I’m watching Pie play Babylon’s Fall beta and seeing players who don’t know how aggro management works, or what it even is. We started chatting about how general game-literacy as far as skill-growth tends to be distributed.
Who knows if this is right, but…
As a maker of guides for various games, as a player, and as someone who frequently watches The Best Players in The World TM at all kinds of games, this is what I’ve seen.
10% of players blame the game no matter what. They take no responsibility and if bad outcomes happen, it’s always the game’s fault. These players don’t realize they could be so much happier.
70% of players accept responsibility, know they could do better, but think “just play a lot” is the answer. This is obviously wrong. Anyone good at anything will tell you it’s wrong. Although playtime and experience are crucial, and you can’t improve without them, you can’t just “play a lot,” you have to think critically, and pursue improvement Consciously.
20% of players seek Conscious improvement. They find joy and interest in Thinking about their own gameplay, their flaws, their gaps, the situations they make mistakes in, how to avoid them, adapt to them. They’ll look up guides, seek information so they themselves can be wiser.
WITHIN that 20% of players, maybe 1% to 5% of THOSE are the best of the best. They’re so good at self-reflection and introspection that they can Learn above and beyond anyone else, and their skill-growth is unbelievably fast, outpacing even the info in others’ Guides.
These people are the Top 500s, the ones who become pro players, who play for money, who frequently hit Top 8 or even Champion at various Tournaments. These players are the ones we look at and think, “HOW? HOW does someone GET this good?”
I don’t know How, because I’m not typically one of them. I can only Guess: Effort is not enough, and Talent is not enough.
You NEED both a baseline level of Talent and an unholy amount of Effort, combined. Lack one or the other, and those heights are off-limits.
The game that sparked this thought process isn’t PVP, but it is a network environment in which the mistakes of one player affect the entire group; a context in which it’s always very easy to start questioning your team-mates’ experience and understanding.
