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Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

I haven't written a blog in a while and this is something that I have been mulling over a bit so I thought I'd just sit down with a coffee, some music on Pandora and ramble on for a while. I recently started a new job and have to take a bus in to Castle Hill each morning. This gives me an hour of idle time each day where my mind runs wild and also put some thoughts into my mind.

In my first week the bus trips seemed chaotic, but by the Friday I was beginning to spot familiar faces getting on from the same stops each day and sit in exactly the same seats on the bus. I too began to slip into the routine of it all and sit in the same place each day through the 2nd week. I felt like I was beginning to "figure it out" when suddenly in my 3rd week there were twice as many people on the bus every day. This threw my whole impression of the routine out of the window. Slowly things returned to their original state over the next 2 weeks and there was another 2 week period of quieter trips with the original regulars. Now I am noticing that things appear to be on a monthly cycle of increased business. Naturally the Starcraft player in me started searching for parallels in Starcraft.

As a new Starcraft player nearly 2 years ago I felt extremely overwhelmed by the game. The races, the units, the maps, the tech trees and then all the extra parts of playing like macro, micro, strategies, timings, build orders and such. To me, a Pro match of Starcraft 2 was this undecipherable mass of chaos that they somehow seemed to make sense of. As I continued to throw myself into playing the game for hours on end over the first few weeks it didn't seem like I was making any progress. But over time I learned all the units, tech trees and upgrades of each race. I saw the importance of hotkeys and control groups from the start and focused on hammering them into myself until they became natural extentions of my hands when playing. But still, games seemed to be this unpredicable bundle of chaos that could never be understood. I continued to play hour upon hour and watch nearly every GSL match season after season.

After all this time spent on Starcraft I still have a long way to go on mastering the game, however I am beginning to piece together things and understand now what used to appear to be random. I realise now that gamesense and understanding the metagame can only come through exposure to the game as seen through a broad lens.

When observing a pattern that appears consistent at first, but later on you encounter anomalies the pattern you are seeking may be on a broader scope than you are currently looking at. Starcraft with all the variables available in each game is completely predicable given enough exposure and when you apply a broad enough scope to the information you have at hand.

I don't know if anyone is still reading, but this is something that ran through my head on the bus the other day and I felt like writing a blog. I would love to hear some higher league player's opinions on this though.

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

I feel you bro

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

Don't worry about SC2. Concentrate on bus stop patterns...school holidays are so important to securing your long term seat. Work on good 1-1 timing attacks to the seat next to the door away from the smelly person. Smile, say hello once in a while and it will become much better. Say gg when that fat slob steals your favourite seat by the exit. Eye flirt with the one, yes one, fit girl who gets on three stops after you...take the aisle seat and shove a big backpack next to the window...then when she steps on...lift your supply depot..sorry..backpack and let her in. Done.

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

I wish I could rep this post so hard right now.

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

If you step back far enough with any scope in any situation every event will seem small, insignificant, and has a pattern. In terms of sc2, the differences in patterns and how the general flow of the game looks are the differences in peoples strategies. Everyones _general_ game will look similar. They will all be building workers, constructing buildings, moving units around, but the smallest of differences in how exactly they move their units and when they construct their buildings are the finer nuances of the game, that like you said, you cant really appreciate until your at the level where you know just how tiny of an adjustment it is, but yet how difference of an impact it can make. For example, if a probe comes in to my base 10 or so seconds later than what im used to, ill be wary of proxy gates or something, because why else would a probe come in at a different time than 99.99% of games. There are hundreds more of these examples, and many of them less obvious, and its pretty much impossible to be tracking all of them, whilst still macroing and microing perfectly. Its your ability to read more and more of them whilst your mechanics are amazing that defines how good you are as a player, assuming you react accordingly and all the rest of it.

But due to there being so many factors that lead to how good a player is at the game, and all of them limiting factors that lead into one another. For example, what you know about how well you can micro your units to get effectiveness out of them is moot if you only have 2 units because your macro sucks. Likewise, you might macro like a beast but if you make dumb decisions and engage improperly, what you know about the game will change on a cerebral basis.

To sum up a really long winded point (im sick thus quite delusional atm), everything in sc2 changes relative to how everything else changes, and all you can do is improve everything until you find a good balance of what suits you. sc2 is about striving to reach perfection, and who gets closest will win

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

Intelligent players make intelligent decisions. If you think intelligently in these situations, then you can see these patterns. Lower level play tends to have less coherency and intelligence, which is why it's lower level. So, when you reach certain levels, different patterns can be seen (Terrans will 1 Rax FE into some form of pressure to stay even with zerg in TvZ for instance).
You can generally plot out what a high level/intelligent player will do (to a large extent, based on scouting and current tech paths) but no so much with a lower level player. There are always different factors involved, and as such each game is different.

TL;DR. games are different, noobs do shit that no one gets and only pros tend to make actual sense.

Re: Order, Patterns and Chaos
 

Starcraft is a game but the biggest game of them all is life. Master that game and you will have the time for every other game.