Why we can't have nice things. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 12, 2015, 16:22 (3355 days ago) @ Earendil

I'm going to play devil's advocate here, just for the sake of argument. Also because my personal anecdata refutes some of yours.

I see a couple things that aren't happening to him that happen to be consistently.

1. He gets a grenade thrown at him what? twice? I die to grenades more than twice in a game, which doesn't count the dozens that are thrown and don't kill.

He's spending most of his time doing the following things: 1) moving. He's always moving, always looking for the next enemy. He rarely camps for more than two kills before changing position. It's highly effective, and I'll wager that more than a few grenades are thrown at places he recently abandoned over the course of the game. 2) attacking enemies en route to a control point, rather than waiting for them to attack the point directly. This is also tremendously effective. He gets the drop on them almost every time, and most of these enemies are probably saving grenades to throw at the control points rather than at some solo guy.

2. The enemy can't snipe worth beans.

Possibly true, but he's also really, really good at sniping. I know I'm a pretty good sniper, and I can't get the quickscope headshots this guy is getting. That being said, in most of my games, I feel like I encounter enemy snipers who are this bad in almost every game. It didn't seem special that he wins the sniper duels, so much as that he's quick-scoping the guys who are between him and the enemy snipers.

3. He gets supered all of once. once. I'm lucky if I go a game, a winning game where I crush the enemy and not get arc bladed twice.

As with #1, most people in control use their supers at the control points. Since he's using choke points rather than control points as his hunting ground (and moving a lot), few people are likely to burn supers in those situations just to kill the one guy. Also... his teammates are terrible, so it's likely the enemy is supering 3 or 4 of them at a time all over the place. When you know you're gonna land a Triple-Down, why burn a super for that one good guy?

4. He is rarely flanked. For some reason the enemy comes at him head on for the entire game. The one(?) time he's flanked he dies. I'll admit he made good use of the proximity grenade twice, but again, twice doesn't cover the number of times the enemy refuses to line up for me.

Again, he's rarely flanked because he moves so often. He's almost never waiting for the enemy to come to him, but is aggressively advancing his position, meaning he picks the point of engagement, which is a huge advantage. It's very hard to flank a moving target. Also, if you watch his radar as he plays, he's definitely moving towards whoever is closest (and falling back if there are people on opposite sides), which means he's usually taking any potential flanker head-on.

5. He couldn't do this with the DBO crew. In other words his team mates helped him out by sucking. The game would have been over at 30 kills if his team mates had been doing anything. With the DBO crew playing with him he'd be lucky to get 20 before the game cap of 20K :)

I agree. Couldn't do this with my regular group of friends either. I have one friend who routinely gets 7+ K/D ratios, but he laments playing with us because he rarely breaks 10 kills during a game. Having a team full of great players means everyone gets mediocre point totals. I had one game where my team got a 3 cap and we won 20k-4k, and no one on our team had above 3500 points.

Not to dismiss his skill. Skill was there, and I realize he probably doesn't get 70 kills routinely, but instead is a good player that through a confluence of luck, team mates, enemies, maps, and heavy ammo managed a game I probably never will. The thought that occured to me half way through and seem to apply, is that the game plays like his TrueSkill ranking was reset and he was given noobs to play with and against. I'm a damn good soccer player when the 12 year olds let me play with them.

Yeah, he's really good, and really smart in his play.

Also, that use of dropped heavy ammo the entire game? People like him are why we can't have nice things.

Exactly. And I'm glad for it. So OP.