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Ok so this is just a quick question the the community. I know many of you have been playing SC since BW days and what not so I'm sure you have some intel on this subject.
This is something I've been beating myself up alot lately about. I have always been a competitive gamer, but it has always been console games. I have been to MLG events and played Halo, Gears of War, and CoD at very high levels. Ive played Sc2 since season 1, but I never played it seriously until mid season 4 (5 weeks ago to be precise). I am currently bouncing around in the t20 of my gold league. I added up my wins and losses totals since i began playing 5 weeks ago and Im at about 110 wins and 100 losses. In season 1 I played 0 1v1s. In season 2 I became silver winning 17 1v1s. In season 3 I was number 1 silver and had 46 wins total , and season 4 placement got me gold and it was the only game I played til a few days b4 season 5. Now in season 5 I have 96 wins.( been goin hard ;P)
So a grand total of around 170 wins in 1v1s. Should I be higher than gold? because in my experience as a competitive gamer I have progressed through the ranks very quickly. I also feel like I know this game really well now seeing as how I've watched every video known to man, studied, taken notes, all that jazz. It is something I really want to excel at and all of this boils down to is should I be beating myself up for still being in gold, or is it a normal pace for SC1 / SC2 players.
EDIT: I will be streaming as much as possible today, 1/13/12, so many of the people asking for replays so they can help me can watch and help me from there. I usually read the chat after every game so this should work. Im listed in the TL stream list. Or go to twitch.tv/blackouttz. (This is in no way trying to promote my stream, its just a way for people who want to see replays see them live)
I will also post replays of games I think I should have won later tonight after playing all day so the people that couldnt tune in to the stream can watch as well.
I really appreciate all the people chipping in to help, its nice to see such a helpful community. <3
EDIT 2: Here are some replays from the game I played today. The only one im not posting is me getting 7 pooled. This is also to show that for some of u that think people in gold are clueless and dont do anything right is quite wrong. It is obviously not perfect play, but being able to win every game by doing something stupid is obviously not possible. I won 6 of these game, 2 are losses.
Replays:
http://drop.sc/91297
http://drop.sc/91298
http://drop.sc/91299
http://drop.sc/91300
http://drop.sc/91301
http://drop.sc/91302
http://drop.sc/91303
http://drop.sc/91304
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Going from Console to PC gaming is a large shift, as well as the fact that you are going from shooters to RTS. If you were a competitive gamer before and want to get better at SC2, perhaps try to set a practice schedule? Of course, I am not a pro myself so I can only give so much advice.
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Number of wins is balanced by number of losses. Also depends on if you are beating people with higher or lower MMR.
170 wins is awesome if you've only lost 2 games. It's pathetic if you've lost 2000+ games.
There is no normal "pace". High gold is probably where your intuitive skills and mechanics have got you. To improve further you can either play lots and lots and slowly improve by brute force, or you can read guides, watch vods, and actively focus on improving your game.
Key thing to keep in mind is that you don't improve your league. You improve your game-play and your league and rank will reflect that.
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@Bagration Since I have starting playing seriously I have spent nearly every second of free time playing 1v1s.
@Kharnage I have won more than Ive lost. Since 5 weeks ago it is about 115-100 roughly. And I have stuided, have a library of builds, know every counter to everything, how to do it, how to macro, all that. I guess I know it all i just cant execute well. Thats my best guess.
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Nice guy, non-elitist answer:
Don't beat yourself up over it. This game is much more competitive than what you have done in the past and requires a different skill set. Just be patient and learn from your mistakes and you will improve.
I hope it opens your eyes and makes you appreciate the talent of the top-tier players.
GL HF 
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On January 13 2012 14:29 BLacKOuTz wrote:
@Kharnage And I have stuided, have a library of builds, know every counter to everything, how to do it, how to macro, all that. I guess I know it all i just cant execute well. Thats my best guess.
This just simply cannot be true. If it is, you are thinking/playing too slow.
Just playing out a regular build order without taking any macro risks, even with zero scouting, will get you to diamond at the least. You might not win every game without scouting, but it should certainly get you to diamond.
Play a game against an easy AI. See how long it takes you to get maxed with a standard army with decent upgrades and a normal economy. Compare that time to how long it takes professional players you watch to get maxed. If it's very far off, you're macroing wrong. If you can get maxed almost as fast as the pros, you can get to diamond at least
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You said that for your last season you were 110 and 100, which means that gold league is the right place for you at the moment, generally, to get placed into the next league you woul need to win about 3 out of every 5 games (more or less/to my understanding.) As for getting better, I would suggest looking to the pros/guides on what you should be doing, otherwise you may get bad habits stuck in your mind that take a long time to flush out if you want to become better, i.e. not hitting every inject may not matter in bronze->diamond league, but good good luck getting into masters if your queen ever reaches a 100 energy before the 15min mark (or nexus/OC depending on which race you play.)
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This game is way harder than any console game. First, absolutely don't become overconfident in your game knowledge, if you knew as much as you think you do you would not be in gold.
if you wanna play a few practice games or something maybe i can give you a few things to improve on if you are on NA
Stokes. 884 (I'll be on for a little bit )
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Just keep focusing on improving and not winning and you'll get there eventually. I focused on winning to get into masters then when I finally did I was like.. Now what?
Go at your pace and look at it as improving not as winning or losing.
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I think your pace is average or slightly above average. It really depends on what race you chose as well. I went from Bronze to Platinum fairly quickly as Terran but hit a wall. I think half my time playing was from when I was stuck in Plat.
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I think alot of my problem is I know the meta game for high levels of play but as Idra has said before, sometimes people win just because they accidently did something amazing that NO ONE ever does. Like losing to 6 rax all ins on Tal darim when they dont scout and guess right first try, and not scouting a 4 gate and building a marauder only army and rolling through it. (Both happened today). No one good would ever build 10 marauders and nothing else without scouting.
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I started season 1 in Silver League and it took me until season 5 to make it into masters league. I think I have about 1500 wins combined between my accounts and my win rate I feel is below 50%, I have NA, EU, and TW accounts because I bought into the hype that NA ladder is terrible. I played Brood War a little, but was never competitive except for with the few friends I had who played it occasionally.
170 wins is nowhere near enough for serious progression. Also, in my opinion you should not track your progression by wins. Come up with a different goal. Personally I played hundreds, maybe thousands of games vs AI or by myself just trying to max out as quickly as possible, never have over 30 energy on my queens, hit specific timings, and practice small micromanagement tasks like dropping banelings from overlords while spreading roaches out and scooting them in for better engagements.
When I watch things like State of the Game, or the Day9 Daily when I used to watch that, I would always have Starcraft open and I'd be running through all the drills I could think of that didn't require another person to be against me. I don't even want to think about the amount of hours I have spent inside the Starcraft 2 clients, but I know I worked at it at least as much as I worked at Dawn of War, and I played that game for 3k-ish hours in about a year.
If you really want to excel you're going to have to put a lot of time into it, because I can guarantee you that although I do all of this, it's not enough to really be competitive. I have only reached diamond on the TW/KR ladder.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
If you are only beating Gold players then you are a Gold player.
You are facing opponents that are at your MMR level.
Once you start beating Gold players more often and start beating Platinum, Diamond, or Masters players with regularity, you will be promoted. Simple.
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There is no "normal" progression rate because the leagues do not represent absolute level of skill but rather relative to rest of player base. So being "normal" would mean you stay in the same league and just everyone get better as time goes on.
But as players leave the player base and others work harder to learn new strategies and become more proficient at mechanics, those others will be able to move up the relative leagues and go from Gold to Platinum to Diamond to Masters to GM to Korea.
GL HF!
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It all depends on the people, but I will give out my experience. I have been playing SC2 since beta phase, and I probably played about few thousand 1v1 matches total. Like everyone else playing SC2, I began as silver league with 60 apm, and steadily improved my game over the past two years. I am in top master now and I was always in master league or equivalent since the retail release, but I can feel that I have gotten significantly better since 6 months or 1 year ago even though I was always in a master league. My real apm has gone up to 200, which partially shows the improvement on my skill level.
My take on improving your game is that do not worry about quantity of games you play, but rather focus on quality of the each game. Every time you play a game, think yourself what kind of build you will do and what kind of particular actions you wish to achieve (eg. correct marine split, right drone scouting, good drop defending, etc) Once the game is over, try to go over the replay and see whether you have actually achieved this or not, find any particular mistakes or improvements you can do, and try to correct them on the next game or next matchup. I feel that this method give more meaning to your games and I always felt that I improved my skill whenever I win with this mindset. I don't know whether this will work on you but good luck and have fun!
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On January 13 2012 14:42 BLacKOuTz wrote:
I think alot of my problem is I know the meta game for high levels of play but as Idra has said before, sometimes people win just because they accidently did something amazing that NO ONE ever does. Like losing to 6 rax all ins on Tal darim when they dont scout and guess right first try, and not scouting a 4 gate and building a marauder only army and rolling through it. (Both happened today). No one good would ever build 10 marauders and nothing else without scouting.
Maybe you should figure out how to scout those things. If you keep learning, you'll improve but for now, honestly you're just bad. You don't know the game remotely as well as you think you do. Even most people in masters are pretty clueless.
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I was like you I switched from playing Xbox games and gamebattles for Gears of War, CoD and halo and I started in bronze. I was able to get from bronze to masters in about 6 months playing a few times a week. It's not hard to go up the ladder if you just focus on pure macro and build orders.
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On January 13 2012 14:42 BLacKOuTz wrote:
I think alot of my problem is I know the meta game for high levels of play but as Idra has said before, sometimes people win just because they accidently did something amazing that NO ONE ever does. Like losing to 6 rax all ins on Tal darim when they dont scout and guess right first try, and not scouting a 4 gate and building a marauder only army and rolling through it. (Both happened today). No one good would ever build 10 marauders and nothing else without scouting.
It has nothing to do with meta game. If you scout something and counter it, you should win. Also, you can randomly build whatever you want as long as you build stuff and win at the gold level.
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hi, top8 gold random player (with about 2k games played)here. are you aiming to go pro, or just aiming to get to masters league?i dont think that you will never be able to play at pro lvl if your winratio vs goldplayers is 1.15. evrybody tries to improve, so your league progression isnt a way to messure your improvement,because if you progress, someone els has to go down a league. you must compare yourself to your past results, just load up a replay from the 5 weeks ago, watch it and compare it to a recent replay. you probably see HUGE improvement. also, if you have a possitive win ratio, you are progressing faster than most of us. i started of in the bottom of bronze(got 0 points for winning), and therefore have a winratio at about1.3(from beating 6pool and voidrays in bronze). btw, just check most of the players in your league's "games won". most of them probably have atleast 300,and almost evrybody copies a build from a pro and play around 40 apm atleast, which is a sign that they are constantly active and tries with all their hearth to win(on eu server, dont know about na). just remember that evryone aims to be masters, there is a very small precentage that can be. so what makes you think you should be one of them? play for fun, not to get good.
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I'm in a clan with players from bronze to masters, and from what i've noticed the general picture of 1v1 win numbers to league is at this time (very roughly):
Masters 1000+
Diamond 600+
Plat 300+
Gold 100+
Silver less than 100
Bronze is either less than 20 or more than 200 ^^
This is ofc not exact at all, but generally i reckon you can pick a player and see what league he's in and 8 times out 10 the numbers above will be more or less right.
However you should consider that the vast majority of ladder players are not really using the ladder for dedicated, efficient practice. Many just have a general idea of a build and a vague desire to improve and the rest just cheese or all-in a lot because they are insecure or something.
The way to beat these numbers is to practice one specific area of your play at a time. I'd recommend just picking 3 standard macroish builds (1 per matchup) until diamond and focusing on areas like scouting at right times, not getting supply blocked, engaging correctly with your army etc one at a time until you get them all right.
Also a really good way to improve is to play people miles better than you if you can get hold of them; A lot of the time you can see mistakes in your play which would not be apparent vs players in your own league. As an example - I'm diamond zerg and generally my plan for attacking a terran army was box everything, a-move, target banelings on marines and mutas on siege tanks. Then i played a couple of masters guys and the way they positioned and handled their armies meant that i realised i had to set up flanks and engage in open areas from multiple sides to have any hope of taking out their forces. Now i'm applying that to my ladder games and i'm not being matched against platinums anymore ^^.
edit: and if you play for fun, not to get good, you will still be in gold with 2k games played :p
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EPT
