Hi, As somebody who actually practices a different sport but draws a lot of inspiration from SC2, I am very curious as to what it takes to get to the top in Starcraft.
So many people play SC2, only some make it to GM. I am sure there are a lot of people in the lower ranks that spend a lot of time playing the game... so this is the reason I post this question.
As to me, I have these possible hypotheses but I would like you to refute or agree with them, since I am not a competitive SC2 player myself but I am a competitive player of another sport... I want to draw inspiration from this post and apply similar strategies in my sport so I can become the best.
HYPOTHESES:
-Time investment. So, does it mean that the more you practice the higher you get? By that measurement, do GM players practice 12-14 hours a day, master players practice 8 hours a day, diamond players practice 6, platinum 4, gold 2, silver 1, and bronze 0? I know it may not be that simple, but how much of a factor is PRACTICE TIME?
-Type of practice. I do not know how much master players practice. But do GMs think a lot about the matches they play, analyzing their weaknesses and so on? Do GMs just analyze the game more than masters and so on? In that case, would that mean that masters and GMs just practice a similar amount but approach the game differently?
-Training environment. Does being in professional teams have an influence? And your practice partners? How big of a factor is this? Is being in Korea an advantage? Also, how are Serral and Reynor so good without being in Korea? What makes their practices different or more effective? How important is training environment?
-Financial and time resources. Are the GM players the players who have financial backing and do not have to stress about life? Are they the players that can only focus on the game? How much do time and resources influence your skill level? For example, are the GMs fully funded players with good resources and only SC2 to focus on, whereas Masters are a bit less funded? Also, do different professional teams provide different types of resources which would produce different results? I am aware this point may be related to previous one.
-Age, Natural Ability. How important are age or natural ability? Reynor is young and started young. Serral, on the other hand, seems naturally gifted. Is Serral simply a genius with God-given super high IQ or the type of intelligence that is ideal for Starcraft? Maybe his physical mechanics allow great play due to his genetic makeup as well? Do you guys believe you can start SC2 at 30 and be competitive? What is the age factor's significance and it's influence on Starcraft?
-Personality. Do you think personality traits have a strong effect on where you end up in the ladder?
...
Basically, I want to know what it is that distinguishes the GM players from the lower ranks. I want to know what it is that makes people reach the elite level in a game that has so many damn people playing it.
The main reason is I want to draw inspiration from this and use these "traits" in my own sport.
You guys will have to educate me since I have no competitive experience in Starcraft 2 other than making Gold league and playing some 2v2s and 4v4s some time ago.
I am really curious about this.
Also, whatever your opinion is, it would also help if you posted your current league or experience to have an accurate idea of where you are coming from.
I think a natural talent for thinking quickly is required. Not IQ but more like executive intelligence (processing and making decisions quickly) that you can see in top football players. That and lots of practice of course.
Mechanics are a big part in hitting GM. For races like Zerg staying alive till hive for Terran hitting your timings and protoss defending most aggression while you build up your army. But I think game knowledge and understanding of a lot of concepts is something that is heavily underrated. I found while watching a lower league game in diamond from a TvP that the Terran opened with something really aggressive (a 3 marauder rush) and although he did kill a few early units he never followed it up with a timing. This leads to his early aggression being basically pointless as the protoss was allowed to just macro up and cut corners to come back into the game. I've also seen Zergs who play against Terran neglect hive by staying on lair too long and not teching up appropriately. Zerg midgame units are strong but they excel a lot more when with other hive units. Counters for units as well as taking the right or smart engagement is also really big. But the main component to being gm is understanding what is required at your level and how to execute it. Afterward, it just becomes repetition until you've mastered it which varies in time from person to person.
You need a ton of games played. Not necessarily hardcore 1v1 practice but you need to get your mechanics down.
The other main part of just playing a lot of games seems simply enough but it’s really important, you (or your brain) need to know what wins what engagement, and there’s a lot of possible compositions and number differences. Even watching a lot of StarCraft helps here.
You watch pros a lot and they’re routinely taking fits and just barely winning them and that comes from that experience.
If you don’t hit whatever threshold of experience that is, you might have a few builds down and decent macro/micro, but continually lose games taking bad fights for example.
1. Know what you’re doing. 2. Automate as much of it as you can.
As to how and when this happens I don’t know, but top players don’t really think about very much, they just do things, or have more instinct on not just their own build but their opponents too.
Top players will make additional decisions based upon what isn’t there, or suspicious unit movement that turn out correctly, while lower players who haven’t that ‘Starsense’ yet will be looking at what is there.
It’s interesting, I can’t remember what player at HSC but I think Artosis was asking ‘what about that probe’s movement is suspicious’ and the player said ‘I don’t know, it just was’
It’s an interesting topic. I think there’s a lot of crossover to other things, in my case learning musical instruments to a good standard, I’m pretty decent at other games and was alright at Starcraft wayyy back but am on seemingly permanent hiatus from actually playing, for various reasons.
Since you mention Serral and Reynor in your post I want to start by pointing out the massive gap between a low GM and Serral - Approximately 2k mmr. Additionally it is important to keep in mind that the skills required for professional level tournament play and reaching GM are fundamentally different, a tournament player needs to not be too predictable and they need to be consistent over map changes and patches. In comparison many people reach GM once or twice by repetitive use of their own (usually weird) individual style that happen to work really well in a certain patch/map pool/meta game - I think I may have first reached GM in a map pool that was good for tempest rushing a long time ago. I was not very good at playing solidly.
But to more directly answer your question, I think time, type of practice are both important.
When it comes to training environment I think the majority of people get almost all their practice from the ladder, it is very hard to find people that want to train deliberately in custom games, especially near GM where most people are crazy about gaining mmr to finally reach it. And GM players refuse to practice with masters that never reached GM. This would be great though to improve skill, but grinding ladder makes it easier to understand the current ladder meta at that level to make it easier to blindly counter your ladder opponents for easier wins. Having a higher level player tell you exactly which strategy to do can make life much easier though.
Financial and time resource - I think the important part is how much you think about the game, how much passion you have and how much you allow yourself to think about Starcraft during the day, it is not uncommon that people make sacrifices to focus more on Starcraft even at low GM level.
Age and natural ability helps some people, but without any of the other above it will not be good enough by itself. It is certainly not necessary though, especially if you get help with your weaker areas.
Personality certainly matters, Starcraft is a rough game that punishes you very easily and you will typically not be able to do what you want to do because of difficult mechanics. To reach GM you most likely will need to at some point play 12 games in a row and try your hardest to win and lose all of them and see your mmr plummet without giving up. People that do not give up deal with this differently, some people push through with anger, others say they will quit and then come back the next day anyway with a fresh mind, and others have an amazing competitive mentality which is of course the best.
Being GM is not about doing everything above perfectly, keep in mind the skill-gap between top and bottom GM. You need some of the above which leads to a very diverse set of people that reach GM.
This has the potential to be a great thread. Terrific discussion already.
Shockingly, not a grandmaster myself, I'm not ultimately qualified to contribute with authority here, but you gotta think almost every variable in the OP matters.
What I'm particularly interested in is if there are ways to practice more efficiently, the whole 'smarter not harder' cliché.
I also think passion is a key asset. You gotta love it to genuinely commit the time.
i've been playing since 2010 and have GM mmr on with Z and P on NA. I don't play that much, to be honest. I play probably two days a week, and I'll play 3-4 hours each day that I play. I watch every replay of every game I play from my perspective and my opponents perspective. Mostly, I focus on my execution of my build and if my scouting information lead me to deciding on the correct build. I put a lot of attention on what information I gleamed and how i reacted (or didn't react) to it. My mechanics have always been rather solid as I've been a musician my entire life (Guitar and Piano) so fortunately for me those are things that don't deteriorate for me very much. I'm 30 years old as of last month. I personally believe extremely strong fundamentals will take you all the way to low GM. It's important to understand there is oceans of difference between low / mid GM and top gm, and even then the difference from high GM and top pro SC2 player is even greater IMO.
For reference, if you are a 5k player on NA (Right at the cusp of GM), you are closer to plat / gold than you are to Serral.
On December 04 2019 21:45 MockHamill wrote: I think a natural talent for thinking quickly is required. Not IQ but more like executive intelligence (processing and making decisions quickly) that you can see in top football players. That and lots of practice of course.
They go hand in hand. You can’t process a whole bunch of such decisions without having the data to crunch in the first place.
In the football example your footballer needs to figure out what pass he can physically do given his body position, or dribble or whatever. Needs to have a snapshot of where everyone is on the field and how they’re positioned. Say his teammate has started a run, he knows x teammate is pretty fast so he hits a pass over the top into the rough zone that is ‘how long this ball will take to get to a location that is my estimate of my teammate’s running speed’. Plus in football players tend to have a dominant foot, so you have to factor all that in, shape a pass to drop on a teammate’s left side if he’s a lefty etc.
Football more than most but most sports require our brains to do a ton of number crunching and there is a real high level of physical/spatial intelligence in those activities.
It’s a crude analogy but I’ll go with it. Substitute ‘technical ability to kick a football in a variety of ways’ for ‘mechanics’ in the SC sense. Professional players don’t grind it out mechanically every day in training, they’ve already got those abilities, some way keep trying to improve aspects but largely they do fitness and team tactical stuff.
I think people tend to watch and analyse replays when they’re at way too level mechanically and I don’t think it’s especially productive because it’s a time I think people should be grinding their mechanics. It’s like taking a freeze frame of a football match, it’s useful analytically to a player to look at what options were open, what they took and what was maybe more optimal. It’s really not especially useful to a player who can’t execute any of the options available properly.
I think there’s a small difference between a potential top end execution in elite sportspeople and those who aren’t quite capable of it, but much can be learned I think the cutoff of actual potential is more between an elite player and one who’s merely good rather than lower down.
Well, to answer a few of your points (and talking about GM on Europe server, I don't know how stacked KR is at the bottom and NA is kinda easy).
- Age: doesn't matter much if you "just" want to be GM, you can be at whatever age as long as your body is healthy I guess? I don't have many examples of players above 40 being in GM, but it's probably because they have too much other life stuff to do. You can be GM at 30+ (see Ret who is 34 and on top of being GM played good games against top players in Nation Wars) ; and I think you can make it to GM starting sc2 after 30 but usually if you don't have starcraft experience up until that point your life probably won't allow you to practice enough to become good enough to be GM (you usually have a lot more free time to invest in sc2 in your 20s). Maintaining GM is doable tho -> point 2.
- Time investment: starcraft 2 is like fitness / bodybuilding / other sports. It takes more time / effort to build up a solid base, but once you have it, you don't need that much time to maintain your level. Obviously, the higher up the ranks you go, the more time you need to maintain your skill level : Serral has to practice / think about sc2 more to keep being at Serral level, than a random top 200 GM, who needs relatively little time, but still a bit more than top masters, etc. For example I didn't play for like three weeks, but when I started playing again recently a dozen of games my MMR was in the same range. If I stopped for a few months and didn't follow the tournaments (meta and stuff) it'd decay a bit but I would need only a few days to be back at my normal MMR.
As for how long it takes for someone who starts from scratch to become GM (or become pro), it depends a lot on each individual, but it takes more practice to progress when you are just starting. Usually young prodigies (Clem / Reynor etc.) need a few years? Like Clem became GM at 12 or 13 iirc, and a threat on ladder at like 15-16, but only recently at 17 he is starting to explode, and the same for Reynor except he exploded 1 year or two before. Serral also played for a loong time before getting really good in LotV (wasn't full time on the game until late btw) Reynor's younger brother BabyMarine is high master atm, and plays A LOT of games, but still stuck at 5200-5400 MMR which is below GM, maybe he'll be a top pro in a few years? (if the game still exists) Or maybe not. I think some players were able to progress in less games than him for sure.
- Personality: yes it's very important, in a broad way I'd say being a competitive person (whatever that means) is necessary, but not sufficient.
- Financial resources: well this one is only relevant when differenciating between semi pros and pros I guess? You don't need to be extra rich to "just" become GM.
- Type of practice: different for each individual but as you progress in the game, you'll usually get better at practicing efficiently. Some pros need to play a shit ton of games (Kas being the prime example), and other past pros such as FireCake not laddering much but focusing on precise aspects of the game.
- Training environment: again not relevant for the question of the topic, which is about "just" GM. But to answer your question anyways, some players benefit a lot from KR practice (SpeCial and Scarlett became notably better for example, NaNiwa back in the days), whereas others become worse (PtitDrogo tried to play like the KR protoss when going there but when coming back to Europe he got crushed by other players because his abilities didn't allow him to play like KR protoss, during the phoenix - adept era ; maybe in another era or now that he knows himself better he'd benefit more from KR practice though ; source - what he said during a NW cast or HSC cast recently on french stream), and some don't need to play there to be top dogs even against koreans (Serral, Stephano)
On December 04 2019 22:36 Poopi wrote: Well, to answer a few of your points (and talking about GM on Europe server, I don't know how stacked KR is at the bottom and NA is kinda easy).
- Age: doesn't matter much if you "just" want to be GM, you can be at whatever age as long as your body is healthy I guess? I don't have many examples of players above 40 being in GM, but it's probably because they have too much other life stuff to do. You can be GM at 30+ (see Ret who is 34 and on top of being GM played good games against top players in Nation Wars) ; and I think you can make it to GM starting sc2 after 30 but usually if you don't have starcraft experience up until that point your life probably won't allow you to practice enough to become good enough to be GM (you usually have a lot more free time to invest in sc2 in your 20s). Maintaining GM is doable tho -> point 2.
- Time investment: starcraft 2 is like fitness / bodybuilding / other sports. It takes more time / effort to build up a solid base, but once you have it, you don't need that much time to maintain your level. Obviously, the higher up the ranks you go, the more time you need to maintain your skill level : Serral has to practice / think about sc2 more to keep being at Serral level, than a random top 200 GM, who needs relatively little time, but still a bit more than top masters, etc. For example I didn't play for like three weeks, but when I started playing again recently a dozen of games my MMR was in the same range. If I stopped for a few months and didn't follow the tournaments (meta and stuff) it'd decay a bit but I would need only a few days to be back at my normal MMR.
As for how long it takes for someone who starts from scratch to become GM (or become pro), it depends a lot on each individual, but it takes more practice to progress when you are just starting. Usually young prodigies (Clem / Reynor etc.) need a few years? Like Clem became GM at 12 or 13 iirc, and a threat on ladder at like 15-16, but only recently at 17 he is starting to explode, and the same for Reynor except he exploded 1 year or two before. Serral also played for a loong time before getting really good in LotV (wasn't full time on the game until late btw) Reynor's younger brother BabyMarine is high master atm, and plays A LOT of games, but still stuck at 5200-5400 MMR which is below GM, maybe he'll be a top pro in a few years? (if the game still exists) Or maybe not. I think some players were able to progress in less games than him for sure.
- Personality: yes it's very important, in a broad way I'd say being a competitive person (whatever that means) is necessary, but not sufficient.
- Financial resources: well this one is only relevant when differenciating between semi pros and pros I guess? You don't need to be extra rich to "just" become GM.
- Type of practice: different for each individual but as you progress in the game, you'll usually get better at practicing efficiently. Some pros need to play a shit ton of games (Kas being the prime example), and other past pros such as FireCake not laddering much but focusing on precise aspects of the game.
- Training environment: again not relevant for the question of the topic, which is about "just" GM. But to answer your question anyways, some players benefit a lot from KR practice (SpeCial and Scarlett became notably better for example, NaNiwa back in the days), whereas others become worse (PtitDrogo tried to play like the KR protoss when going there but when coming back to Europe he got crushed by other players because his abilities didn't allow him to play like KR protoss, during the phoenix - adept era ; maybe in another era or now that he knows himself better he'd benefit more from KR practice though ; source - what he said during a NW cast or HSC cast recently on french stream), and some don't need to play there to be top dogs even against koreans (Serral, Stephano)
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. One of the sad jokes of SC2 is that being "Just GM" isn't that impressive, at least to anyone who's actually been GM. I remember the first time I got it, I was obviously super excited, and then nothing changed. It was the same mediocre play from both sides. I kinda felt like everything was gonna change and i was finally in the big leagues, but nope. Sure, to a gold player GM play is probably super impressive, but once you actually grind up to it it's such a slow and iterative change that it doesn't feel that special. I'm sure pro's feel the same once they got to the very top, it's just a slow, never ending march and since it's so gradual it doesn't feel impressive.
Honestly, I believe most GMs (and even most masters) have sunk at least 5k hours into the game. Some might have spent more time reflecting and watching vods while others grind the ladder and customs.
Sure, some have more talent than others but executing at a high level at macro, micro, scouting and decision making all at once it simply very complicated and takes a lot of dedication.
when i first got GM i was ~18? highest rank achieved was 17th? never played more than a few hours a day until that point.
stopped playing daily/very often when I was ~24 (3 yrs ago) - just casually in 2v2
new season just started, reached GM in 38 games on a fresh account with no real hourly practice or anything.
I think most people who get mid/high GM think of it like riding a bike. Korean pros often talk about how once you learn mechanics, its hard to unlearn the very basics of it. That's why people like bisu can go to military duty and come back and still be gods of their race after not playing for 2 years.
for some people, practice makes a lot more difference than thinking about the game. Puck is a pretty good example of that imo. He trained and trained and got very good through self learning and self correction and he started at the bottom more or less. Kelazhur is a good example of practice, quick learning curves and studying gameplay paying off. He got really good in a relatively short amount of time.
What it takes to be the best?(don't know about GM, thought this was the question you actually wanted to ask) There is passion There is opportunity There is natural ability There is vision
I think vision is paramount. Day[9] talked about that in one of his dailies, how competitive frisbee taught him some things, but he never envisioned himself in a stadium, being the greatest frisbee player of all times. On the other hand, with BW he soon developed fantasies of dominating his foes. You need vision, you need to see what the thing you do could be, see what no one else sees.
The other three all help, but: passion beats natural ability -> natural ability beats opportunity -> opportunity beats passion. If your heart ain't in it, you might be the next Mozart but you never gonna reach your potential. If you have all the chances in the world, but no talent, someone with maybe just one chance and all the talent in the world is going to triumph. If you have all the passion in the world, but no opportunity, you become artosis.
On December 05 2019 01:11 Conut wrote: It's just practice and knowing how to win from what position, if you know you cant kill them how do I survive and give myself the best chance.
Oh they are being greedy well let's skip this and hit them extra hard, oh yes spreading himself thin let's attack from both sides and get damage.
It's just a matter of having great mechanics and then thinking on the fly to the situation.
Or just being so good at something that you win in ways people aren't prepared for. Like ruff lol
You discibe more the endgoal, than the way to get there, wich was the actual question
On December 05 2019 01:11 Conut wrote: It's just practice and knowing how to win from what position, if you know you cant kill them how do I survive and give myself the best chance.
Oh they are being greedy well let's skip this and hit them extra hard, oh yes spreading himself thin let's attack from both sides and get damage.
It's just a matter of having great mechanics and then thinking on the fly to the situation.
Or just being so good at something that you win in ways people aren't prepared for. Like ruff lol
You discibe more the endgoal, than the way to get there, wich was the actual question
I heard HeroMarine complain on stream that some low GMs players relied almost 100% on mechanics, namely harassment and macro.
I am a basketball coach and referee. Since 2011 I help ppl with SC2.
IMHO Tom Brady and his dedication to Football sets an example for every SC2 player heading for GM.
In 2000 no one could see his potential. You cannot prove talent, you cannot prove your ability to read a defense. But when he was chosen, draft pick #199 (6 round), he just said "That is not what my skill set is, but fortunately for me, that is not what's quarterbacking is about it either."
He said in one interview something like this: "I want to earn it every day on the practice field. If I do not earn it there, I should not play on a Sunday."
Tom Brady (and his coach Bill Belichick) studies a lot of games and tapes. They prepare a ton for specific situations. This works in SC, too, as you can see in ShoWTime vs. ByuN (PvT, WCS Global Finals 2016). ShoWTime watched a ton of ByuN's games. 4 ppl talked about the match beforehand, 4 of them predicted: "ByuN will win". He lost. ByuN later won the "Grand Finals", though.
Quote ShoWTime: "I watched a series against Zest (...) and I kinda realized he [ByuN] is a bit weak against quick Collossi play, I think."
Tom Brady has talent, loves his sport and works a ton.
Two fundamentals will help in SC2 as well:
===
> Time investment
A major issue like in every other sport as well. Often you hear: "Just play the game", which is one-third right.
(thanks to JaKaTaK)
> how much of a factor is PRACTICE TIME?
A huge factor. One of my "students" (Mamba) told me once: "It's about mechanics and mechanics are about muscle memory. Without good mechanics, you are overwhelmed by SC2. If you have good mechanics, you are able to think about the game and strategy."
Michael Jordan does not think about how he dribbles the ball. He does not even look at the ball like beginners do. He is able to think about strategy (Pick and roll, Triangle-Offense) because he has trained his muscle memory to perfection.
> Type of practice
See "quality of practice" in the video above.
> Do GMs just analyze the game more than masters and so on?
You see two Master Players (PvZ, emctwo vs Quaterno) playing a ladder game. This game was sent to Harstem, because Zerg is IMBA. But Harstem proves with precision and logic: "[emctwo] You just suck."
I have seen Replays like that a thousand times. "emctwo" looses 9 Probes vs 4 Speedlings at 6:14 in the game. This is a major mistake. Harstem points out more critical mistakes. But emctwo thought after this game: "Zerg is IMBA, let's sent this Replay to Harstem. He will see how IMBA Zerg really is."
emctwo is not alone. I have encountered a lot of players who blame X, Y and Z for a losing streak or a single loss. But the truth is: They lost because they made mistakes. Or simply put: They suck.
To improve as a Basketball referee it is almost mandatory to watch yourself on tape. Almost nobody does that in the lower leagues.
Most of the times lower league players do not watch there Replays at all. And if someone does it, they watch the main fight.
Quote PiG: "... they zoom through the start talking in vague terms about their game plan (...) there is very little focus on the economy. And this goes right to high-level players." Source: The PiG Daily #47 - Learning From Replays - Beginner Basics
This is a Protoss-Master, who tries to copy a build order (BO), sends in a Replay saying "Zerg OP", but he is not able to play the BO correctly in the first 4 minutes.
Ask a Plat/Diamond player about "Timings and Benchmarks" ... "Never heard of it"
Harstem talks about specifics of a BO all the time. "Usually this push arrives at around 4:35 with about 9 Adepts."
This is not a "vague term" (PiG) this is the opposite.
So, why is that?
1. Knowledge about your BO needs reading and training. 2. Replay analysis needs time and understanding. 3. Mechanics (and muscle memory) need a lot of time and training.
Most ppl I know just want to ladder, play 1on1 and reach Master. Without analyzing your Replays, without finding every error in your GamePlay, you will not reach GM.
> In that case, would that mean that masters > and GMs just practice a similar amount > but approach the game differently?
I have coached a Master1-Protoss. He advanced to GM later, but it was his victory, not mine. He played only 4 hours a day; sometimes 2, sometimes 6. But he copied BOs of a ProGamer almost perfectly. His major problem was: His opponent does something weird. 4 to 8 minutes: He would scout and get 700 or 800 minerals, without managing a fight or so. Serral never has this problem, not on a regular basis. He scouts, reacts and is prepared. He keeps his money low, his injections on point. In GM even little mistakes can have a massive effect on the game. This is especially true for the early game.
> Training environment
If you live in a team house with professional players and professional coaches, one thing is very easy: Finding your mistakes. It gets easier to solve your problems. X could ask Y (at breakfast): "Could we practice this map and this BO ten times in a row?"
> Financial and time resources
If SC2 cannot pay your bills, it will be hard to practice 10 hours a day. The more you can practice, the more you will improve. I don't think you can beat Serral, if you have to work 8 hours a day in a regular job.
> Age, Natural Ability
I doubt there will ever be a WCS champion above 30. But there are (a lot of?) GMs above 30, e. g. White-Ra.
1. Build workers! (Zerg: DroneTiming) 2. Keep your money low! 3. No SupplyBlocks! 4. MiniMap 5. Scouting
Finding your mistakes and actually solving all your problems is hard to do. Show me a Replay (loss, defeat) of a Diamond Player and I show you mistakes in at least 3 out of 5 of these areas.
In lower leagues Scouting sometimes is done without a reaction. But this rarely happens in higher leagues.
But it is much easier to say "X is IMBA" than "I will analyze all of my Replays, find 3 reoccurring mistakes and then fix them."
Below 6K MMR: "Is it IMBA or do you suck?" In my humble opinion ... you suck, but so does everybody else.
Printf is a GM, who once said: "There is no Replay, where I did not make any mistakes, and there is no Replay, where my opponent made no mistakes." Background: He sent some Replays to PiG for explaining how to play CannonRush.
It's a really interesting question as to what makes a GM player or pro and I'm coming from a position that is nowhere near that level, however, having played music and trained in martial arts competitively there are a few key aspects that go hand in hand that makes one a better player, competitor.
Time spent: A simple one really but there's a saying that it takes 10 hours to learn something and 1000 hours to master it. I remember someone posting a graph of the amount of games played per day on average for each starcraft league and it was something like GM 10 per day, Masters 7 per day, Diamond 5 per day etc. So yes time spent is really important.
Correcting your own mistakes: this was something I found particularly in martial arts but which very much applies to starcraft. You learn something a certain way e.g. you hotkey one probe to build all your buildings and that becomes an ingrained thing you do because for a time it works. Then the further up you go where there are more efficient methods of building buildings you have to actively relearn it in order to become more efficient.
Forcing yourself to do things: the most obvious example for this would be scouting. For most people it is not their natural inclination to scout, however, it gets to a point where if you want to progress you have to learn how to scout. In this way you are making an active choice to do something until it becomes a passive habit and you get better and better at it.
Micro management: I refer to it as micro management but I really mean breaking up the whole into smaller, more manageable chunks. The idea of constantly producing workers while constantly producing out of your buildings while also scouting and meaningfully harassing sounds quite daunting at first, however, if you focus on one individual aspect one at a time then you improve as a whole to the point where eventually it just clicks.
Taking Criticism: This is a big one if you're wanting to make that step forward. You eventually plateau if you don't have people to tell you how else you could do something because at the end of the day you are only one brain. Having more people around you means there are more people to interpret the same information and they can provide fresh perspectives on a problem. I think Demuslim at homestory cup said that he once suggested something to Reynor and Reynor took it on board and fixed it and his play improved just a little as a result. While not all criticism is useful there is a lot that is.
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.
That is one thing I believe a lot of coaches in SC2 do wrong when they coach people, they explain to a bad player what he is supposed to do, but they don't make sure he understands why.
If you can get someone to help you understand the game your progression will skyrocket.
Even pro players have bad perspectives of the game which is holding them back which could easily be rectified.
Basically you have to create a cognitive reaction in the player from every single event in the game which will constantly drive him to improve since he reflects over every single thing that happens. (this is hard for some people which is why watching replay of all your games is 100% must regardless.)
Of course, this will slow you down in the beginning as you do a lot of thinking while you play, but that same cognitive reaction will transform into instant decision making over time which will make you a much better player.
As you do less and less thinking while you play and it turns into instinct, your brain has more capacity to multi-task macro and micro, etc.
You also have "robots" who get into GM who will constantly do the same builds on a barcode who we like to refer to as one-trick ponies. They master a very small amount of all inn builds and do them on repeat til near perfection but actually have a very bad game understanding and would get absolutely destroyed in a best-of series by more complete players who might even have worse micro/macro. Their reflection on a game they lose usually consists of "I got scouted unlucky" and proceed to queue again and do the same thing since their build has a 50+% win rate.
This is where you have to ask yourself if you want to be good at the game or if you want to reach GM for bragging rights only.
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.
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.
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.
There are also trolls on this forum who throw out outrageous claims without any proof to fish for reactions from other posters.
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.
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.
I m possitive, that Dedraterllaerau meant, that all thinks equal the player with better game understanding is allways superior and can even compensate for beeing a bit worse in other aspects. No single attribute alone is sufficent enough to bring you to the top level. I ve never been GM or even close, but I picture even the players, that are "just mechanically faster" and nothing else, still have a somewhat decent build order and a basic game understanding.
Do you guys believe you can start SC2 at 30 and be competitive? What is the age factor's significance and it's influence on Starcraft?
Yes. Bomber is living proof. also isn't Light 30? he just won KSL, arguably the most demanding game. Sure they didn't start at 30 but it goes to show that your skill ceiling is still just as high as anyone else's at that age.
In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote: In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway.
In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things.
How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age.
Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote: In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway.
In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things.
How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age.
Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago.
The age factor differs widely from sport to sport. In gymnastics for example you re dead old, when you are 25, in marathon running or triathlon, you are just getting started. The human body is unable to reproduce all dieing cells from about 25 or so. Thats why Sports that demand a lot of strenght or precision or involve a high risk in injurie usually see their peak perforemer around that age. Sports that benefit greatly from repetition, tend to have the peak later. In SC2 it is some midle ground I gues. Beeing physically slower can be somewhat compensated by better judgement and so on. But those limitations are probably only in play at an much higher level than bottom GM and affect actuall pro players
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.
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.
As a 34 year old who played since SC Original, ranked Masters 1 in both WoL and HotS in all races, never quite hit GM but was right there, now coasts at low Diamond, and has a career and life, I feel like I have some insight on topic.
First of all, there is a significant difference in being GM and being Pro. It's like the difference between being the top 3 in your class at the 100M dash in high school vs being able to qualify for the Olympics. There is waaaaaaay less investment necessary, but you still have to try a bit. Here's my little tidbits.
1) Intimate knowledge of the game is the most important part. If you can identify what's happening and how to respond, the game is easy. I'm not just talking about countering roaches with Marauders, but learning how to identify and deal with compositions, builds, aggression, turtle-ing, expansion timings, etc. When we watch pro matches, we know what the right move is because we can see the entire map. We can't apply that to our games exactly, but if you know the game and scout somewhat better than your opponent, you will win 60+% of the time until your mechanics cap you. One thing that hindered me from breaking into GM was good spotter pylons and Overlords.
2) Time is not that important, but regular play and a plan is. I would say that you need 2 or 3 games to properly warm up, and every game after that will serve to improve yourself. If you take days off, you need more time to warm up or get the rust off. You also need enough games to be net positive in the grind for MMR. Based on that, I would say 2-4 hours a day would conservatively suffice to make it to GM. Probably closer to 2. However, you also need to know what you need to improve on and work on that. I'm very happy to play mindless games in Diamond right now, and I will not improve the way I play. If you constantly identify weak points in your play, such as scouting, map presence, timing, etc, and work on those, you'll get to GM in no time. It is really exhausting though, so you have to really want it.
3) Make sure you have solid mechanics, and break your lazy habits early. This is a given, but it's also what makes or breaks potential GM Players. Another thing that hindered me from making GM was probably my hot keys. For Terran I put Command Centers on 3, main production on 2, other production on 4 and 5, and army on 1 and F2. It's one of the worst configurations because of the lack of army control, but I stuck with it because I was lazy.
Training Environment, Financial and Time Resources, and Age (under 40) should all be irrelevant. In terms of natural talent, one needs to definitely have the synergy with Starcraft, but not some sort of Maru/Reynor prodigy style talent. I'm noting this because there are people who just don't mix well with Starcraft or RTS in general. Personality might be one of the more significant items needed to reach GM. The higher up you go, the harder and less fun the games are. Actually, the higher up you go, the harder and less fun anything is life is. I gave up on GM, but someone mentally stronger in the same place probably would have made it.
SHORT CUT: You can make GM on a single build. You can't be pro on a single build, the famous kids who tried are all retired now. But you can be GM. Granted, you won't be as good as GM players, and you probably won't go far, but you'll have the rank. The build will usually have a rush element that disrupts the other player's build flow. You'll learn how to macro perfectly while harassing perfectly, and how to perfectly transition with a big lead. Basically you'll learn how to execute this build like a high GM player, while probably not being great at the rest of the game. You'll need minimal warm-up because you're doing the exact same thing every time, adding to your net MMR. Once you hit GM, enjoy the glory and then fall back to your natural rank, because the game will stop being fun after that. Bonus Tip: Wait 1-2 Minutes after every game to make sure you don't play the same guy, which will likely result in a loss.
It's simple to know what you need to do, but actually doing it can be a drag. Like knowing what you need to do to lose 15 pounds, vs actually doing it. It's simple enough, but most people don't want to go through with getting to GM. To those who do, good luck!
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.
My opinion as someone who has been GM since 2010 and done a lot of coaching:
- Some natural inclination for video games and/or analytical abilities. This usually means starting as a young child. If you don't touch a computer keyboard until you are 15 years old you will have a lot harder time succeeding than someone who has played other RTS games, other competitive games, or even worked their problem solving muscles in a computer environment in some way their entire life. I first played Starcraft when I was 4 years old and I think that pretty much carried me the entire way without ever really having to try hard. This first point covers "mechanics" along with the practice time and self improvement points further down.
- Desire to be good at everything you do. I think one thing that a lot of high level Starcraft players share is that they tend to focus on a pretty small number of hobbies/games and like to be very good at them. They don't tend to be the personality types that play the hot new game every couple months, they like to self-analyze and hone their skillks til they reach at least a level they deem competent.
- The right mindset for self improvement. I don't think specific tasks like replay watching or studying vods constantly are necessary for everyone - some high level players benefit more from these specific things than others - but what they all share is an ability to self analyze on the fly and understand what their weaknesses are, why they are losing games, and make adjustments as needed. Perhaps even more important than why they are losing games is identifying and improving their flaws even when they win! I know for me a win feels less satisfying if I feel like I played poorly and noticed many mistakes during my gameplay.
- Some amount of time and environment, though I don't think this is as important as some make it out to be. As long as you are "comfortable" (i.e have food on the table and a place to live, a reasonable pc and internet connection to play the game on low graphics settings which is basically nothing), and enough time to play (on average) a couple hours a day. I don't think you need more than maybe 2-3 hours a day on average of free time to make GM, which is generally attainable by almost anyone before they start to have a family. Still, the later you start age-wise, the harder it is to pick up these skills. I generally think there are quite diminishing returns on practice time after a few hours per day - if you are playing a solid ladder session of 2-4 hours pretty much every day, I don't think more than that is a huge impact.
- Immersing yourself in the community and the gameplay. If you enjoy making friends through gaming, watching tournaments and streams, etc you are more likely to stay motivated and pick up ideas and knowledge even subconsciously. This isn't mandatory if you are good at focused practice, but if you enjoy the game many of these things tend to happen naturally.
These are at least my initial thoughts, feel free to follow up on anything I said with more specific questions or areas you'd like me to address.
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.
On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote: In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway.
In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things.
How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age.
Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago.
Vishy Anand just turned 50. he is top 10 in the world in chess still - even in super fast time formats like blitz. that being said he's a former world champion and certainly not at the peak of his abilities ~15-20 years ago, but not far from it.
Samsonov (43y) and Boll (39y) are in the top 10 in the world in table tennis, a super fast, reaction and agility based sport.
age isn't the key factor, it's lack of determination and responsibilty that usually comes WITH age.
1 Key factor a lot of ppl are missing though is this:
RAW TALENT.
Yes, it exists. not everyone can be great at everything. you need a baseline of intelligence and other geneticially determined attributes to succeed - esp. at the highest level. 2 ppl can do the exact same things and be equally determined - one can reach gm within a year, someone else will forever be stuck in diamond.
On December 05 2019 20:59 MockHamill wrote: In most fields it takes about 10.000 on average to become an expert and 30.000+ hours to become world class. This is simplication of course but no matter the talent becoming great takes an insane amount of time.
Given infinite time anyone could become 10 times better than Serral but in practice you will damage your body if you practice too much. So if your body can handle 8 hours of practice per day and someone else can handle 12 hours of practice per day, he will typically become better than you.
I think this is a large part of why younger people beat older people in most sports. When you are 20 your body can still handle large amounts of practice, when you are older it takes more time to recover and you have accumulated more damage to your body.
Is there a single SC2 pro player in the top 20 who is over 30?
Depends on the sport, old folks do hold their own in many anyway.
In many you don’t see huge amounts of practice once players get to an elite level, because the benefits drop off. On the way up certainly the hours must be put in, but when you get to that level you can hit a golf or a tennis ball, kick a football or throw a basketball pretty damn well and it might be a poor use of time to grind practice here over resting or focusing on other things.
How many of the top 20 are teens now? There’s many in and around the mid 20 range, which is unfortunately Korean military service age.
Even combined with Brood War we’ve only got about 20 years of history to deal with and I think we’ve seen preconceived ideas about youth being necessary in eSports to be proven pretty off base.
Yeah, a 29 year old just won Brood War's KSL a week or so ago.
Vishy Anand just turned 50. he is top 10 in the world in chess still - even in super fast time formats like blitz. that being said he's a former world champion and certainly not at the peak of his abilities ~15-20 years ago, but not far from it.
Samsonov (43y) and Boll (39y) are in the top 10 in the world in table tennis, a super fast, reaction and agility based sport.
age isn't the key factor, it's lack of determination and responsibilty that usually comes WITH age.
1 Key factor a lot of ppl are missing though is this:
RAW TALENT.
Yes, it exists. not everyone can be great at everything. you need a baseline of intelligence and other geneticially determined attributes to succeed - esp. at the highest level. 2 ppl can do the exact same things and be equally determined - one can reach gm within a year, someone else will forever be stuck in diamond.
What is raw talent here though?
Is it having some talent for Starcraft, or is it singularly focusing on Starcraft?
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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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.