For some reason, more often I find 1 spectator for my games, starting at min 1.
My skill level is not particularly very high to attract that many spectators for my random ranked ladder games, specially at this rate I’m seeing (around 2 out of every 3 games)
I wonder if this is some sort of a bug, I hope at some point we (the players) can view who is actually spectating the game
Here’s some reasons I observe: I am interested in openings for a civ. I am interested in peer ability at my rating level (below average). I am bored. I played against you and want to see your other games.
Not necessarily but sadly it happens. Like sometimes people pause and after one min you suddenly have a spec before unpaused. Or what you described with specs being there from min 1. However in that case it could also be regular specs of course.
You’re able to gain spectators before the match even begins - at the start of the timer counting down is when a match is available.
Often there is a spectator delay of a few minutes - not sure if this counts towards players spectating upon match creation tho - my guess there’s a delay for them too.
I myself rarely spectate games, but a tip to everyone who is doing it:
Spectate games a bit above your elo. If you are 1000, spectate 1200. If you are 1500, spectate 1800.
It’s of no use to watch hera or viper play, because what works in their hands (micro and macro wise) won’t work in ours.
Meanwhile players around your level will have similar skills and ideas about the game, which in turn will make it easier to understand/copy their decisions.
In addition, the lower the level, the more mistakes one can pick up on, and the more they can learn from a game as to why and when exactly things went wrong or right.
My tipp for players on low levels is just to work on execution. Learn the buildorders, always queue vills, use your scout, learn army control. Learn to macro these things.
As you maybe see this is all “agressive”. And I highly admit learning to be agressive first. Cause that is the thing that is easy to put in your “muscle memory” by just executing over and over again. Once you feel comfortable with this you can begin to look onto the defence, strategy and decision making of pros.
Yes, pros. They are the ones which you can learn the most from in this regard.
The last step is trying to balance and adjust your eco and set it up for the next strategic marker you want to achieve. This is by far the hardest as it requires a lot of experience with all the ofther stuff mentioned above.
In conclusion: First learn all the mechanical things. Then learn to bring them together. Whilst you do this you will automatically get a feeling where your attention is needed. The whole strategic thing isn’t as important until you reached close to your capable level of macroing.
Even if you are a comparably “slow” player you can get quite high with following this concept in general.
I know it’s sometimes annoying, but you should use the scenario editor to improve things like your unit control and using hotkeys and whatever. It will pay off in the games and open your mind for the strategic things.
I think there are a lot of basic videos of pros and streamers how they set up their hotkeys and how they use them to improve their apm and so on. Basic things like binding TCs and production buildings to control groups etc. And this is then quite easy to learn in the editor, just switching between your control groups in a circle so you can keep up production behind controlling your army, scouting or adjusting the economy. And once you but this in your muscle memory you are already way ahead of a majority of the players - and the best part is you don’t even need to actively remember it. It’s just there, automatically, so you can focus your attention to the things that are fun, the interaction with your opponent.
So you even improve your game experience by just preparing this kind of stuff on dry runs.
My take: below 1500 and probably below 2000, the main reason for rating is number of mistakes rather than judgements or decisions, so probably the most useful way to improve is to stick very close to your level and work out how you would improve on their gameplay. On the other hand, you see 2k3 players spectate 2k games and they just get frustrated by mistakes, so maybe this advice is even more broadly applicable.