Never played a game online..how much time to be decent?

413x

413x

413x

Caporegime
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Having never played an online game in any form I was wondering how much of your life you put in to make it so you can actually win? I get the feeling its a lot.

Part of the reason is my dire wired inet connection and worry for pushing my 3 data use too high using games.

I see threads on the forum that seem very complicated! Do people who are very good just play a single game over and over or just spend every hour on the pc?

By the sounds of it games like sc2 etc aren't fun if you are casual? Seeing as I only play against ai I bet I wouldn't fair well.
 
al4x said:
Having never played an online game in any form I was wondering how much of your life you put in to make it so you can actually win? I get the feeling its a lot.
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I don't worry about winning all the time, just being entertained. If I'm not being entertained, I stop playing.

al4x said:
By the sounds of it games like sc2 etc aren't fun if you are casual? Seeing as I only play against ai I bet I wouldn't fair well.
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Starcraft 2 is a twitch game, not the best example to use :p
 
By the sounds of it games like sc2 etc aren't fun if you are casual? Seeing as I only play against ai I bet I wouldn't fair well.
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I never play RTS games online against random people for this reason. You just end up against people so much better than you and get stomped. However, SC2 (Assuming you mean Starcraft rather than Supreme Commander :p )is a really easy game to get into because it has a fantastic matchmaking system which pairs you up well with people who are a similar level to you.

FPS games are kinda similar, though as you're surrounded by so many people, its nowhere near as bad.
 
SC2 is a very hard game to master but very easy to get the basics :)
It depend how you view it I think.
If you are very competitive then you may want to focus on one game to get better but if you are more easy going then you can get by in most games just having fun and laughing at people who smack talk and rage
 
iviv said:
I never play RTS games online against random people for this reason. You just end up against people so much better than you and get stomped.
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Getting "stomped" in Supreme Commander\Forged Alliance taught me to play better as opposed to just the basics (although a friendly player offering me a live tutorial certainly didn't hurt in that respect). I found GPGnet to be pretty decent as far as community features go.
 
sr4470 said:
Getting "stomped" in Supreme Commander\Forged Alliance taught me to play better as opposed to just the basics (although a friendly player offering me a live tutorial certainly didn't hurt in that respect). I found GPGnet to be pretty decent as far as community features go.
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Perhaps. However, my and my friends are all around a similar level. Perhaps because we only play against each other and the Sorian AIs, it means that we've developed fairly similar to each other. So in that respect I'm hesitant to go out and try to learn all these fancy strategies, because suddenly I'd become 'too good' if you see what I mean.
 
iviv said:
Perhaps. However, my and my friends are all around a similar level. Perhaps because we only play against each other and the Sorian AIs, it means that we've developed fairly similar to each other. So in that respect I'm hesitant to go out and try to learn all these fancy strategies, because suddenly I'd become 'too good' if you see what I mean.
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Strip away the sci-fi elements, and Forged Alliance is a lot like actual warfare. Reconnaissance is important, as is securing resources and other key locations (like dominant terrain for example). Balancing attack and defence with economy. Patrolling your territory, establishing superiority in the air and so on. Of course, being good at micromanagement\having a high APM doesn't hurt, but it isn't like Starcraft in that respect.

If you're "too good" you could always try a handicap match :p
 
Was referring to star craft, but games aren't too dissimilar, i love the game, graphics and units. Played through on top level trying to complete all the achievements etc, I just imagine online to be a one wrong move and your dead. That's no fun for me.

Internet connection, basic broadband, but the throttling kills it to 56kilobytes not bits per second.

The games I like best are the ones that are rts, i have most of the good ones, about.
 
al4x said:
I just imagine online to be a one wrong move and your dead. That's no fun for me.
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I wouldn't get intimidated, not everyone's a grognard when it comes to RTS games :p

al4x said:
Internet connection, basic broadband, but the throttling kills it to 56kilobytes not bits per second.
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Sounds like you need a better ISP. ;)

al4x said:
The games I like best are the ones that are rts, i have most of the good ones, about.
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In that case, you might want to consider turn-based strategy games.
 
Oh, SC2 will drive you absolutely mental. I'd avoid it if I were you.

There's just no entry point, you're beleagered by robots who have studied the one build routine they only use calling you a new person.

Just avoid that game altogether! I'm not a skilled player but I enjoy playing a wide variety of games, just ones that don't invite lifeless potty mouths with their supposed "hardcore" gameplay.
 
Eames said:
Just avoid that game altogether! I'm not a skilled player but I enjoy playing a wide variety of games, just ones that don't invite lifeless potty mouths with their supposed "hardcore" gameplay.
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So it's the Call of Duty of RTS games then? Good thing I stayed away :p
 
No but its got one of those awful pc communities that don't seem to get it when you claim to be learning the ropes.

Oh so you mean you haven't read up on the finer points of counter attacking and want to simply learn from PLAYING?!

Why, are you some sort of escaped lunatic?
 
If you're quite competitive and don't like losing, I'd say if you play a game for a few months you should be able to put in a respectable performance, although somewhat longer to be really good (based on my experience with FPS).

If you just want to have some fun, relax and don't worry if you're getting owned, and ignore any idiots laying down abuse!
 
Eames said:
No but its got one of those awful pc communities that don't seem to get it when you claim to be learning the ropes.
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Elitists? Yeah, that seems familiar ;)

By the way that player playing a live tutorial game with me was female, no less (gotta love VOIP). At the time I had been away from Supcom for a while, and Forged Alliance had changed the multiplayer scene drastically.
 
Not sure about other genre's but for FPS's the easiest way to get good is find the hardest game you can like counter strike or similar and play with the best players you can. You'll probably get smashed constantly but as long as you watch what they do and learn then you'll go play with some average players and find it extremely easy.

Then maybe you'll get a different game and find that all the skills you picked up translate and you're pretty good at that after only a few hours and so on. I find the people that are perennial losers are that way because they never test themselves or try to learn.
 
Not sure why the hate for SC2, for one its very hard to lose more then 50% of your games or win more then 50% of your games so if you ignore chat completely you can go into the game pretty much knowing exactly how often you can expect to lose.

I don't think the game is even very difficult to get to grips with, it's a unique game in that anyone can pick it up and play it however it probably has a higher skill cap then any other game in the world.

The lowest league I found pretty rewarding and I don't think there's a better place to learn the ropes, if you take 'noob' callers to heart just ignore them and move on.

Your going to get the mouthy teen group who call 'noob' etc in pretty much any popular multiplayer game you can think of, there's no exclusive community of them just playing one game. Expect them everywhere.
 
I definitely don't think our wired connection can handle fps, i doubt rts is as demanding? I don't know as I don't know how much is used locally and how much is Internet based.

And the tethering with 3 is much better speed wise but would probably rape it too much and cause me to get throttled!

Ideally I think I would prefer rts, as I always have using one player, much more scope than one player fps. Ie in single player you can choose to turtle or rush. However I imagine that in multiplayer its almost the opposite, even though there are more options in rts, ie two games are never the same, that once people get really good there is only one or two sequences of events that allow you to win, almost like fastest finger wins. Is this right? Rts almost have a mathematical solution where as fps is more varied even though it has less options

Also I tend to like fps games that are quite open, like crysis 1 and puzzle fps like half life, I've seen mates on xbox cod and don't see the appeal, it's frantic, i like crysis and half life as they are stop and think,

Guess that sort of sums me up, like games where you have time to think, turn based games, fps with cloaking, civilisation, rts where you can focus on defence before offence. I expect in multiplayer rts some units never get used as there HP, tech level, cost etc are not viable, i like higher tier units in rts. Do you have to play in a certain way to win in rts because it is the most efficient way?
 
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