A Question that is bugging me

[Navarone_Guy]

If I actually care about it, I could rant for 5 pages, but then people begin to want to throw me off the face of the Earth, so I try to avoid that.

[KingKaramazov]

Well, there's such a thing as being concise. Being able to say a lot doesn't mean you have a lot worth saying.

[luukje]

Might I give a simple view in contrast with the almost scientific analysis of some clan mates?

A top player is

1. Ability: call it talent, hand eye coordination reflexes, some players are just better than others. It's being born with exact skills required for this game
2. Dedicated to being a very good players, they practise at getting better, they spends a lot of time getting to know the game, finding hotkeys blind, knowing all the counters...
3. Mind set: playing stress free and choosing a fine strategy every game and at the same adapting it to every move their opponent makes
4. Playing against the best makes you better. No amount of practise can compensate for playing grunt fives times.

[KingKaramazov]

I agree with your last point, Luukje, but I think it should be amended to be a bit more specific: playing against people that are better than you, but not too much better than you.

Playing against Grunt is probably very helpful and useful for people who are a really high level, but probably for any of us in the clan it would just be a major ass-kicking.

[luukje]

Well playing against someone a lot better is only helpfull in giving you an idea how they play. You can wacth a recording but it isnt the same. And I agree that your skills wont improve a lot by getting your *** kicked.

Playing against somebody up to 5 PR lvl above you is the best way to get better. Got to be able to absorb some losses though.

[Soccerman771]

[quote=""luukje""]Playing against somebody up to 5 PR lvl above you is the best way to get better. Got to be able to absorb some losses though.[/quote]

I don't mind the first part. It's that second part that always gets me.

[KingKaramazov]

Indeed. Hahaha.

[kingchrisII]

I hate losing to people when at the beginning i think im on top, or like i should have won if i attacked at one point or sth like tht!! or over booming/wrong unit coice/attacking them but they attack me and either get bare vills of my tc lol!!

[36drew]

[quote=""kingchrisII""]I hate losing to people when at the beginning i think im on top, or like i should have won if i attacked at one point or sth like tht!! or over booming/wrong unit coice/attacking them but they attack me and either get bare vills of my tc lol!![/quote]

What bugs me the most is loosing when i'm looking away from my battle and my abus are retarded and walk into cav or something. Drives me insane (especially abus).

[I__CHAOS__I]

i feel your pain...
when your units walk into a group of enemies instead of fighting em, just because you misclicked by 1 pixel

[Sporting_Lisbon]

That happens sometimes, but as I make small groups with the mouse (without any hotkeys) it's actually good to send in some guys to force the others in mellee

[KingKaramazov]

Worst is when one small mistake or looking away for one moment makes a colossal difference in the course and eventual outcome of a game....

[StrokeyBlofeld]

I hate it when I press "B" by accident instead of "V". Doesn't really do much damage in terms of losing eco seconds, but really annoying!

[IndyBrit]

ZorPrime - I thought that was a great post. I would add that women seem to have difficulty in abstract spatial orientation required for a game like Ages, which balances their superior multi-tasking. I don't know how all that with some other factors comes out for the sex equation.

Original post: Imagine yourself and Grunt on a desert island with a brand new RTS that no one has ever played but that generally plays like the ones we've all seen, and you're both going to learn the rules at the same time. You could probably play for a year and not beat him. It's largely built-in for the top guys in Ages.

The trouble with some of our thinking here is that we're talking about the 10 or 15 names we would call "experts" rather than top few hundred "really good players". The Ages experts are selected (through various mechanisms) from millions of people. A player like Grunt is about 5 standard deviations from the mean, and a randomly selected person (RSP - that's us) could never be that good. A "really good" RSP might be two standard deviations off mean, and maybe could train another. Realize that, like a bell curve, there are MANY more really good people than "experts". Could a guy train into the top 5% or even 1%? Probably, but the 10 or 15 names we would think of as the experts represent less than 1% of the top 1% (consider the billions available to play, the millions inclined to play, the tens of thousands that bother - not just the 2,000 you actually see online).

If you're having trouble following the above - imagine that we've dealt millions of poker hands down on a table. Say that 15 of those came up straight flushes and you already told me the names. Now you ask me if the other hands on the table can draw into that - no. They might improve their pair to two pair or a full house if they're lucky. Some guys out there are one card short of a straight flush and can draw into it - but there are just as few of those guys as people who started with one (remember they have to succeed on the draw) - so we're not those guys either.

So - built-in or trained? Largely built-in. Training is probably only going to move a guy one standard deviation, maybe two if he just didn't "get it" before starting. However, falling one std dev short will relegate you to "really good" status, so we can't all be NaturePhoenix no matter how hard we try, and it probably wasn't that hard for him.

In the final analysis - you and Grunt should have spent that time making a raft. Where are your priorities? Yeah sorry - too long again.

[I__CHAOS__I]

build a raft? hell no, play till you beat grunt

nice post btw