sc2 skill, learned vs natural - Page 4

Zurachi

Canada289 Posts

January 04 2011 10:45 GMT

#61

Absolutely NOTHING has come natural to me, considering I have not played an RTS since the original Starcraft. And even back then, I didn't really play it for real... considering I was just a kid. When I started, I was a bronze player who couldn't win a game to save his life. But since then I've gradually improved just by playing games and continue to do so.

deanyo

United Kingdom206 Posts

January 04 2011 10:46 GMT

#62

Dont take the build order thing too seriously, learn 1 or two standard build orders up to about 30 supply, ie hatch first + pool first, and even then dont try to stick to them (adapt if you need too, ie hatch getting blocked/accidental supply block). Sc2 was the first rts i played online, and after playing quite badly in my placements i started only really playing vs friends in customs. That seemed to really help in the way that even if you dont realise what your doing wrong, they can tell you the reasons why you lost, and then you can adapt next time. After that i went from something like 10 wins 20 losses silver, to 75 wins 55 losses when i was promoted to diamond.

Maybe you should take a look in the practice partner thread if you dont know anyone that plays sc2, and get on vent/ts/skype and just play a load of games vs them.

Talin

Montenegro10532 Posts

January 04 2011 10:51 GMT

#63

On January 04 2011 17:45 Leviwtf wrote:
There is no such thing as talent, it has been proven over and over again. The level of expertise you have is directly tired to how much you practice AND how effectively you practice.

How exactly has that been "proven over and over again", and where?

Grummler

Germany743 Posts

January 04 2011 11:11 GMT

#64

During Beta Phase 1 i started with silver (now Gold), and got into Gold pretty fast. It took me 1-2 weeks to reach Platinum (now Diamond). From then on i always have been in the highest league.

My race was random for a while till i switched to Terran. I never played sc:bw besides the campaign, but i was into wc3 for about 2 years.

ChaseR

Norway1004 Posts

January 04 2011 11:15 GMT

#65

Learned, defiantly, RTS is not an FPS where you can be good in any game without having to learn anything first, you have to practice your brain and skills and not just react the fastest and shoot anything that moves.

Crawly

Philippines8 Posts

January 04 2011 11:19 GMT

#66

Of course. There are people who just pick things up faster, much in the same way that some people get better at sports faster.
It may sound trite, but at the end of the day, the single biggest factor would still be practice. There are even those who've gone as far as saying that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something. (Malcom Gladwell is a notable popularizer of this)

FeyFey

Germany10114 Posts

January 04 2011 11:32 GMT

#67

they are probably refering to multyplayer, and played a huge damn lot of single player rts games before, and probably watched a lot of streams + forum roaming. I mean if you played through the bw singleplayer without abusing the ai, you should be able to get into diamond very easy.

I personally played a few games against the ai to get used to the shortcuts (normally i playd mouse only, yeah i am horrible). Didn't played the beta but watched stream.

Started with the retail and was pretty good at holding cheese or early pushes and as no one else normally did a macro game i mostly won all the games that went above 10 minutes. Since when you are on your way to rank up, you play people that are going to be ranked down mostly, you have easier opponents most of the time, also a reason why people skyrocket at the start, if they get placed to low by the placement matches.

So no worrys the system just works that way. (thats why i got top10 diamond in my division with an avg apm of 30 ... unortodox playstyle ftl ... wanted to play in silver and slowly increase my apm and micro as my only trademark is seeing weakspots from my opponent )

PimpMobeel

120 Posts

January 04 2011 11:34 GMT

#68

I got from bronze to platinum in about 30 games b4 i had to quit due to uni without previous rts experience. All through hard work practicing build orders against bots or unit tester, memorising timings to protect myself from cheese and working long hours on the unit tester to figure out the best unit compositions. Also watched day9 and hd/husky all through the beta and learnt from it instead of watching it just for the entertsinment value. Never have i cheesed ever in 1v1.

IllegalAlien

United States8 Posts

January 04 2011 11:51 GMT

#69

Before SCII I had played 3 games of SC as protoss roughly a decade ago, this is also the last time I ever played an RTS more than in just a demo mode. Previously, I was terrible at RTS games. Dune, C&C, AOE. I flat out sucked. I also never really invested time into learning .

I did not participate in the SCII beta.
According to SCIIranks I started playing Oct 15th.

One of my coworkers suggested I skip practice league.
Because failing on the ladder amused him, I guess.
My motivation for getting better was to crush HIM.
So I decided to pick one race (toss) learn all I could about it.

I did this on the ladder, bronze league is my placement....still. I spent roughly 100 games seriously sucking. I never really tried to perfect any cheese tactics or all in's, but I did dabble in the dark arts so I could see how they worked. Also how to react. I lost games, A LOT of games, just testing things. I would play 3 custom games, then take it against humans to see if it was viable. I tried strange builds , timings, compositions, all manner of things. Then I analysed my replays to see if these ideas were working based on competition or because they were valid. I was working on a build order optimizer for protoss until a much nicer one was released on this forum. This gave me a great appreciation for macro, and the realization that build orders are flexible.

The first time I played my coworker, he crushed me 8 - 8.
After that, I gradually became more challenging. Taking games from time to time. But nothing as bad as the start.
Now, I'm better , and he struggles to beat me at all.

I win 70% of my games now, I get matched against top silver and all level golds , even though I am bronze league. I rarely get games vs bronze anymore. I'm waiting for placement/reset, where I expect gold based on my MMR.
http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/2043731/IllegalAlien#alltime
you can see on this chart an exponential rise in wins in the past 3 weeks. The most wins coming against an increasingly higher and higher difficulty of opponent. When school ended I had time to do nothing but study starcraft and it shows.

conclusion, skipping practice league prevented me from rising up the ladder as fast as the OP says. The only natural talents I have as a human are athletic talents, and SCII requires just the basic human dexterity. Every single thing I have applied this level of obsession too I have seen very positive results. Only basketball required what I consider natural talent.

Conquerz

Argentina5 Posts

January 04 2011 11:55 GMT

#70

Well, this was my first RTS, and i got on diamond after my first week. I got it 3 weeks after it was released, and im zerg. Never did a 6pool, and always played mid-late games (the ones i won atleast). I got to top 200 on the 2nd month of play. Also, i played on the LatinAmerican region, not the best, but i wanna think im a "natural". Im now beating people with more than 6-7 years of experiencie in BW and shit. So yeah, with a year of practice imma be a beast.

danielsan

Romania399 Posts

January 04 2011 11:55 GMT

#71

imo the people that managed 100 games into platinum-diamond did it when sc2 was relatively new. Level of play back then was really low when compared to how it is now.

Skill difference between leagues probably remained the same but all of them evolved at same pace.

I'd bet my cat same average Joe, no previous RTS experience guy that managed to promote 2-3 months ago into diamond would have a hard time getting into gold right now.

mr_tolkien

France8631 Posts

January 04 2011 11:57 GMT

#72

To any people saying natural skill doesn't exist, you know what ? It's false. Past 2 weeks old, nobody is equal. You change, and from here everybody is different. The older you get, the biggest the differences. But through hard work, you can always come "back" from a bad position, change your way of thinking.

So, when picking up Star 2, some people wil be a lot more efficient than others. But in the long run, the best one will be the one who have chosen the best way to think, natural PRE disposition won't do anything, it will be your adaptation.

idonthinksobro

3138 Posts

January 04 2011 11:59 GMT

#73

it helps a lot if you are smart. Once you have basic game sense and get more information from scouting than "he build a baracks" and you have basic apm (computer games experience or just quick hands) you should be able to get diamond in less than 100 games. It helps a lot if you plan out what you are doing and to watch stuff like day9s daily or streams.
I used to play broodwar but never really competitive i had like 2 iccup seasons D+/C-.

I actually consider players that needed like 250 games or more to get promoted to diamond bad players - and if you arent diamond within 500 1v1s there is very little hope that you´ll ever become great at SC2.

To answer your question no i dont think they are liars since almost all of my friends that play sc2 became diamond really quick.

/E iam a zerg player and never cheese in 1v1s

Hamster

United Kingdom156 Posts

January 04 2011 12:00 GMT

#74

i got through diamond in about 20-50 games. however, from 2k to 3k is the most hardest step. i ended up playing 1k games to get to 2.9k not 3k yet. my win ratio is about 52.8% and i am still learning mistakes, timing and what i could do better. i think that talented players can macro well as some have played past rts games and are aware of their economy more but learned players can do just as well, jus that they need more time as this game is quite new.

Navane

Netherlands2747 Posts

January 04 2011 12:03 GMT

#75

Ladder position != skill. They probably only trained a very narrow set of moves.

Crushgroove

United States793 Posts

January 04 2011 12:04 GMT

#76

I feel as though someone should point out that all skill is by definition, learned. Natural ability is generally a separate entity commonly referred to as "talent".

And contrary to what was previously stated, talent exists if you consider the range of genetic predispositions possible in a human organism...

Tall people could be considered talented basketball players... blind people would be very un-talented astronomers.

Though there is a blind astronomer in Norway, and many short basketball players.

Oxb

199 Posts

January 04 2011 12:06 GMT

#77

I've been wondering the same, however i'm at about 300games and gold league now. I however think there are two things that are very important.

1. Learn how to learn the game, get all the facts figured out (e.g roach > marine). Watch your replays and figure out what you did wrong, and don't make the same mistake again! Scout. I guess watching the Day9 dailies is a good one? (I can't from China, or at least haven't figured out how to yet) Also watch some replays of decent lvl diamond players (not Korean pro's) The skill difference is the huge, watching a 3k diamond players teaches me more than watching a korean pro.

2. Know how to play, know your race timing (when expand with certain builds etc) and know what your enemy is doing by scouting.

If you're at 600games and still in silver I guess ur the kind of player who, sometimes, 15~20min (game time) still hasn't got a second base up and saturated the second base mineral line? Possible still playing with 1~3 barracks, 1fact and 1starport for example? (if ur terran)

If I watch some of the 'low' lvl diamond players on streams, all they do is decent macro, get a good size army, with decent variety and attack then win/lose. There's relatively little countering/scouting/micro etc.

vileChAnCe

Canada525 Posts

January 04 2011 12:07 GMT

#78

As zerg you have alot more things you NEED to learn in order to actually climb the ranks... Game sense is probably the biggest key in your play that needs work. Although if your in silver it's probably just fundamentally fucked, you need to completely prioritize making drones for the next 100 games and just die every time because you have like 60 drones and 4 zerglings... this is gonna teach you how to macro, how to survive retarded shit with just the perfect amount of units and what is physically impossible to hold.

Your easiest matchup eventually is going to be TvZ then ZvZ and finally ZvP. Because ZvP game sense in order to have a 50% win ratio you pretty much have to be Jesus

plagiarisedwords

United Kingdom138 Posts

January 04 2011 12:07 GMT

#79

Reaching diamond "quickly" is subjective. It is quicker and easier just to spam out a ton of ladder games than to watch replays and to analyse them. I work a 12 hour a day job and after work I just cannot be bothered to analyse anything. I tend to just play a ton of SC2 games during the week and to analyse them on the weekend. Spending more time analysing and less time playing will get you to diamond in a lot fewer games but not neccesarily that much more quickly.

Another factor is whether you are actually trying to climb up the ladder quickly. It took me over 1000 games to get to diamond. I made a deliberate effort to get breadth of experience rather than try to get to diamond as fast as possible. If you vary your strategies, play different races and try to play a responsive game then it takes a lot longer to climb up the ladder. Trying to play a responsive game requires you to have an enclycopedic knowledge of the different builds your opponent can go for, how to scout them and how to respond to each one. Someone can get to diamond on 40 games but they simply won't have the same level of experience as someone with more games under their belt. I've experienced more than 40 types of cheese/all-in rushes so I don't really know how someone on 40 games will know how to spot each and how to respond to them.

Having said that, It sounds like you are having a bit of trouble if you are still stuck in Silver. I think the games only become useful platinum and upwards so I would recommend you find a way to boost yourself up the ladder and not to spend time messing around in Silver. Focus on macro mechanics. Watch Day 9's first Newbie Tuesday about macro. That video took me from Silver to Gold almost overnight. Then after some practice onto Platinum too. I would win games in Gold where I went zealot stalker vs MMM and won from just better Macro. ForceStrategy on youtube can help get you off the ground but I don’t approve of his "recipe" approach to strategy.

Goolpsy

Denmark301 Posts

January 04 2011 12:08 GMT

#80

My Sc2 experience: Buy game ---> pick terran + make marines only 6-0.. lose to Protoss Warp in, never seen anything like it before. Thinking to myself, wow thats nifty. Picking Protoss, and within a total on 25 games im Diamond :D

(Didn't play Beta as my computer couldn't run it - Did however play alot of Wc3)

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