4 ms·

My Counterstrike rank was always inversely correlated with my general happiness.

nickpeterson 3y ago
I remember being a young teenager (25 years ago now, yikes) playing counter strike and StarCraft all the time and being pretty good at both. I started playing with others who were in really good leagues (back then it was called cal-i for cs, not sure what exists now), and I realized the level of dedication and time necessary to compete at that level and I basically gave it up. Once you start thinking, “becoming better at this is going to take 6-10 hours of my life everyday” I checked out. In hindsight, I wish I had known it sooner.
- smogcutter 3y ago
  “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy
- ycombinete 3y ago
  I had the exact same experience, when I went to a chess club for the first time. I realised that to keep pace with those guys I’d have to spend more time than I was willing to on getting better. Especially with MMR based systems. No matter how good you get your win/loss ratio will end up around 50%. So you have to ask yourself why you need to keep getting better. To me It’s really about finding a level of “good” that you can maintain comfortably, while maintaining interest. And also realise that games aren’t vocations. It’s fine to play a game until you stop having fun, then stop playing the game.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    I play chess at a nearby place and they just split people into self selected newbie/intermediate/advanced groups. There is just no limit to how much time you can spend training in chess is the thing, applied to most games really. I used to be more into it during the pandemic but now I just play casually without practicing everyday, which is fun enough for me.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Those sorts of guys have ruined all the games I grew up with. I can’t just casually play anymore. It doesn’t exist. Every lobby left is a sweatfest from people who have been playing the game nonstop since it came out 10-20 years ago sometimes. You have to swing vine from vine to whatever crap game is currently popular to get a chance at pwning noobs again.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    There's an easy fix for this one! AI literally made game hacks undetectable. It's never been easier to cheat on videogames in a way that poses literally zero risk of getting banned. Here's an example of a tool that has made my "The Finals" experience about 10000% better: https://github.com/Babyhamsta/Aimmy https://github.com/Babyhamsta/Aimmy I'm having fun with my buddies, leasiurly talking on discord while yet another diamond sweat-lord who tries to gank me gets destroyed. Also related, but botting on games like runescape has made my desire to play MMORPG's go way up too. Now I too can play the fun end game content without wasting my damn life on it.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Botting honestly put people out of work. I met someone from brazil who as a kid used to sell runescape gp to americans. He made some money in a world where there wasn’t much else opportunity to do so at that age.
      - Der_Einzige 3y ago
        The third worlders doing this themselves often bot or run bot farms.
    - jdhendrickson 3y ago
      you shouldn't be proud of this. people like you ruin games.
      - dgfitz 3y ago
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  I played against hardcore gamers and didn't bother. They may have cold head, but I have fun. I once though about playing games with cold head, but the idea is so ridiculous it didn't fly at all.

I remember being a young teenager (25 years ago now, yikes) playing counter strike and StarCraft all the time and being pretty good at both. I started playing with others who were in really good leagues (back then it was called cal-i for cs, not sure what exists now), and I realized the level of dedication and time necessary to compete at that level and I basically gave it up. Once you start thinking, “becoming better at this is going to take 6-10 hours of my life everyday” I checked out. In hindsight, I wish I had known it sooner.

smogcutter 3y ago
“The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy
ycombinete 3y ago
I had the exact same experience, when I went to a chess club for the first time. I realised that to keep pace with those guys I’d have to spend more time than I was willing to on getting better. Especially with MMR based systems. No matter how good you get your win/loss ratio will end up around 50%. So you have to ask yourself why you need to keep getting better. To me It’s really about finding a level of “good” that you can maintain comfortably, while maintaining interest. And also realise that games aren’t vocations. It’s fine to play a game until you stop having fun, then stop playing the game.
- kelipso 3y ago
  I play chess at a nearby place and they just split people into self selected newbie/intermediate/advanced groups. There is just no limit to how much time you can spend training in chess is the thing, applied to most games really. I used to be more into it during the pandemic but now I just play casually without practicing everyday, which is fun enough for me.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Those sorts of guys have ruined all the games I grew up with. I can’t just casually play anymore. It doesn’t exist. Every lobby left is a sweatfest from people who have been playing the game nonstop since it came out 10-20 years ago sometimes. You have to swing vine from vine to whatever crap game is currently popular to get a chance at pwning noobs again.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  There's an easy fix for this one! AI literally made game hacks undetectable. It's never been easier to cheat on videogames in a way that poses literally zero risk of getting banned. Here's an example of a tool that has made my "The Finals" experience about 10000% better: https://github.com/Babyhamsta/Aimmy https://github.com/Babyhamsta/Aimmy I'm having fun with my buddies, leasiurly talking on discord while yet another diamond sweat-lord who tries to gank me gets destroyed. Also related, but botting on games like runescape has made my desire to play MMORPG's go way up too. Now I too can play the fun end game content without wasting my damn life on it.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Botting honestly put people out of work. I met someone from brazil who as a kid used to sell runescape gp to americans. He made some money in a world where there wasn’t much else opportunity to do so at that age.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      The third worlders doing this themselves often bot or run bot farms.
  - jdhendrickson 3y ago
    you shouldn't be proud of this. people like you ruin games.
    - dgfitz 3y ago
GoblinSlayer 3y ago
I played against hardcore gamers and didn't bother. They may have cold head, but I have fun. I once though about playing games with cold head, but the idea is so ridiculous it didn't fly at all.