On October 08 2011 08:48 Icekommander wrote: My Bronze and Silver friends can all macro just fine - as long as nothing is forcing them to make and adapt important decisions on the fly.
Did you honestly ever check? I don't have any friends in bronze or silver -- or even in plat -- who macro well in the absence of unexpected actions of my opponents.
Yes indeed. I was helping one of my Bronze friends today, who was fine macroing off of two base - until a battle happened somewhere and demanded his attention. Simply doing the repetative actions of pressing 4aaaaaaaaadddd 6vv isn't difficult. It is when something forces you to divide your attention that macro suffers.
This is why you must play in real starcraft conditions - you can't get any decent practise beyond your early build versus the AI
But "real starcraft conditions" is not the same as "ladder". To practice, you want a very controlled environment: You want a practice partner who will repeatedly do the same thing over and over again so you can learn how to deal with that. Then you can instruct him to vary certain parameters and learn to deal with those. At some point you'll be comfortable enough to understand the underlying mechanics without thinking too hard on a conscious level, and you'll be able to adapt to changes more easily.
If you just keep playing random (ladder) opponents, that's still "real starcraft conditions", but you never laid the groundwork to make rapid skill progress. *Especially* if your friends are overwhelmed by unexpected decisions -- I don't see how you expect them to improve rapidly by repeatedly overwhelming them if they still have so many other problems in their gameplay at the same time.
I think you are correct - to a point. I can agree that practising under controlled circumstances can help certain aspects of your game very much. And anyone who is seriously practising to get better, should find out which aspects of their game need that work (Macro, dealing with a three-rax).
But if you try and practise versus the same two or three people over and over again, then try to take your build to a tournament, someone is going to smoke you with something you've just never seen before. For example: If your primary zerg practise partner ( and how many practise partners does the average silver/gold player have anyway?) always plays conservatively with his mutalisks, so you might just throw down some, turrets and go about your merry way. Then you play someone who is really aggressive with those same mutalisks, and suddenly your stretched to the brim just trying to hold them off, always having to rebuild turrets, and it seems like you can never move out. Maybe that opponents macro is weaker, which is why he is in the same league as you, but you have no experience with dealing with that style of play, so you can adequately deal with it.
Obviously, if you have a large array of practise partners on the level of a pro team, then no, ladder isn't really required. But otherwise you'll improve rapidly for a bit, and then hit a stone wall, because you are completely unfamiliar with anything outside a very select field of play. Ideally, I think that having a large array of people who you can say "Ok Bob, play me ten times going Three Gate Expand" "Ok now Tim, you play me ten times going Three Gate Expand". But I think many players can't do that (And regardless, the OP has "Polish versus Human Opponents" as the final step, with no distinction of who that is) .
Which is also very different from music IMO. Everyone sounds the same playing the same sheet of music when they play a piano. In SCII, there are many different possible ways to play that same "sheet" of a game.
And failure to also improve your SC decision making ability, will hold you back from jumping leagues as surely as bad macro will.
I think we've seen enough examples of people who made a point of 3raxing, 4gating, or even building mass stalkers all the way to diamond/masters. Macro isn't all you need, but it is one of the most important single things. I do not believe you that bad decision making is as critical as bad macro to getting out of bronze and silver.
You are assuming that this four-gating player is bad at decision making. It isn't. When he does his four-gate, his decision making for that four-gate is at a Diamond/Masters level. He'll know exactly how to crack bunkers, or forcefield roaches. When he is is supposed to reinforce zealots, and when to reinforce stalkers. In fact, that is exactly what all-ins are all about, you are betting the game that you can make better decisions in a big early game battle than your opponent can.
Also this statement is kind of contradictory. You bring up four-gating players making Masters to emphasize the importance of Macro?
On October 08 2011 09:16 BarbieHsu wrote: The music practice method might be more effective.
But, definitely, improving your play by "playing more games" is more fun.
If a player wants to become extremely good at something, often they will have to sacrifice fun for a while and turn what they are doing into a technical exercise in order to get better. In the case of people playing SC2 for fun and casual enjoyment, there is no reason to do this. But for progamers, taking an absolute, intense, 'boring' approach to improving technical mechanics will, in future, definitely become the way to go for players who have reached a certain level of skill in their play. If you want to be a top-notch player in the most efficient way possible, it's something you'll have to sacrifice.
At this stage in the development of progaming as a sport and an 'art', many people will choose not to do this because the field is not as competetive as it could be. But in future, this sort of refinement is what will be required of players in order to compete with the best.
Completely agreed with this. Nobody has ever gotten to the top level in any highly skill-based activity by focusing on having fun. If you ask any NBA player what is the most fun part about his job, I guarantee none of them will say "The hours I spend at the gym to make all of this possible". Ask a professional pianist what is the most fun part about his job, he's probably not going to say "Playing scales for an hour every day to maintain my technique". Look at the stuff athletes have to do to all the time:
Does that look like fun? I remember doing those for tennis and it was the least fun I've ever had. I can't imagine it's any more enjoyable for professional athletes. If I wanted to eventually win the GSL, I would certainly force myself to go through all of the hoops needed to develop pro-gamer level mechanics. Exercises such as practicing stalker vs stalker micro in custom maps over and over to get better at PvP, practicing gateway vs MM micro for hours at a time to never die vs the 2 ghost timing push, 10 games in a row where my opponent is only allowed to attack multiple places simultaneously in order to practice my multitasking, etc. But most of us don't have that desire, and if we're treating SC2 as anything other than a future full-time career, we would rather maximize how much fun we have.
After reading some of the responses along with the OP, here are my own thoughts:
First off, I think the OP is brilliant. I think the points outlined are great guidelines to tailoring a practice method that can best suit your needs as a player. But I feel that a vast majority of people are taking the ideas out of context. The ideas listed in the OP are meant to focus on the basic mechanics, learning them in and out so that you do not have to think about every little action that goes into a move, rather just the move itself. I have heard it said that, "It is better to practice something correctly once, instead of ten times incorrectly." You want to be making good habits with your practice if you want to improve your coordination.
Some people have brought up points talking about how professional musicians may not actually slow down songs a whole lot, but rather just learn it at a performance speed. And that's perfectly okay. But here is why: Music tends to have many different patterns that you can find from piece to piece. Once you have spent a long time mastering and recognizing these patterns, you no longer have to slow things down to perform them optimally. The same can be seen in Starcraft2. There are patterns of key presses which are required for certain moves, and once those key presses are mastered, they can efficiently be performed and the need to slow down the action is no longer required. That is the point that we are trying to get to, to slow down the action in order to create an unconscious understanding of the pattern.
Now, this does not help when it comes to the mental, decision making, aspect of Starcraft2. Others have pointed this out, but I feel that they do not distance themselves from the music mechanic comparison. Musical mechanics have nothing to do with decision making in SC2, so a different exercise is going to be required in order improve that aspect of your game. I believe that you will constantly find a trade off in your play, where either your mental or physical ability is going to be greater than the other, and you have to be able to balance them while pushing their capacity. For example, you have a simple drop going on at the same time. You may know how to correctly/perfectly divide your army in order to defend it, but if you lack the hand skill in order to perform said task, you will not be able to pull it off. Inversely, you may have the physical precision to be able to split your army, but if you lack the understanding of what to do you will be left with possibly a bad composition within your split army. A goal of a good player should be balance these two, because they both are imperative to having success in Starcraft.
Now, I could draw a connection between musical improve and Starcraft, how a musician who can improve holds understanding over the keys, scales, and rythms that make up a piece, similar to how a professional Starcraft 2 player (like Flash for instance) can correctly divvy up his units and look forward to the next move because of his understanding of the game and how player economies and pieces move/react… but that's a different discussion entirely ;D
Best of luck all, sorry for the long post.
:EDIT: Additional point
People seem to be complaining that running drills isn't fun… why can't they be? Seriously, I enjoy playing scales on violin and fixing intonation, and I have enjoy working on my larva injects. I get a thrill out of mastering small skills, and if you change your perspective to encourage your improvement you may find that your sense of accomplishment will be greater.
great post! I think what qxc was refering to was that acceleration should be done at the highest level not for beginners ie bronze to masters. could almost mistake you for Day9 hahaha.
On October 08 2011 08:48 Icekommander wrote: My Bronze and Silver friends can all macro just fine - as long as nothing is forcing them to make and adapt important decisions on the fly.
Did you honestly ever check? I don't have any friends in bronze or silver -- or even in plat -- who macro well in the absence of unexpected actions of my opponents.
This is why you must play in real starcraft conditions - you can't get any decent practise beyond your early build versus the AI
But "real starcraft conditions" is not the same as "ladder". To practice, you want a very controlled environment: You want a practice partner who will repeatedly do the same thing over and over again so you can learn how to deal with that. Then you can instruct him to vary certain parameters and learn to deal with those. At some point you'll be comfortable enough to understand the underlying mechanics without thinking too hard on a conscious level, and you'll be able to adapt to changes more easily.
If you just keep playing random (ladder) opponents, that's still "real starcraft conditions", but you never laid the groundwork to make rapid skill progress. *Especially* if your friends are overwhelmed by unexpected decisions -- I don't see how you expect them to improve rapidly by repeatedly overwhelming them if they still have so many other problems in their gameplay at the same time.
And failure to also improve your SC decision making ability, will hold you back from jumping leagues as surely as bad macro will.
I think we've seen enough examples of people who made a point of 3raxing, 4gating, or even building mass stalkers all the way to diamond/masters. Macro isn't all you need, but it is one of the most important single things. I do not believe you that bad decision making is as critical as bad macro to getting out of bronze and silver.
Actually my bronze league brother can follow a build perfectly as long as he doesn't receive any pressure. As soon as things start happening he looses focus on his macro and things start to go wrong.
Yes that is a major part of macro and mechanics, the ability to still do your stuff while you micro / watch / adapt, but without any pressure some bronze league players can actually follow a build perfectly (or as near to perfect as any non grandmaster player, e.g. their splits aren't nearly as fast so they are a second or two behind from the start)
On October 08 2011 08:48 Icekommander wrote: My Bronze and Silver friends can all macro just fine - as long as nothing is forcing them to make and adapt important decisions on the fly.
Did you honestly ever check? I don't have any friends in bronze or silver -- or even in plat -- who macro well in the absence of unexpected actions of my opponents.
This is why you must play in real starcraft conditions - you can't get any decent practise beyond your early build versus the AI
But "real starcraft conditions" is not the same as "ladder". To practice, you want a very controlled environment: You want a practice partner who will repeatedly do the same thing over and over again so you can learn how to deal with that. Then you can instruct him to vary certain parameters and learn to deal with those. At some point you'll be comfortable enough to understand the underlying mechanics without thinking too hard on a conscious level, and you'll be able to adapt to changes more easily.
If you just keep playing random (ladder) opponents, that's still "real starcraft conditions", but you never laid the groundwork to make rapid skill progress. *Especially* if your friends are overwhelmed by unexpected decisions -- I don't see how you expect them to improve rapidly by repeatedly overwhelming them if they still have so many other problems in their gameplay at the same time.
And failure to also improve your SC decision making ability, will hold you back from jumping leagues as surely as bad macro will.
I think we've seen enough examples of people who made a point of 3raxing, 4gating, or even building mass stalkers all the way to diamond/masters. Macro isn't all you need, but it is one of the most important single things. I do not believe you that bad decision making is as critical as bad macro to getting out of bronze and silver.
Actually my bronze league brother can follow a build perfectly as long as he doesn't receive any pressure. As soon as things start happening he looses focus on his macro and things start to go wrong.
Yes that is a major part of macro and mechanics, the ability to still do your stuff while you micro / watch / adapt, but without any pressure some bronze league players can actually follow a build perfectly (or as near to perfect as any non grandmaster player, e.g. their splits aren't nearly as fast so they are a second or two behind from the start)
If your brother is so thrown off by pressure, I'd argue that he doesn't know his build nearly well enough. The idea of learning a build in practice isn't just to simply be able to perform it in a glass bubble. The idea is to be able to execute it without even thinking.
If we don't have to think about the build order, it won't break down when we are faced with pressure. During times of crisis, we can pay more attention to pressure rather than focusing our energy on when to build an SCV.
Great post, first of all. Secondly, to those who continue to harp on "playing for fun", why does this topic concern you? If you want to play for fun then do so, and leave the people who are interested in developing their SC2 skill efficiently to discuss various strategies for doing so.
Now insofar as the OP claims that the advice to "play more macro games" to really polish your macro is unhelpful advice for people who have macro woes, he is absolutely correct. As anybody who has studied the development of expertise (or has achieved expertise in a competitive/highly developed field) likely knows, deliberate practice of specific sub-skills is paramount to the attainment of the solid base of technical proficiency that is necessary for expert performance. That is, continual and attentive drilling of basic skills in a controlled environment (read: NOT the activity in its totality as it would be performed in competition) is far and away the most effective way to teach beginners a new skill-set, for intermediates to shore up weaknesses in their game and make measurable improvement, and for experts to retain the sharpness and crispness that makes them as good as they are.
I enjoy the musical analogy, but I think there is an even better one given the competitive nature of SC2. I myself have been training Muay Thai (a form of kickboxing, for those unawares) nigh on 6 years now, and the analogy seems strong. How do expert trainers in martial arts teach their students? Do they throw them into sparring every hour of every single session and say "use your punches more" if their punches are lacking speed/power/timing/accuracy? Do they greet their students and tell them to start sparring and "work on their speed"? No, and with good reason. This is the proposed equivalent of the mass-gaming-only approach. If one just "plays a lot" or "fights a lot", you will inevitably get better, but the atrocious mistakes you are constantly making unawares will become habitual over time with this sort of approach. Your sense of how to engage with a live opponent will certainly improve dramatically in this way, and so will your ability to "think on the fly", but this benefit could just as easily be attained through a more deliberate, sensible regimen that is focused primarily on the attainment of solid fundamentals before throwing one into the flames, as it were. The flames will come in training, obviously, but they ought to be kept at bay until the player has some notion of what they should and should not be doing, and what they need to focus on, whether this or that is good/bad execution of some action, etc, etc.
Professional boxers still drill the jab and the cross every single training session. The majority of their training is typically not sparring with live opponents. Rather, it is a far more controlled and focused drilling of various sub-skills such as different combinations of punches, footwork, head movement, and so forth. There are few if any long-lived, well-developed competitive activities that are not approached in this fashion. Music, football, basketball, boxing, MMA, golf, wrestling, Muay Thai, and even activities like chess are trained in this fashion because, quite simply, it is far and away the most effective approach for improving quickly and avoiding the pitfalls of habituating bad/inefficient technique.
Why has it not seeped in SC2, then? Well, primarily because eSports is very young in the grand scheme of things, and this sort of wisdom has yet to work its way in except perhaps in small portions of the professional community. What is and is not efficient/appropriate technique has not yet been deeply explored and laid out by long decades of competition and thought on the subject. This will change with time, and more and more the training that a would-be professional gamer, or just plain old professional gamer receives will come to resemble in many respects the same broad kind of training structure that so many other, more developed skill-oriented activities already have.
Mass gaming has its place, undoubtedly. Just as a fighter who never spars is never going to be very good a SC2 gamer that never actually plays competitive 1v1 is not going to be very good either, regardless of much deliberate practice of sub-skills they engage in. However, focusing on mass gaming only, at any level of skill is a mistake. Once you stop drilling the fundamentals, even as a professional, progress will be slowed, halted, or even somewhat reversed on the many sub-skills that are now only receiving attention in-game. The key is balancing actual practice with the sort of precise, controlled practice that will shore up and make efficient different portions of the competitor's play.
Interestingly, the only place in the SC2 world where this sort of thing is occurring to any appreciable extent is Korea. Koreans have a system left over from Brood War that employs coaches who can watch over players as they play, point out certain things that they need to work on (and thus spur the focused practice of specific sub-skills that would have eluded somebody who simply "plays a lot") and so on. This practice can be as simple as playing a custom game against an AI that sits around and never attacks while focusing on some aspect of play, or it can involve specific builds or strategies with an informed practice partner. I don't think the system in Korea is at the level of a highly developed sport as of yet, but it is far better than what most foreigners have access to. This could well be a factor in the Korean superiority on average amongst the professionals.
In summary, I think the OP is largely correct in that there is a much better way to improve effectively and quickly than what is often pandered on the strategy forums. The literature on the development of expertise points in this direction as well; just doing the activity a lot is not enough when a field becomes developed and competitive enough.
Great post, just one comment in qxcs' "defense": while your approach is imo totally the best way to learn sc2 properly, to push your limits qxcs idea is a good one. Once you have felt the franticness of the upped speed the regular one will feel relaxing to you and you might be able to concentrate on more things. For a beginner or even somebody without a certrain degree of mastery it would be destructive, i agree.
On October 08 2011 10:48 Offhand wrote: How much can you realistically break down SC2 in order to practice sub-skills though? A weak sub-skill could be as broad as one particular match-up.
Where one draws the lines and approaches something as a sub-skill is part of what will be refined over time as the field develops. Obviously being able to snap off a line of perfectly arrayed force fields is a useful sub-skill for all of the Protoss matchups, and this would be something well worth investing one's time in. It is only a fruitful enterprise if you divvy up the practice in such a way that you are focusing on relevant, improvable, and common actions that will have an appreciable affect on your gameplay. Part of the challenge of becoming expert in any field is finding out just what those things are, I think.
On October 08 2011 09:10 Tyrant0 wrote: Those aren't myths, they're pretty true.
You HAVE to play a ton of games at some point. You CAN pin point specific flaws in your play and tackle them head-on, but you can do so in mass while learning to deal with various opponents. It's obviously more efficient though to say, go into a game against no opponent/no AI to work on mechanics exclusively without the variable of an opponent, first...? There was an article a few months ago that explained how mass games, just like mass practice on an instrument is required to develop extensive muscle memory.
The reference to practicing music is spot on, though. I've always compared learning SC2 to playing a violin.
Mass practice is required, but that's not "mass games". Practice isn't the same as playing ladder games.
I linked to one such article in my first-page reply.
You have to deal with the random variable, at some point. If you can't execute without being thrown off, you're really only good at playing in a vacuum. You can really focus on various elements of your play in an extremely controlled environment, but it should also come with a lot of ladder games in between.
I absolutely agree, but the key point here is that you try to deal with a random variable at a time, working your way towards the full "real" environment. You shouldn't try to deal with everything at once if your goal is to improve rapidly.
Keeping it real by playing actual games is certainly important, and there are many things experience brings. I really think we actually agree here.
It's almost comparable to learning the first few parts of a song, then attempting to play them at full speed before moving on.
Yes, that's a good analogy. (Instead of parts of a game, you're working on aspects of a game, but it's easiest to work on those aspects specifically before trying to bring them together all at once.)
Wow, what an interesting post. I'm a professional saxophonist from Texas working on my double music major for performance and composition, and I can highly relate to a lot of the concepts you talked about. Sadly, I didn't naturally try to slow things down for practice, but I DID, however, break the matches I played into beginning, middle and end type of sections and specified when I need to. I guess the fact that I didn't slow the game down initially is just a tribute to my music practice methods, lol. As I'm only 19 years old, looking into my practice methods now, I now realize I haven't been practicing my music as slow as I should considering how I perform them now, so thanks for spurring on that musical epiphany! hahaha. As for my practice method for SCII NOW, well I try to practice with a method I use for my saxophone studies, and that is "Performance provides experience." A musician who never "performs" his piece before his/her actual recital will almost never be as confident in their performance as a musician who plays the music without stopping every now and then during practice to try and provide that "performance" experience before the big day, lol. Likewise, I get my practice in through not the AI, but through real matches. If it takes me a season to finally get promoted to silver because of my losses, then that's fine, but when I get there I'll have more valuable knowledge and experience on how to handle HUMAN players with HUMAN traits and personalities. For instance, I don't think an AI would ever perform something as dirty as a Medivac drop or proxy pylon rush, lol. So like a musician would record these "practice performances" and jot down what/where they messed up, I'll go over replays (whether I won the match or not) and jot down what I did well, what I didn't do well, and what I can add to improve my overall game. Yes I know this method might require a little more patience, but it's definitely worth it in the long run.
On October 08 2011 10:01 Icekommander wrote: Yes indeed. I was helping one of my Bronze friends today, who was fine macroing off of two base - until a battle happened somewhere and demanded his attention. Simply doing the repetative actions of pressing 4aaaaaaaaadddd 6vv isn't difficult. It is when something forces you to divide your attention that macro suffers.
Fair enough -- in that case, practicing macro against an AI isn't the type of practice your friends need. I don't know what the best way to work on that is.
But if you try and practise versus the same two or three people over and over again, then try to take your build to a tournament, someone is going to smoke you with something you've just never seen before. For example: If your primary zerg practise partner ( and how many practise partners does the average silver/gold player have anyway?) always plays conservatively with his mutalisks, so you might just throw down some, turrets and go about your merry way. Then you play someone who is really aggressive with those same mutalisks, and suddenly your stretched to the brim just trying to hold them off, always having to rebuild turrets, and it seems like you can never move out. Maybe that opponents macro is weaker, which is why he is in the same league as you, but you have no experience with dealing with that style of play, so you can adequately deal with it.
Obviously, if you have a large array of practise partners on the level of a pro team, then no, ladder isn't really required. But otherwise you'll improve rapidly for a bit, and then hit a stone wall, because you are completely unfamiliar with anything outside a very select field of play. Ideally, I think that having a large array of people who you can say "Ok Bob, play me ten times going Three Gate Expand" "Ok now Tim, you play me ten times going Three Gate Expand". But I think many players can't do that (And regardless, the OP has "Polish versus Human Opponents" as the final step, with no distinction of who that is) .
I think we're not disagreeing on the fundamentals, more on the details.
I had a long reply typed up, but deleted it for the sake of brevity. I agree with you.
Basically: practicing against a partner should have a specific purpose: You want to practice a specific skill and focus on that. Once you achieved your goal, there's no point in continuing with the same drill. (Example: You can't beat 7-gate. Get a guy to 7-gate you until you figured out how to hold it. Once you know how, move on to learn other things. This is much faster than laddering in the hope of finding someone who 7-gates you.)
I think of it as a gym: You don't need to go to the gym to play soccer or tennis casually. But you can't get around a strict training plan with specific, well-designed exercises if you want to be successful at the same sport professionally, on a high level.
You are assuming that this four-gating player is bad at decision making. It isn't. When he does his four-gate, his decision making for that four-gate is at a Diamond/Masters level. He'll know exactly how to crack bunkers, or forcefield roaches. When he is is supposed to reinforce zealots, and when to reinforce stalkers. In fact, that is exactly what all-ins are all about, you are betting the game that you can make better decisions in a big early game battle than your opponent can.
That's exactly what I mean!
By focusing on a specific, boring, repetitive build, it's easy to learn exactly what works and what doesn't. You're learning decision-making by -- ironically -- reducing the number of decisions you have (namely, by committing to 4gate).
Once you have learned those decisions, the 4gate practice has done its job, and you should move on and learn how to play properly ;-)
But by reducing the number of decisions, you can actually learn much more about the decisions that do remain. It won't teach you everything, but it will teach you some important things very quickly, and then you should move on and learn the rest.
Also this statement is kind of contradictory. You bring up four-gating players making Masters to emphasize the importance of Macro?
No, I brought it up to emphasize that executing something specific very well -- even if it is often a bad decision -- gets you to diamond/masters. Deciding correctly but being unable to execute your choices well is much more crippling at low levels, in my opinion. The guy who only built probes/stalkers and only used a-move (no micro) is probably a better example.
I know when I play I like to focus on a particular area. Its quite easy as Zerg. Focus on spreading creep one game, then on hitting injects perfectly, then on micro/army control etc. Bring the elements together play better overal.
I think there is some merit to just grinding the shit out of games, as long as your taking the time to analyse and target areas of improvement. Afterall the Koreans are better because they play more.
Seems to me speed is product of proficiency. You can't focus on being fast any more than you can focus on being proficient. Make your actions precise and effortless and speed comes.
I don't necessarily agree with the basis of this thread. You are comparing learning to play starcraft with learning to play music when they are totally different. There is no opponent when playing music, and rarely much to distract your attention away from playing. Learning macro cycles isn't very hard either, most platinum+ players can do macro cycles when not harassed. The issue is that they have a lot of trouble dividing their attention properly and doing each task in the optimal order. For example if you see a giant red blob moving at your army do you spread it into a concave first or do you run your macro cycle?
While it may be true that someone who has very poor mechanics could benefit from the slow macro style approach, someone who can execute a near perfect macro cycle while not being bothered can't learn much from this, and can learn alot more from having to divide their attention.
If there is anything that I have learned from this post, it's that a lot of people don't have a lot of… imagination. Some people just don't stretch their mind even a tiny bit before refuting something that doesn't perfectly match up with their preconceived ideas.
Oh well, the world is filled with all kinds and that's why it's beautiful, no? c: c: c:
However, please realize that Starcraft isn't in a bubble where nothing you do has any effect on your gameplay ;D
My friend spent 1 hour practicing stutter stepping (and, having never played an RTS before in his life) can now stutter step better than most plat terran players. He doesn't know whether to stutter step to or away, which is really funny, but his timing is boss. There is no doubt that focused intensive practice offers superior benefits for many tasks. I think it is essential to break tasks down and drill them in. (Although, not all tasks can be handled that way, which is why we probably see so many people objecting to this method, since they see these tasks and go "huh, that wouldn't work for X").
I have concerns about slowing the game speed... so much of becoming good at the game is internalizing it, getting that feel for when things are supposed to happen. As a Zerg player who pulled himself out of bronze and shot up the leagues in season 2, so much of getting good with Zerg was learning those timings from getting pummeled over and over again. While certain mechanical skills can benifit from slowing things down, practicing and then speeding them up, I think much of the game knowledge / game sense things rely on having played hundreds and hudreds of games at proper speed. Therefore, I propose that we use this slow down and speed back up method for things that are more mechanically intensive and less about internalizing timings. I think this is a great tool for training, but is not the right tool for every job.
Thanks! Now I'm going to use it for practicing these army engagements I've been having trouble with XD
On October 08 2011 12:29 Hipsv wrote: I don't necessarily agree with the basis of this thread. You are comparing learning to play starcraft with learning to play music when they are totally different. There is no opponent when playing music, and rarely much to distract your attention away from playing. Learning macro cycles isn't very hard either, most platinum+ players can do macro cycles when not harassed. The issue is that they have a lot of trouble dividing their attention properly and doing each task in the optimal order. For example if you see a giant red blob moving at your army do you spread it into a concave first or do you run your macro cycle?
While it may be true that someone who has very poor mechanics could benefit from the slow macro style approach, someone who can execute a near perfect macro cycle while not being bothered can't learn much from this, and can learn alot more from having to divide their attention.
Which platinum players have perfect macro cycles? If they can produce off of 3+ base without going above 500/500, considering the vast majority of diamond and a lot of masters aren't even that good.
It's not even just about "injecting and making units," or "tapping" your hotkeys. You have to know the exact saturation amounts you add additional production at, how much production you support on x base at x saturations and how much you pull back to fit in additional upgrades/more bases. And then you have to macro perfectly. It is done only one way. Doing so incorrectly results in a shitty economy or floating minerals.
i agree with the op 100%. I would even take it to the next level and say to start of slowing down the game speed. with the extra time you will be able to think about smaller mechanical changes you can make to your game. Have you ever thought about how boxing unit(s) after a specific action can be efficient or inefficient. for example if your mouse is coming from the mini map should i box right top to bottom left or left bottom to top right?I know its small, but it makes a real big difference.then you gradually bring the speed up.
If your bad at starcraft it seems like starcraft would be more like memorizing a peice of music. But really that ain't true son, Starcraft is sexy improvised jazz and nothing else. There is no set sequence to memorize only smaller sets of action to combine at random depending on the situations.
EPT
