How do you define player skill?

In a totally unrelated thread, someone brought up a point I thought was intriguing related to just how one measures "skill" in a video game, and what types of features should be involved. For example, is it skill that makes someone better at a game with twitchy/reflex-related gameplay and if so, how important of a factor is that? What about general game knowledge and then figuring out ways to leverage that uniquely? Is it doing things no one else can do? Is it min/maxing?

How do you define what makes a player "skilled" at playing City of Heroes? Further, do you think it is easier to spot someone playing well or poorly, and how can you tell the difference between doing something good accidentally from doing it purposefully?

Lastly, is skill important? Necessary? Does it even exist as a factor in this game at all?

I know this post amounts to nothing more than a bunch of questions, but I am legitimately curious about differing viewpoints on this.

For me, I identify skill most easily by seeing what people are NOT doing. If you aren't dying, if you aren't pulling extra groups, if you aren't requiring assistance to do things I couldn't do alone... etc.

Likewise, I think it is far easier to spot a bad player than a good one. For me, I can often tell by chat alone if a Trial or TF is going to go smoothly or not, irrespective of the ATs or powers that my teammates have. That is mainly due to certain hallmarks I have learned to identify in my years in the City of bad players. Sometimes, but far from always, a character name can tip me off that the player is likely no good. Am I judgemental? Probably, but when you have been proved right as many times as I have, you start to trust your gut. But, honestly, that is pretty far afield of the topic at hand.

I think that, for me, there is a minimum threshold of skill, above which, I won't really pay attention to what you are doing since things should be going smoothly, so I don't figure I need to. Below that threshold? Well, I will definitely notice. But as to define that line, and what exactly consitutes skillful gameplay versus skill-less gameplay? I couldn't begin to explain it. (Perhaps that's what this thread could help me to do!)

Related, I have sometimes been complimented for "playing well" and I am often baffled as to what specifically I was doing that caused such a comment. Is it that I have played my main for close to 5 years and no pretty much how every encounter will go at a glance without really thinking about it and play accordingly? Well, how can the other play see that? I am often left scratching my head... and so I ask them... to mixed results.

Man, I think I need to go to sleep I am tangenting like crazy with no clear point to this post.

Prolly some food for further discussion here though.

Situational awareness and appropriate power usage.

I don't know if I'd necessarily throw it under "skill" so much as experience, but - well, let me take two common complaints that come up, Knockback and "Immobs are useless on ice patch."

I see people complaining about knockback (not NPC, such as Phantasm, generated, but player generated) as either oversensitive to not getting *every* kill, or playing with someone who hasn't bothered to learn how to use their powers with other players. AOE KB? Don't jump in alongside the tank and fire it off, duh. Help position/concentrate the enemies, then concentrate on the 1-2 you're attacking. You KB, you kill it.

Somewhat like Thirty-Seven's comment, I've actually gotten (positive) comments on my KB use, and to me it's a "Er, why are you complementing me on that?" moment when it happens. It'd be like going to dinner and being complemented for not urinating in the salad.

Frostbite - don't use it on ice slick. The two don't work together. Use it to hold off a second mob, or use ice slick to while keeping the first together.

While I'm thinking of AOE immobs, I'll say they were a huge indicator of someone (no longer in game) I considered, even years ago, to be a horrible player. They basically HAD to be the center of attention and didn't care what anyone else was doing. Yes, they spammed the AOE immobs on ice slick and earthquake. We had a great Dark/Dark tankfender (yes, even on SOs) who'd toggle-pull to Tar Patch, at which point everyone would go to town.... unless this guy was on the team, since he'd run in right after and AOE immob all the enemies in a long, strung-out line. Which as newbie mistakes, ok, fine. Once in a while getting overeager, ok. People can deal with that.

What marked him off as a horrible player (aside from being rather a jerk) was that *he never changed.* He KNEW people were getting annoyed at him. He had multiple requests to wait, or use powers differently, but he'd disrupt entire teams.

At the same time, we had another player who was making mistakes. I don't consider him a bad player, because he *learned* and asked questions. He became a decent player - I wouldn't consider him "the go to guy" for stuff, but he was always welcome on the team because he'd play *with* everyone, as opposed to playing thoughtlessly. He'd ask questions. He'd at least give things an honest *try.*

When the first player left the SG and game, he wasn't missed. When the second no longer played, he was.

(No, neither are me.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

City of Heroes skill, in my view, is just as much about your goals as your results. I don't find it to be terribly challenging to ensure that things go smoothly. Foolproof strategies for that, such as letting the tank herd, have become punchlines. If you get a little crazy you may fall flat from time to time but the important thing is that you'll have learned something. If you're never seeing anything new, what's the point?

I don't usually tell someone they've impressed me with their general skillfulness, but I frequently appreciate the ambition of teammates. Sometimes you can just tell that someone is fidgeting around as they are because they're working out whether their cone will hit both of the bosses in the spawn and if not, what then?

How about when the team rounds a corner and suddenly everyone just stops. It's worse than we expected. Are we all going to die? Nobody knows. After a pregnant pause people begin doing what they do best. Someone hits build up, one of the spawns starts glowing from the impending wormhole, the meleers descend like a thin swarm of thick locusts, the smell of debuffs fills the air and what seems like an hour but was actually thirty seconds later our heroes (or villains) have emerged victorious without a word said between them. Nobody mention that we tried the same thing last mission and had to repair the blaster with duct tape!

That's the kind of skill that I like to see, and fortunately the kind that I do see all the time.

If the player isn't actively pissing me off, then the player is good enough for me. This game ain't rocket surgery.

The ability to play a certain combo like a FOTM build. The indicator is when someone on the team says something to the tune of "Wow, you're This/This on a That? Nice work!" I've seen an FF/AR Defender blast away like a champion; a Mind/Emp solo an entire spawn; a TA/DP swap between weapons like some kind of crazy Hawkeye Fury...

I consider a player skilled when they've taken their chosen power pools and owned them.

skill is the ability to achieve your goals with minimal frustration and effort

Skill is very questionable in any kind of video game and this one is no exception. The thing with CoH is it doesn't require a lot of reflexes or hand eye coordination to give a rewarding play experience. So where does skill come in? To me Skill for Coh is in timing and positioning, and to some extent how you min/max your build using SO,IO or HO.

Have you ever seen or been:
A Dark Melee character that consistently hits 2-3 enemies with Shadow Maul?
A Stalker that times an AS to kill a Paragon Protector before they hit their tier 9?
A Dom/Cont/Tank/Brute that keeps that second or third mob busy while the team is working on the first?
A Ranged character that can perfectly pull troublesome groups consistently?
Ever used a god mode power and drop the last enemy just as you crash?

those are all shows of skill.

Timing and positioning more than anything else show skill in CoH.

From best to works 1 equals very good, 10 not so much

1) Can lead a league on a very complicated task even if some are new to the task, or build a league that can accomplish an extremely difficult task. ( Cathedral of Pain, Underground Trial, Master of ___________ Badge run ) consistently

2) Can lead teams to accomplish difficult tasks ( Master of _______ TF )

3) Can build and run a difficult character type ( difficult for them, a melee player running a squishy, etc.) and do it extremely well, hitting optimal performance. (Optimal means understanding what the character can do and milking it for all it's worth)

4) Can build and run a archetype they are comfortable with hitting optimal performance.

5) Can join a new TF, Trial, or Master Badge run (that they have never been on before) and help the league/team succeed in the goal by following directions.

6) Be a useful member of a team/League

7) Be on a team or league and not do anything that makes the situation worse. (pulling extra spawns the team is not ready for, using knockback to destroy the killbox setup the team is going for, etc.

8) Only once in a while doing something that does nothing to help. ("oops, I think i just pulled that spawn...")

9) Kind of listen to what the team is trying to do, but sort of doing what you want, and creating almost as much chaos as help you bring to the team.

10 ) Leeeeeroy Jenkins!

Knowledge is the meat of having skill, and practice is the skeleton.

However, panic is the soul. You can always tell a truly skilled player by how he handles the terrifying "OH CRAP!" moments in the game.

I -try- not to judge other player's skill, I focus on judging my own skill because ultimately that is all that matters to me. I do the best i can,I follow all the leaders instructions I dismiss my pets I ask questions, I read the wiki. I don't show up to a MoM Trial with red SOs! Most of all I don't freaking auto lock my healing aura! I Really could go on and on.. Last Night doing a Magi run I must have face planted 5 times.. I really am not sure what was eating me but you can count on the fact I will be looking that up!

All that is not to say I don't judge players at all..but I look more at attitudes and behavior, Like the guy that blasts everything away from me as my tanker Brute is taunting or that guy Bill spoke of that AoE Immb everything to me that is a issue of consideration not skill.

When I played WoW I loved to play Hunters and I was darn good at it, and it can be an amazing class capable of amazing things.. But at some point some where some group decided that all Hunters were "skillless" noobs and the class earned the name Huntard and you were a Huntard no matter how awesome you were.

EDIT: Opps forgot a emote in all that, It was said with a happy smile I was in no way attacking anyone else

How much urine is in my salad.

I find skill in CoH to be extremely easy to spot, but fairly hard to put in words. The key part would be not to deal in absolutes.

For example, a skilled player can and will use movement and positioning efficiently, but that doesn't mean someone jumping randomly is skilled.

Sticking to specific roles and rigid team compositions generally shows limited ability, but this doesn't necessarily imply someone doing things differently for the sake of being different is a good player.

And so on. I feel it's more about a million of individual things that a few overarching ones. Although of course, there are showstoppers. Nobody who says "we need [specific powerset or AT]" seriously is truly good at the game.

Build composition or social abilities don't factor into game skill to me, they're another category entirely.

Pwning noobs in PvP.

One big sign of a bad player is inability to follow directions.

What makes for a skilled player? this question should be pondered by those far wiser than myself, but poor players are easy to spot: they often choose some of the most annoying powersets in the game and completely go Section Eight with them, every time they are on a team. For this reason my melee-ers solo 8/10ths of the time. If I am trying to keep squishies alive, Hurricane is the last damn thing I want to see.

I was trying to level one of my Brutes during the recent double-xp weekend and I got so tired of grouping the NPCs around me, going to town and suddenly *BAM* every one of my targets was suddenly hurled twenty feet away, that I left after two missions. I'm not even sure who was using what power that caused the +KB, it was just awful.

Skills = The ability to mash buttons. The faster you mash the more skilled you are.

Yes all my skills are located in my pointer finger...