I never knew how important this stupid feature in Path of Radiance was until Chapter 13 on hard mode. Holy crap. It's the level where you, as the player, must defend a ship for ten turns. One of the characters that starts off on the "Other" force, Astrid, is squishy. I am playing the game so no playable characters get killed. Astrid is one of these characters. If her biorhythm is on par or on the downswing, she will die no matter what you do. If it's on the upswing, the swordsman that ALWAYS offs her only gets one shot instead of two. This is a problem because I had to restart the level FIVE TIMES last night because I didn't even think of biorhythem. In fact, I couldn't even understand what the hell was going on. Today I started playing and realized it immediately (must have been lack of sleep or something finally affecting my mental processes...). Even Oscar and Kieran had differing attacks and hit percentages, which struck me as curious as well (determining if they could kill one spearman or not). This is also biorhythm. As frustrated as I was (am), biorhythm is actually a clever aspect of strategical play that I hadn't thought to work around or take advantage of.
This just struck me as a perfect example of my inability to take certain aspects of gaming to another level. As a rule, I don't like to compete or play multiplayer matches with a) people I don't know and b) little or no knowledge of the game or what I'm supposed to be doing. The point is, however, I don't ever spend enough time with one game to become an expert at it. At least not good enough to actually have fun without getting frustrated every two minutes. I love playing single player games because I can work at my own pace, faff about and actually enjoy what I'm playing. When I play multiplayer, especially with competitive contexts or even with competitive people, I feel panicked, confused and nervous because I feel like I look like an idiot. This is why previous endeavours into Star Craft and Diablo II didn't work for me. I was constantly playing with people way out of my league, and they expected more from me. Though it's good to play with people better than you, I wasn't willing to spend the time becoming better. I didn't feel like I could get better, and I was constantly embarassing myself. I don't have huge amounts of confidence, a hurdle I've constantly had to scramble over. Some of the people I played with made me feel as if I was screwing them up or constantly disappointing them, which didn't help either. And yet I couldn't stop, because I was convinced I could get better and kick these people's asses. It wasn't healthy, and I'm glad that I don't play like that anymore, though I do miss playing with these people at times. I felt like I was one of them...part of their community. Like many other aspects of my life though, I think I'm destined to be an outsider. This is why I haven't touched the multiplayer of Star Craft 2 and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I was eased into Call of Duty Black Ops because of the co-op multiplayer option, which was brilliant in that game (even if the rest of it just looked like the same as every COD game before). My brother, a player much better than myself, was able to play with me and help me get better.
I don't know if I'm just afraid to get back into it because of bad experiences in the past playing even with friends, but I just don't get the same level of enjoyment out of this aspect of gaming. I am becoming a lot better at games like Fire Emblem because of my will and time spent in-game. Every level I learn something new or tactical. I learn tricks for the levels and how to cycle my characters and use healing at the right times to keep them all alive and as effective as I can. I have learned about biorhythm and special abilities, chance to hit (which is TOTALLY rigged in some cases) and how to level characters to make a strong and rounded team. Same with Dungeon Keeper. I've spent hours with that game, playing, recording, reviewing, commenting and in some cases re-playing when I fail. I've spent enough time with the game making a walkthrough series that I am a stronger player. I just can't find anyone willing to play with me on multiplayer. Sadface.
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This is a tough one to troll out. Let'see how I do.
ReplyDeleteRemember Mucky? Of course you do. This feller has a natural talent for games. Always been the best of the best as far as our circle is concerned. A few times he tried to coach me in brood war, but boy was I bad. I think the one time I managed to beat him was PvT when he never made tanks. Yeah, goons vs goliaths...
I never saw it as a competitive thing. I don't do well in competitive environments. I simply saw it as improving myself. The last I played any public MP, except MMO's, was Halo PC. Sure, I was "good". I could handle the crazy latency well, I could pistol duel, and on many occasions I made people very, very angry with the banshee. But, I'm not really a competitor, and the whole social aspect is not something I enjoy.
Fast forward a decade and here we are with League of Legends. I still get a nervous breakdown when we start a game. I feel like if I didn't have so much anxiety, and I really set myself to it, I could solo queue rank to diamond or something. Game's easy mechanically, it's all about communication, co-ordination, etc. and knowing the matchups and such. But, despite being able to put out consistent results elsewhere, playing a game with people doesn't really work out for me. Miss all my CS, panic a lot, do a lot of dumb things, play too passively, tilt etc. The longer a game goes, though, the easier it is for me.
I've been playing games a LONG time, MP and SP, and if anything that anxiety is worse now than it was. But this is independent of skill, even though it affects skill. I've spent most of that time modding, so my skills still aren't what I would say "good". All it takes is a gander at my LP's to tell you I am bad at video games. So, how does one improve?
Stop giving a shit about what you're doing and worry more about what you want to do. I'm still trying to figure out league, so I use the spectator function and mass watch games all the time. I try to understand player decision making and psychology more than "oh he micros so well, he 1v2'd and won" yadda yadda. The first step to becoming better, in general, is to understand the thought motion of game interaction in general. I think people like Mucky have a natural talent because they simply understand things more clearly than people like me. Despite my multitasking troubles, I think it's possible still to reach that level of play, and without overly investing. I was able to reach Mucky's level of play in Sc2, and I hardly played that game at all (to be fair, neither did he).
Once I started casting, my wordcraft got a bit better and I was able to not only convey information better but also read out information to myself better. Therefore, I was able to critique my own play better as well. Thus, I believe that helped improve my play overall a bit.