Some general thoughts from a former masters SC2 player, who has also been decently highly ranked at many other games
There was a famous starcraft caster who was constantly being asked how to become a starcraft caster by people who said it was their dream. He told them all “Go record yourself trying to cast 100 games then send me a message”. Literally only one person took him up on that, and now they’re a famous starcraft caster.
My prediction is that people willing to do the work can get good insanely quickly and people who aren’t won’t. I think “most people say they are willing to do the work but aren’t” explains the vast majority of the phenomenon you call out. You can train a dedicated person to be good really fast but most coaches find 95% of their clients are people looking to get good quick with no work. I think being willing to put in that effort is a far more important variable than raw intellect. If you have someone willing to spend 1000 hours deliberately practicing aiming but isn’t smart enough to keep up with the pros when it comes to thinking presciently and can only handle a few very common scenarios then I expect them to get to an obscenely high ranking (much like how “never stop building workers” usually gets you to the diamond equivalent in any RTS game without having to practice any other skills)
Huh, my experience doesn’t support this. I run an organization that has lower-ranked teams as well as higher-ranked teams. Many of my lower-ranked players have been attending scrims and reviews for years (definitely far more work than the equivalent of casting 100 games) and are still below average. I find that a lot of them don’t have good mental tools for integrating information and applying it, or don’t signal to me when they’ve fundamentally misunderstood something, or quickly forget things and reverse improvements, or aren’t good at introspecting about how/why they make mistakes.
I think most-people-don’t-try-very-hard explains why people are bad at many skills, but it struggles to explain why people are bad at video games. Video games are fun, so it’s not difficult to find someone willing to put in 1000 hours. I know lots of people who have put in over 1000 hours and are still bad.
I actually think the fun part explains it even more. I have a buddy I game with all the time. I always end up better then them. They ask for help. I point out something I’ve identified as a fundamental in the game (the equivalent of aiming/positioning in FPS games, or building workers in RTS games) and some little practice method that I went away and did for 2 or 3 hours one day to get better at that fundamental. Then, every time, they say “that would make it not fun” and just spam some games. Because there’s a fun inefficient way to practice they just do that instead of the less fun efficient way to practice.
Just to clarify, we’re still talking about getting above 3500 when the average is 2500 and pro is 4500? So, getting to the top 20-25% or so of the game? What do you find to be the limiting factor on the people stuck below 3500? It’s my impression that when we’re talking about that sort of rank for a game we’re still talking about people who haven’t gotten down the basic fundamentals and haven’t gotten to the point higher level strategy is super important. For the equivalent rank in sc2 you can still just pick any random strat you want and work on your fundamentals. It wasn’t till around top 2% I felt the need to learn actual strategy instead of just “spend all your money as fast as possible”. Tons of top20% players would be like “I spent all week practicing this new strategy I saw someone do in the last tournament” but still be floating tons of minerals because practicing spending money faster is boring.
Yeah, this definitely doesn’t explain my gold players who spend hours every day in Kovaaks.
No, elo is not a flat distribution. Roughly 2-3% of accounts are in Grandmaster (4000+), the next 5% in master (3500-4000), the next ~10% in diamond (3000-3500), the next 30% in platinum (2500-3000), the next 30% in gold (2000-2500)… but this is skewed for a few reasons. Casual players are more likely to stick to Quick Play and not rank in Competitive, and higher-level players are significantly more likely to have multiple accounts, so the percentage of accounts in higher ranks represents a smaller percent of actual players. Sometimes the top 10 accounts in a region (Europe / Americas / Asia) are held by the same 3 people, playing on several accounts each. So 3500+ is much more of an achievement than top 20-25%.
I genuinely think that the limiting factor for lots of people stuck below 3500 is related to conceptual understanding, learning or cognition. They can have fundamental concepts explained to them, but they don’t really understand them, or they understand what you’re telling them about one specific situation but can’t generalise it to future situations. I also see lots of players with issues with tilt, mentality, attitude, multitasking, communication and general ‘thinking speed’. I know a lot of people who will make the right decision on a 30-second delay, by which point it’s a bad decision—that’s not “reflexes”, it’s how well you can offload concepts to sys1 so you see things faster. Keep in mind this is from my perspective as mainly a scrim/tourney coach; I don’t really see individual ladder games, so the play I tend to look at is significantly more strategic and less mechanical. There’s a reason I specified I think they could scrim 3500. I see consistently poor group decision-making from teams below 3500.
Some general thoughts from a former masters SC2 player, who has also been decently highly ranked at many other games
There was a famous starcraft caster who was constantly being asked how to become a starcraft caster by people who said it was their dream. He told them all “Go record yourself trying to cast 100 games then send me a message”. Literally only one person took him up on that, and now they’re a famous starcraft caster.
My prediction is that people willing to do the work can get good insanely quickly and people who aren’t won’t. I think “most people say they are willing to do the work but aren’t” explains the vast majority of the phenomenon you call out. You can train a dedicated person to be good really fast but most coaches find 95% of their clients are people looking to get good quick with no work. I think being willing to put in that effort is a far more important variable than raw intellect. If you have someone willing to spend 1000 hours deliberately practicing aiming but isn’t smart enough to keep up with the pros when it comes to thinking presciently and can only handle a few very common scenarios then I expect them to get to an obscenely high ranking (much like how “never stop building workers” usually gets you to the diamond equivalent in any RTS game without having to practice any other skills)
Huh, my experience doesn’t support this. I run an organization that has lower-ranked teams as well as higher-ranked teams. Many of my lower-ranked players have been attending scrims and reviews for years (definitely far more work than the equivalent of casting 100 games) and are still below average. I find that a lot of them don’t have good mental tools for integrating information and applying it, or don’t signal to me when they’ve fundamentally misunderstood something, or quickly forget things and reverse improvements, or aren’t good at introspecting about how/why they make mistakes.
I think most-people-don’t-try-very-hard explains why people are bad at many skills, but it struggles to explain why people are bad at video games. Video games are fun, so it’s not difficult to find someone willing to put in 1000 hours. I know lots of people who have put in over 1000 hours and are still bad.
I actually think the fun part explains it even more. I have a buddy I game with all the time. I always end up better then them. They ask for help. I point out something I’ve identified as a fundamental in the game (the equivalent of aiming/positioning in FPS games, or building workers in RTS games) and some little practice method that I went away and did for 2 or 3 hours one day to get better at that fundamental. Then, every time, they say “that would make it not fun” and just spam some games. Because there’s a fun inefficient way to practice they just do that instead of the less fun efficient way to practice.
Just to clarify, we’re still talking about getting above 3500 when the average is 2500 and pro is 4500? So, getting to the top 20-25% or so of the game? What do you find to be the limiting factor on the people stuck below 3500? It’s my impression that when we’re talking about that sort of rank for a game we’re still talking about people who haven’t gotten down the basic fundamentals and haven’t gotten to the point higher level strategy is super important. For the equivalent rank in sc2 you can still just pick any random strat you want and work on your fundamentals. It wasn’t till around top 2% I felt the need to learn actual strategy instead of just “spend all your money as fast as possible”. Tons of top20% players would be like “I spent all week practicing this new strategy I saw someone do in the last tournament” but still be floating tons of minerals because practicing spending money faster is boring.
Yeah, this definitely doesn’t explain my gold players who spend hours every day in Kovaaks.
No, elo is not a flat distribution. Roughly 2-3% of accounts are in Grandmaster (4000+), the next 5% in master (3500-4000), the next ~10% in diamond (3000-3500), the next 30% in platinum (2500-3000), the next 30% in gold (2000-2500)… but this is skewed for a few reasons. Casual players are more likely to stick to Quick Play and not rank in Competitive, and higher-level players are significantly more likely to have multiple accounts, so the percentage of accounts in higher ranks represents a smaller percent of actual players. Sometimes the top 10 accounts in a region (Europe / Americas / Asia) are held by the same 3 people, playing on several accounts each. So 3500+ is much more of an achievement than top 20-25%.
I genuinely think that the limiting factor for lots of people stuck below 3500 is related to conceptual understanding, learning or cognition. They can have fundamental concepts explained to them, but they don’t really understand them, or they understand what you’re telling them about one specific situation but can’t generalise it to future situations. I also see lots of players with issues with tilt, mentality, attitude, multitasking, communication and general ‘thinking speed’. I know a lot of people who will make the right decision on a 30-second delay, by which point it’s a bad decision—that’s not “reflexes”, it’s how well you can offload concepts to sys1 so you see things faster. Keep in mind this is from my perspective as mainly a scrim/tourney coach; I don’t really see individual ladder games, so the play I tend to look at is significantly more strategic and less mechanical. There’s a reason I specified I think they could scrim 3500. I see consistently poor group decision-making from teams below 3500.