On March 10 2013 01:07 Qwyn wrote: I'm going to give my own experience. I used to contemplate coaching a lot, but now I realize I was focusing on the wrong things.
Just focus on your mechanics and you will rocket forward much faster than if you were focusing on minutiae. You focus on being faster, more efficient, and incorporating actions in a logical way, and everything will fall into place. You play like this and you'll start to realize the formality of builds. And you'll definitely appreciate the game more.
To answer your question another way - no, coaching is not worth it if you are looking to improve. For zero dollars you can open a progamer's stream, and learn enough about gameflow to get you started.
But if you are not the highest tier of player, and you'd like to support your favorite progamers and learn a bit at the same time (gain a bit of a pro-level perspective), then by all means, consider coaching.
I disagree 100%. I have way too many testimonials from people messaging me after telling how much it helped and how much they have improved.
Watching a stream and getting someone to 1 on 1 coach you isn't even comparable.
On March 09 2013 13:33 FireMonkey wrote: Well is there anyone who was just an average scrub (master or below) who took coaching and then become pro?
also practice partners dont count
That's pretty irrelevant for the arguement
yeah i know, the main point has seemingly been proven so im just wondering
oh, then no I don't think so to answer your question
On March 09 2013 12:06 U_G_L_Y wrote:
On March 09 2013 05:15 Noobity wrote:
On March 09 2013 04:43 U_G_L_Y wrote: But a coach can't help me be more coordinated, a better multitasker, or remember to do things that I KNOW that I should have done 2 minutes ago.
That's actually incorrect. If you don't know how to fix these things, then no amount of your own work would fix the problems. A good coach would be able to be more exact in noticing your flaws and go even farther, providing specific and proven exercises to do (that you didn't know about) in order to train your multitasking. Provide options on how to improve coordination. Hell there are plenty of training exercises that the proper coach can provide that will help you to remember things (see day9's newbie dailies, most of them revolve around one of the many forms of teaching memory and prioritizing).
My wife has tried coaching me to lock the doors at night, take out the garbage on Thursday night, but I still can't remember to do those things consistently, either. And she is really good at it
If you think a coach can help me to pay attention and do the things I have been trying to do for 15 years, by all means I will pay for it; I just don't see evidence that they can. Only a LOT of CONSISTENT repetition can help that. Or perhaps a brain transplant.
wat, that has nothing to do with anything
and not to derail the thread too much, if you cared more about it, I guarantee you would remember to do it
I don't think that derails the thread at all Minigun. I think that's a very important thing to be aware of. In fact, I'd say it is a better answer to the argument than anything else: "If you care about it, it does actually help."
I think a lot of people don't seem to understand exactly how a truly effective coaching session for any activity works. The most effective way to teach anyone (I have no facts about this, you're welcome to say it's an opinion) is to lead student towards a conclusion that will help them, or one that will show them that what they're so adamant about doing will hurt them. This means, primarily, that to tell a student "when they do this you need to do this" is less effective than saying "when they do this, what are their strengths? what are their weaknesses? you don't know their weaknesses, then what do you think they could be? there's a bunch of tanks, how are they most effective? so if they need to siege to be effective, what does that mean? so if they're immobile, what's a good option for taking them out?" Now some players just want builds and to make sure they're doing things right, which is cool, it works for most players, keeps them happy and gives them some information, but the player being asked to come to these conclusions themselves learns more about how to make decisions than simply what the decisions are. This means most importantly that the coaching is harder for the student to utilize, but more effective once understood.
That's true.
The biggest problem I run into in the lessons, is just there's not enough time. 1 hour is a very limited amount of time to work with. Starcraft 2 is not a simple game whatsoever, and explaining how to defend a certain build can alone take quite a bit of time. But yeah, coaching in the way you explained is definitely the most helpful way.
I'm sorry, I should have elaborated. Rereading my post, you must have interpreted that I meant coaching was worthless. That is NOT the case.
I am looking at the issue from the perspective of cost. Most coaching is not cheap. Most coaching sessions last for only an hour. Watching a high level player stream is free (subtracting bandwidth).Over the course of a hundred games with a competent player you will discover an established gameflow that you can emulate.
But the most important component of SC, mechanical expertise, is achieved through practice. A coach cannot improve your mechanics (beyond certain optimizations). Only you can. And if you approach the game from a mechanical mindset, you will improve leaps and bounds. If you approach the game from a mechanical perspective, it is my belief that you will develop much more organically than if you worry about minutiae (which is what most lower level players who are interested in coaching desire).
Minutiae and the deeper workings of builds simply aren't worth conveying to a lower level player.. And, like you said, "there is just not enough time." Lessons are expensive, and in the timespan of one hour the coach will mainly give "mechanical corrections," and the basic flow of a build, The deeper reasoning behind a build cannot be conveyed in such a short time. What the student is left with is information that, while certainly useful, could have been almost as easily attained with an understanding of each MU's gameflow (perhaps, through a free stream...), and dedication to improving fundamentals.
Which leads to my last statement. I think getting coaching from a player you want to support is great. It CAN help you learn, if you know what you want to get out of it. But I think most players go into coaching without knowing exactly what they want, and end up being coached on basic gameflow and mechanical corrections which they are only going to be able to attain/maintain themselves through practice.
But hey, thinking about it, if you are a higher level player and want to better understand minutiae, getting an hour coaching session and hammering out specific questions/answers rapidly sounds pretty darn cool.
as a teacher coaching can be essential to the further improvement of whatever it is ur doing, the person coaching however doesnt have to be massively better than you, they just have to have a decent amount of knowledge and COACH you to doing what they can see from a calm eye.
coaching in starcraft for me is a wierd one. You dont need it! What exactly do you want to get better at it for? Whats the rush? My argument is that computer games have a 24hr 365 day a year accessibility so even through mass gaming you can get the experience you need with the game. Its not like golf for example, how can someone possibly help you actually swing, well they can be pointing out the issues you have but this is the thing, golf is a 4hr a day (at best) experience before you either get too tired or the elements and light runi the day. coaching in this case is useful as you can maximise ur play time. This goes for ANYTHING that has physical limit into how much you can practice it (unless you own all of the equipment in ur house). noe of course a load of people are going to bash my opinion but i paid for sc coaching 3 times, and then realised straight after it not one of the coaches were the same and had different ideas. this then makes coaching pointless, ur paying for someones opinion and although the fundamentals were discussed they weres told me HOW to hit the bench marks. The pro i got coached with couldnt understand why i couldnt hit 50 supply by 6.30??? so coach me. what am i doing wrong.
With sc2 i feel getting coaching is pointless as it ruins the true rts notion of the game and in the end you start playing mechanical rather than ad hok, come on. we watch gsl and all the tournies. it really is the same game over and over again. When the casters go mad saying hes so creative and all the guy did was throw a starport down earlier than normal . . it makes me laugh
but i guess this was what we were talkin about earlier . . . . .
But, whenever there is a coach.. there needs to be a student. I have coached a lot and didnt take long to realize that 99% of the "students" do not actually want to improve, they just want to be better. This means, they wont practice, they just play for fun and think listening to someone will get them skill out of thin air.
Most people who are trying to become pro gamers or just trying to reach master league do not want to work for their goals. This is one of the main reason "playing a lot" is the usual answer when you ask how to improve.
Most of the SC2 coaching is not aiming at players who actually want to work hard and improve and is therefore low quality. How can you teach someone who doesnt want to learn ? --> You offer fast short therm success. This kind of coaching and practicing will lead to a fast (small) improvement, getting players slightly higher in the leagues and thats it. There is no way to become a pro if some guy tells you a buildorder. How would that even work?
In general improving includes the following steps:
1.) attitude ( figuring out that you actually need to improve, a typical problem in team games where people usually think all others are bad, not a huge problem in sc2) 2.) analyzing your flaws 3.) attitude ( being ready to work hard ) 4.) practicing 5.) improving
If one step is going wrong all following steps are going wrong as well. (If you cannot find your flaws, you cannot figure out what to practice.. so you cant practice and therefore cant improve.) As i said above, the main problem in sc2 is the attitude, people do not want to work hard.. or work at all. They want to play, have fun and magically become really good. But this is nothing a coach can help you with.
However, a coach can help you with 2.) and 4.) . If you are bad at analyzing yourself, you will never improve on your own. A coach can assist you and figure out your flaws on the short run, while teaching you how to find your flaws yourself for later on. After you found your flaws, a good coach will help you to set up practice plans and exercises that allow you to get rid of your flaws by practicing. Doing that on your own works sometimes.. but most of the time it doesnt, simply because people cant find their flaws. (Best proof is: at least 90% of all help threads on TL include a replay where people lost to basic macro flaws, still they all ask for decision making advice and lots of the advice actually aims at the buildorder/decision making instead of the macro)
So basically the coaching problem is like this: people are lazy but want to be pro -> they do not practice -> real coaching doesnt work -> people offer low quality coaching -> coaches advertise -> people think they can be pro without hard work -> back to the start
On March 09 2013 04:43 U_G_L_Y wrote: But a coach can't help me be more coordinated, a better multitasker, or remember to do things that I KNOW that I should have done 2 minutes ago.
That's actually incorrect. If you don't know how to fix these things, then no amount of your own work would fix the problems. A good coach would be able to be more exact in noticing your flaws and go even farther, providing specific and proven exercises to do (that you didn't know about) in order to train your multitasking. Provide options on how to improve coordination. Hell there are plenty of training exercises that the proper coach can provide that will help you to remember things (see day9's newbie dailies, most of them revolve around one of the many forms of teaching memory and prioritizing).
My wife has tried coaching me to lock the doors at night, take out the garbage on Thursday night, but I still can't remember to do those things consistently, either. And she is really good at it
If you think a coach can help me to pay attention and do the things I have been trying to do for 15 years, by all means I will pay for it; I just don't see evidence that they can. Only a LOT of CONSISTENT repetition can help that. Or perhaps a brain transplant.
wat, that has nothing to do with anything
and not to derail the thread too much, if you cared more about it, I guarantee you would remember to do it
WTF?
It has everything to do with what we are talking about. In life, I struggle to remember to do things I know are important, even when focusing on them, just like in Starcraft. At work, if I don't document certain transactions with clients, I get written up. Despite this, when I am dealing with multiple clients, I forget. This is my fucking job, it is definitely important, it is how I live. But I can't remember do certin things anyway. I have post it notes, I have developed specific habits to try to remind me, but I still really struggle with it and am always in trouble for it.
Sending my SCV back to Protoss base at 5 minutes is also SUPER important to me, but I still get distracted and forget and lose to a 4 gate now and then. It is the exact same thing.
I used to drive a taxi from the airport to and from the ski resports/hotels, and I consistently missed the turn-off to the airport, even after a full season driving the route dozens of times a day. Even though I would sometimes have 10 passengers in my van.
I am glad you never forget things that are important to you, that you are focused on doing, but it is the (biggest) reason why I suck at Starcraft. I don't think coaching can fix that. Perhaps a good night's sleep, caffeine, lots of practice, and maybe a brain transplant...
On March 10 2013 01:31 ROOTMinigun wrote: That's true.
The biggest problem I run into in the lessons, is just there's not enough time. 1 hour is a very limited amount of time to work with. Starcraft 2 is not a simple game whatsoever, and explaining how to defend a certain build can alone take quite a bit of time. But yeah, coaching in the way you explained is definitely the most helpful way.
If the one lesson isnt enough time and you know that.. why do you offer a single lesson to your students? Wouldnt it be more honest to tell the students that they need at least X lessons and then only offer at least that amount of lessons?
I take guitar lessons and if anyone asks my teacher about a single lesson he just laughs and sends them home.
To the OP: Some people don't like to read, they try to learn by playing and trying to figure out stuff on their own. I'm not a coach, but I've helped 2 friends that had good mechanics but had no interest in hunting and reading strategies. After I showed one of them 4 protoss strategies that I used to get to diamond he could easily get from silver to platinum on his own. The "gut feeling" for people who don't read strategies seems to be 1 base + harass.
JustAGame: A good reason to take 1 lesson is to try it, and see if the teacher + format is something you like, and then if it was good, book some more hours. Also for my friends I mentioned above, any coach should be able to spot the weakness in their play and explain a couple of basic strats in a fairly short amount of time and be of help for them.
For myself, I went from silver to diamond by reading strats here, watching casts by husky and day9, but not everyone have the patience to spend that many hours on learning instead of playing. It's not only how you want to learn, but also a bit what your talents are: I'm also a self learned programmer, but I needed lessons to learn piano. I have met a few people who did not need a teacher to learn piano but clearly had a lot more talent than me. Most people do need lessons to learn programming, but a few people like me can do it on their own.
Also note that most poeple play for fun and don't have motivation/talent to become pro, Also for people who play for fun and have a stable income, coaching is not that expensive unless you take $150 / hour lessons from Idra
On March 12 2013 12:55 ztranger wrote: JustAGame: A good reason to take 1 lesson is to try it, and see if the teacher + format is something you like, and then if it was good, book some more hours. Also for my friends I mentioned above, any coach should be able to spot the weakness in their play and explain a couple of basic strats in a fairly short amount of time and be of help for them.
My guitar teacher gives a free lesson for that reason, if you dont like it you dont pay at all. I do the same with sc2 coaching, if the guys are nice i even coach for free, but no matter what.. i tell every student that that taking only a few lessons is pointless. I prefer having less students than to make them believe 3 lessons would get them into GM league (and you wouldnt believe how many people think that, i had a bronze league student with 2000 games played, who really thought listening to me for 2 lessons would allow him to win the mlg......)
On March 12 2013 12:55 ztranger wrote: For myself, I went from silver to diamond by reading strats here, watching casts by husky and day9, but not everyone have the patience to spend that many hours on learning instead of playing. It's not only how you want to learn, but also a bit what your talents are: I'm also a self learned programmer, but I needed lessons to learn piano. I have met a few people who did not need a teacher to learn piano but clearly had a lot more talent than me. Most people do need lessons to learn programming, but a few people like me can do it on their own.
One of my students went from silver to master league within 5 lessons (=5 weeks) and about ~75 hours of total sc2 playtime during that time. Learning on your own is always much slower. Reading the stuff on your own isnt the problem, the real problem is evaluating what you read. Most of the guides are written by people who have flaws themselves and (as a lower tier player) its really hard to figure out which guide is good and which isnt.
On March 04 2013 16:43 Teoita wrote: i've seen many (low league) players overmaking stalkers in pvp, which to them is fine (hey i'm keeping my money low!), but is quite a big mistake.
when i switched from nerfed terran to protoss and went down to low-masters i also built mainly stalkers, so it's possible to go to ML with this mistakes, thats why u may use coaching. to ppl who wants buy lessons - take them only from GML/famous players, and only if u're stuck in high leagues (like if u're stuck in low/mid masters). if u're stuck in low league - quit forums, take a notebook and a pen and start mass laddering
On March 09 2013 13:33 FireMonkey wrote: Well is there anyone who was just an average scrub (master or below) who took coaching and then become pro?
also practice partners dont count
That's pretty irrelevant for the arguement
yeah i know, the main point has seemingly been proven so im just wondering
oh, then no I don't think so to answer your question
On March 09 2013 12:06 U_G_L_Y wrote:
On March 09 2013 05:15 Noobity wrote:
On March 09 2013 04:43 U_G_L_Y wrote: But a coach can't help me be more coordinated, a better multitasker, or remember to do things that I KNOW that I should have done 2 minutes ago.
That's actually incorrect. If you don't know how to fix these things, then no amount of your own work would fix the problems. A good coach would be able to be more exact in noticing your flaws and go even farther, providing specific and proven exercises to do (that you didn't know about) in order to train your multitasking. Provide options on how to improve coordination. Hell there are plenty of training exercises that the proper coach can provide that will help you to remember things (see day9's newbie dailies, most of them revolve around one of the many forms of teaching memory and prioritizing).
My wife has tried coaching me to lock the doors at night, take out the garbage on Thursday night, but I still can't remember to do those things consistently, either. And she is really good at it
If you think a coach can help me to pay attention and do the things I have been trying to do for 15 years, by all means I will pay for it; I just don't see evidence that they can. Only a LOT of CONSISTENT repetition can help that. Or perhaps a brain transplant.
wat, that has nothing to do with anything
and not to derail the thread too much, if you cared more about it, I guarantee you would remember to do it
WTF?
It has everything to do with what we are talking about. In life, I struggle to remember to do things I know are important, even when focusing on them, just like in Starcraft. At work, if I don't document certain transactions with clients, I get written up. Despite this, when I am dealing with multiple clients, I forget. This is my fucking job, it is definitely important, it is how I live. But I can't remember do certin things anyway. I have post it notes, I have developed specific habits to try to remind me, but I still really struggle with it and am always in trouble for it.
Sending my SCV back to Protoss base at 5 minutes is also SUPER important to me, but I still get distracted and forget and lose to a 4 gate now and then. It is the exact same thing.
I used to drive a taxi from the airport to and from the ski resports/hotels, and I consistently missed the turn-off to the airport, even after a full season driving the route dozens of times a day. Even though I would sometimes have 10 passengers in my van.
I am glad you never forget things that are important to you, that you are focused on doing, but it is the (biggest) reason why I suck at Starcraft. I don't think coaching can fix that. Perhaps a good night's sleep, caffeine, lots of practice, and maybe a brain transplant...
Then you don't play enough. Sure you may forget the first 5-10 times to take out the garbage or whatever. But if she has to remind you EVERY single day at the same time, then I would put the blame on you. Unless you have a medical condition that causes you to forget easy, or are super overworked or whatever. Otherwise.... Same applies for starcraft...sure you have to be told/reminded to the first few times...but if you are still forgetting...
On March 10 2013 01:31 ROOTMinigun wrote: That's true.
The biggest problem I run into in the lessons, is just there's not enough time. 1 hour is a very limited amount of time to work with. Starcraft 2 is not a simple game whatsoever, and explaining how to defend a certain build can alone take quite a bit of time. But yeah, coaching in the way you explained is definitely the most helpful way.
If the one lesson isnt enough time and you know that.. why do you offer a single lesson to your students? Wouldnt it be more honest to tell the students that they need at least X lessons and then only offer at least that amount of lessons?
I take guitar lessons and if anyone asks my teacher about a single lesson he just laughs and sends them home.
By using the word honest you are implying that I'm scamming them or something...
I'm very upfront with it if they ask about it.
Guitar lessons = / starcraft lessons. 1 hour is still very helpful none the less
One hour is plenty to teach a plat player a matchup. It is not however plenty to teach someone how to actually play starcraft.
You are right, I do not play enough. Though a lot are team lolz and random race games, I have played about 4000 games of SC2 and I would guess maybe 20k+ of SC1. My SCV production is not bad EVERY game, but it certainly slips in MANY games. In games that I have near perfect production, something else slips, and I generally realize it shortly after it happens.
I am not saying coaching isn't worth it for everyone, just for me. I have really really shitty mechanics, I am aware of it and am working to change that. I am honestly shocked when I win games because I am aware of the gajillions of mistakes I made.
I don't think you really comprehend how talented you are
On March 09 2013 13:33 FireMonkey wrote: Well is there anyone who was just an average scrub (master or below) who took coaching and then become pro?
also practice partners dont count
That's pretty irrelevant for the arguement
yeah i know, the main point has seemingly been proven so im just wondering
oh, then no I don't think so to answer your question
On March 09 2013 12:06 U_G_L_Y wrote:
On March 09 2013 05:15 Noobity wrote:
On March 09 2013 04:43 U_G_L_Y wrote: But a coach can't help me be more coordinated, a better multitasker, or remember to do things that I KNOW that I should have done 2 minutes ago.
That's actually incorrect. If you don't know how to fix these things, then no amount of your own work would fix the problems. A good coach would be able to be more exact in noticing your flaws and go even farther, providing specific and proven exercises to do (that you didn't know about) in order to train your multitasking. Provide options on how to improve coordination. Hell there are plenty of training exercises that the proper coach can provide that will help you to remember things (see day9's newbie dailies, most of them revolve around one of the many forms of teaching memory and prioritizing).
My wife has tried coaching me to lock the doors at night, take out the garbage on Thursday night, but I still can't remember to do those things consistently, either. And she is really good at it
If you think a coach can help me to pay attention and do the things I have been trying to do for 15 years, by all means I will pay for it; I just don't see evidence that they can. Only a LOT of CONSISTENT repetition can help that. Or perhaps a brain transplant.
wat, that has nothing to do with anything
and not to derail the thread too much, if you cared more about it, I guarantee you would remember to do it
WTF?
It has everything to do with what we are talking about. In life, I struggle to remember to do things I know are important, even when focusing on them, just like in Starcraft. At work, if I don't document certain transactions with clients, I get written up. Despite this, when I am dealing with multiple clients, I forget. This is my fucking job, it is definitely important, it is how I live. But I can't remember do certin things anyway. I have post it notes, I have developed specific habits to try to remind me, but I still really struggle with it and am always in trouble for it.
Sending my SCV back to Protoss base at 5 minutes is also SUPER important to me, but I still get distracted and forget and lose to a 4 gate now and then. It is the exact same thing.
I used to drive a taxi from the airport to and from the ski resports/hotels, and I consistently missed the turn-off to the airport, even after a full season driving the route dozens of times a day. Even though I would sometimes have 10 passengers in my van.
I am glad you never forget things that are important to you, that you are focused on doing, but it is the (biggest) reason why I suck at Starcraft. I don't think coaching can fix that. Perhaps a good night's sleep, caffeine, lots of practice, and maybe a brain transplant...
Sounds more like you have an attention deficit disorder (like myself) more than you wouldn't benefit from coaching though. Your coaching would need to be specific to include the knowledge of the pre-existing disorder in order to be successful though. And even then the coach would need to know how to teach those with that disorder.
It doesn't mean the coaching wouldn't help, simply that you would need a coaching that specifically addresses your needs. Similarly, if you know and understand where your attention begins to get derailed, you can usually coach yourself into specific ways to remember things. Mnemonics are useful and successful for a reason, and I think the ADD brains must have had some part in coming up with them. They're just different ways to go about remembering things, and these can be taught (or in this case coached)
From the perspective of a music student who knows and understands how to practice:
Coaching will improve players of lower skill much faster than players of higher skill. Players of higher skill (masters+) have the basics of the game down and, for the most part, know what they need to do in order to improve. From there, it's all about continually practicing and remembering to macro more smoothly, smooth out your build orders, study timings, etc. Of course, there are always things that need improvement or bad habits that need to be broken that you can't always see, and it's helpful to have your gameplay reviewed by someone else, either a peer or mentor. Obviously, the more accomplished the person reviewing your gameplay is, the better feedback you'll get; therefore, a pro gamer coach can point out problematic issues in your gameplay quite well.
All of that being said, of course coaching helps. But at the higher levels of play, most of the work is still individual work; a coach can't make you consistently macro better or smooth out your builds perfectly, that's your own work.
On March 12 2013 20:28 ROOTMinigun wrote: By using the word honest you are implying that I'm scamming them or something...
I'm very upfront with it if they ask about it.
Guitar lessons = / starcraft lessons. 1 hour is still very helpful none the less
One hour is plenty to teach a plat player a matchup. It is not however plenty to teach someone how to actually play starcraft.
Minigun nailed this one pretty much on the head. People should think of Starcraft 2 as a guitar and playing it as learning songs. Hell, I would liken songs to builds, that each of them takes tons of pratice. My girlfriend is in a band and they take several 3-5 hour pratices just to master one song to the point where they want to preform it in a set. And its really shows if one of them didn't pratice for a week. Starcraft 2 is the same way. If you don't put the time in, you won't get better. And you can waste your time doing dumb stuff.
Completely separate from a coach's ability to play the game, is the coach's ability to teach the game. His placement into bronze league can disqualify him, but his placement into grandmaster cannot possibly qualify him. Coaching/teaching is a completely separate skill.
You find a good coach and you will find someone that is worth learning from.
I still think people are looking at this incorrectly.
The guitar analogy is good in some ways, but still misses the point, completely.
1 lesson won't make you a god at the game, or even good, it might make you improve 1 specific outlook on it, but realistically it may not even do that.( as people have said is similar with guitar lessons)
But, and this is where the point is missed completely between the 2 comparisons, you can't and don't have to 'beat' the guitar.
The guitar won't react to what you are doing, and try and throw you off.
But even aside from all that the other reason the guitar comparison isn't good, is that say you get to a really high level with the guitar, does that suddenly mean you can win compeitions ? No of course it doesn't because it is only 1 part of being good at it, there are other things then that will need to be improved, mental and phsycial improvements, that will enhance your skill level that you have gained from practicing the guitar.
This is the same for sc2, and most games, you will improve in a bubble and get to GM, does this mean you can now start to win tournaments, no ofcourse it doesn't, you MAY be able to if inherently you can keep calm under pressure, but alot of people need to coach themselves at this, or phsically can't last the full X amount of days a tournament is under the stress. Both of these things can be improved by coaching.
On March 13 2013 03:23 Emporium wrote: I still think people are looking at this incorrectly.
The guitar analogy is good in some ways, but still misses the point, completely.
1 lesson won't make you a god at the game, or even good, it might make you improve 1 specific outlook on it, but realistically it may not even do that.( as people have said is similar with guitar lessons)
But, and this is where the point is missed completely between the 2 comparisons, you can't and don't have to 'beat' the guitar.
The guitar won't react to what you are doing, and try and throw you off.
But even aside from all that the other reason the guitar comparison isn't good, is that say you get to a really high level with the guitar, does that suddenly mean you can win compeitions ? No of course it doesn't because it is only 1 part of being good at it, there are other things then that will need to be improved, mental and phsycial improvements, that will enhance your skill level that you have gained from practicing the guitar.
This is the same for sc2, and most games, you will improve in a bubble and get to GM, does this mean you can now start to win tournaments, no ofcourse it doesn't, you MAY be able to if inherently you can keep calm under pressure, but alot of people need to coach themselves at this, or phsically can't last the full X amount of days a tournament is under the stress. Both of these things can be improved by coaching.
On March 13 2013 03:23 Emporium wrote: I still think people are looking at this incorrectly.
The guitar analogy is good in some ways, but still misses the point, completely.
1 lesson won't make you a god at the game, or even good, it might make you improve 1 specific outlook on it, but realistically it may not even do that.( as people have said is similar with guitar lessons)
But, and this is where the point is missed completely between the 2 comparisons, you can't and don't have to 'beat' the guitar.
The guitar won't react to what you are doing, and try and throw you off.
But even aside from all that the other reason the guitar comparison isn't good, is that say you get to a really high level with the guitar, does that suddenly mean you can win compeitions ? No of course it doesn't because it is only 1 part of being good at it, there are other things then that will need to be improved, mental and phsycial improvements, that will enhance your skill level that you have gained from practicing the guitar.
This is the same for sc2, and most games, you will improve in a bubble and get to GM, does this mean you can now start to win tournaments, no ofcourse it doesn't, you MAY be able to if inherently you can keep calm under pressure, but alot of people need to coach themselves at this, or phsically can't last the full X amount of days a tournament is under the stress. Both of these things can be improved by coaching.
....do you play an instrument?
i thought the EXACT same thing... music instruments are pretty much the same as sc2 .. you have mechanical skills, you have knowledge and experience.. you have buildorders ( called songs) that require you to hit the right button/string at the right timing and you got improvising with the rest of your band, which requires you to react and listen to the song. It requires a pretty euqal skill set. The only difference i can see, here is that music goes to your ear and playing sc2 goes to your eyes.
coaching definitely helps. there is absolutely no reason why it should be different to any other (e)sport or activity. of course it depends a lot on the coach.
me personally I tried it once out of curiosity and paid 2 hours. It was in the early stage of sc2 and the coach helped me to quickly identify different protoss builds depending on the gas mined and other scouting information. the result was a little build order tree no a piece of paper I could use to identify the protoss build and counter correctly. Very useful stuff. I could have found the same information on the net after hours of digging and lots of trial and error. So in a way a coach also speeds up the learning process.
EPT
