EPT
Like the others said you should focus more on improving all your match-ups and not just winning.Normal Sc2 progression rate? - Page 4
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KillAudio
1364 Posts
Like the others said you should focus more on improving all your match-ups and not just winning. | ||
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straycat
230 Posts
On January 13 2012 15:49 Ejje wrote: 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. Well it's really quite simple - if you keep doing what you're doing, you keep getting what you're getting. I guess most players don't start off with an optimal playstyle and those who don't change their initial playstyle better don't get better and stay on their level. On January 13 2012 15:49 Ejje wrote: 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. Eh. Since you started off with kind of an elitist atittude, I'll give you some feedback in kind. In light of your low number of games played, your words and attitude about progression come off as rather silly. See: You got to diamond when diamond was much easier than today, and since then you have played roughly (supposing that you have played 100 games in diamond and that season 1 ended march 29th 2011) 11 matches per month in diamond. Ergo (I didn't want to say this but...): You Sir are a bonus pool surfer and a bogus. Try using up you gigantanormous bonus pool and keep playing, and see if you remain in diamond. As for the OP: Don't look at or compare yourself to others. There are so many factors that weigh in on how fast you will progress through the ranks. If you learn a very strong one base push as terran, you will get up faster than if you start off trying to go macro as zerg (I would guess). Others might have made the major part of their progress during the initial stages of the ladder (when the competition was less fierce) and thus have a skewed picture of what is "normal". It also depends on when and how you play. You only play with bonus pool after a long night's sleep, a healthy breakfast and a nice shower? Or do you play late into the night, half zombiefied, tilted and raging? (the latter will be detrimental to your ladder progress haha) The point is that the answers you will get on what is normal progression rate will vary wildly, and probably only make you angsty about your own progression. ("Oh two months played and still not in diamond, I'm baad, baaad!" etc). Just keep focusing on improving your play, and unless you are held down by mental or physical handicaps, you will probably follow a "normal" progress automagically. (and should you plateau with no clue as to how get further, post replays in the help thread or get coaching). Also, I would recommend that you try not to think of yourself as very aware. Yes, you may have watched a lot of videos and you are perhaps aware of the current metagame among the top GSL contenders. But you know, that really doesn't matter much. It really doesn't. I can read ten thousand books on karate - a ten year old practitioner would probably dropkick me to the ground anyway*. *ah well, let's say a thirteen year old | ||
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PapaJed
Sweden211 Posts
Being a gold level player myself after more than 2k games played I can relate to your situation and frustration. Some of the answers in this thread are really helpful, e.g. those pointing out that good macro and a solid buildorder will get you to at least platinum/diamond. I have come to realize that I lack the talent to ever excel at sc2, I´m bad at multitasking and I make poor decisions when under pressure. My improvement curve is really low. I still love the game though so I will continue to play. Maybe someday I´ll reach platinum ;-) (to my defense I must point out that I have a family and a job and can´t play as much as I´d like to, that obviously hinders my progression as well) People in this thread saying they reached diamond/master or whatever after a couple of games: congratulations. It probably means that you have a talent for this type of game. It does not, however, mean that all other persons will be able to achive the same in the same amount of time. I often in theses threads find an elitist way of reasoning, "sc2 is easy and you suck" -arguments. Sc2 is only as easy as your opponents skill. When sc2 came out a lot of people tried the multiplayer part of the game, and it was relatively easy to rank up on ladder for anyone who put in some effort. Now, more than a year later, the people still playing have gotten much better, and players in gold leauge are not bad anymore (compared to someone who just started playing). I know this because sometimes I play against newbies in custom games, and I completely smash them (you prob know the feeling: "why hasn´t he expanded or attacked me? He must have a really powerful all-in coming! Oh, he just made his first marine! I´ll almost feel bad when I come up his ramp..) Next game I´m up against a diamond or master, and although I´ll probably lose, it´s often a pretty close game ( I know custom is different from ladder, but I´m talking about matches where the other player doesnt just fool around). Some people give the advice to just macro up a big army and a-move. That doesnt work in gold league (anymore). You must learn basic scouting and positioning or your bigger army will get crushed (a-move into HT:s, coli, ling-blings, infestors, tanks? I don´t think so.) Good macro and mechanics will get you an advantage over your opponent, but it´s not enough to win the game. My advice is to play the game as long as you get something out of it and enjoy it. If you want to rank up you practice more than you ladder and only ladder when you´re fully concentrated and not tired. If you want to get better you analyze all your losses and learn from your mistakes. Good luck and HAVE FUN! | ||
Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
Being in gold means youre somewhere in the lower 60% of the player base, plat an above being the upper 40%. This means, if you're doing about 50% and you're matched against high gold players more or less constantly, you're pretty much dead average at the game, in terms of the whole active player base. So when you're thinking about progression, it just depends on you as an individual, how much does it take for you to go beyond averageness at an RTS? Personally, I've played less 1v1 games than you, but I'm high platinum. Mainly because I played SC and probably have some more experience in RTS, and because I've played team games a lot. Doesn't mean I progress better than you or that I'm more talented than you, it's probably just a matter of time invested. My main advice: Don't take notes from pros and try to learn from pro streams. You're gold, first accept that you're extremely average at the game, then accept that you can't do the things the pros do. Once you've done that, you can focus on what will actually help you: How to be better than the average SC2 player. This means focusing on macro and mechanics, and learning the basic scout timings, especially if you play zerg since it's more or less impossible to play zerg with 0 scouting above silver league, but it's of course true for terrans and toss as well. You say you know the perfect compositions and counters etc... forget about that stuff. Yeah, having vikings vs colossus is great, but you don't need vikings vs a gold player toss using colossus if you're playing at plat/diamond level in macro and mechanics, you can just stim in and target down his colossus. Knowing good counters etc is good, but don't center your game around something which matters relatively little at your level. | ||
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Sated
England4983 Posts
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Golgotha
Korea (South)8418 Posts
just keep playing you will get better quickly. 170 wins isnt many wins...at all. | ||
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DarKcS
Australia1237 Posts
Got 2 promotions after 20 games and now I'm platinum facing diamonds or top8. Hard to imagine being in gold or lesser. Much of the macro in gold I was up against was so poor I couldn't comprehend. Coming at me @ 12 minutes with 6 stalkers and 7 gateways, usually a scary position to be against 2 base timings in diamond+ as it's almost universally refined by then and you can't miss a single inject, but you can literally be 1 base roaching and hold off most of these all'ins from T and P. Tldr; focus on macro, less on the league you're in, because you wouldn't be there after 50 games if you weren't meant to be there - it only took me a little longer than you've been playing to get to diamond (not counting weeks I'd take a break in the very long season 1) - but you'd be arrogant to think you're near that level now. Check out my pitfalls and rollercoasters before reaching the next leagues : http://sc2ranks.com/team/4186847#alltime My inactive months stretch it somewhat. | ||
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Zaphid
Czech Republic1860 Posts
The other thing is mindset, I never play "just to pass time", it's always to win, once I do builds just so I don't lose to this or that, it's time to step back. Also never get discouraged by early game cheese, it shouldn't all that much statistically relevant to your learning. | ||
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Saechiis
Netherlands4989 Posts
In your case you're gold and probably playing vs gold level players. When you start winning more than 50% of your games against gold level opponents you'll start facing better and better opponents in that skill region until you win enough to start facing low platinum players. If you start beating those platinum players more than 50% of the time you'll get promoted to that league. And yeah, the ranking system isn't flawed, SC2 is just a hard and competetive game :D | ||
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Ejje
Sweden22 Posts
On January 13 2012 18:38 straycat wrote: + Show Spoiler + Well it's really quite simple - if you keep doing what you're doing, you keep getting what you're getting. I guess most players don't start off with an optimal playstyle and those who don't change their initial playstyle better don't get better and stay on their level. + Show Spoiler + Eh. Since you started off with kind of an elitist atittude, I'll give you some feedback in kind. In light of your low number of games played, your words and attitude about progression come off as rather silly. See: You got to diamond when diamond was much easier than today, and since then you have played roughly (supposing that you have played 100 games in diamond and that season 1 ended march 29th 2011) 11 matches per month in diamond. Ergo (I didn't want to say this but...): You Sir are a bonus pool surfer and a bogus. Try using up you gigantanormous bonus pool and keep playing, and see if you remain in diamond. As for the OP: Don't look at or compare yourself to others. There are so many factors that weigh in on how fast you will progress through the ranks. If you learn a very strong one base push as terran, you will get up faster than if you start off trying to go macro as zerg (I would guess). Others might have made the major part of their progress during the initial stages of the ladder (when the competition was less fierce) and thus have a skewed picture of what is "normal". It also depends on when and how you play. You only play with bonus pool after a long night's sleep, a healthy breakfast and a nice shower? Or do you play late into the night, half zombiefied, tilted and raging? (the latter will be detrimental to your ladder progress haha) The point is that the answers you will get on what is normal progression rate will vary wildly, and probably only make you angsty about your own progression. ("Oh two months played and still not in diamond, I'm baad, baaad!" etc). Just keep focusing on improving your play, and unless you are held down by mental or physical handicaps, you will probably follow a "normal" progress automagically. (and should you plateau with no clue as to how get further, post replays in the help thread or get coaching). Also, I would recommend that you try not to think of yourself as very aware. Yes, you may have watched a lot of videos and you are perhaps aware of the current metagame among the top GSL contenders. But you know, that really doesn't matter much. It really doesn't. I can read ten thousand books on karate - a ten year old practitioner would probably dropkick me to the ground anyway*. *ah well, let's say a thirteen year old It wasn't my intention to come out sounding elitist. As for calling me a bogus? It's true I haven't played that many games and I have always had some bonus pool left at the end of seasons. However I am still getting matched against high diamond/master players and winning about half of those games so I don't really understand what you were basing your comment on. | ||
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forsooth
United States3648 Posts
On January 13 2012 19:30 Zaphid wrote: Just don't practice until you do it right, practice until you can't do it wrong, big difference. This is important. Once you get a build down solid, don't think it's time to move on to something else. Keep doing it over and over again until you can execute it without thinking at all. It has to be so ingrained into your muscle memory that you could walk away from SC2 for a month and come back and do it correctly right away. Once you get to that point, then you can start learning something new. | ||
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elixir_gum
United States82 Posts
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bluQ
Germany1724 Posts
But mindset and practice is about the same. I really doubt a lot of the ppl posting here played FPS seriously. My advices to transition from FPS to RTS: Try to find analogies. When I was playing FA and DoD competitivly we had different training scenarios: 1. Tactics/Strategies/Teamwork (the broad concept of how to play as a team) 2. Reaction/Timing 3. Mapawarness/Communication/Positioning 4. Take it to the next level: play vs your practice clans. Those, i'll call it 4-Step-Approach, can somewhat be translated to Starcraft 2: 1. Tactics/Strategies 2. Mechanics/Precision 3. Mapawarness/-control, Positioning 4. Take it to the next level: grind hardcore vs practice partners to get your builds and MUs straight If you want to get better at FPS or RTS you will need to improve on said steps. Not one, ALL. Sure you can priorize steps over the others; thats why watching replays is so important in competitive games, to know where your weaknesses are and even more important where your strengths are. That may sound weird to some because everyone knows: Work on your weaknesses to become a beast. But why should I then focus on my strength? Naturally it will become harder and harder to improve on your strength. If you have analyzed your play that you know where you strength are. And furthermore you can use it as your comfortzone. When ever you feel uncomfortable remember your strength and try to apply it to take out some of the pace of the game. This will allow you to focus mainly on your weaknesses when playing. Lets say you are bad at macro, but good at micro. You get pushed hard and you marco slips. Rely on your strength, build a banshee/drop/something microintensive and try to force your way back into the game by relying on your strength. Executing it should be easy and almost relaxing which frees up your mind to do the "hard" stuff: macro. Starcraft, AoE2, RTS in general have one big thing in common with FPS (i would even argue that FPS has a bigger focus on it): If you get to a level where you execute most things without thinking, thats where you will shine. FPS example: Quake3Arena, if you have mastered the maps and movment on maps to a level where you dont need to think:"In which angle i need to rocketjump to get to the Red Armor on the plattform" you will have the time to think about "Okay when Red Armor spawns and my enemy is not there, where could he be?" Sniper example (any "realistic" FPS): If you can strave your mouse to the speed of running enemys depending on the distance without thinking, just be reflex you now got the time to think about a positon-cycle (where you will go after the next 2 kills, and from there where you will go after the next 4 kills and so on). If you got there you will notice how big your improvement in your "weaknesses" will be when you can rely on your strength. TLDR; know your strength, practice your strength to a degree where you don't need to activly think about doing it. This will give you the (ingame) time to think/work on your weaknesses. Free up your mind for important stuff by shifting other important stuff to your subconcious. | ||
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yorkey
England69 Posts
Now we all know that in sc2 odd things happen and your MMR is effected, such as someone leaving a game or you getting matched to an incorrect player, such as someone two leagues above or two leagues below etc. Or just simply someone cheesed you and lost. So it's not a perfect system but it's the best we have right now, and infairness its very very good. So the idea is you win as many as you lose, but then you have to take into account that sometimes you might be playing players in the league above or below you. This again will effect your mmr in different ways. From my experiance to get promoted you need to be consistantly beating players in the league above you, not always winning but if you win enough it will raise your mmr high enough to lift you up. What you need to remember is at the begining your mmr will jump around all over the place as it only has a short sample of games to judge you on. So you might only get placed in bronze but if you learn quick you might win quite a few games in a row shooting your mmr up to the next teir very quickly because again it's judging you on a small sample. So for example you might have only played 15 games but you won 10 which gives you quite a high win ratio. The more games you play the better it can find you your perfect skill level match. The OP has a good sample of around 100/100 ish which means they are placed sort of correctly and once they rise in skill level and start beating more people they will be then raised to play players in the league above and once you are beating those regually they will be replaced into the higher league. | ||
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Bill Murray
United States9292 Posts
I've gone from Bronze to Gold in that time I am going to hit platinum tonight, if it kills me different strokes | ||
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PapaJed
Sweden211 Posts
On January 13 2012 20:26 Bill Murray wrote: I've only had my new computer, and SC2, for about the past 2 weeks I've gone from Bronze to Gold in that time I am going to hit platinum tonight, if it kills me different strokes Purpose of troll? | ||
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Snuggles
United States1865 Posts
On January 13 2012 16:15 BLacKOuTz wrote: I just did some practice games with Stokes, the diamond toss who posted on here and we played 3 games. PvP. He won the first 2, and I won the 3rd game. Pretty much what it cam down to is this. In gold league i experience all ins more than 70% of my games. Usaully i feel like I dont have the amount of money I would like to have to build more units. Also im not the best at deciding when to build more gates, and when to build units. Working on my scouting is also something i need to do but i think with simply more obs play ill be fine. I made probes perfectly fine, no problems there. Its pretty much just came down to him having more units than me. I think i just need to work on not being so scared of early pushes to where i build so many units i have no time to do anything else. It just seems so hard to do when every terran 1-1-1 every toss 3 gate robos and pushed with 3 immortals, and zergs just mass roach hydra off 3 base. I did read every post and i appreciate most of ur help. Thanks  The moment you lower your ego, you'll notice more improvement in your game. I don't know if you've learned more from the this thread or not but as you can see the general message is that you're simply not as good as you think you may be. If you're thinking that your understanding of the game is beyond gold level, you are wrong it is simply at gold level, and I know this because you yourself have stated that you keep losing to all-ins. I mean you could have 30 APM and still dominate all-ins if your understanding of the game was at Masters. | ||
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PapaJed
Sweden211 Posts
If you're thinking that your understanding of the game is beyond gold level, you are wrong it is simply at gold level, and I know this because you yourself have stated that you keep losing to all-ins. I mean you could have 30 APM and still dominate all-ins if your understanding of the game was at Masters. I disagree. If I watch a 1000 football games at the highest level my understanding of the game will be really good. That doesn´t mean I can play like Messi. I´ve watched almost every game in GSL and the other major tournaments since sc2 came out, seen lots of replays, most of Day9 and many streamers. I´ve played RTS games since dune II. I still suck at starcraft, but it´s not because I don´t understand the game, it´s because I can´t play at the same level as those that are better than I am. Your understanding of the game won´t help you play better if the execution is bad. | ||
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Lorch
Germany3696 Posts
So as I said I'm about half a year in right now and I'm high diamand atm, with about 450 1 v 1 wins. Now keep in mind that this is just my number, I picked my race immediatly and I do watch a lot of gsl and think about the game a lot, also I'm theorycrafting with friends atleast like 4 times a week. I do have some practice partners but right now I'm just using ladder to get mechanics going as I had like 0 when switching from Xbox, I was literally clicking on everything etc. Also from my number of games (which should be about 900 given how ladder works, probably less as I went from bronze to diamand) you can tell that I don't play a lot of games. Now someone who played a lot of bw/wc3 probably started in plat/diamand as the game came out so thinks are totally different for them. And even between people with 0 rts, or maybe even little to no pc background things will be different, some get the game quicker than others, some have more time than others etc. Also practice is different for everyone, some just mass ladder, others use customs, some do a mix, some go over almost every replay, some only watch their looses etc. pp. You should not worry about other people being quicker/slower at learning the game. You learn at your pace and that's perfectly fine, some will get to masters in a month or two, for others it might be a year or even more. But at the end of the day both enjoy the game and both reach the same point. I feel like no matter what you bring to the table you will always be able to get pretty high if you are not totally stupid and invest a lot of time. Also keep in mind that you do this because it is what you love doing. Gameunderstanding can be a lot higher than your league, if you have shitty mechanics it will not help you that you know what to do. Given that most of the people here were good at rts before sc2 they keep forgetting that some actually have 0 mechanics when starting this game, if you can't execute your build right knowing it won't help you much. | ||
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-Cyrus-
United States318 Posts
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