For example, when I'd play with Zero, I usually knew what he was going to do in most situations. I knew Squid's proclivities. You know where they are heading and their game plan, which allows you to help the team in a few ways, even if you're not as good. You can cover them, or do a noble self sacrifice.

If you know Squid is hiding with Pocket Infinity around a corner, and one guy is there, you can run in and do a 1 for 1 life trade as a split second decision. You know you'll get revived and Squid will melt the other two players who will be called to the area.

Also, announcing your intentions for that round as soon as it starts and not deviating also helps. If you aren't with the group, they need to know where you are and what you're doing. If they know you, they can guess what will happen as well and be prepared for it.

Being with good players can only do so much. It's a completely different mindset you have to be in for Trials. It's one I don't find particularly fun, so on the occasions I've played since TTK I've made it a point to not use it and told my team beforehand that I was playing to have fun and less to be good for Trials. PLEAD ALL YOU WANT, CHAPPY, NOT SWAPPING MY PLAY.

And I even played with Zero and Squid, two very good players, and yet I've never come close to getting to the lighthouse.

I thought we got to 8-1, with one of the losses being a 5-4 capture point choke?

Anyway, I just thought I'd weigh in on this, because it's taken me a really long time to get where I am in terms of "video game skill". I never had a video game system growing up, so my exposure to games was mostly from being at friends houses, and playing GoldenEye/Perfect Dark. I was absolutely awful and useless at both those games, and spent most of the time either going for melee kills or blowing myself up with proximity mines. It wasn't until I played Halo 1 for the first time (and experienced an Xbox controller) that I could finally envision a path to get better.

But it still took forever. I was in the middle of the pack in my group of friends when it came to LAN parties, so I focused on strategy. I also started to develop instincts and "moves", and started to move to the top of the group in the crazy 16 player FFA games we would play on Chill Out, just purely by throwing myself into the nearest battle and trying to pull off impossible sequences of kills.

When Halo 2 came out, I struggled playing the normal 4v4 slayer matches. It was so different from what we did in Halo 1, but I started to figure it out and held my own with my friends. I started to play more without them, especially once I went to college, and got into the Team Hardcore playlist and MLG (although was never a part of that community). I would play for hours, just hoping for an evenly skilled match where no one quit. This continued into Halo 3, playing by myself in the MLG playlist, learning to play the support role for anonymous players. Skill was important, but even more important was not doing dumb things that screwed your team over, and even more important than that was being in the right place at the right time to finish a teammates kill, or finish off a flag cap.

In the ever-infrequent LAN parties with my friends, I was now the best. When we made teams it was me against the next few best players. This continued into Halo: Reach, where I spent an embarrassing amount of free time my first 2 years of grad school playing Team Arena, getting high level Onyx percentiles playing by myself. Why? It was fun, and I was good at it.

Turns out all that practice translated to Destiny pretty well. When I look back at all that time I spent though...not much point in speculating, but certainly I could have accomplished other things. Anyway, I try to enjoy the competition for competition's sake these days. It's fun to test yourself, but it's dangerous to have your self worth caught up your accomplishments as an player.

So, that's the history that has gotten me to the Lighthouse quite a few a times (not to mention the guys I've gone with). Just thought I'd try to put into perspective the unseen background of videos like this. Of course, it's also possible that Korny & co. are just naturally good at video games.

...how crappy this thread makes me feel?

Does he have any idea on how much this makes me want to play trials now?

Happy Birthday, Cody!