(i picked this section as it deals with the strategy and the metagame as well as the shifts in metagame in KR and EU)
I was just watching an interview with Mana who recently moved to Korea to live in the GOM house and participate in the GSL.
There is one thing that he said that made me wonder and start the discussion on this forum. Mana Speaks about Korean terrans being soo much better than the European ones. He Said that Korean diamond players are as good as high master players in Europe. Now this is a big deal. And no im not talking about koreans being better than foreigners as we all knew that for ages.
Is there something that the EU/NA players are missing? I mean how come there is such a huge gap between the korean terrans and us.Maybe there is some one out there that played on a korean ladder and knows the answer to this. Is it just the fact that they are more agro than we are? I myself im a mid diamond terran and i try to be as aggressive as possible in game but sometimes i feel like im overdoing it... which leads to a sour lose.
Next thing i wanted to talk about is the korean metagame, i have seen an interview today with InControll this time, and he talks about this amazing 3 gate timing push which he never seen before because no one on the NA ladder does it. I mean.... how are Koreans comming up with these funky builds.To me it feels like we are trying to mimic what the Koreans are doing. I myself have been playing the same style of TvT for over 6 months at this stage, the same would be said for TvP. How can a player like me, or in this case any other master or high diamond player come up with his own build which will catch his enemy off guard?And what do you guys think is the difference between the way Koreans play terran and the way we Koreans play terran here in Europe.
I think Korean's have a more competitive environment. They would be more exposed to the Korean SC2 scene, so would be more inspired to practice more. Also, having the top players in the world on the same ladder as you will help. Top players make the almost top players better. They make people slightly below them better.
Making a new strat is all about not giving a shit about ladder points. :D Think of something. Do it. Work? Try it again. Work this time? Who cares. Improve it until it does. Or until you want to shoot a kitten with poisoned bullets.
On August 26 2012 23:54 ma70 wrote: Koreans practice more. That's it. Of course, there are just some with natural talent.
Of course they do, but look at the difference between EU Z and P and KR Z and P, now look at the EU T and at the KR T, I mean on one side you got guys able to compete consistently against the top KR ( Stephano / NaNiwa ) and on the other side you've got plenty of average Terrans, some way better but not showing results ( Kas i'm looking at you ) and then only 1 Terran that actually wins stuff, Thorzain.
There has to be something else than just practice because I doubt the Terrans practice less than the Zergs and Protoss ( Kas 13k5 games on the ladder kekeke ), maybe it's in the mentality or because of the mechanics required that are too much, but there's something
Koreans started sc2 with an advantage, most top SC2 pros were BW players... not great BW players, but pros living in team houses none the less. So they had a higher density of good players to start with and add on top of that the practice regiments they brought over from BW.
I play on the korean server, I am in diamond on EU/US and was in plat on KR but I didn't play for a couple seasons on KR and re placed in Silver, I play mostly top8 gold players and my god can they play. If i met a gold player on any other server I would just rush them and win in 6 mins, on korea tho the quality of players is just a lot higher. They have a higher density of good players than just about anywhere else.
The reason why diamond players on KR are high master anywhere else is because to be in master you have to be in the top 2% of players and as KR server has such a density of good players, being in that top 2% is stupidly difficult. I am willing to bet that GM in korea is taken up almost exclusively by pros and their smurf accounts, there probably isn't many non pro players (and by pro I mean real pro's on one of the big teams) in korea GM like there are in EU/US. Same goes for master, most of that top 2% is probably taken up by pro's who can't make it in to GM, B teamers and semi-pro's. Hell I'd be willing to bet there are some pro's who are only diamond if they don't ladder much.
A higher density of good players with whom you can practice produces even more good players. I just wish I didn't have half a sec latency to korea, then I might be able to play my best and improve more rapidly ;p
Terran is a harder race, not everyone can play at a good level. Toss and Zerg do not need skill at all, they just need knowledge and everything is fine, thats why you dont see big difference betwen foreigners and koreans.
ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
I feel it's just due to mentality of foreign Terrans. I'm in masters EU as protoss and nearly 100% of my PvT's are when T's 1 rax expand. I've seen a lot of KR terrans' get gas and do proxy 2 rax's and marauder proxy's etc. which make the whole ladder of toss's play a lot more safe.
Speaking from personal experience Terran mechanics are way way way more complicated than Protoss (no mechanics required) or Zerg (hit injects). The whole concept of having a macro cycle seems to evade Terrans.
That is to say, you need to have a very strict structure to your multitasking as Terran, and just playing the game won't get you there. The macro cycle concept has not been popularised outside of KR I believe.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
Cool story man, now I hope you weren't just pointlessly trying to trash that guy, were you ? Because FYI, nobody has got mad skillzzz and if it's what he takes him, then you should just respect it and at least try not to sound like you're braging about your 1337 skillz.
I personally am in plat and I struggle to get out of there while i've played 2hrs a day for a month.
And on topic : I think it's definitely the mentality of the players after all, just look at the real talk with IdrA, when it was the BW days, pros were trainin 12hrs a day, and even though they clearly train less today, he says that the EU/US training is just innefecient, which I think is a problem of players but also of teams. If teams want the best out of their players then they have to set up some rules, and also, laddering on NA/EU is prolly not the best source of practice ever, but I guess it's all most of the players have ! :/
Yeah, i also believe the fact that due to broodwar being such a phenomena in KR, lots of people played it, even if not on a proffesional level, while the pro scene wasn't as developed in EU for example, and in consequence the fanbase was smaller as well. So while EU casual gamers played Counter or other games, i bet lots of koreeans just got better and better in Starcraft. Why do you think Blizzard chose KR to announce Starcraft 2? And how emythrel has pointed out, there are lots of pro's over there, and they have monopol over GM league and the top half of the master divisions. So yeah, i beat getting there is really hard
I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
On August 27 2012 01:51 kollin wrote: I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
100% agree. Terran as a race has the largest arsenal of cheese and the strongest cheese. Protoss and Zerg players on NA/EU don't have to worry about dealing with that cheese, because the Terrans over here don't think it's a good idea for whatever reason. Therefore, we can use a ton of greedy builds and score EZPZ wins because we don't have to think about scouting etc. as much. It's really easy to beat a player if you know what they're going to be doing ahead of time, and on NA/EU, P and Z players know that the Terrans aren't going to be doing much beyond macro games and a couple of simple pressure or all-in builds. If foreign Terrans started using cheese more, then they'd be able to score more wins versus P and T.
Korea is the cheesiest server. Korea is the strongest server. This is not entirely coincidence.
On August 27 2012 01:51 kollin wrote: I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
100% agree. Terran as a race has the largest arsenal of cheese and the strongest cheese. Protoss and Zerg players on NA/EU don't have to worry about dealing with that cheese, because the Terrans over here don't think it's a good idea for whatever reason. Therefore, we can use a ton of greedy builds and score EZPZ wins because we don't have to think about scouting etc. as much. It's really easy to beat a player if you know what they're going to be doing ahead of time, and on NA/EU, P and Z players know that the Terrans aren't going to be doing much beyond macro games and a couple of simple pressure or all-in builds. If foreign Terrans started using cheese more, then they'd be able to score more wins versus P and T.
Korea is the cheesiest server. Korea is the strongest server. This is not entirely coincidence.
On other ladders, attacking before 3 bases reaps a lot of BM. On KR, it's common and not as badly seen. I think this mentality has a lot to do with Korean success - and early aggression benefits terran way more than protoss or zerg.
Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap. Think about how much stuff terrans have to do, and how cost effective they can be.
Creating a build is no small feet, everyone wants to be the one to create the ultimate build which everyone uses, but it just doesn't happen that way. Its not even 'Pros make new builds' because there are plenty of pros who can't make a new build for their life, and for good reason. A good, viable build, especially a macro build (all ins are easier to make but usually also easier to stop) can really only be made by those who basically have a perfect understanding of the game and insane mechanics to pull off the build, and there are very very very few people who really understand the game to such an extent.
For the 99.99% we will be following builds or be designing horrible builds that aren't viable at top levels of play. Sad reality, but it is reality.
On August 27 2012 02:24 KingLumps wrote: Creating a build is no small feet, everyone wants to be the one to create the ultimate build which everyone uses, but it just doesn't happen that way. Its not even 'Pros make new builds' because there are plenty of pros who can't make a new build for their life, and for good reason. A good, viable build, especially a macro build (all ins are easier to make but usually also easier to stop) can really only be made by those who basically have a perfect understanding of the game and insane mechanics to pull off the build, and there are very very very few people who really understand the game to such an extent.
For the 99.99% we will be following builds or be designing horrible builds that aren't viable at top levels of play. Sad reality, but it is reality.
I actually disagree with you here. While it is very hard to create a brand spanking new opener, that's not what gets the most attention a lot of the time. Usually it's what a player does after than opening that gets attention. How they find out what is effective, especially with any timing based builds or all ins, is through all these crazy cheeses on the Korean server. As I said before, they find out timings that could well have just not been discovered before because no one has tried going for an attack with x composition at y time against z build. EDIT: Just to elaborate on this point, if you look at a lot of BW matchups, they were mainly centred around a small core set of builds, which then developed depending on what you scouted from your opponent.
Koreans have really good mechanics and multitasking.
Terran is the strongest race with perfect mechanics and multitasking. Compare that to Zerg, which is the strongest race with perfect decision making, or Protoss, which is the strongest race when it survives to reach the late game.
Terran's strengths mesh very well with Koreans' strength. So its not surprising that Korean Terrans are a level above their foreigner counterparts.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
I like this argumentation. Someone's just too dumb to learn from proper practice hitting a skillcap is a proof that practice is not the reason for being better.
I guess there's something all professionals over all sports are doing fundameltally wrong. You can't deny Koreans practice more AND more focussed than any foreigners. Hence they are better. This is mostly a game of practice. You do need talent, of course, that's why it's still possible to hit a personal skillcap. I wouldn't be a good professional chess player probably, no matter how much I practiced.
Of course Mana says the gap between foreign and korean terrans is bigger than between foreign and korean players of other races. Does that make it true? Do you think Kas believes this?
On August 27 2012 01:51 kollin wrote: I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
100% agree. Terran as a race has the largest arsenal of cheese and the strongest cheese. Protoss and Zerg players on NA/EU don't have to worry about dealing with that cheese, because the Terrans over here don't think it's a good idea for whatever reason. Therefore, we can use a ton of greedy builds and score EZPZ wins because we don't have to think about scouting etc. as much. It's really easy to beat a player if you know what they're going to be doing ahead of time, and on NA/EU, P and Z players know that the Terrans aren't going to be doing much beyond macro games and a couple of simple pressure or all-in builds. If foreign Terrans started using cheese more, then they'd be able to score more wins versus P and T.
Korea is the cheesiest server. Korea is the strongest server. This is not entirely coincidence.
On other ladders, attacking before 3 bases reaps a lot of BM. On KR, it's common and not as badly seen. I think this mentality has a lot to do with Korean success - and early aggression benefits terran way more than protoss or zerg.
Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap. Think about how much stuff terrans have to do, and how cost effective they can be.
For the first part: completely agree. People take "macro play" way too seriously, and it ends up hurting their entire game. For the second part: we'll have to wait and see.
Actually I met a couple pros in KR dia too - the dude raped the shit out of me even tho I had ten tanks containing his nat (hidden expo, perfect macro pure marine), then later revealed hes actually from IM.
KR terran mechanical is also disturbingly strong, so personally, I feel its not just the micro or the insane amount of builds, its also the macro the korean terrans from plat up have that makes them so scary.
On the other hand, there are a LOT of terrans in KR who should be in masters but are simply stuck in diamond due to A) TvT is disgusting and happens half the time, B) huge gap between many of the actual masters needed to beat to be promoted.
I do want to whine a bit that the amount of cheese/rushes KR protosses and zergs do in KR might be a factor too...Ive been flirting with being promoted for a while but its just not happening. I dont practice enough, and my mindset is fucked
Its quite simple actually, in the early days of Starcraft 2 Terran was unquestionably the best, most imba race. Now when all the B-teamers switched over they for the most part picked terran because they logically wanted to win the most. Now because of this, a lot of the more mechanically proficent players played Terran in Korea and Terran being all mechanics explains the better results. You see the same trend currently with Kespa players switching over. A large majority of them are picking protoss because its easier to learn and is generally considered the best race in Korea (please dont turn this into a balance discusssion.) and they want to win as soon as possible.
IMO terran has a play style that require the most emphasis on mechanics, which takes tons of practice Other races, the emphasis is more on decision making, for example, zerg deciding to make units or drones in early/mid game, terran not much deciding, ALWAYS make units and scvs, but is mechanically hard to do consistently
Therefore I dont see many foreigner Ts becoming really competitive any time soon
On August 26 2012 23:54 ma70 wrote: Koreans practice more. That's it. Of course, there are just some with natural talent.
Of course they do, but look at the difference between EU Z and P and KR Z and P, now look at the EU T and at the KR T, I mean on one side you got guys able to compete consistently against the top KR ( Stephano / NaNiwa ) and on the other side you've got plenty of average Terrans, some way better but not showing results ( Kas i'm looking at you ) and then only 1 Terran that actually wins stuff, Thorzain.
There has to be something else than just practice because I doubt the Terrans practice less than the Zergs and Protoss ( Kas 13k5 games on the ladder kekeke ), maybe it's in the mentality or because of the mechanics required that are too much, but there's something
Kas play 13k games vs non-Koreans; the fact that Koreans practice more means they are also practicing against more practiced opponents.
On August 27 2012 01:51 kollin wrote: I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
100% agree. Terran as a race has the largest arsenal of cheese and the strongest cheese. Protoss and Zerg players on NA/EU don't have to worry about dealing with that cheese, because the Terrans over here don't think it's a good idea for whatever reason. Therefore, we can use a ton of greedy builds and score EZPZ wins because we don't have to think about scouting etc. as much. It's really easy to beat a player if you know what they're going to be doing ahead of time, and on NA/EU, P and Z players know that the Terrans aren't going to be doing much beyond macro games and a couple of simple pressure or all-in builds. If foreign Terrans started using cheese more, then they'd be able to score more wins versus P and T.
Korea is the cheesiest server. Korea is the strongest server. This is not entirely coincidence.
On other ladders, attacking before 3 bases reaps a lot of BM. On KR, it's common and not as badly seen. I think this mentality has a lot to do with Korean success - and early aggression benefits terran way more than protoss or zerg.
Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap. Think about how much stuff terrans have to do, and how cost effective they can be.
For the first part: completely agree. People take "macro play" way too seriously, and it ends up hurting their entire game. For the second part: we'll have to wait and see.
No, they don't take macro play too seriously. All the great players are macro players. People try to find excuses for their bad macro play, when they say they don't mix in enough allins. But just look at the facts: the very best players of the world are all known for macroing superhard, while putting on enough aggression, regardless of the race they play. Taeja doesn't win because he has incredible micro or "knows every build", he wins because regardless of what he plays (if he is not hardcore cheesing), he builts many bases while working with the units he ends up with. DRG, MVP, MKP, MC, Nestea, Oz. Just name any toplevel player. They are all known for incredible macro play, while they basically never let their opponent breath too hard. It's the difference between "cross your fingers and hope you get away with it"-macro and refined builds that can branch into defense or offense depending on what your opponent does, that makes those players so good.
That's not to say cheese is bad, but the reason you want to cheese is, to find out, up to which point it is actually still a cheese and at which point you are just starting to walk the macro route while you punish "finger-cross"-opponents.
Not sure whoever posted it first but damn.... I mean i just thought of it now. I dont have any allins/cheeses planned for any matchup. I talked to a friend of mine about this and he said the same,he does mostly the same builds most of the time, with little adjustments. Maybe it would be a really good idea to actually go and learn a few allins and cheeses, if more and more people started playing cheesy in Europe and in NA zergs and protosses would not be as comfortable as they are at the moment.
On August 27 2012 01:51 kollin wrote: I think the reason that they have lots of different cheeses that take a while to bleed on to the European or American server is because a lot of the time pros will try out weird cheesy builds to try and improve their micro as well as find out potential timings that can be exploited in their opponents build.
100% agree. Terran as a race has the largest arsenal of cheese and the strongest cheese. Protoss and Zerg players on NA/EU don't have to worry about dealing with that cheese, because the Terrans over here don't think it's a good idea for whatever reason. Therefore, we can use a ton of greedy builds and score EZPZ wins because we don't have to think about scouting etc. as much. It's really easy to beat a player if you know what they're going to be doing ahead of time, and on NA/EU, P and Z players know that the Terrans aren't going to be doing much beyond macro games and a couple of simple pressure or all-in builds. If foreign Terrans started using cheese more, then they'd be able to score more wins versus P and T.
Korea is the cheesiest server. Korea is the strongest server. This is not entirely coincidence.
On other ladders, attacking before 3 bases reaps a lot of BM. On KR, it's common and not as badly seen. I think this mentality has a lot to do with Korean success - and early aggression benefits terran way more than protoss or zerg.
Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap. Think about how much stuff terrans have to do, and how cost effective they can be.
For the first part: completely agree. People take "macro play" way too seriously, and it ends up hurting their entire game. For the second part: we'll have to wait and see.
No, they don't take macro play too seriously. All the great players are macro players. People try to find excuses for their bad macro play, when they say they don't mix in enough allins. But just look at the facts: the very best players of the world are all known for macroing superhard, while putting on enough aggression, regardless of the race they play. Taeja doesn't win because he has incredible micro or "knows every build", he wins because regardless of what he plays (if he is not hardcore cheesing), he builts many bases while working with the units he ends up with. DRG, MVP, MKP, MC, Nestea, Oz. Just name any toplevel player. They are all known for incredible macro play, while they basically never let their opponent breath too hard. It's the difference between "cross your fingers and hope you get away with it"-macro and refined builds that can branch into defense or offense depending on what your opponent does, that makes those players so good.
That's not to say cheese is bad, but the reason you want to cheese is, to find out, up to which point it is actually still a cheese and at which point you are just starting to walk the macro route while you punish "finger-cross"-opponents.
In fact no. For instance MKP is known as a player that would go hardcore macro (14cc) or a super cheesy gas first marouder hellion allin.
On August 27 2012 04:24 Bonneyi wrote: Not sure whoever posted it first but damn.... I mean i just thought of it now. I dont have any allins/cheeses planned for any matchup. I talked to a friend of mine about this and he said the same,he does mostly the same builds most of the time, with little adjustments. Maybe it would be a really good idea to actually go and learn a few allins and cheeses, if more and more people started playing cheesy in Europe and in NA zergs and protosses would not be as comfortable as they are at the moment.
You see there you're allining for all of the wrong reasons. Unless you have pretty flawless macro there is no need to. The only reason top koreans ever do it is to improve micro and find timings in their opponents builds. There literally isn't any point, because you tend to stop caring about ladder ranking when you are on IM
On August 27 2012 02:39 Black Gun wrote: a "T is much harder to play than Z or P"-thread in disguise.
Oh of course.
Even when terrans were "op" though foreign terrans did always struggle and there weren't many like there were in korea.
Dunno koreans just practice more, and I am guessing since bw was so big over there lots of players that play sc2 played bw and thus have good control/macro as it's a lot easier to macro in sc2 compared to bw.
On August 27 2012 01:42 Fencar wrote: Two things that I can tell:
1. They practice more and better. You can list cause-effect all you like, this is what it comes down to.
2. Their mentality is better. Remember how Terran is/was called the 'comeback race'? Replace 'Terran' with 'Korean'.
[D]New Race: A Korean Korean.
I dunno why but I lol'd so hard by this... Anyways, as a terran who used to be masters in korea before moving back to Sweden, it's pretty simple actually. Korean terrans are just a lot better. And so is protoss, and so is zerg. The big difference is that they are more knowledgable about the game, they know what timings to hit and what their opponents are doing. Here in EU you face a lot of blind greed, where people don't deny scouting, or do anything clever but it works out anyways because it's so damn stupid. Koreans are more predictable, games play out more normal, scouting is more important and so are timings. There are people who get to masters in EU on cheese alone, who are outright shit at the game but has this one buildorder that works really well because others go with the meta more and don't scout enough. And koreans have better mechanics, you can't get into korean master on builds and decisionmaking alone. You need to have more stuff.
One more thing, I feel as if the Koreans masters actually play more, as in average player, and thusly they face more experienced players in turn. I mean, some europeans play sick amounts of games, but there's such a huge difference in the skill of same rated europeans that they can't get the same consistent practice out.
Oh and terran needs to be the aggressor which is inherently more difficult to do, as in requires more game-sense to make it work, do damage, seize map control, know when to back off etc. Defending is comparatively easy as long as you figure out what's coming. EU toss and zerg just needs to map out their normal BO's, have an all-in or two that have a high success chance of doing damage, defend and/or punish aggression and win late-game where they are at an advantage.
tldr: former korean master, the difference is in the average ability of their opponents and the standard of players above gold, this forces the overall level up
On August 27 2012 02:39 Black Gun wrote: a "T is much harder to play than Z or P"-thread in disguise.
Oh of course.
Even when terrans were "op" though foreign terrans did always struggle and there weren't many like there were in korea.
Dunno koreans just practice more, and I am guessing since bw was so big over there lots of players that play sc2 played bw and thus have good control/macro as it's a lot easier to macro in sc2 compared to bw.
I totally agree but with an amendment. I could practice 12 hours a day for 2 years and never be as good as Taeja, MKP et al because you need to have opponents of that level to play against to get that good. B teamers in Korea get to play against the top players in the world, every day. Top NA and Eu pros get to practice against other top tier NA and EU pros and other GM's, they can practice 12 hours a day and very few of them (with a couple of notable exceptions) will ever get to the same level as Koreans because their opponents aren't of the same class.
That is why I like to practice against Mid to high Master league players, they whip my ass nearly every time but I learn way faster and improve steadily. Flip side that to when I go hardcore laddering (I'm Dia 1600ish MMR, been as high as 1950 MMR), playing people of my own skill level and don't really improve or learn anything new because my opponents aren't challenging me in the same way as someone who is far and away better than I. I'm sure that if I could practice in a house with Taeja for a week or two, I'd be well on my way to high master ;p
Hell, I play on KR server for 2 hours and my micro improves lol. I win more TvPs on korea than on EU and NA combined lol, I jst get in to a different mindset somehow and get way more aggressive and focus harder on battle control and battle macro.
If the argument is that Terran requires less skill in relative to other races, then why do non-korean zergs do as equally well as korean, if not better? This phenomenon is not new, but it is hard to give an answer to it.
On August 27 2012 02:39 Black Gun wrote: a "T is much harder to play than Z or P"-thread in disguise.
I think you're wrong. I think it's a "It's much harder to play T without whining than Z or P"-thread in disguise ;-)
Back to the original point. Koreans have over a decade of evolution head start. They've figured out how to make players. While we had a hand full of die hards they had barrels full of die hards. If you're surrounded by good players. You will improve a lot faster than just figuring out everything from scratch by yourself in isolation. When sc2 came out koreans were teenagers we were infants.
I have learned basically everything I know myself. I had one friend who was better at broodwar than me. Nobody I know IRL can beat me at SC2 and I basically suck at it. I even regret playing my best against a few friends. Who realized how much they had to learn to be decent and just moved on to easier games.
Koreans understand that it's about winning and making GSL or proleague. Among EU/NA players there is a lot of self delusions like "cheese bad" forinstance. That winning doesn't count unless it's done in some particular way. They understand that it's about improving and not about getting ladderpoints. They're not affraid to do something other than 1rax FE.
Yes we have a few foreigners who put in a lot of hours. I'm willing to bet they put in a lot more time per player on average. They have a culture built around esports. That has been around a long time. We have soccer on TV they have starcraft.
TLDR; The most important point being that if you surround yourself with winners. You are much more likely to become a winner. If you have a good teacher you're likely to learn a lot faster.
infestors are such a horrible boring unit, it seriously counters every unit in the game infestor > zerg > terran > toss wouldnt be so shitty and boring if it stopped units from moving
On August 27 2012 00:38 EmilA wrote: Judging from korean streams, K terrans have 1000x more wonky builds than we do.
Koreans are very aggressive in general, and Terran is well suited to be aggressive with all their early offensive options. I remember watching Bomber play vs Forgg on the ladder, and one went for a BC rush off one base, and the other went 1-1-1 on Antigua shipyard.
i dont know what the koreans are saying but in my opinion for non-pros, just the usual casuals of everyone below high master, i dont think koreans care so much about build orders and whatnot like some of the things i see here. over here its all metagame this, metagame that, auto build order losses and what not. i myself emphasis on mechanics and couldnt give a single fuck on metagame. people need to focus getting better through their mechanics and decision making, not perfecting a build or go by the metagame, blaming the opponent for doing something unorthodox. (random cry threads anyone?)
On August 27 2012 03:24 decaf wrote: Koreans practice much more than foreigners. Terran needs much more practice than zerg and protoss.
There's your answer.
This. But it will all change in Hots with new mech units, no micro intesive.
That's if you decide to mech though. If you remain with bio then nothing will change, except that blinding cloud.....and mech wont really help much vs Zerg
On August 27 2012 09:13 Psychobabas wrote: It's not even Korean Terrans. It's Taeja and MVP specifically.
LOL. You are wrong good sir. There are a ton of good Korean terrans and there have been for a long long time. There are a lot more then just MVP and taeja.
Terran requires excellent micro, great build orders and very clean execution. As a Terran player you can't transition and wing it. Korean players are well known for their practice habits and preparation and that really shines through more for Terran than the other two races. Each piece of a Terran build is carefully mapped out and practiced, everything matters from gas timings to when the eng bay goes down for upgrades. Terran also scales with multitasking far better than either of the other two races.
Zerg requires far less time practicing to play a smooth game. Simply having an idea for a composition is enough to get by. Zergs can become good by playing a lot of ladder games, and still require a lot of mechanical skill. Zerg build orders are far more forgiving and generally zergs get to set the pace of the game. There really isn't much advantage gained from being surgical in Zerg build order execution.
Protoss is similar to Zerg in that respect. Protoss can instantly balance a late game economy with addition sentries, templar or zealots. Protoss lategame units also don't require a whole lot in terms of control, although earlier in small skirmishes Toss players do need great control. Protoss also doesn't reward multitasking at all so extremely fast late game micro palyers like MMA wouldn't benefit at all i they played toss. Toss build orders are also easy to practice and pull off, and again Toss players set the pace of the game. Toss chooses their tech path against Terran and has to make no deviations really, and against Zerg Toss only really has one viable composition outside of their all ins.
Once you add all the those factors up it becomes pretty clear that it's much easier to get the most out of Toss and Zerg, while Terran requires a certain threshold of work to even break even. I'd say it takes twice as much effort to be a great Terran player as it would for either of the other two races, however the gains from similar work put in by Zerg and Toss players don't get rewarded like they should.
Zerg has the most imbalanced unit in the game and the best macro mechanic (Infestor, Larva Injects) and Protoss is completely broken on about ten different levels (Upgrades/chrono, warpgate, colossus, immortals, zealots, sentries etc) but the game is balanced around those factors. What we're left with is a game that is balanced sure, but one with huge gaping flaws and holes in it's design that could very easily be addressed in HoTS although it looks like Blizzard is just going to make things worse.
There may be some truth to the argument that terran has the highest skill cap, but then shouldn't there be a lot less korean terran once you go down to foreign levels (mid master on KR)? If there are still a lot of terrans doing well all the way down the korean ladder, then the "higher skill cap" is not really enough to explain it all.
How about tradition? terran was a lot more popular already in korean sc:bw than foreign sc:bw right? Maybe the legacy just carried over?
I really like the cheese-argument though! Us foreigners have a very infected relationship to cheese. Maybe we insult the cheesers so much that legit players cheese less than they should to avoid being branded as cheesers?
Also, the top players outside kr are a quite alone on the ladder I feel. When I see stream of top players on ladder, they almost only get matched up vs people well below their skill level. And playing ppl below your skill level, it is often better to take a safe macro approach and go for late-game rather than cheese. That is, when a foreign pro is playing on ladder, it is better for them to almost never cheese, to get their winrate from 65% to 70%, as most of their opponents are worse than them. So they never get to train cheesing. And most of the cheese the top players see is from lower players, "noobs" that managed to "inflate" their MMR through cheesing, giving a bad reputation to cheesing in general among top players. Also idra.
Playing as a top player on korean ladder, you will get matched up against other extremely good players all the time. Half the time you will be matched with code-S players, and the other half is not much below that. Thus, everyone (except maybe the very best players in the world) benefits from throwing in a cheese every now and then on the korean ladder, as you will never play a pushover. Thus, playing on the kr ladder, you get regular training in cheesing top players.
Essentially it is the difference that the korean scene is much deeper. While the top 5 foreigners may take a series every now and then from the top 5 koreans, the top 1000 foreigners is on a much lower standard than the top 1000 koreans. Maybe the large supply of almost top level training available on the ladder makes cheese a more normal part of play, which in turn very well could favour terran.
Maybe we need a wave of BitByBits on the foreign ladder?
On August 27 2012 10:52 TERRANLOL wrote: http://www.sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm This is a decent part of the reason koreans are so much better than the rest of the world IMO
Did you miss that the thread was about koreans TERRANS being better than foreign TERRANS, to larger extent than the two other races? Or you just felt like driving by and dropping your default argument for the korea vs foreign debate, relevant or not? Or do you mean that IQ is more important for terrans?
Excellent post Filter, and just as a side note, thanks for your tutorials as well (they got me from silver to now facing plats in gold :D)
As a relatively low level Terran, it was a bit depressing to watch this MLG in a few ways. Following a 1 rax expand build since silver vs all races, I've been focusing on macro and getting to the late game to practice my mechanics. Yet just about every time I saw Terrans reach the late game vs P or Z, they had to play either perfectly or already have a lead in some way to pull of the win. With maxed armies, your micro and multitask has to be perfect, and you only have a single ace unit (ghosts) against the two that the Protoss possess (HTs and Colossus). Against Zerg, I'm just not sure what you can do against late game Infestor/Brood armies. I couldn't really come up with anything that could allow you to match army strength and trade armies in an effective manner (since Zerg resupplies 10x as fast as Terran). Keep in mind I'm just a Gold Terran, but it's a bit depressing to see even the pros seemingly have no answer for big late game tech. I suppose I might have to do more of what Koreans apparently do and learn a few good all-ins.
In NA, anything that isn't part of the current metagame is considered cheese. The players on NA that cheese usually just do blind cheese without any reasoning behind it other than "(insert race) imba". At least when I go to ladder on the KR server, the cheese makes sense. Korean players have way better mechanics which makes them better players in general. On top of the mechanics, they have great game knowledge and are also good at scouting/denying scouting.
Lets just say it this way:
Korean Sc2 players are humans just like Foreign Sc2 Players, they just have a better understanding because when they practice, they do it with a purpose and not just with the hopes of getting better.
All this posts about Terran requiring multitask, micro, being aggressive, am I wrong if I say these only apply to bio? Since mech, not saying it is easy, because it is not, but with mech you cannot be as aggressive, and don't need so much micro. So when you say being aggressive, micro etc it only applies to bio right?
Random question, whats the korean food(I guess some kind of sauce?) they were talking about at the beginning? Som jong? or something? Can't tell what they're saying T_T, totally wanna check it out.
On August 27 2012 11:32 Leyra wrote: Random question, whats the korean food(I guess some kind of sauce?) they were talking about at the beginning? Som jong? or something? Can't tell What they're saying T_T, totally wanna check it out.
쌈장 Ssam Jang, speaking of which there's also SSamJang
On August 27 2012 11:32 Leyra wrote: Random question, whats the korean food(I guess some kind of sauce?) they were talking about at the beginning? Som jong? or something? Can't tell What they're saying T_T, totally wanna check it out.
쌈장 Ssam Jang, speaking of which there's also SSamJang
1) Koreans are better, yes. That's not surprising, players over there spend a lot more time and effort; there's not really as much of a community that "casually games" in SC2.
2) Terran is a difficult race, particularly in the lower levels. But it's not harder or easier or better or worse than the other races. All the races have their own difficulties when macroing and playing at a high level; it's up to the players to develop their macro skills the best they can. That being said, a terran with far superior macro skills DOES beat an all-inning protoss or zerg. Look at yourself before blaming the game everywhere.
3) Cheese and all-in builds on ladder are specifically designed for finding timings and/or relieving stress. LastShadow plays some kind of cheese every 3 or 4 games just to see how his opponent responds and how he can adjust things and hit a stronger timing, etc. Playing cheese is NEVER a "good strategy" on ladder.
Because Koreans try to get better while us Foreigner just agree that Koreans are better and spend the rest of our time whining about whatever it is that we are whining about for the month. I highly doubt EVERY korean play 8 hours a day (especially non pros). It is just they have better mentality than us. We complain about the problem, they try to solve it.
I find this interesting to read for a few reasons.
Lets take a look back a good 8-9 years, and try and get some parallels from the older BW scene and the one that we have today.
Back in the days of Korean dominance (real Korean dominance, like in BW when the top 50 players in the world all had Korean flags). Korea was the only place that had a developed scene, and it was the only place where people could actually live off BW.
Foreigners with amazing results (mondragon, testie, white-ra etc), made a couple hundred a month. The mid tier foreign "pros" made nothing. BW wasn't a realistic job outside of Korea, and the skill level required to go to Korea (only to be essentially treated like a slave in the Kespa run pro houses) was amazingly high. We are talking a game that had already been developed for a lot of years.
The incentive to be "good" in the foreign BW scene was marginal, but still you had some players such as Mondragon or Pj who could practice hard enough to regularly take games off some of the best players in the world (I would relate their skill level to someone like Destiny, maybe Goody, a player who can beat the best players in the world, but won't ever win a GSL).
In those days it was easy to say "Ya, Koreans are much better because foreigners have no incentive to practice."
Right now there is more money outside of Korea than inside, and players can easily make a rather large living playing this game. Motivation is no longer a factor. If you tell me that the Koreans are practicing harder than the foreigners, I won't believe it. There is no reason for anyone in the foreign scene to have a lack of motivation, be it Naniwa, axslav, or the aspiring pro gamer making his way through Diamond.
The other argument I have seen a lot is that Korean players use a lot more "all ins" and are less about the pure macro style. While I agree that to be an all around tournament player, having finely crafted all ins and cheeses is important, it isn't a necessity at a lower level.
In fact, in BW it was often said that Foreigners were the ones limiting themselves by using too many all ins and cheeses. Anyone remember how North American zergs used to play? The mass 2 base hydra timings and constant ling all ins? All off an extremely low econ and 2 bases? Anyone remember playing against Lzgamer in BW? Catz? Or any Latin American zerg for that matter?
It isn't a matter of if your a macro player, or if your a cheeser, you can become top level with both. How many people have we seen show up in the pro scene and be labeled as a pure cheese player only to later transition into a heavy macro style?
No, I don't believe it is a certain mindset or that Koreans have and others don't. I also don't believe that it is an issue of motivation or effort.
It simply comes down to sample size. If it is true what Mana says (I find it might be a slight overstatement), that means a high diamond is equal to a high master on EU. That means that a mid master is most likely around the skill of a low GM. How many mid masters players do you think there are on KR? 10,000? A lot more than the 200 players on EU in GM.
10,000 vs 200. That means that ALL THINGS EVEN, for every one player with the extreme drive and motivation that it takes to be a top player that comes from EU, you will have 50 Koreans.
Obviously these numbers are a complete spur of the moment representation that isn't giving a perfect example, but it is a representation.
There is also the fact that top Europeans and Americans play against other players from their region for the most part, but that has already been covered.
because Terran units gain exponential strength when you control them well:
marine marauder hellion siege tank ghost
I mean come on, the concept of splitting marines against banelings was first demonstrated by Koreans, marines, splitting and cost-efficiently counter units that are meant to hard-counter them
Also, you can squeeze your marine & marauder in between mineral patches and kill 10X the zerglings and zealots they normally would.
And Koreans have shown again and again they have the best unit control, period. So much so that whenever we see the likes of Taeja, MKP, MVP and even lower tiers of K-Terrans (Keen, STC etc.) play we expect to see them split their forces with perfect control.
Add that on top of their insane macro you get a breed of Terrans that are just miles above NA & EU
Better builds, smoother macro, crisper micro, they cheese, a lot of them are/were ex bw pros, alot grind 8 + hours a day. The list goes on and on. The game isn't hard for those players, it all comes down to tactics and strategy for them, they aren't fighting the "skill" requirements of sc2.
As to why terran seems to be so dominant in korea? The answer to that is, it has always been like that. You could argue that the most famous BW pros were all Terran as well.
mana's exaggerating of course, i'm master KR terran but right now im low masters na.
i can't speak for high masters KR but KR diamond/master compared NA diamond/master doesn't have anything particularly special, they're just better overall players. it's not more cheese or allin, they just execute standard builds very crisply and focus on mechanics. KR is much more aggressive and use newer builds whereas it takes a while for builds used in GSL to become popular on NA, but that's about it..
On August 27 2012 15:04 rauk wrote: mana's exaggerating of course, i'm master KR terran but right now im low masters na.
i can't speak for high masters KR but KR diamond/master compared NA diamond/master doesn't have anything particularly special, they're just better overall players. it's not more cheese or allin, they just execute standard builds very crisply and focus on mechanics. KR is much more aggressive and use newer builds whereas it takes a while for builds used in GSL to become popular on NA, but that's about it..
if you are masters KR then you should have no problem getting gm on NA because im High Masters NA but I barely break top 50 diamond on KR...
On August 27 2012 15:04 rauk wrote: mana's exaggerating of course, i'm master KR terran but right now im low masters na.
i can't speak for high masters KR but KR diamond/master compared NA diamond/master doesn't have anything particularly special, they're just better overall players. it's not more cheese or allin, they just execute standard builds very crisply and focus on mechanics. KR is much more aggressive and use newer builds whereas it takes a while for builds used in GSL to become popular on NA, but that's about it..
if you are masters KR then you should have no problem getting gm on NA because im High Masters NA but I barely break top 50 diamond on KR...
Yeah but if he plays on KR more he won't be GM on NA.
Anyway, I think the main reason is that their skill density on the server is much higher compared to NA and EU and they use the builds that they see in GSL quite a bit sooner than the other regions because they're not afraid to copy even the aggressive builds then you get the KR scenario. The foreign scene likes to make a huge fuss about cheese and all ins etc. but never try to think that maybe if you do this there actually IS a way to make it non all in or this could be used to hide an expo if I delayed this or that. Things like that I think is the main reason KR server is ahead of us. Mainly the copying GSL builds.
On August 27 2012 15:04 rauk wrote: mana's exaggerating of course, i'm master KR terran but right now im low masters na.
i can't speak for high masters KR but KR diamond/master compared NA diamond/master doesn't have anything particularly special, they're just better overall players. it's not more cheese or allin, they just execute standard builds very crisply and focus on mechanics. KR is much more aggressive and use newer builds whereas it takes a while for builds used in GSL to become popular on NA, but that's about it..
if you are masters KR then you should have no problem getting gm on NA because im High Masters NA but I barely break top 50 diamond on KR...
haven't played on kr this season because i stopped playing for d3 and i don't feel like losing 100 games in a row, but i was in masters kr since last december i think
Every metagame change in high level play was anticipated in advance by what I've seen on the Korean server. Builds, timings, etc. They don't stick with stale builds for long when they are not working and people are quite willing to try anything and get very good at it. I don't know if Mana is entirely correct about diamond Korean being equivalent to high masters, as I myself am mid masters at my best and compete at high diamond level on Korea. I suppose it's fairly close to his claim, but the main difference is simply creativity and attention to details - the macro at this level is not really any better than the level on other servers.
In reality the only significant differences between Bronze to low Masters Koreans and US/EU players are that some of the mechanics from Brood War might have transitioned over and that the sample size will be smaller.
Other than that, the only significant difference is at the very highest end. No, Koreans are not more intelligent, smarter, or better at Starcraft than we are. They just have a ten year old infrastructure dedicated to producing top quality gamers. What's more, the so called "best players" are in almost constant flux and in the top 50, there are at least 15-20 players outside of Korea DESPITE the disadvantages.
Main difference is they practice more and execute shit better - which incidentally, makes a huge difference
As for the builds, you just try stuff, but it's not what matters that much. I was doing cloak banshees standard in tvz a year ago (hipster anyone?), won against GMs consistently, still don't have an mlg trophy
cos I was practicing against high-masters / GMs for a few hours / day, they were practicing vs best of the best for 9-10 hrs / day
there's no genetic/magic etc, more like a cultural drive to do as good as you can (imo)
On August 27 2012 11:13 dynwar7 wrote: All this posts about Terran requiring multitask, micro, being aggressive, am I wrong if I say these only apply to bio? Since mech, not saying it is easy, because it is not, but with mech you cannot be as aggressive, and don't need so much micro. So when you say being aggressive, micro etc it only applies to bio right?
Not at all. While mech isn't as micro intensive as bio it still can require a lot of multitasking and you have to be aggressive with it, especially against Zerg. In TvZ you see a lot of hellion harass and even things like Thor drops. So mech can be micro intensive, but the main skill you need for it is positional awareness and decision making (something I think top korean terrans have a lot of).
On August 27 2012 16:33 Evangelist wrote: Confirmation bias ITT.
In reality the only significant differences between Bronze to low Masters Koreans and US/EU players are that some of the mechanics from Brood War might have transitioned over and that the sample size will be smaller.
Other than that, the only significant difference is at the very highest end. No, Koreans are not more intelligent, smarter, or better at Starcraft than we are. They just have a ten year old infrastructure dedicated to producing top quality gamers. What's more, the so called "best players" are in almost constant flux and in the top 50, there are at least 15-20 players outside of Korea DESPITE the disadvantages.
You should seriously play on the korean server. Play a gold/plat/diamond korean player and then play an NA/EU gold/plat/diamond and you will see a huge difference in skill.
It is not people over exagerating when they say the korean players even at lower levels are skilled, especially compared to the same ranks on NA/EU.
On August 27 2012 16:33 Evangelist wrote: Confirmation bias ITT.
In reality the only significant differences between Bronze to low Masters Koreans and US/EU players are that some of the mechanics from Brood War might have transitioned over and that the sample size will be smaller.
Other than that, the only significant difference is at the very highest end. No, Koreans are not more intelligent, smarter, or better at Starcraft than we are. They just have a ten year old infrastructure dedicated to producing top quality gamers. What's more, the so called "best players" are in almost constant flux and in the top 50, there are at least 15-20 players outside of Korea DESPITE the disadvantages.
You should seriously play on the korean server. Play a gold/plat/diamond korean player and then play an NA/EU gold/plat/diamond and you will see a huge difference in skill.
It is not people over exagerating when they say the korean players even at lower levels are skilled, especially compared to the same ranks on NA/EU.
Considering the difference between low Gold and high Gold/low Platinum can be on the order of several thousand resources of macro, I don't think you can even state that based off "personal experience."
I completely agree with MaNa on this. Before people question i am about 1600 Masters on NA with 150-200 Bonus pool, but my first game ever on the Korean server on a mates at the time Mid-Master account i hit a rank 1 diamond Terran who was easily as good as a Top Masters/Low GM NA terran and it freaked me out. I feel really confident in PvT and it was my favourite/strongest match up before playing on Korea and it still is on any other server. On Korea however it is so fucking hard, they exploit every little thing, throw in hyper aggressive play with sick macro play and always make me feel uncomfortable and i feel like i have no idea what i'm doing half the time. '"Foreign fans" tend to shrug off the difference, even when top, top foreign pro's continually say it but trying to pretend that any of the leagues on Korea are equal to anywhere else is stupid and ignorant.
Anyone in high Masters on Korea would be at least top 50 GM on either NA or EU, mid-high masters on Korea would also be GM level on NA for sure and in all honesty playing through Diamond --> Masters i found that maybe 60-70% of them were as good or almost as good as most of the people i match at the top of Masters/low GM on NA.
There is no magic to it. Koreans take Starcraft seriously, they play longer and harder plus the pool of players coming from BW is larger so the skill level is going to higher.
Foreigners really need to remove this "cheese is stupid" mentality from their brain. Its like they are still stuck in the age of when wars will be fought in a gentlemanly manner.
Fast forward to 4:50
But guess what, a thing called guerrilla warfare developed and this changed everything because in war, you use whatever tactic to win with minimal losses. Sure it would be considered silly to cheese every game even in Korea (eg: BitbyBit), but in a BO3, sneaking in one cheese can easily be the difference between winning and losing.
Terran requires more skill than the other races, so naturally players with much more skill like koreans can perform significantly better than their less skilled terran counterparts. Korean zerg/toss will only be a little better because their race doesn't allow for improved play with skill as much.
It's really because Korean players looked up to BoxeR's creativity in the early days of Brood War. That and the heavier focus on micro-intensive play than macro-intensive. The foreigner scene has been much more influenced by more macro-intensive players that are bent on strategy as opposed to cost effectiveness.
I notice alot of terran failing at the higher tier, even korean, is that they have a retarded amount of units queued in their production facilities late game. They have an abundant amount of money banked up, or misstep on the production cycle, so they spam a and d on barracks and a ton of resources a wasted whereas zerg and protoss will never have this kind of problems.
Bomber is probably the biggest offender in this regard.
I think this is one reason why taeja has been successful recently. Instead of spam queue up units he make production facilities when his macro failed, such as his last 2-3 cc build mid game. instead of let the resources go wasted in a queue. You never want to have a queue, especially for late game where an extra cc or two will always be more beneficial than having 10-20 units stuck in your 10 rax
On August 27 2012 19:36 iky43210 wrote: I notice alot of terran failing at the higher tier, even korean, is that they have a retarded amount of units queued in their production facilities late game. They have an abundant amount of money banked up, or misstep on the production cycle, so they spam a and d on barracks and a ton of resources a wasted whereas zerg and protoss will never have this kind of problems.
Bomber is probably the biggest offender in this regard.
I think this is one reason why taeja has been successful recently. Instead of spam queue up units he make production facilities when his macro failed, such as his last 2-3 cc build mid game. instead of let the resources go wasted in a queue. You never want to have a queue, especially for late game where an extra cc or two will always be more beneficial than having 10-20 units stuck in your 10 rax
I'm not sure if it is even a macro fail. I think it is rather planned that he stores the money for what he needs to do after a combat: --> if you are losing a fight/trading badly, go for more production facilities and try to end it --> if you are winning a fight/trading efficiently, build 2-3 CCs and make sure that your opponent can't catch up again
On August 27 2012 19:18 Incomplet wrote: Foreigners really need to remove this "cheese is stupid" mentality from their brain. Its like they are still stuck in the age of when wars will be fought in a gentlemanly manner.
But guess what, a thing called guerrilla warfare developed and this changed everything because in war, you use whatever tactic to win with minimal losses. Sure it would be considered silly to cheese every game even in Korea (eg: BitbyBit), but in a BO3, sneaking in one cheese can easily be the difference between winning and losing.
The dishonor card is always pulled in video games because people don't like to admit they got outplayed. It's easier to say the other guy was playing unfairly, and not acknowledge that dark and less predictable side of the game exists. Early on people lectured cheesers saying they'll never learn in the long term playing like that. Korean server post launch was considered the cheesiest server out of the 3. They seem to be doing alright in the long term. It's better to play to win, don't let honor hold you back.
I feel that Koreans are better in general because they are way more innovative with their play and develop their own styles while most of the world looks to them for tips/tricks.
It actually really comes down to the fact that the average Korean spends more time practicing, and on top of that has better practice partners because the people they are playing against spend just as much time practicing. This entire cycle leads to a much higher standard of play than either the NA or EU has.
On August 27 2012 19:18 Incomplet wrote: Foreigners really need to remove this "cheese is stupid" mentality from their brain. Its like they are still stuck in the age of when wars will be fought in a gentlemanly manner.
But guess what, a thing called guerrilla warfare developed and this changed everything because in war, you use whatever tactic to win with minimal losses. Sure it would be considered silly to cheese every game even in Korea (eg: BitbyBit), but in a BO3, sneaking in one cheese can easily be the difference between winning and losing.
Koreans aren't good because of cheese, they are good because they are more accustomed to games, especially rts. Doesn't matter how cheesy they are. BW was a popular game for a long time and also gaming is a norm in korea, so people grew up in an environment exposed to an RTS similar to sc2 and that obviously made contribution to what is now a scene dominated by koreans.
Has anyone else noticed that these arguments of Terran being the most difficult while Z and P are overpowered are the exact opposite that we saw when the game was first released? Not trying to take sides on this issue just making observations. Funny how these things change so easily
Diamond terrans on korea being as good as high master on NA is nowhere near accurate and a huge exaggeration. That argument is kinda ridiculous, but it is true that korea terran pros have an 'edge' over non-korean terrans.
Koreans practice more, don't play as many other games and grow up with starcraft on tv. Foreigners are lazy, play lots of other games and gaming isn't even 100% accepted in our culture, let alone pro gaming.
It's pretty simple. On one side you have 1 million Korean kids that used to play BW switched over to SC2 bring the BW mechanic with them. On the other side there's 5 million foreigner kids who either had never touched BW, switched over from FPS games, or Warcraft 3,......The result is that Korean ladder is full of kids with better mechanic than NA or EU ladder, even in lower leagues.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
He might be playing on the KR server, who knows? KR Mid-Dia is like High Masters anywhere else, right?
A lot more people trying to get better and refining builds. On NA you see a lot of the same stuff, people doing the same set of all-ins every game, or the same exact "safe macro" build every game. People besides programers on NA/EU rarely try new things, and even if they are trying to develop a new build, they're doing it alone or maybe with one or two others. In one day of laddering on korea (roughly 30 games) I see a lot larger variety of build orders, and if I play the same person twice, and they do the same build order twice, they tend to have improved something from the last time I played them. If you get enough people all trying to develop and refine build orders you'll get a lot quicker paced and move influential metagame. People see really cool build orders and try them out, they tell their friends, they refine them. Within a day a build can go from something you rarely see to the one build that everyone is doing every game on ladder. Then someone figures out how to deal with it really well, and it disappears again (until MVP wins a few GSLs with it).
TL;DR: More people trying to develop and refine builds, they get bounced around the ladder really quickly. Terrans on NA/EU don't do the same sort of group based build order development.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
He might be playing on the KR server, who knows? KR Mid-Dia is like High Masters anywhere else, right?
diamond on KR is not like high masters on NA/EU/SEA. Diamond on KR is like diamond on NA. High masters on NA is like GM on NA/EU, and mid masters on KR is like high masters on other servers. Low masters and below is about the same everywhere.
I disagree with MaNa when he said that diamond league in korea is like high master in Europe. I did manage to up to master in KR server while playing from EU and i'm only midmaster in EU. Of it's way more cheesy, but no way this harder.
Now do the EXACT same thing for the korean ladder.
On Europe you have the empire terrans putting pretty epic ladder game numbers in. On korea there are so much more people doing that. If you have so many people doing that at the top level you're going to get much better players
Edit: For quick reference, there are 9 people on the korean grandmaster ladder with under 100 "wins" On the eu ladder there are 17 people with under 100 wins. On the americas ladder there are with 38 people less then 100 wins this season.
The answer is simple: Korea had lots of terrans at the beginning as the micro potential was plain to see and simple to understand. As more and more players pick one race (and new players try to emulate them) the situation steamrolls and you suddenly have a serious over-representation. Since those players now learn from one-another their understanding of race and changing meta-game will mean they are much stronger in terms of creativity and adaptation to changes in balance and meta-game. This simply didn't catch in the foreign scene as the micro was seen as difficult and no local heroes like Boxer/Nada would promote terran as their race of choice.
And this should not be looked at as if it is somehow a Korean terran specific phenomenon. We may soon see protoss grow very numerous in Korea and zergs elsewhere. If such long term trends become entrenched nothing good will come of it. Especially since I doubt Blizzard cares enough to react properly.
My personal high master opinion is that terran has a potential to be the stongest race, but in order to play it in the strongest manner you require a lot more multi tasking and multi prong agression, because you want to avoid having dead ball versus dead ball fights in both tvz and tvp and foreign terrans are just not able to multi task as good as koreans can. I think perfectly executed terran play would destroy perfectly executed protoss or zerg play, but perfectly executing a terran play is nearly impossible althrough it's bound to happen in a few years. oh yeah flash yeah
I'm just gonna stick in my head here and say that the avarage korean Terran player just know how to play aggressive. Most of them played Brood War and take a matchup like TvZ. They play out pretty similar in both games and a good Terran from BW would be in your fucking face and force multitasking out of you (which take alot of multitasking from the Terran aswell) and keep up with the BW macro and unit control at the same time. If you can do that you can do it in sc2 aswell and by just playing alot of sc2 you get the grasp of how and when you are gonna be aggressive and put your mechanics to use in all the matchups because that play style fit into all of them in sc2. This is something MANY foreign T's just don't get.
TLDR: Foreign Terrans are just to passive and bad mechanically.
I do think that there are just more Terran players available in Korea who are training with better opponents than we or NA do. In addition I also believe their ladder kinda makes them optimize builds quicker while maintaining the solid play. I certainly do NOT think, that it is because Terran needs more multi tasking than the other races, this may be right in certain circumstances, but all in all I disagree. Especially after seeing Leenock playing OH SO GOOD with MUTA LING BANE(burrowed ones) versus theSTC. That was some brilliant showing of multi tasking ability by him. Who missed it, should definately watch it as it was super entertaining.
TL;DR: It's not balance wise or due to race advantages but due to the environment Koreans are playing.
Terran has a much higher learning curve than toss and zerg. That's why we always see 100000s of foreign toss and zerg doing well and basically no foreign Terrans.
They try more, they think more, they're more innovavitive and they have the APM to execute said strats. You can't just spam games and expect to get results, you really have to put a lot thought into it. And I think they do that a lot more efficiently.
Terran is the most verstile race plain and simple. The race has a lot more viable options than any other race. You can try and be creative with protoss, but they're balance limitations, HTs and Colossus are where you're going to see most of your success. And zerg is pretty straight forward IMO.
I don't know if you can avoid a balance poke in this kinda of discussion. I think Terran just offers a lot more than any other race in terms of possiblities added to the high skill set Koreans have, they're just better.
On August 27 2012 23:07 Syntaxs wrote: I do think that there are just more Terran players available in Korea who are training with better opponents than we or NA do. In addition I also believe their ladder kinda makes them optimize builds quicker while maintaining the solid play. I certainly do NOT think, that it is because Terran needs more multi tasking than the other races, this may be right in certain circumstances, but all in all I disagree. Especially after seeing Leenock playing OH SO GOOD with MUTA LING BANE(burrowed ones) versus theSTC. That was some brilliant showing of multi tasking ability by him. Who missed it, should definately watch it as it was super entertaining.
TL;DR: It's not balance wise or due to race advantages but due to the environment Koreans are playing.
The thing is that we rarely see zerg peaple playing like this when they feel confortable in game. When some one is in danger he will be the best ''bitch" in game to regain advantage in.
Terran is the race that rewards all-in play and punishes long macro games. 1) strong 1 tier units but lacks good late game options 2) production facilities do not allow switching of playstyle. You just pick a gameplan and stick with it. Some adjustments are possible but they take long to kick in.
Good terran play is about timing. Koreans are much better at understanding those.
Now do the EXACT same thing for the korean ladder.
On Europe you have the empire terrans putting pretty epic ladder game numbers in. On korea there are so much more people doing that. If you have so many people doing that at the top level you're going to get much better players
Edit: For quick reference, there are 9 people on the korean grandmaster ladder with under 100 "wins" On the eu ladder there are 17 people with under 100 wins. On the americas ladder there are with 38 people less then 100 wins this season.
The thing is that we rarely see zerg peaple playing like this when they feel confortable in game. When some one is in danger he will be the best ''bitch" in game to regain advantage in.
Thats true indeed, but the game still showed how intensive the other races can be so this is in my eyes no arguement anymore. I am just waiting for Moon making his appearence adding the 4th race just like in Wacraft 3. It's the brilliance Koreans work with, while EU and NA sticks to a style everyone already knows the answeres against.
One thing I think about Korean vs F things like this are all about timings too. With terran especially, no matter how ahead you are in the game, you can you still lose if you dont execute well. And advantages you gain become much weaker over time, so hitting a followup timing can exponentially increase your chances of winning. This is A LOT easier to do as zerg because of the way production works or with Protoss because of warp gate/chrono/aoe. Terran has to plan timings out pretty carefully or make that decision more in advance because they wont have the production to perform said attack, or some kind of tech gets out and can completely negate said attack regardless of numbers difference. Koreans RARELY miss opportunities like that, and adapt on the fly. They know when they kill this much stuff early on, they can do this attack at this time and win the game 100%. I don't see a lot of foreign players play like this, and that is all across the board not just Terran players.
On August 27 2012 22:58 Gosi wrote: I'm just gonna stick in my head here and say that the avarage korean Terran player just know how to play aggressive. Most of them played Brood War and take a matchup like TvZ. They play out pretty similar in both games and a good Terran from BW would be in your fucking face and force multitasking out of you (which take alot of multitasking from the Terran aswell) and keep up with the BW macro and unit control at the same time. If you can do that you can do it in sc2 aswell and by just playing alot of sc2 you get the grasp of how and when you are gonna be aggressive and put your mechanics to use in all the matchups because that play style fit into all of them in sc2. This is something MANY foreign T's just don't get.
TLDR: Foreign Terrans are just to passive and bad mechanically.
I think this sums up Korean players across the board. If you listen to interviews from MLG, most of the stories about the Koreans involved them breaking out some sort of super agressive cheese. Koreans are very aware that bringing the fear of a cheese or an all-in makes players think twice about greed.
If you compair this to the NA ladder(the only one I have personal experience on), the majority of players default to a macro build, trying for a maxed armys. But while Koreans fearlessly go through the GSL on brutal two base all-ins, we mock them for their lack of talent. But yet, every time they show up for an MLG, they mop the floor with every player we place in front of them.
I have played all 3 races at a master level. I think I can safely say, macroing as Terran takes more time. Zerg can build ovi's without even looking at their base, and toss needs only a single probe. I would say this alone means Terran takes around 10x as long as zerg and maybe 1.5x as long as Toss to create more supply.
Terran needs to LIft/Land and make units out of 4 structures, whilst Zerg needs 1 and protoss needs "usually" only 3, sometimes 4.
Missing macro is very bad for Terran and Protoss, whilst for Zerg it is more forgiving.
Zerg needs to create tumors and hit Inject, which is much more important than scans, and hugely more important than chorno.
Overall, I think Terran mechanincs take the most time, and their units take a lot of babysitting, namely tanks. Since it is generally accepted that Koreans can do more actions in the same amount of time, they become much stronger than foreingers while playing terran because there is a greater number of important things to do.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
You are doing something very wrong. When i started playing SCII I had no previous RTS experience and I was placed in plat after I won 4/5 placement matches and went to diamond in my second season at about 300 matches played aka about 130 hours of SCII alltogether. I basically watched streams 5x more then actually played and I practiced builds versus A.I. and I had a few like 3 builds made for each match ups althrough i admit 6/9 builds were 2 base all-ins. So step up your game son.
Terran is the most developed race in WoL and the race that most closely ties mechanics to success. Not that the other races don't require good mechanics but Korean level mechanics pay higher dividends to Terran than Zerg or Protoss. That high benchmark just isn't achieved outside of Korea so most foreigners play Zerg/Toss instead which allow them to succeed.
The thing is that we rarely see zerg peaple playing like this when they feel confortable in game. When some one is in danger he will be the best ''bitch" in game to regain advantage in.
Thats true indeed, but the game still showed how intensive the other races can be so this is in my eyes no arguement anymore. I am just waiting for Moon making his appearence adding the 4th race just like in Wacraft 3. It's the brilliance Koreans work with, while EU and NA sticks to a style everyone already knows the answeres against.
I completly agree with you but in a normal game(50 50) zerg is not required to make it to win.
And for Moon, i don't think he will do like he did in WC3 because when i compare him to the Kespa level that just switch few time ago he is not as good.
Well seems to me if there's more cheese on KR, then on average Koreans are going to be better than others because defending good cheese requires really good mechanics. You can't miss pylons, you have to change your build order, and you have to predict what the opponent can follow up with while at the same time noticing if he is still committed or has throttled back on the pressure to get back in the game. Imagine doing all of this all the time; a normal game might seem a lot slower.
On August 27 2012 00:53 Kontys wrote: That is to say, you need to have a very strict structure to your multitasking as Terran, and just playing the game won't get you there. The macro cycle concept has not been popularised outside of KR I believe.
I feel like it has something do with the fact that Korean's most famous players are mostly terrans. That's why the players who become really dedicated decide to pick up terran at some point.
Koreans look at and understand the game at a different level than foreigners. Just look at the multiple threads we had here complaining about Random and how many people seemed to agree with them. Many foreigners, even masters and up don't really know much about the game, they watch pro streams, copy openers and work on stuff like not being supply blocked and making workers constantly. Well what happens when you get on KR server and someone does a build you've never seen before? You've never seen your pro streamer deal with this and this Korean has mechanics that rape yours. Koreans understand that the game goes much beyond build orders. Foreigners want to be able to copy pros and complain whenever someone uses something that not "standard" or something they deem "suboptimal". Instead of seeing that maybe your build is only a small fraction of the equation, foreigners chalk the loss up to their opponent just not playing "standard". Forget the fact that the metagame is constantly shifting and something that standard today might not be 2 months from now.
Foreigners love to creat this dichotomy of Cheese and Macro, you either cheese or you macro. While Koreans fully understand that you can open with Cheese and transition into Macro, it all depends on how the game plays out.
I believe that Koreans are better because they band together to come up with "wonky" builds, help each other out and practice right, meaning that they don't just grind games, they focus on their weakness not to see how many games they can win. Unlike in NA and EU people worry about their MMR too much.
I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
I mean just open one of the 2 Random threads from the past week and see how many self acclaimed "high master" or "high level" players are complaining about Random on ladder as if their mechanics don't need work, as if their game sense doesn't need work. These players act as if practicing their opening build order is the end all be all of getting better. And any game where they can't safely use their opener is wasted time. If they aren't lying about their skill level then it speaks volumes to why Korean server Diamonds are truly better RTS players than foreign Masters (and this is largely true, may be a bit exaggerated by MaNa but not by that much)
terran is just the hardest race so it requires more skill to reach the tip top pro level, thats why there are a lot of zerg/protoss foreigners but no real good terran foreigner
you admins can ban and warn people for saying this, but unfortunately it is not only the opinion from a lot of creditable people like day9 it is also the most obvios and simple explanation to the OPs question.
I m not saying that protoss / zerg is easy or overpowered or something....each race is freaking difficult to play at a tip top level...
as well i want to mention that 50 % of the posts in this thread are just talking about why are korans better than foreigners at all....that was not what the OP wanted to discuss, cant you guys read and stick to what its all about in this post? He wants to talk about why there are so many korean terrans at the tip top level but not foreigners......
if your answer is, to argue why koreans are overall better then foreigners, you either didn t read the OP or you indirectly confirm what i wrote above about terra beeing the hardest race.
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
I mean just open one of the 2 Random threads from the past week and see how many self acclaimed "high master" or "high level" players are complaining about Random on ladder as if their mechanics don't need work, as if their game sense doesn't need work. These players act as if practicing their opening build order is the end all be all of getting better. And any game where they can't safely use their opener is wasted time. If they aren't lying about their skill level then it speaks volumes to why Korean server Diamonds are truly better RTS players than foreign Masters (and this is largely true, may be a bit exaggerated by MaNa but not by that much)
I agree fully with you, sir. I'm not at all high level (foreign platinum, so korean silver most likely ), but i do feel like there is too much whine compared to effort (in general; there may be specific exceptions) and too much arrogance.
The biggest difference I see, is Korean Terrans play to win. They don't care about playing a macro game, they don't care about playing nice. They are happy to all in or cheese if it gets a win, they will use any unit, composition or build order that brings success. They are much more unpredictable. Because of the aggressive, unpredictable, play of korean terrans you may just outright lose the game if you try to cut corners against them. This has several affects, one of them is that playing macro against them isn't as good, because you can't be as greedy as you want, or you could die.
Korean terrans will exploit any flaw in your play, I think that's part of why they are able to push through so many open brackets at tourneys. Whenever they sense weakness in an opponent the game changes to "let's multitask!" and players who aren't among the best in the world can't deal with the constant multi-pronged aggression and amazing unit control.
When you watch a korean terran play they switch up builds, using a wider variety of openings and styles. They make subtle changes in common builds to hit uncommon timings. They use the meta game to enhance their play, they might make a macro build appear to be aggression. They force opponents to play outside of their comfort zone. Foreign terrans are much more predictable, and when they do all in or play aggressive it seems to be a reaction, or on the fly. Koreans have their aggressive play finely tuned, they practice it just as intensely as foreign terrans practice their macro.
I think if more foreign terrans (and really all races) would go into tournaments with their usual arsenal of macro builds and variations, and also well rehearsed and refined cheeses and all ins, while including deceptive twists in their builds (giving the opponent incomplete or incorrect information when they scout). The gap wouldn't be nearly as big as it is. When you watch a Korean terran cheese, they seem to know when they have an advantage and can back off and play from ahead or if they have not done enough damage, they seem to expect the responses that come from the opponent, that comes from practicing these builds with the same seriousness as a standard build.
Maybe instead of laughing at guys like "bit by bit" foreign terrans should be studying his builds and adding to their arsenal.
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
I mean just open one of the 2 Random threads from the past week and see how many self acclaimed "high master" or "high level" players are complaining about Random on ladder as if their mechanics don't need work, as if their game sense doesn't need work. These players act as if practicing their opening build order is the end all be all of getting better. And any game where they can't safely use their opener is wasted time. If they aren't lying about their skill level then it speaks volumes to why Korean server Diamonds are truly better RTS players than foreign Masters (and this is largely true, may be a bit exaggerated by MaNa but not by that much)
I agree fully with you, sir. I'm not at all high level (foreign platinum, so korean silver most likely ), but i do feel like there is too much whine compared to effort (in general; there may be specific exceptions) and too much arrogance.
"post deleted"
lol, i ret "but i feel like terran is too much whine" instead of there.... sry for that ^^
Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
I mean just open one of the 2 Random threads from the past week and see how many self acclaimed "high master" or "high level" players are complaining about Random on ladder as if their mechanics don't need work, as if their game sense doesn't need work. These players act as if practicing their opening build order is the end all be all of getting better. And any game where they can't safely use their opener is wasted time. If they aren't lying about their skill level then it speaks volumes to why Korean server Diamonds are truly better RTS players than foreign Masters (and this is largely true, may be a bit exaggerated by MaNa but not by that much)
It's the same with the whole "cheese" concept. Foreigner (pros and community) see cheese as a bad thing and low-level tactics. In Korean, it seems to be a legit way to mindgame and put some pressure on your opponent.
On August 28 2012 03:03 Dymond wrote: Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
and how does this have an influence on the fact that there are no good foreign terrans in your opinion?
On August 27 2012 19:36 iky43210 wrote: I notice alot of terran failing at the higher tier, even korean, is that they have a retarded amount of units queued in their production facilities late game. They have an abundant amount of money banked up, or misstep on the production cycle, so they spam a and d on barracks and a ton of resources a wasted whereas zerg and protoss will never have this kind of problems.
Bomber is probably the biggest offender in this regard.
I think this is one reason why taeja has been successful recently. Instead of spam queue up units he make production facilities when his macro failed, such as his last 2-3 cc build mid game. instead of let the resources go wasted in a queue. You never want to have a queue, especially for late game where an extra cc or two will always be more beneficial than having 10-20 units stuck in your 10 rax
I'm not sure if it is even a macro fail. I think it is rather planned that he stores the money for what he needs to do after a combat: --> if you are losing a fight/trading badly, go for more production facilities and try to end it --> if you are winning a fight/trading efficiently, build 2-3 CCs and make sure that your opponent can't catch up again
Terran can't store money like other races, so that's usually a bad thing to do.
you need to make a decision on having that production facilities or CC before those money stores up. we can't ever gain back a production cycle like how zerg or protoss can.
But those two options is still better than having units queued up
On August 28 2012 03:03 Dymond wrote: Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
and how does this have an influence on the fact that there are no good foreign terrans in your opinion?
I don't know specifically about Terrans, but I think that's the reason foreigners have such a hard time competing with Koreans.
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
May I ask what you mean with Nal_rA Old Boy, is it a korean stream/video?
On August 28 2012 03:03 Dymond wrote: Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
and how does this have an influence on the fact that there are no good foreign terrans in your opinion?
I don't know specifically about Terrans, but I think that's the reason foreigners have such a hard time competing with Koreans.
but isn t this thread the thread about why korean terrans are so much better then foreign?
On August 28 2012 03:03 Dymond wrote: Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
and how does this have an influence on the fact that there are no good foreign terrans in your opinion?
I don't know specifically about Terrans, but I think that's the reason foreigners have such a hard time competing with Koreans.
but isn t this thread the thread about why korean terrans are so much better then foreign?
Maybe Terran has a higher skill ceiling than the other races? More potential to do creative things?
On August 28 2012 02:28 Gosi wrote: I wanna just +1 on what SupLilSon wrote. Seriously, just watch something like Nal_rA Old Boy where they talk alot about Starcraft and strategy etc. It's just on a complete different level that you will be amazed. Everything is just so in-depth in ways you never thought about before. And when you live with like 10+ people and coaches and talk and play so in-depth you will be so much better than some guy sitting at home practicing some build order on ladder that he saw from some VOD.
May I ask what you mean with Nal_rA Old Boy, is it a korean stream/video?
On August 28 2012 03:03 Dymond wrote: Ive always thought the difference was that the Koreans have better work ethics than us. They go to school more, don't they? They naturally try harder and learn more efficiently than we are used to.
and how does this have an influence on the fact that there are no good foreign terrans in your opinion?
I don't know specifically about Terrans, but I think that's the reason foreigners have such a hard time competing with Koreans.
but isn t this thread the thread about why korean terrans are so much better then foreign?
Maybe Terran has a higher skill ceiling than the other races? More potential to do creative things?
Hasn't this already been discussed to death? The general consensus was that Koreans 1. Practice in team houses 2. Play more aggressive 3. Better mechanics 4. Better competition
i hate the foreigner mentality that cheese = noob. I've played a few times on the korean ladder and I got my ass cheesed like a mother. start playing more aggessively foreigners and stop thinking that any attack prior to 20 minutes means you're a noob.
I believe it has to do with Koreans actually trying to find new things while NA and euro mostly just do the same thing without changing until a Korean makes it popular. In this way the foreigners will always be behind
On August 28 2012 03:33 rysecake wrote: i hate the foreigner mentality that cheese = noob. I've played a few times on the korean ladder and I got my ass cheesed like a mother. start playing more aggessively foreigners and stop thinking that any attack prior to 20 minutes means you're a noob.
Just an fyi they aren't only good at cheese. Their execution and mechanics are still a lot better then foreign terrans (most). They can do a variety of styles and not just 1.
It's weird to see that people whose opinions are "Terran is harder to play" are getting warned/banned. It's not a controversial topic really. Terran was the hardest race to play in BW. Getting C was really easy as Toss and a little harder as zerg. But to do it as Terran was really, really hard. It's the same concept here.
On August 28 2012 03:33 rysecake wrote: i hate the foreigner mentality that cheese = noob. I've played a few times on the korean ladder and I got my ass cheesed like a mother. start playing more aggessively foreigners and stop thinking that any attack prior to 20 minutes means you're a noob.
Just an fyi they aren't only good at cheese. Their execution and mechanics are still a lot better then foreign terrans (most). They can do a variety of styles and not just 1.
You're abolutely right. I just hate the fact that foreigners look down upon aggression so much.
Korean Terran's have the ability to use their wide variety of harassing tools as well as macro to high level behind the harass. They are really just super good and must push themselves real hard to do what they do, respect. Its like when I watch Korean's occasionally on stream or in tournie they are amazing, but especially the Terran's.
When I watch non-koreans play or even Korean Zerg/Toss and feel like a lot of what they do could be done by a lot of people with real hard work, but some of the Korean Terran's you watch and just think wow.
On August 28 2012 04:02 Swift118 wrote: Korean Terran's have the ability to use their wide variety of harassing tools as well as macro to high level behind the harass. They are really just super good and must push themselves real hard to do what they do, respect. Its like when I watch Korean's occasionally on stream or in tournie they are amazing, but especially the Terran's.
When I watch non-koreans play or even Korean Zerg/Toss and feel like a lot of what they do could be done by a lot of people with real hard work, but some of the Korean Terran's you watch and just think wow.
I agree except there are a few toss's like hero, and genius that have wow'd me at times. They do some crazy builds using prism harass while controlling blink stalkers in another battle. Stephano always impresses me with how well he can predict his opponents play, I watch him in tourneys and it's like there's no fog of war.
On August 28 2012 01:32 Aunvilgod wrote: Strelok once made a thread about this and asked what the korean terrans did differently. Even the Pros don´t know.
They dont make a thread like these and they minimize their whining time and turn it into practice time.
The thing is that we rarely see zerg peaple playing like this when they feel confortable in game. When some one is in danger he will be the best ''bitch" in game to regain advantage in.
Thats true indeed, but the game still showed how intensive the other races can be so this is in my eyes no arguement anymore. I am just waiting for Moon making his appearence adding the 4th race just like in Wacraft 3. It's the brilliance Koreans work with, while EU and NA sticks to a style everyone already knows the answeres against.
Moon did play sc2 extensively but it didnt go as fans expected.
I'm master league in KR and NA and I find the Korean Terrans do a number of things that make them much scarier:
- They don't always fast expand directly at their natural. When I scout with my overlord and don't see an expansion down I start going into anxiety mode, dropping spines and delaying tech. Then the fully completed OC drops into the natural, losing only a few seconds compared to if the Terran had built it right at the natural. And the other half the time they're actually doing a risky one-base rush.
- They know what sucks about Zerg and abuse the hell out of it. Zerg can't shoot up, so TvZ early game is all about using medivacs and banshees to mess up the Zerg economy. Zerg needs to see to survive, so preventing creep spread and sniping overlords kills Zerg's chances of survival. Zerg has no ranged units, so Shakuras Plateau and Antiga Shipyard are basically auto-wins for any Terran willing to exploit the cliffs. Zerg falls hard to unexpected tech, so showing up at Zerg's natural with 16 hellions (after preventing any sort of Zerg scouting) is an instant win for a zerg with bad sim city and no roaches. Zerg can't kill units being healed by medivacs, and they definitely can't kill marines in mineral lines, so the game for a lot of Koreans is to just get to those sweet spots where marines are invulnerable.
- Korean Terrans play very risky with their medivac drops. They lose them constantly but keep doing them because they know it just takes one good drop to end the game. Once those marines are sandwiched in the minerals they can't be killed. They also do multi-pronged drops while clearing creep with their main army.
- They never. leave. games. Shoot me now.
- As one mega bio/tank push is being swarmed the second is on the way. Day9 said Terrans generally wait 2 minutes between marine tank pushes. Not Korean Terrans. I have lost games because I literally did not have 20 seconds to morph banelings during 3 solid minutes of a constant stream of units. Ahead, behind, Korean do NOT care. They will keep attacking until someone dies.
- Koreans tend to trade a bigger economy for constant aggression. They tend to take their third very late and their fourth even later, if ever.
All in all the best way to describe the difference between Koreans and foreigners is by describing each's idea of a perfect game. To a foreign Terran the perfect game is getting away with taking a ridiculously greedy third. To a Korean Terran it's winning in the first 6 minutes. Zergs aren't scared of greedy Terrans, but they're terrified of risky rushes.
Well guys lets not forget there are a ton of new Korean players from Kespa who just joined SC2 ladder and are trying new weird stuff... Korean diamond just means a lot more than other servers, they got so much talent over there... Its like diamond in KR = top 1% of world High masters and masters KR = GM.
Maybe because of the massive popularity of BW, which meant that Koreans have on average better mechanics, which is most beneficial for Terran? (NOT saying Terran's harder than P/Z or any of that nonsense, just Terran often relies heavily on MMM which is extremely micro focused).
On August 28 2012 03:33 rysecake wrote: i hate the foreigner mentality that cheese = noob. I've played a few times on the korean ladder and I got my ass cheesed like a mother. start playing more aggessively foreigners and stop thinking that any attack prior to 20 minutes means you're a noob.
Just an fyi they aren't only good at cheese. Their execution and mechanics are still a lot better then foreign terrans (most). They can do a variety of styles and not just 1.
didnt he make the same point exactly? that one of the reasons koreans are better is because they use a variety of playstyles? He never said they just cheese.
On August 28 2012 04:23 _Search_ wrote: I'm master league in KR and NA and I find the Korean Terrans do a number of things that make them much scarier:
- They don't always fast expand directly at their natural. When I scout with my overlord and don't see an expansion down I start going into anxiety mode, dropping spines and delaying tech.
Then just drone scout. I hardly see what kind of Korean specificity lies in this aspect. Some players like to hide, some don't care, some always wall, some never.
On August 28 2012 04:23 _Search_ wrote: Zerg falls hard to unexpected tech, so showing up at Zerg's natural with 16 hellions (after preventing any sort of Zerg scouting) is an instant win for a zerg with bad sim city and no roaches.
Which is precisely impossible if you go for 2 fact hellions (with BFH or not) but whatever. Any Terran can win against a Zerg not bothering to scout and walling, doesn't take a Korean to exploit this kind of heavy mistake.
On August 28 2012 04:23 _Search_ wrote: All in all the best way to describe the difference between Koreans and foreigners is by describing each's idea of a perfect game. To a foreign Terran the perfect game is getting away with taking a ridiculously greedy third. To a Korean Terran it's winning in the first 6 minutes.
Then why do we see so many 1 rax FE → Hellions/Banshees → fast third? Shouldn't they 2 rax every game if their main goal was really winning in early game?...
Being as you study alongside your SC2 career what is your perspective on how much practice is needed to be competitive against the world's best players? Would you be better if you had the practice schedule of some of the Koreans? Is it necessary?
I wouldn't be better if I had more time, because I simply wouldn't feel like playing more than I do now. Koreans for sure play more than almost everybody else, there are a few hard working exceptions in foreign scene, but in general Koreans are playing more and nobody can deny that. If you want to keep your skill level, probably two hours a day is enough, but if you want to keep improving you probably need more. I think for Zerg it's not a big difference to play on the Korean or European/North American ladder, because we have only to work out safe builds vs. everything, and you can do it pretty much in every game. On the other hand, for Protoss or Terran it would be more beneficial to train in Korea.
Being as you study alongside your SC2 career what is your perspective on how much practice is needed to be competitive against the world's best players? Would you be better if you had the practice schedule of some of the Koreans? Is it necessary?
I wouldn't be better if I had more time, because I simply wouldn't feel like playing more than I do now. Koreans for sure play more than almost everybody else, there are a few hard working exceptions in foreign scene, but in general Koreans are playing more and nobody can deny that. If you want to keep your skill level, probably two hours a day is enough, but if you want to keep improving you probably need more. I think for Zerg it's not a big difference to play on the Korean or European/North American ladder, because we have only to work out safe builds vs. everything, and you can do it pretty much in every game. On the other hand, for Protoss or Terran it would be more beneficial to train in Korea.
If a new build is developed by a Korean that kills in the first 15 minutes, it's called a timing and everybody picks up on it and perfects it.
If a new build is developed by a US masters player that kills in the first 15 minutes, it's seen as a bad way to play and the higher level players ignore it or only concentrate on a counter build and scouting the aggressive build.
Truly, it reminds me of the Street Fighter 2 mindset I was exposed to back in the day. There were so many places that considered throwing cheesey. Of course that eliminates half of the game and encourages strategies that may or may not work against players that know how to play well and also throw.
Same can be said of StarCraft 2. It seems like at least in the US culture... for the most part Teamliquid, casters, and many US/NA players in the public eye encourage players to hate 4 gates, hate aggression, hate baneling busts, hate bio, and only think about long defensive games. I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my meaning. And sometimes the only aggressive players left in the US are the people with the worst attitude that nobody wants to be associated with.
Luckily in Korea, they know better. Macro is important, so is micro. Long games are fine, but short aggressive games are just as fine... and long aggressive games are really fine.
I've got one more. How many of you stay in the game when you know you are behind and have a small chance to win? This is probably one of the best times to learn how to play better. Better micro. Better harassment. Better feints. Better cost efficiency.
If you can only win when you have a huge economic/production advantage, then chances are you are missing out on half of the game.
On August 27 2012 11:35 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: The difference between KR and EU/NA is aggression, Koreans just get this itch to go kill you, and have crazy good all-ins
Dont lie to yourself...allins or no allins.. koreans are just better its simple..
most pro players play with no build and its usually all improvised after the first 5 minutes based upon their information at the time.
even the stephano style 12minute roach max wasnt really a build if you want to call it that, instead it was a playstyle where stephano had a goal in mind and macro'ed towards that goal but he would change his plans if he scouted something that required a reaction, so in the end its not really a "build" as much as it is "reactionary playstyle with high game understanding"
Sure theirs certain "builds" a zerg might do like 15hatch 4queens whatever but usually everything after the first 5 minutes is not part of a "build" they decided before the game started, instead things done after the first 5minutes are decisions that were made after the game started which means it can no longer be considered a build, but instead its strategy/reaction/game-understanding"
but im just talking about all progamers in general. just was annoyed at some people in this thread talking about how the korean terrans have "much better builds that come from superior game understanding etc".... i think thats wrong. i think "builds" are something that most good players throw away as they become better and after thats its almost all reactionary.
instead, korean terrans dont have "much better builds that come from superior game understanding etc"... no, korean terrans have ""much better playing styles that come from superior game understanding etc"
but why do korean terrans have that compared to foreign terrans, while korean zergs/tosses do not seem to have that compared to foreign zergs/tosses? it certainly seems like this is the case. but why?
probably like someone said earlier in this thread, this is a "terran is harder to play" thread in disguise. However I believe that probably is 100% the reason. So yeah, I guess this is a "terran is harder ot play" thread
but I think the word "harder" is the wrong word. Instead I think terran as a race just has more playstyle depth than the other 2 races. This means players in diamond KR who are terran naturally had to understand much more about the game than zergs/tosses in diamond KR. This means naturally every terran you face in diamond KR is likely to be much more scary than zergs/tosses in diamond KR because they just understand more about the game by the nature of the terran race and how it has so much versatility in playstyle so a player needing to understand more options means he understands more about the game
ive seen DRG and MKP and Destinys stream and honestly DRG/MKP dont play much faster than destiny. Some might spam more for more APM, but the rate at which they switch screen positions and control army and macro units and make buildings seems to be fairly even. In my opinion the top pros generally have similar mechanics and its their skill/game understanding that causes them to win.
On August 27 2012 11:35 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: The difference between KR and EU/NA is aggression, Koreans just get this itch to go kill you, and have crazy good all-ins
Dont lie to yourself...allins or no allins.. koreans are just better its simple..
I don't think you understand what he meant. He didn't just say all ins, he also said that they were really aggressive. If you watch a Korean TvT you will see that they are constantly trying to get position on each other, or take out one of their opponents bases. Whereas if you watch a foreign TvT they will mainly focus everything in one place, instead of splitting up their army and being properly aggressive.
We let the koreans innovate and dictate the meta game too much imo. Therefor they will always be ahead, since we mimick exactly what they have sucess with. Also.. they train a lot more lol.
On August 28 2012 04:23 _Search_ wrote: I'm master league in KR and NA and I find the Korean Terrans do a number of things that make them much scarier:
- They don't always fast expand directly at their natural. When I scout with my overlord and don't see an expansion down I start going into anxiety mode, dropping spines and delaying tech. Then the fully completed OC drops into the natural, losing only a few seconds compared to if the Terran had built it right at the natural. And the other half the time they're actually doing a risky one-base rush.
- They know what sucks about Zerg and abuse the hell out of it. Zerg can't shoot up, so TvZ early game is all about using medivacs and banshees to mess up the Zerg economy. Zerg needs to see to survive, so preventing creep spread and sniping overlords kills Zerg's chances of survival. Zerg has no ranged units, so Shakuras Plateau and Antiga Shipyard are basically auto-wins for any Terran willing to exploit the cliffs. Zerg falls hard to unexpected tech, so showing up at Zerg's natural with 16 hellions (after preventing any sort of Zerg scouting) is an instant win for a zerg with bad sim city and no roaches. Zerg can't kill units being healed by medivacs, and they definitely can't kill marines in mineral lines, so the game for a lot of Koreans is to just get to those sweet spots where marines are invulnerable.
- Korean Terrans play very risky with their medivac drops. They lose them constantly but keep doing them because they know it just takes one good drop to end the game. Once those marines are sandwiched in the minerals they can't be killed. They also do multi-pronged drops while clearing creep with their main army.
- They never. leave. games. Shoot me now.
- As one mega bio/tank push is being swarmed the second is on the way. Day9 said Terrans generally wait 2 minutes between marine tank pushes. Not Korean Terrans. I have lost games because I literally did not have 20 seconds to morph banelings during 3 solid minutes of a constant stream of units. Ahead, behind, Korean do NOT care. They will keep attacking until someone dies.
- Koreans tend to trade a bigger economy for constant aggression. They tend to take their third very late and their fourth even later, if ever.
All in all the best way to describe the difference between Koreans and foreigners is by describing each's idea of a perfect game. To a foreign Terran the perfect game is getting away with taking a ridiculously greedy third. To a Korean Terran it's winning in the first 6 minutes. Zergs aren't scared of greedy Terrans, but they're terrified of risky rushes.
I have always thought being unpredictable was terrans best weapon. Denying scouting and knowing the weakness of the other races has always been a great weapon for terrans. Bringing the fear of a stupid all in, hidden base or horrible, weirdly timed drop is everything that a dread against a terran. One rax - FE is not. If you can't know someone is going to all in, you can't play greedy.
On a side note, what side of Canada are you on? I want a KR account, but I am on the east coast and do not want to do if it my lag is terrible. My connection to the rest of the world is very good.
Zerg is the only race that can produce an attack at any time in the game and it not be an all in. The swarm of units that are produced are insane. not only that 200 health floating supply depots with jet packs scout anything at any given point with a simple 100 mineral trade. Also a simple 150 mineral only range unit that has much health can deny 3 hellions per 1 queen. thats 300 minerals < 150 minerals. Zerg is just more powerful from the bottom to the top. You can go as far down as the drones. An unmicro'd marine < 2 drones in battle. (test it out if you dont believe me, and when i say unmicro'd i mean a very badly micro'd 1 marine (but still tried)). All of these are just the brink of the races in game advantages. Cloud kingdom ovie over the natural see's everything. The death ball army....The best stop unit in the game (infestor) and not to mention brood lords. And the last thing.....THE EASIEST mechanically demanding race in the game hands down.
I am not crying op. Im saying, hm maybe i should have practiced with zerg from the start of the game lol. But w/e i still love wings and practice with terran no matter what but i still like playing the game. Even though it takes more work for me.
The key to any new strategy is to develope new openings and transitions.
Strategy's are ultimately just planned transitions from openings, to early game to mid to late. By changing the common timings that we know, new units and playstyles things become more effective at certain moments in the game.
When i was a zerg in zvz i used to hatch first with a drone scout, then delay my pool for as long as possible and throw down a banenest as soon as my 50 gas got mined. i'd sacrifice some econ for my scout but i'd gain the chance of more because i knew exactly what they where doing, and would often 15 hatch, 18 pool 17 gas, which is normally suicidal... yet because i'd get a bane nest i'd be perfectly safe to any aggression but i wouldnt be able to be aggressive because i didnt have speed. Now the timings for the rest of the game are different now.
another thing i like to do as terran these days is 14 CC, resume scv production, then gas then rax vs zerg, using my CC as part of my wall off. I'd rush for seige mode and i'd be safe against any all in and i'd expand safely, then get another CC before i take my gas at the nat and then i'd go up to 4fac (2 tech 2 reactor) and double upgrades and transition into thors. I'd eventually take my third base, while pushing with about 15 marines, 20 or so BFH with +2+2, 6 tanks and a heap of thors, at around 160 supply at 14 mins.
From what I can tell of the difference between Korean and Foreign playstyles, the general theme is some sort of aggression is always present on both sides in Korea. We do see some greedy macro play in tournaments, but it's usually based on some metagame choice. In the west, we see more defensive styles from all races.
In my opinion, this would explain why Terrans do so poorly outside of Korea, and why foreigners that aren't Terran do really well. Zerg and Protoss have good lategame options that can easily win the game with proper engagement decisions. Banelings, HTs, Colossus, and Infestors can turn a small misstep into a lost game, so getting to that point is top priority for foreigners. As Terran, your lategame options either boil down to tons of uneven trades (because you can never win a battle even close to unscathed), or tearing your opponent apart with drops and pressure. This is why Korean Terrans still win, because they are just so much faster than their foreign opponents that play "safe" styles in the early game.
On August 28 2012 04:23 _Search_ wrote: I'm master league in KR and NA and I find the Korean Terrans do a number of things that make them much scarier:
- They don't always fast expand directly at their natural. When I scout with my overlord and don't see an expansion down I start going into anxiety mode, dropping spines and delaying tech. Then the fully completed OC drops into the natural, losing only a few seconds compared to if the Terran had built it right at the natural. And the other half the time they're actually doing a risky one-base rush.
- They know what sucks about Zerg and abuse the hell out of it. Zerg can't shoot up, so TvZ early game is all about using medivacs and banshees to mess up the Zerg economy. Zerg needs to see to survive, so preventing creep spread and sniping overlords kills Zerg's chances of survival. Zerg has no ranged units, so Shakuras Plateau and Antiga Shipyard are basically auto-wins for any Terran willing to exploit the cliffs. Zerg falls hard to unexpected tech, so showing up at Zerg's natural with 16 hellions (after preventing any sort of Zerg scouting) is an instant win for a zerg with bad sim city and no roaches. Zerg can't kill units being healed by medivacs, and they definitely can't kill marines in mineral lines, so the game for a lot of Koreans is to just get to those sweet spots where marines are invulnerable.
- Korean Terrans play very risky with their medivac drops. They lose them constantly but keep doing them because they know it just takes one good drop to end the game. Once those marines are sandwiched in the minerals they can't be killed. They also do multi-pronged drops while clearing creep with their main army.
- They never. leave. games. Shoot me now.
- As one mega bio/tank push is being swarmed the second is on the way. Day9 said Terrans generally wait 2 minutes between marine tank pushes. Not Korean Terrans. I have lost games because I literally did not have 20 seconds to morph banelings during 3 solid minutes of a constant stream of units. Ahead, behind, Korean do NOT care. They will keep attacking until someone dies.
- Koreans tend to trade a bigger economy for constant aggression. They tend to take their third very late and their fourth even later, if ever.
All in all the best way to describe the difference between Koreans and foreigners is by describing each's idea of a perfect game. To a foreign Terran the perfect game is getting away with taking a ridiculously greedy third. To a Korean Terran it's winning in the first 6 minutes. Zergs aren't scared of greedy Terrans, but they're terrified of risky rushes.
I have always thought being unpredictable was terrans best weapon. Denying scouting and knowing the weakness of the other races has always been a great weapon for terrans. Bringing the fear of a stupid all in, hidden base or horrible, weirdly timed drop is everything that a dread against a terran. One rax - FE is not. If you can't know someone is going to all in, you can't play greedy.
On a side note, what side of Canada are you on? I want a KR account, but I am on the east coast and do not want to do if it my lag is terrible. My connection to the rest of the world is very good.
I'm in Japan, and I still play on the NA server but get awful lag.
I just played against a Diamond Terran on KR who opened fast factory/starport on Tal Darim and had 2 hellions in my mineral line before I could even see if he had expanded or not. Then he had two full medivacs of bio at my natural before ling speed was done. I still beat him, because KR macro is awful, and his aggression was super risky (they tend to attack with far too small a force, both Terrans and Protosses), but those types of openings can and will win games straight-up.
OFC NA Players sux because All NA people soo DUMB :D hehheeh more MC Donalds food u must to eat. EU simple OWN NA, Korean terran dont cry like all EU players - they have good build and good macro and then use imba terran mech.
On August 27 2012 00:16 ( bush wrote: Terran is a harder race, not everyone can play at a good level. Toss and Zerg do not need skill at all, they just need knowledge and everything is fine, thats why you dont see big difference betwen foreigners and koreans.
On August 27 2012 00:51 Kontys wrote: Speaking from personal experience Terran mechanics are way way way more complicated than Protoss (no mechanics required) or Zerg (hit injects). The whole concept of having a macro cycle seems to evade Terrans.
On August 27 2012 02:07 ArcticRaven wrote: Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap.
On August 27 2012 03:24 decaf wrote: Koreans practice much more than foreigners. Terran needs much more practice than zerg and protoss.
There's your answer.
These quotes have only been taken from the first two pages. I find it ridiculous how many terran-fans there are that either falsely but definitely without evidence, claim strong things about both terran as other races. They claim terran has the highest skill ceiling, requires the most mechanics, that zerg/protoss are a much easier race to play and require less practice et cetera.
If you already say such things, please be a man and back up your statement as to why you think what you said is true. The main difference between protoss/zerg and Terran is that terran has several different buildings, with different add-ons. That is macro wise, so they have to tab between buildings more to get the same amount of units out.
But then again zerg has to multi-rally their bases, so that when they are being assaulted, their reinforcements from a stray hatchery don't straight run into the enemy.
Zerg has injects, terran has mules, protoss has chronoboost.
It would seem rather awkward that a terran would be able to be so much better, purely because of "better mechanics", compared to the other two races.
On August 28 2012 06:02 Blacklizard wrote: If a new build is developed by a Korean that kills in the first 15 minutes, it's called a timing and everybody picks up on it and perfects it.
If a new build is developed by a US masters player that kills in the first 15 minutes, it's seen as a bad way to play and the higher level players ignore it or only concentrate on a counter build and scouting the aggressive build.
Truly, it reminds me of the Street Fighter 2 mindset I was exposed to back in the day. There were so many places that considered throwing cheesey. Of course that eliminates half of the game and encourages strategies that may or may not work against players that know how to play well and also throw.
Same can be said of StarCraft 2. It seems like at least in the US culture... for the most part Teamliquid, casters, and many US/NA players in the public eye encourage players to hate 4 gates, hate aggression, hate baneling busts, hate bio, and only think about long defensive games. I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my meaning. And sometimes the only aggressive players left in the US are the people with the worst attitude that nobody wants to be associated with.
Luckily in Korea, they know better. Macro is important, so is micro. Long games are fine, but short aggressive games are just as fine... and long aggressive games are really fine.
I doubt this is the entire reason, but I feel like this is a really good point.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
He might be playing on the KR server, who knows? KR Mid-Dia is like High Masters anywhere else, right?
diamond on KR is not like high masters on NA/EU/SEA. Diamond on KR is like diamond on NA. High masters on NA is like GM on NA/EU, and mid masters on KR is like high masters on other servers. Low masters and below is about the same everywhere.
You could not be more wrong, diamond on KOR (Say mid-high diamond) is easily a mid masters+ on NA. Top masters on KOR is easily high GM on both EU and NA (Look at MaNa, he is normally like 70% w/l ratio at the top, top of GM on EU) The Low masters players on Korea as as good as High masters on NA.
I think that Terran is the most powerful race in SC2 and at the same time the least forgiving. What I´m saying is that if Terran is played perfectly it should be unbeatable for the other 2 races. To my mind, there´s no skill limit for a Terran player. You can always do more to improve your play as Terran. However, as Protoss or Zerg player I feel like you can reach a limit where you can´t get better anymore because more Skill doesn´t transition into better gameplay. Which leads me to the conclusion that Terran is very fragile race(One bad engagement can easily cost a Terran the game. I feel like P and Z can recover better from bad engagements, especially lategame because of Warpgate/Larva Mechanic)) but the most powerful race in the hands of a player like MVP for example.
You could also describe it with functions. Zerg and Protoss would be root function like f(x)=sqrt(x) and Terran would be a slowly growing function of the class e^x. The x-axis would be gameplay(or how well someone plays) and the y-axis would be skill. While a root function has limiting value, the terran function doesn´t.
What do you guys think about this statement? Is this true or just wrong?
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
Dear god, I would shoot myself if all I could do is plat to diamond playing 8 hours a day for a summer. I play like 5 hours a week maybe for mid masters.
He might be playing on the KR server, who knows? KR Mid-Dia is like High Masters anywhere else, right?
diamond on KR is not like high masters on NA/EU/SEA. Diamond on KR is like diamond on NA. High masters on NA is like GM on NA/EU, and mid masters on KR is like high masters on other servers. Low masters and below is about the same everywhere.
You could not be more wrong, diamond on KOR (Say mid-high diamond) is easily a mid masters+ on NA. Top masters on KOR is easily high GM on both EU and NA (Look at MaNa, he is normally like 70% w/l ratio at the top, top of GM on EU) The Low masters players on Korea as as good as High masters on NA.
Second Mr Bird here. When comparing NA and KR ladders, every KR league is 0.5-1.0 lower then the NA equivalent (ie, 100th NA GM's = highish KR Masters). You seriously cannot compare these two ladders in terms of skill it's not even close. KR diamond level players (assuming it's not a smurf account being ranked up... sigh) can execute a basic build order and timing reasonably well but they start to stumble when the opponent hasn't died yet and they have to do hard things like macro and make decisions. But they do very well up to that point.
I don't understand some of these nonkorean pros. Practice 5-8 games a day?? When I'm trying to take this game seriously I play 20-40 games a day. It's cool that they have talent but it's kinda a shame to be wasting it away. If they don't feel like they need more games than that to compete then there is definitely no reason not to take a university degree in the meantime.
I wonder how much of the improvement in korea is due to playing koreans and how much is just because of actually playing more than next to nothing.
And to stay on topic: This is why I feel that they are on a totally different level. In theory there are way way way more potential nonkorean players, but they are simply willing to put in more of an effort.
On August 27 2012 00:16 ( bush wrote: Terran is a harder race, not everyone can play at a good level. Toss and Zerg do not need skill at all, they just need knowledge and everything is fine, thats why you dont see big difference betwen foreigners and koreans.
On August 27 2012 00:51 Kontys wrote: Speaking from personal experience Terran mechanics are way way way more complicated than Protoss (no mechanics required) or Zerg (hit injects). The whole concept of having a macro cycle seems to evade Terrans.
On August 27 2012 02:07 ArcticRaven wrote: Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap.
On August 27 2012 03:24 decaf wrote: Koreans practice much more than foreigners. Terran needs much more practice than zerg and protoss.
There's your answer.
These quotes have only been taken from the first two pages. I find it ridiculous how many terran-fans there are that either falsely but definitely without evidence, claim strong things about both terran as other races. They claim terran has the highest skill ceiling, requires the most mechanics, that zerg/protoss are a much easier race to play and require less practice et cetera.
If you already say such things, please be a man and back up your statement as to why you think what you said is true. The main difference between protoss/zerg and Terran is that terran has several different buildings, with different add-ons. That is macro wise, so they have to tab between buildings more to get the same amount of units out.
But then again zerg has to multi-rally their bases, so that when they are being assaulted, their reinforcements from a stray hatchery don't straight run into the enemy.
Zerg has injects, terran has mules, protoss has chronoboost.
It would seem rather awkward that a terran would be able to be so much better, purely because of "better mechanics", compared to the other two races.
I love to play all 3 races at my humble plat level, and I can say without a doubt that yes, Terran is more skill requiring than zerg macro-wise.
My main race is Zerg atm, and if it's not Terran it's only because my god am I awful at macroing, when I play Zerg I don't face this problem because I can just have 32 larva waiting for the repop or the tech switch, but when I play Terran I always miss unit cycles because I'm too busy trying to avoid fungals/storm/banelings and when finally I kill the army, I've got 5 rines and 2 marauders left at my base and with them 2k minerals and 1k5 gas, and I play probably 40% of my ladder games as Terran.
I think it's safe to say that Terran is indeed more mechanics heavy than Zerg and maybe Protoss ( I don't play it enough to judge objectively ), maybe not requiring more skill, but definitely more mechanics which not eeryone has ( I don't ! )
On August 27 2012 00:16 ( bush wrote: Terran is a harder race, not everyone can play at a good level. Toss and Zerg do not need skill at all, they just need knowledge and everything is fine, thats why you dont see big difference betwen foreigners and koreans.
On August 27 2012 00:51 Kontys wrote: Speaking from personal experience Terran mechanics are way way way more complicated than Protoss (no mechanics required) or Zerg (hit injects). The whole concept of having a macro cycle seems to evade Terrans.
On August 27 2012 02:07 ArcticRaven wrote: Also, terran has a way higher skill ceiling and rewards skill a lot more ; if you're better at terran than your terran friend, the difference will be a lot more obvious than with a similar protoss or zerg skill gap.
On August 27 2012 03:24 decaf wrote: Koreans practice much more than foreigners. Terran needs much more practice than zerg and protoss.
There's your answer.
These quotes have only been taken from the first two pages. I find it ridiculous how many terran-fans there are that either falsely but definitely without evidence, claim strong things about both terran as other races. They claim terran has the highest skill ceiling, requires the most mechanics, that zerg/protoss are a much easier race to play and require less practice et cetera.
If you already say such things, please be a man and back up your statement as to why you think what you said is true. The main difference between protoss/zerg and Terran is that terran has several different buildings, with different add-ons. That is macro wise, so they have to tab between buildings more to get the same amount of units out.
But then again zerg has to multi-rally their bases, so that when they are being assaulted, their reinforcements from a stray hatchery don't straight run into the enemy.
Zerg has injects, terran has mules, protoss has chronoboost.
It would seem rather awkward that a terran would be able to be so much better, purely because of "better mechanics", compared to the other two races.
I love to play all 3 races at my humble plat level, and I can say without a doubt that yes, Terran is more skill requiring than zerg macro-wise.
My main race is Zerg atm, and if it's not Terran it's only because my god am I awful at macroing, when I play Zerg I don't face this problem because I can just have 32 larva waiting for the repop or the tech switch, but when I play Terran I always miss unit cycles because I'm too busy trying to avoid fungals/storm/banelings and when finally I kill the army, I've got 5 rines and 2 marauders left at my base and with them 2k minerals and 1k5 gas, and I play probably 40% of my ladder games as Terran.
I think it's safe to say that Terran is indeed more mechanics heavy than Zerg and maybe Protoss ( I don't play it enough to judge objectively ), maybe not requiring more skill, but definitely more mechanics which not eeryone has ( I don't ! )
Wow you're really bad at Terran then. After a fight, I almost always have an army waiting to where I point the spawn location, and a pretty significant army, not only "5 rines and 2 marauders left at my base and with them 2k minerals and 1k5 gas". Im not saying your opinion about Terran needing more skill is wrong or right, but the way you described how you macro as Terran is not the race's difficulty level's fault, but your own.
Actually, it is easier (for me at least) to macro as Terran while fighting since I do not need to move my screen when macroing units. For Zerg, I have to go to each hatchery to spawn larva; for Protoss, i have to move to a warp-in location (unless you have a warp prism or nearby pylon).
You could also describe it with functions. Zerg and Protoss would be root function like f(x)=sqrt(x) and Terran would be a slowly growing function of the class e^x. The x-axis would be gameplay(or how well someone plays) and the y-axis would be skill. While a root function has limiting value, the terran function doesn´t.
What do you guys think about this statement? Is this true or just wrong?
You could also describe it with functions. Zerg and Protoss would be root function like f(x)=sqrt(x) and Terran would be a slowly growing function of the class e^x. The x-axis would be gameplay(or how well someone plays) and the y-axis would be skill. While a root function has limiting value, the terran function doesn´t.
What do you guys think about this statement? Is this true or just wrong?
A root function has a limiting value ?
The only way to make it reasonable is considering the derivative. Taking the derivative of e^x is e^x, so getting better exponentially increases your level. The derivative of sqrt(x) goes with 1/sqrt(x), so the additional level per improvement slows down with your level.
You could also describe it with functions. Zerg and Protoss would be root function like f(x)=sqrt(x) and Terran would be a slowly growing function of the class e^x. The x-axis would be gameplay(or how well someone plays) and the y-axis would be skill. While a root function has limiting value, the terran function doesn´t.
What do you guys think about this statement? Is this true or just wrong?
A root function has a limiting value ?
Sorry, what I said was incorrect and wrong. I shouldn´t have made a stupid and dumb mistake like this. Like the guy after you said, I meant to say that the root function grows very slowly for big x-values compared to the e^x function because their derivate.(Which calculates the slope at a certain point x of the original function f(x)) is different((1/sqrt(x)) and e^x) which means that at a certain point of skill, the room for improvement for the Terran player is much bigger compared to Zerg and Protoss.
Another important difference is the type of competition. In EU / NA, you typically have short tournaments that last over a weekend, so it is less of preparing builds for a specific match-up and more of being prepared for whatever is being thrown at you. However, the GSL is more of a preparation thing, where people tailor their builds for the map and the current meta game, so alot more thought is placed into perfecting the timing attack as compared to perfecting their mechanics. That is why players like Professor NesTea do so well in the GSL as compared to his foreign tournament showings.
On August 28 2012 07:24 LuckyMacro wrote: The notion that "they are only better because they cheese" is just so wrong...
Cheese and all-ins breed good game sense and good mechanics. When you're playing long macro games, you don't get punished hard if you fuck up, because you can do something like throw down another couple macro hatches or whatever to get back in it. In a situation involving cheese or an all-in, fuckups are punished with near-instant loss. When players train for long macro games without appropriate fundamentals in executing and defending all manner of cheese and all-in play, they end up training themselves into using weak, sloppy play, because they've never been forced to keep their play clean and crisp. That's why Korea is the best server: because people there don't have the holy grail of macro games, and instead focus on shoring up their basic play before moving into other realms.
On August 27 2012 00:17 Bonneyi wrote: ofcourse its not practice... i mean look at kas's profile.
Me myself have been living like a progammer during the summer :D, i mean 8 hours of playing a day, (from 9-23) with brakes tranings etc etc, and the biggest improvement was from going top plat to going mid diamond :D i mean come on there is something im doing terribly wrong, im justr trying to understand, what is it that we Europeans and Americans do differently.
I like this argumentation. Someone's just too dumb to learn from proper practice hitting a skillcap is a proof that practice is not the reason for being better.
I guess there's something all professionals over all sports are doing fundameltally wrong. You can't deny Koreans practice more AND more focussed than any foreigners. Hence they are better. This is mostly a game of practice. You do need talent, of course, that's why it's still possible to hit a personal skillcap. I wouldn't be a good professional chess player probably, no matter how much I practiced.
Polgár was born on July 23, 1976, in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish family.[3] Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age.[4] "Geniuses are made, not born", was László's thesis.
She is by far the strongest female chess player in history.
All 3 got exceptional skill in chess.
However it's not just about how much you practice, it's about how you practice. Does any foreigner team have a coach in their team?
EPT
