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.
like destiny said, he can beat your ass with any unit composition he likes, purely because he can make more units than you can.
Competitive gamer all my life. Never played BW. ¬10 games played in Beta. On release I placed into Gold and made Diamond season 1. About 130 1v1s total played, about 70 to make Diamond. Just watched a bunch of Day9, talked to a friend of mine who's an old school BW player and studied the game.
My advice would be as follows, ignore everything except for basic unit compositions and just work on macro until you're high platinum. Play relatively safe and if you macro perfectly, you'll simply have way more stuff than any of your opponents. There is way too much crap people get caught up with that is literally no help at lower leagues. When you get to high platinum, game sense and expansion timings become much more important as most of your opponents will finally be able to keep pace with your mechanics.
just from looking at my different friends who played the game i think 170 games does sounda bout right to be in gold for the average player. I guess with your competitive background you think youre above average? In which case you'll have to crank out a ton more games
I also came from Halo 3, I wasnt anything special, highest skill 50 and played online with friends, no LAN events. But I did alot of WoW pvp so I became familiar with a keyboard and mouse instead of a controller. Then I switched over to Sc2, played season 1 and got bronze and got really discouraged because I hate not being semi decent, so I stopped playing for awhile.
Season 2 rolled around (I think season 1 was really really long?) and for some reason I really got back into sc2, and wanted to be really good at it, and I feel I improved much faster than my friends. The trick? I'm being completely honest, it was Day9.
I also got coaching from wtr1be, and that helped substantially as well, in those 2 hours I spent with a very high masters player from the EU, I felt like I knew so much more. That was 8 months ago, and now I'm on the verge of masters, rank 1 in diamond and playing against alot people I used to download reps from. Now I am able to play them, and sometimes beat them.
Be confident, be competitive, if you put in the work you will see yourself improve over time, just be patient.
TL;DR: It has taken me 8 months and 2000 1v1 games of Sc2, along with Day9 and coaching to get from low low bronze to high diamond, hoping to get masters before the 1 year mark :D
On January 13 2012 14:58 Zrana wrote: 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.
So I played 3k games of Broodwar and I couldn't stay in D+ without dodging PvZ. I've played 4k+ games of HoN and I'm still 1500. Progression is a function of deliberate attempts to improve. Not just number of games played.
It's hard to tell what your biggest motivation is right now. Do you want to be higher than gold? Or is your interest in raising your overall skill? Both cannot work together no matter what anyone tells you. If you are interested in raising your ladder score and league, you will want to learn 1 base timings that are far easier to master than overall solid play. If your biggest motivation is improvement, then fretting over ladder points will only hold back your ability to experiment and learn. You shouldn't worry where you are after 190 games, as the top players in the world have closer to 19,000. I have played 6,500 or so and am rank1 master/GM on diff accounts, and I make hundreds of mistakes in each game that I can pick out after. The greatest pros on earth are also constantly making major errors and learning from each others games. As you will find in numerous well put together guides, the best way to start making big changes is cleaning up your macro. You will be quite shocked how big of a difference it makes. If you try to leap ahead of yourself and get advanced, you will only create more work for yourself later. Others have given good advice before me, particularly learning one build at a time per matchup, and doing it over and over. I understand I may have misinterpreted what you meant by taking sc2 "serious," hopefully this helps.
Also, about the post above that said you cannot go pro. This is obviously not true, as in time the current pros will eventually hang up their keyboards, and those who had the balls to begin pursuing it today will fill their shoes. As with anything it comes down to how much you can let go of what you think you know and how much effort you can put in.^^
@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.
Practice practice practice practice practice, and then when you're sick of practicing, practice some more. Starcraft is deceptive in that it seems like a mental game, but really, "knowing what to do" means jack shit until high masters/GM level. The reason people in higher leagues can beat you without even trying is mechanics, pure and simple, and you only develop that by intentionally focusing on it. I frankly think people in lower league watch too many instructional videos and stuff when really an hour and a half of playing against AI and saying "I WILL NOT MISS A SINGLE FUCKING PROBE" is gonna do you a lot better than watching a Day9 video about some shit Thorzain does that you don't have anywhere close to the mechanics to execute.
I was in Bronze for roughly a million years before I realized that knowing cute high-level timings and how to counter every build ever was completely useless if I couldn't actually execute, and the same applies even in Diamond league. I didn't get there through strategic analysis and knowing a million build orders, I got there by doing one build order in every matchup and focusing on scouting and macro.
On January 13 2012 14:58 Zrana wrote: 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
I've been playing bw/sc2 on and off since the beginning of 2010, and in my experience these above numbers are very accurate. I'd say if you're in Platinum (which i'd consider D rank in iccup) with 500 games played, you're about average. I'd say for low Masters (about C- iccup) anything less than 2000 games played puts you ahead of the curve. This process can be expedited through carefully watching all of your replays, reading the right guides, and, above all else, sticking with the game and not taking extended periods of time off (anything more than 3 weeks begins to set you back).
This is just my own experience, so take from it what you will. I started sc2 with zero previous competitive RTS experience as well as zero competitve gaming experience in general. My only preparation was watching some husky videos, and later day[9]. It took me about 10 games to get out of bronze doing the simplest 3-rax build learned from husky's youtube channel with attention to making sure to hit supply depots and stuff I. It took me about 50 games of just doing this build + amoving over and over to get to gold, at which point i race switched to toss. I hit masters at around 200 games played, and have pretty much stagnated as a very average master's player ever since then as I don't play all that often. I'm really mystified as to how anyone can put any amount of thought + practice into this game and not be atleast diamond very quickly. I have friends who are platinum players who play literally once every 6 months and are still able to win in platinum easily doing extremely half-assed builds + amove. If you watch competitive tournaments with casters like artosis or day[9] you should just be able to apply what you learn + focus on mechanics and hit master's without too much effort in my opinion. My theory is that those who stagnate in the lower leagues despite putting in alot of effort must either be fundamentally mistaken about basic RTS theory (attack right after they expand or right before +1 finishes and dont know why its bad) or have put zero effort into the mechanical aspect of the game (which is really not all that hard). TLDR Just focus on mechanics and apply a tiny bit of critical thinking and there's no reason for it to take more than 200 games to hit masters (this number will probably be greater for zerg as they are more mechanically demanding and the larvae mechanic makes just surviving the early game take alot of experience).
You can have all the knowledge about this game you want, but if you dont have the skills to make those thoughts happen, your not going to be very good.
I just want to add, I got a friend of mine to gold league in two months by having him do 1rax expand in every matchup and just making marine/marauder. When he'd ask me how to counter colossi/muta/whatever, I'd tell him to just focus on making more marines and marauders, because he could win if he just spent all his money and made more workers. We're now working on unit counters and all that because I don't want him to stagnate, but seriously, it does work to just macro and be better than your opponent. Don't overthink it.
edit: also he's never played a PC game before ever, so if he can do it, you can.
some people just suck at video games, dont go all emo over it. even for master league players there are still so many people better than them that their skill is irrelevant when compared to a pro. dont worry about your rank maybe just try a different game like rayman origins, my 3 year old nephew can play that so im sure your gold league micro will be able to handle that
Try not to focus on what league you are in so much. If all you want to do is go up leagues then find a few good early builds (with terran) and just get to diamond/master in a week after you are used to the build and using it v all three races (or one build for each race).
I would say playing normally, you can prob go up one league a season ez. Just watch a lot, read a little bit (not too much), also do not be scared to play 2v2 3v3 and 4v4, it will teach you micro, map awareness, unit counters, early timings and take some of the stress out of 1v1. Also get yourself to either always cheese/rush or never cheese/never rush, or have a set number of games in which you cheese/dont cheese. I include 1base in my cheese/allin/rush. It is bad to stay on one base, one of the biggest improvements in my game involved playing with at least 2 bases in mind.
Focused practice is necessary for rapid improvement, if your opponents are better than you, you'll improve faster as well. First fix your macro, workers, supply, macro mechanics, spending money, building timing. Then work on learning specific strategy timings, deviations, army control, and scouting.
If you have the hand speed, you can go from gold to master in <100 games of practice, by stealing 3 solid build orders, where all the work of having safe timings and having a plan is done for you. You still need to work on the deviations and scouting tho.
This is just my own experience, so take from it what you will. I started sc2 with zero previous competitive RTS experience as well as zero competitve gaming experience in general. My only preparation was watching some husky videos, and later day[9]. It took me about 10 games to get out of bronze doing the simplest 3-rax build learned from husky's youtube channel with attention to making sure to hit supply depots and stuff I. It took me about 50 games of just doing this build + amoving over and over to get to gold, at which point i race switched to toss. I hit masters at around 200 games played, and have pretty much stagnated as a very average master's player ever since then as I don't play all that often. I'm really mystified as to how anyone can put any amount of thought + practice into this game and not be atleast diamond very quickly. I have friends who are platinum players who play literally once every 6 months and are still able to win in platinum easily doing extremely half-assed builds + amove. If you watch competitive tournaments with casters like artosis or day[9] you should just be able to apply what you learn + focus on mechanics and hit master's without too much effort in my opinion. My theory is that those who stagnate in the lower leagues despite putting in alot of effort must either be fundamentally mistaken about basic RTS theory (attack right after they expand or right before +1 finishes and dont know why its bad) or have put zero effort into the mechanical aspect of the game (which is really not all that hard). TLDR Just focus on mechanics and apply a tiny bit of critical thinking and there's no reason for it to take more than 200 games to hit masters (this number will probably be greater for zerg as they are more mechanically demanding and the larvae mechanic makes just surviving the early game take alot of experience).
I didn't want to be the one who said this but im happy someone else feels this way. I really can not understand some people with the time they put in this game and still not improve.
I was pretty much in your spot where i did not have any prior RTS experience, got placed in bronze where i stayed for less than 30 games and then got promoted to gold where i stayed for the majority of season 1 since i did not play very much. (I still watched alot of SC2 and read TL etc). When blizzard announced the end of season 1 i figured it would be nice to not be in gold and have that printed on my account so i started to play some again and within 50 games or something i got into diamond. And that's where I've been since late season 1.
Just checked and I have 81 solo league wins so i have played approximately 150 1v1 games.
I didn't want to be the one who said this but im happy someone else feels this way. I really can not understand some people with the time they put in this game and still not improve.
I was pretty much in your spot where i did not have any prior RTS experience, got placed in bronze where i stayed for less than 30 games and then got promoted to gold where i stayed for the majority of season 1 since i did not play very much. (I still watched alot of SC2 and read TL etc). When blizzard announced the end of season 1 i figured it would be nice to not be in gold and have that printed on my account so i started to play some again and within 50 games or something i got into diamond. And that's where I've been since late season 1.
Just checked and I have 81 solo league wins so i have played approximately 150 1v1 games.
Not to discredit you, but season 1 leagues don't really mean anything these days... I have friends who were gold/plat/diamond in season 1 and 2 and would be in the dredges of bronze league now if they tried the shit that worked for them back then. The pro scene and the whole Day9 thing wasn't as big, whereas now 75% of the people you run into in silver league watch Newbie Tuesday religiously.
Hell, one of my friends was in gold league in season 1, and he thought having more money in your bank meant you were winning...
I would suggest maybe getting a coaching lesson or two. If you are truly that serious about improving, they might be able to spot some obvious issues in your play and save you days/weeks/months of playing with bad habits that you haven't noticed.
I didn't want to be the one who said this but im happy someone else feels this way. I really can not understand some people with the time they put in this game and still not improve.
I was pretty much in your spot where i did not have any prior RTS experience, got placed in bronze where i stayed for less than 30 games and then got promoted to gold where i stayed for the majority of season 1 since i did not play very much. (I still watched alot of SC2 and read TL etc). When blizzard announced the end of season 1 i figured it would be nice to not be in gold and have that printed on my account so i started to play some again and within 50 games or something i got into diamond. And that's where I've been since late season 1.
Just checked and I have 81 solo league wins so i have played approximately 150 1v1 games.
Not to discredit you, but season 1 leagues don't really mean anything these days... I have friends who were gold/plat/diamond in season 1 and 2 and would be in the dredges of bronze league now if they tried the shit that worked for them back then. The pro scene and the whole Day9 thing wasn't as big, whereas now 75% of the people you run into in silver league watch Newbie Tuesday religiously.
Hell, one of my friends was in gold league in season 1, and he thought having more money in your bank meant you were winning...
I am still in diamond though and getting my fare share of matchups vs master players so my point still stands. I still don't have that many 1v1 games in comparison to many people who are still in lower leagues with alot more games than me.
EPT
