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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

#101

Post by cableshaft »

beefield wrote: post #48
anonymousDan wrote: post #22

I always thought that was one of the nice things about golf. The handicap system means you can have a wide variety of skill levels playing in the same competition with everyone having a reasonable chance of winning.

Personally, I find that stupid. If you want a chance to win, do not play against Tiger woods but play against your peers at your club and have different tiers so that the better players seek to not play in the games where the not so good ones play.

Well, sometimes a local league just isn't that big.

Like I remember when I was in a bowling league as a kid that was just whoever signed up to be in it at that one bowling alley.

We had a guy in the league that eventually went Pro and I remember watching him score his first perfect 300 game in person way back then, but there was people like me that were just ok. I think the highest my average got up to was around 130, but i can't really remember. I know I had a 197 game once. In contrast, the future Pro's average was something like 230 (I think), a full 100 points difference.

But my team would sometimes play against the future Pro's team. I'm pretty sure his team always creamed us, even with the handicap, but the handicap at least made it so we were able to beat other teams that were significantly better than us. And if we consistently played well enough we were beating other people our handicap would change.

It made it so there was actually some tension from both sides, and a desire for both sides to play as best as they could, instead of the obviously better player to maybe let things slip a tiny bit or for us to get frustrated and just toss the ball down there without trying.

It also made it so you didn't have a teammate that got too sore if your skill levels were significantly different. Like if I was actually terrible but was paired to be on a team with someone decent, they wouldn't hate me because I would always make us lose a matchup. Instead my handicap would make it so we could still be somewhat competitive.

Granted you were ultimately always competing with yourself, trying to get a better score, but it's another layer that adds to the fun of the game. I haven't been a part of a league in at least 25 years, but sometimes I miss it.

And even in this setup there's still tiers. Like it's not like anyone ever said "yeah, let's send this average for a kid player to a professional league championship and see how well they do!", but there's different skill levels for the players in every tier as well.

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

#102

Post by Balgair »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #13
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,…

Many boards games attempt to make things fun even if you’re losing. One of the best games for this is Concordia, where you don’t count up the points until the end. You always feel that you have a chance. Once you get fairly good however, you can scan the board state and do some rough guesstimating to see who is in the lead. Other games can be quite brutal. You make one wrong move and you know you’re in for 2.5 hrs of…

> You make one wrong move and you know you’re in for 2.5 hrs of pain ...

I mean, why continue at that point? That just sounds silly.

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

#103

Post by learnstats2 »

shultays wrote: post #35

(disclaimer I am not a good chess player) In high school I was playing chess with someone better than me and my plan was to trade equal pieces as much as possible because I am bound to make worse/stupid mistakes than more he does and because of that I wanted to move end game as fast as possible. It actually worked and it ended in tie! I still remember the end game, it was amazing http://prntscr.com/q5z36e (it was rou…

This is closely related to the chess strategy of 'simplification'.

If you are 'winning' (here this works for your idea of winning), it's good to trade pieces to get to the end game quicker while retaining the advantage.

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

#104

Post by paulryanrogers »

tluyben2 wrote: post #61
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to get better, train up. This doesn't mesh with why lots of people play things. It's play. It might just be a nice way to pass the time. I would rather play basketball against someone my level than Steph Curry playing all out. I'm not playing to win or even to get better (getting better is fun, but isn't the point). I just want to have fun. For many kinds of play, if you have to train for it, you may as…

And I don't find some games fun anymore if you or anyone around the table goes in for the kill; simple example that most people will know; monopoly. There are strategies to almost surely win but it makes the game boring and even annoying for everyone involved. So we usually added rules to prevent those strategies. If someone 'is better at that' it means he/she is a boring/non-fun player and no-one will play anymore a…

I thought the point of Monopoly is to learn that monopolies are not fun, or fair

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

#105

Post by arkh »

yoz-y wrote: post #85
friendlybus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A good way in game design is also to introduce randomness.

Randomness management is one of the main transferable skills from one game to another. Most good Poker players tend to be able to easily become good at other games with randomness.

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

#106

Post by Eliezer »

Noos wrote: post #78
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 issue isn't you lose to Magnus Carlsen. The issue is that when you play chess, all you can play against are wanna-be grandmasters who drive the skill floor up to the point where you need to make a heroic effort just to be mediocre. You have to understand, you are making the hardcore fallacy; you assume everyone will stick to the game no matter what and take whatever abuse or steps they need to git gud. It doesn't…

"The hardcore fallacy" is such a useful term I had not heard before. Thank you.

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

#107

Post by DrScientist »

It's about game balance and design.

If I was to play tennis against a professional, it wouldn't really be tennis, it would be a game of 'can I get anywhere near to returning their first shot'.

I'd have to play that 'mini-game' for a long time before I could play proper tennis with such a person ( where tactics of the rally come in ).

Obviously in reality the professional player would ease up - cos actually just hitting balls and watching me pick them up isn't fun for them either.

Some games are more naturally balanced that others - computer game designers often put huge effort in this area.

Really successful games like football ( soccer to some ) have great balance built in. That's why the FA cup has small teams occasionally beating big teams - to score a goal, you typically have to win a series of reasonably balanced encounters - even Messi can be tackled by me.

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

#108

Post by beaconstudios »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #104
tluyben2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I don't find some games fun anymore if you or anyone around the table goes in for the kill; simple example that most people will know; monopoly. There are strategies to almost surely win but it makes the game boring and even annoying for everyone involved. So we usually added rules to prevent those strategies. If someone 'is better at that' it means he/she is a boring/non-fun player and no-one will play anymore a…

I thought the point of Monopoly is to learn that monopolies are not fun, or fair

and interestingly enough, the inventor of the original Monopoly (Elizabeth Magie and "The Landlord's Game") created an alternative rule set called "Prosperity" that was intended to balance out the Matthew effect [1] but this was left out of Monopoly when it was allegedly poached from Magie's game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

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

#109

Post by siffland »

Years ago i used to go bowling with a few friends, i would get like 80 or 90 points and they would get around 225ish. Several months later i was up to getting around 200 points per game. Granted it was all for fun, but just playing with them made me a better bowler (i have not been bowling in a decade now so i would probably be getting around 100 points again).

So yeah i lost, but it made me better. As long as you are aware of your skill set vs. someone else's and you wont let it consume you i don't see it as a bad thing (assuming the other player is not a complete jerk).

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

#110

Post by beaconstudios »

munmaek wrote: post #96
Noos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't you lose to Magnus Carlsen. The issue is that when you play chess, all you can play against are wanna-be grandmasters who drive the skill floor up to the point where you need to make a heroic effort just to be mediocre. You have to understand, you are making the hardcore fallacy; you assume everyone will stick to the game no matter what and take whatever abuse or steps they need to git gud. It doesn't…

> half the posts are just frustration in dealing with the drudgery of playing so many matches to even climb This has nothing to do with skill floors or ceilings. Then play newer or different games. Overwatch has been out for a while by now. Chess has been out for a rather long time by now. > The issue is that when you play chess, all you can play against are wanna-be grandmasters who drive the skill floor up to the p…

I would think the ideal to aim for would be an "easy to learn, hard to master" type game. Chess fits this model well, especially with the ELO system matching you with players of similar skill levels so you can improve incrementally. CS:GO, which I used to play, had a similar thing (though it was plagued with other issues).

TF2 doesn't seem to have this option and thus new players don't get much of a chance to learn because they're immediately thrown in with people with 1700 hours of gameplay and don't get a chance to learn the necessary skillset incrementally by climbing a ladder.

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