|
On December 06 2019 00:55 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2019 00:49 daskleinehotte wrote:
Like it has been already said a couple of times. Maintaining a specific skill level is not that hard in general - most of us know from experience, we can get back to our old MMR or rank pretty easily even after a couple of weeks/months off. The difficult part starts with getting better. In my opinion there has to be a certain threshold of number of games to reach a certain level. e.g. you won´t get GM if you only play 100 games a season (just to give an example).
It would be interessting to see, how many games fresh, first-time GM players have played over their entire career and if the overall timeframe plays a significant factor in that equation (what I think might be true). The sheer number of games alone surely can´t be a reliable source of data, otherwise there wouldn´t be so many Diamond players with 5k+ games on their account. I’m almost more curious about people who are still in Diamond after 5k games as I am about what is needed to get into GM. I like playing pool for example, not super serious about it, as do many of my friends. We just got better playing casually over the years but there was one guy in the group who was basically the same level as when we first started playing and that always mystified me more than why my friend was better than I am.
AMA.
|
A lot of great things in this thread.
I would like to add the word focus to the list. You can repeat all the games you want, but never learn anything.
Focus applies to your practice regiment, how engaged you are, and what you ultimately take in during your time playing.
The game can 'slow down' for you the more repetitions you get. With proper intention and focus, you probably get to that experienced point faster than others. It's hard to maintain this level of focus, which is probably why you see people age out, etc.
|
On December 06 2019 07:35 Aveng3r wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2019 04:09 Nathanias wrote:
Grandmaster is largely about mental space. By the time you're a Masters 1 player you already know a decent variety of builds or at least how to use your limited builds to defeat the average scrub at your level.
When I first got to that level, it was a very mental thing for me. I'm not naturally talented at too many things but I spent thousands of hours practicing and still got stuck at the "high masters" wall for a while. I tribute a lot to my general anxiety keeping me from performing when I saw the gold border in the loading screen the first hundred or so times. I thought, "I'm so close, I'm playing vs Top 200 players now." Of course when this starts you aren't THAT close but it's still a big part of making the jump. It takes a lot of overhyped lost games at the top of masters to finally get over the "rush" that you're "close" to making it.
For me I got a lot more success at staying focused and playing well when I gave up on beating these guys because it was the only way to not get worked up over it for me. I don't think my mechanics improved much, I just made WAY less mental mistakes when I was able to care less about how good my opponent was and just give it my all. It got so much easier when I was first promoted to GM because then of course I was the one wearing the belt.
Just my two cents, of course this is from my extremely specific perspective as a player that grinded for years and studied all sorts of builds etc but ultimately couldn't break that threshold until I disciplined myself. To expand on your point (and forgive me if I misspeak here), I suspect the mental space you describe is a shift in mindset. For myself, I never cracked master league back in my playing days, I was always stuck hitting my head on the ceiling of diamond league. Looking back, I think what held me back was a fixed mindset - I allowed the ranking system to dictate my play because I believed that the diamond tag on my profile was a stamp of my ability, never to be changed. I played to the same point over and over - If I couldn't kill protoss before he got the deathball, I was lost. Same could be said of the broodlord infestor army when I played zerg opponents, and maxed out mech/BC armies against fellow terran opponents. I knew that when my opponent reached a certain point in his game, there was nothing I could do in my game to contest and defeat it. I think what separated me from players who were able to take the next step into Master and GM leagues was their mindset - they were able to adapt their game to overcome the barriers that their opponents put up, where I told myself that the game was lost once I saw an opposing army that I didn't think I could kill. It discouraged me from trying new builds, working on my micro, clocking a ghost and dropping a nuke on their unguarded expansions, etc etc. I just did the same thing over and over to extremely frustrating effect. I've since read quite a bit about this subject and I do believe it has allowed me to change my mindset and improve aspects of my life. I have a great job, I kick ass in the video games that I play today, and I'm a hell of an athlete. I would like to think that if I did come back to starcraft 2, I would be able to push my game much further than I was able to back in my college days.
This is a fantastic view. The player who deems the situation hopeless, that T/P/Z early/mid/late game is broken just make excuses for themselves to justify their own lack of desire to push further. I know this from first hand experience. I was a Zerg player for vast majority of my playtime but when I started learning other races, I consistently complained to my friends that "Dang, I can play this matchup so well, but libs/broodlords/tempests are just too fucking strong!" - the issue was never my opponent or their composition or the balance of the game but my own play. I had a certain skillset that was missing from my repertoir that opponents would consistently exploit and it wasn't until I realized this flaw about my own play that I was able to grow as a player. It's not until you can REALLY be honest with yourself and separate from ego best you can can you start to improve once you've hit a wall.
|
GM seems like such a stupid goal. Either you want to be somebody in this game and you actually make the push to pro if you think you got it in you or you are playing for fun like the rest of us plebs and your main goal should be to enjoy the game and not chase some arbitrary Orange belt.
|
On December 06 2019 09:49 alpenrahm wrote:
GM seems like such a stupid goal. Either you want to be somebody in this game and you actually make the push to pro if you think you got it in you or you are playing for fun like the rest of us plebs and your main goal should be to enjoy the game and not chase some arbitrary Orange belt.
u can enjoy the game by striving towards a goal? whats wrong with that
|
On December 06 2019 06:35 KalWarkov wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 06:38 blooblooblahblah wrote:
It doesn't take much to become GM. There are GM players that have probably never watched a pro game in their life, have awful mechanics/understanding, or never even built a 3rd base. GM is just a portrait, nothing more. It means you know how to win, which is an important attribute when playing sc2, but it doesn't suggest anything about your skill/understand overall, apart from the fact that you probably have passable mechanics (but again, you don't need amazing mechanics by any means).
To become a good player, well that takes hours and hours of practice and discipline and self-criticism. Which is why there are only a handful of players in the world that are good. The rest of us are pretty much plebes, GM portrait or not. that's wrong sir. you can't reach GM on eu like that. you need 5.6k mmr for that, and doing that completly on ur own / without a 3rd base is impossible. yes you can do it with things like cannonrushing and zerg cheese, but that requires a lot of understanding and research.
Europe is a bit different, I'll give you that. I used a little hyperbole in my response but the truth is ( at least for the servers I can play, NA and KR), the level of play in M1/Low GM is really quite low and you can't consider any of them an expert at sc2. There are huge gaps in knowledge, big inefficiencies in mechanics etc. Hell, in the upper parts of GM there are several players well known for never even using an army hotkey lol.
GM difficulty is different across servers but I guess that's my point. It's just a portrait. They have the same portrait as the top pros in the world, but the actual gap in skill is so huge that it's actually ridiculous. If we are to use a vague definition of a GM player as a player that's in GM but isn't a pro/semipro, then their skill level is often far closer to that of masters players than it is of pro players. This isn't me dissing GM league, there's obviously a ton of good players in GM but their skill level is way above the actual threshold required to be GM, which IMO, is a lot lower than a lot of people think.
|
On December 05 2019 15:26 Chronopolis wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2019 06:28 Dedraterllaerau wrote:
Having played SC since the first release of the game in 98 I can say attaining game understanding will benefit you an incredible amount. It will make your practice more efficient because you will draw the correct conclusions from every game you play or watch,(Your own or others). If you have a poor perspective of how the game works you will constantly make illogical and poor conclusions from your experiences playing or watching.
All I can say is once you reach a high level of game understanding and mechanics combined you will laugh at the above mentioned 1 trick pony robots GM's and enjoy the free ladder points every single time.
I did this in a small-time RTS and became top tier in few hundred hours -- unfourtunately, sc2 is more mechanically demanding and far more worked out. Game knowledge won't help all them time.There are cheese builds that are difficult/esoteric to defend. There are harrassment styles that basically pit mechanics vs mechanics. Going for a strong game understanding isn't easy, you'll still need to grind mechanics like everyone else, and making decisons / changing course mid-game can be super difficult. But practicing it will greatly improve your ability to improve and become a solid player.
Game knowledge will always help, but sometimes good mechanics are required even when you know the perfect response to what is happening. My point simply was if you start working hard on game understanding first it will boost your progression. Especially if you are a new player, once they know why they have to do something or not do something the game becomes intuitive for them and they make way better decisions because they are learning faster.
|
I think some natural talent in terms of reaction speed, information processing and multitasking helps, but the biggest thing is attitude to competition and learning.
In terms of mindset, you need to know how to play to win and not be a scrub (in the David Sirlin sense of the word), which is a hurdle that 95% of players will never be able to overcome. To get to GM level, you are going to lose a lot and you have to actively learn from your mistakes, and a game like Starcraft is very unforgiving. Most people don't have the patience or mental strength to do this, so they burn out, give up because they can't handle the losses or fall back on mental crutches like blaming balance to protect their ego.
|
The only thing stopping someone from reaching gm is mechanics (macro, micro and general apm and effective actions). The only way to reach that mechanical level is by practicing games and improving. When you are focused on improving (looking at your weak areas to improve and practice on) and putting in the work (i would say around at the very least 25 games a day), then you will climb very high very quickly.
|
On December 06 2019 09:49 alpenrahm wrote:
GM seems like such a stupid goal. Either you want to be somebody in this game and you actually make the push to pro if you think you got it in you or you are playing for fun like the rest of us plebs and your main goal should be to enjoy the game and not chase some arbitrary Orange belt.
GM is not more stupid than any other goal within ranked gaming. The players who do not consider winning while competing with others enjoyable generally do not play ladder at all, and are unlikely to reach platinum if they do.
It would be interesting to see how many new players reach GM for the first time each season at this point. I have a feeling there is a ton of alt accounts, cross server players and returning veterans filling up that league.
|
On December 06 2019 08:18 LHK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2019 07:35 Aveng3r wrote:On December 06 2019 04:09 Nathanias wrote:
Grandmaster is largely about mental space. By the time you're a Masters 1 player you already know a decent variety of builds or at least how to use your limited builds to defeat the average scrub at your level.
When I first got to that level, it was a very mental thing for me. I'm not naturally talented at too many things but I spent thousands of hours practicing and still got stuck at the "high masters" wall for a while. I tribute a lot to my general anxiety keeping me from performing when I saw the gold border in the loading screen the first hundred or so times. I thought, "I'm so close, I'm playing vs Top 200 players now." Of course when this starts you aren't THAT close but it's still a big part of making the jump. It takes a lot of overhyped lost games at the top of masters to finally get over the "rush" that you're "close" to making it.
For me I got a lot more success at staying focused and playing well when I gave up on beating these guys because it was the only way to not get worked up over it for me. I don't think my mechanics improved much, I just made WAY less mental mistakes when I was able to care less about how good my opponent was and just give it my all. It got so much easier when I was first promoted to GM because then of course I was the one wearing the belt.
Just my two cents, of course this is from my extremely specific perspective as a player that grinded for years and studied all sorts of builds etc but ultimately couldn't break that threshold until I disciplined myself. To expand on your point (and forgive me if I misspeak here), I suspect the mental space you describe is a shift in mindset. For myself, I never cracked master league back in my playing days, I was always stuck hitting my head on the ceiling of diamond league. Looking back, I think what held me back was a fixed mindset - I allowed the ranking system to dictate my play because I believed that the diamond tag on my profile was a stamp of my ability, never to be changed. I played to the same point over and over - If I couldn't kill protoss before he got the deathball, I was lost. Same could be said of the broodlord infestor army when I played zerg opponents, and maxed out mech/BC armies against fellow terran opponents. I knew that when my opponent reached a certain point in his game, there was nothing I could do in my game to contest and defeat it. I think what separated me from players who were able to take the next step into Master and GM leagues was their mindset - they were able to adapt their game to overcome the barriers that their opponents put up, where I told myself that the game was lost once I saw an opposing army that I didn't think I could kill. It discouraged me from trying new builds, working on my micro, clocking a ghost and dropping a nuke on their unguarded expansions, etc etc. I just did the same thing over and over to extremely frustrating effect. I've since read quite a bit about this subject and I do believe it has allowed me to change my mindset and improve aspects of my life. I have a great job, I kick ass in the video games that I play today, and I'm a hell of an athlete. I would like to think that if I did come back to starcraft 2, I would be able to push my game much further than I was able to back in my college days. This is a fantastic view. The player who deems the situation hopeless, that T/P/Z early/mid/late game is broken just make excuses for themselves to justify their own lack of desire to push further. I know this from first hand experience. I was a Zerg player for vast majority of my playtime but when I started learning other races, I consistently complained to my friends that "Dang, I can play this matchup so well, but libs/broodlords/tempests are just too fucking strong!" - the issue was never my opponent or their composition or the balance of the game but my own play. I had a certain skillset that was missing from my repertoir that opponents would consistently exploit and it wasn't until I realized this flaw about my own play that I was able to grow as a player. It's not until you can REALLY be honest with yourself and separate from ego best you can can you start to improve once you've hit a wall.
Exactly. I think you have to be able to look at yourself objectively, and have the courage to admit where you are wrong and where your game needs improvement.
You're point about "the enemy army is too strong!" resonates as well, I was NOTORIOUS for BM at the end of games, blaming balance instead of my own play and decision making, succumbing to rage quits, etc.
If anyone is reading this thread and is interested in learning more, I can't recommend this book enough:
https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/1400062756/ref=asc_df_1400062756/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312178271755&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13911888771017012592&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007377&hvtargid=aud-829758849484:pla-404766125919&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=60258871377&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312178271755&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13911888771017012592&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007377&hvtargid=aud-829758849484:pla-404766125919
|
It doesn't take much to be GM. It takes a lot to be competitive at top level of tournaments, but not GM. I was semi-pro back in 2011, but quit because the money sucked unless you were top tier and a real job in a real career just paid better back then unless you were at top level. Nowadays SC2 doesn't even pay that well even for the best players in the world so I'm very happy with my choice (especially considering I was never the level of talent to become a top 10 player, not even close)
I usually play this game casually once a year for 1-3 months, and I hit GM after a couple weeks and quit before the ladder season even ends as I'll get bored. I just have a natural talent for RTS games, and I have a cheesy playstyle that requires much less practice to execute since I am only playing 5-10 minute games versus 30 minute games with much less variation. 2 seasons ago I was able to hit rank ~100 GM proxy raxing TvX in all 3 matchups.
If I wanted to "git gud" and play with a style that would work at a pro level, I would still start off by cheesing (or whatever style you are good at) every game and then slowly mixing in normal builds (or more variation, cheese if you only play macro) as I would be at the highest MMR I could possibly be at and therefore get the best practice with "normal" builds. But if you are wanting to find out how to just hit GM on server X... just play whatever style you are best with regardless of what the pros use, any style is good enough to hit GM, especially on NA. You could probably get GM going mass speed voids every game as protoss, or ravager or ling/bane all ins with zerg against all 3 races.
|
On December 07 2019 03:59 GoSuNamhciR wrote:
It doesn't take much to be GM. It takes a lot to be competitive at top level of tournaments, but not GM. I was semi-pro back in 2011, but quit because the money sucked unless you were top tier and a real job in a real career just paid better back then unless you were at top level. Nowadays SC2 doesn't even pay that well even for the best players in the world so I'm very happy with my choice (especially considering I was never the level of talent to become a top 10 player, not even close)
I usually play this game casually once a year for 1-3 months, and I hit GM after a couple weeks and quit before the ladder season even ends as I'll get bored. I just have a natural talent for RTS games, and I have a cheesy playstyle that requires much less practice to execute since I am only playing 5-10 minute games versus 30 minute games with much less variation. 2 seasons ago I was able to hit rank ~100 GM proxy raxing TvX in all 3 matchups.
If I wanted to "git gud" and play with a style that would work at a pro level, I would still start off by cheesing (or whatever style you are good at) every game and then slowly mixing in normal builds (or more variation, cheese if you only play macro) as I would be at the highest MMR I could possibly be at and therefore get the best practice with "normal" builds. But if you are wanting to find out how to just hit GM on server X... just play whatever style you are best with regardless of what the pros use, any style is good enough to hit GM, especially on NA. You could probably get GM going mass speed voids every game as protoss, or ravager or ling/bane all ins with zerg against all 3 races.
You're gonna lose a lot of people at the very first sentence of your statement. I don't think that it doesn't take much, I think most people would agree that it's certainly not easy to make GM. If it was easy for you to get there, you likely naturally possess the things that it does take to get to GM.
This thread is an effort to identify and quantify exactly what those things are.
|
On December 07 2019 03:59 GoSuNamhciR wrote:
It doesn't take much to be GM. It takes a lot to be competitive at top level of tournaments, but not GM. I was semi-pro back in 2011, but quit because the money sucked unless you were top tier and a real job in a real career just paid better back then unless you were at top level. Nowadays SC2 doesn't even pay that well even for the best players in the world so I'm very happy with my choice (especially considering I was never the level of talent to become a top 10 player, not even close)
I usually play this game casually once a year for 1-3 months, and I hit GM after a couple weeks and quit before the ladder season even ends as I'll get bored. I just have a natural talent for RTS games, and I have a cheesy playstyle that requires much less practice to execute since I am only playing 5-10 minute games versus 30 minute games with much less variation. 2 seasons ago I was able to hit rank ~100 GM proxy raxing TvX in all 3 matchups.
If I wanted to "git gud" and play with a style that would work at a pro level, I would still start off by cheesing (or whatever style you are good at) every game and then slowly mixing in normal builds (or more variation, cheese if you only play macro) as I would be at the highest MMR I could possibly be at and therefore get the best practice with "normal" builds. But if you are wanting to find out how to just hit GM on server X... just play whatever style you are best with regardless of what the pros use, any style is good enough to hit GM, especially on NA. You could probably get GM going mass speed voids every game as protoss, or ravager or ling/bane all ins with zerg against all 3 races.
Not sure why you're trolling here, Richman. Of course you're getting GM with only 3 months of play out of the year... you've been playing RTS games your whole life. That's kinda the beauty of RTS, the skill doesn't just disappear.
This was a weird post overall because the OP was asking about skills that might translate into another sport. You're here talking about mass speed voids, lol.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
