Let the Newbie Win.
I've been playing Mario Kart Wii a lot lately. I'm loving it. I played 50 and 100cc with the wheel, just to get the feel of it. But when I moved to 150cc and Mirror, I broke out the Wii-mote and nunchuck. I'm not the best, but I'm pretty good.
So I started playing online with some friends, and I promptly destroyed them. They were using wheels, with automatic cornering. I was using the Wii-mote/chuck, with manual cornering. It wasn't pretty. They promptly logged out.
Move ahead a few weeks. I want to play with my wife and another set of friends. I make the room, I pick my favorite unlocked bike, I'm preparing to choose my Control Scheme of Domination, and I pause. I pick the wheel, and automatic cornering. I lose. A lot. To n00bs. But we played for two hours.
A good friend of mine was in town on Saturday, and we played for a few hours. We've been Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart competitors for years. We ask and give no quarter. He hadn't played it yet. I kicked his ass. We both used the Wii-mote/nunchuck/manual controls. It was close. My biggest advantage was that I knew all of the new tracks inside and out. We talked sh*t. We laughed. We cursed. It's how we play.
This morning, I'm chatting with the same friend. He's back home now. He's buying the game tonight. I'm telling him how excited I am to do some big online races. Between my wife and me, two other couples, and my wife's siter and her fiance, we're going to have some pretty big races.
My friend says, "We're going to kill them."
I say, "When I race with them, I use the wheel. If I just destroy everyone all the time, nobody's going to want to play."
He responds, "I'll destroy you. Peeps are gonna hate us."
I say, "Well, I'd rather lose and have people to play with than win by myself."
His reply is short, but telling: "Loser."
Compared to my friend and me, this group is definitely not "hardcore" at least half of them are firmly "casual" in the current traditional sense. I also know these people will find something better to do than get dominated for two hours in their spare time.
I'm a little miffed by his lack of sportsmanship, and my pride is instantly ruffled by the thought of him gloating even though I have obviously and intentionally handicapped myself. Then I realized this is going to be his problem, not mine. I'm going to have plenty of people to play with, and the one person that could get him into a big group, me, is going to be least likely to invite him.
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It's good advice for any competitive activity - although i would say that you can make a convincing 'close' win or second places: you don't have to lose outright.
I'm the only hardcore gamer i know. I never go full-on against people who haven't played the game before - though i will always offer advice if they are receptive to it. On the other side of things i'm a pretty noobish board game player because no one i know plays any (much to my misfortune) and so when a German friend of mine broke out the Carcasonne etc he and the other players pretty much beat me all the time because of their experience with that game and others. It wasn't terrible but it would have been nice to feel like i stood a chance in the games...
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Exactly. It's the same with me and a friend of mine. He also needs to win to have fun, I rather have an evening of fun with my noob friends then own them 3 times in a row and play alone the rest of the night.
Also, I learned from Dwarf Fortress, losing can be fun, just do it with style.
I don't watch, I interact!
I modify my gaming habit based upon who I'm playing with as well. With fellow experienced gamers that want to give every game our full effort, pushing each other to get better as we continue to play, I go all out. Balls-to-the-wall, 110% effort, no quarter given.
With friends & family who don't care enough about getting good to want to play much, but just love to play for fun, I screw around and just make playing the game fun and funny, not worried about proving how good I am or anything. Mario Kart being one of those titles, I'll goof around, picking somebody to mess with each race as a rival and essentially playing bumper cars, using power-ups more for maximum entertainment than for winning, and so on. I'll still end up winning the occasional race, but I don't feel a need to prove that I could beat them all if I wanted. I reserve the need to prove myself for when I'm playing against my gamer buddies.
I don't have a problem making it close. If it's someone who is new to a game and isn't hyper competitive, I will dumb it down and mess around and make it close (if not losing because of doing something stupid).
But if I can't stand to play games where I have no chance of winning, even if I try my absolute hardest. I don't like the Wii for this very reason. I've been playing Wii Play and Wii Sports and some Mario Cart with a buddy who recently got a Wii. I don't remember which Wii Play game it was, but his 3 year old daughter beat me. That's right, his 3 year old daughter. I've been at the top of Stan's Lounge in TF2, I've had rounds of 19-2 in CS:S, I had a 2:1 K:D ratio in CS 1.5 and I lost to a 3 year old. In that moment I was sold on never buying a Wii. Ever (at least this week
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Fletcher wrote:
It would be a sad lonely existence to wish to be "1337" in a Wii game, Smash Bros/Mario Kart making it all the sadder.
It's a balancing act I have to do with new games (board and console) with my wife. I tend to have better reflexes for our Wii & PS2 games (more years of gaming) and I am usually quicker to find a winning strategy in board games so I have to let her win a couple times while we are "breaking in" the games. The dangerous part is that I cannot make it obvious. She gets far angrier if she THINKS I let her win than if she loses a "fair" game. But if she can't win a game after a few tries she doesn't want to play it again (ever). We are both kind of stubborn so I am also not allowed to give advice how to win. I have to be sneaky in games and do things likes saying, "Hey look, if you shoot this yellow thing a secret power up appear over there. Why don't you grab it and see what it does." Of course that has to said in a serious voice too. No sarcasm or condescending tones.
After the "break in" period she analyzes them to death and does well on own anyway.
Does this all mean that I can finally take off the gloves in Stan's? (I mean that literally; I've been wearing boxing gloves while playing just to give you n00bs a chance...)
I'll let my wife win if she's getting frustrated, but lord help me if thinks I am. It's part of the subtle ebb and flow of marriage.
As to getting slaughtered, my cousins may well be the worst people I've ever played games with. I was first introduced to Smash Brothers Brawl at their place. They'd been playing it for weeks? months? a long time, anyway; I'd never played any of the Smash Bros. games. They are, needless to say, fairly different from most fighters.
They absolutely clobbered me. While I was trying to learn the bloody controls. They're socially retarded, so I should really have expected it, but MAN! did it ever leave a sour taste in my mouth.
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Judge_Digger,
Thats exactly, exactly, the way I approach gaming with my wife. She gets really frustrated if she doesn't figure out a game rather quickly and she hates to lose, so the trial & error part of gaming is missed on her to a certain extent. Funny enough, it's usually to my detriment, because, if she likes the game, after the initial sneaky "gloves on" period she will learn a game inside and out and beat the stew out of me. This is why I refuse to play Wario's Woods with her now, even though I hardly consider myself competitive and I had a 6 month lead time with it, heh.
However, this is only true half the time anymore, now she's addicted to achievements and on her 60th hour or so of Puzzle Quest on xbla. Oh yah, and she'd kill me if she ever thought I'm not trying my darndest. *glances over shoulder*
Gamer Tag: wokavan
My wife is a big fan of Sudoku. I downloaded the demo the other night for the 360 so she could give it a shot. Now, she's intelligent, but her mind just doesn't do the mental gymnastics as quickly as mine (I'm by no means a genius, just a bit faster than her). After the 2nd helpful hint, I was asked to leave the room....
So, the request was made to me: Please unlock the full version, and never be in the same room when she plays.
.....
The dead carry with them to the grave in their clutched hands only that which they have given away.
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I find it more likely to believe that everyone who is "letting" their wives win may just be actually losing and is trying to cover it up. Maybe it's just a case of your wives (or SO's) being insanely good at new games. I would probably cover that up to though, can't have something like that getting out.
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Elysium wrote:
I had a similar experience with my girlfriend and pen and paper Sudoku, except I am the one who is much slower (She's won 3 online Sudoku tournaments which I wouldn't know existed except that she's won 3 of them). So I'll often not be able to finish the one I'm working on and I know that she's already solved it in her head.
I don't play Sudoku in her presence anymore.
Fletcher wrote:
I'd rather have awesome skills in Super Smash Bros than in Gears of War. Why? Because I have more fun competing in Smash than Gears. Same with Mario Kart over most racers (except for Forza 2).
Tastes differ. But multiplayer is multiplayer, and Smash Bros & Mario Kart have deeper wells for competitive gameplay than you give them credit for.
I would love for my lady to legitimately kick my ass in some games. And someday, if I have any say in it, she will.
This is why I don't play games competitively with Will. He just doesn't care. With a game he's very experienced with, I'll have no idea what I'm suppose to do and I can never learn because he's too busy wiping the floor with me. He gets a huge kick out of destroying the weak.
On the other hand, I give him some leniency. I would like to have a formidable opponent so I'd rather he learn how to play first. Problem is, he always knows when I'm letting him win. Sometimes, I'm less of an enemy and more of a tutorial. That's not fun I guess.
We cancel each other out. When we play games together, it's always in co-op mode.
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Do any of you ever fear you're going too far in the OTHER direction? I especially have trouble figuring out where the line between "forgiving" and "patronizing" is for one of my friends who used to play Natural Selection like God and could destroy anyone I knew on a laptop with the touch pad. She was eaten by World of Warcraft, though, and I'm trying to wean her off stat-based games and into TF2, but whenever she's not doing really well I'm afraid she'll get discouraged, and when she IS I'm afraid that if I try to be too encouraging she'll be insulted; she'll think I'm talking to her like a child.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein
When playing with the casual-types where there's multiple casual-types, I tend to change my playing style to simply annoy them. If we're playing Smash Bros., I choose Peach and simply throw turnips at them from the side-lines and rarely defend myself if they attack. In Mario Kart, I turn around and drive the wrong way, throwing items at everyone. Of course, if we're playing Battle Mode, I actually compete with them because I'll lose just as much as they will. Especially in Mario Kart Wii.
If it's a game with team options, like Brawl, I'll sometimes put everyone on a team vs. me. This usually helps even things out.
Oddly enough, I don't do this for my room-mate, who is essentially a PC-gamer only. I hand him the controller, tell him, "To play, push some buttons and don't suck." And then I kick the crap out of him. He usually does well, but with Smash Bros. he became frustrated because he was trying to play it like Soul Calibur (which he is insanely good at). I had to actually show him how everything works and then set the handicap so that we were more evenly matched. Now we don't use the handicap at all and he wins about 20% of the time, which is really good considering I'm super-awesome forever.
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I like to play with others, therefore I like to help them learn a game (I'm looking at you Soul Calibur). To that effect, I usually pick characters that I suck with and teach them the ins and outs. I usually did this with my sister as Soul Calibur is the only game she would play. I did this because I have some not-so-fond memories of jumping into a game of Smash Bros. with some guys and it quickly turning into a 3 player game as they played together all the time. After a few of those, I'd just elect to do something else.
Also, I'd like to point out that noob or not, I always let the Wookie win.
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I don't know that I would let someone win, but when playing with super casuals i usually encourage either games I suck at so everyone can suffer equally (DOA 4) or encourage co-op play.
Otherwise I pull out the party games and we usually go co-op or 'hot seat' in GH2 or Rayman Raving Rabbids. No one cares if you suck at throwing the cow, it is just fun for its own sake.
kuddles wrote: