[D] Race switching to break skill ceiling - Page 2
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Insurgent3
1 Post
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DjayEl
France252 Posts
I see a lot of random/offracing players here. Do you guys feel that some races match some natural skills better (like aptitude for mechanics with T, strategic thinking with P or what have you), or given the proper training you could have achieved the same results regardless the race you picked, and would say it is only a matter of personal taste? | ||
Frankie Teardrop
United States74 Posts
On August 05 2014 00:17 SC2John wrote: I don't think that people that plateau in gold are limited because of their skill. There's no reason why every person can't reach masters if they practice correctly and are learning efficiently and put in the time. I can't believe in saying it, but for the first time, I actually disagree with John! I just don't think it's possible for everybody to reach masters. Of course, I could use the argument that, by definition, the league known as "master" is reserved for the top 2%, so even if the entire player base were playing at a level that your average master leaguer plays at right now, only the top 2% of them would be able to have that blue star badge. But to take a more soft approach, I don't think it's even possible for everybody -- even with proper practice, efficient learning, and a generous time commitment -- to play at a level similar to what master leaguers play at today. Platinum, or even diamond, I would be inclined to agree with, but it's easy for us to forget (especially those who have been playing at a high level for a long time) that Starcraft 2 is an incredibly difficult and fast paced game that does not come naturally to a lot of people. I would even agree that, with enough efficient practice, learning, and time spent, anybody could develop master-level mechanics, but mechanics -- while extremely important -- aren't everything. I firmly believe that there are certain amounts of natural, innate multitasking and decision making abilities that one must possess in order to play at that level, and the cast majority of us just don't have them. While anybody can certainly improve his/her multitasking and decision making skills to a degree, I don't believe that anybody and everybody can learn multitask or make decisions based on game-sense like a master leaguer. It's a certain type of aptitude that can't be learned or taught. Fortunately, for those people, there are 5 other leagues below master where they can find opponents to play against that will yield then a win rate ~50%. Contrary to what people tend to post on forums, there's nothing wrong with being "stuck in gold", or silver, or platinum, or diamond, or even bronze for months, or even years, as long as you are enjoying the game and having fun. | ||
Genome852
United States979 Posts
On August 05 2014 06:45 Frankie Teardrop wrote: I can't believe in saying it, but for the first time, I actually disagree with John! I just don't think it's possible for everybody to reach masters. Of course, I could use the argument that, by definition, the league known as "master" is reserved for the top 2%, so even if the entire player base were playing at a level that your average master leaguer plays at right now, only the top 2% of them would be able to have that blue star badge. But to take a more soft approach, I don't think it's even possible for everybody -- even with proper practice, efficient learning, and a generous time commitment -- to play at a level similar to what master leaguers play at today. Platinum, or even diamond, I would be inclined to agree with, but it's easy for us to forget (especially those who have been playing at a high level for a long time) that Starcraft 2 is an incredibly difficult and fast paced game that does not come naturally to a lot of people. I would even agree that, with enough efficient practice, learning, and time spent, anybody could develop master-level mechanics, but mechanics -- while extremely important -- aren't everything. I firmly believe that there are certain amounts of natural, innate multitasking and decision making abilities that one must possess in order to play at that level, and the cast majority of us just don't have them. While anybody can certainly improve his/her multitasking and decision making skills to a degree, I don't believe that anybody and everybody can learn multitask or make decisions based on game-sense like a master leaguer. It's a certain type of aptitude that can't be learned or taught. Master league is not as good as you think it is. Anyone can reach master if they try, unless physical handicaps are involved... Multitasking can be trained. Decision making can be trained, there are only a finite number of scenarios that can happen in a game and if you have played thousands upon thousands of games, you will have seen how each situation plays out and can improve upon your decision making based on past experiences. One example of this is determining if your army can fight the opposing army and win. Lower league players who have not played many games often times have no idea of the relative strength of their army (or their opponent's) by just looking, so they often take engagements they cannot win and lose from that. And this is only talking about players who try to do macro games every time. A monkey can 7rax or 2gate proxy to master league if they were bored enough to (I have played against these people). | ||
MrBarryObama
Korea (South)141 Posts
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Kvassten
Sweden159 Posts
On August 05 2014 07:09 Genome852 wrote: Master league is not as good as you think it is. Anyone can reach master if they try, unless physical handicaps are involved... Multitasking can be trained. Decision making can be trained, there are only a finite number of scenarios that can happen in a game and if you have played thousands upon thousands of games, you will have seen how each situation plays out and can improve upon your decision making based on past experiences. One example of this is determining if your army can fight the opposing army and win. Lower league players who have not played many games often times have no idea of the relative strength of their army (or their opponent's) by just looking, so they often take engagements they cannot win and lose from that. And this is only talking about players who try to do macro games every time. A monkey can 7rax or 2gate proxy to master league if they were bored enough to (I have played against these people). That is because they have the mechanics to do a good followup attack which requires good knowledge, macro and decision making. Just doing a 7rax, proxy 2gate or an early pool with no transition does not win more than 50% of the games. | ||
Shuffleblade
Sweden1903 Posts
On August 05 2014 07:09 Genome852 wrote: Master league is not as good as you think it is. Anyone can reach master if they try, unless physical handicaps are involved... Multitasking can be trained. Decision making can be trained, there are only a finite number of scenarios that can happen in a game and if you have played thousands upon thousands of games, you will have seen how each situation plays out and can improve upon your decision making based on past experiences. One example of this is determining if your army can fight the opposing army and win. Lower league players who have not played many games often times have no idea of the relative strength of their army (or their opponent's) by just looking, so they often take engagements they cannot win and lose from that. And this is only talking about players who try to do macro games every time. A monkey can 7rax or 2gate proxy to master league if they were bored enough to (I have played against these people). I absolutely agree with this, of course different people does not have the same amplitude for the game, it also true however they probably have an amplitude for different things. A person could be very skilled and have a very easy time learning how to micro well but have a harder time getting mechanics down while another person cant micro well but is basically like a "Machine" when it comes to macro cycles. The question of amplitude is therefore pretty mute, since most people will have a strong amplitude for some parts of the game but be weak in others meaning its rare for people to be generally unskilled across the board. Besides the question of amplitude the most imprtant thing in SC2 is obviously practise and repetition, this is the only way to get good decisionmaking and also the foundation of getting macrocycles down. Being the top 2% of the SC2 players in not especially hard, thats because a vast majority of the gamers does not really take the game that serious anyway. Also discussing the actual difficulty of reaching masters is pretty impossible unless we specify which time period we are talking about, at the launch of SC2 the skill-level was obviously a lot lower than it is now. Now for my own tale, I tried off-racing yesterday just because and oh my god the disaster. I'm diamond level zerg player and feel I'm pretty decent anyway but holy bloody crap Terran is impossible xD Trying a race I never played before in competetive 1v1 really showed me what experience and habits really do. I understand the theory behind Terran well and know what I'm supposed to do to some degree anyway. It was however totally impossible, I went for fast medivacs and got them at like the 11-12 minute mark and floated thousands of minerals just within the first 15mins. I played 5ish games and I didn't really feel like I improved or got the hang of it, at the end I tried on focusing on just making marines but lol couldn't even pull that off. If anything I must say, the last game I played yesterday I went back to zerg and I've never felt so comfortable in a game ever XD | ||
vhapter
Brazil677 Posts
On August 05 2014 06:45 Frankie Teardrop wrote: [...] But to take a more soft approach, I don't think it's even possible for everybody -- even with proper practice, efficient learning, and a generous time commitment -- to play at a level similar to what master leaguers play at today. [...] I think you're disregarding the fact that these people who can't get into masters pretty much never practice enough. I'm a prime example of that. I played wc3 for years, so when I switched to sc2 I already had good mechanics and knew how to set up my hotkeys. Got stuck in gold for a while because I didn't practice enough and there was a lot of strategy to learn at once. But once I had at least a clue what to do in each matchup (strategically speaking, I still sucked for the most part imo) and put in the time, I got promoted to top diamond in no time. Why have I never been promoted to master league in 1v1? I don't like to play people I don't know. The ladder is full of jerks who just can't respect other people at all. The worst of all is you can't play the player - people just do the shittiest strategies ever and hope for lucky, cheap wins. Since you're not playing the same player again, you can't see who the better player is if you get caught offguard. It favors luck too much and dismisses important skills that good players need to have, such as analyzing your opponent's weakenesses. I'm pretty sure if I were "in shape" and played for an entire season, I'd be promoted to master league though. I think all top diamond players can do that if they're already solid enough. If they don't get promoted in the first season, it would probably serve as a stepping stone as they'd most likely make it in the next season - assuming they fixed their builds and learned how to deal with their own weakenesses. | ||
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On August 05 2014 06:45 Frankie Teardrop wrote: I can't believe in saying it, but for the first time, I actually disagree with John! I just don't think it's possible for everybody to reach masters. Of course, I could use the argument that, by definition, the league known as "master" is reserved for the top 2%, so even if the entire player base were playing at a level that your average master leaguer plays at right now, only the top 2% of them would be able to have that blue star badge. But to take a more soft approach, I don't think it's even possible for everybody -- even with proper practice, efficient learning, and a generous time commitment -- to play at a level similar to what master leaguers play at today. Platinum, or even diamond, I would be inclined to agree with, but it's easy for us to forget (especially those who have been playing at a high level for a long time) that Starcraft 2 is an incredibly difficult and fast paced game that does not come naturally to a lot of people. I would even agree that, with enough efficient practice, learning, and time spent, anybody could develop master-level mechanics, but mechanics -- while extremely important -- aren't everything. I firmly believe that there are certain amounts of natural, innate multitasking and decision making abilities that one must possess in order to play at that level, and the cast majority of us just don't have them. While anybody can certainly improve his/her multitasking and decision making skills to a degree, I don't believe that anybody and everybody can learn multitask or make decisions based on game-sense like a master leaguer. It's a certain type of aptitude that can't be learned or taught. Fortunately, for those people, there are 5 other leagues below master where they can find opponents to play against that will yield then a win rate ~50%. Contrary to what people tend to post on forums, there's nothing wrong with being "stuck in gold", or silver, or platinum, or diamond, or even bronze for months, or even years, as long as you are enjoying the game and having fun. I guess what I'm trying to say is that players who are interested in the game and willing to improve can definitely achieve masters through intelligent practice and consistent commitment. Players who aren't as interested in the game will ultimately end up quitting or giving up before they reach any significant amount of skill, which is totally fine. Starcraft isn't necessarily for everyone, and that's fine. But like playing an instrument, people who are interested in learning can functionally play with enough time and dedicated practice. | ||
neptunusfisk
2286 Posts
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neptunusfisk
2286 Posts
On August 05 2014 16:51 SC2John wrote: I guess what I'm trying to say is that players who are interested in the game and willing to improve can definitely achieve masters through intelligent practice and consistent commitment. Players who aren't as interested in the game will ultimately end up quitting or giving up before they reach any significant amount of skill, which is totally fine. Starcraft isn't necessarily for everyone, and that's fine. But like playing an instrument, people who are interested in learning can functionally play with enough time and dedicated practice. There are studies on violinists and the correspondance between practicing more than 10k hours and being famous as principal or solist players was almost 100%, while the sub 10k students were moderately successful and the ones below a certain threshold were all music teachers or retired into other jobs a decade later iirc | ||
maddogmcgee
Australia105 Posts
On August 05 2014 16:51 SC2John wrote: I guess what I'm trying to say is that players who are interested in the game and willing to improve can definitely achieve masters through intelligent practice and consistent commitment. Players who aren't as interested in the game will ultimately end up quitting or giving up before they reach any significant amount of skill, which is totally fine. Starcraft isn't necessarily for everyone, and that's fine. But like playing an instrument, people who are interested in learning can functionally play with enough time and dedicated practice. I was tempted not to reply for fear of derailing the thread BUT... as current high school teacher with a masters in education I can say that masters league in SC2 is almost certainly not possible for many people. In regards to students age 12-18 which is what i know most about, in Australia someone with a severe intellectual handicap goes to a separate school with specially trained staff in order to learn life skills etc. Someone with moderate intellectual disability can attend a public school but needs lessons to be changed, because even with a full time aid, they can often not complete reading, writing etc like other students. These type of students may be unable to understand build orders, let alone respond on the fly to different in game situations. Once you remove these students there is still a large minority of students who struggle with basic concepts in English math etc. Just because concepts like small delays in worker production leading to hundreds of minerals lost may make innate sense to some, does not mean that they make sense to all. The idea that almost all people could manage to be in the top 2 percent of people who memorise build orders, respond to attacks, remember timings and unit competitions while being mechanically adept enough to reserve most of their cognition for decision making, rather than operation of the keyboard and mouse, seems to me to be counterproductive. There always has to be people in the bottom 98 percent and many many people will be here regardless of their practice style or desire to improve. I would also suggest that team liquid has a much higher percentage of people who are naturally talented at SC2 on it which may lead regular forum goers to assume that all sc2 players are similar....and team liquid policies (which i agree with) prevent many people who would rage about being stuck at gold due to imba toss etc from posting. Oh and on a lighter note, I learnt random because i was sick of dying in ZvT. Now (6 months later) that im ok with terran, I all in with timing attacks based on when I know Terran are weak. | ||
Ty2
United States1431 Posts
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Chameleon
United States604 Posts
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Socup
190 Posts
On August 04 2014 22:33 TokyoGirl wrote: If you are plateauing in skill then its something that cannot be fixed regardless of race switching or not. Some people are just naturally not designed for this game. Thats why some people stay in gold for 4 years and then some reach GM in 2 months. However I do find race switching somewhat useful since you can learn what each race is strong/weak against. Also you can learn some important timings. What I do is when I go on lose streak, i play offrace unranked and it is very helpful, relaxing and puts you back into a good mood regardless if i win or lose. There's no such thing as "natural at a game" or not. The type of person you are will dictate how you approach a game. Do you have a good or a bad mindset? Do you learn or do you try to overcome your obstacles with brute force and no reflection (a.k.a. mass gaming)? You need a number of key things to improve in anything; focused practice, a plan, goals, reflection (the good kind that pulls things apart and understands them in their own as well as together), etc. People can "play" guitar for years as well, and go nowhere, or any other musical instrument. Some can play it for a few months and become "decent". You can't say "some people just aren't going to be good at guitar". It's that some people don't have a "natural" or early developed ability to focus and improve properly, while some do. Google "Learning how to learn". There's no such thing as people "meant" to be good or bad at something which only requires learning, but there is such as thing as people who have an advantage in learning faster and better than their peers because of their personality and what they learned earlier in life. Learning takes intelligent work, who knew? On August 05 2014 22:34 Ty2 wrote: There's something called the 10,000 hour rule I think applies to everyone except the physically/mentally handicapped that goes along the lines that if you spend 10,000 hours doing something you'll be an expert at it. I think any player as long as they're committed enough can improve and eventually get to masters. All it takes is hard work and I don't think getting to masters requires any inherent ability. That 10,000 hour rule only matters when a person intelligently improves in something, not when a person masses tons of hours doing blind or thoughtless work. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/433514-sc2-notes-how-to-plan-a-strategy Like MadDmcgee was describing, he had a "fear" of Terran based on not understanding. This fear probably damaged his macro or all-in decision making abilities. Day9 talks about this "fear" of things which aren't real that affect your gameplay in the audio files in that above link. I can tell you with certainty that this is true, because if you main Zerg for a long time and you don't understand the other race, Terran can feel like a constant threat all throughout 2-8 minutes. But if you start playing Terran, you realize that Terran actually has very limited options and a low army count. Then you can go back and just throw up a spine and get two queens and perfectly counter reapers and any hellion followup before they even get to your base, and continue spamming drones into a huge economic lead until you know what kind of push T is trying for. | ||
vhapter
Brazil677 Posts
On August 05 2014 20:26 maddogmcgee wrote: [...] There always has to be people in the bottom 98 percent and many many people will be here regardless of their practice style or desire to improve. [...] I don't think the point is every single person in this world could reach masters. We're talking about people who find the game inherently interesting - people who would put the time and effort to get really good. Let's look at it from a different perspective. Think about music. There are definitely right and wrong ways to go about learning how to play an instrument. I for one wouldn't have learned how to play the electric guitar without proper resources or help. But nobody has to start from scratch and learn everything on their own - that just not efficient. The moment I learned how to practice, what proper technique was, and put in the hours, I got really good. While it was flattering to hear that I was a talented person, all I did was practice (properly) for hours on end. It was something inherently interesting to me. Starcraft 2 isn't as black and white and music imo. But there's so much information out there. Those who are really interested are the ones who usually watch tournaments and get to understand how the game works. With things like forums, tutorials, build orders, and videos out there, there's no lack of information for those who want to play at a higher level. There's a reason why Koreans practice in groups and share their ideas so much... a single person usually can't figure everything out on his/her own. It's just unreasonable. So it's important to keep in mind that people don't have to realize the importance of everything on their own. Of course, they're not likely to get far if they really rely on people too much and don't think about anything themselves, but that's something entirely different. | ||
FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
APM always averaged between 90 - 110. It's just understanding what to do at all times that's kept me going rather than mechanics, people understate strategy far too much in this game. | ||
Socup
190 Posts
On August 06 2014 08:07 FabledIntegral wrote: I plateaued with Zerg, so I switched to Terran. I plateaued to Terran, so I switched to Random and have once again plateaued. I now play all 3 races relatively equally, at least per my win% with all 3 races. My plateau point has been relatively consistent at low GM to high masters since the start of the Beta (I was on all those "top 200" lists they came out with). APM always averaged between 90 - 110. It's just understanding what to do at all times that's kept me going rather than mechanics, people understate strategy far too much in this game. APM increases if you practice a build. APM decreases with decision making and lack of a plan. The more you try to think your way through a game to respond, the worse your APM is. The more you doubt your strategy and game decisions the slower you go. Play some micro games and practice your strategy vs very easy AI to work on your APM producing structure/units. http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/Day[9]0002-BuildingTriggers.mp3 | ||
WGT-Baal
France3167 Posts
here are my 2 cents, hopefully it s not fully devoid of interest (but the overall quality is so high it s hard!): I play random in 2v2 because I find it more fun that way. 2v2 is way more forgivign than 1v1 and you can do crazy stuff. At the same time, it's great to try 1 base all-ins or two base timing attacks! For 1v1, I switched from P to Z (P being my BW main race) for a variety of reasons, but sometimes I go on another server (NA usually because the latency is ok too) to play T or P 1v1 there. I used to random in 1v1 but it s too, well, random. You get 9 possible match-ups, a lot of different maps, and overall I never focus on a single thing. I prefer to play 10 games as one race, then 10 as another and 10 as the last rather than 30 random games (I hope this makes sense for someone). The macro mechanics are so different from one to the other (esp Z vs P/T) that I feel I need a couple game of the same race to focus on it and improve my overall game mechanics. It definitely helps with game knowledge too. And I am not lost when I scout something now, I think "ok, what would I get in his shoes?" and not "ah damn, what did I read on TL about scouting again?" at any case, keep having fun, offracing is good to relax, it takes your mind off of supposed "imbalances" you see. Go lose 10 PvT in a row and you ll be like "yeah, ok that MU isnt that broken after all" | ||
FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
On August 06 2014 08:35 Socup wrote: APM increases if you practice a build. APM decreases with decision making and lack of a plan. The more you try to think your way through a game to respond, the worse your APM is. The more you doubt your strategy and game decisions the slower you go. Play some micro games and practice your strategy vs very easy AI to work on your APM producing structure/units. http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/Day[9]0002-BuildingTriggers.mp3 I don't doubt my strategy whatsoever. Almost at no point during the game do I think "what should I do next." Strategy is above an beyond a strength, not a limiting factor for me, it's all intuition. I just don't care about increasing APM or taking the time to practice, hehe. My APM has been low since BW, where I capped out as C on iCCuP due to mechanics. Strategy didn't get you quite as far in that game. | ||
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