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On March 09 2012 02:51 TheToaster wrote:
The only problem with Bronze league, at least on North American ladders, is that 90% of players are going to cheese you in some way. That, or at least make some decent timing attack that's refined enough to win games in the first 10 minutes. So unless you're the one doing the Cannon rushes, 6 pools, or timing attacks, I can't really see how being in Bronze should be enjoyable for the standard player.
This makes experimenting with higher techs or different strategies almost impossible. So you watched a White-Ra game recently where he does some sick Warp Prism micro and kills a thousand workers with some Zealots? Now you wanna try that build in your Bronze league? Who gives a damn. You're going to die from an all-in Zergling attack before your first Cybercore barely finishes. GG.
There aren't enough legitemate Bronze players out there to make the league even close to interesting or respected. It's all about who can win enough games with cheese so they can advance to Silver or Gold and play some real games. An endless self-promoted cycle of cheesers.
Even if they cheese, they're not going to execute the cheese well. You can defend anything from bronze players without scouting since they're executing it poorly.
Also your example of trying a warp prism build when they're 6pooling is why lower league players don't promote. They don't scout or react to what they see, so they die to the same shit over and over and then blame cheesers when it's their own fault.
As for the OP, I honestly don't see how it is possible for someone to devote so much time to the game and still be at that level. Sounds to me you're doing more work than me or most of the people I know. But honestly if you don't mind and just want to have fun and enjoy your games like you said, then by all means accept where you're at.
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People have this notion which has stayed from last year that Bronze players don't know hot to play the game at all and just build void rays and shit :p
While these people may still exist I play Zerg and every ZvP they did FFE and seemed to at least know what units to build at the right times ;p
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one does not simply accept that they are a bronze level player
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its a game. if you are enjoying it, who gives a shit what other people think?
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On March 09 2012 03:32 Treehead wrote:
I don't think many people here are actually listening to what this guy's saying. He's bronze, and he doesn't mind being bronze. He likes the games he plays. He's looking for other people like him. I don't know why that illicits 5 pages of mechanical, strategy, and mentality advice. He's already said he's not looking for that.
I am not bronze, but you might check out the "practice partners" thread and see if anyone on there is in a similar spot (they're organized by league, so you can see who's bronze, and find out if they're in a similar situation).
So much this. If you're happy being in bronze/silver/gold/plat/diamond/master then that is the whole point of playing a video game! Have fun with SC2! I myself have a perfectionist attitude in anything that I do so unless I am feel I am playing fairly well I will not be happy with myself. Other people like seeing cool units (I swear to God I'm going to learn a carrier build...) or doing cutesy things with muta harass or baneling bombs or cloaked banshees/dts etc.
Definitely go to the practice partners season 6 thread as mentioned above. It's a tremendous resource that not enough people use and you can play with any level person you want to as it is organized by league. Have you also considered doing any bronze level tourneys for fun? That'd be an easy way to make friends with people around your league.
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The people who remain in bronze despite the fact that they are engaged in the game, are the people who never truly accept the fact that their macro is just bad. They go in circles trying different openings or strategies or compositions, and never tackle the huge glaring error which is keeping them where they are.
I've talked to plenty of bronze players who are either in complete denial about how bad their macro is, or just have a vague idea that yes, their macro is weak compared to better players, but they don't realize it is 95% of the problem, they think it's more like 30%.
I've coached some low level players, and I always start by doing the same thing:
Each player does an identical one base build, and we see who wins with no micro. I crush them, just because I have more units. This helps them to realize that it doesn't matter what opening or strategy or composition they make if they just have less stuff. And seeing someone make the same exact buildings and units and somehow "magically" having a bigger army starts to sink into their heads, that they are doing something wrong.
Hope this helps at least one bronzie out there. And to all the people saying "he's happy in bronze..." Believe me, 99% of them would be even more happy in silver.
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Sorry but I too am having a hard time seeing how anyone who plays more than a couple hour a month for an extended period of time can remain in bronze. I came to SC2
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I've tried giving advice to Reddit SC2 users and they all acted like they knew it was wrong and proceeded to bad manner me. I never posted there again and I would advice you do the same unless you like looking at SC2 meme's all day.
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On March 09 2012 03:51 Mouzone wrote:
Sorry but I too am having a hard time seeing how anyone who plays more than a couple hour a month for an extended period of time can remain in bronze. I came to SC2
40% of people that play the game are Bronze
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On March 09 2012 03:59 LJ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 03:51 Mouzone wrote:
Sorry but I too am having a hard time seeing how anyone who plays more than a couple hour a month for an extended period of time can remain in bronze. I came to SC2 40% of people that play the game are Bronze
I believe it is just under 20% each in Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, with the remaining 2% in Master or GM.
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On March 09 2012 04:01 pigmanbear wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 03:59 LJ wrote:On March 09 2012 03:51 Mouzone wrote:
Sorry but I too am having a hard time seeing how anyone who plays more than a couple hour a month for an extended period of time can remain in bronze. I came to SC2 40% of people that play the game are Bronze I believe it is just under 20% each in Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, with the remaining 2% in Master or GM.
Last graph I saw said that there were more gold players than bronze/silver/master/GM combined.
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when I first started playing SC2 I got placed into Bronze I was initially very upset about being in Bronze. After a while I just stopped caring about what league I was and focused only on the players in front of me. Had more fun that way and when I eventually promoted it wasn't that big of a deal - I'm now in plat still with that same mentality and it's working pretty well.
As far as Bronze skill - being 'stuck' in bronze usually points to being stuck in place, skillwise. I dunno about you but one of my favorite SC2 aspects is the constant theme of improving 
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On March 08 2012 20:47 Dodgeball wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 18:43 Defacer wrote:On March 08 2012 18:36 bigbeau wrote:On March 08 2012 18:25 Defacer wrote:
I think that a lot of higher level players (diamond to GM) have a gross misconception of the skill level of players in lower leagues. A gold player now is definitely not the same as a gold player a year ago.
I'm not very good, and stuck in Gold. But since the season 6 maps have come out, I'm absolutely crushing Terran and Protoss with Zerg. I used to lose to a lot of coin-flip builds and all-ins that T and P do at my level, but Cloud Kingdom and Korhal finally gave me a chance to win when I play "the right way".
There's plenty of decent players in the lower leagues that aren't bad, but struggle against cheese, playing for fun or just trying to learn to play 'right'. I'm sorry but this is simply not true, and it is a big reason lower league players remain in those leagues. I'm a low master league player. I don't really play much anymore, but I considered myself pretty bad. My mechanics are bad, my speed is bad, my micro is bad, I just understand what to do. However, against any gold player I could win with any race making any unit that can hit both air and ground. The whole idea of struggling against cheese is a crutch. Struggling against cheese is a sign of a bad player. There's no such thing as playing 'the right way'. The goal is to win, and if you can't beat the other person, you're bad at playing, simple as that. I'm not saying I'm good, but I certainly disagree that there isn't a difference between approaching the game by improving ones mechanics/reads and praying that your zealot rush pans out. And I don't believe you can beat any gold player with any race with any unit. Well, maybe marines. But certainly not hydras.  I believe him. it's totally possible Destiny went from Bronze league to Platinum just by building only drones and queens. no other units, no spines. Some of his opponents stream cheated and knew what he was doing and still lost.
Hmmmph. I remember last season a guy went mass queens against me.
Once I realized what he was doing, I just took five bases and rolled over him with just 200/200 banes.
I think it all really depends on 'the type' of Gold player you run into.
There are people in Gold that got out of bronze by spamming the same cheese over and over again.
There are people in Gold that have reasonable macro and micro but no real set builds.
There are people that have average macro, but great decision making skills.
There's one thing I've noticed when I'm matched up with a platinum player or players that are supposedly better than me. Zerg players at these lower levels are much better at making in-game decisions, and Toss and Terrans in general have relatively shitty macro and rely heavily on set builds. Now that the map pool has changed, I have no problems smacking around Ts and Ps.
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Nobody who is halfway competent at macro stays in bronze. To the person who said bronze league players do stuff like FFE now, that doesn't mean they are getting better. They usually have the first 5 minutes of a build down pat and then after that mark they get completely lost, float tons of resources, get supply blocked, don't have constant production and will execute their timing push or whatever at the 16 minute mark instead of the 10 minute mark. It really is that bad.
I got out of both bronze and silver using only macro and literally attack moving into the enemies base. I lost a few games to stuff like cloaked banshees because I am horrible in dealing with them, but held every poorly executed cheese in the book. Bronze league is as bad as it always has been, people in that league just don't know how bad it is because they have no reference point for timings and how much stuff you should have at what point in time.
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The vast majority of people stuck in bronze-gold are taking a completely wrong approach to improving, but theres also just some people stuck in those leagues that are just not meant for RTS games (low competency level when it comes to stuff like SC2, they can't properly focus, they forget things all the time, etc). Generally, older gamers that are newer to sc2, (25-30+ years of age) have trouble with these things I put in brackets just because general focus/reaction times get worse as you age. And some people's minds just aren't cut out for processing a lot of information at once and carrying out numerous tasks.
But if you're younger and still having a really hard time with getting into plat or higher even with a ton of time (several hours per day, and months and months) put into watching pro replays, streams, analyzing your replays, and sufficient ladder practice... Then RTS games just probably aren't for you. That doesn't mean give up.. It just means don't get angry at yourself.
When I started playing this game about a year and a half ago I had absolutely no knowledge of what Starcraft was at all, no RTS experience.. I picked the game up because a friend recommended it.. I started off in bronze after skipping campaign and jumping right in losing all 5 of my placements... And within 3 months I was in Plat. (This was due to a combination of watching pro-level replays, and playing ladder games). This was with playing for about ~2 hours per day.
Now I am Mid-Masters level on my main account, its really tough to move up past that point without investing a LOT of time into analyzing and game knowledge.
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dunno ive been in bronze, silver, gold and was pushing for plat but race switched, changed keybaord bindings 3 times etc
Moreover i know loads of builds, play all 3 races equally badly and have been keeping track of the metagame for over a year.
Could i get into plat or higher?
Maybe ... can i be arsed to do it?
Nope, id rather piss about with different stuff.
I find t and p players in silver+gold are executing timing attacks and fixed builds. Z on other hand is harder to say as the initial builds go on for longer ... its a lot easier to just have a build order loss as z in a tvz and pvz than the other way around i think (bar really early ling/roach/bling 1 base style cheese)
The kind of reaction time you are talking about isn't split hair trigger reactions ... its learnt muscle memory.
What you are saying is that nobody can improvise music once they are past 30 because they cant react with milisecond timing. What does diminish (maybe) is straight up response time to something hot ... but i haven't seen the evidence.
When people get older they spend more time training other skills, so the ones you value so highly diminish.
You need to find empirical data not for average people but for propel that actually train at a skill. Because lets face it 80% of people are lazy ass mothers that dont do much and slowly wither and die in a chair.
I hardly play games now. when i was high skill at games its because i used to play them several hours a day every day and train hard to get better. Now i just don't put in the time. Moreover i dont have as many people around me that are good, are competative about getting better etc. When you are a kid all your mates are into it so its easy to get good. Think about any game you are a lot better at then your mates ... you sat in a room and ragged it for a while - just so you could pwn them.
Eg Starcraft2 ... none of my mates play it, they have all diversified into other games and genres. When we used to have lan parties every 4 weeks we now have them once or twice a year. When we once had 50-70% rail gun accuracies we now have 30% because we havent played for so long.
One thing that is true as you get older is that you do have to make more conscious effort to refine out mistakes as you form habits faster i think. But then i taught myself guitar so i can use the experience of learning things slowly and perfectly to carry over. I also got to 1dan at a game called go and spent 2 years teaching people how to play that.
i dunno what im trying to say is that shit changes. To say reflexes slow is a gross over simplification that i think is not true. Its more a redistribution of skills ... wheras i used to be on a hair trigger i now think a lot more and am more conscious of how i do things - because a LOT more of what i do has a much greater knowledge content to it. What i am trying to say is that i need to be right 100% of the time at work ... that causes things to shift from being able to produce a crap ton into deliberate action - that is a real problem that i feel when i play. There is a mental 'yes' almost when i do stuff rather than simply having already executed a thought. That annoys me and maybe thats why reactions are slower ... btu if you put me on a reaction test i am still damn fast.
IE when i was a kid (<20) i was really good at solving things intuitively by the seat of my pants, now i deal with stuff to big to think about so i have to find other ways of dealing with it whilst still using that intuition to solve stuff. Its intuitive skills that the younger people have because they havent had to get very good at something they really suck at.
Oh yeah another big thing ... im usually playign after a day at work, when im pissed and usually stoned and dont do nearly enough exercise. When i was 18 that wasnt the case. Also i am sat on the edge of a sofa not at a desk like i used to ... when i goto lans and play on a desk people are amazed at how my mouse + keyboard accuracy improves.
Dont diss people as they get older, you'd be suprised at how wrong you are 
wow thats a load of qq
In response to guy below ... i know i have bad mechanics ... poor multi tasking and bad mouse accuracy
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On March 08 2012 18:25 Defacer wrote:
I think that a lot of higher level players (diamond to GM) have a gross misconception of the skill level of players in lower leagues. A gold player now is definitely not the same as a gold player a year ago.
I'm not very good, and stuck in Gold. But since the season 6 maps have come out, I'm absolutely crushing Terran and Protoss with Zerg. I used to lose to a lot of coin-flip builds and all-ins that T and P do at my level, but Cloud Kingdom and Korhal finally gave me a chance to win when I play "the right way".
There's plenty of decent players in the lower leagues that aren't bad, but struggle against cheese, playing for fun or just trying to learn to play 'right'.
i'm mid/top master and i think the leagues are a pretty good representation of your skill. if there is any misconception at all, it's that the skill gap isnt that big between leagues while in reality it's huge. even between top masters and low masters, there is a noticeable difference. when comparing between leagues, there is even more of a disparity. the skill gap gets even greater above masters as low masters < masters < GM <<< pro-gamers/GM kr < kr pro-gamers < GSL <<<<< DRG
i rarely have any trouble with anyone who is "low masters" and playing anyone below diamond is extremely confusing as i cannot read what the player is doing at all. he wont have an expansion well into the late game which causes me to throw up defenses in preparation for an all-in. but after i throw up my spines, no attack comes and he just sits in his base throwing up an expansion 10 minutes later.
if you're below diamond, u have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game and/or have horrible mechanics. i have never lost to anyone below masters but i admit i have lost 1-2 games against platinum protosses who just a-move deathball me.
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I'm like you! I watch many dailies (not just funday monday), watch a lot of streams, all the big tourneys, and I've been mid-silver league for almost a year now. Recently, I've apparently got worse, since I haven't been matched up with many gold leaguers in a long time. Admittedly I was doing pretty well (top 8 silver, so potential for promotion) and then I got a job so couldn't play so much, and found that i wanted to do other stuff with my time as well as ladder (last season I didn't spend all my bonus pool for example, playing too many other games/2v2s with friends etc)
I know I could be better
I know my macro suffers, my engagements are often poor, etc etc.
I know all this.
But I have fun playing as I currently do, and I feel like I would have a loss of fun if I spent time analysing replays. The result would be a higher league, a better game, etc etc, but if that's not going to increase the amount of fun I get out of a game I'm not going to invest all my time into it. Don't get me wrong, if I was promoted to gold next season I'd be over the moon, but as is I'm not crying myself to sleep for my terrible play.
Also as a side, one of the things that people say really annoys me. "Oh it's easy to fend off bronze level cheese because they don't do it properly"
Well guess what, I don't defend properly either! My cannon-rush defense is also bronze level! It's also shit! If someone 6-pools me, I sometimes just die. Because I'm a silver league player, and if I didn't, I would probably be gold.
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On March 08 2012 23:16 danielrosca wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 22:55 xxgeffxx wrote:On March 08 2012 17:53 Adamgm wrote:
So, thought I might try here.. any bronze players who consider themselves relatively hardcore and still have pretty great games in bronze? I was about to write a guide as to how you can get promoted, as I thought that was what your last sentence(which was a little confusing) was but then I realized it was not what you wanted. Choosing to play a competitive game and wanting to be the lowest tier possible. Seriously?
Maybe not "wanting to". But being content with it? Sure.
Higher league games don't look like much fun at all.
More one-base all-ins with workers, more bad manners, more stress.
Low league games are actually fun.
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On March 09 2012 04:15 bbm wrote:
Also as a side, one of the things that people say really annoys me. "Oh it's easy to fend off bronze level cheese because they don't do it properly"
Well guess what, I don't defend properly either! My cannon-rush defense is also bronze level! It's also shit! If someone 6-pools me, I sometimes just die. Because I'm a silver league player, and if I didn't, I would probably be gold.
This is actually a really good point :D
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EPT
