Today I've decided not to ladder. Up to this point I haven't really been going with proper builds. I've just been going for a loose form of 3-rax (techlab and two reactors) to get up mass bio with stim and combat shield and a late expand. It's been working alright against protoss and zerg but not terran. Today I did some research to find one good build for each matchup and I've been practising them against the AI just to get them memorised and the timings down. Tomorrow I'll put them to use on the ladder and start practicing the hell out of them. They should help quite a bit because now I'll have an actual plan for every matchup and I'll learn how to adjust them to react to what my opponent is doing.
For the rest of today I'll be doing the multitask trainer which is amazing for practising multitasking. You have to constantly micro a probe around so it doesn't get killed by a zergling, build a base, build an army, defend attacks, rescue a guy from an island and eventually kill the enemy base. Plus there's a time limit. It's pretty hard, but I've started to get the hang of it and it should really help in my ladder games when I have to macro, control a drop or banshee and attack or defend with my main army.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Sunday, June 24, 2012
OK, so this blog post is finally in-line with where I am currently. I haven't played any ladder games since my placements two days ago because I had one of my mid-year exams to do and then an unexpected and very serious health problem in the family. Anyway, life goes on and I'm looking forward to getting back into the laddering in a day or two. I'm hoping to be able to get in a good ten to twenty games on Monday.
I did play quite a few 1v1 custom games tonight in PeepMode with Ian, Maurice and one of their friends. I'm definitely better in TvP, although my TvT did improve toward the end of the night and I took a couple of good wins. We also did some 4v4 for fun.
Just for an update, my old protoss practice partner has reached diamond although he doesn't play much anymore because he doesn't have the time to get to masters. He has offered to play some games with me to help me improve though.
To be honest, I think I don't deserve to be in platinum. I didn't beat any platinum players in my placements and I even lost to a silver so I think I'll be demoted to gold as soon as I start massing ladder games. I'm fine with that, it means I can just focus on what I need to improve in my play.
What I really need to do is get in the habit of constantly checking my minerals, gas, supply and minimap. This held me back from improving previously and the only way to fix it is to ladder so that's what I'll be actively working on. Thankfully my game sense is pretty good because I watch a lot of pro matches. Once I get some good builds down and fix my mechanics, I think I can be back in platinum for real this time. My APM is pretty decent considering I haven't played much. Six months ago when I played, my average APM was up around 70-90 in every game. Because I haven't played it's dropped to about 50-60 but I should be able to get it up to 100 pretty quickly with some mass laddering. It's just my thinking speed that slows me down because I haven't played enough. Hand speed has never been a problem because I've played guitar for six years. There are stretches of time where I can get over 300APM and playing the Marine Split Challenge I averaged 100APM using almost exclusively the mouse over a whole hour.
The reason this blog is titled 'The Quest for Grandmaster League' is because I always wanted to see how far I could get up the leagues with the huge amount of free time I have. Thankfully I've fully dealt with my ladder anxiety problem and I truly believe that with 5+ hours of laddering a day and proper focus on fixing holes in my play one by one, I will get to GM. It might take six months, it might take a year, but I know I can get there. This blog will be following my progress all the way. I don't know how often I will post, but at the moment I'm aiming for once or twice a week. Thanks for reading.
I did play quite a few 1v1 custom games tonight in PeepMode with Ian, Maurice and one of their friends. I'm definitely better in TvP, although my TvT did improve toward the end of the night and I took a couple of good wins. We also did some 4v4 for fun.
Just for an update, my old protoss practice partner has reached diamond although he doesn't play much anymore because he doesn't have the time to get to masters. He has offered to play some games with me to help me improve though.
To be honest, I think I don't deserve to be in platinum. I didn't beat any platinum players in my placements and I even lost to a silver so I think I'll be demoted to gold as soon as I start massing ladder games. I'm fine with that, it means I can just focus on what I need to improve in my play.
What I really need to do is get in the habit of constantly checking my minerals, gas, supply and minimap. This held me back from improving previously and the only way to fix it is to ladder so that's what I'll be actively working on. Thankfully my game sense is pretty good because I watch a lot of pro matches. Once I get some good builds down and fix my mechanics, I think I can be back in platinum for real this time. My APM is pretty decent considering I haven't played much. Six months ago when I played, my average APM was up around 70-90 in every game. Because I haven't played it's dropped to about 50-60 but I should be able to get it up to 100 pretty quickly with some mass laddering. It's just my thinking speed that slows me down because I haven't played enough. Hand speed has never been a problem because I've played guitar for six years. There are stretches of time where I can get over 300APM and playing the Marine Split Challenge I averaged 100APM using almost exclusively the mouse over a whole hour.
The reason this blog is titled 'The Quest for Grandmaster League' is because I always wanted to see how far I could get up the leagues with the huge amount of free time I have. Thankfully I've fully dealt with my ladder anxiety problem and I truly believe that with 5+ hours of laddering a day and proper focus on fixing holes in my play one by one, I will get to GM. It might take six months, it might take a year, but I know I can get there. This blog will be following my progress all the way. I don't know how often I will post, but at the moment I'm aiming for once or twice a week. Thanks for reading.
So I finished my last placement match and he turned out to be a silver. I'm kind of annoyed that I lost to a silver after just having beaten a gold, but it was because of my own stupid mistakes. So the placements have gone like this:
Won - Bronze ZvZ
Won - Bronze ZvZ
Won - Silver TvZ
Won - Gold TvP
Lost - Silver TvT
A pretty good effort I think considering I haven't played Terran in ages. Then this takes me completely by surpise:
I'm in platinum!? But I've never even been in gold! The last time I laddered was a year ago and I was only in silver. What's more, I've only got sixteen 1v1 league wins since I bought the game. I was absolutely blown away. After beating that gold and then losing to the silver I was pretty confident I'd get gold, or possibly silver.
In my next blog post I'll be talking about what's happened over the past few days since this achievement. Thanks for reading.
Won - Bronze ZvZ
Won - Bronze ZvZ
Won - Silver TvZ
Won - Gold TvP
Lost - Silver TvT
A pretty good effort I think considering I haven't played Terran in ages. Then this takes me completely by surpise:
I'm in platinum!? But I've never even been in gold! The last time I laddered was a year ago and I was only in silver. What's more, I've only got sixteen 1v1 league wins since I bought the game. I was absolutely blown away. After beating that gold and then losing to the silver I was pretty confident I'd get gold, or possibly silver.
In my next blog post I'll be talking about what's happened over the past few days since this achievement. Thanks for reading.
Finally I've Fixed It!
I tried to put this new anti-anxiety method to use the other day and you know what? It worked perfectly! Without batting an eyelid, I hit that find match button and was into my third placement match as terran without a hint of anxiety. No adrenaline, no racing heartbeat. I had won my first two placements against bronzes (as mentioned in my previous post) and both were ZvZ, my best matchup as zerg. I hadn't played terran in a long time so I was expecting to lose. I didn't actually care if I won or lost because I knew that if I did lose, I'd still achieve my 'loss quota' for the day and therefore win my daily challenge.
I go into the game and my opponent is a zerg. We're playing on Tal'Darim Altar. I go with one of my usual terran builds, marine-tank, and get my second base running at my natural. I notice he's not building many units and hasn't expanded yet so I was a bit worried. I send in two cloaked banshees to harass and spot a spire so I take it out as well as his queen. An overseer and his first three mutas then turn up to dispatch of my banshees. For some reason (probably because I'm an idiot), I completely forget about the mutas and neglect to get an engineering bay for some turrets. He attacks and I lose all my SCVs at my main but at this point I had my third base up and running and his second had barely finished so I was pretty confident. I got a turret up at my natural, my third and at my group of barracks to protect my production. I notice all he has is lings and he was reckless with his mutas, losing most to my marines, so I push with my marines and a few tanks. I come across a group of roaches I hadn't scouted and kill all of them. I then take out his speedlings and a couple of banelings. He's managed to whittle my force down to almost nothing but I have good production back at base so I have two tanks and a fresh group of marines ready straight away. I push straight to his ramp and siege up at his natural. I take out his entire army, natural and extra macro hatch and then check for a third base but it doesn't exist. I push into his main and take everything out. I send out a marine to every group of minerals on the map to find hidden bases and manage to spot one building so I take that out with a few marines. I then notice he's got his third base up and running already where the fourth usually goes (down the cliff from the main). I siege up on the high ground and stim in with marines. I kill his handfull of lings and he types gg. I check his profile, he's silver.
My fourth placement is against a protoss on Cloud Kingdom. I like this map quite a bit. I go for a three-rax build this time (note, I haven't practised these builds in months and they probably suck). I get my natural up and use a scan in his base. Looks like a three-gate robo. Next minute I know, I have units warping into my base. Turns out he'd placed a pylon on the low ground and was using an observer to warp in up-top. I thought I didn't have enough units but I micro away from his zealots and manage to kill everything. He warps in again but this time I think I have enough to hold so while I micro my units, I send three marines down my ramp to go and kill the pylon. Phew, I've held it off and also managed to kill the pylon and that pesky observer! But the next thing I know there's a warp prism in my base. I stim my marines foward and almost kill it but it gets away. A minute later it's in my base again and two zealots are attacking my SCVs before I even notice. I take them out and stim foward to finally kill the warp prism. I only lost a few units and about two SCVs from all the pressure. That's not good for him considering he's lost about five stalkers, six zealots, an observer, a warp prism and a pylon. I spend just a few minutes growing my marine/marauder army to a somewhat decent size for this stage in the game and then go for an attack. I figure I'm pretty ahead because of how much he's lost and it turns out I'm right. I stim into his natural (which has only just finished being warped in) and see his army is half the size of mine. He types gg before his army is even dead. I watch the replay and notice if he'd pulled back into his main and maybe forcefielded the ramp to keep me out (although I don't remember seeing any sentries at all), his first colossus would have popped out. Guess I hit a pretty good timing there. I was pretty happy too when I found out he was gold. I've never been in gold league, the last time I laddered was almost a year ago and I was only high silver then. What's more, I haven't played terran in months.
My last placement is a TvT, my worst matchup and also my least favourite. It's also on Ohana, a map I've only played on once before. To make it even worse, I'm an idiot so I make up a build I've never done before. It was a sort of marine-tank build with some cloaked banshees in there to harass. I do manage to get my natural up though. I send in my banshees and kill a few SCVs but I look away for a second to build a building in my main and the banshees die before I can cloak them. Doh! So already that's lot of wasted resources for nothing. Being behind, I decide to turtle and build up my army. By the time he comes his army is bigger than mine and my tanks are in stupid positions defending my natural, even though he attacks my now-functioning third base. I army dies quickly and I'm forced to gg. I put that loss down to the bad build, my bad macro that game (got supply blocked a lot) and also losing the banshees.
In my next blog post I'll talk about what league I placed and where I am now with my play. Thanks for reading.
I go into the game and my opponent is a zerg. We're playing on Tal'Darim Altar. I go with one of my usual terran builds, marine-tank, and get my second base running at my natural. I notice he's not building many units and hasn't expanded yet so I was a bit worried. I send in two cloaked banshees to harass and spot a spire so I take it out as well as his queen. An overseer and his first three mutas then turn up to dispatch of my banshees. For some reason (probably because I'm an idiot), I completely forget about the mutas and neglect to get an engineering bay for some turrets. He attacks and I lose all my SCVs at my main but at this point I had my third base up and running and his second had barely finished so I was pretty confident. I got a turret up at my natural, my third and at my group of barracks to protect my production. I notice all he has is lings and he was reckless with his mutas, losing most to my marines, so I push with my marines and a few tanks. I come across a group of roaches I hadn't scouted and kill all of them. I then take out his speedlings and a couple of banelings. He's managed to whittle my force down to almost nothing but I have good production back at base so I have two tanks and a fresh group of marines ready straight away. I push straight to his ramp and siege up at his natural. I take out his entire army, natural and extra macro hatch and then check for a third base but it doesn't exist. I push into his main and take everything out. I send out a marine to every group of minerals on the map to find hidden bases and manage to spot one building so I take that out with a few marines. I then notice he's got his third base up and running already where the fourth usually goes (down the cliff from the main). I siege up on the high ground and stim in with marines. I kill his handfull of lings and he types gg. I check his profile, he's silver.
My fourth placement is against a protoss on Cloud Kingdom. I like this map quite a bit. I go for a three-rax build this time (note, I haven't practised these builds in months and they probably suck). I get my natural up and use a scan in his base. Looks like a three-gate robo. Next minute I know, I have units warping into my base. Turns out he'd placed a pylon on the low ground and was using an observer to warp in up-top. I thought I didn't have enough units but I micro away from his zealots and manage to kill everything. He warps in again but this time I think I have enough to hold so while I micro my units, I send three marines down my ramp to go and kill the pylon. Phew, I've held it off and also managed to kill the pylon and that pesky observer! But the next thing I know there's a warp prism in my base. I stim my marines foward and almost kill it but it gets away. A minute later it's in my base again and two zealots are attacking my SCVs before I even notice. I take them out and stim foward to finally kill the warp prism. I only lost a few units and about two SCVs from all the pressure. That's not good for him considering he's lost about five stalkers, six zealots, an observer, a warp prism and a pylon. I spend just a few minutes growing my marine/marauder army to a somewhat decent size for this stage in the game and then go for an attack. I figure I'm pretty ahead because of how much he's lost and it turns out I'm right. I stim into his natural (which has only just finished being warped in) and see his army is half the size of mine. He types gg before his army is even dead. I watch the replay and notice if he'd pulled back into his main and maybe forcefielded the ramp to keep me out (although I don't remember seeing any sentries at all), his first colossus would have popped out. Guess I hit a pretty good timing there. I was pretty happy too when I found out he was gold. I've never been in gold league, the last time I laddered was almost a year ago and I was only high silver then. What's more, I haven't played terran in months.
My last placement is a TvT, my worst matchup and also my least favourite. It's also on Ohana, a map I've only played on once before. To make it even worse, I'm an idiot so I make up a build I've never done before. It was a sort of marine-tank build with some cloaked banshees in there to harass. I do manage to get my natural up though. I send in my banshees and kill a few SCVs but I look away for a second to build a building in my main and the banshees die before I can cloak them. Doh! So already that's lot of wasted resources for nothing. Being behind, I decide to turtle and build up my army. By the time he comes his army is bigger than mine and my tanks are in stupid positions defending my natural, even though he attacks my now-functioning third base. I army dies quickly and I'm forced to gg. I put that loss down to the bad build, my bad macro that game (got supply blocked a lot) and also losing the banshees.
In my next blog post I'll talk about what league I placed and where I am now with my play. Thanks for reading.
Anti-Anxiety Method
About a month ago, only about two months since my last time on SC2, Ian invited me over to watch some SC2. The local e-sports society also held another BarCraft. This was really great because it got me back into SC2 and the social aspect started to keep me motivated. For MLG Anaheim two weeks ago Ian invited me over once again. These regular e-sports events with real life friends really started pushing me to play the game.
I started playing again and I continued on with zerg. I actually managed to play (and win) a placement match but stopped after that because of the ladder anxiety. At Ian's house for MLG Anaheim we played a ladder game each, so that got a second placement done (won that too). I continued to play custom games as zerg but after playing (and losing) to a few of Ian's bronze league friends, I realised that I just played better as terran. I switched back to terran just the other day and boy did it feel good. Even though I hadn't played terran in a long time it immediately felt familiar. There were a few skills that I'd lost since I last played, such as remembering to shift-click workers back to the minerals or build supply depots, but I've almost fixed those completely.
Being an extremely lazy university student who spends all his time either at uni, at his computer or sleeping (but mostly sleeping lol), I have many spare hours a day to play StarCraft. I'd always liked the idea of putting all those spare hours to use to see how far up the ladder I could get, but my damn ladder anxiety had always stopped me from achieving it. I decided that for the next year I want to try and spend at least five hours a day playing SC2 to see just how far I can get.
Realising that the major problem was this ladder anxiety, I started thinking of ways to fix it. I'd tried taking people's advice of 'just hit the damn find match button', but that didn't work at all. The anxiety was still there after all. I eventually came across the first edition of GLHF magazine and was reading through it when I found a really great article on beating ladder anxiety. It suggested having little goals to try and achieve each game (like staying below X amount of minerals) and if you could achieve these goals, you could count that game as a win, even if you did infact lose. I thought that was a good idea, although I felt it wouldn't fix my problem completely and it would make me focus on those goals rather than the specific things I wanted to work on in my play.
Shortly after, I came across a short youtube video about how to fix ladder anxiety. The guy suggested making a daily goal of playing the ladder until you lose three games and then stopping for the day. I thought this was a great idea. My problem with the ladder was just the fear of losing. I don't really care about my league or rank at all, it's just that losing games feels 'scary' and the adrenaline builds up to a point where my hands are shaking. I started to think about this daily goal of losing games. I decided that my daily goal would be to play until I lose eight games (if I play at about a 50% winrate that would be 16 games a day on average, about what I can handle at the moment). I focused not on the fear of losing like I used to, but instead the thought that these losses would be my daily goal and if I achieved that goal of just laddering till I hit that eight loss mark, then I would infact 'win'. Essentially, I turned losing into winning and in the process, completely eliminated my fear of losing. I also knew that just by fixing this problem that had plagued me for over a year, I would finally be able to mass ladder games and progress rapidly through the leagues.
Thanks for reading, in my next blog post I'll talk about how this method has worked for me and where I am now.
I started playing again and I continued on with zerg. I actually managed to play (and win) a placement match but stopped after that because of the ladder anxiety. At Ian's house for MLG Anaheim we played a ladder game each, so that got a second placement done (won that too). I continued to play custom games as zerg but after playing (and losing) to a few of Ian's bronze league friends, I realised that I just played better as terran. I switched back to terran just the other day and boy did it feel good. Even though I hadn't played terran in a long time it immediately felt familiar. There were a few skills that I'd lost since I last played, such as remembering to shift-click workers back to the minerals or build supply depots, but I've almost fixed those completely.
Being an extremely lazy university student who spends all his time either at uni, at his computer or sleeping (but mostly sleeping lol), I have many spare hours a day to play StarCraft. I'd always liked the idea of putting all those spare hours to use to see how far up the ladder I could get, but my damn ladder anxiety had always stopped me from achieving it. I decided that for the next year I want to try and spend at least five hours a day playing SC2 to see just how far I can get.
Realising that the major problem was this ladder anxiety, I started thinking of ways to fix it. I'd tried taking people's advice of 'just hit the damn find match button', but that didn't work at all. The anxiety was still there after all. I eventually came across the first edition of GLHF magazine and was reading through it when I found a really great article on beating ladder anxiety. It suggested having little goals to try and achieve each game (like staying below X amount of minerals) and if you could achieve these goals, you could count that game as a win, even if you did infact lose. I thought that was a good idea, although I felt it wouldn't fix my problem completely and it would make me focus on those goals rather than the specific things I wanted to work on in my play.
Shortly after, I came across a short youtube video about how to fix ladder anxiety. The guy suggested making a daily goal of playing the ladder until you lose three games and then stopping for the day. I thought this was a great idea. My problem with the ladder was just the fear of losing. I don't really care about my league or rank at all, it's just that losing games feels 'scary' and the adrenaline builds up to a point where my hands are shaking. I started to think about this daily goal of losing games. I decided that my daily goal would be to play until I lose eight games (if I play at about a 50% winrate that would be 16 games a day on average, about what I can handle at the moment). I focused not on the fear of losing like I used to, but instead the thought that these losses would be my daily goal and if I achieved that goal of just laddering till I hit that eight loss mark, then I would infact 'win'. Essentially, I turned losing into winning and in the process, completely eliminated my fear of losing. I also knew that just by fixing this problem that had plagued me for over a year, I would finally be able to mass ladder games and progress rapidly through the leagues.
Thanks for reading, in my next blog post I'll talk about how this method has worked for me and where I am now.
On again, off again...
I thought that I wouldn't really play much StarCraft 2 again. This ladder anxiety problem seemed like it had stuck and there wasn't going to be any way past it. This year, however, something awesome happened for e-sports in my city. A group of students at my university, the University of Tasmania, started the Tasmanian E-Sports Society. I signed up for the tiny fee of $5 and was pleased when I found out that most of the guys were focused on SC2.
The first event the society held was a BarCraft for the GSL finals. It wasn't held at a bar unfortunately because organising that with a pub would be a pain, so it was held at a local internet gaming cafe. People just brought their own beer with them. I was blown away by the experience. I thought there would be maybe five or ten guys at most but we had about thirty or maybe even forty. The games were up on three big HDTVs too. We even had prizes to win that were donated by Tt eSPORTS. It was a pretty impressive e-sports turnout for a city the size of Hobart (capital of Tasmania, population of 200k). I managed to drag a friend along even though he had no idea about StarCraft or e-sports. He was incredibly suspicious of the whole affair, especially when DRG and Genius walked onto the stage and flames starting bursting into the air. He said 'how much nerdier can it get?' which I find amusing because he's a pretty big nerd himself. Thankfully by the end of the night he kept repeatedly saying 'that was AWESOME!'
Here are some photos, it's hard to get a sense of how many people are there because we were kind of watching in two groups due to the amount of people:
Having been completely blown away by the experience and meeting a cool guy called Ian while I was there, I decided I should play SC2 again. My old protoss practice partner was now platinum and was bit too high level for me to practice with. We played a few games but he mostly offered advice and tried to get me laddering. Unsurprisingly, he failed in that endeavour. The first two games I played when I came back were against Ian and his friend. Ian was a silver level protoss and his friend Maurice was a bronze level terran. Having not played in months, I promptly died to a cloaked banshee rush and Dark Templar rush.
I was sick of the terran playstyle. I hated having a huge amount of different buildings for everything as well as having addons on a lot of them too. The tech path felt very hard to navigate around because of the need for so many different buildings. I was also having a hard time using tanks, so I was going almost exclusively bio. I decided to switch to zerg because all units are made at the hatchery and it just suited my playstyle better. I found the switch very hard. Just remembering to inject larvae and deciding to build drones or an army was very hard to train myself to do at first. Slowly but surely I started to get better and my old protoss practice partner helped me a lot with my expansion and attack timings. Right when I started to make progress (still without ladder games) I went on a holiday to Adelaide in my mid-semester break (April 2012). By the time I got back I had essays to write and I didn't really feel like playing any SC2.
In my next blog post I'll finish the story and we'll get up to where I am now. Thanks for reading
The first event the society held was a BarCraft for the GSL finals. It wasn't held at a bar unfortunately because organising that with a pub would be a pain, so it was held at a local internet gaming cafe. People just brought their own beer with them. I was blown away by the experience. I thought there would be maybe five or ten guys at most but we had about thirty or maybe even forty. The games were up on three big HDTVs too. We even had prizes to win that were donated by Tt eSPORTS. It was a pretty impressive e-sports turnout for a city the size of Hobart (capital of Tasmania, population of 200k). I managed to drag a friend along even though he had no idea about StarCraft or e-sports. He was incredibly suspicious of the whole affair, especially when DRG and Genius walked onto the stage and flames starting bursting into the air. He said 'how much nerdier can it get?' which I find amusing because he's a pretty big nerd himself. Thankfully by the end of the night he kept repeatedly saying 'that was AWESOME!'
Here are some photos, it's hard to get a sense of how many people are there because we were kind of watching in two groups due to the amount of people:
Having been completely blown away by the experience and meeting a cool guy called Ian while I was there, I decided I should play SC2 again. My old protoss practice partner was now platinum and was bit too high level for me to practice with. We played a few games but he mostly offered advice and tried to get me laddering. Unsurprisingly, he failed in that endeavour. The first two games I played when I came back were against Ian and his friend. Ian was a silver level protoss and his friend Maurice was a bronze level terran. Having not played in months, I promptly died to a cloaked banshee rush and Dark Templar rush.
I was sick of the terran playstyle. I hated having a huge amount of different buildings for everything as well as having addons on a lot of them too. The tech path felt very hard to navigate around because of the need for so many different buildings. I was also having a hard time using tanks, so I was going almost exclusively bio. I decided to switch to zerg because all units are made at the hatchery and it just suited my playstyle better. I found the switch very hard. Just remembering to inject larvae and deciding to build drones or an army was very hard to train myself to do at first. Slowly but surely I started to get better and my old protoss practice partner helped me a lot with my expansion and attack timings. Right when I started to make progress (still without ladder games) I went on a holiday to Adelaide in my mid-semester break (April 2012). By the time I got back I had essays to write and I didn't really feel like playing any SC2.
In my next blog post I'll finish the story and we'll get up to where I am now. Thanks for reading
Stalled Again
So continuing on with my StarCraft 2 multiplayer progress, I was paralyzed with ladder anxiety. I was so worried about improving that I couldn't bring myself to ladder until I felt I was ready. When I finally did ladder, losses made me feel like I hadn't made any progress and that I wasn't ready to ladder. It's pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but that's how my psychology was working at the time.
I kept playing custom games for another two weeks but games against the AI became the majority of my games. I finally hit a brick wall. There's only so far you can go before you stop improving against very hard AI that you can crush easily. I stopped playing pretty soon after, sometime towards the end of 2011. I was high silver at that point. I'd gotten really interested in the pro scene since I started playing so I watched a lot of casts and events and I really enjoyed MLG. Once I stopped playing though, I kind of just stopped watching SC2 games.
Months went by and I just played other games and I only occasionally watched a game or two of SC2. Sometime around January 2012, just a few months after I had quit playing, I got back into it again. I started watching casts and practicing again, and my old practice partners were still playing so I started playing with them again. After a few weeks though I stalled again. I still couldn't bring myself to ladder because I was so afraid of losing. I could be out in the kitchen getting a drink and think about playing a ladder game and feel the adrenaline start to build up and my heart start to pump. It's not that I can't take losing, I've played games like Counter Strike. It's just that in StarCraft, it's just you and the other guy and a loss feels like a complete failure. The ladder anxiety had developed from me just waiting until I improved a bit in custom games, to a full on panic attack at just the thought of playing ladder. So once again months went by where I didn't play or watch casts.
In my next blog post I'll talk about how I got to where I am now. Thanks for reading.
I kept playing custom games for another two weeks but games against the AI became the majority of my games. I finally hit a brick wall. There's only so far you can go before you stop improving against very hard AI that you can crush easily. I stopped playing pretty soon after, sometime towards the end of 2011. I was high silver at that point. I'd gotten really interested in the pro scene since I started playing so I watched a lot of casts and events and I really enjoyed MLG. Once I stopped playing though, I kind of just stopped watching SC2 games.
Months went by and I just played other games and I only occasionally watched a game or two of SC2. Sometime around January 2012, just a few months after I had quit playing, I got back into it again. I started watching casts and practicing again, and my old practice partners were still playing so I started playing with them again. After a few weeks though I stalled again. I still couldn't bring myself to ladder because I was so afraid of losing. I could be out in the kitchen getting a drink and think about playing a ladder game and feel the adrenaline start to build up and my heart start to pump. It's not that I can't take losing, I've played games like Counter Strike. It's just that in StarCraft, it's just you and the other guy and a loss feels like a complete failure. The ladder anxiety had developed from me just waiting until I improved a bit in custom games, to a full on panic attack at just the thought of playing ladder. So once again months went by where I didn't play or watch casts.
In my next blog post I'll talk about how I got to where I am now. Thanks for reading.
Day[9] and Friends
So now my StarCraft 2 story continues with Day[9]. I discovered Day9's dailies some time in early-mid 2011, I don't quite remember when it was exactly. The first daily I watched was #132 - Back to Basics: The Mental Checklist. It was a revelation. Even these super basic things which are at the core of playing the game were new to me. I knew how to do everything he talked about but the whole idea of mechanics was something I'd never even thought about. I suddenly realised that just waiting until tasks (build SCVs, make supply depots, etc) popped into my head was a very slow and bad way to play and that you had to actively think about them. I watched more and more dailies, one that comes to mind was Daily #121 - Plugging leaks in silver level play. Now I was ready to start playing on the ladder. Just by watching a handful of dailies, and without having played a game since my first hopeless attempts months earlier, I managed to place into silver.
I started playing the ladder and my play improved a lot. I found myself at rank 13 in my silver league with less that 20 games won. Day9 had suggested in one of his dailies (I believe Daily #269 - How to get into SC2) that it was a good idea to get a practice buddy so I went onto teamliquid.net and posted in the practice partner thread. I got messages from two guys, both were about my level of play. One was a zerg and the other a protoss, so that worked out pretty well with me being terran. I started playing a lot of custom games with them, particularly the protoss player as he was the best out of the three of us. About two weeks after I met him he got promoted to gold and I wasn't far off it.
I started to improve and my macro and mechanics were getting a lot better. I rarely missed building an SCV, only got supply blocked once or twice a game (not bad for a silver with only a week or two of play under his belt) and made shift-clicking workers back to the minerals a habit I didn't even have to think about. I was getting better and better but there was a problem. My practice partners played games with me and also laddered. I on the other hand was so focused on improving my play through what I had learned from Day9 that I stopped laddering. I felt I had to sit in custom games or games against the AI and 'hone my craft', as Day9 puts it lol. I thought I could practice effectively offline and then ladder when I felt I would be ready somewhere down the track and make a jump up to the next league. The problem was, my practice partners weren't available to play endless amounts of games and the AI is terrible to play against if you want to improve. By avoiding the ladder I created my first huge problem: ladder anxiety.
I'll continue my SC2 story in my next blog post. Thanks for reading.
I started playing the ladder and my play improved a lot. I found myself at rank 13 in my silver league with less that 20 games won. Day9 had suggested in one of his dailies (I believe Daily #269 - How to get into SC2) that it was a good idea to get a practice buddy so I went onto teamliquid.net and posted in the practice partner thread. I got messages from two guys, both were about my level of play. One was a zerg and the other a protoss, so that worked out pretty well with me being terran. I started playing a lot of custom games with them, particularly the protoss player as he was the best out of the three of us. About two weeks after I met him he got promoted to gold and I wasn't far off it.
I started to improve and my macro and mechanics were getting a lot better. I rarely missed building an SCV, only got supply blocked once or twice a game (not bad for a silver with only a week or two of play under his belt) and made shift-clicking workers back to the minerals a habit I didn't even have to think about. I was getting better and better but there was a problem. My practice partners played games with me and also laddered. I on the other hand was so focused on improving my play through what I had learned from Day9 that I stopped laddering. I felt I had to sit in custom games or games against the AI and 'hone my craft', as Day9 puts it lol. I thought I could practice effectively offline and then ladder when I felt I would be ready somewhere down the track and make a jump up to the next league. The problem was, my practice partners weren't available to play endless amounts of games and the AI is terrible to play against if you want to improve. By avoiding the ladder I created my first huge problem: ladder anxiety.
I'll continue my SC2 story in my next blog post. Thanks for reading.
Welcome to my Blog
Hi, and welcome to my blog. My screen name is ShinDig and I live in Tasmania, Australia. This is going to be the place that I record my journey to Grandmaster League and beyond (hopefully) in Starcraft 2. To set the scene, here's a bit of backstory of my gaming life and StarCraft history.
I started playing games at a very young age (I think about 4) on my father's Mac. This was in the mid 90's. All the games I played were basic (Load-Runner and Cobra Gunship, anyone?). One day I was being looked after by my uncle and to keep me occupied he booted up his computer (also a Mac, my family have only ever had Macs since the early 80's). It was now that I came into contact with my first 'real' game, WarCraft 2. I didn't play it much that day but I remember the awesome graphics and how deep the gameplay was. This was the battle.net edition which came out in 1999 so I was a bit late to the party as StarCraft was already out at this point. Still, I was only 7 years old in 1999. I remember telling my father about this amazing game and so one day he came home from work with a copy and proceeded to finish the human campaign before I even got a go.
Not long after, I was at my other uncle's house and he had StarCraft. It was there that the obsession started. Being only about 8 at the time, I was quite terrible at the game. I would turtle in my base and never expand until I had a 200/200 army (no upgrades of course) and then go and crush the enemy. My father, being and adult, was a lot better and progressed through the campaign much faster. Eventually I got up to the last level in the Terran campaign but couldn't beat it so I started the Zerg campign. I remember getting up to a level where you have a heap of bases all linked with nydus networks but my child brain couldn't handle moving my army through the network quick enough. I then switched to the Protoss campign but I didn't get very far., only a few levels.
As I got older, I spent a lot of time playing StarCraft, it remained my main game for many years but I basically just played the Terran campaign over and over and over. I tried Brood War a few times but the missions were harder so I could only do a few levels and I couldn't be bothered learning the new units. This whole time I didn't even know people played multiplayer and none of my friends played so I had a pretty isolated StarCraft life.
Eventually I got Age of Empires 2 for Mac and played that a ton. I played that for a few years and basically ignored WarCraft 3 because at that stage my father rarely bought games for me. Around 6th grade I started to mature as a gamer and discovered WarCraft 3 and Halo for the Mac. Halo was the first FPS that I played (as a younger child I was afraid of being shot and killed lol) and really got into. I actually managed to finish it and I started to play games other than RTSs. Medal of Honor Allied Assault was another FPS I got into at the time. Despite these new games, StarCraft was still something I occasionally went back and played, althogh basically just the Terran campign for the nostalgia. Through all these years the PlayStation 1 and 2 had been a big part of my gaming life but I never became exclusively a console gamer, I always liked computer games.
Grade 8 in highschool was when things started to change. Three of my friends had World of Warcraft and it sounded really good. I hadn't really played any RPGs before but I decided to get it and surprisingly my father said he would pay the monthly subscription fee. He had given up playing games at this point due to work committments but we still had a family Mac for gaming. WoW was my first social experience playing a game and that made it addicting as hell. I began to play with my friends after school for two, three and eventually four or more hours a night. I played it seven days a week and it was almost the only game I played. After almost a year of playing WoW my dad cancelled the account because of my obsession and I was devestated, I literally cried (yes, I was almost 15 at the time lol). I thought my WoW days were over.
A few months later my dad actually let me start my WoW account up again and I got straight back into it with my friends. This WoW gaming went on for a few more years. I eventually reached the level cap up to Cataclysm and had many lower level characters but many of my friends quit and I started having breaks of several months where I wouldn't play.
In 2007 Apple brought out a new iMac with a dual-core processor that allowed you to install Windows. Finally I had a way of playing all the Windows games my friends raved about. I got Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source and we started having CS:S LANs at a local gaming cafe. Crysis also became a favourite of mine. I played many many different games now that I had Windows, most of which were FPSs. I hadn't played any RTS games like StarCraft in a long time and I really missed that style. I found Company of Heroes boring and I loved World in Conflict but it just didn't fill that emptiness that StarCraft had filled.
I started wanting more powerful graphics to play all the latest games and our iMac was getting a bit long in the tooth. In September 2010 I built a new gaming PC. I researched which parts offered the best value for money and shipped all the parts to my house. It was pretty awesome to have my own computer just for gaming. It had a 2.8Ghz i7, 6Gb of DDR3 RAM and two EVGA GTX460 1Gb in SLi which I overclocked. Even now it runs almost any game on max (including Battlefield 3 when just playing the singleplayer). I also made sure to get a nice big Asus 27" 1080p monitor. StarCraft 2 was already out at this point and I had been looking forward to it a lot but I just kind of forgot about it because I had so many other games to play.
Finally in about December 2010 I finally got StarCraft 2 and played through the singleplayer. I absolutely loved the story and it completely lived up to my expectations. I thought they did a great job of modernising the game while still making it a true StarCraft experience. I didn't want modern gameplay like Company of Heroes with sector control and weird economy mechanics. By this point I started to realise that there was a pro multiplayer scene outside Korea and this intrugued me. Since the last time I had played StarCraft 1, I had gotten a lot older and played many multiplayer games so multiplayer was something I actually decided play in StarCraft 2. I went online thinking 'oh I played StarCraft one and I finished the SC2 campign pretty easily, I should make gold league'. Well, I placed bronze and I was a little annoyed. I played about four or five ladder games, the first of which I turtled until I had a huge amount of reapers and then proceeded to be thrashed. Then I went for mass battlecruisers and thors (they're strong units, right?). That actually won me two games but this was in the depths of bronze league after all. Getting fed up with being terrible, I stopped playing.
I don't quite remember why, but one day I was searching on the internet about the StarCraft 2 pro scene even though I wasn't playing the game anymore. I came across an article about how to improve at the multiplayer and it was then that I discovered Day[9]. I am so glad that I did, I owe him so much and I doubt I would be playing SC2 now if it wasn't for his daily. It was then that I started to grasp the game and understand how to actually play it. This marked the start of my SC2 multiplayer journey, the rest will be in my next blog post. If you got this far, thanks for reading.
I started playing games at a very young age (I think about 4) on my father's Mac. This was in the mid 90's. All the games I played were basic (Load-Runner and Cobra Gunship, anyone?). One day I was being looked after by my uncle and to keep me occupied he booted up his computer (also a Mac, my family have only ever had Macs since the early 80's). It was now that I came into contact with my first 'real' game, WarCraft 2. I didn't play it much that day but I remember the awesome graphics and how deep the gameplay was. This was the battle.net edition which came out in 1999 so I was a bit late to the party as StarCraft was already out at this point. Still, I was only 7 years old in 1999. I remember telling my father about this amazing game and so one day he came home from work with a copy and proceeded to finish the human campaign before I even got a go.
Not long after, I was at my other uncle's house and he had StarCraft. It was there that the obsession started. Being only about 8 at the time, I was quite terrible at the game. I would turtle in my base and never expand until I had a 200/200 army (no upgrades of course) and then go and crush the enemy. My father, being and adult, was a lot better and progressed through the campaign much faster. Eventually I got up to the last level in the Terran campaign but couldn't beat it so I started the Zerg campign. I remember getting up to a level where you have a heap of bases all linked with nydus networks but my child brain couldn't handle moving my army through the network quick enough. I then switched to the Protoss campign but I didn't get very far., only a few levels.
As I got older, I spent a lot of time playing StarCraft, it remained my main game for many years but I basically just played the Terran campaign over and over and over. I tried Brood War a few times but the missions were harder so I could only do a few levels and I couldn't be bothered learning the new units. This whole time I didn't even know people played multiplayer and none of my friends played so I had a pretty isolated StarCraft life.
Eventually I got Age of Empires 2 for Mac and played that a ton. I played that for a few years and basically ignored WarCraft 3 because at that stage my father rarely bought games for me. Around 6th grade I started to mature as a gamer and discovered WarCraft 3 and Halo for the Mac. Halo was the first FPS that I played (as a younger child I was afraid of being shot and killed lol) and really got into. I actually managed to finish it and I started to play games other than RTSs. Medal of Honor Allied Assault was another FPS I got into at the time. Despite these new games, StarCraft was still something I occasionally went back and played, althogh basically just the Terran campign for the nostalgia. Through all these years the PlayStation 1 and 2 had been a big part of my gaming life but I never became exclusively a console gamer, I always liked computer games.
Grade 8 in highschool was when things started to change. Three of my friends had World of Warcraft and it sounded really good. I hadn't really played any RPGs before but I decided to get it and surprisingly my father said he would pay the monthly subscription fee. He had given up playing games at this point due to work committments but we still had a family Mac for gaming. WoW was my first social experience playing a game and that made it addicting as hell. I began to play with my friends after school for two, three and eventually four or more hours a night. I played it seven days a week and it was almost the only game I played. After almost a year of playing WoW my dad cancelled the account because of my obsession and I was devestated, I literally cried (yes, I was almost 15 at the time lol). I thought my WoW days were over.
A few months later my dad actually let me start my WoW account up again and I got straight back into it with my friends. This WoW gaming went on for a few more years. I eventually reached the level cap up to Cataclysm and had many lower level characters but many of my friends quit and I started having breaks of several months where I wouldn't play.
In 2007 Apple brought out a new iMac with a dual-core processor that allowed you to install Windows. Finally I had a way of playing all the Windows games my friends raved about. I got Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source and we started having CS:S LANs at a local gaming cafe. Crysis also became a favourite of mine. I played many many different games now that I had Windows, most of which were FPSs. I hadn't played any RTS games like StarCraft in a long time and I really missed that style. I found Company of Heroes boring and I loved World in Conflict but it just didn't fill that emptiness that StarCraft had filled.
I started wanting more powerful graphics to play all the latest games and our iMac was getting a bit long in the tooth. In September 2010 I built a new gaming PC. I researched which parts offered the best value for money and shipped all the parts to my house. It was pretty awesome to have my own computer just for gaming. It had a 2.8Ghz i7, 6Gb of DDR3 RAM and two EVGA GTX460 1Gb in SLi which I overclocked. Even now it runs almost any game on max (including Battlefield 3 when just playing the singleplayer). I also made sure to get a nice big Asus 27" 1080p monitor. StarCraft 2 was already out at this point and I had been looking forward to it a lot but I just kind of forgot about it because I had so many other games to play.
Finally in about December 2010 I finally got StarCraft 2 and played through the singleplayer. I absolutely loved the story and it completely lived up to my expectations. I thought they did a great job of modernising the game while still making it a true StarCraft experience. I didn't want modern gameplay like Company of Heroes with sector control and weird economy mechanics. By this point I started to realise that there was a pro multiplayer scene outside Korea and this intrugued me. Since the last time I had played StarCraft 1, I had gotten a lot older and played many multiplayer games so multiplayer was something I actually decided play in StarCraft 2. I went online thinking 'oh I played StarCraft one and I finished the SC2 campign pretty easily, I should make gold league'. Well, I placed bronze and I was a little annoyed. I played about four or five ladder games, the first of which I turtled until I had a huge amount of reapers and then proceeded to be thrashed. Then I went for mass battlecruisers and thors (they're strong units, right?). That actually won me two games but this was in the depths of bronze league after all. Getting fed up with being terrible, I stopped playing.
I don't quite remember why, but one day I was searching on the internet about the StarCraft 2 pro scene even though I wasn't playing the game anymore. I came across an article about how to improve at the multiplayer and it was then that I discovered Day[9]. I am so glad that I did, I owe him so much and I doubt I would be playing SC2 now if it wasn't for his daily. It was then that I started to grasp the game and understand how to actually play it. This marked the start of my SC2 multiplayer journey, the rest will be in my next blog post. If you got this far, thanks for reading.
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