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No this is not about the player. (Though I love him very much)
I just read RoieTRS' blog about L4D2, about how he can't enjoy a game unless he really understands it, and how he rolled through a tourney full of people who didnt know what they were doing.
It reminded me of friends and what I dont get about them:
My friends enjoy a lot of things and yet they never bother to actually learn them.
They used to play brood war against each other every now and then.
I didnt join them cause I remembered bw as being a damn hard game and I figured I would just get destroyed if I played them.
And when I eventually did play them, thats exactly what happened...
well, sort of
I lost, but the games were somewhat close and since I felt frustrated after the losses I took some time to look after some basic BOs on some internet site with lots of horses (hell, after that I still thought that '9 pool' and '12 hatch' were BOs)
And soon after I did that and got a skill lvl that was I would guess barely D- they stopped playing sc.
Because losing every single game just isn't much fun.
It's similar with poker. I started playing it because they did, and pretty soon I would be much better than them, and, at least in cash games, never lose.
It's not like they're all monkeys and I'm so much smarter than them, they would simply have to sit down in front of their PCs, which most of them do a lot anyways, and google about how to play properly, or just let me teach them a bit instead of acting like I'm some cocky elitist snob whenever I try to make them understand how the game works.
It would take so little time, compared to how often they play it.
Sure, I win a few bucks whenever we play poker, but the game would just be so much more exciting if I actually had to put in some effort,play some real mindgames in order to outplay someone, instead of just waiting for good hands, occasionally bluff when its blatantly obvious they have nothing (for example when they pretty much just tell me), and let them give me all their money.
Some people might argue that poker games with friends are supposed to be casual, and I'd agree, it's not like there's any pressure with blinds of 1 and 2 cents anyways, but I mean I could be stoned and drunk and still would have no problems beating them cause they just dont have the slightest clue of what they are doing.
And thats what I don't get about them,
why not just put in some goddamn
damn it!
What about you guys, have you had similar experiences?
 
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don't get angry. abuse it.
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On January 04 2010 11:48 SkytoM wrote:
don't get angry. abuse it.
I never get angry since I never lose, and I do sort of abuse it since I always take their money, it's just that it could be so much more fun.
Plus I cant abuse it for example in starcraft since they refuse to play me now, even if I offer to offrace (or let them play with a computer or sth)
I guess the op is written in a somewhat angry way though cause I'm pissed at one of my friends for an entirely different reason :p
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when i play with friends i go into flops with bad or mediocre hands to make things interesting and to practice unusual situations, as well as to practice mindgames and reading opponents. of course you can always win just by waiting for good hands when you're playing with bad players, but that gets old real fast as you know =P
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I get frustrated with friends who are lazy sometimes. Maybe a friend will tell me they wanna write something, or paint something, and I'll tell them "cool! show me when you finish :D" Then I'll ask later and they'll be like 'oh I couldn't find time, but soon!' so I'll ask later again, and it's always the same tired excuse. How busy is your life that you can't find time to do something for an hour or two? Maybe if you didn't sit on your ass watching House everyday or staring at FaceBook you'd actually have time for a personal project! :@ AHhhh... Makes me mad and it makes me sad :O
Actually just people complaining they don't have time in general. That's such bullshit.
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On January 04 2010 11:53 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
when i play with friends i go into flops with bad or mediocre hands to make things interesting and to practice unusual situations, as well as to practice mindgames and reading opponents. of course you can always win just by waiting for good hands when you're playing with bad players, but that gets old real fast as you know =P
Well ok I already do actually play way more hands preflop than one usally should, though thats partly because they barely ever raise preflop.
However, you use the word "practice" and that is honestly something I cannot do with them.
You cant read people that cant even read their own hands.
Once I went to this thing called "poker bundesliga", its basically a league consisting of lots of tournaments every in germany that everyone can join.
There were also lots of players who had no clue what they were doing but then this one guy sat down, he was a regular at the tournament, and, while I'm not sure exactly how good he was, he definitely knew the game a lot better than all the other fish at the table.
So then one hand he raises preflop and I am like "OMGOWAJHIA he has a huge hand, this must be aces or something"
the guy on my right raises, I fold, it eventually leads to an all in situation so the good player finally showed his hand: Ace King.
There were a few instances where I could have sworn my life on him having a huge ass hand even when I didnt think about it too much, I just felt it, and thankfully he showed his hands even when he won the pot before the river.
And that was the day that I realised that people who have decent basics can be read, people who have no clue what they are doing cant, because I NEVER EVER had that feeling with any of my friends.
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You sound exactly like me
do you ever find that you can't be bothered to learn a certain new game, so therefore you don't end up enjoying it because you have no idea what you are doing? I find myself playing the same old games again and again until something truly awesome worth learning comes up (sc2!!).
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On January 04 2010 12:22 writer22816 wrote:
You sound exactly like me
do you ever find that you can't be bothered to learn a certain new game, so therefore you don't end up enjoying it because you have no idea what you are doing? I find myself playing the same old games again and again until something truly awesome worth learning comes up (sc2!!).
Yea I guess, although I think I just generally lost interest in computer games until I played those sc games and stumbled upon some videos of some guy named boxer and some other guy named yellow on an old computer my brother used to use.
When they were released I also played Halo3 and COD4, but its not like it takes that much skill to pick up these games and get going as long as youre just playing public games.
Considering mainly playing old games though.. if I decided to pick up counter-strike again (I did actually play against some friends recently) I wouldnt even think about playing CS Source :p
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some people naturally arent as competitive or just arent competitive in certain things. Some people just enjoy sc/poker just because they're playing with their friends.
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I actually find myself in the middle about this. As some people might know from my random bouncing from one game to another in the S+G forum, when I pick something up, I tend to go fanatic about it, learning the ins-and-outs of everything about the game. That leads me to become pretty knowledgeable about a game very quickly and I become fairly proficient in the game.
And then I drift to another game. Only a handful of games have kept me engrossed for a long period of time (SC, Guild Wars, DotA, and now possibly LoL).
It's like this for board games too, I guess. I'm almost always among the first to pick up and comprehend it, dominating or at least being at the top-ish for the first several playthroughs, then I slowly fade away as my friends become experts at the game and I decide I don't want to learn it.
Similar thing with SC. Most of my friends suck at it, but none of them play/care enough, so I don't blame them. I have one friend who matches me at around 200-220 APM (lol!) but all we do is BGH. Neither of us have the fire to become any good at iccup...
Though weirdly enough, I was in guilds that hit #1 ranking in Guild Wars, but I definitely felt like that sapped up my lifetime's supply of competitive fire.
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I know exactly what you mean. I'll start with my example of StarCraft because I'm sure a lot of you can relate.
I never played StarCraft until two years ago (whenever I joined TL). At the time I knew ~60 people in my city who played StarCraft casually. All of these people were better than me because I hadn't played the game before (maybe once or twice when it first came out). A closer circle of friends, say 15 people, were playing on bnet regularly and I wanted to join them. Therefore, I decided to put in some effort to learn the game.
Within a couple weeks I was better than everyone. I was maybe D on iccup at the time. Then, everyone quit. I'm now C but I lost a lot of the desire to improve so I'm not playing as much anymore.
The reason I put the effort in to beat all of them was because I had a goal. I wanted to be able to compete, and eventually, beat my friends. The reason they didn't improve was because they either had no goal or they didn't think it was attainable. That is to say, they didn't either didn't care enough to practice to beat me or didn't think they could.
This story illustrates the bigger picture on effort. In my opinion, there are two reasons people don't put effort into something:
1. Don't think the end goal is attainable
2. Don't think the effort is worth the outcome
Maybe your friends view getting good at StarCraft or Poker a waste of time. Hell, that's why I haven't learned how to play poker "professionally." Perhaps your friends prefer to spend their effort getting good at other things. We play poker games to socialize so skill isn't applicable to the outcome.
Edit: WOW. This is almost exactly two years from my join date. What a timely post.
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I have felt this a lot of times. It's hard to get a good group of gaming friends. Ability varies wildly and there's not much you can do about it. Some people are just better than others at gaming. (I'm sure your friends are good at other things though).
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On January 04 2010 14:24 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I have felt this a lot of times. It's hard to get a good group of gaming friends. Ability varies wildly and there's not much you can do about it. Some people are just better than others at gaming. (I'm sure your friends are good at other things though).
Well that's the thing, I'm not simply more talented at it than they are, I'm sure they could get as good as I am pretty fast, if only they actually bothered to put a little effort into it.
On January 04 2010 13:22 Durak wrote:
This story illustrates the bigger picture on effort. In my opinion, there are two reasons people don't put effort into something:
1. Don't think the end goal is attainable
2. Don't think the effort is worth the outcome
Maybe your friends view getting good at StarCraft or Poker a waste of time. Hell, that's why I haven't learned how to play poker "professionally." Perhaps your friends prefer to spend their effort getting good at other things. We play poker games to socialize so skill isn't applicable to the outcome.
Mh I cant imagine they really see it as a waste, I mean I can see it pisses them off a bit every time they lost their whole stack, and I certainly see how much they enjoy it when they just won a huge pot.
btw you forgot Reason #3: You're just too fucking lazy :p ... I'll actually admit that's a problem that I have, I play a lot of guitar for example, but I spend very little time practicing (I write my own stuff instead) ,hence I'm very bad compared to how many years I've been playing.
But personally I feel like that's different, because that is something I would have to put in a LOT more time into to significantly improve, it's not something where I can just read and go "huh so thats how it is"
Although in a way it's just as bad (/worse) I guess
Same with learning korean, I never managed to get myself to truely try it, I guess that would be a mix of reason 3 and reason 1
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On January 04 2010 14:37 7mk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2010 13:22 Durak wrote:
This story illustrates the bigger picture on effort. In my opinion, there are two reasons people don't put effort into something:
1. Don't think the end goal is attainable
2. Don't think the effort is worth the outcome
Maybe your friends view getting good at StarCraft or Poker a waste of time. Hell, that's why I haven't learned how to play poker "professionally." Perhaps your friends prefer to spend their effort getting good at other things. We play poker games to socialize so skill isn't applicable to the outcome.
Mh I cant imagine they really see it as a waste, I mean I can see it pisses them off a bit every time they lost their whole stack, and I certainly see how much they enjoy it when they just won a huge pot. btw you forgot Reason #3: You're just too fucking lazy :p
Obviously once you're playing the game, you're happy if you're doing well. However, they're playing with very small buy-ins usually and the reason they're playing is to socialize. They don't want to play poker professionally and then #2 kicks in.
I think laziness stems from 1+2. That is the common excuse though.
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Your story sounds exactly like my own. I identify with both parties and see my friends in the same way. During college my housemates picked up Starcraft and I got into it as well, but once I started learning about how to win they didn't want to play me anymore. Another group of friends local to me used to play poker all the time but once I started studying it and suggested the others try to get better too they stopped playing altogether.
I have the same problems though figuring out what to do next in life, when I'm going to get in shape and learn Korean etc. etc. You're not alone!
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I'm pretty sure that all of us here are here because we were more involved with game x than our friends were.
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