Hello guys, I just wanna discuss the difference between skill and talent. What do these words mean? Where is the difference? How can I rate starcraft players in terms of skill and/or talent? I won't look up these words in a dictionary, I just want to give an insight of how I think the words should be used because in my opinion many users mix them up and don't use them properly.
Skill Skill is a measure of how good a person is at something at the moment. A player with more starcraft skill is better than a starcraft player with less skill. But deliberate that this is at a given moment. The player with less skill might be far better a month later or used to be better for the past years. But that does not matter now. Examples: Idra has the most skill of all foreigners at the moment. It does NOT count if other players like ret,nony etc. would be far better than idra if they had the same practice conditions. That is irrelevant. If a player who practices his ass off every damn day and night but can barely beat you as a casual player who plays 2-3 games per week, he is still better than you at the moment. Maybe you would rape him if you just played more for a week but that is not important for the term 'skill'. That guy is more skilled than you NOW.
Talent Player A has more talent than player B if he can display more improvement over a specific time. The requirement is that both players have the exact same practice conditions of course. So if it is your opinion that nony or ret would be far better than idra if they had the same practice conditions like him, then they have more talent than him. The player who practices his day off has of course much less talent than you at the game. Kolll might have a huge talent if it is true what he said. According to him he could make it to B in like 6 months of playing. Sure he practiced many hours per day but this is still an achievement which only a few foreigners could do. And yet there are still many foreigners who are able to beat him because they are just more skilled at the moment as of now. But if Kolll practices at least as much as the more skilled players in the future he will catch up because of his bigger talent.
So the term 'skill' depends mainly on the time and on some other minor factors (concentration e.g.) while your 'talent' for something does not change over time. In 2 years you won't have more talent for starcraft than now. Sure you would learn it faster if you played other RTS games in these 2 years but that is because you increased your skill in 'RTS games'. You can catch up with more talented players if you practice more than them. You can have better grades in an exam than a more intelligent guy who does not need to learn, just because you put much more effort in it. But I don't see how you can get more or less talented in anything over the time. Maybe even not if you get old because it is not your talent which is decreasing but your skill level in things like speed, reaction time etc.
I think all of you can give me other opinions and examples which would let me rethink my statements. You have to make a lot of distinctions regarding this topic. Questions are coming to my mind and I wanna discuss them later:
1) Is there a skill barrier and is it dependent on your talent? 2) Is your talent for something really a natural constant? What role does your childhood play? 3) Is your skill level much more dependent on other factors than your practice time? (answer is yes, I can think of a lot of examples right now)
1) obviously. "i can be as good as <#1 person> if i just practiced/worked/did X as much as/more than them" is the biggest crock of shit to grace this earth. no, you can't. 2) yep. you can't alter your genes, right? no matter how much you train you're not gonna run a sub2:30 marathon if you're just an average guy (or even if you're a quite good runner.. it takes much more than being "good" to run that well). a childhood of running isn't going to change that 3) why are you asking this if you say "answer is yes"?
but it's important to not let the idea of talent put you off from putting in the work. "what's the point i won't ever be good at this?" is a dangerous line of thinking that should be avoided unless you already put in a lot of time, flatlined on your progress for a significant time no matter what you try.
re: your initial question of how to rank players between skill and talent. .i think that's silly. there is no point on ranking anyone on anything other than skill. "would've could've should've" isn't going to work.
Simple RPG analogy: talent is the starting stats and the amount of stat gain you can have, and skill is the total stats you gain from leveling up. So a talented individual will end up with much higher maximum stats and will whoop the untalented players in PvP.
1 Yes, in fact talent is the main thing at work if you think about it, not just because you peak higher if you have it, but since you improve faster than your peers you get encouragement galore. Less gifted players will not feel as good training for many hours even if they are more hard working and give their best. Like it or not, results influence you.
2 That is the definition of talent.
3 Your condition, form or whatever may vary independently of practice regime, tapering helps even in gaming, but practice(not practice time) will dictate your level mostly. Remember that skill does not scale evenly with practice time. There are diminishing gains, followed by burnout as you increase volume
On June 11 2010 02:32 buhhy wrote: Simple RPG analogy: talent is the starting stats and the amount of stat gain you can have, and skill is the total stats you gain from leveling up. So a talented individual will end up with much higher maximum stats and will whoop the untalented players in PvP.
Lol this is good. I agree pretty much with that, except that your talent stats arn't always much higher so it usually doesn't make a huge difference. I don't think your "Natural" talent is really enough. "hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard".
All "natural talent" can be overcome by learned skill.
I mean , look at starcraft... I'm sure lots of the team EG guys have lots of talent, but because they aren't playing as much as the koreans, they can't compete.
On June 11 2010 04:49 ella_guru wrote: All "natural talent" can be overcome by learned skill.
I mean , look at starcraft... I'm sure lots of the team EG guys have lots of talent, but because they aren't playing as much as the koreans, they can't compete.
Have you considered the exact opposite? They have average talent but have more skill than the average BW gamer because they practice in a house together?
I honestly feel that there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who have immensely more talent at video games and would be vastly superior to even most pro gamers with the same conditions but this talent is never developed because they don't care enough to realize it, some might not even like video games at all.
I honestly feel that there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who have immensely more talent at video games and would be vastly superior to even most pro gamers with the same conditions but this talent is never developed because they don't care enough to realize it, some might not even like video games at all.
but you cant be good at starcraft without working hard at it. there are progamers who are not extraordinarily talented, but there isnt a single one who hasnt worked very hard to get there. if you dont have the desire or will to practice that much then you are not capable of being a progamer or being better than a progamer, "natural talent" or not.
I honestly feel that there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who have immensely more talent at video games and would be vastly superior to even most pro gamers with the same conditions but this talent is never developed because they don't care enough to realize it, some might not even like video games at all.
but you cant be good at starcraft without working hard at it. there are progamers who are not extraordinarily talented, but there isnt a single one who hasnt worked very hard to get there. if you dont have the desire or will to practice that much then you are not capable of being a progamer or being better than a progamer, "natural talent" or not.
I honestly feel that there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who have immensely more talent at video games and would be vastly superior to even most pro gamers with the same conditions but this talent is never developed because they don't care enough to realize it, some might not even like video games at all.
but you cant be good at starcraft without working hard at it. there are progamers who are not extraordinarily talented, but there isnt a single one who hasnt worked very hard to get there. if you dont have the desire or will to practice that much then you are not capable of being a progamer or being better than a progamer, "natural talent" or not.
True this. I'm from a slightly musical background, and I've been in touch with a lot of excellent musicians (I know a pianist who's gotten 2nd in the Young Chopin Awards or w/e). He's an extremely talented individual, but I know for a fact that if he spent only a casual amount of time of practice every day he'd be nothing. He's been practicing for at least six hours a day since he was very young, thus he has invested more 7+ years of consistent, dutiful practice in order to get where he is as a musician today.
Sure, there are people like autistic savants who have genius level abilities without doing anything for it, but there aren't many of these people are there doing professional caliber work netting extreme amounts of fame and fortune. I can think of one (that British guy, Daniel I think was his name), but nobody else atm.I think that most (if not all) of the people in the NBA/World Cup teams/Olympics/whatever tournament acted disciplined and practiced the hell out of their event/sport to attain their skills.
TL;DR : 99.9% of the time, if you want to be good at something, you have to work for it. Discipline>"natural talent".
On June 11 2010 12:10 lazz wrote: i think talent is a farce - raw discipline is what gets you anywhere in life.
I think talent is overrated. I do not disagree that someone may have a genetically predisposed to be better at something, but many of our genes require environmental factors to be expressed, and what genes really attribute to our talent in certain skills? And you can have all the talent in the world and still be bad at a game if you never actually practice and learn.
Sure you cannot reach anything without putting a lot of practice into it. This can only work for something which is 'new' to the people. At the beginning of the SC2 Beta you could have owned with pure talent. But after some time the hardworking people will get better than you even if they are less talented. If you practice as much as them you will likely always stay ahead of the,.
Regarding progamers: Like in most other disciplines you have to be both hardworking and naturally talented at the same time. Otherwise you cannot compete. Some people stated that hard work is everything and talent is only a useful tool to achieve some skill level easier. But this is not the case in my opinion. You will never become a progamer without a huge talent. There are thousands of korean amateurs who have been playing starcraft for 12 hours a day for years and they still aren't progamers. They might be able to catch up and get into a B team someday but they will never belong to the better progamers. On the other hand a huge talent won't belong to them as well if he does not put enough effort in it. The pool of progamers consists of people who are naturally talented in starcraft and also practiced their ass off for several years.
On June 11 2010 17:39 IdrA wrote: nvm practice doesnt matter
Haha, I have to laugh at this. In all seriousness though, if you guys want to read an excellent book about this topic and similar ones, read the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. The book has a chapter on what makes people successful and whether its from talent or just huge effort.
I'll summarize, but basically it's the fact that talent is what gets you noticed and gives you the opportunity to excel, but it's practice that determines whether you are a success or not. Here's a quote from the book.
What the research suggested was that once you have enough talent to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. In addition, other studies have also shown that excellence at a complex task requires a minimum level of practice, and experts have settled on 10,000 hours as the magic number for true expertise
On a random note, the book also has a chapter on why asians are good at math, which I found was hilarious.