What is the most difficult type of competitive game?
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I'll say that of all the games, RTS is the only genre of game I never got into because of how difficult it is 😅 .
I can't say I agree with this. Unless I'm misunderstanding something (and I'll admit I watched about 5 seconds of this video), it's basically just a high score competition that takes place at the same time, no? Trying to hit a pattern of notes that's always the same for a specific song? I'm not saying that it's easy, I'm sure the pattern memorization and dexterity takes a long time to manage at this level. But that's... all it is. There's no element of strategy or tactics, no reacting to what your human opponent is doing.
EDIT: Turns out I'm wrong about a chunk of this, see Hoa's reply below
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I'm bad at all types of competitive games but in particular from what I've played I struggle mightily with BRs. I just have no instincts for rotating, when to push etc. In a regular FPS game I can eventually learn the maps and kinda know where to be but in something like a BR where it's much more open I just have no idea where I should be and get myself into trouble.
RTS for me
Incredible micromanaging, can be dealing with 1-7 factions at one time, resource and number crunching, base reconstruction. And map awareness
It's like every aspect of all other competitive games into one
Incredible micromanaging, can be dealing with 1-7 factions at one time, resource and number crunching, base reconstruction. And map awareness
It's like every aspect of all other competitive games into one
Incorrect, most of the time these players are playing with random notes. Even though when a note appears is the same, the position that they appear in will always be different. If you look at the video, you will notice that the players notes are not in the same position as each others.
At a high level you can't strictly really memorize charts anyway. Not only are there too many notes but there are also too many songs potentially in a pool. That is why in IIDX specifically it is encourage to play with RANDOM, R-RANDOM, or S-RANDOM to train your reaction.
Not only that, but Konami will also specifically introduce new songs in the finals to test players adaptability and reactions.
It being simple doesn't mean it isn't insanely difficult. There is a reason that despite IIDX existing for 23 years, only 3 Lvl 12 songs out of hundreds have been MAXed. There is also a reason why a ton of people can't clear Kaiden as well despite years of playing. You need to be Kaiden minimum to even compete with these guys.
Also forgot to point out, usually in head to heads players actually get to choose (or deny) a song from whatever pool of songs are available, and knowing what your opponent is strong or weak at in comparison can play a huge role in your selection. Definitely seen it change the tides in a variety of rhythm game tournaments.
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RTS genre is so difficult it killed the genre. It is the easy win here. People also underestimate MOBAs due to their popularity.
I would also rate old school arena shooters like Quake at/near the top, and they shouldn't be grouped with other shooters. It's another genre where the difficulty killed off it's mainstream appeal.
I would also rate old school arena shooters like Quake at/near the top, and they shouldn't be grouped with other shooters. It's another genre where the difficulty killed off it's mainstream appeal.
Incorrect, most of the time these players are playing with random notes. Even though when a note appears is the same, the position that they appear in will always be different. If you look at the video, you will notice that the players notes are not in the same position as each others.
At a high level you can't strictly really memorize charts anyway. Not only are there too many notes but there are also too many songs potentially in a pool. That is why in IIDX specifically it is encourage to play with RANDOM, R-RANDOM, or S-RANDOM to train your reaction.
Not only that, but Konami will also specifically introduce new songs in the finals to test players adaptability and reactions.
It being simple doesn't mean it isn't insanely difficult. There is a reason that despite IIDX existing for 23 years, only 3 Lvl 12 songs out of hundreds have been MAXed. There is also a reason why a ton of people can't clear Kaiden as well despite years of playing. You need to be Kaiden minimum to even compete with these guys.
OK, interesting. It didn't occur to me that the patterns of notes would be random; I was just comparing it to rhythm games like guitar hero or amplitude or the like. Definitely more impressive than I first thought.
I still stand by my general point, though. I think having to balance what you practice (and play to your strengths), keeping multiple things in mind, and interacting directly with other humans is going to be tougher than (what appears to me to be, please correct me if I'm wrong!) a pure reflexes (and perhaps pattern recognition) test.
Yea I wouldn't argue too hard against that at all. I just think the endurance and frame perfect or near frame perfect timing required to get to that level get vastly underestimated overall. I can see why they do though, players won't really understand until they try to reach that level themselves. Same thing happens with Fighting Games too.
Yeah that's fair, and I'm a clear example of that. I probably should have guessed that it wasn't a set pattern, but I just didn't think much about it.
Those rythym games or tetris grandmaster.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0oiyCqaH8
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghppdCYKEnA
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0oiyCqaH8
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghppdCYKEnA
probably rhythm games. in competitive versions, especially on competitive songs, you need to play your absolute best with 0 mistakes.
View: https://youtu.be/DQ6tGVSTAKM
View: https://youtu.be/xu8Lj4Nv2ww
View: https://youtu.be/DQ6tGVSTAKM
View: https://youtu.be/xu8Lj4Nv2ww
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Rhythm Games for sure. What genre can require this of you
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVne0CFhm8
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVne0CFhm8
View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1775550/Gary_Grigsbys_War_in_the_East_2/
Do multiplayer hex wargames count?
'Cause juggernauts like War in the East 2 feel like you need several advanced degrees in military history and wartime tactics & logistics just to make an opening move.
For real. I can even pass this song but high end competitive DDR/ITG/StepmaniaX is just on an unobtainable level for me. I've been playing for over 20 years and am what most would at a glance to be considered extremely good but I am not even in the realm of being close to being competitive on a tournament level.
OP
OP
Back when I was in high school I went all in on Rock Band 2 drums. I had several FCs under my belt, and recognized how difficult some of those top songs were but wouldn't put it near the top in terms of difficulty.
Is RTS team-based?
I think fighting games are harder for many people due to the nature of them being solo. It's harder to accept defeat when you have no one to blame but yourself. Going from FPS to fighting games was personally quite difficult but when I finally overcame it, it was one of the most satisfying things I'd ever done.
I think fighting games are harder for many people due to the nature of them being solo. It's harder to accept defeat when you have no one to blame but yourself. Going from FPS to fighting games was personally quite difficult but when I finally overcame it, it was one of the most satisfying things I'd ever done.
No disrespect to Rock Band, but it's not even in the same league of skill or timing requirement as the bemani classics and their sims/spinoffs (although I'm sure Clone Hero and the other sims have probably pushed it up there by now). One thing about ongoing rhythm games is that once players hit a ceiling, the ceiling gets raised even higher either officially or unofficially through sims. That's why it's so hard to get up there, they keep pushing the limits.
MOBAs are team based. RTS typically you v. Other player.
On ladder, they can be; I don't know what the distribution looks like as far as solo vs teams (and there can be varying team sizes etc.), although I suspect solo is more populated by a good bit. Big tournaments, in my viewing experience, are exclusively 1v1.
Interesting. I've never really tried to understand these games, mostly because they don't look or sound fun and aren't fun to play for me so I never really bothered with them so please excuse my ignorance but what makes RTS so difficult (at high level)? The mind games?
OP
OP
Sorry, I was just talking about the rockband video that was posted above. I didn't have much knowledge about rhythm games in general which is why they didn't come to mind when I created the poll.
People overthink fighting games. If arcades were still popular, nobody would think fighting games were particularly difficult to play. They have a learning curve, for sure, but it's not more steep than FPS or sports sims, both of which are normie genres. Fighting games only seem hard because finding people to play with has been a chore for the past couple decades.
In the 90s, everybody who played video games as a hobby played fighting games competently. Everybody. They weren't Daigo, but people had no problems doing special moves, understanding basic spacing concepts, or landing simple combos.
In the 90s, everybody who played video games as a hobby played fighting games competently. Everybody. They weren't Daigo, but people had no problems doing special moves, understanding basic spacing concepts, or landing simple combos.
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As a genre I would say RTS as an individual game Quake 3 arena probably has the highest skill ceiling I've ever witnessed.
There's just a lot more going on, I would say, in an RTS. There's often at least some benefit to controlling individual units in your army directly (micromanagement, generally just shortened to 'micro'), so you need to keep an eye on any fight that's going on; sometimes it's incredibly important and you'll lose your whole army if you don't get them out of the way of a big spell or ability or the like. But then you also have to keep in mind the overall state of your base(s), keep producing units, researching new tech, etc; the 'macro' side of things. You need to keep an eye on the minimap and scout constantly, so that someone doesn't sneak in a drop or raid or the like and destroy your economy or a key part of your base. Scouting is also important just to have an idea of what your opponent is doing, so that they don't come in with a unit or composition or whatever that you're not prepared for. There's also the fact that the pace of games can be incredibly varied; a cheese might end the game in the first few minutes, other times things can drag out to 30-40+ minutes. And, hell, all the different maps you can play on, and the way they encourage or discourage specific types of strategies.
Ultimately there's just a lot of complexity going on for players to keep track of, while still allowing for a high ceiling on mechanical skill.
Ultimately there's just a lot of complexity going on for players to keep track of, while still allowing for a high ceiling on mechanical skill.
Rocket League is fast paced as hell and exceedingly mechanical just by virtue of movement options, and it requires good teamwork. Probably not as "brainy" of a game as MOBAs or RTS games though.
I'm putting FPS, but only for a specific type of FPS. I don't really consider something squad/team-based like Overwatch to be the same kind of game as, say, Quake or UT if you're talking about deathmatch and shit. Basically if the game has team-based objectives they're harder for me to play a lot of the time because people just ant to play like it's deathmatch and not do the goddamned objective, which ends up losing the match.
Drives me insane playing PvP in Destiny when it's objective-based and people just run around shooting people when you're supposed to be capping and protecting zones or sticking to each other while you collect a dropped token or, I dunno, not running in and dying like an idiot when the whole team has limited revives.
Drives me insane playing PvP in Destiny when it's objective-based and people just run around shooting people when you're supposed to be capping and protecting zones or sticking to each other while you collect a dropped token or, I dunno, not running in and dying like an idiot when the whole team has limited revives.
Balancing between micro and macro management, resource gathering, base building, hyper keen map awareness, controlling your different squads, predicting opponents moves ahead of time, and the micro second timing between every single one of those.
Oh, and ability to control swarms of your units and also control them individually to position and avoid attacks proper.
It really is all about APM and awareness.
You can't miss a single beat.
I feel like this is only a factor in terms of entering a competitive scene in the first place, not actually in competing at a high level. When you're looking at the absolute best teams things like being carried by a single great player become unviable because a team of great players is going to be stronger than the best individual player teamed up with a bunch of dead weight. And coordination between a team is a skill in and of itself people would have to learn alongside all the game knowledge stuff as well.
I don't personally play any of these genres much, but based on what I do know the answer is almost certainly RTS or MOBA though I don't have the genre experience to know which.
My personal competitive game of choice is competitive pokemon (specifically VGC), which requires a lot of game knowledge and reading the opponent, but doesn't require the twitch skills or anything like that so it definitely isn't the hardest. Unless you mean to regularly win because the amount of RNG and how match ups work mean it's incredibly hard for even the best players to consistently top events they go to, which is why Ray Rizzo's three-year win streak at worlds was so impressive (even if the field was easier back then due to less players and VGC was newer and thus less defined), and still the only person to ever win worlds multiple times. That said most of that comes down to luck with RNG or getting good matchups in swiss and bracket so it's not quite the same
RTS is most difficult just to play. but once someone has a lead, it's very easy to turn that into a win
FPS has a lot more comeback potential
i can beat RTS players who are much better than me just by getting a lead early. i can basically never win a whole game against a superior opponent in a FPS
natural selection is a game that is both genres at once. extremely difficult, but still not as hard to play as a RTS with awful user interface (eg. brood war)
FPS has a lot more comeback potential
i can beat RTS players who are much better than me just by getting a lead early. i can basically never win a whole game against a superior opponent in a FPS
natural selection is a game that is both genres at once. extremely difficult, but still not as hard to play as a RTS with awful user interface (eg. brood war)
