On November 21 2015 05:40 Grumbels wrote: There was this anecdote posted on TL which, iirc, was something like: there was a clan with some players that were always silent and hitting the play game button, while others were continuously discussing strategy and watching replays and analyzing and so on. And over time the first group of players would become obviously superior at the game, just because they were actually doing something. I find that story really easy to believe.
I will tell you something, that could be true but depends a lot on the player's talents. A guy who play a lot but have no really good idea of the game or/and can not see their mistakes on replays will not really improve as fast as he could, and will fall behind when changes come because if the things he does work without knowing why, he won't be able to adapt. On the other hand, people who understand a lot of the game and waste more time watching replays could become maybe the best coaches ever, but they will not practice enough to increase their skill ingame, which leads to
1 - Good people playing without knowing exactly why 2 - Good people knowing the game but unable to transfer it to their hands
Both things are important, I prefeer to understand the game instead being good at it, but also few things are good "on paper", so excesively theorycrafting is not good without lot of practice as well.
In a game like StarCraft, it makes sense to make this list of "goals" to get the mechanical skills necessary. The transition from HotS to LotV was hard for me; (I stopped watching streams, and didn't have professional replays) the old build orders and unit compositions obviously would not work, and I could not make anything work. I had to start from the ground up, and that improved my focus. How many times as competitive players have we took the day and said to ourselves "I'll win the next 10 games straight and receive a league promotion, then proceed to hit the Play Now button after a loss just to tell ourselves that we made a mistake that could easily be fixed if you made a slight adjustment? By segmenting each task you can improve your skills as a whole and rather than focusing on a match, you're focused on your own improvement as a player.
On November 21 2015 04:51 -StrifeX- wrote: Grumbel basically what you said i agree with 100%. I feel it's matter of someone wanting to learn than anything else. A person must evaluate themselves and improve off of what they are weak out and focus less on what they might be stronger at during that time...
I should add that I teach guitar and I strongly feel that the parallels between music and starcraft are not that great and that people like destiny or jakatak make a mistake whenever they promote the connection. All pro players in SC2 have become good by playing ladder and just improving their weaknesses like that, while no pro players have come from structured methods like the Staircase. There was this anecdote posted on TL which, iirc, was something like: there was a clan with some players that were always silent and hitting the play game button, while others were continuously discussing strategy and watching replays and analyzing and so on. And over time the first group of players would become obviously superior at the game, just because they were actually doing something. I find that story really easy to believe.
To respond to the nested message, you talk about StarCraft being enjoyed when you make practical decisions in order to get the best possible result. The purpose of the StairCase program is improve players' mechanical skill so that it does not limit their ability to make these practical decisions. Many people are new to the genre or game and will never understand the pace of the game if they just pick the game up and play from the get go, atleast that is how I felt.
To your second comment, think about learning how to play the guitar. For an aspiring guitarist who is learning to play for the first time, which would be easier: hearing a song and trying to mimic the sounds until there is some coherency in his play, or learning notes and chords so that he can learn to play everything song?
On November 21 2015 05:40 Grumbels wrote: There was this anecdote posted on TL which, iirc, was something like: there was a clan with some players that were always silent and hitting the play game button, while others were continuously discussing strategy and watching replays and analyzing and so on. And over time the first group of players would become obviously superior at the game, just because they were actually doing something. I find that story really easy to believe.
I will tell you something, that could be true but depends a lot on the player's talents. A guy who play a lot but have no really good idea of the game or/and can not see their mistakes on replays will not really improve as fast as he could, and will fall behind when changes come because if the things he does work without knowing why, he won't be able to adapt. On the other hand, people who understand a lot of the game and waste more time watching replays could become maybe the best coaches ever, but they will not practice enough to increase their skill ingame, which leads to
1 - Good people playing without knowing exactly why 2 - Good people knowing the game but unable to transfer it to their hands
Both things are important, I prefeer to understand the game instead being good at it, but also few things are good "on paper", so excesively theorycrafting is not good without lot of practice as well.
The second type of player doesn't exist, unless you're talking about the highest level of play where absolute speed becomes important. What you call an inability to transfer knowledge to your hands is an euphemism for simply not knowing what to do in any given situation. Virtually any player is physically capable of the same speeds as your typical person in GM, they're just not as good because they don't know what they're doing. As your understanding improves your mechanics will improve, they're largely intertwined.
I think your mistake is equating what is really the ability to express yourself with an actual understanding of the game. If you're a very strong player yet you can't explain your decision making process to others then that's a complete side issue, totally irrelevant to the question of your playing strength.
On November 21 2015 04:51 -StrifeX- wrote: Grumbel basically what you said i agree with 100%. I feel it's matter of someone wanting to learn than anything else. A person must evaluate themselves and improve off of what they are weak out and focus less on what they might be stronger at during that time...
I should add that I teach guitar and I strongly feel that the parallels between music and starcraft are not that great and that people like destiny or jakatak make a mistake whenever they promote the connection. All pro players in SC2 have become good by playing ladder and just improving their weaknesses like that, while no pro players have come from structured methods like the Staircase. There was this anecdote posted on TL which, iirc, was something like: there was a clan with some players that were always silent and hitting the play game button, while others were continuously discussing strategy and watching replays and analyzing and so on. And over time the first group of players would become obviously superior at the game, just because they were actually doing something. I find that story really easy to believe.
To respond to the nested message, you talk about StarCraft being enjoyed when you make practical decisions in order to get the best possible result. The purpose of the StairCase program is improve players' mechanical skill so that it does not limit their ability to make these practical decisions. Many people are new to the genre or game and will never understand the pace of the game if they just pick the game up and play from the get go, atleast that is how I felt.
To your second comment, think about learning how to play the guitar. For an aspiring guitarist who is learning to play for the first time, which would be easier: hearing a song and trying to mimic the sounds until there is some coherency in his play, or learning notes and chords so that he can learn to play everything song?
What I call practical decision making involves mechanics, play style, strategy, it's not narrowly focused on build orders and unit compositions. It's about acquiring some measure of control over the outcome of the game and treating it as a game, not a series of tricks or feats. It's about crafting a play style which is robust and effective, i.e. it allows you to make decisions that affect the outcome of the game. I don't think the Staircase lets you do any of this. (example: adding spare barracks that correspond to your level of mechanics, or learning to appreciate the importance of scouting and responding to your opponent's unit composition)
To be honest I have a tendency to distrust most methods and tutorials, since uniformly they're based on someone's personal background as a guitar player, psychology student, basketball coach or whatever, who then try to map their experiences to learning Starcraft without appreciating that all good Starcraft players are a product of mass gaming and not of structured practice methods. You can't ignore the evidence and just use some outside method to no particular success and then expect that people give your theories credit just because you made a fanciful parallel to some other, totally different field.
I don't get the OP. No one is going around saying anything about this specific improvement guide to playing SC2, which is one of many guides to playing SC2, so I can only presume that it is only a thinly veiled promotion of said improvement guide. The music analogy makes no sense either. Last time I looked, playing music didn't involve an opponent trying to defeat you. So what would be the best analogy? Not that there needs to be an analogy. Well SC2 is essentially a 1v1 sports. There's loads of 1v1 sports and they other than stuff like physical training there only exists one way to improve. Mindfully playing practice matches.
How does this transfer to SC2? 1) Play the game. preferably ladder. I go to chat channels and see players asking how to improve, yet they have played less than 10 ladder games over a period of months. There's no point asking how to improve if you aren't playing the game.
2) Be mindful. This can be achieved from many ways, from over complicated way that no one can understand like the link provided in the OP, which seems to involve registering to another website and only a fifth of the post is actually dedicated with what to do, or repeating a simple mantra of building more stuff. Or telling new people to watch pro replays becuase it's simple to type.
In the end, anybody who plays mindfully will improve faster than a method which no one can adequately explain even in the very post that it is advertised under.
Yeah, I don't get that either. Don't you already have a thread about this thing? You saying that there are any "misconceptions" about the thing, but that silently assumes that there are people talking about it, which I do not observe to happen. Nobody is saying that you can't follow your favorite approach to SC2, but I think you are extremely overestimating how much other people care about it.
Yes, some of these threads are old, but new players often ask for strategies and as you can see the often asked questions regarding TheStaircase.
And I am bombarded with questions "How to improve" and "TheStaircase does not teach to scout, right?".
There are many, many misconceptions regarding TheStaircase.
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If you teach guitar you should know techniques like
Though this is not a guitar it demonstrates: Simple techniques. Repetition. I am a basketball coach for 16 years now. I know how ppl learn. I do not teach the "Triangle Offense" if my team can't dribble the ball correctly or play a simple Give and Go.
If someone wants to play 40 games a week using ProGamer BO's and ProGamer-Micro, he will learn the game, but keep in mind he then will complete TheStaircase in a few days. I think you can complete TheStaircase in 100 games from #1 to #7. But if one has a job and family, he might only achieve 5 games a week. And then TheStaircase is better for him then doing the ProGamer-Way.
Even TLO says: "It seems to me that far too often lower league players are tying themselves unnecessarily to the way progamers play. They see, learn and even get taught builds of progamers, without adjusting them to their own skill level. Let me give you an example of how you can change that and probably have a better personal experience with the game.
Let's say you're Zerg, you're on 3 bases and struggle with macroing. You tend to float minerals and gas like it's nobody's business and get frustrated after another loss with 2000 minerals unspent. Macro is hard! But it doesn't have to be, it's only that hard if you want to play ''perfectly'' but aren't yet capable of it. So how can you make it easier? Don't entirely copy progamers!" Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/495925-tlo-on-macro-mechanics
TheStaircase encourages ppl to play the game. My students often times were afraid of the 1on1-Ladder. Playing TheStaircase often times (more than 80%) leads to more games, because winning and loosing does not matter anymore. The player tries to improve, he tries to play better Macro & Mechanics. And he has fun doing it.
Hey Guys, I'm one of those guys who are displayed in the opening post. I came in touch with TheStaircase about a year ago, when a new guy called MiSu (also mentioned in the OP) joined the clan. He trained newbies all day long. These noobs made pretty good progress and became solid training partners after some time. We had a little talk because I wanted to know about this method he was using and why is he was teaching it. He mentioned, that a good learning way is: Keep it simple! Try to focus on one thing only. To train, Mechanics, Micro, Macro, Scouting, Multitasking all at once would be the opposite and really difficult. Focus on Macro, improve your Macro, learning the right Mechanics for it along the way. So the rest needs to be simplified as much as possible. Therefore he used TheStaircase, keeping the Units and Tech simple and set the students focus on the most important part of StarCraft 2: Macro.
Shortly after our conversation, he wrote a little German guide. I got suspicious how this could work, lings to master. Now I needed to give this one a try. A Zerg guide was written, so I needed to try another race, so Protoss was choosen and I wanted to write a guide myself, because I wanted to challenge myself in an educational way of playing StarCraft. As a self-experiment I wanted to see how far Macro can go. With my own stricter version of TheStaircase I raised up from Bronze to Diamand within 75 games. Surly masters would be cool, but Protoss isn't that entertaining than playing my mainrace and I don't like grinding games. I tried the same few weeks ago in LotV and it still works great, got diamond with TheStaircase within 60 Games. So there is no need to build couter units or any fancy strats to get into the higher leagues, Macro is enough
Also TheStaircase is pretty easy to execute so every beginner can play it and can get used to StarCraft without overextending. Also they are forced to figure out things themself. Everyone higher than average can easily point out, what problems they have with Macro, when analyzing their Replays.
For myself I needed to get used to way less options in Scouting and Harassing. So figuring it out is pretty cool. Scouting, getting used to StaticD, when adding Gas go get full use of it, spend the money in a efficient way. It might sound strange, but it helped me a lot, to see the game from a "Noob perspective".
TheStaircase is a cool tool to improve at the most important thing in StarCraft the Macro. I can highly recommend it for new player and for everyone below Diamond/Master. You can make it into Masters without TheStaircase like I did. In retrospective I was more unfocused at the game and took a lot more time to get better.
Hope I could give you a little overview from a player perspective.
And I'm sorry for my bad English skills, am not used to this language anymore :/
EPT
