How to play with people who are better than you

It also allows the stronger player to improve.

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 me with one fighting game)

>Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty much any subject from now till the end of time. Deciding when to get off the treadmill is just as important as deciding to stay on.

Agreed, but the speed in which you progress varies case by case basis.

>My inability to defeat the greatest players of a subject does NOT make the game less appealing. Indeed, I often times seek out the challenge of stronger players, especially when I'm explicitly trying to get better at the game.

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.

>Losing constantly by playing vs players who are better than you provides a learning experience. You should find other players you can win against of course: you'll never learn to win if you keep losing. But losing teaches you what bad-habits you've formed from playing vs weaker players.

This depends on aforementioned difference in skill, too high is prohibitive to learning. The latter part depends on how good game is proving feedback. Some games are great at that(chess, soulsborne), other are horrible(all blizzard games come to mind, DotA, Go). It is very hard to improve in latter group of games without deliberately analysing your past games. For example in Go your mistake might be made really far back into the game, but you are seeing it's effect just now. In chess - it is way simpler to just walk back the history of moves in memory to find the mistake, or at least start spotting the wrong decisions.

>I think that's the key: losing all the time is unfun. But I can definitely take "losing for a whole week" or "losing for a whole month" in a row, especially if its for training. Finding players of lower skill, equal skill, and higher skill, is important.

Agreed, but there is one exception - games with randomness built into them - this includes matchmade team games. With randomness, losing when you are really ahead feels way more punishing, and in team games it is sometimes impossible to carry your team to win - even if you are literally the best player in the match by overwhelming margin.

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 work that way; what happens over time is the better people raise the skill floor by driving weaker players out.

And increasingly the skill floor is getting ridiculous. Overwatch University on reddit recommends players post videos of matches for point by point analysis on how to get better, and half the posts are just frustration in dealing with the drudgery of playing so many matches to even climb.