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Hello, TL. Let me first say this: this community is amazing, and has been a source of immense help and entertainment during a recent stage of my life, a stage where Starcraft has been a larger point of focus than anything else. My goal was not to make a first post until I reached B- on ICCup, and though I only missed that by a few wins last season, I fear with the shadow of SC 2 being cast, the goal of B- might be forever unfulfilled. That said, I am confident I have finally reached a level of skill that I can give back to the community that has helped me so much. Just because there will be a lot of raised eye-brows at such an ambitious first post, I'll state my fairly mediocre SC credentials for anyone who cares: I got up to 5500 C+ during ICCup season 14 in Starcraft, and I am currently Rank 1 in Platinum division 30 with a rating of 1534 in Starcraft II. To everyone who makes this forum special: Thank you, you guys are the best.
Practicing to Improve
People play games for many different reasons, and Starcraft is no exception. However, Starcraft has a following that is much more hardcore, a large percentage of which are focused on obtaining skill in the game. I am deeply entrenched in this subset of people. It isn't that we don't think the game is fun in-and-of-itself; what we are even more interested in is something about ourselves: the cultivation of our abilities, and ways we can overcome our opponent (read: winning).
That said, a surprising number of players who fall into this category don't really think about their learning process, and trudge mindlessly forward bashing their face into thousands of games until they aquire a modicum of skill. The raw amount of time one has put into the game will certainly affect how strong of a player they are, but there is so much more that goes into it. There are others who pay more attention to the game and their execution of things in it, looking back at replays and trying to figure out what went wrong and what adjustments could be made. These players might do such things as practice specific builds, or drill one match-up on one map at great length.
Then, there are the players who practice.
When I speak of practice, I am talking about something more specific than playing with the intent to get better. In practice, I am talking about doing something very specific to improve an aspect of one's performance as much as possible given the amount of time one has available. Being a musician, I can't help but draw the analogy of learning an instrument. Compare someone who spends most their time practicing a musical instrument versus someone who spends most of their time playing it. People who have played an instrument for a long time can become quite competent, but will not improve nearly as quickly as one who understands how to practice and spends most of their time practicing instead of playing. Our society doesn't really value video-games as a pursuit worthy of great effort, so it is rare that you will find someone who practices a video game as they might practice a musical instrument, a sport, or some other craft that our society has labeled as "valuable." Yet the process for obtaining skill in a video-game should be similar to everything else. This is a practice method that I think is extremely useful for learning any skill, though in this article, it is solely addressing SC and SC 2.
Of course the first step is deciding what you want to improve/practice. Second, analyze what your weakness is, and why it's there. This is probably the most difficult part, but will come naturally over time. Third, you must use the resources at hand to come up with a specific practice method to address this problem. Finally, you must be disciplined and put in the time practicing in the manner you have decided. Here are a few specific examples.
Let's say you want to work on a mechanical aspect of macroing. First, you must analyze what you want to improve, what your weakness is, and why it's there. I am not talking about "my macro is bad at such and such a time", or "I have too much money now", or "I need to add on two barracks at this point," etc. Though that type of analysis is very important, that is what you would want to do BEFORE this step. That type of analysis has been addressed in numerous different threads or day[9]'s podcasts and daily videos; thus, it will not be addressed here. I am talking about "I am having trouble spending my money at this point BECAUSE I am not able to cue units in my barracks quite fast enough, which upon further analysis I think is because my mouse movement isn't as precise or as fast as I'd like it to be" or "I don't have any marines cued in my barracks BECAUSE I'm spending all of my attention microing my army or BECAUSE I am not jumping from building cluster to building cluster as smoothly as I'd like." This analysis stage is difficult because you must be able to remove yourself from the events in the game and observe things about yourself.
Now, think of some ways to address this problem you have found. There are probably many different ways you can do this depending on the specific problem, though having a practice partner that is actually willing to work to get better--instead of just playing--is very useful. You might be able to use a UMS or a saved game file (there is less flexibility right now in SC 2 I know) that sets up a scenario for you to drill or practice how you would like. Just make sure you isolate what you are specifically working on as much as possible. Then, drill it until you (or your partner) lose focus, or until you feel the problem has been somewhat addressed. Some things are harder than others: so though you should see improvement very quickly, you probably won't get to the level you want with just one practice session (or even ten or a hundred sessions depending).
I'll give two personal examples: a good one from SC, and a not-quite-as-good one from SC 2 (I'm just starting to grasp things like which units do what, so I haven't done much practicing of it yet).
SC Example+ Show Spoiler +I noticed a while ago that in some high-adrenaline games I would often have bad clicking precision and miss sniping medics or single marines with my muta stack, resulting in running them in to do nothing save getting damaged by stimmed marines. I also noticed I had a lot of tension in my arms, which I hypothesized was a large contributor to the bad mouse precision. I played a handful of 2 hatch muta ZvT games while observing my physical state and realized that right after my mutas came out I became excited and I would start to get tense in my abdomen and shoulders. When actually microing them against the opposing army or base the tension became far worse, resulting in (I guessed) more jerky motions and less mouse pointer precision. After becoming aware of this, I had something to work with: this tension was making my muta control worse, and I needed to come up with a way to iron it out. First, I used a Python Muta Micro UMS (created by Grobyc), which was the lowest stress environment. When starting to work on muta micro, I would usually play this for 5-15 minutes to make sure I was relaxed and the most fundamental control was clean. Then, I grabbed a willing clan-mate to play various different Terran styles against me, making saved game files around 30 seconds before the mutalisks came out for each scenario. Then we drilled and drilled, resetting back to the same save point every time the muta harass ended (whether it ended well for me or not). Since I was specifically addressing the state of tension in my arms, I would spend a lot of attention on my physical self trying to stay relatively relaxed. This of course resulted in the horrible loss of entire muta stacks while I was getting used to it; however, after a relatively short amount of time, I was able to stay much more relaxed when microing mutalisks, which, as I had hoped, greatly improved my clicking precision. Problem analyzed, and solved. Suck it, medics!
SC 2 Example+ Show Spoiler +In watching a handful of my replays, I was shocked at how horrible my larva inject timings were. My queens sometimes had 50+ energy at only nine minutes into the game, and trust me, it was not for a strategic reason. Thanks to the ridiculous amounts of information one can get off of the replays, it was very easy to see that I was focusing nearly all of my attention on army placement and less important things like telling my overlords to scatter and generate creep on my side of the map. It seemed to me that the issue was that I simply didn't have the larva inject at the front of my mind, as opposed to not having the attention or speed to jump back to my bases to larva inject (I mean, who am I kidding? It's not hard at all to do this, I am just a noob). So, my strategy was to try to ingrain constant larva cycling (selecting hatch 1 and its larva, then selecting hatch 2 and it's larva, etc., but in a very fast way so it doesn't disrupt what ever else you are doing) into my muscle memory while doing basic army manipulation, so I would have the larva inject timings more in the front of my mind.
[Small tangent here-I think larva cycling is both easier and more important in SC 2 than in SC. You can have all your hatcheries hotkeyed with Jaedong-style easy-to-reach hotkeys (doesn't use keys 8-0) since you practically never need to add on hatches for extra larva, AND it really helps keep tabs on larva inject timings. Just something to think about...but now I digress]
I didn't really have a practice partner, so I first hopped in a game with a computer, macro'd an army while putting up three bases, and ran my unit groups through an imaginary obstacle course while larva cycling, double-tapping back to a hatchery each time it was ready for an inject. After I lost my focus doing this, I tried playing games against humans: not with the intent of winning, but with the intent of the continued address of this problem. After a few games of this I got a lot better and stopped practicing; but as I sit now, my larva injects are still at an unacceptably low level, and need more practice.
Of course I would not espouse this method of practice to the point of excluding others, as it is very important to play games and see the "big picture" of how your development is coming along. However, I do think it would be a very good use of most players' time to augment their playing with this method. It's certainly not for everyone, but for people whose main goal is improvement in a game (i.e., a lot of the enjoyment they get out of it is the process and result of getting better) or for people who want to try to compete but don't quite have the time to mass game, I strongly recommend you try out this disciplined style of practice. I am totally convinced it is more efficient than just playing thousands of games, even if you are playing them with the intent to improve.
Because after all, Starcraft is serious business.
~Hungarian
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Fantastic first post and an excellent read!
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great points to think about
awesome post
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ah wonderful read, I'm definitely going to take a sec to rethink my path to learning SC2
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Excellent post. I'm taking a similar approach to improving. I suck at typing with one hand and don't know the key placements well, so I'm just doing speed typing tests now.
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Interesting point and very true that practice isn't always just playing more often.
I've probably played less starcraft in beta than most of my friends (all of us seasoned broodwar vets) and yet i'm still able to best most of them (as protoss, no less: they're all terran or zerg) because i'm very quick to pick up on my mistakes in replays and while i'm not playing I try to make a list (usually just jot stuff on a legal pad) of things to fiddle with when i get home. I'll play a good dozen custom games with a comp opponent just to get my specific issue ironed out if it's macro related.
Micro related problems are a lot harder to address, and practice, i've found. Without UMS maps right now, I think the best choice relly is just playing more games. Custom games with your friends can help, but it really can't beat the unpredictable nature of random ladder games. I am a lot more relaxed and focused when playing my friends.
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I loved this post Hungarian. Thanks for posting this! Why do you have a terran scv icon and talk about Queens and Jaedong! (btw how does he group his units in sc1?)
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Pretty good stuff here. Just playing alot of games, even if you play them wanting to improve, isn't neccessarily going to help you get better, and certainly not improve optimally.
Practice is all about figuring out your weak points, their causes, and then devising an efficient way to go about improving them. In other words, basically what Hungarian said. If you practice the things your are good at, or just try to "play well", you won;t neccessarily be working on anything, and if you haven't identified what causes your weakness then your practice won't help a ton because you can't fix your problem areas if you don't know why you stuggle with them in the first place.
That would be like knowing you slice in golf. Sure you can try and improve that but without knowing why you slice; outside in attack, open cubface, or some combination of both (both of which can be caused by a fair number of swing flaws), you can practice all day trying to fix the slice; but if you don't understand the cause you can't fix it.
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I am curious to know what you guys think about playing random. So far I have been playing all of my ladder games as random. It's definitely punishing to do so. I can barely remember a suitable opening for each race, but it also enforces playing by ear and learning how to play the game Starcraft 2, and not just to play as Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. I could see myself being able to practice specific things such as macro (really what I need to work on the most) while playing random, but in the end I feel as though I won't really be able to excel as random, especially since I don't have a whole lot of time to play the game since my classes are ramping up towards finals in a month.
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Great post! I hope to hear more from you in the future Hungarian!
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Excellent first post sir. Probably one of the best first posts I've ever seen. Here's a toast to welcome you to TL. It looks like you will have lots of good things to add to the community.
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Zurich15325 Posts
Hi there welcome to TL! Keep posting like this!
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I love this post. I have been thinking along somewhat the same lines myself.
We all know sirlin.net and the whole "Playing to win" mantra. But I just don't buy it! If you play to win every game then you may end up being a one-trick pony, without the depth to handle exceptions.
My mantra when playing is "Playing to learn". I have a tough time not caring about losses, but in order to improve I need to accept that while I am learning the basics I will lose a lot.
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Welcome to TLnet as poster. 
Beautiful read and great first topic!
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Great post, something ive been doing myself  In sc1 i couldnt connect to battle.net at home so i couldnt really play games vs others. So what i did was going through a similar process like you describe vs. computers and getting all mechanics, builds and so on in place. Also analyzing your own play, and watching your replays to find what goes wrong and why helps alot with the input of watching good players and seeing how it is supposed to be done . So by nearly only playing computers i was able to play (and win :O) against C ranked players on ICCup when i was at friends houses without having played more than perhaps 200 games online in total.
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In the future. This person will write Final Edits.
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This post is very pointless.
If a person is losing and not knowing why they lost, they're just bad.
Every game I lose I say "what did I do wrong?" and "what do I need to work on"? If a player fails to ask that question then they will never improve. End of story. Pointless read and a waste of time. Any player taking this game seriously and actually wants to get better will not just MASS GAMES without thinking about how they lost like you said. ]
Bad post.
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This is probably one of the best first posts TeamLiquid has ever seen.
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You have a bright future here on TL
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Sick post dude. I definitely agree.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 07 2010 15:48 zatic wrote:
Hi there welcome to TL! Keep posting like this!
Here I am thinking to myself, if everyone posted like this I wouldn't need to bad so many people!! Keep it up!
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very good post indeed.
you could include it in some kind of guide or something
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Nice article, thanks. I use the same method for practicing.
Currently I have very similar physical problem as in your SC1 example - I play most ladder matches at the edge of physical and mental skills which results in sloppy movement and stupid mistakes.
How would you suggest to overcome this in SC2?
I find that playing a lot with the same practice partner eliminates this problem in games vs that person, but it remains in ladder games.
Another problem in SC2 beta is practicing vs ladder games. Mediocre player cannot try new strategies or tricks in ladder games because he will lose every game. The only option is to stick to your cookie-cutter builds.
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Zurich15325 Posts
On April 07 2010 16:19 Gilgamesh33 wrote:
This post is very pointless.
If a person is losing and not knowing why they lost, they're just bad.
Every game I lose I say "what did I do wrong?" and "what do I need to work on"? If a player fails to ask that question then they will never improve. End of story. Pointless read and a waste of time. Any player taking this game seriously and actually wants to get better will not just MASS GAMES without thinking about how they lost like you said. ]
Bad post.
I suggest you read the OP first before replying. If you still do not agree with what he says point out why.
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I really liked your example with your muscles getting all tense, actually I have that problem, too, and I realized it as I was reading this post, so thank you for that.
I really gotta loosen up a little while playing and I might actually get better in the long run. Welcome to TL!
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i really like this post, as it gives me confidence that i'm on the right path to learning =)
i play terran, and i know my biggest issue is my in-ability to marco effectively, so what i've been trying recently, even just vs the computer, is to pay attention to completion sounds, and learn what it means i need to do.
for example "SCV Ready!" means i need to go back to my CC and build another SCV etc...
i find it very hard to do, even when that's the ONLY thing im focusing on, let alone in the middle of a battle... i'm probably missing 1-2 units per production facility (rax/starport/fact) each time i expand/transfer army/engage in battle... and that could go close to giving me 30-40% more troops in the next battle!
i think this is an excellent post, if you can think of any ways to help improve this sort of thing, or find other ways to help relax etc, please share =)
EDIT: i agree i play better when relaxed!
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great post. i think its very important if you reaach a point where you just dont become better by mass-gaming
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Very well thought out first post. I can think of a similar example from music. When learning a hard musical piece on piano, for instance, many people make the same mistake - they play the song over and over until they finally learn it. The problem with this is that it's not efficient. Generally, the beginning parts of a song may be much easier to play than the middle parts. So what ends up happening is you spend most of your time practicing the beginning of the song (say that it's 2 minutes long) and then stumble over the hard part (say that it's 15 seconds long). So in essence you're spending 2:15 minutes each practice session to learn something that you should only be spending 15 seconds on each practice session. The more efficient way to practice is to SKIP the easy part and start exactly where the song gets hard during practice. After you master the hard section, then you work on the transition between the easy to the hard section, and finally, you PLAY the song from the beginning.
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Very good read. I'll give it a shot and try and prac some macro vs the computer. Even tho im not convinced it'll give me as much as playing ladder vs real people.
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This post is very pointless.
If a person is losing and not knowing why they lost, they're just bad.
Every game I lose I say "what did I do wrong?" and "what do I need to work on"? If a player fails to ask that question then they will never improve. End of story. Pointless read and a waste of time. Any player taking this game seriously and actually wants to get better will not just MASS GAMES without thinking about how they lost like you said. ]
Bad post.
Really? You honestly don't see the value in this?
The OP is making the point that for the best quality practice you do MORE than just mass games and think about how you lost. Many, many people will look at a game and say something like "I lost because my macro was horrible." Then they go into the next game with the intention to improve their macro. However, "improving macro" is pretty general; you have to know WHY your macro is poor. Are you not keeping your gateways producing, do you have enough gateways, are you supply blocking yourself, if your economy bad, are you expanding appropriately, etc. Even beyond that you might need to look at why your doing each of those things. If you consistently don't build enough gateways why is that?
To continue with my golf example, take the case of a person who has a bad slice. Let's say they take the club well to the inside and get the clubshaft on a very flat plane going back and then come down over the top swinging outside-in which produces the slice. Many, many, many people; I'd argue its much greater than the majority, when you ask them what they are working on on the range will respond "I'm fixing my slice" or maybe even "I'm trying to swing more of the inside to eliminate my out-in path" The problem with both statements is that they don't realize the underlying issue. If your taking the club too inside and flat, trying to return the club on the same path is pretty hopeless; you'll end up hitting most of your shots extremely flat. Consequently, the only option the golfer has is to swing down steeper and on a more out-in path to compenstate for their initial overly inside takeway. Trying to fix this by saying "I'm going to swing from the inside" won't work well at all, because even if you do force yourself to do it, you'll have a whole new host of problems; but most likely the results will b so awful you won't even end up changing your swing path at all.
A major point here is that good practice is more than just realizing the obvious problems or dropping the same cliches as to why you did bad. It's about understanding why you make the mistakes that you do, or why your gameplay has the flaws it does. Its about realizing that your muta micro is bad because your tense and thats hurting your mouse accuracy, its about realizing your macro is bad because you never transfer probes except to your natural, its about knowing you slice because you take the club too inside and flat on the backswing; its about pinpointing and knowing the underlying cause to every mistake you make.Identifiying these underlying causes is by no means intuitive, but doing so can make your practice dramatically more efficient.
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Great read! Really gives me things to think about while practicing Sc2.
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On April 07 2010 16:19 Gilgamesh33 wrote:
This post is very pointless.
If a person is losing and not knowing why they lost, they're just bad.
Every game I lose I say "what did I do wrong?" and "what do I need to work on"? If a player fails to ask that question then they will never improve. End of story. Pointless read and a waste of time. Any player taking this game seriously and actually wants to get better will not just MASS GAMES without thinking about how they lost like you said. ]
Bad post.
And your post was any better? Get a grip D-Bag - I bet that more than 80% (including myself) of the people who read the post already understand the concept behind what he is saying in regards to practicing and becoming a better player.
But:
a.) The 20% (or w/e) who don't really gain some insight from that post.
b.) It is a good thing for even the other 80% to be reminded and have a fresh perspective placed upon them.
You make broad, incorrect statements, in your post. "They're just bad" "Will never improve. End of Story".
What does your comments add? Nothing but negativity. You need to ask yourself why you're so wound up, and maybe your quality of life could also improve, with your attitude.
In your last sentence you actually contradict the statement that the post was a waste of time and has no point...As you say "Like you said" which means the post had a point.
Grow up a little before posting again.
--- To the OP --- Good write up -- Glad to see someone who has actually improved their game like you have.
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Calgary25980 Posts
Very true. I've always found it stupid that players trying to improve play more instead of actually practicing.
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Great post thanks!
I just recently started studying my replays, and my game has improved greatly.
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Wow! Excellent post. Thanks for sharing. Definitely a lot of great insight into specific practice techniques here.
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I agree to an extent. Usually when I play a game I have a particular mindset in each matchup to overcome certain large mistakes I made in the previous game. After the game, I write down all of my obvious mistakes. If I can't find at least three mistakes, then I go to the replay and look for exact moments of supply cap, poor scouting, lack of harassment, missed timing windows.
IMO if you every play a single match without trying to deliberately improve, you're being a casual gamer. Not a bad thing, just not practice.
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On April 07 2010 23:55 Chill wrote:
Very true. I've always found it stupid that players trying to improve play more instead of actually practicing.
You'll need a balance of both - drilling things into your gameplay takes time and practice, like practicing when to pull off gas or how to react to proxy rax.
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I appreciate this post a lot and I hope you continue posting. I am pretty familiar with "real" practice through all the years of baseball I played, breaking down my swinging and pitching mechanics on film weekly.
However, this post really exposed some flaws with my approach to learning to improve my skills in StarCraft 2. I've been watching my replays to find out what I do wrong but I never really do anything specific to fix them other than trying to do better in another session of games. What I was doing was comparable to watching my hitting and pitching during a game and not running any drills or attending practice until the next game where I'd try and improve. It seems absolutely silly now that I looked at this post. It's so blatantly obvious I feel a bit ashamed.
Thanks for the inspiration to devote more time and effort into a true practice regiment.
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Haha Brilliant! I especially liked the comparison to a musicians practicing, me being a piano player and all.
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Excellent Post - I was a casual warcraft 3 player and when I got my beta key I was excited to try to be a better player. I admit, the excitment lead to the mass gamage without too much afterthought of why I lost. I still mass game but also, watch a lot of replays of pro zergs, read these forums and keep a daily tab on my W/L and some brief notes of why I lost.
What I haven't done is to practice my timings against the computer. Last saturday I had an urge to learn toss after watching orb's stream for an hour and writing down some general builds. Biggest mistake going straight into ladder, losing 8 games in a row without even analyzing why. The long and short of it is going for instant gratification without practice won't go too far. Practice mode for me now, combined with viewing more losses in my reps!
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Awesome post. Well thought out and well written; I appreciate posts like this. I, too, enjoy SC as more than just entertainment, but as a platform for goal-setting and "practicing" as you speak of it. I wish the game were a socially approved skill rather than viewed as a mere video game, but fortunately the community is large enough such that there are people who can understand the product of one's hard work. That said, I commend you for your efforts, and keep up both your practicing and your posts!
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Great post.
Being new to SC2 and the RTS genre in general, my play is becoming increasingly frustrating from loss-to-loss. I have a strong burning desire to become a really great player, but I am boxing myself in and failing to win consistently.
I seem to have fallen into the trap where I look at a generalized 'core' reason why I lost a previous match, and attempt to prevent that in my next match. But I rarely ever sit back and analyze the 'I lost BECAUSE' of moments -- I just play on.
This obviously isn't working out.
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On April 07 2010 16:19 Gilgamesh33 wrote:
This post is very pointless.
If a person is losing and not knowing why they lost, they're just bad.
Every game I lose I say "what did I do wrong?" and "what do I need to work on"? If a player fails to ask that question then they will never improve. End of story. Pointless read and a waste of time. Any player taking this game seriously and actually wants to get better will not just MASS GAMES without thinking about how they lost like you said. ]
Bad post.
Speaking of pointless, I don't really understand what you are trying to say with your post. That you are so much better than other people that you don't need advice from anyone? It might be obvious for you but there's no need to be an arrogant douchebag.
On topic:
Regarding your analogy of learning an instrument, I really recognize it as I'm playing the guitar myself and also have a lot of friends (or just acquaintances) who are also playing the guitar. I must say there are huge differences between people. Obivously because of individual variations such as talent but also because there are people who practices and people just plays. I know people who have played the guitar for like 8-9 years, but not nearly as good as people who have played for 2-3 years. And also there are those guys who learn boring songs who everyone knows just so they can impress the ladies on parties (not sure if they are really that impressed though) 
And about SC2, when I got a beta key I started to play a couple of custom games to play against real players (before I had a key, I played the AI version) and when I felt that I had learned all the basics I started playing ranked 1v1 matches. It went pretty well and I got up to Gold League div 36 with 4-1 in matches. First I thought that I was lucky to face bad players, then I kept winning like 2 or 3 more matches and got up 5th rank in my division (this was right after the ladder was reseted) and this was when I became overconfident. I have no SC:BW experience at all except games vs computer so I thought like: "Wow, I'm fucking awesome!".
Then I started to lose since there was obviously a flaw in the system/luck that caused me to face bad players. I think I lost like 8-9 matches in a row before I realized that something was very wrong (I ended up at 95th rank in my division) and decided to watch replays (both my own and others' ), search on TL for strategies and stuff etc.
So after that I was back on track again and became better and better each game. And of course I still watch my replays each time I lose, and even sometimes when I win so I can see what mistakes my opponent made. I won't be moving up to Platinum League very soon though since I've decided to go Random to practice with Zerg and Terran as well. And also I'm sharing my account with my cousin who is also trying the other two races other than Terran.
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very rarely do i see a great post from someone with under 100 posts...you sir are a great poster and now i am looking to find problems in my play in sc:bw ^^ bc i has no beta >.>
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very good post. can you read minds? i was thinking today about the problem you mention (watching reps, seeing mistakes and not realy doing it better) and was looking for an efficent way to approach the way of learning from mistakes.
literaly minutes after those thought is read this thread and want to thank you for this well written post and showing me a way to REALLY improve my big flaws
i.e. every replay i watch i have to admit it totaly forget scouting from midgame on. everytime i think "yeah next game ill do it better"... week after week passes and still the same problem.
now im gonna sit down and really try to bring it to an point where i know WHY and in what situations i forget to scout especialy what distracts me so much and how i can change that. (maybe ill try something like your larva solution and map 1overlord to 0 and just constantly cycle to it whenever im not handling my army or eco)
Thanks!
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Excellent post. I'm going to steal your idea and run an army around while continuing to produce out of as many rax as possible.
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On April 07 2010 20:47 omninmo wrote:i think the muta map you are talking about is this one from GROBYC grobyc's micro maps
This was absolutely correct; I've edited the OP accordingly to give credit. Thank you for your help.
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Don't starve yourself of TL, it doesn't work ^^
Very good point of making sure you identify what you need to improve and then work on it. Great stats! Rank 1 in Plat!
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FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts
Excellent first post. Welcome to TL.net, good sir. I hope you enjoy your [hopefully long] stay here^^
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Yes, every time I sit down and include +2 AI to my opponent roster I feel a little bit guilty that I am not playing against live oponents.
I still play a game or two against people to see whether I have improved on the unconscious level.
But I have a plan to improve on many fronts because I am lacking basic skills in macro.
I am playing terran and I know what I lack (at least as first steps) from my games played so far.
Here are the first objectives I have set for myself (because it is fun to see myself improve).
1. Right now I am just trying to improve my macro by having 5 as hotkey for all production buildings and 6 as hotkey for command centers. I am building a balanced army of rines/rauders/tanks/vikings/ravens, which is not taking into account my opponent's army composition. Just trying to spend my resources in time (performance indicator - decrease the average unspent statistic to at least below 600 of each resource).
2. My next step will be to improve my supply depot timings (maybe have builder scv on a hotkey) so as not to block supply (performance indicator - no messages with "you need more supply") while keeping the macro level as in 1.
3. Here I want to up my scouting to the level where I will know the tech my opponent has access to and his basic army composition, while continuing to macro (not a very specific performance indicator).
4. I need to be able to adjust my macro by spending the resources on an army composition that counters the enemy's army composition. Performance can be evaluated by checking the replay for army composition (filter - units) at various points during the match. If there were various points in the game where I could have been attacked and lacked defense - then I need to improve more.
Steps 1,2,3 can be practiced with the VeryEasy AI for starters. Further on it is better to have a human opponent (so that you really need to scout and counter his builds). Very Easy AI only has so much to offer... Another way would be to hack AI, but I am hoping for really good editor options in custom maps, so that I can make the AI to use certain builds against me.
4+
Next comes harrassment, expansion, all the time keeping the above performance. This is where micro comes into play strongly.
All this can then be practiced in real matches, where factors such as adrenaline kick in - but I believe that is a bit high level for me still
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As long as you ask yourself 'why did I lose' and know the answer, then you're fine in my opinion.
Some people are just bad at games and will either not know why, not ask, or will have the wrong answer... but otherwise that's all you need to get better.
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EPT
