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There's a lot of reasons to be bad at online video games. Mine?
Lag.
About four years ago, I came to this site looking to become good enough to beat one of my friends in 1v1 Fastest. I asked him how he became so good, and [thankfully!] he directed me here, and I've been gladly lurking ever since.
I once had dreams of becoming a great BW player [didn't we all?]. I willingly spent the majority of my middle school life and freshman year grinding away at iCCup, struggling to bring myself out of the throes of D by joining Gaia/Blue Storm games. However, I would rarely get games with other people, and the majority of the time they would immediately leave or the quality of the games would be so bad that I learned all but nothing from each experience, retarding my growth as a player even further.
Why couldn't I grind away the way I wanted, you ask? Why did people refuse to play with me? Why was my win rate ~20%? I sucked, of course. I wasn't expecting to be good anytime soon, though, so my inability to play good games with others and improve didn't irk me at first. However, as the years passed and I remained in D, I noticed that I still wasn't winning games.
My APM had jumped from whatever low level it was when I started to a solid 200. I had memorized 3hat muta, 2hat muta, 5hathydra--> spire, hydra busts, 3 hat ling allin, you name it. Why didn't I get out of D, then?
Lag. My little brother's excessive use of our bandwidth -- through youtube, downloads, whatever-- ruined my online gaming experience. For a family with a relatively slow internet connection, the presence of a demanding activity on the internet [by our standards, 100+ kb/s. sad, i know.] by one person would reduce the connection of everyone else in the network to a 2-10 kb/s trickle. People on iCCup would steamroll me or leave the game as soon as they noticed that I lagged. I would get halfway through a game with a massive macro advantage, only to watch my army and bases die helplessly as my units performed five second delayed responses while being shelled by scarabs and Siege Tank shells. I raged. I lost. After regaining my composure, I would try to play another game, only to repeat the process.
Fast forward two years, and I've grown rather tired of the routine. I stop trying to play BW competitively, but continue to play Bunker Wars or whatever the hell they have on USWest UMS. At least when I lagged there, my losses didn't matter.
I do this for about one more year, and then start getting into LoL. It was a fun game for me, and I had a pretty good premade. I wasn't a great player by any means, but I wasn't terrible either. I did what I needed to, placed wards, didn't feed, etc. After getting all runed up, my friends and I started to try to take the game a little more seriously, getting into ranked games and whatnot. Unfortunately, my play was extremely inconsistent. In about one in every three games, I would feed, have terrible CS, or be super low level compared to everyone else. Why? Again, lag.
I'd miss snares and tornadoes [played Morg and Janna] on people that were in point blank range. I'd walk into a team fight, only to have my character respond after the fight was over, if I was lucky. Most of the time, my character would stand helplessly as it was pummeled upon by the might of Demacia, a hail of bullets, a mummy's tears. Death came shortly afterward, followed by rage from my teammates. I raged in Ventrilo. I told my friends [if I was playing with them] what was happening, and they understood. I knew that they didn't want me in the party with that kind of play, so I'd excuse myself and do something else.
Eventually, the SC2 beta gets released, and I get a key around May [I signed up for the beta when they first opened the signups, around December 2008]. I had high hopes for SC2. My brother's computer was broken for most of the beta, and I played pretty well. I remember reaching Platinum and laddering with a few somewhat well-known high level players, and obsing games between them, most notably Limenade and Hincram. Of course, my brother's computer gets fixed, and the same thing happens. Baneling micro? Nope. Storm dodging? No way. Units under attack? They move, once about half of them have been killed.
Today? I'm a few months from graduating high school, awaiting decisions from UCSD, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine, where I'll [hopefully] be able to play an online video game with a stable internet connection. I've pretty much given up on competitive online gaming altogether while living in this house, and have replaced it with SSBM [a TERRIFIC game, BW on gamecube IMO]. Grinding away at waveshines, SHFFLs, and SHLs might not be fun to most people, but for me just being able to work toward something without an external force hampering my progress is a blessing in and of itself.
TL;DR: Never could get into online gaming because my brother lags me. Trying to get decent at SSBM.
 
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When I had this problem with my sister, a simple "hey, I'm trying to play starcraft over here, do you mind not running your torrents at 4 PM?"
That generally worked.
Have you just asked/forced your "little" brother to stop being an internet hog while you're playing games?
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Now is the ripe time to jump into SC2 and make a mark on yourself! Go out there and make a name for yourself!
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On March 16 2011 15:04 N3rV[Green] wrote:
When I had this problem with my sister, a simple "hey, I'm trying to play starcraft over here, do you mind not running your torrents at 4 PM?"
That generally worked.
Have you just asked/forced your "little" brother to stop being an internet hog while you're playing games?
He's only about two years younger than me, but I can't really do that.
My parents are pretty strict about sharing the internet here, and neither of us can really complain about it without getting in trouble. I used to ask him to stop it, but he wouldn't listen or start it back up again, and get into arguments, which is why they became so gung-ho over the issue.
For awhile we had bandwidth wars...one person would try to lag the other as much as possible so that they'd stop using their computer. lol. We've grown past that though.
Also, I couldn't force him even if I tried. He's a football player/boxer and taller than me!
On March 16 2011 15:05 imsoniac wrote:
Now is the ripe time to jump into SC2 and make a mark on yourself! Go out there and make a name for yourself!
Hopefully once I move out!
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
Dude. You let your little brother kick you around? -_-
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On March 16 2011 15:47 orgolove wrote:
Dude. You let your little brother kick you around? -_-
Little in comparison to age.
Doesn't necessarily mean he's weaker or slower.
Let's be mindful and consider that brothers of almost equal age may have a better bone structure and muscle as well.
My brother is 2 years younger than me, but could pound me if he had the intellect.
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Germany2896 Posts
Are you up- or downstream limited?
If it's the upstream then a good router will help, just prioritize the gaming ports higher than the say torrent ports.
For downstream it might help a bit, but probably not too much. For downstream it'd be optimal to do the prioritization on the provider end of your connection, but you can't do that. The only thing you can do on your end is delaying the TCP packets that acknowledge the receiving of packets and thus slowing down the download. But even then bursts of incoming packets during which all your gaming packets are delayed can occur.
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just MAC block his wireless / ethernet card through the router config while youre playing :D
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On March 16 2011 15:08 vlaric wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 15:04 N3rV[Green] wrote:
When I had this problem with my sister, a simple "hey, I'm trying to play starcraft over here, do you mind not running your torrents at 4 PM?"
That generally worked.
Have you just asked/forced your "little" brother to stop being an internet hog while you're playing games? He's only about two years younger than me, but I can't really do that. My parents are pretty strict about sharing the internet here, and neither of us can really complain about it without getting in trouble. I used to ask him to stop it, but he wouldn't listen or start it back up again, and get into arguments, which is why they became so gung-ho over the issue. For awhile we had bandwidth wars...one person would try to lag the other as much as possible so that they'd stop using their computer. lol. We've grown past that though. Also, I couldn't force him even if I tried. He's a football player/boxer and taller than me! Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 15:05 imsoniac wrote:
Now is the ripe time to jump into SC2 and make a mark on yourself! Go out there and make a name for yourself! Hopefully once I move out!
The fact that you guys can't work something out over bandwidth usage, without getting your parents involved says something on its own. But seriously, tell your brother to quit being a douche and turn off his downloads while you are trying to play SC. Can't he just run torrents and shit at night, seems like an immature bunch of bullshit imo.
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Oh god, the world doesn't need another falco player. Well, at least you didn't chose sheik or puff. gl with ssbm, its definitely up there with sc as a long lasting competitive game that's impossible to master.
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You gotta mess with the routersettings to make you the top user. Might help a bit as chaos said. Me and my brother used to play wow and we had a stephbrother who didn't came by very mutch. However always when he was there the internet was clogged. One day my brother kicked him of the internet. When he came asking for our help we just pokerfaced  .
Also we had a lame router with some kind of dnds or whatever it was called setting. We would keep putting ourselfs in it and removing the other. Cause without it you couldnt host games.
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A good router with decent QoS will solve most of the problem. I used to play SC in a house with 4 people who all torrent like mad.
Luckily none of them are CS/Engineering major rofl.
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On March 16 2011 15:08 vlaric wrote:
My parents are pretty strict about sharing the internet here, and neither of us can really complain about it without getting in trouble.
Dude, if your parents really are "strict", then surely they wouldn't allow your little brother to be downloading copyrighted material off the internet. See what I just did? There is your solution to free up your bandwidth. If you say you have tried confronting your brother and it didn't help, simply inform your parents of the potential risk their son is putting them in by downloading and uploading illegal crap off the internet.
When confronted with a problem, think creative :D
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EPT
