I should really be in Diamond, but...
Have you ever found yourself thinking this? Or have you ever heard another low-level player say this?
Sometimes people find themselves in the Top 8 of their league and wonder why it is that they haven't been promoted. They look at their rank and think that they're so close to getting to that "next level" that they basically "are" at that next level. If only 11/11s, deathballs, and Zerg remaxing weren't so OP...
It's an easy trap to fall into. After all, it's only natural to look at your ladder ranking, see that you're in the top 8% of your league, and assume that you're close to promotion. Just a few more points and you'll make it, right?
The problem with slipping into this mindset is that it takes your focus off of improving and puts it on the "reward" you get for improving: league membership. Once you fall into this trap of thinking that you should be in league X, your progress becomes stagnant. You'll start grinding out games, thinking that since you're so close, all you need is just a few more wins and you'll get there. You'll stop watching replays, you'll stop focusing on fixing your failures, you'll lose to the same things you always do, you'll start to rage, and you'll start blaming broken game mechanics, imbalance, and overpowered units for your failures instead of the thing that's really failing: you.
Your league and rank are indicators of your win percentage weighed against the rest of the Starcraft player base. If you're not moving up in your league, it's because you aren't winning as often as you need to be in order to get promoted. As I've discussed before, you can get to Masters and beyond just by cheesing. If your goal is just to get to Masters, then you can certainly change your map settings to cheese friendly maps and 11-11/sixpool/proxy gate all day. However, a lot of players might not define someone who can only cheese as being good at the game, and just getting to Masters isn't a good enough goal for you (I'm assuming, since you're reading this blog :P)
At the end of the day, if you actively focus on improvement and then improve as a result, you will win more games. If you win more games, you will ultimately move up through the Starcraft leagues. If you focus on moving up through the leagues, rather than improvement, then you run a good chance of staying exactly where you are - or even getting worse as you get lost in the frustration of going nowhere. So if you find yourself thinking that you're "owed" a promotion, just remember this: You are in the correct league based on your win percentage. If your win percentage was higher than it is now, you'd already be in the league above your current one. If you were constantly improving, your win percentage would be going up. Ladder points are ultimately meaningless - you can have a 50% win percentage and be at the top of your league, but a 50% win percentage isn't going to push you any higher than you are now :) Bottom line: You belong where you are, and you are where you belong. Get better, and you will move up.
There is an (admittedly) cheesy quote from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon that encapsulates this a bit. "It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of that heavenly glory!" The ladder leagues (Bronze, Silver, etc.) are fingers, pointing to the moon (being good at the game). Focusing on the pointers will cause you to ignore what you need to get to the moon - constant improvement - and cause you to miss out on what you actually want - which is to get better at Starcraft.
Showing posts with label defining good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label defining good. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Friday, November 21, 2014
Does Being in Masters Make You Good?
In the last post, I mentioned that you need to define what "good" is before you can start pursuing it. Now, when it comes to Starcraft, a lot of people might define "good" as being a Master League player, and it's not difficult to understand why. Master League members are in the top ~2% of all Starcraft players, and the competition to get there is fierce. Getting to Masters means that you have a very good innate understanding of how to consistently win against the other 98% of the Starcraft 2 playing population. Builds are crisp, supply blocks are rare, scouting is clutch, micro is tight, and timing attacks are...well...timely. Basically, the biggest fundamental errors that most Starcraft players will make are either non-existent, immediately corrected, or otherwise strongly mitigated in Master-level play.
For the most part, that all holds true. What some people forget is that being in Masters literally means that you've won enough games (i.e. have a high enough MMR) for Battle.net to place you into the Master League. Theoretically, you could be placed in the Master League if all of your opponents coincidentally surrender in the first five seconds of the game. And let's not forget that players have been able to break into Masters (and beyond?) by cheesing and nothing else. That's not to say that only bad players cheese. It's not even to say that cheesing is bad (in fact, it helps make the game that much more dynamic and interesting to play). What it does mean is that someone can place into Masters without necessarily having all of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most people would expect of them.
So why bring this up? Well, because defining "good" as being in the Master League might not be the best way to drive your self-improvement. Cheese and strong all-ins can push you up into the top tiers of 1v1, but they're a fairly one-dimensional approach to the game. Conversely, being someone who never cheeses or all-ins can also be said to be taking a singleminded approach to Starcraft. And at the end of the day, being in the Master League only means that you've won enough games to get there. Focusing on the title of "Master" and the placement into the respective league is a good way to distract yourself from real improvement at the game, and can lead to things like ladder anxiety, league frustration, and misplaced focus - things which just make the game miserable to play.
In the future, I'll talk more about how focusing on a title as a signal for being "good" can get in the way of your improvement. But for now, go back to your definition of good and try to see whether or not you're explicit about your goal. Try to see if there's a way to technically achieve your goal in a way that you wouldn't define as a success (cheesing to Masters when you want to be a macro player, for instance) and then refine what you mean by "good". It's a lot easier to get better at something if you know exactly what you want.
For the most part, that all holds true. What some people forget is that being in Masters literally means that you've won enough games (i.e. have a high enough MMR) for Battle.net to place you into the Master League. Theoretically, you could be placed in the Master League if all of your opponents coincidentally surrender in the first five seconds of the game. And let's not forget that players have been able to break into Masters (and beyond?) by cheesing and nothing else. That's not to say that only bad players cheese. It's not even to say that cheesing is bad (in fact, it helps make the game that much more dynamic and interesting to play). What it does mean is that someone can place into Masters without necessarily having all of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most people would expect of them.
So why bring this up? Well, because defining "good" as being in the Master League might not be the best way to drive your self-improvement. Cheese and strong all-ins can push you up into the top tiers of 1v1, but they're a fairly one-dimensional approach to the game. Conversely, being someone who never cheeses or all-ins can also be said to be taking a singleminded approach to Starcraft. And at the end of the day, being in the Master League only means that you've won enough games to get there. Focusing on the title of "Master" and the placement into the respective league is a good way to distract yourself from real improvement at the game, and can lead to things like ladder anxiety, league frustration, and misplaced focus - things which just make the game miserable to play.
In the future, I'll talk more about how focusing on a title as a signal for being "good" can get in the way of your improvement. But for now, go back to your definition of good and try to see whether or not you're explicit about your goal. Try to see if there's a way to technically achieve your goal in a way that you wouldn't define as a success (cheesing to Masters when you want to be a macro player, for instance) and then refine what you mean by "good". It's a lot easier to get better at something if you know exactly what you want.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Defining "Good"
Starcraft is not a game for everyone. It has a steep learning curve, it requires a ton of focus, and there's a strong emphasis on 1v1 play. Because of this, losses can feel deeply personal and even rage-inducingly humiliating - to the point where it makes people just not want to play the game. I even took a year off after losing to one too many Protoss deathballs/4gates. But in the end, I just couldn't stay away.
A lot of the people who stick around - or who leave and come back - want to get better at the game. They reach out to friends, clanmates, pros, YouTube, TeamLiquid, /r/starcraft, IMBABuilds, and as many resources as they can find to help them to be "good" at Starcraft. And since you are currently reading a post on a site about the mental side of Starcraft and personal improvement, I think it's safe to say that you are one of those people.
The first step on this path, however, is not to learn some fancy build that you saw in the GSL, it's not to increase your APM, and it's not to track your MMR so that you know when to expect your next league promotion. Heck, the first step doesn't even require you to open your game client or even be anywhere near a computer!
The first thing that you need to do in order to be "good" at Starcraft is to define what "good" means for you.
Every player has a different definition of what it means to be good at Starcraft. It's the reason that a Gold League player might look at a Master League player in awe, while the same Master League player feels like they're still "terrible". It's the reason that you hear people arguing over whether consistency, tournament wins, or league rankings determine who the best players are. It's why someone will accuse a player of being bad for cheesing, while someone else will accuse a player of being bad for losing to cheese.
If you want to be "good" at this game - and if you want to get better as efficiently as possible - you need to know what good means to you. Different definitions lead to different approaches and foci. Defining "good" leads to fewer distractions and periods of stagnation. Knowing what your "good" is must be the first step on the path to getting there!
There's a lot more to be said about this topic in the future. In fact, tomorrow's post will focus on the problem with defining "good" as being in the Master League or above. But for today - think about what it means to you to be good at Starcraft and whether the way you approach the game is helping or hurting your progress towards your goal.
A lot of the people who stick around - or who leave and come back - want to get better at the game. They reach out to friends, clanmates, pros, YouTube, TeamLiquid, /r/starcraft, IMBABuilds, and as many resources as they can find to help them to be "good" at Starcraft. And since you are currently reading a post on a site about the mental side of Starcraft and personal improvement, I think it's safe to say that you are one of those people.
The first step on this path, however, is not to learn some fancy build that you saw in the GSL, it's not to increase your APM, and it's not to track your MMR so that you know when to expect your next league promotion. Heck, the first step doesn't even require you to open your game client or even be anywhere near a computer!
The first thing that you need to do in order to be "good" at Starcraft is to define what "good" means for you.
Every player has a different definition of what it means to be good at Starcraft. It's the reason that a Gold League player might look at a Master League player in awe, while the same Master League player feels like they're still "terrible". It's the reason that you hear people arguing over whether consistency, tournament wins, or league rankings determine who the best players are. It's why someone will accuse a player of being bad for cheesing, while someone else will accuse a player of being bad for losing to cheese.
If you want to be "good" at this game - and if you want to get better as efficiently as possible - you need to know what good means to you. Different definitions lead to different approaches and foci. Defining "good" leads to fewer distractions and periods of stagnation. Knowing what your "good" is must be the first step on the path to getting there!
There's a lot more to be said about this topic in the future. In fact, tomorrow's post will focus on the problem with defining "good" as being in the Master League or above. But for today - think about what it means to you to be good at Starcraft and whether the way you approach the game is helping or hurting your progress towards your goal.
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