I love video games. But I am terrible at them?

As it says in the title, I love gaming but I am just bad at it. I mostly stick to 4X, Strategy type games and I always seem to think I am doing well but I end up being bad at it. In Civilizations games I go broke if I expand too quickly. Even when I have tons of cottages I am still losing money. In Online gaming I seem to die a lot or get killed. I often think that I am good at games but I am actually pretty bad at them. In League of Legend I will often die a lot and never get any kills. I was wondering what do I do to improve my skills?

Watch other people play the game, either by spectating them in game, on twitch or youtube, read forums and guides, ask questions on forums. See what you did that ended up going badly and learning from those mistakes, or see if you can use whatever you did more effectively (maybe you used it in the wrong situation).

Also playing on easy mode can help a lot in some games like Civ Lots of people are not particularly good at shooters either so don't feel bad there.

Surely the question is "are you having fun?". If the answer is yes then your good at games as that is the whole point! If the answer is no due to feeling like your bad at them then follow Manicals advice, like any other subject if you want to improve you have to educate yourself and practice!

grandad1982 said:

Surely the question is "are you having fun?". If the answer is yes then your good at games as that is the whole point! If the answer is no due to feeling like your bad at them then follow Manicals advice, like any other subject if you want to improve you have to educate yourself and practice!

Click to expand...

I agree here. The key point is not really whether you are any good at games, its whether you enjoy games. If the answer to that is yes, then it doesn't really matter.

Saying that, there is no harm in trying to get better. I was always "ok" at civ. I used to play civ 2 at the level after warlord (i forget which one now). But when i played civ 3, i decided to challenge myself and get better. But this was still in the early days of internet. It wasnt really until civ 4 (and i came late to that party) that i really tried to get very good at civ. And after reading the forums, watching lets play video's, i managed to get to a point where i nearly always won on emperor, and could win most of the time on immortal.

A word of note, the standard on this forum is generally much much higher than general level of play across everyone who just plays the game as it is. I think that is probably true of most forums, as they tend to attract fans who really enjoy the game (and thus are generally better than the average joe).

The core component of any game is the process of experimenting, failing, and improving. You're supposed to suck when you start, and you listed fairly deep games that take considerable amounts of time playing to get competent at. The secret to getting better, particularly at the sorts of games you listed, is taking genuine post-mortems on your game, analyzing what you did wrong and endeavoring to not make those mistakes in the future.

It doesn't matter one bit if it's a single player game. I suck at civ compared to everyone on this forum, I never min/max strategies or use diplomacy required to beat the higher difficulties. For example, drafting an army, I think I've used draft maybe once ever. Or intentionally choosing a civic for diplo bonuses and bribing enemies into war. Nope, not me. Or just terrain blocking early game. I think I did that once or twice.

I play shooters on easy all day. Beat entire dead space series on easy, died maybe a couple times on bosses. I was more interested in story progression than real challenge. Same with mass effect series, I beat them on normal. I restarted mass effect 2 on the hardest difficulty (nightmare?) a few times but it becomes a grind, every level is slow as you must move very carefully or die. It gets dull fast.

civvver said:

It doesn't matter one bit if it's a single player game. I suck at civ compared to everyone on this forum, I never min/max strategies or use diplomacy required to beat the higher difficulties. For example, drafting an army, I think I've used draft maybe once ever. Or intentionally choosing a civic for diplo bonuses and bribing enemies into war. Nope, not me. Or just terrain blocking early game. I think I did that once or twice.

I play shooters on easy all day. Beat entire dead space series on easy, died maybe a couple times on bosses. I was more interested in story progression than real challenge. Same with mass effect series, I beat them on normal. I restarted mass effect 2 on the hardest difficulty (nightmare?) a few times but it becomes a grind, every level is slow as you must move very carefully or die. It gets dull fast.

Click to expand...

Most games im a bit like you. I care more for the story than how hard a game is. Although, there are some games where the fact its hard is an enjoyment in itself, and if i lessen the difficulty, the game becomes less fun and less rewarding. XCOM is a good example here.

On the flip side, there are some games i dont like hard. Survival horror games score highly here. The idea of playing alien isolation or outlast on hard takes the wind out of me. I struggled through it on easy.

Then you have games in the middle. I would put civ in here (along with most other strategy games). Whilst i can win at civ 5 on immortal most of the time, and i might even be able to beat it on deity (not really tried). I simply dont have the patience to micro manage.

I don't like in civ4 how to win at the hardest difficulties you usually repeat the same strategies, you will whip, you will draft or cannon rush, you will tech broker to keep up, you will need a science city and a gp farm. You will plan at least one war by the rennesiance or fall behind. Playing the same way every game to win gets boring. I'd rather drop difficulty a notch and play a peaceful buildup game with zero tech trades if I want or non stop war if I want and choose whatever civics I please cus the diplo won't matter.


And there are some games that are too hard to be fun. I can't stand spelunky cus I die so easily and can't beat levels. Same with volgar the viking.

I dislike Hotline Miami for being a bit too tough. And although i like the look of it, I suspect that Ori would be the same story. I would class them more as frustrating though. The best game I have ever played that was brutally hard and worked that way was Commando’s behind enemy lines. Ever remember that?

I think the problem with strategy games, particularly turn based empire building games, is that there is often a far superior tactic to victory. Especially when you have generic victory types accessible to all. The number one criticism people throw at strategy games is a lack of balance. But having everything balanced generally leads to bland gameplay without any character. I love the diversity of MOO2, but it is clear that some traits are far superior to others. The most diverse strategy games I can think of that actually work well tend to be RTSs. Namely Warcraft 3, starcraft 2, I would also say Sins is pretty balanced and diverse. Turn based games are a bit more problematic. Not really sure why as there doesn’t seem to be a very good reason, other than that the computer can think better in real time than humans can, which I guess is all it takes. The factions in HOMM3 are quite balanced and diverse (not the skills for heroes though). The factions in lords of magic were very diverse, but not very balanced. Endless legend is a bit of a different kettle of fish because you have faction specific victory conditions. IMO civ 4 did the best job of any civ in adding diversity that was balanced. The traits were actually quite powerful. That’s probably because it is one of the few games that has actually managed to simulate an economy that was buildable one of two different ways.

Hotline Miami did kind of suck that way, it got very repetitive just dying, killing, dying, repeating level. That's my same issue with a bunch of platfomer types like volgar and spelunky. They're twitch games, a lot like fps, except in fps you can usually adjust the difficulty if you suck. Can't in those platformer types. Hotline is basically a platformer with a top down view.

Civ4 stays diverse by making the civ leader personalities diverse plus random maps and leaders on each. The actual AI isn't that diverse. Ghengis and ragnar will always want to land grab. Izzy and saladin will always hate and fight opposing religions. Ghandi will always amass culture and strive for peace. What changes is the land and neighbors they have and that changes the game's feel and outcomes dramatically. There is nice diversity only for the player, actual viable tech paths and economies to run. But again, there's always a most efficient way of doing things.

I absolutely agree on MOO2 though, why would anyone want to run a feudal government (or even dictatorship) when the others are so much better and the points from feudal just aren't worth it? It also suffers a lot in the ship building, generally bigger is always better and you just go mirv of your top missile or auto fire/continuous of your top beam. My ships all become homogeneous. Not so in MOO1, I'm always adapting ships to counter my enemy. I might go one giant battleship type with auto repair if enemy is using small ships without a lot of dmg, or I might go a bunch of tiny bombers with maneuver if I need to fly up and bomb their bases in one turn.

Yea - there were stock choices i would always pick because they had so little effect on actual gameplay. So a penalty in spying and a penalty in ground combat were almost obligatory. Even repulsive had its merits. Some of the other picks were way too powerful as well. Creative was a monster trait, as was subterranean.

I never played MOO, only MOO2.