Myth skill improvement thread

[Myrk]

This is a thread for anyone to get input from the higher-rated players on how to improve their game.

Obviously this is a draft tournament where teams have a certain percentage of higher-level players who already have good micro ability and game awareness, and others are ranked lower and have some sort of hole in their game that's holding them back.

I'll start off this protip session by addressing one of the most basic issues: keyboard and mouse control.

If you can't control your mouse with precision, you can't be good at Myth, or any other video game really. Having a good mouse and good settings also helps you work more efficiently if you use your computer for work.

Personally I use a Razer mouse that cost around $65 Canadian. If you don't currently have a good gaming mouse and you can afford one, then get one. Setting your 'acceleration' to 0 is important, you want your cursor to always move a predictable amount when you move your mouse. Then adjust your speed to the most efficient level for you. Personally I have the 'tracking speed' in my mouse settings at zero, and the tracking speed in my mouse software at max with zero acceleration.

I only bring up keyboards because I use a mac and the only keyboard apple makes is a complete piece of shit. If you're on a mac, get a windows keyboard that will work on a mac and change the key layout so that 'option' goes where the windows key is and 'command' goes where the alt key is. By default, option is placed on the alt key and command is placed on the windows key, which is shitty for making presets. You change this by going to keyboard settings in the control panel and clicking 'modifier keys'. From there it's straightforward.

If you use a cheap mouse and/or a shitty keyboard and you're not living from paycheck to paycheck, just follow this advice and upgrade, and you'll see a big difference.

That ends this particular protip session

[adrenaline]

I bought a Razer Deathadder mouse and Razer keyboard a couple years ago. definitely makes a difference. good advice.

[Dantski]

I use a cheap mouse, a cheap keyboard from 2002-3 (yes I've kept it for 3 diff PC's), have shit reaction time, poor clicking ability and mouse control.

Is there any hope for me Myrk?

[punkUser]

Agreed good peripherals are important. I use a razor mouse + mechanical keyboard as well. The latter is not as important as a good mouse, but it's still nice. (And let's not discuss playing with a track-pad, as apparently people have done ).

I will note that you can actually get very good at being precise with mouse acceleration in RTS and other "2D picking" type situations, as these are really the ones that the research into mouse metrics/acceleration came out of. However acceleration is pretty awful in FPS which is why most gamers recommend that it be turned off. So if you're a career myther and have learned with acceleration on, you shouldn't feel compelled to switch, but if you plan to (ever) play other games it's better to learn no acceleration.

Is there any hope for me Myrk?

Mazz maybe?

[Zak]

I use a marble mouse

[falcon]

4 years of mythin', still figuring out observer constants, FML.

[dac]

Mazz maybe?

Dantski is not that good at mazz.

Edit: but he will dismantle you at fetchball.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/br ... 23220.html

dantski's fetchballing is responsible for this.

[Zak]

I think about 90% of the community needs to get better at using soulless, and using warr packs. Can we have the skilled players do a myth clinic for these 2 unit types some day?

[c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊]

Heh I use an apple keyboard from 2006 and an ancient, beat up microsoft mouse. Never even occurred to me that this shit could make a difference, not much of a gamer... does it really make a difference?

Then again I am a broke ass grad student so... anyone want to donate some myth-quipment?

Dantski 5-0ed me in under 10 minutes at fetchball the other day... I blame my keyboard.

[punkUser]

Dantski is not that good at mazz.

Yeah I was just kidding and poking fun at the "1 unit micro"-style plugins a bit

[Myrk]

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mouse_settings

A decent article on mouse settings. It's for SC2 but obviously the mouse is used in similar ways for Myth so it applies here too.

"for RTS games it is generally recommended that mouse acceleration be turned off. Having the cursor always respond in the same way for the same mouse input is generally accepted build and further develop muscle memory"

Regarding mouse acceleration: when I dropped it to zero I just found everything easier with the mouse, immediately. There wasn't even an adjustment period. "I'm used to it" isn't a good reason to keep doing something that is holding you back. I recommend just giving it a try for a while. The worst case scenario is you could find that it isn't helpful and you'll switch back, but I think just about nobody will find this to be the case.

Also if you have a shoestring budget, there's ebay, amazon, etc. It shouldn't be too hard to find a good-condition used model of a decent keyboard/mouse type.

I think it bears repeating that if you can't easily select units and click exactly where you want quickly, you can't micro as well as someone who can, and therefore you'll have a ceiling on how well you can do in Myth until you fix this problem.

[Zak]

I think it bears repeating that if you can't easily select units and click exactly where you want quickly, you can't micro as well as someone who can, and therefore you'll have a ceiling on how well you can do in Myth until you fix this problem.

I think a bigger issue is game IQ and lack of knowledge about how to use the units you've been assigned properly, or how to avoid/initiate a pinch. There were good players with poor unit management skills.

[wwo]

Yeah, but Myrk is just giving basic advice to start from. There's no impediment to acquiring proper equipment, whereas clearly there are mental impediments that will never be overcome for some.

[Dantski]

Mouse control test

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=34755

I got

Movement 76
Accuracy 65
consistancy 75
strength 2331
speed 138

[punkUser]

"I'm used to it" isn't a good reason to keep doing something that is holding you back. I recommend just giving it a try for a while.

Agreed, but some pro gamers do use acceleration (the article you referenced even mentions this, as well as it being person preference in the end). It really is quite specific to how "natural" a certain motion curve feels to a person, which is why it's best to try various options.

There was a pile of research done on pointer ballistics including user studies on the ability to be quick and accurate with picking, but alas it seems to have gotten lost from the web. This article (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/1 ... stics.html) references it and talks about some of it a bit, but the links are dead unfortunately, though his conclusion there that "everyone should leave it enabled" is obviously as questionable as "everyone should disable it".

I personally prefer it to be disabled, but I've used it both ways in the past and you can get used to both. I highly suggest that people try it off first though and typically to leave it that way, but the crusade against "mouse acceleration in general" from gamers is not entirely justified by the research (although it's not unusual for people to want to just simplify things). One major reason to recommend turning it off is that it's the most consistent everywhere, whereas the acceleration curves are often different between OSes and sometimes even mice (yikes!). Also in this day and age of very high dpi mice the need for acceleration is certainly lessened.

Anyways tl/dr is I agree with the advice, but try both and see what works for you.

To the point though, I'll add that it's important to learn to use the keyboard for navigation in Myth instead of the side of the screen (disable it and learn fast!) or heavily relying on minimap clicking for small movements. Every time you need to move your cursor across to the edge of the screen or even to the minimap you have to re-track your location when coming back. I think most people probably already know this, but I still see occasional comments about screen edge scrolling, so I figured I'd mention.

BTW Myrk I'm curious if you (and others) use right click for attack ground or hold control? I have the feeling that most people map it to right click and I'm the odd one out, but I got used to that with the old/default control scheme and haven't learned to switch yet :S

[par73]

I think it bears repeating that if you can't easily select units and click exactly where you want quickly, you can't micro as well as someone who can, and therefore you'll have a ceiling on how well you can do in Myth until you fix this problem.

I think a bigger issue is game IQ and lack of knowledge about how to use the units you've been assigned properly, or how to avoid/initiate a pinch. There were good players with poor unit management skills.

here's the part of the thread where I interject with some subjective measure and am sometimes mistaken to be blatantly arguing against a point not presented. regardless,

I think what myrk is saying is right. I think what zak's saying is projecting not only zak's own problems but also right. I think good players with poor unit management skills made up by it by taking less units and having to control them less. Therefore, I would put in-game control to be a bigger step than in-game awareness in the myth skill improvement category, as well as a necessary preceding step to develop in-game awareness.

Recap: players needed to learn how to use the units in the game before they could develop any hypotheses at successfully valid strategy, innovation, and execution.

while technical ingame control problems, and lack of in-game oversight almost seem like two polarities here I think another concept worth indulging in is connectivity issues. I would also like to mention that we would not be having discussions about what to do with units and concepts like tactics and strategy if this never came to be present. Connectivity issues from having lag (i.e. delay in the way you process information about the game, delay in the way you input information back to the game) to being on a constant, unstable connection (i.e. dial up, wireless) causes players to spend more time improving in a different realm of myth than people with good connections (to the internet and to the host). playing myth on dial up is a lot different than playing it on cable, and you experience the game at a different pace.

If someone is learning at a pace with 2 second delay it will be much more difficult to differentiate between what you clicked being the right or wrong thing, than an individual learning this with little or no delay. This should always be considered in regards to myth skill improvement, as it happened to the community as a whole and it's historical truth still resonates in conversations today.

Therefore I think before improving unit control or understanding tactical situations, one must get the best connection to the real-time, or 'host-experienced', game as possible. Otherwise they will learn how to play a 'different' game than the empirical 'good players'.
I think it's also safe to say that with netgames from 1997-200# gradually increasing in internet connection relevance to the 'host-experienced' game, 'being-able-to-click' was able to become a mastery which caused an explosion of 'strategies' and 'what-to-do' to occur in myth history.

here's a quote
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton


oh p.s. of personal subjectivity, i also learned how to play this game a lot faster by playing with tcox in 06, who already had an idea of all of this shit figured out. this was also when i switched from dial-up to cable.

[dac]

I think players who learn on lag tend to be better at predicting what opponents will do, and i still marvel at overseas folks who play at a high level because they can predict what to do a good half second beforetime instead of relying on the instant reactions. I played way better when i moved from 14k dialup all those years ago to a dsl connection, in fact the game was completely different as paris said and i had an edge due to being able to predict the opponent

the other thing that nobody has mentioned is presets. dont be so damn reliant on them (im the worst at this) but my mouse control is terrible and i never even considered mouse settings like myrk is saying. i will have to look into that when i get home, but the problem is going to be that my work mouse cannot be configured and it will probably be really annoying to switch.

[Asmodian]

Watch films of very good teams going at it in competitive matches. Analyze the decisions that the players make and do your best to understand the strategy behind the plan (not just where the captain sends the players initially). If you want to become any good at this game in 2 team play you must do this or find a way on a top end team (which would be hard if you don't already have a "good eye for the game") in able to fully understand myth tactics and how to make good decisions in game.

Also STOP waiting for your cap to tell you EVERYTHING to do. In order to have great team play you need players other than the captain to communicate and help make quick decisions. The captain can't be watching every place on the map at once and if you don't make the decision on your own sometimes to push,retreat,ect than the opportunity might be lost.

[Zak]

If every map was a BC fest like lmoth, then skills would be more important than intelligence. However, even then, you'll need intelligence to avoid getting rushed, pinched, and wighted.

In a 2 team game where the game type is flag rally, stampede, or captures, a player who has great unit handling skill is going to be of less value than the player who can play the map intelligently and stick to the game plan.

[wwo]

Mouse control test

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=34755

I got

Movement 76
Accuracy 65
consistancy 75
strength 2331
speed 138

Groovy. I tried it after an hour of playing bass.

Movement 70
Accuracy 77%
Consistancy 40% (LOL)
Strength 7112
Speed 132

[Chohan]

Mouse control test

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=34755

I got

Movement 76
Accuracy 65
consistancy 75
strength 2331
speed 138

Groovy. I tried it after an hour of playing bass.

Movement 70
Accuracy 77%
Consistancy 40% (LOL)
Strength 7112
Speed 132

Movement - 93
Accuracy - 91%
Consistancy - 82%
Strength - 53,895
Speed - 194

[dac]

impressive crun!

[Myrk]

BTW Myrk I'm curious if you (and others) use right click for attack ground or hold control? I have the feeling that most people map it to right click and I'm the odd one out, but I got used to that with the old/default control scheme and haven't learned to switch yet :S

I control click to attack ground. I use right click to move units using the overhead map, which is useful when you want to send something somewhere quickly (ie send a couple melee away to tag a flag) while you're doing something micro-intensive and don't want to take the time to select your unit, click on the map, move your unit there, and move your camera back to the battle. The only thing I ever changed from default was mapping the taunt key to F, since the old key (U I think) was too far away to be useful. Not that taunt key is actually useful at all, I don't think I've ever been in a game where the ability to pretend to shoot fireballs has made a difference.

[punkUser]

I control click to attack ground.

Ah ok, cool. Interesting note about using minimap to send people too.

Not that taunt key is actually useful at all, I don't think I've ever been in a game where the ability to pretend to shoot fireballs has made a difference.

Yeah I don't use it often myself either, and it seems like space or H should ideally animation cancel as well (can't think of a reason why taunting should be special in that regard). Meh.

[Myrk]

On Dantski's thing:

Movement 83
Accuracy 95
Consistency 66
Strength 2154
Speed 190

"Good, you're better than average but sitll not the best you can be, keep playin'"

I'd say the only thing that's a good indicator of mouse control as it pertains to Myth is the part where you select the circles as they move across the screen and they get smaller and smaller. The first part is too random, I don't see the point of the circle going between the lines, and strength and speed just involve spamming with the middle finger.

Also taunt is nice if you accidentally hit T on your wights, but you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.

[par73]

I tried turning my mouse speed down and I have way more control over what I'm doing. Thanks Myrk

[switch]

I can't stand disclicking. Why does that happen?

Example:

You know, I'm moving a bunch of melee around to attack a flank and I'm ground clicking a bunch to get them into the right position and then bamp no unit control. Go to reselect but the opponent is engaging so manoeuvre phase now over.

[dac]

did it twice, consistency of 26% then 37%! dac's 2 ball mystery SOLVED, but the stupid thing said im lvl 10 afterwards lol

[par73]

I can't stand disclicking. Why does that happen?

Example:

You know, I'm moving a bunch of melee around to attack a flank and I'm ground clicking a bunch to get them into the right position and then bamp no unit control. Go to reselect but the opponent is engaging so manoeuvre phase now over.

what do you actually mean by this? you should always be able to reselect (and thus disengage if you make a mistake to try to save losses)
if you're ground clicking to get them into the right position then lose unit selection, you must be pressing a deselect in the process (and what a terrible, terrible time to deselect it sounds)

and by ground clicking do you mean gesture clicking?

[Myrk]

I can't stand disclicking. Why does that happen?

Example:

You know, I'm moving a bunch of melee around to attack a flank and I'm ground clicking a bunch to get them into the right position and then bamp no unit control. Go to reselect but the opponent is engaging so manoeuvre phase now over.

You're talking about when you have units selected, go to move them, and instead of moving your units get deselected right?
This happens if you hold down the mouse button too long when you click somewhere. By too long, I mean about a second. You should always release the mouse button immediately after you gesture-click. Click, drag the mouse where you want the units to face, and release as quickly as possible. Accidental deselection should never happen if you click fast enough.

[punkUser]

You know, I'm moving a bunch of melee around to attack a flank and I'm ground clicking a bunch to get them into the right position and then bamp no unit control. Go to reselect but the opponent is engaging so manoeuvre phase now over.

It's usually because you move the mouse far enough to start a band select while the button is held down. This is actually one of the reasons I use right click to issue move orders (i.e. set it to gesture click) - you can hold it as long as you want and see exactly where the formation is going to face, or spam it or whatever and you won't deselect.

[Vantobia]

edit: hah everyone is very helpfull today arnt they ??? Was answered before I finished my answer.. :

I think it is when you are clicking too fast, so the game registers your clicking as holding the mouse button in, thus making your pointer make a very small box, which of course selects nothing and de-selects your current units. I reckon thats it mate.

I have a weird OCD habbit of deselecting my units after I give an order. Weird.

[drunken_deer]

I use Cyber Snipa products for my gaming. they used to sponsor me back in my starcraft days so yeh they give me good discounts.




My keyboard, the warboard with interchangeable keys such as a knife ect. Also has Macro Keys with software on either side for those games like starcraft for instant build instead of Hotkeying 2 letters B-build B-Barraks for example.

http://store.cybersnipa.com/images/stingersm.jpg

My mouse also with 3 different modes of movement. So for games like myth you want a medium scroll rate but for FPS you want a uber fast scroll rate. Good grip for mice you want one without shitty plastic and a rubber surface for solid grip. I dont see the excitment over razor, they are starting to get better but the last few years have been utter shit pumped out.

I also use Right click to attack ground, ctrl is far away and you want to be spending less time as myrk has said on the keyboard and more time focusing on your mouse clicks.

The most important rule though: is not the tools you use for gaming its the gamer himself just like in any craft, you can still out-think your opponent on the shittest of microsoft keyboards but your fingers are going to pay the price.

[Flatline]

Movement 61
Accuracy 74
consistancy 74
strength 1911
speed 156

[c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊]

I control click to attack ground. I use right click to move units using the overhead map, which is useful when you want to send something somewhere quickly (ie send a couple melee away to tag a flag) while you're doing something micro-intensive and don't want to take the time to select your unit, click on the map, move your unit there, and move your camera back to the battle.

WTF you can do that? lol

Changed taunt to F, good idea thx myrk, and right click to ground attack, don't know why I didnt do that years ago since I naturally gesture with left click.

Anyone know how to change your mouse acceleration thing on a mac?

Also, anyone know if they're going to finally bring Fear back to OS X with 1.8? Been wanting/needing to change some of my formations.

Looked at these fancy keyboards, mice... theyre like $100 & $50 respectively even used wtf.

[Myrk]

Mouse acceleration on a mac is extra retarded because the geniuses who designed OS X didn't put in any option to disable it. User-friendly, my ass. I could go on a long rant about how Mac's gone all the way downhill since OS X came out but I'll stay on topic.

In my case, getting a Razer mouse with its mac-compatible software was able to override the retarded Mac acceleration. A lot of high-end mice aren't mac-compatible, I can say for sure that Razer's mice are. Getting a good quality mac-compatible mouse would be your best option.

Before I got my Razer I got by with some application I downloaded from the internet, USB Overdrive I believe. http://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/02/02 ... or-mac-os/ <-- an article that explains the Mac OS problems a bit and gives you links to a couple of shareware mouse applications. This isn't going to be as good an option as upgrading your mouse but it will still be better than using the shitty Mac defaults.

[Myrk]

Also, regarding formations, you're basically fucked for changing them yourself since the geniuses who designed OS Lion threw in the great user-friendly feature of making all PowerPC applications not work.

You can just download mine and put them in your local folder.

This will lead into the next most important fundamental thing after keyboard and mouse control, formations and observer constants.

In general you need:

- a formation to fit your units into tight spaces that's not too clumped up.
- a couple of loose line formations that are spaced enough so you can efficiently dodge arrows with your archers. These also serve the purpose of rushing with melee against artillery so your melee takes minimal damage from each shot.
- a tight formation (tight box is mandatory, tight line useful with very large melee groups) for fighting pure melee vs melee. Never, ever use this formation near enemy pus or dwarves.

Explanation of my attached formations:

1: Default spacing, 8 units wide. I mainly just use this for moving things around at the start of the game, and for archering in tight spots when there aren't pus ghols around, such as a flank on Grilling Grounds. In tight spaces it's better to use this formation rather than one like formation 5 where everything could get hit by 1 pus. This is also good for using Trow in melee fights, since trow are fatter than regular units and tend to moonwalk if you try to use formation 5.

2. Tight line, only useful in a melee fight if you have a lot of melee.

3. Very loose line, 6 wide. Great if you have 6 or fewer archers, and can be useful for rushing against dorfs/morts/pus that's not well supported by melee.

4. Tighter loose line, 8 wide. Use for more than 6 archers, and for rushing against dorfs/morts/pus supported by melee.

5. Tight box, or the "that's what she said" formation. Use for fighting melee vs melee. Never leave all your melee in this formation, ever, when there are enemy pus or dorfs around you since you can expect all your melee to die in 1 hit.

6-10. Useless. I found formation 9 useful in that TFL campaign level where you have to rush a shallow encirclement of soulless to get to The Watcher, and that would be the only time I've ever used any of these.

Other good players have posted their formations in other forums, they can repost them here if they like.

Observer constants make your camera move faster. This is probably common knowledge at this point, but if your camera still moves at the default speed you need to change this immediately.

Formations_obs_constants.zip

[Dantski]

I would make the point that for archer formations, if its possible for 2 of your archers to be frozen by a single pus thrown directly at 1 of them, then they are not spread wide enough, this is applicable for the widest spacing you have and less so for others.

[Myrk]

In a normal game, I'd be quite happy to have someone waste a pus to kill 2 of my archers. If archers end up being that vital for some reason, there's form 3. Note that form 3 can still be used with larger archer groups, just you'll only have 6 max firing at once.
I'll discuss things like micro and retard magnets another day, where you can make 'bad' formations effective.

[dac]

retard magnets? lol

[Myrk]

A retard magnet is basically bait used to get someone to waste their effort attacking something that is going to put them out of position. It's a term that comes from starcraft, here's an example of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okMyPEoSdaw

Myth examples of retard magnets are when a trow goes off chasing a single zerk, a force stays somewhere useless BCing when it should be spreading and tagging flags, or using archers as pus bait when you're getting rushed. There was a kickball game of Paris vs Thor a few weeks back when the people controlling Thor's force stayed middle BCing in a creep game as the clock was winding down when they should have been spreading out to tag flags, for a recent example.

[SamTheButcher]

To contribute something. I changed my preset key to ` since it is right in row with the numbers. I can just like roll my fingers and select 1-5 very fast. `1`2`3`4`5 I use 2 presets all the time but 3-5 pretty commonly as well. I will sometimes put like a single unit that is flanking or a wight or something on 6 or 7. For the camera speed I had originally years ago adjusted it myself but when I started playing again this time I found someone had a file to DL that had the Observer Constants already set with different speeds. I think it went from 2x-8x(maybe 10X) normal speed. I have my set to the highest speed. I over shot with the camera a lot at first, once I got used to it its nice. Right click I have for Ground Attack.

[wwo]

Forms 1, 2, and 3 are the same formation, just labeled differently. Don't let that constrain your use of them. 4 and 5 are barely variants; 4 offsets odd rows, and 5 tries to keep # rows = # columns.

The encirclements can be exceedingly useful. Twiddle with the settings and you can get an infinite line spaced however you like for 7, though 8 will copy all attributes except arc length (in degrees).

Also, you guys should be giving actual numbers for unit spacing. I've forgotten probably, but tight melee is ~ .35, very loose for arcs is ~3.5, etc.

[c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊]

My formations are already almost identical to yours, I just wanted to experiment and tweak a bit.

[enculator]

nerds

[Vantobia]

More competetive games during aussie timezone is pretty much my only way to go beyond the 2-3 ball rating.

Login - no games - 5 peeps in lobby - log out, come back for MWC/TWS 6 months later

[switch]

Thank you for the observer constants, Myrk. I won't be able to change those until 1.8 version of Fear.

[Honkey]

Some Advice For myrk:

#1- Win a Mwc, before you give tips.

#2- Stop Putting on the worst statistical performance in all of mwc finals history before you give tips.

That is all.

[dac]

Honkey's greatest* life achievements were reached 2 years ago - he can die now.

1) mwc ring.

2) superbowl ring.

Thats right, he was equally instrumental in both wins. In a glorious performance he shut down mike wallace single handedly and single handedly dismantled shaister in the finals with one hand tied behind his back.

[Honkey]

This thread has nothing to do with me Dac. It has to do with a finals flopper telling others how to play myth.