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How to play with people who are better than you

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Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#81

Post by watwut »

mjfl wrote: post #45
random42 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is playing for enjoyment and recreation. Playing and losing to Steph Curry does not give him that. Playing competitively with his friends does it.

I must be a different neurotype from you people. If I saw someone get upset, lack enjoyment out of playing basketball with, and losing to Steph Curry, I would think that person is a loser. To each their own.

Realistically, that game would be Steph Curry having ball all the time dancing around you while you dont touch ball except initially. It would also make Steph Curry score within 3 sec from gaining the ball.

Overall effect is that you do nothing. There is no strategy you can use or think about, no time to try trics with ball or even shoot or dribble.

One reason it is not fun is that the less good person don't actually get to be active in play - he will be effectively in much passive position and it wont even be challenge.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#82

Post by mrgriffin »

mjfl wrote: post #62
cehrlich wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to lose a game of basketball against Steph Curry, would certainly be a fun experience. But it would get old fast as he would certainly crush me every time. If my goal is to get better at basketball, playing against Steph Curry is not useful. Learning happens most efficiently when the challenge is somewhat above your current skill level, but not enormously so. If someone just recently started going to the…

No but I'd assume they were a loser if they left the gym if someone walked in that could lift it.

That isn't a very good comparison. Lifting weights isn't a competition in the way that basketball is. I want to say the latter is more "zero-sum", but I'm not sure if that's correct terminology.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#83

Post by Noos »

Xelbair wrote: post #74
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

>Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. If the difference in skill is too high you won't learn anything from playing with them. What's worse - you might ingrain bad habits that let you occasionally win(that happened to…

> if opponents are better than you, but not overwhelmingly so ,it is indeed one of better ways to train. It is a matter of mindset - you are playing to deliberately "git gud", but not necessarily win.

if you train in something, you aren't playing. Training is actually the total opposite of play; you need to do things that are not fun but are beneficial for your goal, and it sucks. You have to do a lot of tedious study and memorization to get better at chess beyond a point, or spend a lot of time in a fighting game's training mode just to be able to consistently do moves and combos on demand.

I think with videogames one of the worries I have is people are now viewing them as work they have to train for; we are creating a professional class of gamers, and whenever we do so eventually players become spectators instead

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#85

Post by yoz-y »

friendlybus wrote: post #44
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

Rats won't play with each other unless the smaller rat wins 30% of the time, even though he will lose every game if the larger rat chooses to do win every game. A decade ago Call of Duty 4 introduced an under-barrel grenade launcher for the m16 rifle as a way to get easy kills even if you could not aim. The devs called it 'first order optimal strategy' and players called it the noobtube. CoD4 did the right thing, eve…

A good way in game design is also to introduce randomness. Hearthstone is definitely a skill game but even with massive skill difference the win ration will more likely approach 60-40. It's good for new players to have fun and stick to it.

I stopped playing Starcraft 2 after I realized that there is just no chance of getting anything done unless sinking massive time into it to train.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#86

Post by sethammons »

ggm wrote: post #75
fredoliveira wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would you even try going for criticism of an article before even reading it?

I speed read. I didn't see go. I went word search for go, didn't find it. But, a fair comment. Critique demands care.

Is speed reading just skimming?

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#87

Post by bluesquared »

dorkwood wrote: post #3

I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group,…

Kobayashi Maru

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#88

Post by harimau777 »

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

The problem that I see is that it is often difficult to learn when you are going against someone who is sufficiently better than you if they play their hardest.

For example, in martial arts an important skill for a beginner is recognizing openings in an opponent's defense. However, an experienced fighter has few openings (so the beginner gets less practice) and can often defend against an attack even if they were open (so its difficult for the beginner to recognize when they successfully identified an opening).

At the early stage it's often a better teaching tool for the experienced fighter to purposely use a strategy that tends to create openings (e.g. by using more aggressive strategies rather than counter attacks), to fight with a handicap, or even to purposely leave themselves open and allow the beginner to score a (non-damaging) hit.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#89

Post by bluedino »

mrgriffin wrote: post #82
mjfl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but I'd assume they were a loser if they left the gym if someone walked in that could lift it.

That isn't a very good comparison. Lifting weights isn't a competition in the way that basketball is. I want to say the latter is more "zero-sum", but I'm not sure if that's correct terminology.

There are plenty of competitive weight lifting sports. CrossFit, Olympic lifting, powerlifting...

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#90

Post by munmaek »

Noos wrote: post #83
Xelbair wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. If the difference in skill is too high you won't learn anything from playing with them. What's worse - you might ingrain bad habits that let you occasionally win(that happened to…

> if opponents are better than you, but not overwhelmingly so ,it is indeed one of better ways to train. It is a matter of mindset - you are playing to deliberately "git gud", but not necessarily win. if you train in something, you aren't playing. Training is actually the total opposite of play; you need to do things that are not fun but are beneficial for your goal, and it sucks. You have to do a lot of tedious stud…

> ou have to do a lot of tedious study and memorization to get better at chess beyond a point, or spend a lot of time in a fighting game's training mode just to be able to consistently do moves and combos on demand.

Things like that are fun for a subset of people. I played competitive smash bros. melee for years. I always had a separate crt tv in my room ready to go, and I would put on music, or a podcast, etc, and just practice things. It was relaxing after a long day and that practice eventually made me much better in real matches- winning matches is a huge high.

Chess is different but also the same. I'm slowly learning theory, openings, etc, and it's quite fascinating.

> or spend a lot of time in a fighting game's training mode just to be able to consistently do moves and combos on demand.

That's -why- these games are fun to play and spectate. What separates bad from decent from good players is how consistently they can apply technical skill under nerve-wracking situations, such as being 1 game in a set away from getting knocked out of a tournament. Stuff like daigo's parry at EVO 2004 was exhilarating precisely because of the technical skill required, and the fact that he had to practice things like that.

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