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Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

> the skill level is so high that you basically need tools to tell you your mistakes. Otherwise you're in for a truckload of frustration as a new player.

The onboarding experience is also non-existent. I've played a few hours of CS and stopped because I couldn't figure out what was going on and I wasn't invested enough to find out. When I say I couldn't figure out what was going on I don't mean I couldn't understand the angles I should take or other tactical things like that, but, once I went beyond quick play where I just shoot everyone, what team I was on and what I was actually trying to do.

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Maybe I've got this all wrong, but back when I was an active player, mostly in the CS:S days, you didn't need onboarding. You could just play a game and not think about strategizing. Really good players would do this, but for most, it was some skill shooter that was still mostly run and gun.

Exactly. In my opinion, casual CS/TF2 is the “real” game and competitive is its weird mutant offshoot. But I guess the majority of gamers today prefer hardcore competition and ranking over just dicking around and having fun.

Competitiveness and skill-based matchmaking is what killed multiplayer gaming for me. It used to be you were good at a game or bad at a game, and you could always tell yourself you lost matches because too many really good players happened to be on the other team. Now there are only two options: you play better than you did yesterday and you win, or you play worse than you did yesterday and you lose. I despise that constant pressure. I want days when I get rofl-stomped by a team of demi-gods, and, dammit, I want to occasionally be the one doing the stomping. That just doesn't exist anymore. You're playing with a bunch of people who are about as good as you and if you don't try your hardest you're going to lose every time.

Seems like you want exactly the opposite of what everybody else wants. The biggest reason why people get frustrated with games is when challange is eithet too big too small.

I like the element of randomness. I hate knowing that every time I lose it isn't because they were better than me, it's because I didn't try hard enough. I play games to have fun, not to push myself to the limit every time. What precipitated my mostly giving up multiplayer was when I noticed I was forming my habits around winning and it was working. If my room lighting was good, if I drank coffee before a match, if I played during the right hours of the day, I won. When I started avoiding using the bathroom because having to pee made me more alert, I knew it wasn't worth it anymore. I like games, not sports.

Well if you chill a bit in the system your rank will naturally go down and you will get worse opponents. Many people do that.

Its much better system than one out of 5 games being balanced. Not sure where the problem is… maybe you dont like about yourself that you are actually competitive? I mean i played esports on pretty high level and i am pretty sure not going to a bathroom to keep you alert is not a thing. Sounds like pretty serious urge to win.

Good thing is i think one can learn to be less competitive, enjoy it more and it makes people even better. You can work with this and not make it all out competition.

During TF2’s massive popularity in its first decade, “everyone” wanted fun, casual shooting. The audience for social shooters is vast, but for some reason competitive play gets all the focus today.

Sounds like you jumped straight into competitive?

In general, I would recommend spending some time playing casual to get an overall feel for the game - game/round format, weapon types, popular maps and their layouts, using sound, using the minimap, among others. Combine this with some YouTube videos and you’ll be in a much better place.

CS has such a long history, yet never really a good tutorial mode. I think partly because the core game loop is so simple, but also because of the wealth of knowledge and material out there. Of course, Valve’s online games are notorious for not having a decent tutorial mode, so that might be the main reason lol. I am a huge TF2 fan, and man does the “tutorial” sell the game short.

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