For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Multiplayer games taught me that I generally dislike other people.
I’ve been on a decade long hiatus from multiplayer aspect of games - aside from games I was with people I knew in RL.
I only occasionally get a twinge for the comraderie of some epic raid in an MMO, or tight unspoken squad tactics where everyone just does their job as expected (not necessarily well lol) and came out on top.
But really, I don’t have the time to commit to either of those.
Then I hear about my friend in GW2 (RL friend) who is going through some toxic guild BS and I don’t miss it.
I tried DOTA once. Once was enough.
I can play on my own time, and I can play with friends, but god help me I HATE playing on the server’s time. I can kinda do it with Pokemon Go, but that’s one you can play as casually or as hardcore as you like since you’re mostly playing for yourself after a point.
Sorry in advance to people who hate talking about it but Dark Souls is a very paradoxical experience It can:
- Help you learn patience and awareness
- Help you learn not to stress over losses
- Help you learn that people have different experiences of enjoyment and understand your scope of interest in games.
I think that only works if you already have that in the first place though (and you already have enough mechanical skill to get anywhere in those games fast enough to get hooked)
Have made the mistake of introducing people who don’t really play videogames to games like Celeste before thinking it’ll help them improve but it only ends in frustration
Those first two are so true. I got around to Elden Ring recently, and I realized that losses I’ve taken and not sweated and how meticulously and carefully I approach each situation have been influenced by all the games that came before. I’m (relatively) kicking the crap out of it because I know how to play Souls games now because the series has been teaching me these exact things all along. I’ve offed quite a few bosses first try, and damn it feels good. It’s such a great series for giving you a sense of power through perseverance and awareness, rather than just grinding up the XP to trivialize everything like most other RPGs. Miyazaki really did strike gold with the formula. I hope there are way more Souls games coming in the future.
I failed hard at DS then, except for the last item on your list. I remember a friend who was really into it recommended it so much. I found it so ridiculously difficult I lost interest too quickly. But, I don’t have a problem if others enjoy it
I was also going to say dark souls. It made me better at accepting loss in games.
Though I do think it’s interesting how some people thrive on challenge and getting their ass kicked until they triumph, and some people just aren’t here for that. If the game is hard they just don’t want to fuck with it.
Celeste was the first “hard” game I played that I actually ended up 100%ing. It’s so fun and makes me try harder on other games too
I was also going to say Celeste! I feel like it also improved my attitude towards games in general- taught me to be persistent but forgiving of myself when I’d fail
Rocket League. If I can reach my fast moving targets without having to adjust pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust, all at once, from a third-person view, there’s just no challenge.
Counter Strike: raw aim, how to outsmart opponents, perfect practice makes perfect and if you put enough hours into anything and do it correctly/good, then you can get good at almost anything.
Path of Exile: Taught me about being efficient. If you’re repeating the same action 10,000 times, if you can cut even 1 second off each time you do that action, it adds up over time to a significant amount. And then you can try and cut another 2 seconds off…then another second.
It took me 1038 hours to get out of silver in csgo. It took me 10hrs to get to DMG, one day something just clicked.
Knowing the maps puts you at such an advantage, those hours add up
I’m surprised not to see more people mention From Software games. Going all the way back to demon’s souls they consistently teach you how to understand the tools at your disposal, the challenge that you currently face, and how to use the former to overcome the latter. I learned how to “read” opponents to find and exploit vulnerabilities while playing dark souls way back, and that general approach is consistently useful in all sorts of other games. There are lots of other translatable skills involved, of course, like timing and resource management.
Yeah I agree,
Other games mentioned in this thread involve a lot more manual introspection to get better at, otherwise you’re at risk of just repeating the same mistakes again and again without realising.
In the Souls games you simply cannot progress without learning and becoming better.
There’s always that special moment when you dip your toes into NG+ and overcome bosses first try that would have taken you dozens of attempts beforehand
Crusader Kings reminded me that losing can be fun
- Dwarf Fortress has entered the chat.
Oh man, that brings back memories. All my Dwarf Fortress games were horrific dystopias. Full-on police states optimized for the production and export of lead children’s toys (they are enchanted by our more ethical works).
Then new unskilled arrivals would wait in a room with retractable spikes before they met anyone. It was someone’s job to pull a lever all day. Then the clothes would be exported (they are enchanted by our more ethical works).
Everyone left was either in the army or a skilled worker confined to a 2x2 room containing a bed, table, chair, and statue of the mayor. The doors locked from the outside.
Newer versions have made this strategy less productive I think – I haven’t really kept up. At the time a single death could send your fortress into a fatal spiral of depression and it worked pretty well though.
Nothing like castrating half of the family tree because of that one time your brother tried to break up your empire!
You may have misread my post. I said losing the game. What you’re describing is clearly winning the game :p
Not that it’s much of a benefit today as RTS games are barely nonexistent. But StarCraft 2 taught me all about macro management. Spending them resources and building an economy.
Yeah, learning to perform a macro cycle while doing other stuff is really useful. I sometimes play AoE2 with friends, and I’m not very good at it, but if there’s one thing I can do, it’s spamming trash units in the late game.
When I was a kid it took me 2-3 weeks to beat the Flight School mission series in GTA: San Andreas, and although I hated nearly every minute of it I did become a better video game flier.
Dude fuck that mission. The draw distance made it nearly impossible because power lines would appear right in front of me
World of Warcraft. 12 years of playing and raid/guild leadership helped me learn how to play, not just play. How to:
- Theorycraft
- Research how to improve
- Maximize output and/or efficiency
- Take advantage of class synergies in games
- Understand the importance of area of effect, burst damage, sustained single-target damage, etc.
- Understand damage mitigation vs avoidance, and where each is valuable
- Play to my/my team’s strengths, rather than simply doing what is “best”
- Better recognize trends in game mechanics to anticipate what may come
- Recognize the valuable portions of a game’s user interface and maximize its visibility while avoiding clutter
I had learned portions of these things in other games, but my leadership role in WoW pushed me to truly understand many things that aren’t a major focus in most games.
I have basically the same take from my years of raiding and leading in ESO (still top Argonian DPS babyyyyyyy), and it has also given me an unparalleled intuition when it comes to game and combat design, which comes in handy since I’m a game developer.
And not just gaming, looking back on it my first people management experience was leading 40 players through Molten Core.
Eve Online taught me that math + leadership are effective ways to win. Also the importance of thinking strategically and weighing risks.
World of Warcraft taught me that many people are willing to craft items all day, if it earns more in-game gold than actually doing anything fun in the game (actually in hindsight this was true of Eve, and real life for that matter). I sort of… ran an exploitative in-game sweatshop producing things for the in-game markets (e.g. not involving real money or anything that violated the rules of the game).
These two groups of realizations made me pretty good at online games for a little while! My gaming hobby came to an abrupt end when I realized I could just… start a company IRL and be paid non-virtual money.
So, you learned how to open a sweat shop? XD
Yes, I suppose so! Technically with child labor too!
We just call them factories here though, not sweat shops. They have varying levels of working conditions, and child labor has been more or less eliminated.
Some are awful, and others are quite OK! I’ve personally had worse jobs than the OK ones. Some have integrated housing too, I knew someone that designed it. The ones they designed looked quite reasonable, at least – I’ve unambiguously lived worse places. You won’t save much money working for an OK sweatshop, but you will accumulate a small pension, eat, have a place to live, and get 2 weeks vacation a year (usually accompanied with a bonus equal to a month’s pay). Most people I know see them as a sort of always-available job that’s the closest thing we have to a social net right now.
I run a small tech company though, not a sweat shop. Just recently, an opportunity to help open one did come up though!
A client is looking at setting up backoffice work in the countryside, so far it looks like we’ll be able to offer decent working conditions and wages. I’m slowly building the management software – fewer managers means we can pay workers better as well as be more profitable. If it works out, it would probably pay about double the regional minimum wage, which amounts to a decent job, certainly better than a lot of people have currently.
It’s not perfect, but it’s progress. There’s still a hundred ways it can go wrong and fail. So far we only have 10 staff, but it’s going steady.
For about 3 years though, I earned less running my company than the workers in the worst sweatshops. Even with all my video game experience! That was hard. Still, video games were my first experiences with management, accounting, economics and so on. It was better than nothing.
Anyway that’s a slice of life for you, fresh from Southeast Asia.
That’s wholesome AF! Wishing you all the best in your endeavors <3
Thanks! The truth is, such plans rarely work out. My life is a series of hundreds of such schemes, most result in nothing (or less). Only as handful work. Only a handful have to.
…but just like in video games, you can just try again and again.
Try, fail, endure, try something new.
Its a good attitude, and shows a lot of personal strength, which, like I said, is wholesome AF :)
Gta vice city as I learned how to type properly as I couldn’t figure out how to pause the game to type aspirin with 1 finger. Does that count?
No one gonna say it?? No one?
Fine.
Cuphead
I would recommend playing Metal Slug 2 & 3 before getting into Cuphead.
2? Not X?
3 is such a coin-eating masterpiece though
MS-X does not suffer the performance issues found in MS2, yeah.
But was also made slightly harder than MS2 so “master players” would get more enjoyment out of it.
So yeah, for beginners i would recommend the original Metal Slug 2.
Hollow Knight 100%. Its also my favorite game.
- balderdash ( @balderdash9@lemmy.zip ) 7•1 year ago
Six-ish years ago I would say Overwatch. It was my first online multiplayer FPS and it fosters a lot of skills. Teamwork, communication, mechanical ability, game sense, ability management, managing tilt, etc.
Too bad Blizzard decided to stop new content for Overwatch 1 for years, only to reintroduce Overwatch 1.5 with an upgraded battlepass and cash shop monetization scheme. I don’t get how people are still playing after what they did to it.
Blizzard are still simultaneously making gross comments about how players are just too stupid to see that they are wrong about wanting to play 6v6 whilst not actually delivering on their previous claim that they would offer it as an alternative mode at some stage.
I can’t see how it would be complex for them to do it. They already have a balance patch for multiple tanks and you can enable 6v6 in the workshop. It can’t be very difficult for them to spin up a 6v6 quickplay. What do they have to lose if they are convinced that the playerbase doesn’t realise how little fun they’d have playing it? Either Blizzard are right, people play it and say “y’know what? Their condescending comments about how ‘nostalgia is a powerful drug’ when we say we want 6v6 back like they promised were right after all! 6v6 does suck!” and then they can just take it down, or Blizzard are wrong and offering it as an option makes their players happy and excited to play more Overwatch.
It’s a win-win so long as you’re not making your decisions based on sheltering the ego of the individual developers from having to deal with being wrong about stuff. Multi-billion dollar businesses would never make silly self-destructive decisions based on something like that, right?
- balderdash ( @balderdash9@lemmy.zip ) 3•1 year ago
I stopped playing shortly after trying Overwatch “2” and so I’m not abreast of the news. But its not surprising that their PR is still this bad.