Is SC skill natural or trained? - Page 19
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Leargle
United States173 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16387 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:41 VPCursed wrote: just like how nestea got older and stopped winning tounaments. oh wait. dont reference SC and baseball. the reply was made to the generalized comment applying to all sports activities not just SC. | ||
secretary bird
447 Posts
Take Flash for example if he was born in another country where progaming wasnt as big or he would have had parents that dont accept his choice to play for hours every day and eventually quit school for progaming he wouldnt have a chance to get training in the best possible environment. Also realistically I could probably train like crazy for 10 years and still wouldnt be as good as he was at a very young age. That is assuming I could mentally and physically handle to train that much in the first place which is a talent in its own right I think. | ||
.Sic.
Korea (South)497 Posts
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Hybris
United States185 Posts
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unit
United States2621 Posts
On October 08 2011 02:16 JimmyJRaynor wrote: do you know how many hard core alcoholics and substance abusers have the natural ability to hit a 99 mile an hour fastball with no practise at all ? I'll give you 1 very well documented example: former Yankee, Blue Jay, Astro, Cub, Indian CLIFF JOHNSON. every hitter has an "upper limit" in the speed of pitch they can hit. once u go beyond that speed the player is guessing... i was one of the best players on my baseball team ( keep in mind i'm in canada where baseball is not taken seriously) and i simply can not hit a ball that goes over 90 MPH... for many of my friends who were extremely competitive and practised hitting a lot their maximum speed was much lower... like 86 MPH .. or 82 MPH... and i watched my friends drop out of baseball 1 by 1 as pitchers threw harder and harder and their ability to make contact diminished regardless of how much they practised. and of course by the time i was 18 ... any pitcher able to crank it up over 90 MPH was simply unhittable for me. MLB is filled with lazy guys who happen to be the 1 out of 10,000 that can hit a 99 MPH fast ball. Go to a batting cage and try for urself. thats a physical trait, with talent being defined as mostly mental in my wall of letters, however ill still answer to it what you are speaking of is an inability to react fast enough, to hit the pitch after identifying its speed, people are not born equal. what im saying is that hard work crushes those inequalities which are mostly found in thought and physical makeup, cliff johnson obviously had a very good reaction time and the body composition to match it, there are however far more examples of athletes who worked constantly at their craft...enigmas do exist, and you never disproved that cliff practiced when he was younger edit: On October 08 2011 03:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote: the reply was made to the generalized comment applying to all sports activities not just SC. i included music and chess, baseball is free game...direct comparisons however arent the best idea due to the differences also the vanessa-mae documentary is rather interesting :D from a personal standpoint being "gifted" in music (through hard work/practice) yet also being half deaf its quite interesting to see | ||
jinorazi
Korea (South)4948 Posts
its rather naive to think everyone is equal and anyone has a chance to become anything. there are limitations, physically and mentally, and everyone is different. i'm sure there are platinum/diamond players that play muuuuch more than some master/gm players, including the difference in total games played that would differ in the three digits. | ||
Maxtor
United Kingdom273 Posts
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zeek0us
United States67 Posts
First off, natural attributes are distributed among the population in more-or-less of a bell curve. That's not open to argument. Some innate, genetic characteristics offer an advantage performing certain tasks. As the tasks get more complex, a more specific mix of characteristics (balancing genetic and learned or practiced) is required to succeed. Take sprinting, where the job is to run as fast as possible in a straight line. With nobody training, there's a natural distribution of, say, 100m times based on innate characteristics. If some people in the 50th percentile of this "natural" distribution train their asses off, they'll be able to jump to the 99th percentile. But if the guy in the 99th "natural" percentile also trains his ass off, he'll still be the fastest. He had a head start in that endeavor because his genetic makeup made him well suited to the task in question. Now take something like basketball. If you're tall, coordinated, fast, and strong, you're likely in the top of the distribution of "naturally" good basketball players. But if you never play, you'll get leapfrogged by a short, awkward dude who busts his ass in the gym every day. And to take it even further, say the first guy is physically well-suited to excel at basketball, but isn't very creative or aggressive and has terrible spatial awareness. Now a guy who might not be as quick or tall or can't jump as high, trains enough to leapfrog from the 50th "physical" percentile to the 90th, and has 99th percentile mental makeup for basketball, will likely be the superior basketball player. IOW, there have been plenty of guys as good or better than Michael Jordan physically, but none who also had the ideal brain for basketball. All of that being said, Starcraft has none of the physical limits that athletic sports do. There's no barrier to jumping from any "natural" percentile to the very top of the game. You can train your reaction time and reflexes enough to be the best (unlike sprinting, where you can't "train" more fast-twitch muscle, or basketball where you can't "train" longer arms), no matter where you started. Or, you can build your game around winning in other ways and exceed your opponent elsewhere and negate his reaction-time advantage. And since SC2 is a complicated, mostly mental competition, there are various mixtures of attributes that can be associated with success. You might have a good mind for RTS games and a quick mouse hand, so you're in the 90th "natural" distribution. But there's nothing that's going to give you a lasting advantage over a guy who has to figure it out over time and build up is hand speed. In the end, the spread of possible characteristics to be a top player is wide enough that you can't stay ahead just because it came easier in the first place. | ||
nojok
France15845 Posts
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OhMyGawd
United States264 Posts
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tutsicockroach
United States57 Posts
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jphj012
United States10 Posts
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"? I'm not diamond or masters but its true about koreans. 1. South korea is a small country thats overpopulated and its much more difficult to survive than in the US. 2. Koreans are very very competitive with a hungry mindset. You need to be hungry in a ultra competitive atmosphere to survive. So therefore koreans pretty much go all in when they are dedicated to do achieve their goals. 3. Koreans are very intelligent people. They rank 3rd in math & other academics behind India and China. 4. Koreans LOVEEEEEE video games. Alot of them become very addicted to it and there has been some death rates because of this. I'm not saying koreans are the shit or anything but this is a fact because I am a korean as well. | ||
ChApFoU
France2982 Posts
* Does it mean that I'm more gifted than a guy who has played the game for 1 year and is still in silver ? Not necessarily. What quickly got me to that level was simply the fact that being a former BW player I already had in mind a bunch of basic SC concepts that transferred to SC2. If ppl still in bronze after 500 games really cared about being better and more efficient at the game, analyzing their losses and watching pro replays they would quickly get at least into platinum in a month or two. Overall I feel the sincere desire to dedicate yourself at something is a much much greater force than what we call "talent" and which is btw pretty vague. | ||
Holgerius
Sweden16951 Posts
![]() And you'll obviously need to combine the talent with hard work, or people with a lower skill ceiling will achieve more simply by putting in more hours. | ||
Shaok
297 Posts
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Tal0n
United States175 Posts
so, it is mostly hard work, whereas talent can help you get there quicker. | ||
Offhand
United States1869 Posts
On October 08 2011 04:15 Holgerius wrote: We aren't born the same, and we do not have the same aptitudes. Tabula rasa is a dumb concept. Without specifying what qualities are inherent, this is a pointless statement. What abilities does SC2 require that naturally vary between people? Reaction time and manual dexterity are the only two I can think of. Manual dexterity can be trained, no one starts out a grandmaster pianist the same way no one starts out being able to use a keyboard like Nada. Reaction time varies between people and age but the real differences in reaction time amount to less than a tenth of a second on average. This could certainly provide a benefit, especially when defending things like drops and harass. Realistically, a one tenth of a second difference can be corrected through proper scouting. Reaction time doesn't significantly drop off by age until you're 40-50, so even the oldest progamers should have comparable reaction times to the youngest (not many progamers in their 40's). | ||
TriO
United States421 Posts
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Gladiator6
Sweden7024 Posts
On October 08 2011 04:36 TriO wrote: Stay hungry, stay foolish. - Steve Jobs I think it's a mixture of both. | ||
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