By Jim Rossignol on October 13th, 2011 at 1:31 pm.
I suppose this question will largely be interpreted as “what game are you best at?” but I actually have a more specific motivation for asking. While I was probably best at Speedball 2 or Quake III in terms of raw twitchy gaminess, my best developed skill from a game was definitely fleet commanding in Eve Online. It was a skill within the overall mastery of the game. I wasn’t the best pilot, or the best trader, or the best diplomat or best at Eve in any general sense, I was just really good at fleet commanding and running gangs. I’m a little sad that this skill is now languishing after years of work.
Anyway, it made me wonder whether you lot had any specific talents you’d like to share? Perhaps, unlike John, you are a particularly good healer? Or are you a brilliant WoW auction house ninja? Or something else more exotic? The most interesting claims will win points in the subgame of RPS that I call “keeping Jim amused while this DLC downloads”.
Go!
I was wicked good at Hyperblade. I do not think I reached that level of mastery at any game following that one.
Edit: Spelling mistake.
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Awww man Hyperblade! Always had to play as the Leeds Castles. Always.
Why is it not on GoG!
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Hyperblade!
I have the original somewhere still.
Why didn’t anybody make a good remake of that. :(
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I loved Hyperblade, think I’ve still got it on CD somewhere.
Was always pretty naff at it though. Also, go Warsaw Ambush!
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Hyper-ducking-blade! Man, it was satisfying to behead people in that game. Too bad it’s pretty much unplayable in XP (don’t remember why exactly, long since I tried). STURMNACHT, BABY!
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That was a funky game. I had a copy which came included with something, perhaps a video card. Didn’t think much of it at first, but before I knew it, I was hooked.
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@tentaclesex
It was some 3d Matrox card, IIRC (the mystique?). I say this because I got my copy from a bloke who bought one.
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I’m a great game crafter, anygame i play that i can craft items in i always will do :) also i make an awesome support character in mmo’s :D
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Me too!
I mean, er, if there is not crafting then I will not stay with the game for long.
I don’t really consider myself a support player though -too much responsibility.
My favourite characters on City of Heroes are defenders and tanks which are sort of supporty, but you don’t really have to be the healer as a defender and can settle in a debuffer role.
More crafting games. Without griefers please.
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I craft, therefor I am
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Starcraft 2. But I’m still only around gold/platinum leagues. Even so it takes an enormous amount of learning and skill to even get to there by comparison to the vast majority of computer games out there.
There’s a Starcraft 2 thread on the forums if anyone fancies a team game:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?17-Starcraft-II-players
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same here, except I’m only borderline silver/gold. It’s amazing. I’ve dumped hundreds of hours into the game, no doubt, and by any average definition I’d say I’m really very good at playing the game of starcraft. But when it comes to the incredibly high skill ceiling that exists, I’m still a mediocre noob.
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I have none. I am a triumph of mediocrity.
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Beat you I am mediocre at being mediocre.
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As am I. :(
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You’re all small time.
I’m so bad I can’t even
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editied for idiocy
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how do i work this thing
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Tapioca?
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I was a good trader in Eve, though I was never interested in putting in the time to become one of the mega-rich players. Just enough to keep me going.
I suppose I have a pretty strong record in Blood Bowl too, but there’s plenty in the RPS leagues who are better.
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Im a really good driver of virtual cars, as a plus, Im kind of an expert in knowing all the special points where you can hit a car to make it veer out of control.
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Along these lines, I’m quite a good qualifier in sim games. And though my race pace can unfortunately vary quite a lot over a full distance, I am quite good at maintaining reasonable pace on well worn tyres.
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Tangent – friends and I one night, many moons ago, once set out to scientifically answer the question “Does alcohol make you a better driver?”. “Better driver” naturally being defined as lap times of Laguna Seca on Gran Turisimo.
Whilst it must be said that our methodology failed to account for the effect of repeated exposure to the test course, and our grasp of scientific principles somewhat faltered as the night progressed, we did manage to PROVE WITH SCIENCE that one and a half pints makes you a “better driver”.
It goes without saying that this is not an experiment that one would advise attempting around the suburbs, and relying upon our study in court after the police disentangle the cyclist, lollypop lady and half a bus stop from your radiator grill would be rather foolish.
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Funny you say that actually.
Back when I was still racing iRacing, was doing some Week 13 racing on Laguna Seca. I had a bottle of scotch next to my wheel that I was swigging most times I went down the pit straight. For the first 2/3 of the bottle this netted some excellent results. I won some and was up the sharp end for all.
As I waited for another race, I finished that bottle. Amazingly, due to my good results in the preceding races, I was placed in quite a high split (where the fast guys race). That split happened to include a racing driver that I happen to be quite a large fan of (Shane van Gisbergen). I was absolutely stoked.
I also happen to be right next to him on the grid. So the race started and I was extremely cautious for the first lap, making completely sure not to smash in to him. Unfortunately at this point the alcohol had really set in and I was having a lot of trouble keeping focus. My pace was good enough to keep up, but I unfortunately crashed out not long in to the race. Blew my chance to race with someone I look up to somewhat :(
What I learned from this: Alcohol can be great, but if you drink too much it can bite you in the ass right when you don’t want it to.
So yeah that was my completely irrelevant story.
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i did a similar experiment with a buddy, vodka and weed (over a couple of days so the effect of one shouldn’t affect the other). Setup was rFactor with no assists with a decent force feedback wheel.
we found that alcohol reduced the level of precision we were capable of, especially where really precise throttle and steering were needed – lap times dropped away very fast as more was drunk.
weed didn’t really make much difference in this respect and we could lap very close to sober (apart from the odd lapse of concentration – its hard to smoke a spliff while driving fast).
both weed and alcohol made reacting to outside stimulus very much harder. making overtakes or defending was much much more likely to result in a crash, normally a big one.
so basically, if you know the road you will probably be fine driving along it stoned as long as no one else is driving near you or someone runs into the road.
moral of the story is: not sober, don’t drive!
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Damnit, thought the spambot ate it. I swear this has been invisible for about an hour. Sorry for the double post!
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I’m usually bad at driving. Give me anything from Flatout to Gran Tourismo and I’ll spend most of the game crashing into walls. But give me a vehicle not intended for greatness and task me with going, quite simply, from point A to point B … and prepare for all of hell to break loose and work itself into my tire treads.
It started with Battlefield 1942. It was the first driving game I ever played. I learned to drive by dodge tank blasts, weaving between mines, and driving tanks safely down cliffs. I wanted to get the drop on enemies and end up behind enemy lines. Towards the end of my BF 1942 career it started to get a bit supernatural–not that I got better, just that it got weird. I stopped being able to go between the two impossibly close trees I was aiming for, but fate would compensate by sending me between the other two trees that were too close together for the graphical mesh but somehow just far enough apart not to count as a collision. Or I’d drive over a well placed mine only to hear the car behind me explode. I also had an uncanny ability to store dynamite and mines ontop of tanks, jeeps and lorries that I never managed to repeat with planes despite my best efforts. As an engineer, I’d lug around explosives in the passenger seat, bounce my way around obstacles, and ditch right next to the tank that had been trying to shoot me unsuccessfully for the past 400 m of travel. Shortly thereafter, explosions. As such I was both overjoyed and somewhat put out when I discovered sticky-C4 in Battlefield 2.
My finest moments took place on Wake Island. Tapped on the south beach landing, our forces would be surrounded by mines, tanks and falling bombs. And I’d drive my way right out of that mess, only half-aware of exactly where I was going or how. Sometimes the passengers would still be there. Often they’d be shot or bail out, rightfully terrified that some stupid bastard was about to take them straight over a bunch of mines, or was heading straight at a tank, or was gunning a gap between buildings clearly too small for a jeep, or taking the jeep down a cliff. I wish I could have told them somehow, as it would have made many of my behind-the-lines missions much more fun and useful to have had more allies with me in my smoking-near-wreck of a vehicle. But it’s hard to convince someone with “Don’t worry, I have no idea what I’m doing but I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine.”
While the skill has dwindled somewhat, it once spread across most games not explicitly about cars. Most recently I experienced a complete synergy with the Mako. I could take it up almost any slope in the game. Or at least, I could take it up slopes that it was clearly not designed to go up, as I only managed by wiggling my way up polygon by polygon, squeaking out the last two feet of the slope at the Mako’s absolute minimum speed. I could make the thing do backflips. I was a road-kill generating machine. I was born to drive the Mako.
It’s still there, waiting for the right vehicle. Give me enough of a clunker, and a mundane enough task … and there’s no obstacle will stand between me and my destination. And no way in a million years we’ll be taking the straight path. Bring it on, Ice Cream Truck simulator. Bring it on.
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Healing loads of damage as Medic in TF2. It’s satisfying to heal several teammates who are near death, Übercharging heavies, and busting spies who tries to stab your teammates.
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Yes. I also was quite good at being one of those heavies and sticking with my medic.
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For me it was the TF2 Heavy. With or without medic. I knew every healthpack ,exact what I could and couldn’t take, swapping between shotty and the basic heavy gun at the best moment. I reigned supreme even on the high-skill servers I frequented! I could basically “smell” spies about to backstab me and rare was the pyro who could out-circlestrafe me…
And even though I hadn’t played for over a year, a couple of months ago I played it again for a day, and after a couple of rounds they couldn’t take me from the top-spot again :) Granted that wasn’t the high-skill server, but it’s cool that I quickly get the feel and instincts back.
Best moment? A 21 kill spree, I basically placed myself behind the mine-cart in the first map with them and pushed it all the way up to the finish and I never died :) 15 minutes of glorious battle, people dying all around me, I never had a medic for long, and at times it was just me praying behind the cart trying to not get spotted until I killed them :)
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Back in the day I could play a mean game of UT (original and 2004). But it’s been so long I’d hate to think what’s happened to all my skill.
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UT and UT2k4 here as well. No other shooters can keep me interested for long enough to master all the maps…
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I was really good at Action Half-life at some point. Now, not so much. Also, none of my friends can beat me at Tekken.
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DM all the way. AHL still remains my favourite multiplayer FPS of all time.
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I was quite an accomplished pistol sniper in Action Quake 2 – just at the LANs my friends and I used to run, not on public servers. But then I discovered bunny-hopping with the shotgun…
Never got in to Action Half-Life. It was like they took the simple, pure addictive goodness of AQ2 and cut it with all kinds of nonsense that diluted it. Then again, I never got into HL or any of the other mods (I never liked Counter-Strike, which could have something to do with it stealing all of my friends away from AQ2).
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I was good at jumping in AQ2.
could do all the insane jumps, it gave you a good advantage but I wasn’t much good at shooting.
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I did Action Half-Life, but pretty much exclusively teamplay. My talents were throwing knives / handcannon, always with the stealth slippers, and my favourite risky-but-worth-it tactic was to sneak up behind high-up snipers and jump-kick them out the window to their deaths. ;)
In a slightly similar vein, I now specialise in TF2 Heavy + fists + sneaking up on people and punching them to death before they realise what’s going on. It’s not nearly as effective as my AHL sneaky tactics were, but it’s still pretty darn fun.
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8 pages of everyone talking, no one listening. Calling it now.
I am best at NOTHING! And oh so opinionated.
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It’s fun to go back and read them all later, but you’re right — a dearth of long reply threads is to be expected. (As on all “talk about YOURSELF” threads, I s’poze).
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Implying not every comment thread is a long list of everyone talking, nobody listening
Except actually it’s everybody talking, nobody listening, a few dedicated trolls trolling
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Scanning the posts now I’m pleased to be somewhat surprised!
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I am best at mucking about, while the NPCs talk at me. Plant-pot on the desk, a-hoy!
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Taunting at Street Fighter.
Dan Hibiki is my main, and I wouldn’t even consider using any other character. It would feel dirty.
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I played on the PvP server for Asheron’s Call, and I always managed to be the gimpiest character for my level (as well as one of the slowest-levelling!) but my special skill was that while everyone in the world was trying to kill me (except the anti-PKs whom I love) I was suspiciously good at typing frantically while running for my life, trying with my silver tongue to make my enemy a friend before one of his lightning arcs landed.
It worked more often than you might think, and I had a long friends list full of otherwise ruthless killers who would sometimes come to my rescue because I was a funny little man.
(This is also where I gained my 100+ wpm typing speed — Mavis Beacon is less motivating than a guy with a crippling blow takuba).
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I was level 3 on AC playing a proto-axeman and I got a whisper from a player basically telling me that my build was never going to work. Level 3. True too. AC was a great game. Is it F2P?
Oh, I have no game skills. I give them up the minute they get hard. All about unwinding for me. Many, many real world skills though.
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Well shoot, I reply failed and now my comment is lost to the too-many-posts monster. Long story short, it’s not f2p afaik but they do still have regular updates and they made a way for all the old outdated quests to become relevant and fun to do again (tikola’s dagger, green mire cuirass, dungeon muddy, etc…).
Didn’t you know the only way to be uber is to start with the hitpoints of a small rabbit? =P (I’m guessing ignorance of that is what gimped you =P).
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I have leet aiming skillz. Any game, all games.
Probably thanks to the countless hours “wasted” with Q3 back in the days :)
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I am so bad at aiming, I can’t play a sniper ever, in any game. I am, however, extremely good in knowing where to place myself and just how to move in FPS, so the two counteract.
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@akimbo I completely understand, any time I try and use a sniper rifle it’s like I’ve completely forgotten which end of the gun is dangerous.
But then somehow I’m the god-king of iron sights. I can score at least five headshots across the map in BC2 with the revolver before I have to reload, and assault rifles become precision weapons in my hands. It’s not even the scope on a sniper rifle that throws me off; I always, ALWAYS use an ACOG whenever I’m given the choice. I wish I understood how this works, but I’ve never been able to make sense of it.
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im definetly in the manshoot area, thx to about 80 000 counterstrike player kills and quake 3. Its not that im that great an aimer, though im decent, i just have a knack for suckering players to stick their head out at the wrong moment.
Im also okay at just about any driving game, and pretty mediocre at RTS´
theres my E-Peeen!
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My jumping and running skills served me well in the twitch shooter years, to the extent that when I have the choice, I usually stick to building quick characters. First Deus Ex 3 augmentations I got were running and Jumping options, and I usually stick to thieves and their agile pals in the few proper PC RPGs I’ve attempted to get into.
That said, I simply can’t get my head around playing the Scout in TF2.
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Modding Bethesda’s games.
Also being extremely conservative with ammo and resources in all games, refusing to use any consumable items that improve resistance/strength/whatever because ‘I might need them later’. And then I reach the end of the game and I still have an inventory filled with those items.
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Amen. I hears you. About the ammo, I mean. No idea about modding.
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I feel like crying! I’m not alone!
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I made it to the end of Amnesia with over 50 tinder boxes. Toughing it out in the dark was preferable to consuming those precious sources of light!
I did something similar when I saved up about 120 ammunition of the most powerful weapon for the final boss of Dead Space whilst playing on “impossible” difficulty (considering I beat it, the term is a little misleading). I crumpled that bastard in under 15, yet I still thought saving up that amount of ammo was a good idea.
Its a compulsion I tell you!
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Hey ! You have to be prepared for that boss fight AFTER the boss fight… So yeah basically I also carry around an ever-growing bunch of consumables until the game ends (or my inventory explodes).
You never know, right ?
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i kinda have the same problem, although only if the item is in any way limited in supply. Obviously you can only find so many tinderboxes in Amnesia, so i never ever used those, but stimpaks in post-dead money new vegas are more plentiful than bottlecaps
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I do this too. And similarly, it’ll be why my level 100 character will have 99 unspent skill points, or something. It’s also why I need to get the lowest symbol count in SpaceChem – it can be a painful affliction.
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I too am extremely conservative in my use of limited resources in games. It definitely started at a young age with me: I can remember beating Super Mario Bros 3 with all three lines of power-up slots filled with leafs and fire flowers. The majority of my playthrough of Deus Ex, I had 30 bioelectric cells in my inventory. (Use my augs? are you crazy? I may need them at some point).
Although it might just be an innate trait, I’d like to think that this conservationist approach learned from video games is responsible for the pleasant state of my personal finances.
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lol, I do the same =P it’s especially great in fantasy-ish RPGs, say Oblivion or somesuch…where I come across an unexpected enemy who smacks me for 60% of my health and then I say, “WAIT!!!”
time freezes while I pop open a cold frosty potion and drink it down…followed by another…another and still another. when time unfreezes I’m making suspicious sloshing noises, am at full health, have about six glowing auras competing for dominance around me, am invisible, resistant to all forms of damage, supernaturally strong, faster than a puma, and accompanied by a friendly ghost.
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You know, i always end up with a bunch of boosters i havent spent at the end of the game aswell!
As for ammo, i think my style is called “pray n spray” ;)
Tried to get the ammo scavenging trait in Fallout 3, but alas, my char´s luck is too low.
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Haha, yes, I have the same trait/problem. Especially in games with crafting, I’ll never sell anything unless I know for a fact that it’s just “vendor trash”. I hate inventory size limits for this reason.
Weirdly, I kind of find myself doing it in real life as well. I have a bottle of my favorite-smelling soap, for instance, and I just kind of hoard it rather than, y’know, enjoying it and BUYING MORE. It’s very silly.
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This probably isn’t what you were looking for, but a few years ago I was kind of adept in IRC trivia. Not so much the knowing of stuff (what they aren’t really about), but the fast processing, reaction and typing required. I used to say “the question has to go from your eyes directly into your fingers”
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Give me an assault rifle at long range in a realistic-ish shooter like BF2 and you’ll be glad to have me on your team/sad to have me on the other team. Put me at close range though and I’ll just fruitlessly hammer all my rounds into whatever part of the target is most heavily armoured.
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I’m excellent at ditch efforts.
Is my only chance to turn around a fighting game a desperate super move? I pull it off.
Is my my only chance to win in Magic: the Gathering dictated by an insane plan that could easily backfire, but I’m doomed anyway? It will work.
Am I a lone Medic with the Payload inches away from victory and only 10 seconds on the timer? I’ll push it that last inch with übersaw in hand.
It obviously backfires, but more often than not, these highly dramatic ditch efforts work and inspire ragequit and hatemail.
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Sniper. It seems to be my calling. I remember being able to headshot at 1.5 miles in Delta Force. The max range on the gun was supposed to be .5 miles.
I also tend to be a good healer. You’d think this would be easy, but time and again I’ve been one of the best healers around, where most healers were really bad at what they did.
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I agree with sniper, although perhaps not in terms of sheer marksmanship. I really like setting up ambushes, even if it means waiting for minutes before anyone even shows up. The one game I really excelled at was the original Flashpoint. You find a nice cosy bit of undergrowth or, even better, a corpse, lie over it and wait for someone to just stumble across your part of the island. It worked to a lesser extend on BF2′s Wake Island, but never really topped Flashpoint for me.
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I used to be a sniper too, but any game I’ve tried it in the last few years just hasn’t done it for me. Actually Delta Force was the last one I remember as a truly great sniper game.
I think I’m going to start a forum thread about truly great sniper games
EDIT:
Should have searched first. Here’s one we made earlier apparently!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?486-Best-sniper-experience
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As a marginally sociable teenager I became quite adept at talking\feigning interest on the phone with one hand while playing Mortal Kombat 1 with the other. Thanks to the numeric keypad I could do combos, special moves, and fatalities one-handed with scary proficiency, even while multitasking.
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I am likely the best Oni player around. I feel so lonely here at the top…
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There is Always Someone Stronger…. Have You Forgotten?
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Metonymy might be right, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. My best skill was easily guild/outfit/clan/corp leading (But not Fleet Command Jim, I left that to the aggressive players!). When I first started in Planetside at the age of 13 I was a poor leader, it was my way or the highway and the turnover rate was quite high.
Over the years and games though I actually learned how to lead, to mediate disputes and delegate tasks, how to give people both a vision of what we could be and an organized path on how to get there. I learned that jokes and a helping hand get you a lot further and caustic remarks (Although those are still fun on occasion) and how to get people to do things very much like work in their free time.
I think that’s really what I’ll take away from games if I ever stop playing, the skills I developed in virtual worlds has helped me quite a lot in this one.
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Im a fairly good WoW raid leader.
Also ok at figuring out new mechanics (I was the first to figure out how Thunderfury’s threat generation in WoW vanilla worked, and had this be incorporated into various threat calculating ui modifications).
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I’m probably best at running a corp in EVE… Someone had to do it, and I ended up with the job of running what is now the 3rd biggest corporation in the game.
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And a generally well liked and respected one at that, arguably a far more impressive feat :o)
(assuming you’re that Kelduum)
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I’m the best at hitting the quickload button when I meant to hit the quicksave button and vice versa.
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haha, yeah, that happens _all the time_ :)
i was glad that Deus Ex 3 moved the ql button to f8 by default (it was f6 in the original game if i recall it correctly), but i still managed to screw it up 2 times :D
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I’m would say i’m best at working out tactics for battles and manging small squads of people/ai/things, i’m hopeless at full RTS games due to not being able to micromanage or do the whole build up the base while attacking thing (captain turtle is my favorite way of playin them) but i tend to be good at identifing how people/AI go for the attack and suggesting how best to beat them.
Basically i suck at starcraft but was good at world in conflict.
unfortantly in games where i am good at this the playerbase is best described as “lively” (read, bunch of twats) so if you suggest a tactic other than “run in and hit things/blow things up/shoot things” you get scorned and kicked so don’t get much chance
Other games i’m good at due to this is the advance wars series, but that might e becasue whenever i play my mates at it the they have never played before so i end up just steamrolling them as they go “ohh big tank, much get that”
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Nade-Fu.
Making Oblivion characters that look like James Earl Jones from Conan the Barbarian.
Running off to save myself when the sh*t hits the fan in ArmA… Usually getting lost in the woods, and killed by the Predator.
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Aw man. Now I’m sad that there isn’t really a lurking Predator in Arma.
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My twitch skills are mediocre at best but I do class myself as an above avarage redstone wizard in minecraft. My fully automatic piston driven minecart station with self balancing cross-station minecart storage was quite impressive even if I say so myself.
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im good eve solo pvper. but i dont play it anymore
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This is embarrassing. I’m really good at finding camping spots in multiplayer fps games. Also good at sneaking past enemy lines in games like BF.
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A useful skill indeed!
That was always fun. Setting an enemy base to neutral, planting explosives on all the vehicles and ditching before the latest batch of spawns turns around to retake the point was a fun way to give the front-liners time to get to my position. :)
I’m not brilliant at it compared to other players, but I’m a lot better at traps and ambushes than I am at most other gaming pursuits. Mostly because I have a very good internal clock. Without looking at the stopwatch, I know how much better/worse I did on a Trackmania map/lap down to .5 second precision (admittedly less than useful in Trackmania where it’s the .05 that wins you the race … and since there’s a clock at the bottom of the screen :P). Outside of gaming, if I ask myself how much time has passed since the last time I looked at a clock (and if I have been distracted as opposed to specifically counting down minutes/seconds) I can usually get within 30 seconds of how long it’s been out to around an hour of passed time. If I can figure out which route a player is going to take, I can usually time their doom without watching. It helps for killing cloaked spies on 2Fort as well, catching them as they try to stalk across the bridge after giving themselves away on the battlements.
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I’m consistently top on the leaderboards for any FPS I play.. thanks, 6 years of competitive Counter-Strike!
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I was one hell of a Sniper/shotgun wielder in Halo2(42 kills 1 death was my best). Considering it was controlled with a .. controller I’m pretty proud of that. I will never put that much time into a controller based shooter ever again.
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I had a talent for treachery in Eve Online but i started to think i was a bad person so stopped playing as that was really the only draw for me. I consider myself talented as i could afford anything i wanted and had three accounts i payed for with plex.
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I have an excellent talent for betrayal. I’ll bluff and double bluff you but it is inevitable I will betray you somehow. I excel at betrayal in games that don’t allow friendly fire in particular.
I also have a talent for throwing grenades. My gamer friends today still talk about how the clinking noise of grenades bouncing around in Quake 2 still gives them the jeebies.
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When I had the time and patience to singularly focus on a game I was in top clans in shooter games and top guilds in WoW. I’ve always been very quick at figuring out how games work and what is the best way to excel at them coupled with good hand-eye coordination.
These days I don’t have the energy to get stuck in a single game (he said unknowingly six months before Diablo 3) for a long time.When I played UT/Battlefield/WoW I missed so many good games because I had no time to play anything else. So now I am playing more and more single player games avoiding some of the multiplayer traps, seeing as how I have a slightly compulsive personality.
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For some reason I’m not too good at shooters. But when I was at the peak of my Soul Caliber III ability, no one I knew could take me down.
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I consider myself pretty good at TF2, though not professional grade.
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Powerslide. Slid all over that thing.
And Death Rally. When I finished the game on difficulty “Petrol In My Veins”, I became a legend to myself.
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Despite being a misanthrope, I happen to be a very good medic. Talking about wasted talent.
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I tend to be a pretty good healer in most games In both RPG’s and FPS’s alike
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I played WoW for the first 2 and a bit years that it was around and my main was a warlock. Due to guilds chopping and changing, I ended up comparably under-geared in a high-end guild and got in one of their Naxx raids. I absolutely shined on Patchwerk (just pure dps over an extended time), only coming behind a super-geared mage and rogue on the dps tables. I had his abilities down to an art form.
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I used to be a walking encyclopedia about City of Heroes back when I played it, knowing pretty much everything there was to know about both the mechanics and content. I was still not all that great at actually playing it though.
Apart for that, I’ve not really developed any special talents with a game that I can think of.
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Shotgun ninja. I’m that guy that pops up in your flank and shoot you a few times in the face before disappearing again. Also if I warm up I’m a great TF2 heavy.
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So that was you! I’m torn between admiration and hate for people like you. One hand it takes some guts to pull that, on the other most of the time it seems like a desperate and no-brain tactic.
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Now you can’t just throw a comment out there about downloading DLC without actually at least dropping some hints as to what DLC?
I’m sure I’m the champion of not finishing games.
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Hmm, probably blowing myself up in online FPS’s. Can’t seem to get the hang of throwing a grenade without it rebounding off something to land at my feet. The amount of times I’ve been autokicked from servers for fratricide is too numerous to count.
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I was surprisingly good at the flying parts in Turrican II.
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Demon’s Souls taught me, and Dark Souls is currently reinforcing, that I’m almost pathologically persistent even in the face of multiple failures, and no real idea what I’m doing wrong. And also that I’m a masochist. That’s a talent. Who says it’s not.
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I was good at making 40 cents stretch a long way on an arcade machine. Only choose games that reward skill with long playtime. Never continue. Then practice practice practice. Silkworm was my favorite, I played the Jeep, my friend flew the Helicopter.
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I’ve got nack for turrets in BF games.
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I was a decent healer and bossy enough to lead instances back in the day.
In multiplayer I specialise in drowning the enemy in my corpses. I always lead kamikaze attacks, ninjaing towers in Alterac, leading groups of enemies away from the frontlines, crashing helicopters into fortified guard towers. At LANs the higher my deathcount the more my team wins.
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I was the greatest thief in Fallout 2.
Wherever my shadow stalks, not a single NPC will be left with his goods.
also pro slider in The Specialists, sliding in and out of rooms while gunning down 3 people in one slide. OH THE GLORIOUS DAYS.
oh also I am very good at screaming at my monitor whenever i fail at anything in any game :D
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On that subject, Thief: The Dark Project was the first game I completed at the hardest difficulty. I’d played previous games on much easier settings.
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In every WoW guild I joined, I became guildleader eventually. So apparently I am either a good leader or a people person, I suspect the second one :D
In other games I would say healing/rezzing, but I just like the “Uppam” role of running toward my fallen teammates, under fire, and rezzing them while biting the dust myself :P
Oh and Helicopter darting in BFBC2! Love those tracer darts!
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Probably being analytical in my mistakes or successes. Its really the only way to get better at a game and it lends it self well to harder games. As a result I’m never really frustrated when I pick up a new genre or game because if I suck I know I can work out how to improve. For instance playing Witcher 2 on hard mode I died a lot in the prologue. But I figured out what worked and didn’t worked and the rest of the game was managable.
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Interesting question, come to think of it. In my case, I think it’s training. Near every multiplayer game I play, and even some Single Player games, I end up teaching how to play them and tips and tricks to newer players.
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Im a bit good at Crysis, Well Crytek think I am.
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I’m good with grenades in some games. In HL2Deathmatch I killed hundreds of stupid noobs with gravitygun+grenade combo. It was my first multyplayer game that I played at home instead of a lan-clubs because I just got a decent connection, so I poured a lot of time in it. I got so good with this combo that people on servers started to call me “grenade whore”, I only used grenades most of the time. Felt good. I played HL2D until people left my fav server. To this day every time I spawn in a game I press ’4′ to pick a grenade.
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I suck with grenades in most games, but the gravgun nades that you start with were basically 2 free kills for me. Knew the timing/physics of the things (shot “naturally” or with an added grav-gun boost) so well that I could make them explode next to your head at any range.
Good times. =) (it’s been a long time though.. aren’t even sure that they were insta-kill -_-)
Nowadays my special skill is being wildly inconsistent. Hitting every shot in one life and missing everything the next.
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I am a first rate Medic in TF2. I always found it was hard to find a medic on servers where I didn’t know someone, so I decided to take up the task myself. I wish more people realized without medics it is really difficult to win pushcart matches.
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Or indeed ANY matches that aren’t scoutrush CTF
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I am the best at killing all the harmless, ambient wildlife.
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Playing Mitsurugi in the original Soul Blade. Must have spent about 2 years playing that with friends almost every day. Man we were good at that game…
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An “unbeaten” Taki man myself. Consistently got worse with every subsequent game though.
Fancy a match?
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If I still had a system capable of playing one of these games I’d take you up on that. Alas no PC versions mean my once-honed skills now languish unused.
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wowowow incredible number of comments…
all i can think as a talent, is to explore any area in rpgs, talking with all npcs, retrying sequences with multiple choices to try each one etc… and yeah, i’m not so bad at beating a random trained player at a fight game i don’t know, the first time i play, by hammering the pad :) but i guess i’m not alone.
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No one on this earth can beat me at Monkey Target on Super Monkey Ball 2 on the Gamecube.
My friends and I played for countless hours, I developed every new technique and counter technique we used and I can’t be beaten. I still feel like it was my calling in life.
It’s not even the main game, just a minigame. My life is worthless.
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My skill is not tied to a particular game. Well it has a bit to do with MMO’s. I’ve developed a ridiculous resistance to mindless grinding thanks to 5 years of Lineage 2. I could spend 36 hours straight killing the same monster over and over again without breaking a sweat. Alas, those times are long gone.
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Wait, when did I make an account called DevilSShadoW??
In all seriousness I still remember that pain at the West entry of Death Valley… And i I played a bloody Shillien Elder, A.K.A Mr. I-have-no-DPS!!!
Haven’t played a healer in any kind of RPG since!
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I’ve got pretty quick reflexes. Used to be a competitive FPS player ( mostly UT and CS ), a decent arena player in wow and GW, have very good micro at most rtses and also pretty decent at fighting and platforming games.
And that’s proving to be quite a handicap at starcraft II. I tend to focus too much on microing perfectly and completely forget about my base. There’s no use in making my units extremely effective if I have two thousand minerals stacked while my opponent has already rebuilt his army =/
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I can pick up any game fast and play at decent level. Now, about spending time improving…nope, not me.
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I would say that I’m a pretty good medic in TF2. It’s a great feeling when you are the only medic and you feel like you are keeping your team alive by looking out for everyone. Not many games gives me a kick like that.
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I was a pretty damn good PPU (complicated support/heal character) in Neocron.
I’m a good flanker in FPSes in general (I learn maps quickly, and am pretty good at spotting the quiet areas to sneak through and then open up on the enemy’s back).
I’m also an all right team/squad leader. I defer to my team’s wishes a bit too much to be great, and hesitate more than is ideal, but I can get a read on a situation and have people doing something to manage it pretty quickly. No good with bigger teams though.
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Hmm. I think the three main ones are:
1. Clearing rooms in FPSs. I quite enjoy, and I’m quite good, at urban combat.
2. Long range combat, with rifles or MGs.
3. Flying in ArmA.
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*cough* *cough* I m sorry I must have chocked on something…
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Haha. I know it sounds crazy, but all of the times I crash it’s either: Someone else’s fault, or I was messing around.
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I’m great at not finishing games.
I’m also great at buying games faster than i can play them.
I don’t think I’m particularly great or terrible at anything actually in the games themselves, maybe because I don’t often play multiplayer and I don’t often get obsessed with one single game for long enough to get great at anything (see points 1 and 2).
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I could take on allcomers at Goldeneye when the N64 was at it’s peak. I in fact never lost a game of multiplayer including winning the tournament we held at my school. Good times.
I was a mean street fighter too and specialised in Ken or Guile.
Currently my favourite pasttime is squad leading or being a medic on Project Reality mod for BF2 and I am generally in the top 3/4 players on a full server.
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Wooh Goldeneye! Did you hold the N64 controller at a 45 degree angle clockwise too or was I the only one to do that? I swear that’s the secret to mastering the game.
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Also, if you looked down on Goldeneye, you ran faster.
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I was a god in Supremacy, the old C64 / Amiga space strategy real time game with the most awesome music ever.
Oh, and I am particulary skilled at remembering music from obscure games as well!
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I am just plain awesome at spotting the teeny tiny, pixel-sized sensors in Crusader: No Remorse. Also not at all bad a strafe-leap acrobatics in Unreal Tournament 2003. But eye-balling microscopic sensors from the other side of the room while my friend played Crusader was way more of a crowd-pleaser.
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Haha! I used to set off every goddamn laser tripwire in Crusader: No Regret. So many needless robot battles.
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I’m good at finishing the games incredibly fast. Sometimes I wish I weren’t as powerful though :(
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I’m pretty good at leaving the comments which RPS spam blocker does not like.
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Ha! I know the feeling. Especially in my longer comments.
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I’m good at keeping my Steam backlog well supplied.
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Hmm, I’m sure I was pretty good at something ; but I can’t for the life of me remember what precisely.
Oh wait, I got it, that must be getting shot in the face.
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I am a born supporter. Be it medic in TF2, cleric in an RPG or even support gunner and copilot in Battlefield, I can be anyone’s right hand man.
Put me in charge while you go for a loo break however, and you will return to a smoking hole where your squad\guild\base used to be.
Always the bridesmaid, never (should be) the bride…
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I rock at Trackmania Canyon, when I get time to play it I win a lot.
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I hope that, some day, I will get this healer joke. :P
Anyway, while I tend to be not bad in most games, I have trouble finding something at which I do exceptionally well. Maybe I could simply go with stubbornness – if I play a game, and there is some specific goal I want to reach, I usually don’t give up until this goal is reached. If that means I have to grind an enemy for three hours, or mine cobblestone for a couple of days, then so be it.
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There’s not really much to get. It’s just a running joke to be mean to John.
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Also, its true.
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In strict PvP situations I’d say I do best in FPSs, especially in the old-school hit-where-you-point type of games. The fire rate control of more modern FPSs tends to sap my effectiveness somewhat, though I’d like to think I still land well above average.
I still prefer strategy games to shooters. Unfortunately my strong psychological preference for just building up my economy means I’m a poor PvP strategist. Building up an underdog through unparalleled economic efficacy is often the only thing I aspire to in grand strategies.
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My housemate and I have become notably skilled at Baseball Stars 2 and Neo Turf Masters on the Neo Geo. Which is something you dont hear every day. Oh, PC? Cripes! Forgive me!
Most recently I’ve become fairly good at both Bad Company 2 and L4D versus; the latter in particular as I’ve been playing both the original and its sequel with my L4D versus clan almost since day one. I normally dont consider myself that good, seeing as I dont tend to play as much nowadays as my other clanmates, and compared to them I’m pretty average. However, when playing with people who arent that used to the game, I find myself utterly bewildered and frustrated at how crap they seem to be. And then I remember that they havent played it for 600 hours.
Edit: Oh, and suppose I’m also pretty good at GalCiv 2, since I regularly play on either Painful or Crippling. Which is strange, because I absolutely suck at Civilization 3/4.
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I often win deathmatches that contain vastly better players. I just need a lot of mediocre players running around, because I play very aggressively and am very good at exploiting the predictable mistakes that they make. A good example is Mount & Blade, in which you can instantly kill any player who doesn’t understand spacing (by doing something silly like walking backwards and then lunging forward when they follow).
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… Or at throwing a god damn javelin in their head from across the map you f’ing sniper you ;)
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I think the only point where I’ve ever felt comfortable saying I was excellent at something was THPS2.
My high-score route on the school was ridiculous and I could complete every level’s objectives in one runthrough. Thank goodness it didn’t have a global scoreboard or it would have been revealed that, in fact, I was about the 500,696th best in the world.
Stupid global village
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I was godlike at the latter version of THPS, mainly the 4 and underground (didn’t really play the next stuff they made) + one on psp. I never got the chance too play against other really skilled people, but I think I was really one of the best players around (feels good to brag about it once in a while :3).
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Mechwarrior 2 / GBL / Mercs: Creating awesome death machines and using them to completely annihilate my (virtual) foe.
That said, I couldn’t tell you if I was really good at it, or if the game was just really rewarding. But I rarely lost a battle
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Besides being a master HoMM/King’s Bounty tactician, I was our school’s Civilization I anti-DRM. About 15-20 turns into a game you would be given a question about the tech tree, and since the school didn’t have the manual on hand, people had to rely on me since I had the entire tech tree memorized. This is one of those things that I thought was totally badass in 6th grade…, but somehow I think most of my classmates just thought I was weird :P
I am also an Action RPG champion loot-whore/ninja. I was always willing to share loot with friends I was partied with, but i’d say about half of the “precious” D2 loot drops never hit the ground before I scooped them up.
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I’m mostly terrible at pretty much any game I play. Partly or possibly completely because of a lack of patience and a tiny attention span. While this is bad in most games I make great bait in co-op games like Left 4 Dead. My team mates can just follow me around at a safe distance and enjoy a relative calm while I get beat on by almost every enemy in sight. Unfortunately any loss of concentration from my team mates and I usually manage to lose them which tends to lead to a quick death on my part and sometimes theirs (especially if they try to save me – people quickly learn not to save me!).
For some reason I rarely had this problem in WoW where my patience and attention span seem to be significantly above average.
The only other examples I can think of where I actually was good at something are very specific sections of specific games: last level of Chaos Gate and 1st level of Elastomania
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I am excellent at training military in Dwarf Fortress.
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Danger room ftw?
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I’m a tank.
Don’t matter the game, don’t matter the genre, if there’s a heavily armored character who’s job is to be the first one to get punched in the face, that’s me, and I’m good enough at it that I don’t feel like a tool for saying I’m good at it.
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I’m best at making the team laugh on vent, whilst having zero focus on the game at hand.
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I am excellent at assembling doomed raids composed mostly of you.
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I excel at hoarding potions and other consummable items until they are worthless.
Also do a pretty mean job of reading instruction manuals containing no pertinant information that couldn’t be gained by spending 5 minutes in the game.
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I used to be insanely good at grinds and manuals on Tony Hawks. Spent a good two years at uni just racking up points. Then they ballsed it up by making it a free-roaming world.
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I’m good at finding and bonding with genuinely nice and friendly people even in the most hostile communities. I’m a bit of a social hub; I suck at most games, but I seem to make up for it by just being a fun person to play with (or so I’m told).
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My ability to join any team / clan / guild as the new guy, and within 6 months be the leader of said team / clan guild. Happens every time, I never ask for it, never try to run them, but for some reason everyone ends up relying on me to tell them what to do.
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Two things I’d say.
SWG – Bounty hunting.
I was going to put resource gathering, but, thinking about it I had a friend who was always miles ahead of me there. He really had a knack for exploiting the planetary resource system to it’s limits. For me though I was an excellent bounty hunter. I remember one situation in paticular. I spend a good 30 minutes tracking a guy on the planetary map on naboo. He was running smuggler missions. After watching which routes he was talking I was able to predict which mission station he’d be heading to next and made sure I was there waiting for him.
Eve – Ship locking
Put me in a battle ship and I’d be lost, but in a small light weight electronic warfare ship and I was right at home. I spent weeks tweaking stats and equipment until I finally created the setup I was happy with. Myself and a small group of other goons really enjoyed the thrill of being one or two hits from death.
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I’m amazing at metagame diplomacy, I used to play shitty text-based browser MMO games like ‘city empires’ that somehow grow all this crazy metagame geopolitics. Man, I was on every factions forum, IRC and mailing list, it’s all about developing and maintaining connections with people in other factions government.
I wasn’t a great leader, my own faction was weak as hell. But everyone knew me, and I could pull together as much muscle as I needed in any fight.
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I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 regularly for about two years now.
I’m a jack of all trades class-wise. I can play all the classes to a decent standard, and I’m confident enough in my ability to fill in almost any role that my team needs.
I usually wait and see what classes my teammates pick, and I’ll choose mine based around that (although it’s usually medic).
On reflection, I’m probably best at gauging what class our team needs to push forward/defend sucessfully, and I’ll adjust my play to that.
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SIr, you are the kind of play who truly deserves the epitaph
‘credit to team’.
I would call myself the same, but I play 5 of the line classes in an almost amateur way. Embarrassingly, i’ve been playing since the beta. But if you need a Pyro or Medic…
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Well shucks, thanks!
Part of the reason the game appeals to me so much is the sheer variety in the classes. My playstyle just evolved to incorporate that.
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I’ll take whatever position the team most needs, and use whatever weapons combo assist the team most. Which sounds great. Except that I’m a horribly inconsistent player. Some days I’m top of the server within minutes and some days I’ll never leave the bottom row. I’m also not very good at all with some of the classes (which I’m best with seems to vary based on my mood), so my good-samaritan intentions are often waylaid by lack of skill. I try though! And I’m getting better with a lot of classes I wouldn’t play if I weren’t trying to be helpful. If I do badly enough, I’ll default to the class I’m having the best luck with that day … but I’m pretty stubborn so I’ll be useless for a good long while first :P
Bravo to you sir, for your team spirit. And thank goodness other people can actually manage it, so we with guilty consciences can stick to our strengths on a wider variety of servers. ;)
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Man, I always love this kind of post/article.
I’ m always overwhelmed by how many great PC games mentioned by RPS commentator that I’m not yet played or never heard of before (like Hyperblade mentioned by 1st commentator, WTF is that game?? Search google, and it seems nice and interesting for me) .
Thanks,RPS! And you, guys!
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what he said. Of every 20 games mentioned on RPS I’ll have heard of maybe 7 and played 1 for around 20 minutes.
When someone mentions a game I’ve put real time into its like hearing one word you understand in a conversation in a foreign tongue
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About a year or two ago Audiosurf was the home of my proudest playing moments.
Holding some various bands pro-world title, Los Campesinos! (nearly everything) and upbeat Belle and Sebastian songs were my personal favourites. (as “D3L”). Myself and my housemate “Rob2984″ used to have days of playing the same song again and again and again till we knocked each other off the top to the chagrin of neighbours, I might add.
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Twee AND competitive?
It’s against nature I tells ya.
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Oh, this. In my day I was Pro-Champion (riding Eraser) for half of the indie canon. My proudest moment? The month or so when I was Pro-Champion of the entire of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I’ll tell you, that’s a competitive album! I actually ended up in a bitter rivalry with this woman weeblegirl, who appeared to have almost exactly the same taste in music as me, and near identical (or infuriatingly just superior) skills. I don’t think I ever spoke to her, but even seeing that name still fills me with rage.
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I’m best at flying (and landing) various virtual aircraft, from props to the PMDG sims. Though it is strange to think that that is no surprise, given that I played my first flight sim nearly a quarter of a century ago. Good grief.
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I tend to be a pretty good healer in MMOs (several years of raiding in WoW without extensive healing mods tend to do that) and I have a good eye for leading targets in flight-sims/space sims
I generally out-perform the built-in target lead reticule (ITTS in the wing commander games) and in games without one I tend to get rather high hit-percentages once I get my head around the projectile speeds and relative speeds of the craft involved (also works to a limited degree with slow projectile shots in FPS games).
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I used to be the neighbourhood kid everyone wanted over at their place to beat a certain sequence in some game, sometimes I would be invited over to some dude I didn’t even know, just to nail a certain jump or fight a certain boss and then I would (have to) leave again mere minutes later. To this day there are very few games I own or owned that I didn’t beat.
I’m not trying to boast, but at times I was really amazed how quickly I would grasp these kinds of things. For instance, some guy would be stuck in a game for ages and I’d nail that sequence in half an hour at most, without ever having played the game before. Rygar on Nintendo is an example, I later bought the game myself and finished it in a couple of days. Or Faxanadu.
Out of all the people I know who I used to play Nintendo and whatnot with, I was the only one ever to beat the first Metroid. I used to help people with Mega Man, Zelda, Castlevania, well pretty much any game you can think of that requires timing. Later I was really good at Unreal Tournament or Fifa Soccer to name a few. Bah, what am I saying, I was good at playing almost any game! :P
Even to this day (I’m almost 30 now), friends ask me to help them with Assassin’s Creed for example (the timed sequences like Romolus Lairs come to mind), Uncharted (even though I think that game is so lax) or God of War.
I actually like to think that playing games is one of the very few things I’m really good at, too bad it never really got me anywhere … Actually, that’s not true, I learned to speak and write English and I’m a good problem solver, very analytical and it usually doesn’t take me long to find my way around a new piece of software or whatever. Although I was definitely and infinitely faster when I was a child.
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I know a guy like you. I try never to call him but I needed him to beat the Chocobo race in Final Fantasy X so that I could unlock something or other. Winning the race was trivial but you had to beat a certain time, and even though I’d worked out a method I just couldn’t do it. He came over, I explained the situation, and he needed five tries. As thanks I punched him for being a dick. If I ever meet you, I will punch you, too. But it’s… you know… a THANK YOU punch.
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If the Battlefield 3 beta was anything to go by, me and my flatmate are going to be a crack M1A2 Abrahms crew come release. Disabling an enemy tank in their base whilst still in our base was a particular highlight. Oh, and one-shotting a jet with the main cannon.
Hooah!
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Hooah!
I’m definitely living in those tanks come release. So much killing!
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I don’t really know how to describe my skill. I’m definitely best in FPSes, coming in the top score frequently. However, I’m not a good aimer, I’m not great at tactics, and while I go for the goal that I think is most likely to prove useful for the team I really am not the best at teamwork.
I think what it might be is that I’m good at outmaneuvering people; I get behind them or pop up where they don’t expect anyone. Met head to head I’ll almost always get outsniped in games like CoD and BF, but left to my means, I think I tend to catch people unaware and shoot them while they don’t expect it. I don’t bother with knives just to spite the foolish developers who think they kill better than guns.
I’m also a master tank whore, though. I commanded the armor for the eastern team in three of the first BF2 Project Reality Mod tournaments and we won. Just wait until I’m shelling you from a distance in BF3.
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Despite my trepidation towards the multiplayer FPS, in my earlier years I was really fast in the CoD and Unreal Tournament series. Unbelievably fast. Fast enough to get kicked off servers because players thought I was using Aimbot. If Doc Holiday and Sonic the Hedgehog had one drunken fling, I would have been their mutated offspring.
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I’m a balanced all-rounder. I’m kinda decent at pretty much every genre. Put a game in front of me, and I’ll usually skip reading the manual and any tutorial, and do respectably well. Everything from an RPG to strategy to bullet-hell shmup.
I’m not *great* at anything, though. Never the top of any scoreboards. Never an MVP. Never going to speedrun something on the highest difficulty. I’m good, but not great.
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I am an exceptionally good CTF Doom Player. I’m not the best at 1on1 or straight deathmatch, but in CTF I get to use my wit and creativity. Above all, though, CTF is a game about speed, and I can run like the wind. There’s at least five different ways to increase your speed in Doom. North wall strafe FTW! Play it on Zdaemon if you want to, we could always use more players.
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Stealing things. If something in a game can be stolen, I’ll steal it. And creating back-stories; my two snipers in C%C 2 had names and families, one was an old veteran who had served in the Faulklands, the other a young rookie fresh from the gulf, his reliance on technology contrasting with his partners respect for traditional soldiery.
Found it really nice to replay New Vegas, the first time you have no knowledge of the people and story and must play as the ‘hero with amnesia” as these things are revealed. The second time you are playing as someone who has a memory and understanding of the world, and can roleplay this instead. My second courier was a freesider his whole life, doing odd jobs for gangs before working as a courier, explaining why he knew exactly where new vegas was and made his way straight there rather than wasting time helping Primm.
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I love doing that! Even in guns-and-conversations type games and RPGs, I have way more dialog and character development in my head then is presented on screen. It’s the only way I managed Half-Life 2. The side characters were excellent fodder for interesting conversations … but rather than give me basic exposition or relative silence … they gave me something worse: one sided conversations. Gordon had to have a voice in my head, or at least I had to provide some sort of alternate explanation for what was happening. Otherwise … all of these interesting people would have been expressing trust and affection for a complete nut case who pretends to be a scientist and speaks only with bullets. Or alternatively, an extremely expressive mute. It wouldn’t have been a problem if no one gave a crap about Gordon. But Barney clearly talked with Gordon–either I remembered past conversations as I went about killing headcrabs, or I imagined Barney unloading his troubles on the silently brooding Gordon in the locker room. Alex professed the affection of a dear friend, obviously concerned about Gordon’s well being– I either sent similar words back, or thought of her as an extremely insecure individual who has trouble with relationships, using Gordon as a sort of social teddy bear while he stares at the ceiling. Alternatively, I was some sort of magical entity with a psychic field that altered peoples memories and perceptions of me. :P
Roleplaying is fun in any game! :)
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For some reason I was able to get excellent dps out of my hunter in WoW.
I was reasonably well equipped and had a number of friends in different guilds. Every now and again I would get a whisper “are you free? Have one dps slot left for guild raid?”. I would turn up and there would be 2 other hunters with much better gear there. Halfway through the raid I’d keep getting /w from other members of the raid asking me how i was out dpsing the two other hunters (and the majority of the other dps in the group) when their gear was obviously better than mine. I never had a dps meter and never spent any time at a targets dummy trying to fine-tune my rotation or whatever, i just managed to be good at it, bizarre.
Was shit at everything else mind
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I was always very very good at getting rich through the auction house. By the time I had stopped playing WoW, I would easily have netted about 320k or so gold. In Rift I netted about 30k platinum.
No idea how though. I just seem to be good at merchanting crap.
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I’m a fairly proficient recon element. Sniping, spotting targets, and laying c4 ambushes since bf2142.
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Tf2 and Unreal 2k4 are the only games I can snipe worth beans in. :(
Ambushes, explosives and recon are another matter. :)
You must have had fun in BF 1942 if you were a good sniper … some of you guys seemed to have developed short-range teleportation skills. I liked to get behind enemy lines, lay traps and generally treat the Engineer class like James Bond (complete with the not-at-all subtle vehicular sequences). …. Which meant I was often trying to occupy the same nest as a sniper (and they usually realized this first), or else I didn’t have any buddies to decrease the odds snipers would pick me off, and maybe buy me enough time to duck for cover and figure out where the clever blighters were hiding. Which is definitely not the main reason I liked having teammates.
You folks are part of the reason I learned how to drive a jeep like a madman, though, so I suppose I should thank your ilk. You guys trumped my M1 Garand for precision and range, too, which was my main advantage over other classes. Cursed snipers!
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I’m really good at parkour and lateral thinking in games. Both of which often go hand in hand. It’s the legacy of platform gaming and real life snowboarding I suppose, but like most I don’t think that I’m anywhere near a world class competitor. You have to be crazy obsessed to get to that level. I was happy enough getting the official speed runs completed in Mirrors Edge, there was no way I was going to expend another few months getting up to the top few hundred. I’m not competitive enough, I only like to challenge myself, not the world. I am though, for some unknown reason, absolutely terrible at skateboarding and snowboarding games. Go figure.
I also have horrendously poor aim. If this was a question of what are you bad at in games it would be a longer list.
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I always assumed the EA Mirror’s Edge high score servers were totally hacked since a lot of the maps seemed to have 1-second highscores ._.
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My skill is in maintaining a high K/D ratio in online shooters. In Gears of War 3 I’m currently riding 2.8 thanks to a positional/patient/anal playstyle.
Disclaimer (Inb4 team-dooming lone-wolf bellend): I only play this way in TDM.
Also, I beat Bayonetta on Infinite Climax mode!
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For me it’s the same thing as in real life: Procrastination.
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I’m pretty lousy at nearly all games where player agility is a large determining factor in success. I just don’t find it particularly rewarding to master the particular sequence of button-mashing that the developers want me to.
Occasionally, there is a game I want to play that includes twitch mechanics (shooteryness, platforming, RTS gameplay that doesn’t include a pause where you can issue orders), in which case, I’ve gotten pretty good at exploiting the games’ design wherever possible to avoid the worst of these segments.
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I am really good at finding the most obtuse path to victory possible. Like using the sniper rifle as a close-range weapon in Rainbow Six. Or trying to play… well, most FPSes as melee games.
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Battlefield. I don’t know what it is really, but I just know what to do in like every single situation. It’s rare that I lose a game if I have a squad or two to lead.
Pretty good at aiming in that as well, and more or less always end up as number one on public servers. Tried playing in a clan in BF2, but found that incredibly boring (the jump around a CQ flag and squad jump type of deal).
I’m also pretty amazing with the rail in Q3. Sadly, that’s it, so either I find that and do allright or end up close to last.
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I’m a rather good air-blast Pyro in Team Fortress 2, and I used to be somewhat evil with the TMP in Counter-Strike Source
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Not in any specific game but I’m a particularly good lone wolf. Not the kind that does everything alone but I tend to be good at anticipating what other thinks, finding flaws and creating commotion in the other team either by back stabbing, confusing or simply being where I’m not anticipated. This usually works best when I go in alone. I don’t mind getting killed if it helps the team on the long run.
That and I’m a pretty sly sniper.
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I’m fantastic at accidentally shooting team members in the back in Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2.
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I’m a good healer, transfusion NEVER missed when you were really trying.
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I’m quite good at shooting people from afar with long-ranged weapons. Not very original I know but I seem to do it well. And short burts of frantically running around being good at shooters happens as well. Although that isn’t really under my control.
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I am phenomenally good at winning everything in sight with generally awful teams in Championship Manager 2000/1.
As skills go, it’s not exactly a breadwinner.
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Logistics and covert operations.
Mostly in EVE and Planetside. We managed to sneak Strontium and Nanite and keep bases up and runing under heavy enemy siege, meanwile retrieving BPO’s and other usefull stuff.
Sadly, i’m sick of eve, and PS and i dont know any other games where i can use it.
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I was a god in Star Control multiplayer. I usually killed the entire enemy fleet with just my Androsynth ship.
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Funny how most of the comments relate to FPS or MMO games. Me? I will out-psychology you in any strategy game, and win with a weaker economy and military force. Yeah, I’m sort of banned from playing RISK, and forget trying to win Total Annihilation against me (or Supreme Commander for that matter). This extends to psych in other games too… see Space Marine MP.
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This is an interesting question for single-player games, because the whole point of a good single-player game is to fool you into thinking that you’re a terrific player, with amazing skills.
I mean…. wow, I just completed that entire level in DXHR with sneaking and no kills, I am AMAZING! Or, wow, I just figured out the optimum way to infiltrate and knock out that Korean base in Crysis, all by myself. I am AMAZING! Or, I just managed to defeat the neighboring province’s final army in Shogun 2, even though I was outnumbered 3 to 1 in number of units. I am AMAZING!
Well, no… those are just good games that have been play-tested to reward a very average player like me, who masters the basic skills. There’s so much sleight-of-hand in that process, like fooling the player into thinking he’s a good sniper in a game without bullet drop ballistics or windage. I am an AMAZING sniper in any game with scoped, straight-fire weapons, and I suck at the real thing. I have probably a better than average understanding of military tactics, but when I defeat an enemy army in a Total War game, it’s really more about how I’ve learned to exploit chinks in the game’s AI than anything else. Against a real human player in a tactical war game, I’m only average at best.
If I have any “virtual talent” at all, that isn’t a result of game manipulation, it’s probably whatever I’ve learned about flight sims over the years. Put me in a game with a semi-realistic flight model and a high enough frame rate, let me hook up my HOTAS controls, and I do pretty well.
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I think being good a manipulating the game can certainly count as what the OP is talking about. And also, if you’re unusually good at point-and-shoot sniping, either compared to other players or compared to your other skills in gaming, that’s a pertinent distinction. I could just as easily flip things the other way and say most of my out-of-game talents are irrelevant to gaming (guitar doesn’t help me with Guitar Hero, for example).
I think a lot of people here are being at least somewhat tongue in cheek with their pride as well–some more obviously than others. It’s not, I think, news to anyone here that these skills are inferior to those of a fair number of other gamers, or largely unrelated to their real-life counterparts. But if something about using the WASD keys to make a plane do tricks makes way more intuitive sense to you than driving an actual car or even moving any other in-game vehicle or avatar with the same WASD keys … that’s a point of interest to you and your friends, as gamers, isn’t it?
Good point about single player games though. It varies wildly from game to game, but your point holds very well with most big-budget games.
On another note, I’m impressed by anyone who manages much with flight simulators. I’ve never had any talent for them, probably for the same reason it took me so long to develop the ability to drive safely enough to feel like I deserve my license (I refused to drive without someone else in the car for a long time after I got it, as I was far to scatterbrained to be trusted on the road no matter what my test results said). Vehicles and I don’t get along without a lot more practice and dedication than a lot of other people seem to need. And simulators, by nature, bring this out. Bravo to you, amateur fake-pilot! Or would it be fake professional pilot? Or fake amateur pilot? Professional fake-pilot is definitely not right. Well, unless you have a rather strange job.
Sidenote: I wish amateur was less commonly found with the “not-very-skilled meaning” as it confuses manners.
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I’m usually good at adapting myself to games in general, but just when I really want it. Otherwise I’m your typical (less than) average dude in most games I play, not the worst, but certainly never the best.
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I’m pretty good at “instinctively” knowing board games. I somehow can understand the mechanic/how to win without trying it out much. I tend to win board games that my friends and I are trying for the first time, like Citadels, Small World, Seven Wonders, Space Hulk, (2nd for Agricola) and a few others. However, on subsequent plays, my friends would have grasped the mechanics better or something, and I tend to do not so well or do terribly, even.
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Aha, I do the same thing! First round of a new game is almost always mine.
As near as I can figure out it’s because I VERY quickly identify the potential winning strategies and focus on the one that nobody else is competing for – something like ignoring the military route entirely to focus on cornering the sheep market and in the last turn nabbing the victory points for animal husbandry and largest estate while using a merchant event to barter my enormous wool surplus into the stone, wood and pewter required to upgrade my house to a level three mansion*.
*This game does not exist, but still you know it to be true.
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Some call it a curse, but my gaming superpower would have to be the ability to play games purely for the joy of it. If a game is not (or ceases to be) fun, then I stop playing. “Winning” or completing a game is secondary. In fact, I have found it to be a rather sad experience in most cases. “It’s over…*sniff*.” Perhaps that’s why I love games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. There is so much to see and do. As for EVE, I would love to play it (having only experienced a 14-day trial years ago) but my current machine is far too ancient to truly enjoy it as it was meant to be. Speaking of RPGs and MMOs, I usually play as a ranger type in the fantasy end of the spectrum, or a miner/explorer in the very rare space-themed worlds.
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Does it count if I say modding? I’ve become extremely proficient at modding games where the developers provide no tools for it. Bonus if the game is relatively/very old and nobody cares about it anymore.
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Online, in any game: Defensive play.
I’m not the best offensive but defensive, I can put many people to the test. I am the Rogal Dorn of the real world.
Or sneaky play. I have a cowardly yet sneaky almost hide and wait for my moment to strike kinda style. Despite being quite an impatient person in the real world.
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I was reasonably good at the X-wing/TIE Fighter series back in the dim and distant past. I shudder to think how many years of my tender young life those games gobbled up.
These days (and I suspect I’ll be branded a heretic for bringing this one up since it isn’t on PC) Demon’s Souls and now Dark Souls. I’m a ‘multiple newgame+’ aholic. It is an absolute tragedy that these games are not on PC :-(
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Yup. So good, and so classy! Did you know (you, the general PC gaming reader) that these are action RPGs with no map, compass, or objective arrow? No NPC-given quests? (Almost) no music, except during boss fights? No loading times? So much class. I don’t want to go back to normal games…
When I was growing up, during the Super Nintendo through Playstation period, my special ‘skill’ was spending more time playing games than anyone else I knew, so I could beat my friends at any split-screen shooter or fighting game. Especially on one-hit-kill game modes. Not much fun – most of you know what I mean. If you play competitively with your friends, you’ve probably played a game where you have to play below your level so everyone can have fun.
Now? Throwing grenades in the first Halo. I could put a grenade anywhere I could see. In all the sequels the physics have changed, and Master Chief doesn’t have the arm he used to. I’m bad with grenades in all other games. In SWAT-style tactical shooters, my specialty is throwing a grenade over my partner’s shoulder from behind in such a way that it bounces off the back of his riot shield and hits him in the face before exploding.
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“(Almost) no music, except during boss fights?” – well, in Dark Soul’s case that’s doing it a bit of a disservice. The soundtrack (which Amazon randomly chucked in as part of the special edition pre order I deal had no idea I had signed up for) is actually pretty lovely in a moody sort of way and has tracks for each of the major areas. Worth checking out even if it’s not quite Bastion standard.
I’d add ‘the most balanced, rewarding thing I’ve ever played’ to your list. No game is so unforgiving, yet (almost always) completely fair to the player. The absolute elation you feel on beating some sort of shambling horror that has challenged you to the point of nearly breaking again and again is unparalleled, and Dark Souls gives you that feeling about once an hour.
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Alas, it’s not f2p as far as I know…but it’s still regularly updated. I tried the free trial and was especially delighted to see that one of the societies (you know, from teh lore!) has built a giant Quest Museum sort of place. New players can go and do old worthless quests like Tikola’s Dagger, and turn in some specified proof that they completed the quest, and the Quest Museum NPC gives them a ridiculous amount of XP for it. You’d be level three for about 3 minutes if you played it now, I think. =P The quest museum place (not its real name) even has portals that get you close to each of the old quests! It’s a lovely way to keep the hard work and classic quests from being totally lost.
I’m guessing your build involved starting with more hitpoints than a rabbit, and that’s why it was broken? ;-)
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Twitch turning shots with the rail gun in quake III.
Getting angry in HoN.
Footsies in SSF4.
Coming up with crazy GvG/HoH builds in Guild Wars.
Grabbing all the items in Diablo II.
Having arguments about items with my friends in Diablo II.
Ninja-capping points and suicide commandoing the enemy medic in TF2 (as Scout).
Killing people way higher level than me in EQ2.
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I can pick up any competetive multiplayer game awfully quick and understand the ins and outs of its mechanics, making me usually pretty above average on the get go on anything i choose to play, wether its a FPS, RPG or Strategygame.
On the downside, almost as if to compensate, i can never truly get to pro-levels in anything because i loose interest and have to be good at something new and shiny before too long.
A game ceases to be fun after a certain point, getting to repetetive or highlevel metagaming becoming too tedious for me to enjoy.
So whatcha call that? Quick-learner skill?
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Back in the day, I was that bastard on the doom deathmatch maps runnning around with the chainsaw, and only the chainsaw.
Then descent came out, and I was the bastard blowing up the reactor as fast as possible and advancing them map -)
Now I mostly tank in mmo’s and try to conquer the world with minor powers in pdox games.
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I seem to be alright in long attrition battles in RTS’s where you need to be able to perform many commands as quickly as possible.
Other than that, not much. I’m more of a dev than a player :)
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I’m somewhat good at grand strategy games, as in long term planning for many a Paradox game. I know someone who’s the best at being bad at economics.
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I can run. Forrest Gump style, carrying an item through ‘splosions and enemies or dashing through enemy lines right to the objective.
I’m not much of a Master Sargeant Shooter Person, but I sure as hell can run.
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:P That sounds like an awesome knack! I’m sure you’ve got some great stories.
I have something similar, but only in ground and water vehicles. So it comes up in fewer games.
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Jim, you still play Quake III ? Me and a few mates have been getting into a bit of Quake Live recently, we are pretty noob, you should drop in and show us how it’s done. You could be like our ex champion, wise-monk style coach!
My Talent appears to be timing pickup spawns to shut out the opponent.
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I’m pretty good at obsessing about infrastructure – whether it be technologies and structures that improve income in a strategy game, or maximizing skills that increase experience/gold in an RPG, or building the straightest, most level railroad to preserve as much speed as possible in Transport Tycoon.
I’m pretty bad at gearing up for war as a consequence, though.
I also have a pretty good sense of direction in games – enough so that I would sometime help my brothers when they got lost in a game.
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I was pretty good at taking out those pesky helicopters in BF2.
As a general player I was middling to fair, but give me a jeep with a mounted MG and kiss goodbye to your chopper…. (that sounds dodgy!).
I think it’s largely because I hated the bastard things – my hatred guided the bullets.
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I don’t get lost in games. Not of much use in single player games, but in MMOs and stuff people always follow me around to see where to go. Was quite handy back in the everquest days before the MMOs had maps.
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Oh god, I get lost in any game. I get confused in Alpha Protocol when the mouse-sensitivity bug sends the camera spinning 90*. Then I magically forget where I am, where I was going, and what I’m supposed to be doing. I will go in circles in linear corridor shooters. But I’m also a completionist. So I get glued to the map, trying to find every corner and making all the wrong turns.
My sense of orientation is abysmal, but outside of games I’m a pretty good at intuitive and explicit navigator. When it comes to remembering routes, relative directions,meandering through a foreign locale, or overlaying a mental map on my surroundings, I’m pretty successful. As such, if I get immersed enough in the game I’m playing, I’ll know exactly where I am and where I’m going and I’ll be great at finding alternative routes. But I get confused as to which way I’m facing. I get mucked up by buildings. I’ll know exactly where the main entrance is relative to my position, and where north is relative to the main entrance, but I have to do the mental geometry to find north from where I am in the building or even where another major building right next to the one I’m in is relative to my current position. This part is even worse in games.
And god forbid if I get pulled out of immersion by something gamey (like a camera bug) … then I become supernaturally lost. Doubly disoriented both in-game and out. The map is imprinted on my brain, but which way I’m facing is an impossible mystery, compass or no. It’s depressing. I have quite honestly gotten lost in straight tunnels. I’ll go one way, realize I’m going the wrong way, and then be surprised when everything looks familiar … only to realize I somehow got turned around again inside the tunnel. Then I’ll check the map. And it will often happen at least one more time. -facepalm-
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I’m best at shooters and such, particularly those that require more than fast twitch to succeed. World of Tanks being case in point, I’d say I’m quite comfortably one of the best players on the EU server and have been doing well in tournaments and such.
A shame there aren’t many games out there like this.
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I’ve put 135 hours into CS: Source and I still suck at it, gotta count for something. :)
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Flying. Mainly planes, but I’m competant at flying helicopters in FSX and ARMA. Yet to try TOH yet though.
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One thing I was scary competent at was 3rd person MP hackers that had some sort of unwritten code of honor, like Rune or Jedi Knight 2. Thing is, I was so adept at dazzling opponents with my ritualistic pre-fight choreography that they’d naturally assume they were playing someone much better than them and then make silly mistakes during the fight.
So yeah, I guess I’m a multiplayer dancing con man.
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Jack of all trades, master of none.
However, I will say I used to be particularly adept at artillery in Battlefield 1942 + Vietnam. I was upset when Battlefield 2 removed those features, but at least I have Project Reality’s mortars to keep the flame going.
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I’m in that Jack of trading club thing.
What I find to excel in, is understanding game mechanics and adapting to different kinds of games.
Also kind of a good tactician in WoW PvP predicting actions, too bad people ignore you anyway :p
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Strategy, tactics, leadership when I can get people to listen (Yes I do see the irony), and Heavy Weapons Guy.
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I finished Battletoads on the NES when I was a little girl. Using Warp Zones, of course, but I still don’t think I managed to achieve such a feat of pure willpower and stubbornness in gaming like that one again.
I’m also quite good at SSFIV, and if really want to win, I’m a nightmare when I’m turtling with Cody, or at least that’s what my friends tell me between insults. I used to be a decent L4D player too, and had the pleasure of sharing games with many well-known competitive players, some of which are still good friends.
Now, I’m enjoying being a solid PvP Disc Priest in WoW with a friend, but we never found a decent third to get our Glad title.
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I think my best skills are (mostly space game related):
Headshots with the sniper rifle in Unreal Tournament
Shooting down enemies in nearly any space game whether in a fighter or a bomber
Finding excellent trade routes in games like Elite or Hardwar
Tweaking my spaceships with the best guns/engines/shields etc
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I’m a pretty damned good space fighter pilot. I’m the guy who made the tutorial videos for multi-player space shooter free to play Half-Life 2 Mod Eternal Silence http://www.eternal-silence.net. I went like 100-10 all the time.
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I used to be so good at playing Halo, but /stylishly/. I would blend together the most ridiculous, beautiful improvisations, to the continual amazement of my couch-peers. It was amazing. So proud. (notreally)
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In adventure games, I was always very talented attempting to use every item in my inventory on the objects in the game world. By quickly resorting to this tactic when the puzzle makes no sense, I’ve probably saved myself a decent amount of frustration. Which I usually need for the puzzles that don’t involve the use of items.
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Damn you Monkey Island! So many great puzzles, such a fantastic game … but bloody hell were some of them ridiculous. At least Monkey Island is consistent in the style of it’s absurdity so I got better at figuring out the illogical puzzles over the course of the series. But most adventure games … argh!
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Grenades.
Any kind of indirect fire. Halo stickies, RTS Artillery, TF2 Demoman (Scottish Resistance), anything.
If there is a grenade I will throw the hell out of it.
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Tank in every game that has one. Mostly honed by WoW and CoH. Don’t play MMOs any more though, so that’s a ‘talent’ that doesn’t see any use any more.
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I appear to be rather good at arcade racers. I hold all golds or Ses in three Burnouts, Excite Truck, four Wipeouts and a few others. That could be the product of joyless grinding, but I don’t think so; I feel I got them in a very reasonable number of tries. My only memory of being definitively better than someone else at a game comes from college. Just before lunch my buddies suddenly needed a fourth in their split-screen PGR2 game, the first and last time I touched it. Amid their assortment of Porsches and Audis I picked a New Beetle S (or R? I don’t know from cars) just to be an arse. At the starting line they roared off around the first corner as I learned where accelerate and brake were. Three laps later I crossed the finish line. It was ten seconds before the next car even came around the last curve.
I’m probably above-average in six-axis movement. I played Descent, but I personally credit it to the Independence War games where you’re constantly managing huge momentum and trying to split your enemies between your shields while following rotating engine bells through space. I spent probably hundreds of hours in Desert Combat choppers; Operation Battleaxe and Kharkov against bots were essentially complete single-player arcade games for me, and on LAN I could be a Credit to Team even in a ‘medevac’ transport. I thought I was mediocre because one of my friends went from zero to flying backwards through the Market Garden village and split-S landings in two hours, but then I saw a few other friends try to learn. It came as quite a surprise to me that many people couldn’t at least fly from Point A to Point B. For the past few months I’ve been consumed by Kerbal Space Program, where there’s a steady stream of newbies asking how to use the artificial horizon.
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I’m.. Hmmm…
I never give up in games, no matter how hard they are!
That’s a talent, right? orz
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Fishing in WoW. Kidding you I am not.
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I am fantastic at driving. Just give me a driving game and I will drift in about 15 seconds, just to get used to the handling. Any game – not a problem. ( and then I wonder why all my friends hate me when we are playing racing games..)
I also have a talent for trading being able to convince people to buy anything for a much higher price; Yep, I was one of the rich guys on a private WoW server. :)
And also, I tend to progress the ladder in a guild/clan extremely fast. I remember that only after a month spent in a guild in WoW, I became a senior general – controlling almost half of the guild! :D
I feel relieved, now I now that I am not the only crazy person who loves to run behind enemy lines/ betray/ conserve ammo and items.
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I’m a good medic, but my real best-developed skill is exploring. I have a drive to uncover every piece of map, or to know/mark every dead-end when no map exists.
It makes me great at GTA/Open world games – I can totally put off the next mission so that I have time to know where all the respray and gun shops are. It makes me horribly susceptible to Minecraft – I never craft, but every crevice is an entrance to a space that *must* be made safe and fully explored. It makes me crappy at multiplayer shooters for a good number of games – until I know there’s nothing more to be explored, and then BAM! I’m standing behind you.
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I guess I’m good at seeing through visual noise. I was a bit of a dab hand at Space Giraffe when it came out, hanging around in the second place spot behind Jeff Minter for a while. It’s still the only game wherein I have purposely sought all of the achievements, and I’m quite proud of having acquired all of them.
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Me me me me me, me me me… Me!
Me me me me me. Me me me me me me me me me!!!!!!!!111
Me
Xxx
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I’m best at leading small squads in team based FPS games. BC2, TF2, etc(2) – I usually end up finding my place leading from the front and telling people how best to support me. Mainly this is because I have a good intuitive feel for how a map is going and so usually I’m always in the right place to intercept a push or to sneak into a vulnerable spot and making sure to bring a few people with me to make it work.
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I am excellent at the kamikaze run. I do not care in the slightest about my kill\death ratio and will gladly die over and over again taking one chunk out of a target at a time.
I’m also probably that pyro who had been ineffectually running around your setting fire to things your entire team chased after and gunned down while the rest of my team took out your lovingly placed sentries.
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TF2 taught me to be a competent sniper. I’m also reasonably good at raiding tactics in RTS games, burning down a couple buildings and then running like hell with minimal casualties.
Also, I’ve noticed that regardless of who wins, when I play an RTS the end-of-game scoreboard tells me I’ve almost always killed more units than anyone else. That must mean something.
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Patience. I have huge amounts of patience in-game.
I excel at patiently waiting for the AI to move whilst I lurk in the shadows waiting for them to disappear off down the corridor, at which point I can nip across the way and pinch whatever’s in the next room. I loved the Thief games for this, and someone once suggested that this tendency of mine could be due to extensive playing of Jet Set Willy in my younger years.
I also am very partial to exploring and making sure I’ve checked out every container before leaving an area.
Possibly the saddest thing though is that I’m very good at keeping ‘to do’ lists in games. In NWN I made extensive usage of the journal system, which would allow me to make notes and keep my own journal as I went on.
I wish more games allowed this! Keeping little scraps of paper is annoying, and having OneNote running in the background and having to alt-tab is kind of immersion-breaking.
Right, I’m off to straighten up my books, iron my shoelaces and arrange my socks in chromatic order.
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quickscoping.
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You know how everyone hate hate hated the helicopter physics in GTA: Vice City? And damn near exploded with rage on the game’s very first helicopter mission, where you have to fly an RC chopper through a multi-level construction site on a time limit to drop off multiple bombs while people try to shoot you and whack you with hammers?
I beat that mission on the first try, and I liked it so much that I reloaded and played it again. The chopper was my favorite vehicle through the whole game. I didn’t even realize people had trouble with them until long after I’d completed it.
I was actually disappointed when I got Mercenaries and the chopper control were much easier/more arcade-y.
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I’ma pretty good League of Legends player, although my main talent in it was shooting off Lux’s ulti, which for those who don’t know is a giant lazer of death. And I’m an insane last hitter with pretty much any character on the game, even if i’m hopeless everywhere else!
I’m also a competent medic in TF2, although sometimes my communication failed a bit.
Outside of PC games I was a pretty mean Pikachu on Smash Bros!
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If they ever make a ballistic combat MMO, I’m set for life. I think I played more Scorched Earth or Worms than most MMOs, and I actually consider myself an MMO player.
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My special talent is handgun kills. Even if there are other weapons I only use handguns.
Best instance of this was CoD Handguns Only Lugers vs Colts.
Small arms fire is just glorious.
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Crafting and tanking sire.
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I think the last thing I was ever more than depressingly mediocre or bad at was Quake 2 and before that space and flight sims. These days I pretty much just muddle through everything.
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Actually role-playing on an RP server.
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Ok that’s awesome. I always hate it that rp servers have very few actual rpers. It’s always frustrating.
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mass murdering my dwarves once all hope for my fortress is lost
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Mount & Blade Warband (online)! That game hit a special nerve for me the first time I got into a frag pit with horses archers and more importantly, melee weapons. I had a partial addiction to jedi knight 2/academy but it was missing something, and warband really took what started there and turned it into a huge addiction.
I’d say in general I find that I figure out games very, very quickly and reach a pretty above average level fast, but can’t ever seem to push up into the next level. So I sort of pop out ahead of the majority of people then watch as the rest of the world catches up and rides past.
The only games I feel like I really ever got good at were warcraft 2 via kali way back in the day, followed by a long, long period of not much interests in anything, right into warband.
Oh, and beach spikers on the game cube, damn that game was fun. My roomate and I at the time were basically like robots and were unbeatable in our local crowd.
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With dedicated practice, I have become rather good at Unreal Tournament 3, Wipeout HD, and the Scout in Team Fortress 2.
Games that I seem to be born to play were Soul Caliber 2 and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. If I actually spent more time playing those games I probably could have almost made it to the professional tier. I mean, I picked up those games and somehow I was automatically good, even against other people.
Also, when playing on the console, I am apparently very good at “screen-peeking” and analyzing information that way.
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@man-eater chimp , exactly my type, Lux’s ulti ftw. Lux is one of my main characters :)
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I killed Underwater Weapon without using Knights of the Round.
I am also unbeaten at Sensible Soccer 2 and SWOS.
You may touch me.
Oh yeah: once ranked top 5 in’t world in Laser Squad Nemesis.
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I like to think that I’m a pretty good Squad Leader/Tactician in FPS games. I can read the flow of battles quite well and (as long as they are listening) always put my team in the right place to make a big difference. Best examples I can think of are in the Battlefield games, particularly BC2 and 2142, and the skills are also transferable to TF2.
My tactical mind only seems to function in a “boots-on-the-ground” every unit still having sentinence way though, I am awful at RTS (though I do enjoy them).
Also back in the days of cart racing games I was KING of perfect aim with any straight-line firing weapon, you are power-sliding, I am powersliding and yet I shall still hit you with several bombs/shells!
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i’m particuarly good at dying in the first few seconds of a round but still managing to do more damage in those few seconds than the rest of my team can do in the remainder of the round. (quakelive clan arena).
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I’m an above par troll.
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I’m a tank. Be it a MMORPG, co-op shooter or single-player game (often RPG), I always seem to excel at soaking up damage and creating room for others.
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I find things. I often break things in unintentional, unexpected ways.
I’m very, very nosey, so often, if a game revolves around exploration then I’ll be able to find all of its secrets out in short order, without a guide. It’s what I do. And it’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to Guild Wars 2, since they’ve been teasing me with dynamic events which have hidden away activation points, which one would have to seek out. And I am a seeker, I seek things, and I find them.
I often get incredibly lost along the way, too, but I always find what I was looking for. If I don’t, then I tend to find something of equal importance and/or interest. I’m in a group of about 2% of all of gamerdom that isn’t in a rush to “Get things done!”
I often find that when I’m in a group with people, they rarely want to relax and poke things, they just want to get something done. I tend to instigate things. Be it breaking games or finding things, or goofing off. I make games inside of games. I find holes in world maps so I can get outside of instance borders and explore the outside, I approach things in ways a game wasn’t expecting, often with entertaining results.
In Guild Wars I was given the title of “He who finds the most epic, panoramic cul-de-sacs ever!”
That tends to hold up.
I suppose if I have a thing then that is probably my thing.
And given a game with dialogue, I’ll also try and probe around the edges of dialogue trees to find unusual responses, rather than just jumping upon the most obvious response. I find that being patient and doing this in role playing games that have consequences yields good results. Often, consequences which would make one feel horribly guilty can often be learned about through hints in the didalogue itself. You just have to pay attention.
I’m also the sort of person that stops to examine things, I like poking things, and I always appreciate the amount of effort that’s gone into designing a scene. I also like looking for little touches that are put there for the amusement of a developer but players rarely see.
Thankfully I’ve found a friend whom also does these things, so I’m no longer alone in my desire to discover, but I still find that most gamers couldn’t care less about this stuff.
One particularly great example is recently, in Champions Online, in the Canadian area, we found a bunch of VIPER who looked like they were laying out a battle plan. It had one guy drawing stuff in the snow. So my friend and I crept up and listened to their NPC conversation.
VIPER Soldier: See? Perfect!
VIPER Squad Leader: Idiot! That’s not how you draw a smiley face! Here, let me show you…
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Exploring. No one else has mentioned yet except you, but I think it’s an under appreciated skill. Takes a lot of patience, and appreciation of level design. I can’t count how often I’ve found myself staring outside the boundaries of a map because I found myself exploring off the beaten path. If a game clearly wants you to go in one direction, I will inevitably go the opposite just on principal. So I’m the guy that always finds the secret cave, the chest behind a tree, or some weird bit of scenery that would otherwise be unnoticed.
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Hrm… testing something.
Okay, yeah, it looks like the comments system is currently always eating the latest comment, which doesn’t show up until the next comment is posted. That’s interesting, and mildly confusing. It seems to be something to do with how the current comments system pages comments.
(Edited.)
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I noticed that too. It’s quite obnoxious.
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I’m pretty good at shooters, even though I was probably at my best with Quake 3.
Also, loved Half-Life and its mods: particularly Action Half-Life. Never had so much fun with a mod like in that one!
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I have a talent for sheer boobery in Op Flashpoint or Arma. Running over teammates, forgetting to bring the bazooka, facing the wrong way when lying ambush, accidents with grenades, that sort of thing.
Also, I never seem to die, I just get riddled in the legs and am left to crawl uselessly around after everyone.
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My talent would have to be keeping track of a space when the FOV is turned up to 120 degrees and I’m flying over walls and ceilings at 30m/sec. Must be all that Aliens vs Predator when I was a bit younger. It’s a shame that the sequels made the aliens slow and clunky in comparison.
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My talent is being absurdly good at destroying enemy vehicles, especially aircraft. Whether it be Halo, CoD, or most recently BC2.
During Modern Warfare days, harriers, attack choppers, apaches, gunships, etc would be destroyed before they could get a single kill.
In the better days with Bad Company 2, choppers drop within a minute of me catching sight of them.
It has gotten to the point where my friends celebrate if they beat me to killing a vehicle.
In other news:
I’ll stop being proud of myself now.
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I applaud you, I have a friend with a similar skill in shooting vehicles, he is an extremely handy chap to have around, “Hey can anyone deal with tha…..BOOM!….never mind!”
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I was usually on top of the damage meters in the WoW raids, no matter which class I played.
I’d be the one trying to figure out if hat A gives me 1% more DPS than hat B. Or if rotation A is 3% better than rotation B.
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The only time I remember being well ahead of other players was when the auction house first came to DDO, I made so much money off that thing since I had just come from WoW.
I’m pretty good at disrupting the enemy’s strategy in LoL. I’m bad at most other components of the game, but normally I can mess up formation, positioning, and skill shots. I’m pretty good bait for overextenders.
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I have no skill what-so-ever, but i have seen a friend of mine getting the high score for columns on the genesis on acid while talking with me for three hours …. (yes…something like 9,999,999 score).
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*edit*….apparently you just have to wait for it to appear :)
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I just remembered: In addition to my ability to play games for fun, I’m a good driver and pilot. My anti-vehicular skills are also top-notch–such as in Bad Company 2. Tank and chopper pilots run away screaming for their mommies and even dedicated snipers break out in a cold sweat. Nothing says “peek-a-boo” quite like a high-explosive rocket.
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I have landed a Gloucester Gladiator immaculately despite having both the rudder AND ELEVATOR cables severed.
I have also been seen to one-shot no-practice kill a Zombie with a hand grenade at maximum range on a perfectly flat HL2 test map by lobbing it up at 45 degrees from flippin’ miles away
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http://www.top4biz.com ..
http://www.top4biz.com .
http://www.top4biz.com .
thanks to visit ….. ………
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I’m the best at spending 3 16-hour days downloading, installing, re-installing, hacking together, and swearing at every mod ever for a given game, only to play it for half an hour, get bored and go do something else, and never come back to it. Oblivion is my speciality.
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I’m a pretty good secondary gunner in a vehicle. I’m fairly paranoid so I’m looking everywhere, always. I’ll totally make sure no one sneaks up on you to blow your vehicle up, or gets more than one rocket off at you. I’m usually playing an engineer class so will jump out and repair you too. I’m totally worth waiting for at spawn.
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I guess iam good in stealth. wtv the rpg ( although i only played age of conan in reasonable amounts, i hate wow) , I never get the hunger for the frag, or the kill, and just silently watch people.
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I am excellent at abusing trust. This has myriad gaming applications.
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You know, I didn’t really think I was great at anything until I got the Machina in TF2. I don’t know if it’s the rifle itself or what, but man, I’ve been pulling some absolutely insane scores since then. Before, I liked playing sniper, but I was never very good at it- but now I get more headshots than deaths.
Depending on the day, I’m also pretty good at spy, but that’s very much a random thing.
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I’m good at complaining.
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As my wife is wont to say to me when I’m playing a game and she’s watching “use your grenades!” It has become something of a running joke, such that a grenade is any useful consumable in a game that I am inclined to hoard.
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Choppers. I will master them in any and every game that features choppers.
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Helicopters.
I can’t fly planes very well, and I can’t man-shoot like the pros, but rotary-wing aircraft are my lady love, my creamy centre, my one saving grace in gaming.
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I’d have to say my virtual skill is definitely multitasking. On a computer I do on average 3-4 things at once while at home, but at work its crazies so I do more, but in real life I am incapable of multitasking.
For example I usually play a turn based strategy game while working on homework (Shogun 2 I love you), or I have tons of apps running. I usually have my tablet with me too while I work on my pc. That’s when it gets confusing and I start poking my desktop monitor.
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Mongol Light Cavalry Rush in AOE 2.
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My talent….Survival.
That guy who popped a heal at 2\600 Hp, that’s me. The guy who ducked outta the room BEFORE you stormed in and killed everyone in it, also me. If you’re running explosives in MW, I’m the guy with blast shield, I’m the engineer you can’t find after taking a rocket hit to your tank. When you yell at your screen “JUST DIE ALREADY!”, that’s me you’re yelling at. My twitch skills aren’t the best, but I can usually see danger a mile away and get the hell outta dodge whenever I need to.
I can also fly a helicopter in BF:BC2 (and land it too), from what I’ve observed that’s a rare talent…. Even more rare, I can keep the UAV alive for longer than 30 seconds. Also tanks, I still remember me and a mate carrying a game by using two tanks, whenever one of us took damage he just reversed and the other guy rolled in front so we could patch up. Those 2 tanks lived for an entire game, fairly rare for armor in a Battlefield game.
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I guess I would say I’m a good adapter. I can play almost any kind of game well…. not the best or amazing but I am a good all around gamer and I pick up new controls and game styles very quickly…
Ooohh… I just thought of a more applicable trait. I am the master of backloggery :)
I have sooooo many games that I haven’t finished it actually makes me sad. I mean seriously I have officially beaten around 2% of the games that I own. I do own a ridiculous amount of games for all platforms but that doesn’t hide the fact that I just cannot beat games. I think its some kind of psychological issue, I don’t want to finish the game because then the initial experience is over… Like if I don’t beat the game then I’m in a perpetual honeymoon. It actually really bothers me sometimes, but then I just find another game and start playing that :)
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Minesweeping in Planetside. I have a preternatural ability to sense mines anywhere and run directly into them, thus saving my squadmates from having to. My preferred minesweeping vehicles has always been the Magrider.
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Optimizing.
I hate 95% of all new games I play, but when a special one comes along I sit down and pour ravenously over guides, forums, calculators etc until I discover the optimum skill/item/character combination/build order.
I then proceed to apply my mediocre skills at actually executing game mechanics with my supernatural ability to give myself a headstart through research, to achieve overall above average performance compared to others in the game.
Examples include:
League of Legends, Starcraft II, Guild Wars, Magic: The Gathering, Diablo series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate series
But I do this in non-game areas as well because apparently I have OCD:
PC building, PC security and perhaps unsurprisingly, my day job as a scientist :p
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Tags (bananas, glue gun, sleeping grenades, etc.) in No One Lives Forever 2 multiplayer.
Who cares about killing when you’ve got bananas?
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The Double-Silent Takedown. Peek behind a door with two guards in it? Distract one? Hell no. Whip out that silenced pistol, take the first one down and nail the other one in the head while he’s flipping out. I actually got pretty good at this with the silenced pistol and the basic grunts in Deus Ex.
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I am the guy that uses all the wrong weapons for the job and does well. I am “That Guy” that sprints up and bayonets a group of the enemy in Project Reality.
Shotguns and pistols and such are always my favourites. I’m very aggressive and will get right up in your face with my shotgun, whilst quietly sobbing to myself that I am alone, as nobody seems willing to run up with me quite as fast.
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Tanking for me. I’m great at lumbering in there, attracting lots of attention, and I enjoy being heavily armored. Weirdly, I’m very conflict-averse in real life; I’m sure there’s something psychological in that dichotomy.
The flip side of this is that I’m terrible at subtlety. Sneaking missions/games are not my forte.
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I have a ballistic calculator in my brain. I can hit sideways moving targets on any elevation, at long ranges, on most milsims, compensating even for ping. Fuck yeah.
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I made billions station trading in EVE Online. Quit with 14b in cash/assets. Came back, had 1.5b, grew it to 7b in a couple of months.
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I’m top 10 in the world at virtually painting virtual cars on Forza motorsport.
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I’m good at sneakyness in games. When playing FPS games, I love to sneak up to people, breath down their neck and kill them (preferably with the most stupid weapon of the game). I don’t care about kill/death ratios, I prefer to have the most fun. Knifes, pistol whips and fists are all commonly used by me. Also, if there are weapons like the tripmines of Half-life in a game, you can be sure they are placed in the most unexpecting places. But the most fond memories I have of the TNT sticks in Outlaws, which you could drop while running, and then switching to knives. Good times.
Somewhat similar, I’m good at suprising people in games. Not necessary in the most positive way, but always suprising. I’ll be the one using the least used weapons in an FPS, creating weird armies in RTS’s or mastering a useless skill or collecting useless things in an MMO. Just because :)
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I beat Super Meat Boy to 100% completion twice. (both Xbox and PC) That means A+ grades on all levels, dark and light worlds, and all of the bandages. Also, I just got to world 8 (second to last) in SpaceChem, which I consider to be an achievement. Only two other people on my friends list made it that far.
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TF2 heavy before I quit around the 3rd batch of class updates.. Nothing gives a feeling of godlike power like an epic minigun killstreak “RUUUN!!!! RUN!!!! AH HA HA HA!!”
After that I became obsessed with CoD4 multiplayer. Pipeline was my muse and the mp5 was my instrument. I would still play but its become increasingly hard to find good low ping servers : (
Other than that I’m a fairly average RTS player and racing games outside of the burnout franchise put me to sleep.
I know its not PC but at one point I could finish resident evil 2 in 2 hours with a pistol and no healing items.
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My game I mastered the most thoroughly was Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I’ve never lost a game vs. a human opponent. Mostly, this was due to discovering how to use some unit editing software. I wouldn’t ever change anything (that would be cheating), but it did show me, in hard numbers, how much damage things did vs other things. I memorized it, crunched numbers, and came up with some fun tactics. I recall being very proud of myself, but to be fair I was a fairly rubbish sort of child and had few things to be proud of.
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Desert Combat. Rocket soldier. El Alamein. M1 or T-72:
http://www.genadmission.com/files/DCwin.jpg
Been a long time, though.
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