Exactly (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Wednesday, June 10, 2015, 15:26 (3694 days ago) @ Kermit

I played most of my time in Iron Banner as a random. I lost more than I won, but I rarely had more than two medallions, maybe twice reaching the limit of 5. When I played with more than one or two DBO friends we didn't do much better, maybe flipping the ratio of win/losses, but one thing was certain, I would very nearly be shut down, completely unable to compete. I did better as a random, and I'm sad to say that playing as a random was more satisfying. Most of my online friends are better than me. That's just how it is.

When I play w/ DBO it seems I get a lower kdr, but I'd rather play with people who know what they're doing and can communicate with me instead of randoms. I"m getting better, but many of the DBO PS4 crew are better than I.

Well, there you go. I never said I knew what I was doing.

A few other points:

• I probably do better when I can concentrate.
  
• Communication can be distracting especially if, like me, your primary sense modality is aural.
  
• Only a fraction of the communication I've experienced while playing with a full fireteam of friends has been strategic.

I had a game last week where I actually whined about this. I nearly took off to play solo, because it felt so wrong.

Normally, I'm fine with the mix of strategery and gossip that happens when a group of DBOers (or really, anyone who isn't super-competitive) gets together to play. That night, though, NONE of the conversation was about the game, and I learned something pretty important about my playstyle - my situational awareness drops dramatically when I'm playing with teammates. I do okay keeping track of the enemy when I'm playing alone, and I listen well when teammates are calling out positions or supers or sneaky control-point-stealers or whatever... but when I'm playing with friends who are NOT calling things out, I die to crossfire MUCH more often. After two horrible games of this (we won both of them; nobody was affected except me) I said I was leaving, because I simply couldn't switch my mind to single-player mode when I had teammates that were talking to me. They agreed to move the conversation to a more game-based one... and the problem went away. (We continued to win... but my contribution went from 6-15 to 15-10 or whatever.)

It was clearly MY problem - but I'd never realized before how much I let my playstyle change when I'm playing with friends vs alone. (I think partly it's my inability to filter out talk when I'm trying to concentrate - it's a big part of why I don't hang out on IRC channels any more, either. ;) )