Hooray for questions! :D I'm really digging this discussion.
To start, TheStaircase is a tool to get you to a higher level. Imagine a ladder. If you lay it on the ground, you can step on each rung easily and get to the end of it, but you have achieved nothing. If you lay it at a 45 degree angle maybe you'll get halfway up the side of a building, but the greater the angle, the harder you fight against gravity, and the higher your end result is. Really we should have called it TheLadder, but for obvious reasons we did not.
1. I suggest not moving to the next step until you've worked your way up to 3 base macro play and are multitasking to the limit.
2. Injects and supply blocks are encompassed in Spending Skill and Saturation Speed (as you recently learned). If you get supply blocked or larva blocked, you will likely miss your Spending or Saturation benchmarks. If you are missing one of these benchmarks, its probably because of one of those factors.
3. If your injects are perfect (which is really only beneficial in the first 10 minutes of the game or so) you can use the queen energy. If not, you can use a hatchery. Personally I don't burn a CG on a hatchery for it, I just click the wireframe or use my basecam to check it, but it just depends on how much you value that particular CG.
4. You can just mouse over the queen and you'll see the energy. (make sure you have your tooltips enabled). For hatcheries see #3
Just some feedback in case it is of interest. First up I completed steps 0 and 1. (Zerg of course.) Then:
Long story short, you could say I'm either impatient or time poor, but I've decided to just go back to playing my own game and then checking my stats in "The Staircase View" in ggtracker and concentrating on comparing my saturation and spending skill results with how the game 'felt' at the time.
For me, after easily completing step 1 many times over and then moving to step 2, I felt that it just suited my learning style better to play my normal comfortable game but divert more than normal attention to saturation, injecting and spending.
While this is a very gimped version of The Staircase method I have to say I do appreciate the special views available in GGTracker and will keep using it as checking it after each game is very illuminating - especially when I think I've done well but the stats tell a different tale.
Anyway, thanks again JaKaTaK and whoever else works on this. These sorts of tools are great to hold onto when you're feeling frustrated by the difficulty of the game!
Edit:
This is interesting, http://ggtracker.com/matches/3292918 - A master zerg who won a decently length game against protoss with a much worse inject timing than myself ...53% ! And yet good saturation, good spending... how is that possible?!
You can get to Diamond league with pure Marines and no gas if you have good control. I remember putting that handicap on myself to shake the rust off of my macro and it was fun until I finally got to Diamond league. =.=
On June 17 2013 09:58 Cassio wrote: Testing this method out, but having a lot of trouble with Zerg Step 2, mainly because I don't have a good gas dump -- any tips?
That's great! Use TheStaircase as much or as little as you like. Depending on your situation, you might just need some step 0 and be totally set. But if you're a new player, you'll probably want to use the whole thing.
If you're trying to take a wall down, and you've been using a regular sized hammer the whole time, then you pick up a sledge hammer and quickly finish off the parts you were missing, why keep hitting the wall? Its not there any more
Anyone that has an opinion please let me know: Should Saturation Speed be an average of each Saturation Speed benchmark, or should we keep it like it is: the slowest saturated base in relation to league is counted as your overall Saturation Speed for the match.
We want to figure out what is best. This means, what will create the most fun and motivating experience for the player. This in turn leads the player to play more, and outperform a player with the most efficient practice strategy, with no regard for motivation or fun.
As someone who is a newb, gold level player. I feel like saturation speed is very unforgiving. I perceive that the philosophy of theStaircase is to give motivation to new players and make laddering like running a marathon.
As a beginner long distance runner, I don't go out to any race with the intention of winning. People have been training years. My motivation in running is to better myself and improve my personal times. Blizzards metric compares people to one another, and all outcomes are either a win or a loss. I connect with theStaircase because, like running, I can now focus on bettering myself, and not just on bettering my ladder ranking or win/loss outcome. Awesome. If that's what this system is about, keep it at it's heart.
Now, back to saturation speed. I feel like this is a great metric if the goal is to master a level. For Zerg, as we discussed, this meant that you couldn't miss a single inject, get supply blocked, or make a small misstep against early aggression. Suddenly, I feel like I am a beginner asked to train like the masters, and I can't go up until I meet those levels. Now, yes I am having fun laddering with just slow zerglings and queens, but I can see if someone new feels a bit restricted.
For me personally, I will win a game and feel really good about it, just like after completing your first race, but then I log onto gg tracker ony to discover someone telling me that it wasn't good enough. I saturated my third too slow and am staring at the discouraging bronze banner. I get no credit for the grandmaster spending and saturation speed on my first two levels. Yes, I know I can get there with practice, but perhaps that should be emphasized at a higher level or be a little more forgiving, just so new players don't get too discouraged.
hey hey! I agree, the bronze badges can be very discouraging, which is why we're changing things up!
There will be 3 badges on the player profile screen for Saturation Speed, one for each base, this way you can see which bases you are saturating well and which bases you need to focus on without needing to go to the match and then click on economy.
The other important thing to note is that the way TheStaircase is going to work once we get the GGTracker GUI online is:
1. choose race 2. choose league goal 3. Start at bronze Step 1 (0 for zergs) 4. When you pass 80% of your most recent 5 games (4/5) you move up to Sliver Step 1. 5. Continue progressing through the leagues until you reach your league goal, then go to Step 2.
Example
I choose Protoss with a Gold league goal. I start Bronze benchmarks Step 1 and pass 4/5 games. I go to Silver benchmarks Step 1 and pass 4/5 games. I go to Gold benchmarks Step 1 and pass 4/5 games. I go to Bronze benchmarks Step 2 and pass 4/5 games.
etc
We found that players would always have much lower stats whenever they start a new step, so everyone's goal on a new step is to just get the basics and beat bronze benchmarks.
If you exceed your benchmarks you can skip leagues.
Example:
I choose Protoss with a Gold league goal. I start Bronze benchmarks Step 1 and pass 4/5 games. I go to Silver benchmarks Step 1 and pass 4/5 games with Gold benchmarks. I go to Bronze benchmarks Step 2 and pass 4/5 games.
This may seem complex and difficult to manage yourself, but it will make much more sense when we have the GUI up and running keeping track of everything for you. Awarding you with achievements and other motivational things to help you keep on keeping on.
On June 19 2013 23:06 JaKaTaK wrote: Anyone that has an opinion please let me know: Should Saturation Speed be an average of each Saturation Speed benchmark, or should we keep it like it is: the slowest saturated base in relation to league is counted as your overall Saturation Speed for the match.
We want to figure out what is best. This means, what will create the most fun and motivating experience for the player. This in turn leads the player to play more, and outperform a player with the most efficient practice strategy, with no regard for motivation or fun.
Just starting to use the staircase and ggtracker as a way to improve my macro. It works really well.
Concerning the saturation speed, i feel it's really important for the second base, if the third one is a bit worse it may be because of poorly managed harassment or whatever. It could depends really on the game itself and not really on the macro ability of the player.
I'd make something like: if the number of bases is equal or under 2 : take the min if the number of bases is above 2 : take the mean
Also, i found this result weird:
How come i've got a silver badge with a better saturation speed than him?
@Cook We'll be using separate benchmarks for each base instead of one combined one. We feel this is more accurate, more clear, and easier to use, as you won't have to go to the game page to see where you went wrong.
Part of Saturation Speed is learning to defend harassment and protecting you economy. We think it is an important skill and will lead to better play and more wins. To be specific about your example, your opponent has a bronze saturation speed, so he's lower than you in that regard, but it is very much beside the point so I didn't mention it in my explanation.
@everyone NEED FEEDBACK ON NEW IDEA FOR SATURATION SPEED!!!
glad to have the attention of the audience
We are considering changing from 1 base mineral income (640) to 640 income straight up. This way the player is not constricted to going for the mineral heavy strats, and has more flexibility to explore new things. I believe this will yield more consistent data as well.
I'm wondering why with lower time from 3rd base complete to 3 bases income i've deserved a lower league badge (third line of the table). Is it normal? Anyway, some explanation needed here since it happened in some other games.
We feel this is more accurate, more clear, and easier to use, as you won't have to go to the game page to see where you went wrong.
But you can't see if you've done right at least for some part of the game. In fact, I do go to the game page to see where my saturation is good or not. Because those low league badges are a bit discouraging... Maybe a display of at least the first three bases saturation speed badge on the general profile page would be nice. It would provide a better environment to analyze a set of games and see the improvement of a player.
For now, i don't see any con regarding your new idea for saturation speed.
What you are suggesting is what we plan to do. Sorry for not being clear. You will see the first 3 bases saturation speed on the main page in the next patch.
EDIT: woaah... 0:47 seconds not fast enough?! weird.
EDIT2: That is definitely an issue with the mule. This was a TvZ matchup I assume. Any ideas for solutions? Is this even a problem?
On June 22 2013 00:06 JaKaTaK wrote: We are considering changing from 1 base mineral income (640) to 640 income straight up.
What is the difference between the two 640? As a protoss player I have problems reaching a goal higher than bronze at the moment for the first base, if I go double gas or early MSC. Will that be changed with the new 640 income?
On June 22 2013 00:06 JaKaTaK wrote: We are considering changing from 1 base mineral income (640) to 640 income straight up.
What is the difference between the two 640? As a protoss player I have problems reaching a goal higher than bronze at the moment for the first base, if I go double gas or early MSC. Will that be changed with the new 640 income?
Yes, Jak is talking about moving from 640 mineral only to 640 mineral + gas combined.
Yes, this is exactly why we're considering the change. The reason why I went with minerals initially was to not require players to get gas if they didn't want to. However, I think this is a good compromise.
We are also considering adding 1 mule's worth of income for terrans to even things out a bit. I don't think its good to encourage players to stop at 12 workers and then get mules for the rest.
@everyone NEED FEEDBACK ON NEW IDEA FOR SATURATION SPEED!!!
Saturation speed itself Pros - More accurately diplaying ressource collection skill than worker waves per minute, since it also takes your saturation skill into account (I know, kind of obvious).
Cons - Highly prone to strategies from both the player and the enemy. If I suddenly have to defend early aggression with workers or if I intentionally deprioritize my economy to pressure my opponent (for example with a bunker rush) it will in both cases hurt my saturation speed. - Does not count gas, which is part of the reason why it's so affected by strategies. I think making two values, one for minerals and one for gas, and perhaps finding the average of those two would be a good solution.
Moving from 1 base income to overall income Seems like a very good idea. However, 640 becomes a bit of an arbitrary number. Adding more benchmarks (more specific collection values lined up to different times) would turn saturation speed into the Blizzard's ressource collection rate graph, if I'm not mistaken. Would the use of a graph be good? I can imagine you would get a more consistent idea of where you're aren't doing optimal, if your game's curve was compared to a league average curve? Adding notices of where expansions finishes, and the usual red marks that shows when ressources are lost, would further clarify a graph like that. Of course, it would be much harder to simply skim to see if you passed, so such a graph would need a supporting average of your perfomance in the graph to really work out.
EPT
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