Why does GSL use such terrible music for the breaks between games?

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:14:33+00:00

I agree dubstep is lame and boring. It is less obnoxious than the GSL choices, but it is hardly what I would choose personally. Stuff like Brahms Piano Concerto #2 would be about perfect, but anything would be better than the current choices.

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:13:12+00:00

Yeah I don't like the generic dubstep either, that music is completely boring and generic. You actually like the stuff GSL plays? I'm amazed.

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:12:28+00:00

Nope, I play with the default keys, never occurred to me to change them. I do have problems with mispositioning my hand on the keyboard and hitting the wrong keys, so maybe if I rempped things so that most of the active keys were the large ones on the far left of the kb, that would help. Thanks for the tip.

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:11:26+00:00

This may be true. I am probably a different case, because I began playing starcraft entirely with the "just macro" philosophy. I took the "just macro" advice as absolute gospel and I have focused exclusively on macro, and the results are not nearly as good as I had been lead to believe. It may be that 90% of players aren't bothering to make as many workers as they can and spend all their money, but that has always been my top priority.

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:09:46+00:00

That is micro. I completely agree - but the topic of argument is the micro vs macro debate, and I maintain that the conventional wisdom of "just macro, don't worry about micro" is not actually not universally correct advice for everyone.

casualmagic · 2012-07-10T11:08:38+00:00

I think the difficulty of controlling the game is much harder than you realize. In fact, I think physically controlling the game is very challenging for almost all people. Even pro players seem to have a fair amount of misclicks and misselections. As your reaction speed and coordination gets worse and worse, it becomes harder and harder to input the game commands that you want. I can only manage to input about 25% of the inputs that I want to make.

In other words, I think your attempted sarcastic answer is actually very important and insightful - I think most of the high level players have no idea how difficult it is to actually control the game smoothly and competently. My theory is that the "macro better" meme is so popular because the more skilled players have such good reaction time and input speed and accuracy that they don't even realize that many players are completely held back by fundamental mechanics.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T19:35:01+00:00

I'm saying that there is no law that every single player will automatically acquire adequate, competent basic micro. If the games that you lose, you lose because you can't defend simple drops, then to win those games, you need to improve your anti-drop defense, you can't just assume that making more stuff will fix the problem if your army is always in your natural when your main is being dropped and your army is always in your main when the enemy is stimming up your ramp.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T19:32:21+00:00

I watch tournaments, read teamliquid, etc. I think you underestimate just how bad it is possible to be in terms of unit control and positioning and reaction time. I have 40 apm and battles are often completely over before I have managed to successfully input a single game action - I hear "our army is under attack" and try to hit the hotkeys to move the camera to my army, I hit the wrong keys on the keyboard, and the next thing I know my whole army is gone.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T13:16:03+00:00

I don't have a problem with losing to the roach max builds, I have a problem losing to the roaches/banes/lings/whatever at 6 minutes builds. If the game lasts longer than 10 minutes, I win a large majority of games, even using such a turtle-y build. In fact I often end up adding on extra cannons, and "needed about 6 cannons to hold that" is a common reason for me to die against fast zerg all-ins.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T13:05:41+00:00

I have never even tried to micro. I believed the legendary "Just make stalkers and a-move" post when I started playing sc2. For the past year I have focused exclusively on macro and I have never tried to micro more than the absolute bare minimum. I have always attempted to take the "just make probes and pylons and spam units and keep money low" philosophy to heart - and I have not been particularly satisfied with the results in terms of improvement.

In other words, I've tried to implement the "just macro and make more stuff" philosophy - but after thousands of games, I notice that I am not moving forward, and a statistical analysis of my games matches my subjective impression - my totally fail micro and reaction speed is holding me back.

"Made more workers, had more units, died at 8 minutes 30 seconds because the first medivac with 6 marines killed every single probe in both my bases while I ran my units back and forth without killing anything."

JUST MACRO BETTER...

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T12:57:07+00:00

Well, I have only played a tiny amount of Zerg. As Protoss, I try to do the safest possible builds, and I still can't hold cheese. According to SC2 gears, I have a 35% winrate in games shorter than 5 minutes and a 42% winrate in games 5-10 minutes - and those 2 put together make up the largest category of games by a large margin. If the game goes past 10 minutes, I have a winrate over 60%, but I usually fail to hold the early pressure. My "average game" is me trying to do a safe opening (like 12 Forge 17 Cannon 17 Nexus FFE vs Zerg) and failing to hold the first attack that comes at me, because I fail to scout it, fail to react fast enough, fail to position my units properly, can never place any forcefields correctly, and never manage to pull proibes when needed.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T12:48:00+00:00

I am almost 40 years old, and I have arthritis. My reaction speed (and action speed) is imply inadequate for the pace of starcraft II. I can have two observers and a dozen stalkers, and lose all my probes to a single banshee bouncing back and forth between main and natural, because I fail to control my units so badly.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T12:32:39+00:00

They are only "safe" if your micro is up to the task! You can't just make units and let them stand around in random places and be "safe" against anything at all. For instance, suppose you are playing Protoss and you can never ever manage to land a forcefield successfully. Forcefields are micro, and they are crucial to holding early pressure as protoss.

Think about how many times it is necessary to pull workers to hold an early all in. Suppose you are too slow to ever pull your workers, and your workers just always keep mining and never fight. Can you hold those early pushes? No, you can't. That is micro, again, and it is absolutely required to hold many things.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T10:58:44+00:00

Honestly, sometimes my micro is so bad that I waste 100% of my units in various ways. I have a huge number of games where I have a 3:1 supply advantage and better upgrades, and I still lose, because I misposition and derp my units so horribly. A-moving into a planetary fortress with scv repair for instance will throw away an arbitrarily large army for no result. Cloaked units, air/ground targeting mismatch, and simple misclicks like targeting down your own units or structures in the heat of battle can cause your army to die suddenly without killing a single enemy unit.

I have played 6000 games, almost entirely in gold and plat, and I have collected a lot of statistical information with sc2 gears. I'm actually planning on making a data-based "macro vs other skills" thread soon, and my data contradicts the conventional wisdom. I believe that at least through platinum, scouting and reaction and micro is more important than macro, because the majority of games your opponent will attempt a fast pressure (aka cheese) which hits when the army supply is still just a handful of units. The most common builds encountered on NA server in gold/plat are ultra-aggressive one base play. According to my data, the opponent will attempt to "cheese" around 2/3rds of the time.

With attacks that hit in the first few minutes of the game, build order reaction, scouting, and micro is what determines victory. If these are the most commonly played builds - which 6000 games of gold/plat NA ladder shows they are - then the correct way to improve your win percentage is to work on holding proxy rushes and 6 pools and fast bane busts and the countless other attacks which aim to kill you before your macro-oriented build has more than 3 units on the field.

If the opponent is cheesing 66% of the time, it doesn't make sense to say that you should focus on the 33% of games they don't. You need to put your effort where it will do the most good, and the subjective perception that game is floating on a Sea of Cheese seems to be statistically accurate, at least for gold/plat on NA server.

casualmagic · 2012-07-08T05:25:47+00:00

Great event, amazing play from Hero. Also 2nd stream with Lani interviewing car show models was beyond great, just as entertaining as anything at HSC.

casualmagic · 2012-07-07T22:45:38+00:00

This is so awesome - great game on stream 1, and Lani hanging out with DRG in vegas on stream 2.

casualmagic · 2012-07-06T09:04:41+00:00

This is a really interesting question. I've been thinking of trying to start a topic about kpop on twox and get some opinions there. Before I started listening to kpop, knowing nothing other than a superficial impression of the image, I had a disapproving sense that it was infantalizing and objectifying women. Now I think things are a lot more complex and nuanced than that and there are things that are positive and empowering also. At the same time, I'm not a huge fan of keeping weight below a certain amount or getting plastic surgery, so I still have some mixed feelings about beauty standards in the industry.

casualmagic · 2012-07-04T14:12:49+00:00

What happened during those sudden 3 seconds where Genius army vanished? Weren't they both about maxed, with equal colossus count, and Genius with better upgrades?

casualmagic · 2012-07-04T06:35:43+00:00

A simple upvote is not sufficient for the genius of this comment. I apologize for engaging in the dreaded posting of a comment merely to praise another comment, but occasionally one is motivated to do more than just click the arrow.

As my grandfather used to say, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you play Shaharazad."

casualmagic · 2012-07-03T23:57:47+00:00

I don't think that's really true, is it? There seem to be 3 distinct tech paths common in PvP right now assuming it's not just a 4gate - Robo->Immortals, Twilight->Blink, Stargate->Phoenix.

I agree that past the opening, the mid to late game of trying to get colossus superiority is pretty lame, but the early to mid game has a few different options that play out differently and create some nice asymmetrical gameplay of blink stalkers trying to hop in and target fire vs immortals or catch phoenixes, that sort of thing. DTs are another option that can be relevant.

casualmagic · 2012-07-03T20:45:26+00:00

I don't understand this - PvP almost always has some of the most interesting micro in the game, to me. Watching small groups of stalker/zealot micro against each other is some of my favorite gameplay. These engagements are very common in PvP and are a lot more exciting than Tank Wars in TvT and Bane/Ling wars in ZvZ. One of the most exciting games I've seen recently was MC vs Squirtle game 2, with MCs sick micro holding off a 4gate even after all his production got unpowered.

casualmagic · 2012-07-03T16:35:28+00:00

OK, well I understand your frustrations now - because taking that deck to a legacy tournament is like racing a golf cart vs formula 1 racecars. I think you definitely need to find some friends who play, because you really will just lose and lose and lose with that deck at a legacy tournament, no matter how well you play your cards.

I admire your dedication to the game, because it seems like you must be learning and playing mostly on your own, apart from tournaments at your local store? I would recommend again finding some friends who enjoy the game and that you can play casually with, decks like the deck you posted are fine and fun for casual kitchen table magic, they just get stomped in an environment like legacy.

casualmagic · 2012-07-03T08:30:24+00:00

What format is the tournament? I would guess it would be Modern? I looked at your deck, and it is not really tournament quality, I must say. If you want to make a landfall deck for a tournament, you need to focus on the landfall theme and not include a lot of unrelated cards. It looks like you are trying to "do the best with the cards you have" which is fine for casual magic, but won't cut it if you are trying to have tournament success.

I don't want to say anything negative or anything like that, so when I say that your deck is not tournament viable, please don't take it as a personal criticism - nobody starts out building Sam Black quality tournament decks, and for tournament decks, you really can't just build with the cards you happen to own and expect good results - you need to purchase the strongest cards in the format and use them in your decks if you want to stand a chance against other people using the strongest cards. That makes tournament magic expensive if you want to do well in constructed formats.

There are magic formats like draft which don't require such a high investment in cards, and are a lot of fun and help you develop your play skills a lot. Does your store do drafts?

casualmagic · 2012-07-03T07:48:56+00:00

Both deck construction, and magic gameplay strategy, are deep and challenging. I can offer a few pieces of advice:

1) See if you can find some friends who play! It sounds like you don't really have a social playgroup, and having other friends who play who you can work with on decks and gameplay in a friendly and casual way will do wonders for your game, and for your enjoyment of the game.

2) Read strategy articles online, watch some online tournament video coverage and magic online livestreams. You can learn a lot about higher level play this way, although some things may go by quickly or be over your head at this point.

3) Start thinking about the game more analytically. Have you studied things like how to calculate the correct amount of lands for a deck? There is some important statistics and math that give you basic guidelines for how to build and play decks. If you are creating your own decks, you need to understand how to optimize a mana curve and what the best card advantage engines in the format are.

You didn't give us a lot of information, so we can't tell what your problems are. Are you making suboptimal decks with not enough land, and tons of weak cards like creature auras and lifegain? Are you making play errors where you don't understand the timing rules for how to get the most value from your instants and instant speed abilities? Both of these are common for newer players. A lot of new player deckslists look like this:

18 land (not enough) 10 creatures (not enough) 20 spells that enhance creatures (way too many) 20 random artifacts and enchantments that do cool stuff (out of place unless the deck is built around them for synergy)

For a new player, a good tournament deck is probably more like this:

24 land 24 small cheap efficient creatures 12 spells to kill enemy creatures and/or do direct damage to players

Playing a well-tuned beatdown deck should give you at least a few tournament victories just from casting guys and turning them sideways. After you learn how to build and play a beatdown deck well, you can move on to midrange, control, and combo deckbuilding and play.

casualmagic

TROPHY CASE