Live data from Hacker News

How to play with people who are better than you

wellcomecollection.org

161–170 of 190 posts

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

#161
you need to be crushed in order to know what is possible. but you should also go against people who are similar/worse than you. ranking systems are good at that.

jiu jitsu is a good example of this. the belt rankings indicate experience/skill and give you an idea of where people are in training. if i just steamroll day-ones it is helpful to a degree. people of similar experience will give me a good fight that will allow us both to make mistakes that we can both capitalize on. but if i get manhandled by higher ranks i can see the possibilities and get ideas for piecing together holes in my game.

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

#162
post #85

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.

Randomness is a very popular (and good) answer to skill gaps, but it's also a dangerous knob for game designers to turn.

I quite enjoyed the early days of Hearthstone, including the random factors in who won. But successive releases kept adding more randomness, and specifically uncontrollable randomness, until I quit the game. (It may have improved, and this didn't make it a bad game. It just wasn't for me anymore.)

Most people recognize that War is a bad game, because it's entirely random and has no element of choice. But a game like Mario Party is full of choice, and yet the random payouts are so large that skill is often irrelevant. Even near-perfect play can be dominated by random factors, and those random elements (specifically, bonus stars) aren't numerous enough to average out over the course of a game. That's what broke me on Hearthstone: the feeling that the randomness that was too scarce to average out over one session, too potent to avoid or overcome, and too unconstrained to strategize around.

At the far end of that spectrum, a game like poker consists almost entirely of strategizing around randomness, because the random factors are common enough to view statistically and only indirectly produce winners. And so the better poker player will win pretty consistently, and having fun across skill gaps starts to become difficult again. (Hence the popularity of moderate-randomness card games Euchre for social play.)

Randomness is often a good addition to games, especially in combination with hidden information. Not only does it make play across skill gaps worthwhile, it makes them more replayable. But there's a lot to be said for adding it carefully, in places where players can exert some measure of control.

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

#163

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…

> 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. If training isn't fun, then don't train up. Instead, learn to be satisfied with losing. Which is fine: I'm satisfied when I play a decent game (but lose) against stronger players. I probably was going to lose anyway. Being satisfied with your skill level, and learning to enjoy a game without necessarily i…

I believe you're imagining a scenario where there isn't much of a skill gap, e.g. a match between a newbie and a competent amateur; a competent amateur and a professional; or a professional and a grandmaster. Losing to someone who's still "within your sight" can still be fun, because there's still an element of challenge to the game, and there are still stakes—i.e. you can still control how badly you lose, and therefore there's still something to strive for (to lose by a smaller margin.)

But when your level of skill gap with another player is too large, such that you won't learn anything by playing them and the entire match will be under their control 100% of the time, then there really isn't any point in playing them, and you'd be far better off—both for your enjoyment, and for your growth—to play against a weaker player.

It might be fun to have a sprinting match against your local state champion. It might even be fun to have a sprinting match against Usain Bolt. But there's no point to having a hypothetical sprinting match against The Flash. You wouldn't even leave the starting line before he crosses the finish line. There's no gradation of success available to you. You're simply crushed.

Likewise, there's no point, if you're a five-year-old, to trying to (seriously) arm-wrestle an adult. Your undeveloped strength will be overwhelmed without accomplishing the slightest movement of the opponent's arm, right at the beginning of the match, every time. You won't even get to practice the skill or build the muscles involved in arm-wrestling.

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

#164

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 ope…

Go uses a very elegant handicap system of spotting stones. The weaker player essentially takes between 1 and 9 scripted moves before the actual game begins.

It's an excellent system for several reasons. Most obviously, it largely preserves the flow of a "normal" game, whereas something like handicapped chess has completely different opening play. But another major benefit is that it remains a good way to practice for equally-skilled play. The skills used to overcome or capitalize on a handicap transfer effectively to playing out a weak or strong position in a neutral match. There are relatively few handicap-specific strategies to play, and "irrational" play is generally less rewarding in handicapped games than simply mismatched ones.

(I doubt this applies in martial arts, but in many games a heavily-outmatched player is actually rewarded for bad play. If their odds of winning on performance are bad enough, they'll succeed more often by making surprising or high-variance moves and hoping for an error. There's an excellent story from DF Wallace about how as a teen he won local tennis tournaments by simply playing safe and waiting for unforced errors, but actually had less upward potential than the people he beat. When unforced errors became scarce, he had no strong play to fall back on.)

Interestingly, the handicap system could be extended beyond nine stones without losing too much elegance, but by tradition it isn't. It's understood that across any greater skill gap, it's essentially impossible to play a real and educational game. The weaker player won't be able to trace why a move is good or causes them to lose, and so handicapped games should be replaced with either direct lessons, or play tailored to education instead of competition. It sounds a lot like the situation in martial arts, and I suspect holds across a great many other games and competitions.

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

#165

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…

Do you have a source for that claim about rats? Interesting if true.

It was part of Jordan Peterson's spiel, he got it from Jaak Panksepp's book Affective Neuroscience.

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

#166
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If training isn't fun, then don't train up. Instead, learn to be satisfied with losing. Which is fine: I'm satisfied when I play a decent game (but lose) against stronger players. I probably was going to lose anyway. Being satisfied with your skill level, and learning to enjoy a game without necessarily i…

I believe you're imagining a scenario where there isn't much of a skill gap, e.g. a match between a newbie and a competent amateur; a competent amateur and a professional; or a professional and a grandmaster. Losing to someone who's still "within your sight" can still be fun, because there's still an element of challenge to the game, and there are still stakes—i.e. you can still control how badly you lose, and theref…

> But when your level of skill gap with another player is too large, such that you won't learn anything by playing them and the entire match will be under their control 100% of the time, then there really isn't any point in playing them, and you'd be far better off—both for your enjoyment, and for your growth—to play against a weaker player.

Unless you're playing in an exceptionally small or dying gaming community, most video games and online board games have good matchmaking services, which provides a quick-and-easy matchup to people of similar skill levels as you.

A lot of the discussions in this thread are about Overwatch (one of the most popular video games right now), or Chess (one of the most popular board games). You should have no issues finding opponents close to your skill in either of these games.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Monopoly is to make money for the owner of the trademark, and condition people to buy games based on inertia, advertising, and nostalgia rather than complexity, balance, or fun.

Fortunately we have a plethora of much better games now. I think monopoly will be a quirk of history soon. How many boomers have never played monopoly (and hopefully never will) because they have so many other games to play.

Was that an autocorrect from "zoomers" to "boomers"?

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

#168
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you're imagining a scenario where there isn't much of a skill gap, e.g. a match between a newbie and a competent amateur; a competent amateur and a professional; or a professional and a grandmaster. Losing to someone who's still "within your sight" can still be fun, because there's still an element of challenge to the game, and there are still stakes—i.e. you can still control how badly you lose, and theref…

> But when your level of skill gap with another player is too large, such that you won't learn anything by playing them and the entire match will be under their control 100% of the time, then there really isn't any point in playing them, and you'd be far better off—both for your enjoyment, and for your growth—to play against a weaker player. Unless you're playing in an exceptionally small or dying gaming community, m…

Er, the article is clearly about "participatory games" (either single-player games with leaderboards, or multi-player games intended to be played with friends or family-members rather than strangers) and how they should work vis-a-vis accessibility considerations, like "assist modes." Should a speedrun of a game appear on a leaderboard if you had to play with aim-assist due to Parkinson's? Etc.

If there's an ELO matchmaking system in place, then the whole discussion—"How to play with people who are better than you"—is moot. So, for the purposes of discussion here, you should probably assume that there isn't such a system in place for the game in question. (The people who are bringing up examples from games with ELO presumably haven't read the article.)

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

#169
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like BJJ is pretty unique in this regard. It's the only activity I've come across where it's still fun to go 100% against a complete newbie.

Maybe. Another interesting paradox about it, as one of my former instructors once pointed out, that it's actually harder to submit a white belt than to submit a blue belt :) The former one may be more clueless, but offers 100% ferocious defence without attempting any reasonable attacks of his (or her) own. You can sort of see how progressing to the next step - from white to blue - is an inevitable setback of sorts. F…

As I remember, someone who put together a study of highly mismatched chess games reached a similar conclusion. Strong chess players often play longer games and lose more material when their opponent is thoroughly unskilled players than when they're merely somewhat weaker.

It's possible to beat weaker players more efficiently, but it requires consciously "playing down" to set simple traps and grab materiel quickly. Otherwise, a clueless opponent will disrupt "sophisticated" plays by accepting losing trades and ignoring threats. It lowers their chances of actually winning compared to a better player, but pushes the game towards a drawn out chase.

And yes, I think there's certainly some truth to the hype cycle comparison. They both remind me of the "four stages of competence", where people in the middle two stages of "conscious" execution can be slower and more uncertain than either trained or untrained instinct.

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

#170
post #91
post #29

People who can't play games against people who are better than them are over-competitive and lazy! It's more fun when you play against skilled players, you learn more! I've never understood that personality trait, and I love losing at Dominion!

It really depends on how good the player is. I have played people in smash where the skill gap was so wide I could have just put my controller down and it wouldn't have made a difference. I literally lost a match in a tournament where I didn't, couldn't , touch the enemy once. I was probably the lowest seed in that tournament, he was the #1 seed, and was one of the top 5 players of the game. I normally like playing b…

Which version of Smash was that?
Post reply on HN