Topic, a friend of mine revealed to me that Overwatch has levels for matchmaking that go up regardless if you win or lose matches. I proposed that it's a flawed system and should be fluid if you repeatedly lose, showing that you're not getting better at the game in question. He refuted that just because you constantly lose at a specific game of competition doesn't mean you're not getting better or learning more about it. I said that if you lose constantly then you aren't. Any thoughts on the matter of outside opinion?
You need to look deeper. What matters is HOW you lose.
There's thousands of ways of losing, by analyzing the match and figuring out how you lost and what you could have done to win, you learn and get better. This, however, will only prevent you from losing in that specific way and that alone. There's still thousands more ways of loss which you have yet to lose to and experience and learn from, so it is possible to keep losing in different ways while constantly getting better. Also, it may be the case that you THINK you know why you lost but are actually 100% wrong, so what you do to not lose is actually the exact worst thing possible, which ideally you will eventually figure out, which is also a way of getting better.
Finally, we have pure unadulterated skill difference. When you go up against someone with thousands of times more playtime than you, you will never ever ever win, you will learn tons by just being analytical of their playstyle but also always get crushed. Do not dispair though, as this knowledge and improvement will shine when you face people around your skill level.
This has been my experience being competitive with fighting games for the better part of a decade now.
It's a tough question. You can learn from losing, but it's linked to how well your opponents do, and how visible what they did to win was.
I didn't play much Overwatch, but from what I saw, there's only so much you can learn from your opponent. The games too busy to be able to parse much, unless you're recording and reviewing later.
That being said, there is some merit to being moved up in brackets due to time played. It may be hard to learn from losing to people who are good, but it's absolutely impossible to learn from people who just started playing 2 hours ago. And I really doubt Overwatch is pairing uber-losers who've played for a long time with juggernauts who have 80% win rates (At least not exclusively). I imagine match making is just moving them up a bit, out of the newbie ring.
I don't know squat about Overwatch, but I do know quite a bit about losing, and I can tell you that you absolutely can learn a lot from it, even doing it over and over again. Of course, that's at its truest when the game has mechanical depth and heft to it, so it's going to be less true of a lot of modern F-and T-PSes, as well as less true in general of games where you're competing directly against other people and it's less a question of knowing the game and more a question of mastery of a few specific skills, but less isn't none.
I know everyones forgotten about it, but Space Marine's online versus mode was amazing. It was leveled, up to 41(teehee) and you unlocked weapons and abilities both with the Marine's level and the weapon's level. So its entirely possible to be a lvl 1 Marine with a bolter fighting a lvl 41 Chaos Raptor with a master crafted power mace and plasma pistol. And you get your ass rightfully handed to you.
Except the balancing factor was during the respawn menu, you have the option to copy the loadout of the man who just killed you exactly for 1 life. Allowing you to play classes and weapons above your level, both for fun, and to get the extra experience and not feel just totally outclassed all the time.
And I think there's an achievement for killing the man who just killed you with the same loadout.
And it worked. Space Marine was perfectly balanced.
Until the Dreadnought expansion, but that was dumb.
I know everyones forgotten about it, but Space Marine's online versus mode was amazing. It was leveled, up to 41(teehee) and you unlocked weapons and abilities both with the Marine's level and the weapon's level. So its entirely possible to be a lvl 1 Marine with a bolter fighting a lvl 41 Chaos Raptor with a master crafted power mace and plasma pistol. And you get your ass rightfully handed to you.
Except the balancing factor was during the respawn menu, you have the option to copy the loadout of the man who just killed you exactly for 1 life. Allowing you to play classes and weapons above your level, both for fun, and to get the extra experience and not feel just totally outclassed all the time.
And I think there's an achievement for killing the man who just killed you with the same loadout.
And it worked. Space Marine was perfectly balanced.
Until the Dreadnought expansion, but that was dumb.
Honestly, havin such high imbalance goes against anything remotely competitive that I just can't take it seriously. Even if you use their stuff you won't have had the chance to practice its use and figure out stuff so that hardly helps and all it does is let people make excuses that they lost cause of the better guns and not cause of skill difference.
This is why I like fighters, your guns are within you in the form of combos and mixups and setups. You can both be using the same char but if you're good the char seems to have so much more than they do when used by a bad player. No room to blame the loadout, no excuses, no lessened glory for the victor.
He refuted that just because you constantly lose at a specific game of competition doesn't mean you're not getting better or learning more about it. I said that if you lose constantly then you aren't. Any thoughts on the matter of outside opinion?
If, indeed, human beings were incapable of learning or improving from losing than by that very definition, we would never be able to win either. Failure is pretty much unavoidable. So, the only way we'd really be able to win would be if a game is absolutely entirely luck based and has no player input...in which case it'd be up to debate whether a player is really involved.
However, that's not the case. People have lost games and yet still persevered. We all have. Or, I dunno, at least I have lost a lot of times. A lo-o-o-ot of times. Me and my friends thought that the Half-Life campaign was absolutely impossible to beat without cheats. Sure, you could progress a bit, but you could never really beat it. That was our thinking at the time and we, quite frankly, sucked. Not only at Half-Life - at games in general.
But we improve. We all do. And failure is part of the process. It's inevitable, really, and I'd even dare suggest that it can teach more than success. Whether the player takes those lessons in is a separate issue, though, however the fact remains that they are there. And looking at the world at large - people are using the lessons taught by failure. Without them, after all, there would never be success.
This is my current beef with the PVP season on Guild Wars 2. (Trying to reach next tier is pure luck if you in a RNG team.)
You maybe good at playing a specific character but that doesn't mean the other people you are playing with will be the same as you. This is of course vice versa (they good but you're bad).
I mean yes when you and other reach the same tier, it still doesn't mean they will still be as good as you (like if they having a bad day in performaning well as the character).
Also Overwatch is a team game yes? So I guess it's a similar situation.
The one does NOT follow from the other. I think it's called a logical fallacy...A) is true therefore B) must follow. Winning or losing have NO direct bearing on learning. One can win or lose in any proportion and not improve. Improvement is by learning and in fairness a lot of learning comes by the doing.
If someone does lose all the time, they should still be learning. Each mistake is an experience from which one can learn. Make a mistake, oops, won't do that next time, or to execute better/differently. Even the lowliest of animals can learn...rats pushing buttons for reward or learning to avoid them for punishment. In a shooter you have a combination of your own character/weapons to learn, the map and its intricacies and of course your opponent's offensive and defensive capabilities. Hopefully, in spite of losing your friend is learning which attacks to dodge or block, when to time his own shots, where to find cover, what sounds/signs give away special attacks, and so on.
If there's no improvement after many days, then perhaps he will struggle to compete. And if your level goes up win or lose then the level doesn't reflect skill, only time spent. Thus a higher level character doesn't actually mean better or worse, just that they've played longer.
You certainly can be, especially in games where your success can actually be measured numerically in resources earned or units produced (DOTA 2 and SC2). Both have insane learning curves where a new player would probably lose their first 100 games, but still be able to learn how to play better by watching replays. The trick is having a thick enough skin to not quit from such aggravation.
I would always prefer matchmaking systems that pairs people based on average win rates over total time played, since different people learn at different rates.
I think that famous (and surprisingly in "quotes said by famous people land", real) quote from Edison sums up the question fairly succinctly
?I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.?
You get better at stuff by doing it repeatedly. Some people learn quicker than others, some people may have a capability they can't break through, but you never aren't learning something just because you're losing. Especially given that a game like Overwatch depends on more than just your own contribution, it's a whole team effort.
It is but i suppose that might due to server fluxation, in the beta i found the game far more balanced with level growth.
I would remind you that because they are greedy bastards that whipped everyone's beta data and injected a number of very skilled players into low level play. fighting a level who is rally a level 80 with hundreds of games under his belt is going to fuck you over. Even worse when they have a team like that.
He refuted that just because you constantly lose at a specific game of competition doesn't mean you're not getting better or learning more about it.
If you always play with bad people will you get better?
yes at doing mundane taskes.
I've learned this from hunting gibuses as a sniper on trade servers, you never really get better at playing the best, or getting in to the right mindset.
I said that if you lose constantly then you aren't. Any thoughts on the matter of outside opinion?
That aside, just because you are getting better doesn't mean it's
A. immediately noticeable
B. learning the right way/repeating the same mistakes because you are bad at learning.
C. people are learning as you learn and are thus getting better are a rough rate to you.
D. Your team could just suck.
I had that brick wall where i was playing said level 80s.
IT will get better nerd, push yo self
My grandfather taught me to play chess. I never won a game against the man, not even close. But I learned a hell of a lot about strategy and thinking ahead because of it. You don't always win, sometimes you never win, but the opportunities to learn are still there regardless.
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