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On March 14 2012 15:36 freakhill wrote:
My point is that this guy, diamond at the time, wouldn't reach silver nowadays. He would be bronze. Btw your previous argument made no sens whatsoever.
If you want to make a point based on when the game is FIRST RELEASED. SUREEE...
It is always easier to find justification (that they tried so hard but the league is much harder now). Their aptitude is a function of their attitude. If one thinks one cannot leave bronze due to external factors there they'll be.
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On March 14 2012 09:14 HyperionDreamer wrote:
This debate is pretty much an exact replication of the "does elo hell exist" debate that every moba community has.
The answer is simple: No, it doesn't exist, and no, the bronze league is not better now than it ever was. I'm a masters zerg who often plays on a bronze account to go mass queen/void ray/scv/planetary and stuff like that, and it works just as much now as it did a year ago.
If people in bronze league were getting better, they would be out of bronze. Statistics dictate as such.
Well, to my understanding, all the moba games are games where you are likely to be forced to play with other people, which seems to complicate things in my view (part of the reason I hate team games) How you interact with moba players on your team when you're in bronze league (or whatever mobas have) i assume is much different than the presumed teamwork in a master level game.
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On March 14 2012 15:10 HyperionDreamer wrote:
OK, so they've figured out that banshee's aren't anti-air units. I don't think that's even relevant improvement, that's like saying they finally figured out that upgrades exist. Just because a high school student finds out about the existence of calculus, that doesn't mean he got any better at math.
Huh? A high school student who starts learning about calculus is getting better at math. I don't get your point. (In my example, it's not like the bronze league players are learning that some units can't hit air and then deliberately making those units vs. air anyway, so it is a meaningful improvement, even if a small one.)
See Gheed's blog on Bronze League to see what I would consider really strong evidence that a small small portion of bronze players actually care about improvement, most of them are there semi-permanently.
Edit: I had said, incorrectly:
His blog seems to make it pretty clear that he's at the low end of bronze, so his anecdotes aren't necessarily a representative sample.
He pointed out I was wrong about that, so then I'd point out that his experiment is testing exactly one skill which doesn't come up that often, and with which you could probably catch a lot of players unaware up to gold league.
Bronze is a pretty wide league in terms of skill, compared to the middle leagues (in the sense that a top bronze player, playing normally, will take virtually 100% of their games off a bottom bronze player.) Some of those top bronze players are even on their way to being promoted, go figure.
Everyone in here is completely ignoring the fact that just as players are leaving the ladder system, there are also new players coming into the system.
Oh yeah, who?? Everyone I have ever met in real life who has touched the game bought it in the first couple months. I have not met one person, not one single person, who started in the last year. (I do know a couple who took breaks and came back, so to some extent those folks may be coming in near the bottom.)
I would be willing to bet that the overall skill (if you can even find some metrics to quantify bronze skill) in bronze has remained relatively constant over time, where the overall skill in diamond/masters has slightly increased over the past few years of release.
My sense is that bottom bronze is probably about the same. The active players in bronze who stand a good chance of promotion are certainly playing as well as silver players around the time of release. Meanwhile, silver, gold, platinum have kind of compressed in the middle -- I find that random fluctuation in my win rate has me oscillating between silver, gold, and platinum opponents, which tells me that high silver through low plat are a pretty narrow skill difference as measured by win likelihood (because of the rock/scissors/paper effect of complementary skills that came up earlier on this page.) That entire range are pretty much where low plat were after the introduction of master league, at least based on the macro you would see looking at old replays.
Meanwhile, I have no personal basis to guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if diamond and up had stretched out like you suggest.
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On March 14 2012 15:58 lazyitachi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 15:36 freakhill wrote:
My point is that this guy, diamond at the time, wouldn't reach silver nowadays. He would be bronze. Btw your previous argument made no sens whatsoever. It is always easier to find justification (that they tried so hard but the league is much harder now). Their aptitude is a function of their attitude. If one thinks one cannot leave bronze due to external factors there they'll be.
This thread wasn't about bronze people complaining they can get out. It was about trying to meet and have fun with other eternal bronze players.
It got highjacked by people insulting bronze players for being bronze players, treating them like some kind of idiots, and displaying a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners (a good example being Gheed). I am merely trying to demonstrate that most bronze players are fully functional people, no more stupid than masters might be, and for some wiser than many.
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His blog seems to make it pretty clear that he's at the low end of bronze, so his anecdotes aren't necessarily a representative sample.
I would suggest you read my blog more carefully before making assertions based on the content within it. If you are going to use it as a basis for argument, which I'm not sure you should, at least take the time to read all of it.
In my previous blogs, I discussed my descent to what I had imagined must have been the deepest depths of the North American ladder. The longer I played, though, the more I realized I was not being completely accurate. I have, it seems, barely scraped the surface of just one of the many hells encapsulated within the bronze league. Normally, I scoff when someone describes themselves as "high gold," or "high silver," thinking them braggarts who fancy themselves better than they really are, but I can't think of a better way to describe my own preeminent position within my league. I am, as much as it pains me to say it, "high bronze."
When I first began worker rushing and my MMR settled, I noticed I would play almost exclusively against bronze leaguers. Now, I'm facing a silver leaguer or above in about one of every four matches.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HQrWn.jpg)
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=283221
In the more recent ones, I attempted to find "bronze hell," but in the end there is no bronze hell. Bronze is hell.
Edit: I just got a second account to play real games on, and after 6 months of nothing but worker rushing I got placed in platinum, the league I used to be in. So much for the player base having dramatically improved.
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On March 14 2012 15:58 lazyitachi wrote:
If you want to make a point based on when the game is FIRST RELEASED. SUREEE...
Well, that's what the leagues getting better "over time" means. Nobody said this was a fast process or a wholesale revolution in bronze league play.
I'd make the observation that the SC2 skill range is so incredibly wide that a top bronze player can greatly improve their win rate vs. mid bronze players while leaving their own win rate pegged at exactly zero vs. gold players and up. Pit those players against each other, and the mid bronze player would say the top bronze is getting much better, while the gold player will say "nope, he's still awful."
Anyway, I'm happily sitting here arguing that top bronze has improved somewhat without any motivation to use it as an excuse for anything, since I haven't been in bronze since S1.
I'll also agree that someone actively working to improve who's stuck in bronze after playing regularly for a solid year probably is missing something very, very important. That doesn't mean they haven't improved in certain ways despite that.
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On March 14 2012 16:10 Gheed wrote:
I would suggest you read my blog more carefully before making assertions based on the content within it. If you are going to use it as a basis for argument, which I'm not sure you should, at least take the time to read all of it.
Sorry, I did read that, and I forgot it. (I did just update my post to reflect this, thanks.) Your experiment still isn't really a representative survey of bronze league play because you're testing exactly one skill which is explicitly not a factor in the vast majority of games (knowing that a-moving onto the ground vs. a worker rush is likely to be a guaranteed win.)
The thrust of my argument, though, is that if your base skill level is diamond or master league, you may be completely incapable of seeing the differences between different levels of skill in the bronze league because they all look horrible to you. The only way to measure that would be to pit all those players against each other and see who beats whom, and with what win percentages.
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On March 14 2012 16:05 freakhill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 15:58 lazyitachi wrote:On March 14 2012 15:36 freakhill wrote:
My point is that this guy, diamond at the time, wouldn't reach silver nowadays. He would be bronze. Btw your previous argument made no sens whatsoever. It is always easier to find justification (that they tried so hard but the league is much harder now). Their aptitude is a function of their attitude. If one thinks one cannot leave bronze due to external factors there they'll be. This thread wasn't about bronze people complaining they can get out. It was about trying to meet and have fun with other eternal bronze players. It got highjacked by people insulting bronze players for being bronze players, treating them like some kind of idiots, and displaying a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners (a good example being Gheed). I am merely trying to demonstrate that most bronze players are fully functional people, no more stupid than masters might be, and for some wiser than many.
I am arguing that permabronze are there because of their mentality.
But let's be honest, we do expect the average intelligence of each league to increase the higher it is... No?
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On March 14 2012 16:22 lazyitachi wrote:
But let's be honest, we do expect the average intelligence of each league to increase the higher it is... No?
No, because Starcraft 2 is not a test of intelligence. It's a test of game knowledge, muscle memory, reflexes, and multitasking. Intelligence certainly helps, and I feel that overall the game appeals to smart people, but there are extremely intelligent people in the low leagues who just don't care about improving and people in the top leagues who just aren't that smart but happen to have gotten very good at the game.
I would say that the complexity of the game appeals to bright people, which helps explain the much different community vs. various other types of games that are more about reflexes and less about problem-solving, but I doubt there's a really strong trend in intelligence vs. league.
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@lazyitachi,
I would say intelligence of the game? perhaps. General intelligence I'd have to disagree.
Seeing the quality level of posts since my last I would have to assume that nobody really bothered to read my post other than lysenko. I do admit it was rather long and perhaps should have made a tldr version, oh well live and learn. All this talk about bronze league makes me very curious to experience it again. Oh well, don't own a time machine.
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Im one of those players who is stuck in bronze despite playing regularly (I watch day9 ocasionally, I watch a lot of VODS but no too many replays). I think I have definitly improved in the last year, but the rest of people seems to improve faster than I do. I have tried to stick with a build (1 barraks expand) and improve my macro, but my multitasking is really bad and if I ever try to micro, I find myself suddenly floating on 1k minerals. These are replays for the last 2 games I played, against protoss (win) and against zerg (lost).
http://replayfu.com/download/6jwSrk (protoss)
http://replayfu.com/download/qr7TGt (zerg)
Could somebody help with something? I know that I have A LOT to work on, Im just plain horrible (at one moment in the vs zerg game, If i remember correctly, I think I missclicked and turn a CC into a planetary inside my main. At first I thought not to post THAT replay, its a little more embarrasing, but I decided to be sincere and post just the two latest games that I have played. These 2 are from yesterday). But my question is: is my gameplay equally bad in all aspects?? Or is there a singularity, ONE THING that is fundamentally wrong for some who has been playing for more than a year now?
I like the game and I play for fun, but when you know how the ladder works, its a little frustrating to still be in the low 20% after playing that much. I really would apreciate if some one could watch a replay (and sorry for the bad english!)
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@milodon
How regularly is regularly?
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On March 14 2012 16:33 milodon wrote:
But my question is: is my gameplay equally bad in all aspects?? Or is there a singularity, ONE THING that is fundamentally wrong for some who has been playing for more than a year now?
Many would argue I'm in no position to talk, since I'm having my own problems executing in the game too, but if we're talking about getting out of bronze, I can offer a few thoughts that might be useful.
I think looking for the one magic thing that will fix everything is usually not realistic. What you should do is pick a thing that you can see you aren't optimal at and practice that one thing. You'll find that your games probably get worse, because your attention on that detail will at first block out other things to which you have probably been paying sufficient attention before, but as you practice your chosen thing to work on will become easier to manage with less attention.
Based on looking at your replays, I notice that you are cutting workers pretty early and often leaving CCs idle. In the first game (which you won) you cut workers at 40 or so (can't recall the exact number) and built more production buildings than you could afford. In the second game you did better on that, but you still stopped making workers after about 55. I'm not that familiar with Terran, so someone more experienced may have to chime in on this, but I suspect you probably want to be pushing 75-ish workers on three bases as your ideal place to be before you stop making them. More than that and you'll start eating into your max army size too much.
When you manage to keep your CCs making workers basically 100% of the time, you'll start to find that you have trouble spending all your money, because you have fewer production buildings and more money. At that point, you'll probably want to work on your building timings and keeping your production buildings 100% busy, which will help.
Anyway, those two games looked a lot stronger on both sides in raw econ than the bronze league I remember, so to anyone who says the skill level in bronze isn't increasing, I'd say you're probably wrong. (I played probably eight weeks in bronze in S1 without seeing more than a handful of people make a 3rd base at all. Those are qualitatively different games than what we were playing back then.)
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On March 14 2012 09:14 HyperionDreamer wrote:
This debate is pretty much an exact replication of the "does elo hell exist" debate that every moba community has.
The answer is simple: No, it doesn't exist, and no, the bronze league is not better now than it ever was. I'm a masters zerg who often plays on a bronze account to go mass queen/void ray/scv/planetary and stuff like that, and it works just as much now as it did a year ago.
If people in bronze league were getting better, they would be out of bronze. Statistics dictate as such.
No, that's not how ladder works. If people in bronze were getting better, the overall standard in bronze would increase, which I suspect it has(silver and gold certainly have). You probably don't notice this as a masters zerg player, who incidentally is contributing to the stagnation of bronze by smurfing there.
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For a long time, I just couldn't win games, in bronze league, against AI, anyone. It was very stressful and as a result I played no Starcraft for at least 6 months. During that time, however, I watched Day[9].
At first I was watching because I really, really, really wanted to be winning more matches, but as time went on, I just started ENJOYING myself. Watching games was fun, analyzing games was fun. Around November, I started playing again. Firstly as my BW Protoss before realizing I loved playing Terran. Switching races was the best thing I could have done, because I was playing Protoss with my BW mindset instead of with the new fun mindset I had gained from watching pro games and just silly games.
Fast forward two months and I'm still in bronze, but playing gold leaguers 2/5 times and the rest being silver. I'm having heaps of fun and winning 50-60% of the time. What league I'm in no longer really matters, now I just think about how much fun I have playing the game. Hell, even replays are fun to watch now. :D
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@interpolarity: I started playing 1 year and a half, i think, first like 1 hour almost every day for like 8-9 months, then I stopped for like 3-4 months, and since january I have been playing 1.5-2 hous every day.
@lysenko: thanks for watching the replays and for the comentary! I really thing cutting workers too early is one of the biggest problems, also Im really bad in transfering SCVs to expansions (when the game goes beyond 3 bases, I usually make a mess). Watching my own replays, I have seen that a lot of times my natural is never really saturated (ever). I will try to focus on that on my next games.
One thing in that I can see a small progress is in my TvZ, I used to lost all the time (I mean really always), and now Im at least 50/50.
I have another question, when do you think the knowledge of the maps begins being important? I really dont know very well the maps architecture, and I have to confess that when the casters talk in the VODS about a map being imbalanced or being better for a race, I really dont know what they are talking about. I spend a lot of time in liquipedia, but there is not a lot of information on maps there (correct me if Im wrong?). Do you think that map knowledge is important for people below plat?
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On March 14 2012 16:05 freakhill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 15:58 lazyitachi wrote:On March 14 2012 15:36 freakhill wrote:
My point is that this guy, diamond at the time, wouldn't reach silver nowadays. He would be bronze. Btw your previous argument made no sens whatsoever. It is always easier to find justification (that they tried so hard but the league is much harder now). Their aptitude is a function of their attitude. If one thinks one cannot leave bronze due to external factors there they'll be. This thread wasn't about bronze people complaining they can get out. It was about trying to meet and have fun with other eternal bronze players. It got highjacked by people insulting bronze players for being bronze players, treating them like some kind of idiots, and displaying a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners (a good example being Gheed). I am merely trying to demonstrate that most bronze players are fully functional people, no more stupid than masters might be, and for some wiser than many.
There is no such thing as an eternal bronze player. Anyone who thinks they are eternally bronze (barring some extreme physical or mental disability) quite frankly IS an idiot. And how on earth do you manage to deduce that Gheed is being BM? He is worker rushing people on ladder (aka fucking giving them free wins), and even helps people who manage to lose. It's the people he plays that display "a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners".
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@milodon
Map architecture is very important as it dictates the power and viability of strategies. Smaller chokes promote defensive and macro play, while large open areas are more susceptible to flanking, making large mobile armies much stronger (zerg). I am awful at terran so I won't be able to provide you any constructive advice other than very general things, but I'm not at a place where I can view your replays at this time.
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On March 14 2012 17:31 milodon wrote:
I have another question, when do you think the knowledge of the maps begins being important?
Again, the best possible answer on this is probably found above my level, but a little map knowledge is hugely helpful. I'd strongly suggest looking up the ladder maps and identifying these things:
Is it a 2 or 4 player map?
Important because on 2 player maps you instantly know where your opponent is. You're also going to see more super-early blind rushes on these maps. Currently only the new maps, Korhal Compound LE and Cloud Kingdom LE, are 2 player, the rest are 4.
Are near spawns allowed on the map?
In the last couple seasons, near spawns have been disabled on certain 4-player maps (currently Shakuras Plateau, Shattered Temple, Metalopolis, I think that's it), which means you can rule out that your opponent will be at that location. I see a lot of people scouting these locations first anyway in my games, which loses them time.
Where are my entrances, including back doors?
In 3v3 and 4v4, I often waste precious game time hunting around for the exits, or being surprised by enemy units coming in the back. Best to avoid this.
Where's my natural? Where would I plan to go 3rd or 4th? How would someone attack those places, and can I put my army in the way?
Think about where you'll expand and what you might have to do to defend those bases. Chances are, those locations dictate a certain region of the map where keeping your army is safer. Figure out where that is, and when you're not attacking, keep your army located defensively. It also helps to think about how you can deal with drops.
Also, on certain maps, the most easily defensible third has destructible rocks. It's not as annoying as Terran, since you should be making at least some units at all times, but as Zerg, I have to alter my build to take those down if I'm not defending an attack anyway.
I'd think that having an answer to these questions on each ladder map will mean spending less attention figuring them out in game.
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On March 14 2012 17:40 writer22816 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 16:05 freakhill wrote:On March 14 2012 15:58 lazyitachi wrote:On March 14 2012 15:36 freakhill wrote:
My point is that this guy, diamond at the time, wouldn't reach silver nowadays. He would be bronze. Btw your previous argument made no sens whatsoever. It is always easier to find justification (that they tried so hard but the league is much harder now). Their aptitude is a function of their attitude. If one thinks one cannot leave bronze due to external factors there they'll be. This thread wasn't about bronze people complaining they can get out. It was about trying to meet and have fun with other eternal bronze players. It got highjacked by people insulting bronze players for being bronze players, treating them like some kind of idiots, and displaying a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners (a good example being Gheed). I am merely trying to demonstrate that most bronze players are fully functional people, no more stupid than masters might be, and for some wiser than many. There is no such thing as an eternal bronze player. Anyone who thinks they are eternally bronze (barring some extreme physical or mental disability) quite frankly IS an idiot. And how on earth do you manage to deduce that Gheed is being BM? He is worker rushing people on ladder (aka fucking giving them free wins), and even helps people who manage to lose. It's the people he plays that display "a severe lack of respect and incredibly bad manners".
In my dictionary, publicly humiliating people is not really a display of good manners. Actually, I would say that it is pretty sensible to qualify it as bad manners.
I don't want to dedicate time to your demeaning statement about eternal bronze people being either "idiots" or suffering from some kind of "extreme disability".
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EPT
