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Hello everyone,
It is common knowledge to say that playing all the races on the ladder at the same time (going 'Random') is not producing the best results in terms of skill/training time ratio.
But do you guys think game knowledge of other races (from an active player standpoint) is useful when playing one race, or is it best to dedicate one's time to deepen his understanding/mastery of his main race?
Here is my thought: I have encountered many players that were doing well in one particular race, then have switched because they felt they have reached a skill ceiling, and then have experienced (a year later) a incredible skill breakthrough with their "new main race", possibly going from diamond to high masters, etc.
One way to explain that would be that some races require too much skill to win consistently at the precise level at which they encountered their 'ceiling' (even if that does not mean nothing about actual, overall balance), but I am not fond of this explanation.
What might be possible, is that the game knowledge offered by knowing a particular race's ins and outs from a player perspective is a great plus when you decide to play another race, especially (or not?) in the matchup involving these two races.
What is your experience with this, and do you think race switching is a nice way to overcome a (perceived?) skill ceiling you may experience?
Do you think this experience is useful (considering the considerable amount of time needed to master a new race) when switching back to your old race, compared to continue playing it?
Do you think this might be true at some levels only, and do you think it is useful to master other races to some extent is profitable when playing one race, but that putting too much work into this (like, once you get the basics) would only get you diminishing returns?
(please not that all of this is not designed to "put oneself's in his opponents' shoes" to teach him something about the balance of the game that he might have been perceiving wrong, let's assume that the game is perfectly or almost perfectly balanced, which I believe is true).
Please let me know
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If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose.
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On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose.
What you say is a tad contradictory: you say race switching is *somewhat* useful, so it does mean that it is a way of practicing that can result into a non-negliegeable increase in skill; but you also say that a skill ceiling cannot be fixed, which would mean that if you practice from a plateau, no training method can ever grant you any gain in skill whatsoever.
Do you mean that race switching can help you only before you reached that "plateau"? And btw, when and how do you know you have reached it?
You might be right about some people not being naturally designed for this game, but I find it a rather pessimistic way of seeing things. That would be a nice subject for another topic though.
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On August 04 2014 23:05 DjayEl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose. What you say is a tad contradictory: you say race switching is *somewhat* useful, so it does mean that it is a way of practicing that can result into a non-negliegeable increase in skill; but you also say that a skill ceiling cannot be fixed, which would mean that if you practice from a plateau, no training method can ever grant you any gain in skill whatsoever. Do you mean that race switching can help you only before you reached that "plateau"? And btw, when and how do you know you have reached it? You might be right about some people not being naturally designed for this game, but I find it a rather pessimistic way of seeing things. That would be a nice subject for another topic though.
yes thats what i meant. if you reached your plateau then nothing will change that "skill ceiling". If there is still room for improvement then playing other races can help. However if you are a fairly new player, i highly suggest sticking to one race and getting at least plat before playing other races or else you will be overwhelmed with information.
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It happened to me towards end of wol. I am zerg and got stuck at low diamond and decided to go terran and see how it goes, I got to high diamond pretty easily playing pure bio. (only versus masters) but then I had exam and took a break.
I did the same for protoss and got to low diamond as well (I just don't get pvp)
I think the knowledge of the game and game sense are as important as mechanics itself and you just get some matchups better
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United States4883 Posts
On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose.
I don't think that people that plateau in gold are limited because of their skill. There's no reason why every person can't reach masters if they practice correctly and are learning efficiently and put in the time.
Aside from that, I DO think that race switching is relatively good for people, but it becomes more and more detrimental to you as you get higher in skill. When you're in mid masters to GM, there's a lot of very little things to remember, and even just a week of not playing or playing another race makes you forget a lot of small details. It's certainly helpful to see from another race's perspective, but whether it would help or hurt especially high level players or pros, I think the answer is that race switching would clearly be detrimental to their overall skill in short run, which, as a pro player, is not an option.
As far as "for fun" goes, I highly encourage offracing. Knowing that you suck with another race helps with your mindset because you get out of the frustration of losing with the race you're supposed to be good at. Plus, mech is fun . I play random in all my team games, and I'm mostly like Rank 1 diamond or masters with my 2v2 teams.
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Lots of factors coming together I think.
Playing a new race forces your brain to develop in different areas as the races require different skill sets. It's motivating to start anew and you can use the skills you've acquired to build a more efficient framework the second time around.. Having played both sides of a matchup also makes it much easier to sniff out what your opponent is doing and knowing what to scout for. Plus you're actually just playing the game more and getting better at the core mechanics.
I played random (currently maining Zerg) and race switching has definitely helped me get through blockades (skill ceiling is the wrong word). Even for the sake of perspective it's very helpful so you don't get stuck in a negative mindset where you're too tunnelvisioned on imbalance to come up with creative solutions.
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If you replace "skill ceiling" with "game understanding" then switching races can help your cause. If you are referring to "skill ceiling" as your ability to make decisions, APM, macro, multi-task, then it is of far less benefit.
Switching can give you an opportunity to work on different skills that you might not otherwise be required to perfect. Learning to split Terran units will make your engagements more powerful as Zerg or Protoss, for example.
As was said, a Random player might not be able to achieve the same intricate knowledge as a single-race player. For the majority of SC2 players, the amount of fun and well-rounded knowledge outweighs the negatives.
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On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose. No one that doesn't have SEVERE mental/physical disabilities stays in gold for 4 years with willingness to improve and effort.
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If you are 'good' with one race, you should already be quite good with all of them once you get used to hotkeys etc. Not on the same level as your main race, but not much lower.
Also, anyone can get master. The people in gold with 8000 games played just don't care about playing better, which is perfectly fine since skill in games doesn't mean much unless you are a pro player...
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Can't say for the skill ceiling, but I can say switching from Zerg to Random really made me more appreciative of the skill needed to play each race and therefore made me able to enjoy tournaments more. Before, I couldn't possibly cheer for a protoss as their win felt so dirty to me, but playing them changed that and helped my viewer experience tremendously. Now I laugh at protoss bullshit instead of crying.
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United States4883 Posts
On August 05 2014 02:29 VengefulTree wrote: Can't say for the skill ceiling, but I can say switching from Zerg to Random really made me more appreciative of the skill needed to play each race and therefore made me able to enjoy tournaments more. Before, I couldn't possibly cheer for a protoss as their win felt so dirty to me, but playing them changed that and helped my viewer experience tremendously. Now I laugh at protoss bullshit instead of crying.
That's something everyone needs to do! No one knows how impossibly difficult it is for the Protoss player to constantly sweep around with an oracle for vision while positioning their army to attack while positioning for a counter drop, and doing all this while macroing and using constant chronoboost; no one knows until they've actually tried it.
But on a general note, I think offracing in general in good for people who hit a plateau or (in my case) just really love learning because you really start to see where the weaknesses of each race are. When you're playing Protoss, it always seems like Zerg just has stuff and your attacks never work, etc., etc. And then you play Zerg and realize that, holy shit, any timing earlier than 3-base saturation is like completely obnoxious and screws with your saturation and benchmarks so much. Or Terran players who don't realize how strong reaper/hellion/banshee pokes are until they've played Zerg and try to stop it with 3 queens and 16 lings lol. It's all about perspective.
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When I first reached masters with my main race (which is, still today, Protoss), I decided to buy myself a new account and play random (this was during WoL). That was a lot of fun and I progressed a lot : for instance I really got the feeling playing T made me learn with more force how important engages/splits were, and playing Z improved my macro cycles for all races. Besides, I reached masters quickly with this account too, so I could steal some PvZ or PvT builds I couldn't beat to improve my own P play. Overall it was really beneficial, but I did it at a time the general level was far less high, so I don't know. If you want to reach say high masters today and plateau in mid masters, you have to really know your race by heart so I would recommend to just stick to it, learn the tiny things (building placement, critical timings, etc...) and improve that race only. Offracing wouldn't help you, just make you realize how hard the other races are to play too -which is actually quite important as it would spare us a lot of twitch chat whine.
Overall an undoubtedly enriching experience, but not something I would recommend to progress if you aim for the upper league for instance.
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I've been thinking about offracing for a while, but seriously I've played Zerg since SC1 and never any other race(besides campaign and stuff ofc). It just feels so wrong and also I'm worried it will screw up my rhythm, I rarely play SC2 nowaday, sometimes I get the cravings but thats like 3-4 days of intense playing a month. Meaning my multitask, creepspread and control groups are far from on autopilot.
I'm scared off-racing because I feel I will get even worse at the race I actually want to play but I've always felt that it probably would be very beneficial for me to do so. I honestly think that if I for example played Terran I would have a lot easier time against Zerg than I do vs T as Z. Not because T is stronger or anything like that but simply because of my knowledge of the races weaknesses.
As Z I often feel forced to do something to react, when attacking I often just charge in heedlessly. The reason for that is that I'm scared that the enemy will see what I'm doing and be able to counter by for example position better. I dunno how to describe it really its just that as soon as I move out on the map I feel like its me being pressured rather than the other way around. Like if the T scouts my roaches he will just kill them. If i played T I'm sure I would feel scared like hell seeing lots of roaches =P Experiencing that fear and what exactly it is you are afraid of as Terran would probably be very useful.
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On August 05 2014 02:03 Karpfen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose. No one that doesn't have SEVERE mental/physical disabilities stays in gold for 4 years with willingness to improve and effort.
no its a sad sad truth, some people are just really that bad
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Savior used to practice Terran because he said he had learned everything there was to learn about Zerg .
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I think it depends whats the reason for you not getting better. There are some people whose mind set is just pure toxic and lose, before even playing as they think opponents race is imba.
After switch they may get good/better results, but even that may be because they have used more time on thinking how to win with opponents race instead of race they played them self. In these cases you may even just change race, nothing is as useful in sc2 than thinking your race us better, because you will see reason you lose more clearly.
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there are some very good posts in this thread!
my 2 cents: (long post incoming) In BW, I played Zerg exclusively, in SC2 I sometimes messed around with Protoss during WoL, but mostly kept playing Zerg. Now that I'm done with college, I've got lots of spare time until "real life" begins, so I decided to come back to SC2 by finally trying out Random. I had reached Master with Zerg last year, but due to the lack of play during the last months my mechanics took a huge dip. Still, I can easily beat most players up to diamond with Zerg.
I've always been a very mechanical player (around 200 APM with Z), i.e. I fully concentrate on macro but neglect micro almost completely. (exceptions: early game, zvz, defense vs. allins) Learning the other races is hell right now. Especially Terran. Everything dies almost instantly, you have to build hundreds of buildings, switch addons...and so on. I've always had respect for Terran players, but after trying the race for more than just some 4v4 fun games, I really have to admit that Terran takes tons of knowledge AND insane mechanics. (unless you're Goody, no offense)
With Protoss it's kind of simple, as long as I can dictate the pace of the game. If the opponent manages to distract me, I completely fall apart. But practice makes perfect, I guess.
The most important thing I've learned: Just because you know the zerg timings doesn't mean you can stop them.
On skill ceiling: I think I had reached my ceiling last year. I have bad eyesight, which makes playing hectic games pretty hard. My knowledge with Zerg is decent, the other races catch up quickly. While playing the other races surely helps your overall understanding of the game, I don't think it's directly linked to improvement with your main race. The only thing I've noticed is that you get a better feeling for gas timings and building placements.
Mentally, playing other races definitely helps. As I'm losing a lot with P and T, my MMR isn't that high atm. So everytime I'm Zerg, it's time to relax a bit. I also don't get too angry anymore, because playing random always offers new challenges. I always had a tendency to get stuck on overdroning and not scouting properly, which nowadays doesn't happen too much anymore, because I'm much more focused reading the opponent correctly. In that regard, race switching definitely helped.
My goal is to reach Diamond with Random, then I'll go back to zerg as I'm not still not liking Terran very much.
On the "6000 games and still gold"-phenomenon: This always baffles me. You sometimes see players, who actually know some basics and are trying hard. Those are the ones who maybe just aren't capable of improving, because they have a tendency the screw up basic stuff even after thousands of games.
And then there are those people with 5k games, who are trying to 1 base bc rush or build 3 spines in their own main in zvz vs. a 15 hatch. I have a hard time understanding that. How is that fun? And why aren't they looking for some better builds? I'm by no means a good or talented player, and I also don't want to brag, because bragging sucks. But I just don't get it. Today I played a guy who went mass phoenix vs Z off of 2 bases and then went on to flame me, because I had built Hydras. Why.
Final thoughts: The older I get, the more relaxed I am while playing SC2. I'll never be a pro, maybe I won't even reach Masters anymore. But playing Random has helped me appreciating the game as a whole. Maybe it would be for the good of the game, if some people (especially the so-called tryhards / imba whiners in lower leagues) would try to see the game through the eyes of the other races. But maybe they like blaming others for their losses.
Sorry for that monstrous post.
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Random helps you appreciate the game as a whole. (Totally exactly what the previous guy said). You understand the biases coming from the other side better. It makes the game more fun as it allows you to fool around at a lower level and play fun compositions and use things you never used before.
In terms of making you a better single race player, I have had no help in that. I'm still just as bad. But that's ok because when I lose, I'll go play some random and have fun doing it.
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I've played random since BW. I'm diamond currently and have made masters twice.
I'm on the other side of this discussion.. looking at my win percentages I feel like If I just switch to my best 'overall' race I could make masters consistently.
but I didn't start out as random for rank.. I started because I bought the whole game and didn't want to limit myself to just 1/3rd of it
do what makes it fun... who cares if you're 'capping out'..
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