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"Just macro," is what I get told whenever I ask for help.
Look, I'm not good at this game, I've been long stuck in the top of bronze since the launch of SC2. To be fair that's because I often go long periods of time without playing and I lose whatever skill I build up. Yet with the start of ladder season 2 I've decided I want to not be awful. The ultimate goal is get good enough to serve as a respectable alternate for my CSL team come September. It's a big big undertaking but I feel I can do it. I have even taken up playing random on ladder while practicing Toss mostly in custom games. But that's not really the point of this.
As I look for the beginning of serious help most of what I see is pretty simplistic advice. "Keep your macro up, pylons and probes, scout," are the kin d of tips you see for most people at my level. "Bronze is pure cheese and 10 year olds," is the kind of sentiment that comes across. This has gotten especially worse since Destiny did his mass queens ladder experiment getting him all the way to diamond with the nothing but the infamous larva spawner. It was point and match for macro/mechanics in the eyes of many. Yet this experiment seems hollow in my eyes as anyone can pick off silver/gold players with high masters level transfusion micro.
Now I'm not saying anything is more important than macroing it up. I just think most people don't understand what actually goes on in the lower leagues and thus give very generic advice when many low level players are looking for something more than that. For instance despite it's reputation bronze is pretty devoid of cheese. Most cheesers have worked there way into silver and gold with easy victories.
So I decided I want to teach TL what bronze is like. I've fired up sc2gears and am collecting stats on all my games. woth the aim of collecting specific stats and information that gives us an accurate and detailed picture of low level play. Figure out what low level players actually struggle with regarding their specific races and matchups. Figure out what type of builds (strategies really, it's looser than builds) and techniques are popular and why they do or do not work.
So what I'm asking for is what would you want to see in such a piece? What do you want to learn and what would be helpful to look for? Let's create advice that is more helpful than, "build shit."
P.S. Lolzy bronze replays will be included.
 
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United States17042 Posts
where are the replays? ^^
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Nothing yet, I'm still in the process of gathering data to file a sufficient report. I just am looking for input as to what people would be interested in (if at all). I don't want to write up a piece on something that doesn't address what people are looking for.
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The thing is, when it comes to concrete play, macro is area that would benefit people the most to improve upon. But this does not neccesarily make it sound advice, I really feel that mindset is the thing that will most rapidly improve your play.
For me, artificially raising my apm when nothing was happening, would make me strive to do more things, faster when I was actually playing.
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The thing is, getting better at macro is really the single most effective way for bronze league players to improve. Looking for "more useful" advice is a moot point IMO.
I don't see how anyone who is willing to spend an hour or two a day for a few months could still be stuck in bronze. " Build shit" generally equates to working on your ability to produce lots of units quickly. If you can produce lots of units quickly you can make it out of bronze as you admitted yourself with the entire mass queen thing. There are plenty of resources which can help you learn how to do that. For example: Day[9] has made many exceptional podcasts/daily episodes which cover macro mechanics. The biggest thing is simply practice regularly with the goal of producing lots of units quickly. An individual with any semblance of intelligence will figure out that they need to:
-Gain resources quickly ---> build lots of workers
-Spend resources quickly ---> build enough production structures to keep your resource intake <= spending without getting supply capped.
I think bronze leaguers should check out the Day[9] daily where he talks about the "mental checklist". If you watch that daily and practice for an hour or two a day for a month I would be amazed if you were still in bronze.
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I think one thing to look for is the efficiency of the build. I have some RL friends who are Bronze/Silver players and their initial pylon never goes down when they have 100 minerals - it's always at like 130 or 150. And their hatchery first builds plant the hatchery when they're floating 500 minerals instead of the second they hit 300.
I'm not going to go as far as to say that if you don't get your hatchery down at exactly 300 minerals you are going to lose the game but these sort of things will eventually build up and will severely screw you up.
Additionally I think that's a statistic you can collect - though it will require watching and recording events from the replay. If the hatchery goes down at 450 minerals instead of 300 you can say that build was 150 minerals less efficient than it could have been - or whichever metric you decide is appropriate.
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I think the biggest thing I see in bronze friends is they always stop making workers and just forget to build them for whatever reason. That tied into them just playing slowly and having idle workers. Usually all of this is built by simply playing more.
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Destiny isn't even the first one to to do something like that. There was that one redditor who turtled and maxed out on stalkers every game with 0 micro, scouting, or reacting to his opponent in any way and he made it to diamond, too. Hell I personally made it out of bronze with "just macro".
Honestly I think any project which aims to help bronze players by instructing them to focus on something OTHER than their macro and possibly the ability to correctly execute 1 opener per matchup is going to do more harm than good. This is GOOD advice. If you're still having trouble, it's only because you're having a hard time applying it; I'll be glad to observe a game of you playing, if you want, and point out why it's not working for you.
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On March 25 2011 02:27 Tercotta wrote:
So what I'm asking for is what would you want to see in such a piece? What do you want to learn and what would be helpful to look for? Let's create advice that is more helpful than, "build shit."
P.S. Lolzy bronze replays will be included.
I'd just like to see the next 10 games you play, not anything specific, just normal bronze league-matches.
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"Just Macro" is so nice advice, however, it doesn't get you out of bronze necessarily. I happen to be proof of that... Now, that's not what I'd dare to say on my own - I'm too inexperienced to make such bold statement, but it's something most of my higher lvl friends say - that my problem is not macro.
So, I believe that some of the Bronze players might find themselves in the similar situation; their biggest issues may lie in completely separate areas. Of course, macro may be something in need of constant improvement, I'm just saying that in some cases it's not what loses the games, as even if you outmacro someone, you might lose for completelly different reasons.
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I don't really know your specific case, so I don't want to say something as broad and general as "they're right, macro more."
However, I'll say this.
Even up to mid-diamond, I think the majority of games can be won by constantly building workers and constantly building units. If you don't ever float, get supply blocked, or otherwise screw up, you should just have a stronger army than the opponent's. With some scouting to react correctly to their opening, it's very unlikely that you'll lose a game.
I don't know what kind of advice you're looking for, but if you're looking for builds, there are "standard" builds for a reason. 3gate expand as protoss, 14gas 14pool as zerg, 2rax as terran are all useful. At higher levels, they might not appear in certain race-specific matchups, but it should suffice, again, all the way to diamond.
Alur commented on mindset earlier, and that's important. If the replays are what I suspect they are (they might not be!) then don't ever think "there's no way I could've held that off with the units I built." More likely the case is that you could've hammered out at least 1.5 times as many units, and held it off handily with proper play. I might be wrong, though.
Edit:
On March 25 2011 02:56 BabyToss! wrote:
So, I believe that some of the Bronze players might find themselves in the similar situation; their biggest issues may lie in completely separate areas. Of course, macro may be something in need of constant improvement, I'm just saying that in some cases it's not what loses the games, as even if you outmacro someone, you might lose for completelly different reasons.
Again, I'm judging without replays, so this may not be true, but I find that unlikely. You should be able to 1a your units into the enemy and win with superior macro to a rather high skill level--even beyond top bronze. I'm waiting on the OP's replays.
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Honestly I just don't agree. I have tons of reallife friends that are bronze, and when I watch them play, they lose because of macro. Honestly, the #1 thing I tell them is how many production facilities per base, and to be making units all the time out of those.
It's not uncommon for bronze players to be at 40 or 50 food by the 10 min mark. I strongly believe from my experiences watching my friends and obsing, that picking a simple, easy standard opener per matchup and working on macro and scouting is the best way for bronze players to improve.
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I dunno, sometimes when I play 4v4 I get matched up with 3 bronze guys. It freaks me the fuck out when I see my teammates doing shit like building 2 cyber cores or waiting 30 seconds after they hit 11 scvs to build their first depot. And then, I scout the enemies base and I see some zerg going macro hatch extractor before pool and then I breathe a sigh of relief.
I strongly believe that the only thing that one needs to do to get out of bronze is to get a good/safe build order, memorize it, build shit. Heck, if you can make it to masters by just 4 gating in all matchups it should get you out of bronze.
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On March 25 2011 02:55 Finskie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2011 02:27 Tercotta wrote:
So what I'm asking for is what would you want to see in such a piece? What do you want to learn and what would be helpful to look for? Let's create advice that is more helpful than, "build shit."
P.S. Lolzy bronze replays will be included. I'd just like to see the next 10 games you play, not anything specific, just normal bronze league-matches.
i would also like to see this!
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On March 25 2011 03:03 ZeaL. wrote:
I dunno, sometimes when I play 4v4 I get matched up with 3 bronze guys. It freaks me the fuck out when I see my teammates doing shit like building 2 cyber cores or waiting 30 seconds after they hit 11 scvs to build their first depot. And then, I scout the enemies base and I see some zerg going macro hatch extractor before pool and then I breathe a sigh of relief.
I strongly believe that the only thing that one needs to do to get out of bronze is to get a good/safe build order, memorize it, build shit. Heck, if you can make it to masters by just 4 gating in all matchups it should get you out of bronze.
4 gateways before core is a shockingly popular build order in bronze it seems.
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United Kingdom1266 Posts
i think the only other necessary piece of advice for getting up the divisions is being aware of threats and having better than dreadful mechanics. for example even that 'get to diamond on just stalkers and zero micro' wouldn't have worked had he chosen the wrong unit. the stalker is a decent general utility unit, had he picked the zealot one air unit would lose him the game and he also knew to get detection. an example of the mechanical ability would be to know to put units on attack move command instead of just move command. you are partially right in that just macro isn't exceptionally useful advice, its just that everything else is so extremely basic to those giving the advice they will omit it or forget to mention it. macro is of course the single most important thing though
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On March 25 2011 03:03 ZeaL. wrote:
I strongly believe that the only thing that one needs to do to get out of bronze is to get a good/safe build order, memorize it, build shit. Heck, if you can make it to masters by just 4 gating in all matchups it should get you out of bronze.
im in masters and i wish somebody could tell me a good safe build order
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United Kingdom1266 Posts
On March 25 2011 03:07 kaisr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2011 03:03 ZeaL. wrote:
I strongly believe that the only thing that one needs to do to get out of bronze is to get a good/safe build order, memorize it, build shit. Heck, if you can make it to masters by just 4 gating in all matchups it should get you out of bronze. im in masters and i wish somebody could tell me a good safe build order
safe for bronze is a lot different than safe for masters of course
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I'm interested in this. I want to know your thoughts behind your in game decision making. From my experience of coaching my friends typical bronze play is where you see a Terran wall off with 4 depots before rax.
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EPT
