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On March 22 2012 23:11 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
3) The nature vs nurture debate on SC2 skill. On one extreme, people who believe that otherwise normally functioning(ie not retarded in the original sense of the word) people might well be skillcapped in bronze. Vs people who assume they're all brain damaged or something.
My personal belief is that any person of average intelligence and physical capability certainly could be trained to get out of Bronze by a coach who knew what they were doing. I do also believe that there are people of average or better intelligence and physical capability who may not get out of Bronze if they're left to themselves to figure out how and what to do, or solely by watching videos and reading about the game.
Most likely, such people who are skill capped in Bronze probably have bad habits they haven't recognized, and having a more experienced player look at what they're doing and point them out may help quite a bit.
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On March 23 2012 04:29 lazyitachi wrote:
Your ladder point is a poor indication of ur MMR. That's what the noobs always quote when they say they high bronze.
Just cause you play a lot and lots of points <> you are close to silver MMR.
Ladder points, not counting earned bonus points, converge on MMR if a player's playing enough games (where "enough" is probably keeping one's bonus pool at 0.) So yes, high-point bronze players are close to silver MMR.
This is obscured somewhat by the fact that lower league divisions have varying offsets in their mapping between MMR and point values.
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On March 23 2012 12:21 DrLOAC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 04:57 TacticalBadger wrote:Ladder points are capped at your current MMR. You can mass games all you want, it won't do you any good, unless you actually improve by playing that much. You need to have silver or near-silver level MMR to be in top bronze, otherwise your ladder score will just stall at some point. For example, our friend Gheed is at a measly 13th position despite having 415 wins (guess worker rushing doesn't get you out of bronze after all) and the division is topped by a guy who has 1/5th of his games and nearly twice his ladder points. What exactly does this mean? I've been perma bronzed since starting this game back in Jan 2010. I play maybe 4 games a week. However recently I've made a concerted effort to mimize lapses in building SCVs, reducing supply blocks, and increasing scouting. I just made top 8 in my bronze league. I've got 19 wins this season but everyone above me has multiples of that in wins but not that many more points. Does this mean I'm improving?
The quick version is that the game awards more points for wins until your point total corresponds to your opponent's MMR (which usually will be close to yours), then your wins will earn the same as your losses lose. This means that your points rapidly increase, at the start of the season, to a level that corresponds to your MMR.
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I still dont get the resistance of bronzies to switch race ... xD
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Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
Reasons:
- If sub-16 year old kids can get into masters, then you can at least get into plat (considering the gap between bronze and diamond = the gap between diamond and high masters).
- The best progamers in the world are progamers not because they are savants and geniuses, but because they work hard, and have perfect practice.
- The key to improving is to humble yourself and take a close look at what you're doing wrong. "I'm playing just fine, I only struggle with my micro, but my macro is perfect if I'm left alone! I just get flustered when they harass me." is what my gold friend says all the time. It's like saying you play chess perfectly as long as they don't kill your pieces.
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I have two friends in Bronze, over 100 games each and both wonder why they have not advanced. Im high platinum and when we 1v1 for fun we can both macro without pressuring each other and when we engage my supply will almost be double his in some cases.
I started in Bronze, and your mechanics, APM, and macro are nowhere near being decent. The biggest mistake I see Bronzies and silvers do is try to micro like crazy while their income skyrockets. Just focus on macro and not getting supply blocked. Bronze is still bronze like it was when the game came out. Ive played my friends account nothing has changed.
Just focus on macro and you will get to gold. Then start focusing more on speed, scouting, and some micro.
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On March 23 2012 23:37 noD wrote:
I still dont get the resistance of bronzies to switch race ... xD
Its kinda simple really.
I'm new. There is lots of info and thigns to learn. There is differencies between the races. Doing little here and little there, atleast imo, is no point until you have atleast a pretty good idea how the game and races work.
Learning 3 different things at 1 time will be harder then learning 1. And while learning 1, u will have the chance to pick up some of the ideas about how to play the other 2 races.
Atleast that how I were thinking when I decided that I will use terran only and not touch zerg and protoss anymore until I feel I, not master, but atleast can handle terran ok.
Maybe I'll notice that terran is not for me but the playstyle of protoss seems to fit better after ahile. Then I can change. but atm, I dont ahve the knowledge to build decisions on, so I could have neded up with anything. Only real reason it became terran first, is that 2 I know use it too. They are almost as bad as me, but if we do 3s or something they might notice something I do completly wrong.
In the end I dont believe you can get the will to progress your play unless things feel right. For me, zerg feels wrong, and I dont really like the idea that nuking a pylon screws things up. But, as I said, thats just me without knowledge of the game. For the basics terran feels simple tho. Obvious things do obvious stuff. Think that might be a reason why many new play terran. i dont really believe that its because u play terran in the campaign, I had more or less decided to play protoss to get a change (well, I had decided that even before the game was released)
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On March 23 2012 23:45 PeanutsNJam wrote:
Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
Reasons:
- If sub-16 year old kids can get into masters, then you can at least get into plat (considering the gap between bronze and diamond = the gap between diamond and high masters).
- The best progamers in the world are progamers not because they are savants and geniuses, but because they work hard, and have perfect practice.
- The key to improving is to humble yourself and take a close look at what you're doing wrong. "I'm playing just fine, I only struggle with my micro, but my macro is perfect if I'm left alone! I just get flustered when they harass me." is what my gold friend says all the time. It's like saying you play chess perfectly as long as they don't kill your pieces.
I'd like to point out that if everyone has the minimum capability of reaching a certain level, such as platinum in your comment, and everyone reaches that potential, than the players who are only capable of reaching the level of current platinum players will then be in bronze.
Also, using one person as a basis for an entire population is not exactly the best comparison. The sub-16 year old player is merely an outlier, not an example of the population of SC2 gamers as a whole.
However, I do agree with your statement that the key to improving is humbling oneself, as that has helped me reach new leagues on the SC2 ladder.
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On March 23 2012 23:45 PeanutsNJam wrote:
Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
There's no such thing as a "platinum skill level". The lack of understanding of how the system works is astounding. Saying that most people can be platinum is saying that most people can have above-average skill. It's impossible by definition. You are platinum because your skill (or rather your MMR) is above average, relative to other players. If most players improve to your skill level, you will fall to gold, because gold is where the "average" players are.
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On March 24 2012 01:23 TacticalBadger wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 23:45 PeanutsNJam wrote:
Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
There's no such thing as a "platinum skill level". The lack of understanding of how the system works is astounding. Saying that most people can be platinum is saying that most people can have above-average skill. It's impossible by definition. You are platinum because your skill (or rather your MMR) is above average, relative to other players. If most players improve to your skill level, you will fall to gold, because gold is where the "average" players are.
And those with average time for gaming 
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On March 24 2012 01:23 TacticalBadger wrote:
There's no such thing as a "platinum skill level". The lack of understanding of how the system works is astounding. Saying that most people can be platinum is saying that most people can have above-average skill. It's impossible by definition. You are platinum because your skill (or rather your MMR) is above average, relative to other players. If most players improve to your skill level, you will fall to gold, because gold is where the "average" players are.
I should have said "the current skill level in plat." I should also add that the plat cap is for people who are trying. I think the skill distribution will remain similar to what it is now despite "everybody is improving" because of the influx of new players and people who aren't trying to improve (there's nothing wrong with that).
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On March 24 2012 01:23 TacticalBadger wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 23:45 PeanutsNJam wrote:
Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
There's no such thing as a "platinum skill level". The lack of understanding of how the system works is astounding. Saying that most people can be platinum is saying that most people can have above-average skill. It's impossible by definition. You are platinum because your skill (or rather your MMR) is above average, relative to other players. If most players improve to your skill level, you will fall to gold, because gold is where the "average" players are.
I think he's not saying everybody should be at least platinum, because that's obviously ridiculous as you pointed out. But assuming other bronzies-silver stay at their current level (casual playing so they don't play much and with much less thought than higher players), you should be able to rise above them (considering SC2's current bronze skill level) and place at platinum if you work hard enough towards it.
I also think that's reasonable. Platinum is no rocket science, really, if you're not completely dumb or physically hindered.
I think he meant that you can at least learn that proxy engineering bay rush (seen in a bronze game) is not a good build and that building workers help your economy, if you're willing to do it and don't play SC2 just for the campaign or Star Jeweled.
I predict that it won't be true anymore in SC2's further years of life, where casuals will have all quit for a long time and that bronze will be like diamond level from today :D.
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On March 24 2012 01:45 ZenithM wrote:
I think he's not saying everybody should be at least platinum, because that's obviously ridiculous as you pointed out. But assuming other bronzies-silver stay at their current level (casual playing so they don't play much and with much less thought than higher players), you should be able to rise above them (considering SC2's current bronze skill level) and place at platinum if you work hard enough towards it..
I bolded the big assumption. That assumption is most definitely not going to be true. The general skill level in the scrub leagues increases over time, partly because the general body of players do improve over time, and partly because the players who drop out are disproportionately from the lower leagues. I've definitely heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests that this effect is happening in sc2 (as it did with BroodWar - the scrub leagues in iCCup were utterly brutal to an average gamer, just before sc2 was launched.)
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After over a year of ladder, it's not all that absurd to perceive apparent similarities among the leagues, while they no doubt change over time, from personal experience I would say that "platinum level play" is when players are comfortable enough with the game to execute a coherent 1 or 2 base strategy for the first 10-15 in game minutes. As I moved up through the leagues, people went from smashing the keyboard intermittently, acting much like an easy computer by building 10-15 workers and then occasionally sending waves of random units, to smashing the keyboard desperately hoping they could get as many of their favorite unit out in time to kill me, and it isn't really until Gold that a noticed players doing more than 1 of the Trinity of Starcraft (scouting/expanding/attacking)
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Assuming that most people who don't play for 8 hours a day will "plateau" at a similar skill level, then the longer the game is on the market, the more "average" players it will have. If 60% of the population starts playing at a near-similar skill level, then it will be almost impossible for a new player to get out of bronze without putting in a sh*tton of work, because actual skill difference between silver and high plat/low diamond will be almost non-existant, so he will effectively have to play at a near-diamond level to get promoted.
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On March 23 2012 23:37 noD wrote:
I still dont get the resistance of bronzies to switch race ... xD
Because we've made so much progress with our main race.
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This reminds me of my experience playing sf4. I love playing the game but I'm not THAT into it to start going into the specific strategies and tactics required to rise above a noob player. I haven't bothered to learn move priorities, spacing, tech throwing, cross ups. block strings, juggle systems, etc. I've been playing Street Fighter since sf2 snes but some of the lingo I hear in SF streams and vids still confuses the hell out of me.
Am I depressed that I am stuck at the bronze level equivalent of Street Fighter? No. Like I said, I love the playing the game. I also like playing chess but I'm just a 1500ish player, even though I've been playing it for years. I don't plan on quitting both games just because I am mediocre at them.
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On March 24 2012 10:11 DarK[A] wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 23:37 noD wrote:
I still dont get the resistance of bronzies to switch race ... xD Because we've made so much progress with our main race.
Even if you're being sarcastic, you're correct. Learning all the hotkeys, basic build orders and unit control takes time. Even if they're still bad at it by the end, they'd be even worse with a new race. Unless the new race suits their skills or lack thereof better.
Now as a counter argument, I think race switching can be good as it broadens your perspective. I've played both Z and T, so now TvZ is one of my favourite matchups. And some people might just have picked the wrong race at the start. Certainly if you like macro and hate multitasking, Terran is probably the worst one to pick.
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step 1: Pick the race you want
step 2: Look for an unit composition that is just awesome (MM,Roach/Hydra,Zealot/Stalker)
step 3: Start game, produce constant workers/supply and concentrate on building units, expand whenever you can. Every 5 min do an a-click into opponents base. If you get more than 500 minerals punch yourself in the face.
Gold in 1 week.
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On March 23 2012 23:45 PeanutsNJam wrote:
Oh I am absolutely certain that a normally functioning human being's lowest possible "cap" on their skill is perhaps platinum.
Reasons:
- If sub-16 year old kids can get into masters, then you can at least get into plat (considering the gap between bronze and diamond = the gap between diamond and high masters).
- The best progamers in the world are progamers not because they are savants and geniuses, but because they work hard, and have perfect practice.
I don't think any of us have any real idea of how much normal variation limits one's ability to multitask at the level needed to play SC2 at a plat or better level. A person might inherently lack the response speed or ability to redirect their attention fast enough to play at that level and yet still be within the middle 60-ish % of all adults, which is close enough to the mean to not be considered "deficient" in a medical sense, for example.
Just because we happen to have a self-selected internet forum here made up of people who disproportionately exceed that standard doesn't mean that's the norm, or that our personal experiences are very informative about what the norm is.
Edit: PeanutsNJam, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying that that's a question we're not really equipped to answer here. And, even if the average person might find it difficult to exceed platinum, it's very possible that someone one standard deviation below average wouldn't make it out of bronze with any amount of effort.
Note also that even if the average video game player were skill-capped at bronze, those people would be highly disproportionately likely to walk away from the game rather than bang their heads against something at which they don't feel very successful.
(By the way, I'm speaking of the difficulty for one new player, today, to hit those leagues, Obviously if everyone currently playing the game decided to apply themselves aggressively to improving, the average skill cap would certainly wind up mid-gold, at about the 50th percentile.  )
Edit 2: Long as we're talking about our own personal experiences, of my 20 or so real-life friends who spent any appreciable time playing Starcraft 2, I'd say maybe 15 never made it past bronze league and quit. Of the 5 or so who still play, they're all generally silver through gold. There was one diamond player who seems to have quit also. I would say none of these bronze players ever got to the point of playing enough to improve.
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EPT
