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I think the higher you go, low-> high diamond, lowmaster->high masters-> pro level -> successful pro-> highly successful there are stages of increased natural skill and training.
People with the best work ethic are going to be at the highest advantage. The next I believe is natural understanding (which can be related to natural skill). The faster you understand the game the faster you will improve.
Personal example:
My friend:
-it took me months of practice to finally beat my friend.
-after being able to stay even in practice games, he came up with abusive and a slew of different strategies and began to beat me regularly.
-Does not watch any pro games. Is in graduate school so just plays causally as a random player.
Me:
- For me to beat him, I had to watch a lot of pro games, and study how they react to different situations.
I personally believe that natural skill exists, but I think work ethic can overcome this. The only problem is that you need the work ethic of a monster, which is why I believe there are only a few dominant players.
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My opinion on the intelligence of this forums user base has plummeted. Anyone who thinks natural talent doesn't play any factor is either ignorant or in denial.
Even if, theoretically you could practice for an infinite amount of time and perfectly know your opponent, then the winner would just be whoever has the fastest reaction time.
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I've played the game for 3 months and I've played about 100 games.
My friend has played for about 2 weeks and has played in 150 games.
I'm in diamond, he's in silver.
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Anecdotal evidence counts for literally nothing on a topic about claims of trends in an entire population.
There's a wealth of research into this exact area (albeit not about specifically SC2) in the field of Cognitive Psychology. My professor, Dr. Anders K. Ericsson, at FSU studies Chess players, Basketball players, Golf Players, you name it. He found a long time ago that given a certain amount of time anyone can become an expert at something. This amount of time is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
People who are in lower leagues with 100s of games played, those who were placed in, say Gold, and are still in Gold are not doing the "deliberate" part of the practice. This is a strategy game, you refine and perfect your mechanics to deploy your strategy. If the mechanics are bad, the execution of your strategy will fail. If the strategy is bad, you'll likely still fail. Practice routines, flexible builds and "game-sense" take hours upon hours to develop, but any playing that does not have a specific practice end to it (say, developing a build that leads to a good macro game, but can hold off a 4gate) will be wasted and might just reinforce habits and playing that is counter to actually "objectively" improving.
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While you can become an 'expert' given enough practice, others with similar amounts of practice with better natural gifts will be better than you, while other will be worse. This is the way life works.
It is clear that Dr. Ericsson's studies don't apply across the board to competitive games/sports, where one's aptitude is compared against other individuals. A 5'2 man will never be an 'expert' basketball player, even if he spends every waking hour of every day playing basketball. His skill level will be very high in one sense, but his competitive success won't be world class, and can never be world class due to his height. There are many, many sport players who spend 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and don't achieve professional success.
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No one just plays a game like Starcraft and becomes good on their first game, but instead some people just learn very quickly on their first encounter with the game thus allowing them to learn the more complicated stuff earlier.
And I think it's mostly about how badly you want to improve. Anyone can play for 8 hours a day, but then it'll just be another day of laddering if you are just looking to get your win/loss ratio up.
I've experienced one of these "epiphany-type" (not sure how to put it) moments where I suddenly drop all of my emotions about how I am losing more than I want to and instead completely focusing on improving. The results were something I would've never believed to be possible. Too bad I only had one of these 
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On March 21 2011 22:33 Geolich wrote:
But he survives for now as this is enough to put him streets ahead of players who do not have this mechanical base
On March 21 2011 22:33 Geolich wrote:
streets ahead of players who do not have this mechanical base
On March 21 2011 22:33 Geolich wrote:
streets ahead
Pierce, streets ahead isn't even a real term!
Being one of those bronze league players (silver now!) with more than 800 games played I feel a little, well.. bad at this game. I had taken the time to refine my build orders, watch day[9] as well as other casters' daily casts and view places like this and /r/starcraft for strategy tips. I then applied all this and.. I'm still in silver. I think it is possible to build your skill mentally but I am one of those cases where it will take thousands of ladder matches to do it.
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I believe there is a natural capability, but this can be tought thru lots of training. There's a reason why professional gamers are professional gamers -- it's their livelihood, their life. They train constantly.
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im bothered by people saying "natural" talent when its a damn video game(unatural)... get a grip, you dont have natural talent for anything in life, no one is born with it, its just that simple, you learn how to do something, and you practice, and you get better. wow "natural talent" for an "unatural item" video games are not natural, natural talent applies to nothing, every is training, peeing in the middle of the toilet, to handling a hockey puck, to taking a bra off with one hand, down to playing starcraft... its just bothersome i will not return to this thread, and just hope people post about it being pure training. Meow~~
the only think i can think of to shut myself down on this one is art, what if some kid picked up a pencil and drew a perfect picture, but then at the same time that only happens with autism, as far as i know.. but yeah i honestly dont believe people are naturals at anything, any more than the fact that they are considered naturals by you, go research that persons past, if there is enough info you will probably just see that he/she was surrounded by people of that same interest thus when they tried it, they were not naturals, they were just aware of what was what at an early state. something enough so that they were just subliminally trained to do it in a ("natural") way that seems natural.
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Read the quote below..
It hints at natural talent overcoming all eventually. Like boxing, you can get very far off hard work & dedication. But the special fighters are naturally talented. Like Floyd Mayweather. A current undefeated fighter. Sure there's a plethora of hard if not harder working fighters than him out there, but if you're genetically superior from the outset, it's hard to match.
or perhaps comparing Flash to some other BW pro's. Now I'm not 100% positive but I'd assume he doesn't practice the most of all Brood War pro's. He's just naturally gifted in a lot of what Starcraft requires. Which is why he stands above the rest.
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You need to be smart enough to know what mistakes you and your opponent make in order to learn and further your skill. Training will increase hand speed, also you need to know what Decisions to make and when. Which can only come from practicing the game day n and day out watching replays and finding a pro league team that gives you access to real practice partners(the ladder is not a practice zone)
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It's trained. But most people would rather excuse their failings as immutable personality traits, so they don't recognize mindset as a trained characteristic.
There may be a limit imposed by your biology, but if your mentality is such that you'd even ask if you've reached that limit... you're not even close.
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On March 22 2011 16:11 FataLe wrote:
Read the quote below..
It hints at natural talent overcoming all eventually. Like boxing, you can get very far off hard work & dedication. But the special fighters are naturally talented. Like Floyd Mayweather. A current undefeated fighter. Sure there's a plethora of hard if not harder working fighters than him out there, but if you're genetically superior from the outset, it's hard to match.
or perhaps comparing Flash to some other BW pro's. Now I'm not 100% positive but I'd assume he doesn't practice the most of all Brood War pro's. He's just naturally gifted in a lot of what Starcraft requires. Which is why he stands above the rest.
I have to disagree completely with this quote, Natural skill is considered what you have before training, also this is not boxing/fighting, there are so many factors that are involved in fighting compared to playing a game where there is no physical limitation that cannot be overcome with training...as for the comment to flash, he is a great player and trains 10 hours a day to become what he was and is. he studies the game like you would for your masters degree picking it apart piece by piece, the only thing that would separate you from becoming a Pro, would be your intelligence, and your mental psychology. Those 2 things are the only thing that would separate you from the best if you trained just as hard and studied the game just as much.
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On March 22 2011 09:54 Amui wrote:
The ability to build units while microing iin multiple locations is something that cannot be taught.
this is going to be worded quite strongly, but you must be clueless. i was a D- iccup zerg player for about two season, do you remember ZvT? simultaneously multitasking, muta micro'ing, getting hydras ready to morph into lurkers to hold third? that shit was hard as FUCK. but after practicing enough, i finally hit C in around season 8. all it takes is someone better than you to say hey, your ZvT is weak because you can't do this, and you focus on that for 100 games until you can do it. sure, some people may pick it up faster, but hard work overcomes natural ability most of the time.
oh account made in "Saturday, 21st of August 2010" nvm
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One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.
- Simone de Beauvoir
I think that a person can be born with an affinity/talent to video games/rts games, but (as with everything else) the time/dedication one puts into it can allow that "less talented' person to beat the more talented person.
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On March 22 2011 13:56 cosmicTrex wrote:
Anecdotal evidence counts for literally nothing on a topic about claims of trends in an entire population.
There's a wealth of research into this exact area (albeit not about specifically SC2) in the field of Cognitive Psychology. My professor, Dr. Anders K. Ericsson, at FSU studies Chess players, Basketball players, Golf Players, you name it. He found a long time ago that given a certain amount of time anyone can become an expert at something. This amount of time is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
People who are in lower leagues with 100s of games played, those who were placed in, say Gold, and are still in Gold are not doing the "deliberate" part of the practice. This is a strategy game, you refine and perfect your mechanics to deploy your strategy. If the mechanics are bad, the execution of your strategy will fail. If the strategy is bad, you'll likely still fail. Practice routines, flexible builds and "game-sense" take hours upon hours to develop, but any playing that does not have a specific practice end to it (say, developing a build that leads to a good macro game, but can hold off a 4gate) will be wasted and might just reinforce habits and playing that is counter to actually "objectively" improving.
the problem with this argument is that no where does it specify what 'deliberate practice' means. essentially it's just a diluted term which can be used to describe some things but not everything.
let's say a starcraft player was to spend 10,000 hours 4 gating, until it was the most refined 4 gate you'll ever see. obviously this time investment--despite being uttery ldevoted to practice--will not likely make one an expert starcraft player. but how does the 10,000 hours theory go about explaining this? this is only the most accessible example I thought of. there are far more convoluted and hidden issues with practice regimes that could invalidate this kind of theory.
my point is how do you quantify practice, furthermore, how do you distinguish good/bad practice? Suppose the scII metagame reached a point where there was some unstoppable 4 gate build if performed flawlessly. In this case, the above training scenario would be invaluable; perhaps the best training program possible. Practice is easily refined retroactively, when you know what the outcome was.
MY POINT in this long-winded poorly organised post is that to define practice as either useful or harmful, you have to know what you want your outcomes to be. a goal such as "being the best player' is neither her nor there, it says nothing. of course, my whole argument is in reference to strategy training, not of mechanics, which can be quite directly targeted.
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I suspect that there's a degree of natural talent involved. Whether that be in the form of reflexes, the ability to multi-task, or a general propensity for decision making that translates well to SC2, I'm sure innate skill is involved somehow.
However...
This game is all about practice. The people who are good at SC2 - and I mean fucking good play this game for a ridiculous amount of time, practicing repetitive movements and strategies to the point where (and I quote a number of pros here) "you don't even think about it."
Practice > Natural Skill but the latter is most certainly involved and heavily enhanced by disciplined practice - pretty much like everything else in life.
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On March 22 2011 12:03 Angelbelow wrote:
I think the higher you go, low-> high diamond, lowmaster->high masters-> pro level -> successful pro-> highly successful there are stages of increased natural skill and training.
People with the best work ethic are going to be at the highest advantage. The next I believe is natural understanding (which can be related to natural skill). The faster you understand the game the faster you will improve.
Personal example:
My friend:
-it took me months of practice to finally beat my friend.
-after being able to stay even in practice games, he came up with abusive and a slew of different strategies and began to beat me regularly.
-Does not watch any pro games. Is in graduate school so just plays causally as a random player.
Me:
- For me to beat him, I had to watch a lot of pro games, and study how they react to different situations.
I personally believe that natural skill exists, but I think work ethic can overcome this. The only problem is that you need the work ethic of a monster, which is why I believe there are only a few dominant players.
How much of a gamer is your friend and how much of a game are you?
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Anyone who doesn't accept natural talent has the up most out of whack ego. The easiest way to explain talent imo is drawing. I can sit here and draw infinity pictures and will never draw as good as someone with NATURAL drawing ability. In drawing you have to use a tool to express you're talent which is a pencil paint etc etc. SC2 is also a tool IN WHICH someone with natural TALENT will be better and improve MUCH faster, theres infinite examples of this such as math writing etc etc SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST BETTER AT THINGS WHATS THE BIG DEAL?? People who think other wise need to wake up and stop taking talent for granted because with out it we would never have innovation and still believe the world is flat. Talent is the catalyst to all innovation whether you accept it or not  I guess for most people being normal makes them insanely stubborn.
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On March 21 2011 22:18 JeLLe04 wrote:
Hey, guys.
My friend and I were talking about this last night after watching Destiny answer some questions on Reddit (I wanna be a pro, how much do you make, how do I join ROOT, etc. etc.) and it got me to wondering - how much of a given person's success in SC2 can be attributed to a natural affinity for the game or for video games in general?
I say none, my friend says a lot. His argument is that SC2 is just like any other sport. Nearly all of the players in the NHL, NFL, MLB, etc., got to that league through a combination of favorable circumstances, loads of practice, and natural skill. However, SC2 is different in that one's physical qualities have almost no bearing on gameplay - the exception would be hand speed and reflexes, which, in my opinion, can be trained.
My stance (and Destiny's, from what I could tell) is that even the lowliest Bronze player could theoretically make it to the GSL one day, with a metric fuckton of work and a lot of dedication. Look at Koreans, for instance. Koreans are typically better at SC2 for one of two possible reasons. The first is that Koreans are just born with a Gauss rifle in their hands and are veritable SC gods from the moment they exit the womb; the other is that Korean family values tend to stress hard work and dedication much more than the typical American family does, and Koreans therefore just work much harder at the game.
What do you guys think? If you're high Diamond or Masters, do you think you've worked enough to deserve it, or do you think you were just "born that way"?
... born into high masters... are you serious. you need 6-10 hours a day. to compete.
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EPT
