I have been a fan of pro StarCraft for a long time, and currently follow GSL and ProLeauge, however, as a player I've never been able to get past the very basic stages. I can't seem to break through the absolute beginner level.
I'm a professional musician, and teach a lot as well, and have endless exercises, studies, etudes, and so forth which I give to students to help cement fundamental elements of playing music. I very often use these myself, to constantly keep in top form.
I was wondering if there are similarities with gaming/starcraft, and if anybody could offer me some exercises to work through in order to get my playing on track. It probably sounds silly and ridiculous (everybody learns gaming for themselves, right, it's just a game!), but the reason I enjoy spectating eSports so much is because of the parallels I see with creative music, and as such I figure there must be some parallels in the learning to play side as well.
Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is not the correct forum/subforum. I'm even more inexperienced here as I am in-game.
Quite often, people have some sort of 'warm-up' that they do. This is generally to get the fingers and brain moving at the required pace for a normal game, and shares many similarities with things like Hanon exercises and simple etudes. Usually this involves a custom map or arcade game of some kind. Popular ones include micro trainers (for things like Marine splitting, and generally increasing speed), and build order trainers (an excellent one was recently published as 'Benchmarker' on NA and EU).
You can divide your Starcraft play into mechanics and strategy, which are analogous to technique and musicianship, respectively. Mechanics, like technique, are practiced by absolutely rigid repetition. Until the act of constantly constructing workers and depots is muscle memory, you get much less benefit out of your strategy. Strategy, like musicianship, is something that is mutable depending on the game (read: piece of music or ensemble) that you are currently engaged in. This is where the mechanics are allowed to inform and enhance the creative choices you make in your selection of strategies.
My advice if you want to advance, just like learning an instrument, is to spend a not-insignificant portion of time each day with the mechanics (technique). Spend time on arcades/customs making sure that you are ALWAYS building workers, depots, and keeping the money low. There are many excellent guides out there on how to do this. May I recommend Jakatak's YouTube videos (just search for his name on YouTube) as a great and rigorous way to start your pursuit of excellent mechanics.
There is obviously a time-investment question to be asked here. Just as one does not win positions with the Berlin Philharmonic without thousands of hours of practice, one doesn't make it into Master's League without many dedicated hours of practice and immersion in the knowledge of common moves-countermoves that is the metagame. You have to decide what the endpoint goal is. If it's Gold League, awesome. GM? Likewise awesome, but the two have very different expectation levels.
First, the mechanical practice. Tedious, yet required.
Then the ability to read sheets. Over time I began to see structure where I only saw notes before. Similar to the game when I began to see strategy and not only army movement.
I am also a musician. I was able to hold and maintain a diamond level in WoL but at the start of HotS I decided to try and bring my efficient practice from being a musician over into my gaming life. Within two weeks I began beating Masters players and was promoted. What I found was extremely helpful was first practicing away from the game isolating elements. Most specifically I would unplug my keyboard and work on keystrokes for abilities, building units etc. JaKaTaK recommends a hotkey trainer that he links in this video . I have been using this in order to learn TheCore over the past two weeks.
After mastering those basics the next step would be to put everything slowly together on a map vs Very Easy AI or no opponent at all. Just figure out exactly what to do in a no pressure environment while aiming for accuracy. Going extremely slowly is important at first.
Also something I have been experimenting with telling lower level viewers of my stream recently is to focus on three things when trying to improve at the game. 1) Always build workers. (If Zerg, always hit your injects). 2) Keep both minerals and gas under 500. 3) Build a basic unit composition (Sentry blink stalker, roach hydra, Marine marauder medivac.) The idea here is to develop your skills to constantly produce probes without gaps in production. Keep your money low regardless of situation and take focus away from strategical aspects of the game such as build orders, reactions, unit composition crafting etc. By focusing only on macro you develop this aspect of your game so that when you want to start playing build orders you never need to worry about missing probes or floating money because those skills are already in place. As feedback my viewers have been very happy with the results they get on ladder at low levels by practicing this way.
Finally I think it's important to have a theoretical way to practice. IE watching vods, studying the game and discussing strategy with other players. It is important for you to investigate the game yourself and no just copy builds from IMBA builds to secure fast wins on ladder.
Edit: I also made this post around a year ago, it is very outdated in terms of what i believe to be ideal hotkeys configuration etc but there is an ending portion where I discuss learning a bit. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/427329-technique-in-starcraft-a-guide-on-mechanics. Also included in in the bib there are alot of resources that are useful (even though they are extremely old).
Best thing I found, playing as Terran, was Filter's Bronze to Masters guide. It was the same build order every map, every match up. The guide gives you some very specific benchmarks- goals for supply count, workers, army, tech, etc at various points in the game.
Every game I knew at (example only) 4:30 my 2nd CC needed to be started. At 9:30 I was supposed to have +1 attack completed, 50 scvs, 2 medivacs completed.
I would watch my replays to see if I had hit those benchmarks. If I was short on SCVs, then I knew I needed to watch that more closely etc.
Not sure that is the type of thing you're looking for, but thats what I liked best: Establishing universal benchmarks and constantly checking to make sure I was hitting them.
I'll definitely check out the JaKaTaK stuff. How to practice "away from the game" was exactly what I was looking for (scales, etudes, etc.). I haven't really checked out the custom games side of things, but it sounds like that's the answer. Any recommendations for customs to play? I currently play Terran, though am not too attached to it.
There isn't a whole lot out there in terms of do x,y,z everyday and you will improve. That's why I find threads like this really interesting.
Personally, I find typing exercises are the most useful thing you can do to warm up and improve. Good players in sc2 will use most, if not all, of their fingers. Typists aim for speed and accuracy which is the same in sc2. A keyboard mistake in sc2 like unhotkeying your hatcheries as zerg can cause your control groups to be messed up entirely, costing you up to 10 seconds to re-hotkey everything. Typing gives you instant feedback on keyboard accuracy. My favorite site is typeracer http://play.typeracer.com/ for racing. I taught myself to type 9 months ago and at the time I was maxing at 130 apm. These days I type 80wpm and max out at over 200 apm.
On July 09 2014 11:44 moley13 wrote: Thanks for the responses guys. Really helpful
I'll definitely check out the JaKaTaK stuff. How to practice "away from the game" was exactly what I was looking for (scales, etudes, etc.). I haven't really checked out the custom games side of things, but it sounds like that's the answer. Any recommendations for customs to play? I currently play Terran, though am not too attached to it.
Knalle Micro Map (Arcade) is what I use to practice single skills (Marine splitting, Storm dodging, etc.). You can do any race's basic micro techniques, from small groups of one unit on each side up to microing an entire army on the fly versus a Protoss deathball. Really great.
Benchmarker (Custom Games) is what i use to warm up a build. It lets you hit your worker/depot/supply benchmarks while not having you be bothered by an opponent. Another neat feature is that you can perform a build, save it, and in the future, it will let you practice against that saved build order to see if you can tighten it up. Check out the thread on it in the Custom Maps TL section.
If you're looking for finger speed, I recommend either playing piano or doing some typing games like another poster suggested. I believe there's a Hotkey Trainer (or at least there was in WoL) in the Arcade, but it's a bit simple for my tastes. Regarding mouse accuracy, this is why pros are constantly selecting their SCVs at the beginning of the game.
Shit, I just remembered a fantastic resource. Go to day9.tv and search his archives for a Daily on mouse movement and APM. I believe it's 250-something? Anyways, Day9 goes through in detail how he as a professional Starcraft player would warm up his coordination in terms of building things and microing at maximum efficiency.
Tried a few of these out. Benchmarker is pretty awesome! I used the Hotkey Trainer too, and tried out The Core Lite - which worked really well and became familiar quite quickly (I figured I don't have THAT much muscle memory already trained, so might as well try something which is a little more ergonomic). Have been going through FilterSC's method, and it's been really helpful. The approach of isolating out certain elements (while still in a full game) has really helped. APM doubled overnight, too.
Thanks everyone! I'll post back if I find any other useful stuff.
EPT
