Are you amazing at any particular game? If so, what separates you from a "merely good" player?

CeeBod

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I can remember a Counter Strike clan temporarily banning use of the shotgun on their server when I was racking up "too many" kills with it - I was poor at best with most guns, but was almost unkillable when I had a boomstick! Staying hidden, and only coming out of cover to take 1 lethal short range shot and then go back into hiding was how I racked up the kills :eek:)

I also used to think I was a pretty good hunter in WoW, but I can remember when a semi-legendary solo player joined our guild (he'd solo kited everything it was even theoretically possible to kite including taking Kazzak to Stormwind, and no I don't know how he managed that) realising that maybe I wasn't as good as I thought I was! However good you get, or however good you think you are there is always someone capable of humbling you! ;o)
 

Lightknight

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I could play space invaders without ever losing, literally. I can play until my patience finally wears thin with the invaders never reaching the bottom. At my longest time, when I found a version that allowed me to pause, I once played for 15 hours over 3 days just because. That was also the last time I played it or likely will ever play it.

I'm also crazy good at shooters. I have a much faster reaction time and a better feel for killzones for some reason. I usually finish in the top three regardless of game mode.
 

Fappy

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I guess I would consider myself "amazing" at any of the main games that I've obsessed over at one point or another. Most of them are single player games though, so they're hardly worth boasting about. Relatively recently I was pretty fucking good at the ME3 multiplayer. I carried bad groups through Gold matches with sub-par and rarely played classes all the time, and was doing Plat runs frequently (with decent groups). There was a time in my WoW career where I was basically the go-to player on my server for kitty raid DPS advice (this was near the beginning of WotLK though, so there were very few kitties doing progression raiding).

Most competitive games I have played I am at least competent at - usually good enough to stomp my IRL friends consistently.

I can pick up just about any game and succeed, but rarely ever become an "amazing" player. I guess I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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Casual Shinji said:
I can say that there's no games I'm straight-up bad at.

Beyond that I'd say I'm more stubborn than actually skilled. I've played through Heart of Darkness, Jak 2 and Dead Rising multiple times, when I've heard many people say they where never able to finish them even once. I also replay games A LOT, so Resident Evil 4 I'm pretty much a champ at now.
This is a false belief. To be good doesn't mean to be a savant and just excel at the games without all that much time spent playing them. Also, there's really no such people if you actually look at the people who are top level in most of these things. There's no people who are just naturally amazing, unless your definition of amazing isn't what the best people would agree for it to be.


No, we're all just super stubborn like you describe yourself to be and due to this stubborness end up practicing for literally thousands of hours and become as good as one who does all this practicing logically would end up being at the end of it.


Natural talent comes more in the way you solve logical puzzles and on your reaction speeds but those are too unrefined traits. You can't win anything on those alone without a whole lot of work at focusing them to a laser point.
 

dyre

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JohnnyDelRay said:
Yeahhhh, CS back in the day was a long time ago. I was on a clan for a little while. These days I hardly have the time to devote to get really good at anything. I remember talking to the leader of the clan at the time, who had amazing KD ratios like I'd never seen. And I asked him if it was more reaction/aiming or familiarity with the guns, or more positioning, tactics. And his reply was that despite what most people think, positioning, tactics, knowledge of the map and the flow of rushes is what counts more. And he said you don't need to burst fire, countering the recoil with the mouse is much more effective than crouching, double-tapping or whatever. So that caught me as a surprise.

OT: Yeah the only thing I've been "slightly above average" in lately would be Resident Evil 6, got pretty damn good at Mercenary mode there for awhile. For awhile I was slick with the Hitman games, up until Absolution I could get Silent Assassin rating on every damn level, is how much I loved it. Which is weird because nowadays I can hardly be bothered with stealth games at all.

Rainbow 6: Vegas 2. seems I mention this game in my every other post, but anyways. I can do pretty much any map on Realistic difficulty, Lone Wolf, highest enemy density, with only a pistol. It would take me a buttload of tries to attempt that nowadays, but I think I'd be able to do it eventually.
Hmm, interesting input, thanks. I can believe that positioning/tactics/sense of flow matter more, but I've always been amazed how fast people can pull of headshots with unscoped weapons, in the middle of a hectic firefight. Maybe it's something that eventually "clicks" with enough familiarity and practice.

Also, yeah, I can relate to not bothering with stealth games these days (or, choosing the "loud" option, at least). I chalk it up to not having endless after-school afternoons anymore...if I can only play a few hours a week, I'm not going to spend them all perfecting a single mission.
 

dyre

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Loonyyy said:
CS:S was my thing for a while. Too late to get into the competitive scene, but I was really enjoying stomping around the local servers, so I got some advice from my friend who played from a pro team, set myself up with a bunch of the usual sort of aim maps and started practicing every day. Had a little schedule and everything for what I'd do. Didn't go so much for the desert eagle, got good enough with it that I could pop a headshot with it and control the recoil and get a trade on eco, but I practiced AWPing like made until my close up game with it was tight as hell, and my footwork was perfectly time to control the sway.

My main obsession though were the AK-47 and the M4. I practiced burst firing patterns over and over on bots, learnt the AK's spray pattern by heart. I'd regularly do fairly well on the regular servers, though I was never a fan of dust2.

What I liked about it was how much of a process it was. I'm fairly good at Call of Duty, but that's often a mindset thing, you need to feel the confidence, be in the zone, be hyped up to do really well. The trick I always found there was that it rewards ultra aggressive play, even in the competitive scene. You can get by for a while on good strat and placement, but eventually the match will turn, and the more aggressive, coordinated team, usually takes it. In CS:S, you had to slow down, learning to manipulate the movement speed to control recoil is absolutely gamechanging, learning to tap the AK etc. And each weapon plays very differently, and there's a lot of very viable weapon choices. Mastering the deagle or the Scout completely changes the game, and I never got to that. I loved how after a CS binge I'd go back to other shooters, and my aim would be noticeably better.

I am a nightmare on Payday 2. Hundreds of dead cops.
Looking back on it, I'm amazed I did things like getting used to the M4 and AK's spray pattern, quick-scoping the Scout, etc. And I wasn't even a very good player...didn't even think about mastering footwork, haha.

I can't even imagine most players taking the time to do that in modern FPSs. Maybe at the competitive level, but I think even semi-casual players spent the time to learn how to shoot AKs properly back in the day.

Can I ask if you ever did stuff like watching for shadows or listening to footsteps? I'm still trying to determine if that was something people did back then...
 

dyre

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Dreiko said:
Casual Shinji said:
I can say that there's no games I'm straight-up bad at.

Beyond that I'd say I'm more stubborn than actually skilled. I've played through Heart of Darkness, Jak 2 and Dead Rising multiple times, when I've heard many people say they where never able to finish them even once. I also replay games A LOT, so Resident Evil 4 I'm pretty much a champ at now.
This is a false belief. To be good doesn't mean to be a savant and just excel at the games without all that much time spent playing them. Also, there's really no such people if you actually look at the people who are top level in most of these things. There's no people who are just naturally amazing, unless your definition of amazing isn't what the best people would agree for it to be.


No, we're all just super stubborn like you describe yourself to be and due to this stubborness end up practicing for literally thousands of hours and become as good as one who does all this practicing logically would end up being at the end of it.


Natural talent comes more in the way you solve logical puzzles and on your reaction speeds but those are too unrefined traits. You can't win anything on those alone without a whole lot of work at focusing them to a laser point.
While this is true, I think part of gaming "greatness" also involves one's focus on actually perfecting skills. I mean, lots of people can spend hundreds of hours in a game without ever thinking about the deeper mechanics and how to abuse the meta-game. A lot of people aren't even aware of the advantages that can be attained when you spend the extra time to learn about that "boring" stuff.

Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of players pour tons of time into LoL, for example, but obviously not all of them are equal.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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dyre said:
Dreiko said:
Casual Shinji said:
I can say that there's no games I'm straight-up bad at.

Beyond that I'd say I'm more stubborn than actually skilled. I've played through Heart of Darkness, Jak 2 and Dead Rising multiple times, when I've heard many people say they where never able to finish them even once. I also replay games A LOT, so Resident Evil 4 I'm pretty much a champ at now.
This is a false belief. To be good doesn't mean to be a savant and just excel at the games without all that much time spent playing them. Also, there's really no such people if you actually look at the people who are top level in most of these things. There's no people who are just naturally amazing, unless your definition of amazing isn't what the best people would agree for it to be.


No, we're all just super stubborn like you describe yourself to be and due to this stubborness end up practicing for literally thousands of hours and become as good as one who does all this practicing logically would end up being at the end of it.


Natural talent comes more in the way you solve logical puzzles and on your reaction speeds but those are too unrefined traits. You can't win anything on those alone without a whole lot of work at focusing them to a laser point.
While this is true, I think part of gaming "greatness" also involves one's focus on actually perfecting skills. I mean, lots of people can spend hundreds of hours in a game without ever thinking about the deeper mechanics and how to abuse the meta-game. A lot of people aren't even aware of the advantages that can be attained when you spend the extra time to learn about that "boring" stuff.

Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of players pour tons of time into LoL, for example, but obviously not all of them are equal.
That's true to a degree but was much more true back in the day than it is anymore, especially for fighting games which was what I was mainly talking about (since they're the only thing I have experience with). That's so because when you go online you will see the results of all of this knowledge and you will keep losing to it until you adapt and learn the "boring stuff" as you put it (though I don't consider these things boring at all lol).



Also note that when I say practice, I don't mean practice MODE, I include in it basically everything outside of matches that matter due to having prizes and bragging rights at stake. Under this definition playing with people in non-tournament settings is practice too.
 

flying_whimsy

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I'm really good at older light-gun arcade games that aren't just incredibly hard reflex tests like newer ones (the time crisis series suffered the worst since it basically had a dodge mechanic). Not top score good, but more of the 'you got how far on one quarter?'

I have a lot of skill for more logical puzzle platformer games like portal and antichamber; sadly there are very few games like that but they never reduce me to cheating or looking things up. I have friends that can't even beat the original portal.

I'm also a bit of an idiot savant at fighting games; meaning that even in a game I've never played I pick up the concepts well enough to bury any beginner to midrange and maybe a little higher opponent, but when it gets into meta stuff you get with more competitive players the best I can do is make them sweat and bring out their A game.

In TF2 I'm also a ridiculously sneaky pyro on surf maps: I'm really good with the high speed guerrilla tactics surf maps let you get away with (though not quite as good with the surfing).
 

DoPo

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dyre said:
Can I ask if you ever did stuff like watching for shadows or listening to footsteps? I'm still trying to determine if that was something people did back then...
As I said, footsteps was something that was done back in the original CS, so undoubtedly it has been in CS:Source. Heck, it isn't even CS specific - the footsteps were part of the HL engine - and you could have them in a plain HL server. Sound was somewhat less utilised then because a lot of times there would be constant fighting, shooting and explosions, but in the quiet times picking up anything or recharging health/armour could spell your doom because it's incredibly easy to know exactly where you were based on the sound and a tau cannon or explosive would usually soon follow. Again, sound was sometimes used to lure enemies in the cases when everybody is currently hiding.

As for shadows - they weren't in the original HL/CS engine. Well, not dynamic player model shadows cast by various light sources (there was only pool of shadow under the model's legs, if I recall). By the time CS: Source rolled around I had left the scene, however, it doesn't surprise me the least that you'd watch for shadows. They should also occasionally clip through walls/floors to make it even more obvious where the enemy is.
 

dyre

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DoPo said:
dyre said:
Can I ask if you ever did stuff like watching for shadows or listening to footsteps? I'm still trying to determine if that was something people did back then...
As I said, footsteps was something that was done back in the original CS, so undoubtedly it has been in CS:Source. Heck, it isn't even CS specific - the footsteps were part of the HL engine - and you could have them in a plain HL server. Sound was somewhat less utilised then because a lot of times there would be constant fighting, shooting and explosions, but in the quiet times picking up anything or recharging health/armour could spell your doom because it's incredibly easy to know exactly where you were based on the sound and a tau cannon or explosive would usually soon follow. Again, sound was sometimes used to lure enemies in the cases when everybody is currently hiding.

As for shadows - they weren't in the original HL/CS engine. Well, not dynamic player model shadows cast by various light sources (there was only pool of shadow under the model's legs, if I recall). By the time CS: Source rolled around I had left the scene, however, it doesn't surprise me the least that you'd watch for shadows. They should also occasionally clip through walls/floors to make it even more obvious where the enemy is.
Oh sorry, I actually completely missed your previous post. It actually clears a lot of things up.

Weird thing is, I don't remember 3D audio even being around back then. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention and hadn't noticed it back then.
 

Extra-Ordinary

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Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+

I played the demo, thought it was fun, bought the game, thought it was extremely fun. Then I made the mistake of looking at the Leaderboards and thought "I can beat that".
I decided to start with the first board, 5-minute score attack. I'm currently sitting at number 36 out of the top 35,000 that the leaderboard counts.
There's a replay function with the 5-min score attacks built into the game so you could watch other players and see how they did it. I didn't even know what I was looking at at first, I could see why these guys were blowing me out of the water.
They were pulling off maneuvers that I had never seen (it's Pac-Man, yes, but a remix of the classic formula with some new mechanics added) and I thought "I can beat the high score without those. I most certainly could not, I discovered why the strategies shown were required for high-level play and after some practice, I got them down; now I can watch the number 1 player and be confident that there's nothing he can do that I can't do.
Now, still haven't cracked #1, the game feels like a drug that's lost it's touch, I can halfway predict ghost movement and I've more or less stopped playing but I'm getting back into it.
And hey, 36 out of 35,000 ain't bad.
 

MHR

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4000 hours of TF2. I was always good at it though. Even when I was at 200 hours, people on community servers were pretty much fearing me.

Of course I don't have much on people that actually play competitively, but then again those people are actually trying.
 

Hero of Lime

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I'm an excellent player in Splatoon these days. I have earned the highest rank of S+ which is very tough to do, as you lose points toward your rank if you lose in ranked battle modes. I'm consistently the best player on most of my teams in terms of either kills or turf inked, most of the time having both.

As for why, I've dedicated A LOT of time to this game. In the five months since it came out, I've played over 250 hours. I have a lot of experience with the maps, modes, and weapons. My dedication to playing the game is probably why I am better than the "average good player."

I'm still surprised how much I've gotten into Splatoon. I've never been one for online multiplayer, but the game has a strong hold on me.
 

Tautology

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I used to be quite adept at the Assassins' Creed multiplayer, specifically Assassinate Mode. Few games are as thrilling as that was. No set target or pursuer, just a vague idea where everyone is. Stalking through the crowds, hunting you. Hunted by you.

Keep moving or wait in one spot, both have risks. Rooftops are ill-advised unless you're the only one using the them. Loitering in a group of 2 or 3 identical npcs different from you is best. A genius misdirection and the perfect trap. Few ever think it's the odd man out! When they wise up to it, do the reverse.

The first minute of the game is the quietest when you wait in a corner. Everyone is consumed by killing those closet to them. You're to far away, so they ignore you for now. Eventually somebody gets curious. The radar lights up as someone comes into view. You make them immediately. They're sloppy, giving themselves away. Maybe overconfident because you're isolated, an easy kill with no competition. No secondary threat. They're closing in. Do you target them now, or wait a little longer?

I'd always wait. Let them get close. A lot can be learned by observing your prey. Sometimes they are followed. Pounce too soon, lose sight of all the other hunters, and be cut down before you can react. Better to let the first lamb fall to the second and him to the third. When the victor stops to revel in the slaughter, I step out from the crowd and drive my blade through their spine! I then disappear into the mob and wait for his return. They'll seek revenge if they can get it.

Playing a corner of the map was the best way to go a game of Assassinate unkilled and sometimes unmarked. I didn't always walk away with the most kills, but I almost never died.

It was possible to do the same in the center of the map and get more kills, though riskier. Being heavily trafficked by other players, one wrong move will reveal your presence to everyone! You could, if careful with your movements, vanish in their radars due to how close everyone is. You could be right behind someone and nobody would know.

I also found that players became impatient, yet overcautious and flighty in the map's center. Be too quick to mark a target, they may see you coming and run. Often they'd just get cut down by someone else. I learned to use this to my advantage.

Whenever I was marked, I'd never react. I wouldn't even target them back, it tells them they were right to target me. Most times my opponent would believe me to be another npc and they'd go for the character next to me. They kill the wrong guy and I strike before he knew what hit him! If that didn't work, I'd always fall back on an ability like the bodyguard or smokebomb. Once my pursuer got close, I trigger my ability and while he's stunned I'd kill him in return!

Good times.

I was also pretty godly at the Multiplayer for The Last Of US. You'd be surprised at the damage you could do with just a shiv, a silenced pistol, and a single Molotov cocktail.
 

Albino Boo

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I'm usually in the top 10 percent of players at most online fps but at 42 I lack the reactions and the time to get any better. I normally get a good win/loss ratio by situational awareness, map knowledge and flexible tactics but when it comes to the close duels with the same base skills but better twitch, I lose.


Baffle said:
I'm really good at Monkey Island. That isn't true, I just wandered around in the forest for hours, didn't understand that dance steps thing.
Are you sure you are not mixing up monkey island with getting lost on the way home after a night out?
 

direkiller

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dyre said:
Weird thing is, I don't remember 3D audio even being around back then. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention and hadn't noticed it back then.
Half life was one of the fist games to have it. Thing was most computers or speaker systems did not have the functionality to do it.


OT, I was top 100 Wehrmacht players in the COHO open beta.

Admittedly I kinda abused the un-upgraded Defensive artillery, that oddly got worse the more points you put into it.
 

Guitarmasterx7

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Most of the games I end up sinking huge amounts of time into are single player so it's really hard to say.

As a broke teenager Oblivion was the only game I bought on the 360 for like 2 years and I played that game into dust. I assume I have a stupid amount of knowledge about how that game works from the 600+ hours I put into it.

I have a natural knack for Smash for someone who's never taken it seriously. People practice those ones a lot so unfortunately I can't lay my claim to being REALLY good at it, but back in the melee days I beat people that were in the competitive scene (or claimed to be.) At one point I beat some guy and he literally called his friend and was like "you have to play this guy's shiek it's insane."
 

Evonisia

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I'd say the closest I ever got to amazing at a game was the multiplayer of Gears of War 3. Largely because I refused to use the Lancer[footnote]Gears 3's Lancer is the laziest weapon to use in the series. Barely any recoil, way too much damage for its good fire rate, the perfect reload is easiest to pull off, basically infinite magazine, the chainsaw will almost always kill a retro lancer charging you for some damn reason.[/footnote], I very quickly mastered the other four main weapons. I could very efficiently manipulate the cover and dodge rolls without resorting to the vomit-inducing zig-zag technique favoured by Gnasher addicts. I picked up on the game's quirks quickly. I had an efficient balance of accuracy, fire rate and recoil management with the Hammerburst and burst fire with the Retro Lancer. I frequented the Capture the Leader mode[footnote]A mode wherein two teams have a leader, and the goal is to damage the enemy leader so they down before you take them as a human shield for 30 seconds without being killed yourself by the enemy leader's team.[/footnote] as well which is possibly my favourite game mode in any multiplayer game, and I pretty consistently got the Untouchable ribbon for never even being taken hostage once, and in long matches I averaged 8-10 minutes before being taken hostage the first time.

What separated me from a merely good player of Gears 3 is just how adaptable I was with a consistently high quality. I could handle near enough any situation and even take on multiple people at once all while playing the objective as opposed to just racking up kills. Sadly I'm not nearly as good as I was in 2012 now, but I'd still say I was pretty damn good at the game.
 

Loonyyy

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dyre said:
Looking back on it, I'm amazed I did things like getting used to the M4 and AK's spray pattern, quick-scoping the Scout, etc. And I wasn't even a very good player...didn't even think about mastering footwork, haha.

I can't even imagine most players taking the time to do that in modern FPSs. Maybe at the competitive level, but I think even semi-casual players spent the time to learn how to shoot AKs properly back in the day.

Can I ask if you ever did stuff like watching for shadows or listening to footsteps? I'm still trying to determine if that was something people did back then...
Yeah. Shadows often glitch under surfaces like vents, and appear on some edges and through some objects. Listening for footsteps is big, if you've got dirrectional audio, a headset or surround sound, you can actually pinpoint them by ear. On the doors on Assault, you could aim through the sheet metal wall using your ears and hit someone. Even with 2.1 sound, you can get a good idea of the direction. One of the big things when it comes to winning matches is that you need to react quickly, cover sites and rotate when the enemy is spotted. When you start moving the minute you hear walking or shooting, you can get the drop on people really easily. That's why people say to "Shift walk".

Most modern FPSes don't have such distinct weapons. Compared to modern FPSes, CS has uncontrollable recoil, it's more like say, Red Orchestra, than Battlefield or Call of Duty, and it's decidedly unbalanced, and built around an economy. I kinda like it actually, after a while the gunplay in the other games just feels like each gun is a different set of stats, damage, fire rate, etc, rather than really distinct.