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On December 26 2014 09:25 clickrush wrote: the problem with esports, especially in the NA scenes is that ppl didn't recognize the absolute nessecity for good coaches. The players often have way too many things on their minds and problems to solve. When I think for example of Nony/Tyler then I think of an absolutely incredibly intelligent and talented individual. Everyone loves to see him play, hear him talk about the game etc. But he didn't have that big success so far because he had/has mental issues which hold him back which are on top of it irrational (in a sense) and cannot be solved by purely *knowing* what the situation is. If you have a person who is there to motivate you, structure your practice, ask the right questions, and say the right things, know when to be gentle and when to be demanding and hard then even the hardest problems can be overcome. This sounds all so simple but its NOT simple at all. You need a person who is dedicated to those things and it's not an easy job, nor any coach fit to any player, as we all experienced for example with teachers during our school time. I think it is problematic to hire your friend as some sort of coach.
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On December 26 2014 09:25 clickrush wrote: the problem with esports, especially in the NA scenes is that ppl didn't recognize the absolute nessecity for good coaches. The players often have way too many things on their minds and problems to solve. When I think for example of Nony/Tyler then I think of an absolutely incredibly intelligent and talented individual. Everyone loves to see him play, hear him talk about the game etc. But he didn't have that big success so far because he had/has mental issues which hold him back which are on top of it irrational (in a sense) and cannot be solved by purely *knowing* what the situation is. If you have a person who is there to motivate you, structure your practice, ask the right questions, and say the right things, know when to be gentle and when to be demanding and hard then even the hardest problems can be overcome. This sounds all so simple but its NOT simple at all. You need a person who is dedicated to those things and it's not an easy job, nor any coach fit to any player, as we all experienced for example with teachers during our school time. I think it is problematic to hire your friend as some sort of coach. Are there players in na who are willing to go the full time coaching gig?
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On December 26 2014 09:25 clickrush wrote: the problem with esports, especially in the NA scenes is that ppl didn't recognize the absolute nessecity for good coaches. The players often have way too many things on their minds and problems to solve. When I think for example of Nony/Tyler then I think of an absolutely incredibly intelligent and talented individual. Everyone loves to see him play, hear him talk about the game etc. But he didn't have that big success so far because he had/has mental issues which hold him back which are on top of it irrational (in a sense) and cannot be solved by purely *knowing* what the situation is. If you have a person who is there to motivate you, structure your practice, ask the right questions, and say the right things, know when to be gentle and when to be demanding and hard then even the hardest problems can be overcome. This sounds all so simple but its NOT simple at all. You need a person who is dedicated to those things and it's not an easy job, nor any coach fit to any player, as we all experienced for example with teachers during our school time.
I think this is very true. Coaching makes such a difference in "traditional" sports; teams can be good, but elevated to playing great by the right coach who can handle not only his/her players, but also the various situations and adversity presented to them. I agree that this is not given enough merit in the NA scene, probably because people view it as solely an "individual" sport, so the need for a coach seems less obligatory.
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Coaches are very important I think. For mentality and that extra drive
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I think that some individual athletes do "train" 10hs a day. The main thing is that their training it's not devoted to 10hs of gameplay nonstop.
Some do 4hs of practice ( different drills ) 1 game + 3 hs of phisical therapy to prevent lesions + tactic/data analysis.
The problem with e-sports is that you literally can play every awake hour ( minus eating + bathroom time ).
But I do agree that Stacraft itself doesn't provide the perfect tools for training, proven by the drop in skill level and desition making in late game scenarios. I've been thinking about this related to my work and study areas ( i teach design and art at college ).
I think that routine is fundamental for analyzing results and changing methods, even if you find a global set of excersices and habits that benefit the final results, there will always be fine tunning for each individual as each learning curve and most efficient mechanism are different.
Many things can be learned from sports, but also I think that, generally, e-sports players live a lifestyle much more compromised to their activity ( except gymnasts and bodybuilders ). But their practice schedule and habits are very much inneficient as many of them are reluctant of analizing past games and nitpicking their own mistakes. It's hard to watch a lost final ( i know from experience ) but it's one of the most important excercises there are.
I think in time results will skew practice methods away from mass quantity of games, as information that is extracted from them ( in therms of cost efficent engagements for example ) it's really not efficent and could be better of by old fashion memorization and situation simulations.
I think teams should really invest in developing training tools ( special maps to render specific scenarios ) to maximize practice time. I'm amazed that not every team has a mapbuilder in their lines, they could be so useful....
Coaches are beyond questioning they are absolutely necessary, and 1 input can change a tournament result. I used to coach back in 1.6 in Counter-Strike and i can quote many examples of simple advices that ended up defining rounds, matches and therefore tournament results. Players need to devote much of their day to muscle memory, coaches have the luxury to analyze and crunch data of many games from opponents to leech or develop new tactics and strategies.
Desition making is best when relevant information is abundant. Follow a player long enough and it's hard not to predict what their are going for most of the times or to find small tells of bigger angles and scopes of each game.
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On December 26 2014 13:39 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 10:33 brickrd wrote:On December 26 2014 10:04 Rickyvalle21 wrote:On December 24 2014 23:11 SatedSC2 wrote: I think eSports practice regiments are 100% inefficient. Watch a football team practicing. Do they play 90 minute games over and over and over and over? No, they mostly perform drills of important skills over and over and over. They rarely play full-games in training and it certainly doesn't form the bulk of their practice. Comparing a game to a sport is soo stupid. Ofcourse footbal players and soccers dont just play regulated games over and over again because its time consuming. However the very best madden and nba 2k players get good by just massing online match making games. Example being ProblemWright. He knows every play in the playbook and how to counter them. It just his experience for playing the game for so many years. good point, and one of the diffs between a regular sports game and a regular starcraft game is that the variety of scenarios increases exponentially as the game goes longer. all football/soccer games last as long as the clock lasts, but starcraft games go until a win condition is met, which means you can play for upwards of an hour and have to deal with various unique situations depending on the map and millions of other little details of how the game has played out it's impossible to practice a macro game situation other than by playing a game and making it that far. i suppose you could resume from replay over and over with a practice partner, but a single practice partner won't be able to throw a full variety of strategies and micro techniques at you whereas people on ladder will try lots of crazy shit. and even stuff that "shouldn't work" can work if you haven't run into it on ladder and practiced the correct response. that's why every so often you'll see stuff like pooling 3-4 oracles at pro level, you still have to execute correctly or stupid shit will kill you I definitely think it is much better to spend quite a lot of your time to practice late game situations over and over. Most long games I see people play on stream, the streamer doesn't learn much from. Either they just roll over the opponent easily (satisfying, but you didn't learn anything), or they get handily beaten, showing them that they did something wrong. In best case the streamer will take some time to think about what he could have done differently (although a lot wont think twice about the loss and just jump into next game, or some will even make some complain about the game), but he will not get a chance to try the different approach in exactly that situation for many games, and he wont have it fresh in his mind when he does. While if you identify a situation that you think lost you a game, say not building enough spines and not handling DT/zealot warpins properly, you can play that situation over and over with your training partner, and you will indeed see if you get a better outcome if you handle it better. So starting from the exact same situation, you can try two different methods ten times each, and you will then figure out for sure which is the best response in an hour or so. While if you just try this different method in next ladder game where a similar, but not identical, situation appears, you will never know if you did better because of the different method, or because there were other aspects of the game that affected the outcome (skill level/style of other player/map/resources/upgrades/tech/number of active bases/creep spread/queen placement/unit compositions/...). You can go months without getting a clear answer to what the best response is. You definitely need to play on the ladder as well, to try out your build "live", and as you say, expose yourself to a larger variety of opponent plays. But once you identify a play that you are weak to, you should go back to your training partner and figure out how you should handle it. I should mention that I am not a good (or even very active) sc2 player, so take that into account. However, I am personally pretty convinced that people can train a lot (A LOT) more efficiently than what I see on most streams.
Your posts don't get the appreciation they deserve. Keep it up.
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All I'll say with the new replay system blizzard put in(one of the few things they did right imo, but thats a diff topic) the way to efficiently train isn't mass gaming imo. That is to say that a greater portion of your time should be spent using the new replay system to play out different scenarios like someone else said above.
You only mass game when you need to see meta changes/possible new strategies you've never seen.
Imo the way to practice is:
mass game a bit to see strategies/meta Use replay system to patch up weaknesses in your build/game and theorize moves mass game and try to prove the theories right or wrong.
Rinse repeat.
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On December 27 2014 03:59 FromShouri wrote: All I'll say with the new replay system blizzard put in(one of the few things they did right imo, but thats a diff topic) the way to efficiently train isn't mass gaming imo. That is to say that a greater portion of your time should be spent using the new replay system to play out different scenarios like someone else said above.
You only mass game when you need to see meta changes/possible new strategies you've never seen.
Imo the way to practice is:
mass game a bit to see strategies/meta Use replay system to patch up weaknesses in your build/game and theorize moves mass game and try to prove the theories right or wrong.
Rinse repeat. So far im aware of being able to play a perfect game mechaniques wise is really really really fucking important, I think its more important than looking at meta since most builds are solid anyway
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Lets be clear training at that sc2 is different training then a sport they are completely different but we can learn lessons from sports how they change there training and do a lot more theory. We have to play the game for a number of hours the more hours we play the better we get at keystroke,memorize keys and practice at playing the game. If you don't play much your going to forget stuff so more hours we play the better you should get at playing. 10-12 hours would be less effective when your tiered and have not had a break you would not be able to play all those games at 100%. You could just be spamming games with no result and forget to research, learn tactics and a lot of other things. So I think some of the pro need to train more effectively by reducing there hours playing and do more theory but if there getting results then maybe playing lots hours works for them.
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If you're not spending 50% of your time psychologically training yourself, then you're doing it wrong. MC is so successful because he walks into the room and truly believes is champion and the best the player, and that no one can touch him. He doesn't get rattled, doesn't get phased by the setting or the stakes, no matter what is going on. He was a true champion in his mind long before he won a GSL.
Stephano was the same, he congratulated people when they beat him on ladder, because he thought that anyone that could beat him deserved it. And when they rolled through everyone for the first to win a major tournament, they acted like they belonged there before they go there. Because they did, and it's a huge part of the reason that they won.
You know how good when you play at your best, and how bad you play at worst. What was different? The only real difference is your mindset. E-Sports has a long way to go here.
It's all in your head.
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What a good practise regimen might look like:
Wailing up early in the morning, stretching and massasing stiff muscles at one's leisure; then going for a walk/run/swim with your teammates whose company you enjoy and whom you joke around with. The sun is shining - and even though you are enjoying the lovely weather and the beautiful scenery, your mind is on Starcraft. You're exited about the prospect of playing soon.
You get back to the teamhouse where you are greeted by your personal physioteraphist and massause and of course your mental coach. You eat a healthy delicious breakfast while chatting with your friends. Then the main coach and manager talk about today's asignments and program.
To be continued (i have to go eat brb)
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What does laddering for 12 hours a day to your mental health, has anyone done a study on this?
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For me I might have ended up being a pro, but I took the safe way out, went to college, got a useful degree, and ended up in a well paying job.
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On December 28 2014 02:02 ren0312 wrote: For me I might have ended up being a pro, but I took the safe way out, went to college, got a useful degree, and ended up in a well paying job. To each their own. I have a huge amount of respect for players who've been around the scene for so long that they could be considered veterans, oldies or ancient, and yet still have the drive to win at SC2. Breaking out of "mediocrity" is seemingly impossible in Korea with the way that so many Korean players are competitive. Being pro is only a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you have to know yourself superbly well to understand your limits and whether you are ready to take on such a dedicated task.
Practice for so many hours sounds like torture to some, but it is the fuel that keeps the fire going in almost all serious SC2 progamers.
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Norway839 Posts
On December 27 2014 16:17 BronzeKnee wrote: If you're not spending 50% of your time psychologically training yourself, then you're doing it wrong. MC is so successful because he walks into the room and truly believes is champion and the best the player, and that no one can touch him. He doesn't get rattled, doesn't get phased by the setting or the stakes, no matter what is going on. He was a true champion in his mind long before he won a GSL.
Stephano was the same, he congratulated people when they beat him on ladder, because he thought that anyone that could beat him deserved it. And when they rolled through everyone for the first to win a major tournament, they acted like they belonged there before they go there. Because they did, and it's a huge part of the reason that they won.
You know how good when you play at your best, and how bad you play at worst. What was different? The only real difference is your mindset. E-Sports has a long way to go here.
It's all in your head.
You can have a pretty trashy mindset and still be quite successful. The complete skill level, in essence - results - are produced by different types of skills in combination, good and bad. The strengths of players are more different than you might think. If you want to know what efficient practice is for the sake of applying it to the average person, it should not necessarily be useful to use one or two 'talented' players as a sample. I'll use an example for this.
Let's say we had one guy who really hated himself but would wreck everyone with a 70% winrate, dominating the global competition, including KR. Now a bunch of people would say 'you have to be a lunatic and really hate yourself to be the best' whereas it would just be the craziest exception of all time, if you'd look to the top25 the other 24 very respectable players would be nothing like that. The mood type of this player, would be - most likely - irrelevant or even harmful when applied to others. Maybe that example #1 player would be even better if he'd change? Maybe not.
You have to choose a big sample from the top of the results table, ask relevant questions as to how they're this good and take it from there. Go to http://aligulac.com/periods/latest/ or make your own table, ask questions about what their strengths are, what their lives have looked like and how their routines and habits are today.
For example, you could ask: How much do the top players (say, rank 1-25 and 26-50 on aligulac) practice per day? If the number of hours put in for the average of 1-25 is higher than the number of 26-50, that's a good indicator that more practice is better on average. Maybe the results will be inconclusive, maybe you won't learn much at all. Then it's time to think of and ask more questions before you ultimately apply the evidence to yourself.
You don't want to reinvent the wheel, yes if you can take on things from scientific studies and sports, that's great. Such as "some physical exercise every day is great for your brain". No-brainer. Cross-check with the top players? Yes most of them live in team houses, yes they look somewhat fit, yes they do exercise a bit. But you're also required to prioritize well and not waste your time on useless experiments.
If you assume that the KR server is the best, simply playing on NA or EU server could be called a waste of time. But it might not matter. You have to weigh it to the best of your ability and that's how problems arise. Let's say you're from Korea, but you move to Europe, let's say to a place where you don't speak the language well and where the food is different. Will that living condition affect you so much that you won't be able to perform well? Just an example.
To underline this point, here's another more extreme example relevant to non-Koreans: Basically all the top players know how to speak Korean and live in Korea. Should a non-Korean player go through learning the language for the sake of becoming 'efficient/skilled' and making it to the KR environment, or will it interfere with other habits (practice, replays, VODs, exercise, sleep, social activities, friends, food, playing tournaments, streaming) and take too long - to the extent that it will not be possible to profit (IN TERMS OF RESULTS ONLY) from it?
+ Show Spoiler +disclaimer: learning a language is probably great for your brain and might be useful for all of your life
It's pretty simple really, as long as you factor enough things in. All the players at the top have solid things going for them and they didn't just magically get there, there are simple, clear-cut things about their way of life and way of game on average that anyone can pick up on with enough questions asked and enough answers given.
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On December 28 2014 02:45 NeThZOR wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2014 02:02 ren0312 wrote: For me I might have ended up being a pro, but I took the safe way out, went to college, got a useful degree, and ended up in a well paying job. To each their own. I have a huge amount of respect for players who've been around the scene for so long that they could be considered veterans, oldies or ancient, and yet still have the drive to win at SC2. Breaking out of "mediocrity" is seemingly impossible in Korea with the way that so many Korean players are competitive. Being pro is only a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you have to know yourself superbly well to understand your limits and whether you are ready to take on such a dedicated task. Practice for so many hours sounds like torture to some, but it is the fuel that keeps the fire going in almost all serious SC2 progamers. The point is that you are streaming for 16 hours, and your position deteriorated overall, anyway some people seem to do better when playing for up to 10 hours, and then your position deteriorates after that. But anyway sometimes streamers do not take well meaning advice well. And the streamer may get irritated, no offense, when you tell her to call it a day and try again tomorrow when her mind is fresh again.
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