EPTAlternative Practice Methods - Page 2
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dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
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Isto
52 Posts
That program though, that would be a really good add on on starcraft. This might be something to mention to blizzard, to be able to play within replays to copy the players in the replays and learn build orders in this way. Doing is often more productive than watching and only then doing yourself. One method would be to use two screens where there is replay on one screen and play in other, but to be able to place buildings in the same spots that show in the map as shadows would be productive. I suppose this could be easy to code, all the code is there already would have to only add transparent shadows from replay to the game and load the game as learning mode. Would be a tool to practice and perfect build orders and building positioning, not much else. Someone might still do teaching replays for unit positioning and such also. Could also add short text for them for instructions. | ||
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Isto
52 Posts
The reason to focus solely on stalkers in the given practice is to force the player to invent methods to use them as in ideally, the player would always have stalkers. Not only, but always some and when the player have gone through different situations with only stalkers, inventing alternative methods on their use the available skills and knowledge is used even when there are other units. Its purely to improve stalker use because i myself believe that protoss should never play without stalkers as it is a crucial unit. They are also only gateway unit that shoots air within a medium range or is it the only unit in the entire roster. You need to have them. Only scenario i can think of is that if you go strongly or solely on air. Some players who get good on stalker micro can also win games in the early game with stalkers alone. I do not disagree on your points on stalkers. Still, alphago showed us that you can produce only stalkers and if your stalker micro is good enough you are probably invincible. Many protoss units are like this, and because of this have the most potential as a race which humans can never fully unlock. You can improve endlessly on using them. You can instantly teleport your units, recall all your units as in teleport within the map and instantly put in warp prism and away and in top of that have controllable ammunition which destroys almost anything at once. The micro potential is endless. I dont have a clear though now, maybe im saying same thing over again. Not sure what you mean about scouting. Seems like misinformation that wont affect a player who stays in course. There are unit compositions that fare against everything if you meant that. I have vision of automated education system that could produce professionals automatically, teaching step by step through automated programs, facilities and enhancements. You put people in and some of them walk out as professionals in any given area or rather, you download programs to help you being self thought and the programs might give you certificates through certain tests that would be publicly acceptable. Of course these kind of programs might help learning games too. Ah you mean that kind of stuff, the one build does not care. It produces the same things no matter what you do, it is an automaton. The reason why you lose to it lies in the execution and giving the player who is mechanically better than you the tools to perform in all situations and if you have an edge in strategy or so called "mind games" which the automaton does not take into account at all, you will still lose through your worse execution. It all depends that the player who uses "the one build" is better at mechanics than you and thats why, the one using it successfully must be the best in the world using a build that lets him win every single time through his superior abilities not falling for any loss through strategic approaches which are minimized as a risk factor. The player would be best in mechanics because lets say, from china there would be hundreds of millions of people that are drafted for the program, then only the most talented are left and the best from them would reign. They would not have other life than the program all of their other life is forfeit. Think it as something like an army in virtual environment. This could also be hold out as a pure military draft, competing on professional games to gain funds for the government, using the same players as soldiers in cyber or remote controlled environment which does not differ from RTS. The soldiers would probably also be cyborgs. This when there are billions of dollars involved in price money which will only happen after audience who do not play themselves start to get interested in esports. Before that, the one build would be teached in normal ways and would probably not fare that well. It can still be made into system that each player have their own approach for "the one build". Patterns they do every time because they are comfortable doing them and they find them effective. Starcraft is a game in my opinion where this can be accomplished. This is when imagination goes far ahead to the future, as in now, the one build in that format is a fraud. Starcraft is a game which is almost purely of arcade, and only starts to be a real time strategy after the opposing mechanics are around the same as yours. When you play against superior mechanics, you can only win by some strange shenanigans and even then only if you are worse by a small margin. This is the whole idea of "the one build", to shut down such possibilities so that the one with the superior mechanics cannot be beaten by players with lesser mechanics no matter what they do. Their decisions in the game would also have been mathematically calculated to represent the risk factors and taking account the worst case scenario to have an approach where the players win, even in the strategic or situational worst case scenario. The attack angles, timings, unit compositions, does the player pursue or not in a given situation and so. The games are not that different that they would produce any unknown patterns after hundreds of thousands of games. If someone would accomplish that, they would have beaten the system but would probably still lose to superior mechanics as this is an advantage they cannot nullify by strategies. The most usual pattern against better players are to rush, and the one build would always blind counter a rush. No one wants a "macro game" against mechanically superior opponent and the one build is built to bring the player safely to macro game and build to use the most efficient unit compositions, positionings, timings and so. It does not help the other player even he would know all of this beforehand because all is resolved by pure mechanics as in brute force alone. The requirement to win using "the one build" would be to be the one with clearly better mechanics. Of course if the opponent is strategically mute, the one build would fare better even with lesser mechanics as it is optimized. The main weakness would be predictability which does not help or work against such build again, if the player using it have better mechanics. It all comes down to that. Does this answer your questions ? The whole "the one build" is a thought i invented on the run when typing to this thread. It is purely improvised. The text above is too. My "the one build" in this forum so far have been that everything is improvised. The original post was to give several ideas to try on practice and couple of hints on undervalued or focused units. Can you imagine, you can see a professional Brood War match where the protoss player does not produce reavers against late game zerg who is producing mass hydra. This would be unthinkable if the player would use "the one build" which produces reaver + storm combination every single time as anyone should. There is no exceptions to this, no arguments why that would be unadvantageous. It will always favour the one doing reaver + storm against the one who does not. There really is not that many things you have to take account on starcraft game, in its core it is really simple and same things work over and over again. There really is not better alternatives. Same goes for terran late game vs zerg, try to play without irritade versus using irritade. Same goes for using EMP against protoss against not using. The same attack angles, the same routes in each map, the building placements and so. It really is quite repeatative outside the wonky all ins which the one builder is in thought of to completely shut of as a nuisance for getting to late game. You also mentioned a litany of units, it really is uneccessary like you said and the "one builder" must optimize his actions as is playing in human limits. The most optimal and / or useful combination must be chosen within the players limit. Otherwise the composition would not be optimal for that players circumstances. In starcarft 2 there is a new pro gamer at least in my knowledge named Zoun, which in my opinion have something going on in optimizing the protoss unit compositions. Most of the other protoss do not have, at least not in a way that have made me take notice like Zoun did. In one game for example, he had exactly 2 disruptors, exatcly 1 colossus, stalkers, exatly 2 adepts which he saved from early harass and exactly 2 zealots which he positioned on back of his army. Rest were stalkers. He made a timing attack on zerg using that optimized composition and placement so that when the flanking lings came, the zealots where there not rushing to die in the front like most of them do, and the disruptors + colossus + stalker combination in that early of a game crushed the opponent. This was in this year season 3 gsl ro24. This made me notice him and i have started a Fan Club as i want to see more what he comes up with and in my opinion he thinks the protoss race in starcraft 2 in an interesting way. The whole thing was planned out perfectly and the composition and placement was top notch. I got the feeling that every resource was counted on maximum efficiency. No other protoss have given me that feeling before, they just seem to play whatever and warp in units like crazy. In the past one of Specials Firebat (walking hellion ?) rushes made me think in the same way, that it was perfectly optimized. Both of the players won their respective games but specials approach was seen as an "all in" when Zouns approach was not, but could be seen as "the one build" if he would use it every single time. It seemed to have no weaknesses other than poor execution. - There is another thread on team melee format, thinking what accomplished players could manage when practicing enough on warp prism micro, think about 2 or 3 players who control individual warp prisms and constantly shift units within and outside warp prisms between the fight. That would really be something. In Protoss team melee there could be dedicated players for warp prisms alone. On top of that, there could be one player whose only purpose on the team is to always blink a stalker on red to the back of the army. No human can manage these feats alone, but one can still try to improve to do as much as possible. 4 player team positions could be something like this: Player 1 = Production Player 2 = Army Movement Player 3 = Warp Prism micro and Drop / attacking economy Player 4 = Blink micro for individual damaged units | ||
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Isto
52 Posts
I think you would approve of the ghost program in your practice that i mentioned ? Hmm what is my approach exactly ? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25883 Posts
On October 02 2020 01:59 Isto wrote: Seems like you have a good start. I think that might end up being a decent guide. Most of the people, i think even pros just play and do not have any systematic approach like you do. Many people do not need such but some of them might. I think you would approve of the ghost program in your practice that i mentioned ? Hmm what is my approach exactly ? My approach to practice isn’t systematic or isolated, I’ve just broken down the constitute of the game down. In practice I think Starcraft is a game of all of those things, so you have to practice them together, as mechanically soundly as you can and just grind it out. Thinking is underrated as well, be it strategically or visualising things, can’t always be at the keyboard after all! Your approach seems more akin to overly focusing on one aspect of the game for the sake of improving that aspect. I’d say it isn’t a bad approach at all, just markedly different from mine is all! With mine I have an idea of what overall top level play looks like, so it’s just trying to play that way, even if I get wrecked for a bit. Whereas yours would encompass doing things or playing styles that are designed to focus on improving say, unit spread or scouting Ovies or spellcaster control, but in a lopsided sense from standard play, almost like playing a challenge mode. Don’t think that’s a bad approach at all to take, just very different from mine. Hope that makes some sense! One thing I would do to warm up a bit is marine split customs, find it quite relaxing too. It’s important to get that skill down. On the other hand you know you’re splitting marines vs banes and are expecting them coming. Whereas in a real game you’re macroing, pushing and positioning tanks or mines and crucially you don’t always know when your opponent is going to pounce. So while there’s value in practicing the skill and warming up, eventually the ability to be good at that micro game doesn’t necessarily translate to a live game situation. One thing I would practice are builds prior to much opponent interaction. I think that’s valuable to get those builds really tight for the first few minutes, but that’s because outside of very crazy cheese you’re still practicing what you’d be doing in a game situation. | ||
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Isto
52 Posts
Its a separate thing from all other practice not a method you should dedicate yourself to. (When speaking of creating only stalkers for couple of games for example.) Your list seemed to me systematical. No matter, there is a certain image in my mind based on what you wrote and look forward to seeing your finished guide. Not practicing starcarft myself but am interested on the subject of learning. I can see my instructions are lacking, english is also not my birth language so i have to think those more throughly in the future, thus far none seem to have grasped what i mean. It is like writing on a handicap of sort, with very limited amount of words to use. Speaking of which, i happened to found randomly a guy called "Metatron" on Youtube. He had a very good tip for learning languages. He did every day say to himself the name of common items in each language he was focusing on. Take a tooth brush for example when washing teeth every day, and say the name of tooth brush in all languages he wanted to learn. Take a bread when eating breakfast and go through all your items and food with different languages and so on. Take a door when going out of the house and say that. Happens to be he speaks something like five to six different languages almost fluent. In his opinion people learn what is practical and what their brain wants to use in everyday routines. He stated that he dedicated something like 5 to 10 minutes each day to learning languages in that method for few years and had very good results. Dont know, maybe there might be some idea for starcraft practice too. Yes that is a challenge mode, something you use couple of times to see if it gives you anything and then go back to normal routines. It is only something to use few times to see do you get something from it. Of course the scouting routine could stick with you and be part of your normal game routine as in, you would do it every time in your gameplay so not a practice anymore but a routine you get used to. Training stalkers, that might also be something someone might do over and over again when wanting to improve their stalker micro. Idea of doing only stalkers for couple of games is to see how you find yourself managing different situations with only stalker where you would clearly need other units. It is an experiment to see what you come up with. Changes are that if you do not come up with anything in a few game you never will and further use of that is not necessary. "The One Build" then is a complete system that can and should always be used if someone decides to stick with it. It is a system that shows its value only from constant use as it is built around that fact. Its predictability is also one of its strengths, dragging the opponent on game that you are more familiar with. There are some old clan made UMS micro challenge maps in bw that are sometimes used on exams to get into a clan or a training method. Sometimes those maps have different levels so you have to clear certain challenges to prove your skills. That kind of maps might be good alternative to be used for time to time instead of only practicing normal routines. It seems strange to me that someone might think i am suggesting to only use stalkers or mines and neglect all other training. Yes, microing your units while doing everything else is really challenging. Starcraft is a really challenging game. I remember that in early years of BW people did expand less for that reason, they focused more on microing units and many players that were deemed good used even single base strategies. I started to macro heavily in the early years of BW and some players took notice on my builds. After a while it started to spread and many people did that too, like nexus first openings. That was something i came up with, my solution for the game was to macro heavily and produce more while most of the players focused heavily on micro oriented play. It took a while before people started to do these things at once and there were not many players who managed to do that properly. At least this was how the game was played locally but i suspect it was the same in everywhere else. There was also one guy who had a habit using units that others did not, for example firebats. What was strange that people still did not do as he did, even he had success against them with those kind of builds. He also used valkyries which is a norm in nowdays. Used maelstorm, disruption web and all that kind of stranger stuff. Problem was that player did not macro, so he got crushed in the late game. I used to have something like 2-3 expansions when he was thinking about getting his first. (Played a decent amount of 2v2 with him) The development of my macro strategies is kind of funny in fact, as i did it because i played with broken mouse. It freezed from time to time and often you could not click individual units. You had to battle like 5-10 times to click somthing and use certain kind of sweeps to get your units selected and sometiemes you had to do that repeatedly many times. Stupidly so i still did not buy a new mouse and my answer was to use macro strategies as i could basicly only a move. It was an old mouse with ball inside the mouse and the mechanics were damaged. Those strategies were successful and people started to copy them. Even now when i watch starcraft in youtube, those empty mineral fields scream to me EXPAND DAMN IT when the player have something like 800+ minerals and there is next to nothing going on. They produce units instead and might not even use them. Probably following some plan or build and in that plan there is no expansion at that time but for some reason have fallen behind, got extra minerals in bank because of that and throw it on units. Do not expand because that is not part of the original plan but would fare well in that situation. If you want to watch some examples on Widow Mines there are some decent Widow Mine use from Innovation in this years games. There seems to be a player who can use Widow Mines to his advantage. (spreading them on back of his units, then backing from a fight towards widow mines + producing them at large amounts for that reason. He had at least 10 of them when attacking and still producing. Used them to defend his offensive, in a way.) It is also seen in DRG game that he had a lot of mutas and the opponent had basically only medivacs and marauders (ro16 this year GSL season 3 ?) and DRG decides not to pursue. Seems ludicrous when knowing that the opponent had nothing and DRG saw his army, but there might have been mines you never know so a champion caliber restraint. Almost anyone would have gone for it, and many people are in hurry to end the game. You see many games lost because of this. This decision would be called as one with "the one build" as it takes account possible risks and decides to avoid them regardless of the possible gain and focuses only on what can be known. This is also why scouting and map vision is so important on "the one build" as all is weighted against risk. It does not matter in the long run if you avoid instant gain as the gain will be produced slowly and rationally. This way you will also avoid instant loss. "The one build" also never all ins as it is too risky. Still, it rushes every single time. I think this is how some players play poker, producing constant and calculated wins with minimal risks. Usually these kind of players play in many tables at once never putting much of a tough on a single table. Same for Zest, both players seem higher tier in mentality than many of the other players. Players like Maru Serral Dark tend to crush mentalities but players with championship caliber should be immune to this effect and only take account what is actually happening in the game. | ||
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