMO, to not be a one trick pony but be able to do a variety of builds and composition and react accordingly.
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Once I got to diamond and started vsing 10% masters then 90% and 100%, I only had to force myself to play 4-5 games a day (less than 3 hrs) to make it to masters.
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I wish I could do this, but I get 'fatigued' if I play too many games, or a longer (20 minutes+) intense game.
I know it's strictly on the mind, but I can't seem to play more than a few games a session without getting tired. It's getting better slowly, since I'm pushing myself to play slightly more each session (usually), but it's still a problem that I hope I can fix.
Force yourself to do it.
I mean I take a lot of breaks too, and that's fine. But make sure those breaks are smoke breaks, bio breaks, eating. Not time spent posting on forums or watching tournaments.
Like if I'm eating, sure, I'll watch the GSL. But if I have free time to play, I never post on the forums or watch games. I don't keep very up to date with tournaments, but I know my game is always improving by a lot (my win rate usually sits around 60% according to sc2gears).
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I'd say everyone is capable of getting masters. You do not need very high APM to do well in this game. If you can have a consistent 60 APM with no spam actions that is more than enough for perfect macro. Micro can be trained with a variety of maps.
I never played RTS competitively before SC2, but got into diamond from bronze in the second week of release and have been in master since the league was opened. I used to read TL more than I played the game as well, you don't need to "mass game" to get better if your mechanics are already solid.
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when i made the switch from casual fastest map possible (custom bw game) games to melee 1v1s, my apm was around 40 and i was absolutely terrible. Now I am High Masters with ~150apm.
I believe anyone can obtain masters.
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On February 16 2012 11:01 Belial88 wrote:Any gamer can with any race. Anyone can if they play deathball Protoss (not a balance whine, i'm just stating that if you turtle a deathball, you need less skill to pull it off to get to masters, especially since lower level people can't pull off the macro or aggression to 'counter' it and low masters is low level, and mech isn't really viable in all of the 3 match-ups and not as hard to deal with as zerg, you might actually need skill to do it in tvz). For the average person, yea. If you play 2,000 games (not even sure on the exact number, probably less, whatever) you will definitely be masters though, provided you are at least like 17 years old. Dude... your plan is horrible. You aren't getting it. 1. Yes, demuslim is a beast, but you are nowhere near his level, 99% of masters players are seriously like bronze to a diamond compared to him, and you are better off PLAYING. In fact, when I was diamond, and first realized I 'could' hit masters, I made a vow to stop watching tournaments, stop watching streams, stop posting on TL, stop posting on any forum, stop watching VODs, stop watching day9. Suffice to say, i hit masters almost within a week. You just have to PLAY. How much time have you spent on just in this thread alone? An hour already? That's easily 2 games. All the time you waste watching stuff, yea you may learn stuff, but you would've learned a LOT more playing. Not to mention, anyone below high masters is at a level of play where you'd just learn way more by playing the game, and learning it for yourself. Plus, you can't do what Demuslim does, he's 'above ladder', he could do some serious troll stuff and get away with it because he's that good. So maybe some of his play is trolling, maybe he does it but doesn't realize it's not viable against an MVP caliber opponent, maybe he does, but either way you are better off PLAYING. 2. You are way too low level to get coaching. All a coach will do is say "yea man just do this build ezpz get masters pay me $20" or "build probes, build pylons". Get a coach once you hit high masters. Or I mean go for it, it's your money, it's only a bit of time. But you really don't need a coach. You just need to know how to be critical of yourself, and understand you macro like total shit. Because unless you are high masters, it's true that you actually macro like total shit. Myself included (mid masters). 3. You want to play. Maybe join a chat channel and ask to play better people than you, but focus more on playing, not joining social groups. 4. You can do whatever builds you want. It's your macro that's a problem. In short, you need to PLAY more. Get off the forums. Completely disassociate from every tournament, every vod, every pro, every stream. I strongly recommend, that if you want to hit masters, you should not watch any tournaments or anything or even visit reddit or TL (especially reddit). Just get out there and play dude. Masters really isn't high level at all, and even if it was, you are just holding yourself back by not playing. I guarentee you, you play 2,000 games, you'll easily be masters.
I don't agree with this.
I watch pro streams and tournaments once in a while, but probably 95% of my SC2 time is spent laddering. I have a touch over 700 ladder wins lifetime in 1v1, which (if we assume 50% win rate) probably puts me at around 1450 games played.
I am in Platinum. I would like to say I'm high Platinum, but realistically I think low-mid is more accurate, since I usually struggle to stay consistently in the top 8 in my division. It may be that if I play another 550 games I'll be in Masters, but I very much doubt it. 550 games ago I was in Platinum, around the same level I am now.
Coincidentally(?) I am about the same age as the OP.
While I think all the encouragement the OP has received on this thread has been great, if anything I think posts like this just confirm the OP's point about skill levels. In my experience, reaching Masters is nowhere near as simple as just playing 2000 games. Belial88 says that it was that simple for him, and I have no reason to doubt him (plenty of others on this thread have expressed similar sentiments) so I conclude that his experience of learning SC2 and my experience have been quite different in some fundamental ways, and there are things that came naturally to him that don't to me.
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I believe yes, if you are dedicated enough and put enough effort into learning and practice, you can get into masters. Especially because consistency and mechanics, along with a dedication to just grinding even when you don't want to, are what get you into masters.
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Yeah, I think pretty much anyone willing to put in the effort can get Masters. Just some people take more effort than others. One thing is, if getting to masters is your goal I think its easier to get to a certain point (mid-masters) or so by improving game knowledge, decision making, build orders and responses than to just try and brute force improve mechanics/multitasking/speed. Allthough obviously to reach the very top you have to do the latter.
Do no worry or focus about apm at ALL. I am a fairly consistent mid-masters T player and have lower apm than you. 80APM is not keeping you in platinum. 50 effective and efficient average apm is plenty to get to masters in SC2. You just need to have a well thought out game plan where you know exactly what to do in every situation and then just practice execution. For the sake of it being less draining and tiring and to get more games in, I do recommend having a couple very smooth well executed all-ins that you do in certain maps/matchups/situations. (Not every game if you want to keep getting better actually) For example something like:
1-1-1 or 2port banshee all-in (your choice) vs P on Shattered or Metalopolis
Marauder Hellion vs Z on (map of choice)
Reactive all-in off your standard build vs Nexus first.
etc.
At the most 1 "standard" build per map per matchup (probably multiple maps for each build actually)
For a lot of people I think this makes laddering easier and breaks up the intensity. The truth is, after getting my main account to masters more or less legit I got an account to Masters by doing a 2-port all-in every TvP and either marauder hellion or gas first banshee all-in every TvZ. (Also did some shitty hellion marine junk every TvT but its pretty bad I just couldn't bring myself to leave every TvT, had a very low winrate tho)
I have about 1000 wins as T total across two accounts so for what is worth
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the only way to get higher APM is to use more hotkeys and F keys and just FORCE yourself to play faster than usual but try to not forget fundamentals like probes and pylons and keeping money low.(giving your army a thousand move commands is not playing faster) do this a lot and then it will become natural.
started using F keys and rebinded a whole lot of things to make everything faster and now my apm is around 130 from 90ish
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On February 16 2012 13:14 Chutoro wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 11:01 Belial88 wrote:Any gamer can with any race. Anyone can if they play deathball Protoss (not a balance whine, i'm just stating that if you turtle a deathball, you need less skill to pull it off to get to masters, especially since lower level people can't pull off the macro or aggression to 'counter' it and low masters is low level, and mech isn't really viable in all of the 3 match-ups and not as hard to deal with as zerg, you might actually need skill to do it in tvz). For the average person, yea. If you play 2,000 games (not even sure on the exact number, probably less, whatever) you will definitely be masters though, provided you are at least like 17 years old. So here is my plan:... Dude... your plan is horrible. You aren't getting it. 1. Yes, demuslim is a beast, but you are nowhere near his level, 99% of masters players are seriously like bronze to a diamond compared to him, and you are better off PLAYING. In fact, when I was diamond, and first realized I 'could' hit masters, I made a vow to stop watching tournaments, stop watching streams, stop posting on TL, stop posting on any forum, stop watching VODs, stop watching day9. Suffice to say, i hit masters almost within a week. You just have to PLAY. How much time have you spent on just in this thread alone? An hour already? That's easily 2 games. All the time you waste watching stuff, yea you may learn stuff, but you would've learned a LOT more playing. Not to mention, anyone below high masters is at a level of play where you'd just learn way more by playing the game, and learning it for yourself. Plus, you can't do what Demuslim does, he's 'above ladder', he could do some serious troll stuff and get away with it because he's that good. So maybe some of his play is trolling, maybe he does it but doesn't realize it's not viable against an MVP caliber opponent, maybe he does, but either way you are better off PLAYING. 2. You are way too low level to get coaching. All a coach will do is say "yea man just do this build ezpz get masters pay me $20" or "build probes, build pylons". Get a coach once you hit high masters. Or I mean go for it, it's your money, it's only a bit of time. But you really don't need a coach. You just need to know how to be critical of yourself, and understand you macro like total shit. Because unless you are high masters, it's true that you actually macro like total shit. Myself included (mid masters). 3. You want to play. Maybe join a chat channel and ask to play better people than you, but focus more on playing, not joining social groups. 4. You can do whatever builds you want. It's your macro that's a problem. In short, you need to PLAY more. Get off the forums. Completely disassociate from every tournament, every vod, every pro, every stream. I strongly recommend, that if you want to hit masters, you should not watch any tournaments or anything or even visit reddit or TL (especially reddit). Just get out there and play dude. Masters really isn't high level at all, and even if it was, you are just holding yourself back by not playing. I guarentee you, you play 2,000 games, you'll easily be masters. I don't agree with this. I watch pro streams and tournaments once in a while, but probably 95% of my SC2 time is spent laddering. I have a touch over 700 ladder wins lifetime in 1v1, which (if we assume 50% win rate) probably puts me at around 1450 games played. I am in Platinum. I would like to say I'm high Platinum, but realistically I think low-mid is more accurate, since I usually struggle to stay consistently in the top 8 in my division. It may be that if I play another 550 games I'll be in Masters, but I very much doubt it. 550 games ago I was in Platinum, around the same level I am now. Coincidentally(?) I am about the same age as the OP. While I think all the encouragement the OP has received on this thread has been great, if anything I think posts like this just confirm the OP's point about skill levels. In my experience, reaching Masters is nowhere near as simple as just playing 2000 games. Belial88 says that it was that simple for him, and I have no reason to doubt him (plenty of others on this thread have expressed similar sentiments) so I conclude that his experience of learning SC2 and my experience have been quite different in some fundamental ways, and there are things that came naturally to him that don't to me.
I agree, people can certainly get "stuck" at any level. Remember, it's not whether you get better in the absolute, but whether you get better relative to other players at your rank. The higher you go the tougher that gets. Eventually you settle at the "appropriate" level, given your reflexes and time to spend on SC2. There is nothing inevitable that this is Master's level. Everyone has different constraints in their life.
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On February 16 2012 13:14 Chutoro wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 11:01 Belial88 wrote:Any gamer can with any race. Anyone can if they play deathball Protoss (not a balance whine, i'm just stating that if you turtle a deathball, you need less skill to pull it off to get to masters, especially since lower level people can't pull off the macro or aggression to 'counter' it and low masters is low level, and mech isn't really viable in all of the 3 match-ups and not as hard to deal with as zerg, you might actually need skill to do it in tvz). For the average person, yea. If you play 2,000 games (not even sure on the exact number, probably less, whatever) you will definitely be masters though, provided you are at least like 17 years old. So here is my plan:... Dude... your plan is horrible. You aren't getting it. 1. Yes, demuslim is a beast, but you are nowhere near his level, 99% of masters players are seriously like bronze to a diamond compared to him, and you are better off PLAYING. In fact, when I was diamond, and first realized I 'could' hit masters, I made a vow to stop watching tournaments, stop watching streams, stop posting on TL, stop posting on any forum, stop watching VODs, stop watching day9. Suffice to say, i hit masters almost within a week. You just have to PLAY. How much time have you spent on just in this thread alone? An hour already? That's easily 2 games. All the time you waste watching stuff, yea you may learn stuff, but you would've learned a LOT more playing. Not to mention, anyone below high masters is at a level of play where you'd just learn way more by playing the game, and learning it for yourself. Plus, you can't do what Demuslim does, he's 'above ladder', he could do some serious troll stuff and get away with it because he's that good. So maybe some of his play is trolling, maybe he does it but doesn't realize it's not viable against an MVP caliber opponent, maybe he does, but either way you are better off PLAYING. 2. You are way too low level to get coaching. All a coach will do is say "yea man just do this build ezpz get masters pay me $20" or "build probes, build pylons". Get a coach once you hit high masters. Or I mean go for it, it's your money, it's only a bit of time. But you really don't need a coach. You just need to know how to be critical of yourself, and understand you macro like total shit. Because unless you are high masters, it's true that you actually macro like total shit. Myself included (mid masters). 3. You want to play. Maybe join a chat channel and ask to play better people than you, but focus more on playing, not joining social groups. 4. You can do whatever builds you want. It's your macro that's a problem. In short, you need to PLAY more. Get off the forums. Completely disassociate from every tournament, every vod, every pro, every stream. I strongly recommend, that if you want to hit masters, you should not watch any tournaments or anything or even visit reddit or TL (especially reddit). Just get out there and play dude. Masters really isn't high level at all, and even if it was, you are just holding yourself back by not playing. I guarentee you, you play 2,000 games, you'll easily be masters. I don't agree with this. I watch pro streams and tournaments once in a while, but probably 95% of my SC2 time is spent laddering. I have a touch over 700 ladder wins lifetime in 1v1, which (if we assume 50% win rate) probably puts me at around 1450 games played. I am in Platinum. I would like to say I'm high Platinum, but realistically I think low-mid is more accurate, since I usually struggle to stay consistently in the top 8 in my division. It may be that if I play another 550 games I'll be in Masters, but I very much doubt it. 550 games ago I was in Platinum, around the same level I am now. Coincidentally(?) I am about the same age as the OP. While I think all the encouragement the OP has received on this thread has been great, if anything I think posts like this just confirm the OP's point about skill levels. In my experience, reaching Masters is nowhere near as simple as just playing 2000 games. Belial88 says that it was that simple for him, and I have no reason to doubt him (plenty of others on this thread have expressed similar sentiments) so I conclude that his experience of learning SC2 and my experience have been quite different in some fundamental ways, and there are things that came naturally to him that don't to me.
There's no such thing as high or low Platinum, due to how the ranking system works. Only the 'top' rank is where points/ranking mean anything, since low level people can be stuck in Plat due to inaccurate MMR, or and 'high' people just being promoted.
I would also argue that if you played instead of watching pros and streams, you would be higher ranked.
It's not exactly a convincing argument when you are saying "Look how successful I am! I a pizza delivery driver!"
Also, I'm pretty sure everyone who's played 2,000 games and is somewhat matured (ie not 13 years old, no handicap) is masters. If the number is wrong, the number is wrong, but you play 10,000 games, you WILL be masters. Someone else can say more accurately what the number is that 99% of people hit masters once having played that many games, but you get my point, and it's not exactly that many games. I'd also hazard that, besides BW experience and such, like 90% of people hit masters in roughly the same number of games.
I also think that over 99% of the people who played BW ICCUP, are at least Masters. That just goes to show that Masters ain't no thing. I'm not saying BW pros, I'm just saying anyone who even played BW. I mean I was bronze at one point, zero RTS history.
Diamond, is definitely something that ANYONE can achieve, even non-gamers. If you are in Plat, that's just lack of games put under your belt. I'm not trying to be insulting, but play a good 1,000 games, you'll be diamond. You aren't far from it as it is anyways.
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As many have pointed out, the key is to ACTIVELY learning.
The difficulty, though, is that not everyone is able to spot their flaws, or do so inefficiently. I am stuck at high diamond, and being able to play only on weekends, I am making the same mistakes over and over without really a clear awareness of what they are and how to fix them.
Hence the importance of a mentor.
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^ Mentor isn't going to help as much as just grinding out 10 hour game days for 2 weeks straight. You'll be masters.
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On February 16 2012 13:46 Belial88 wrote:
^ Mentor isn't going to help as much as just grinding out 10 hour game days for 2 weeks straight. You'll be masters.
Yeah, this is basically it, when I first started I didn't even know what a marine was, and I had played almost no RTS before sc2. Obviously since I knew absolutely nothing, and didn't know about TL, I had to play a ton of games. IMO even if you can do things like watch top koreans which you could not do before, the best way is just grinding a TON of games. I mean just go on ladder and play as much as you can. Try switching up your hotkeys and try to multitask as much as you can and your APM will go up.
TBH Terran is going to require more APM than other races as you go up the leagues, but as long as your playing a decent amount of games it should improve, and its not much of a limiting factor anyways.
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On February 16 2012 13:46 Belial88 wrote:
^ Mentor isn't going to help as much as just grinding out 10 hour game days for 2 weeks straight. You'll be masters.
I may, but it will be an inefficient way of improving.
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3) Look at Stephano around IPL 3 time. 4 Hours a day, wins IPL 3 over many code s koreans,
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^^ Not really. You aren't going to hit masters significantly quicker in any other way. You're too low level to really be mentored anything better than 'macro better' (not to be offensive, i mean myself included in anyone below high masters).
You just need to grind out some games. The idea that watching hours and hours of starcraft or posting on a low level forum will improve your game significantly is ridiculous.
There's a reason why you never see pros post on forums (even most high masters avoid prolific posting), and you can't argue with someone who's played 5,000 games (as in they will be extremely fucking good).
3) Look at Stephano around IPL 3 time. 4 Hours a day, wins IPL 3 over many code s koreans,
Didn't stephano play wc3 10 hours a day for a few years?
Oh yea... and he plays a lot more than 4 hours a day when practicing.
But even then, yea. 4 hours of actual game time a day on Sc2, every day, you will DEFINITELY be at least high masters within a year. Even if we are going to ignore that Stephano has 1 in a million talent, he just puts in enough hours on ladder, and has put on enough hours (wc3). That, and he's got a teamhouse.
I mean, if you were to say "Hey, should I ladder, or should I play in a competitive team house?" the answer is obvious. But that's not exactly a realistic choice here.
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On February 16 2012 14:04 Belial88 wrote:^^ Not really. You aren't going to hit masters significantly quicker in any other way. You're too low level to really be mentored anything better than 'macro better' (not to be offensive, i mean myself included in anyone below high masters). You just need to grind out some games. The idea that watching hours and hours of starcraft or posting on a low level forum will improve your game significantly is ridiculous. There's a reason why you never see pros post on forums (even most high masters avoid prolific posting), and you can't argue with someone who's played 5,000 games (as in they will be extremely fucking good). Show nested quote +
3) Look at Stephano around IPL 3 time. 4 Hours a day, wins IPL 3 over many code s koreans,
Didn't stephano play wc3 10 hours a day for a few years? Oh yea... and he plays a lot more than 4 hours a day when practicing. But even then, yea. 4 hours of actual game time a day on Sc2, every day, you will DEFINITELY be at least high masters within a year. Even if we are going to ignore that Stephano has 1 in a million talent, he just puts in enough hours on ladder, and has put on enough hours (wc3). That, and he's got a teamhouse. I mean, if you were to say "Hey, should I ladder, or should I play in a competitive team house?" the answer is obvious. But that's not exactly a realistic choice here.
I agree that if you grind out a ton of ladder games you will go up in rank faster than if you watch a lot of VOD's and streams, but it won't be as efficient.
The reason for this is, by watching people that have a similar play style, you can learn how to defeat all sorts of all-in's, how to play in a long macro game, and, to a lesser extent, how you can deal with crazy situations in that one in one hundred base race.
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EPT
