How do you define player skill?

I'm gathering that Thirty-Seven is talking about the character being PLed, the character sitting by the door while the other individual does all the work.

It takes no observable skill to door sit and absorb xp, I think that was his meaning.

I'd define skill as knowledge and the ability to use it effectively.

Someone who understands their own character and the situation well enough to do the right things at the right time is skillful. Skill is a learned attribute.

It's easy to pick out bad players. Those who don't know their own powers, who ignore directions, who have, for some reason or another either failed to contribute or are actively destructive to the team. Sometimes they're just novices and in the right environment they can learn a lot from being with skilled players. Sometimes they're fools who don't want to learn, even when given clear and friendly guidance on how to play better. Sometimes they're just jerks who get their kicks making others unhappy.

Most players are suitably skillful in most situations. With the exception of a few encounters, this game just isn't that hard.

Great players are harder to pick out because there are a lot of different ways to be great, and not all of them are obviously manifest the way that gross ineptitude is. Being truly great generally means that you've gotten past the point of desperate need for attention.

Great team/league leader?
Have lots of badges?
Know lots of ATs/powersets/builds inside-out?
Can solo hard targets/TFs/max difficulty maps?
Considered an authority on ____?

You could call any of these a sign of exceptional skill.

Depends on the game. This probably won't be popular, but I have a hard time saying anyone is "skilled" at this type of game. With MMOs there's pre-planned numbers in place that determine how good or bad your character is at doing something, rather than direct commands from the player. Whereas with racing games, or FPSs most of your success or failure is based on your own attributes and talents; how good your aim is, how fast your reaction time is, etc.

What determines a good or bad player (for me) in MMOs, is knowledge and understanding of the game. Knowing the best gear/enhancement combos, and understanding how those all affect your character's powers, having your entire fight planned out based on what/who you're fighting, understanding what needs to be done to keep up with the ever changing world due to updates and balance re-works, etc. Those are things I feel are more based on a player's understanding of the game, and that understanding comes through experience and learning from others who've already figured it out. Not necessarily through some natural gift/talent (outside of general intelligence maybe).

And for some insight, my K/D Ratio in Halo is , I have a slightly-above-average iRating in iRacing, and I'm no where near the top of the world records in Forza. So my post isn't from someone who fancies himself God's gift to gaming.

By their ability to learn from and react to different situations.

If you react to different situations correctly, you'll never be great. With a good build you can be, well, good, but when that build needs different tactics you won't pull it off because you don't know how to react to that situation.

If you can't learn from different situations, you will never react correctly under those circumstances that took place.

This goes above and beyond observing combat situations like "gee, my defense is getting debuffed, maybe I should pop an insp!". It goes to planning your builds (I don't use Brawl much, maybe I shouldn't slot it), planning your tactics (pulling when too many spawns are grouped together) and team play (locking stuff in as opposed to out of debuff patches).

Most people aren't great at something they just picked up, but they can usually learn.

Well I can try to give a PvP perspective on everything.

Fightclub PvP is really similar to PvE in general, because the skill mostly comes from the build. The best players in PvE, the ones who can do amazing things that take a lot of work and effort, are the min/maxers of the game. They are the people who can squeeze a little more defense or offense in a build to achieve those goals.

The same is for fightclub PvP, the Min/Maxers are the ones who are going to win. The skill is in making the build, and perfecting it, knowing the mechanics of powers and similar things.

In team PvP, it's less the build and more the player. Seeing attacks before they're coming, watching your buff bar, tabbing through targets quickly, timing your attacks to hit the target all at once, evading and breaking LoS effectively, inspiration management. I could go on and on. If it were just about the build, like it were in PvE or Fightclub, it wouldn't take that long to get to the top.



Since this was asked by someone who doesn't PvP, and pretty much everyone here is talking about PvE, I can tell you that the skill is mostly from the build. There's a difference between good and bad players, but the gap is not that big. There's knowing powers, and mechanics etc, but that's all min/max again. It's the build and the knowledge the player knows in CoH, not so much skill.



That's why some people don't share their top preforming builds on the forums. If someone else gets a hold of that build, they'll be able to do what they do.

The reason I'm 100% comfortable posting my PvP builds nowadays is because I know it's not the build at all. It's the player, if they're going to be better than me, they don't need my build. If they're worse than me, they're still going to be worse than me.


How would I define skill? There's quick reflexes + predicting attacks + many other things in PvP.

In PvE, the skill is moreso knowing things. It's less skill and more knowledge with PvE.


You can get really good at CoH by reading redtomax + forums + spending times on mids. I would call that knowledge rather than skill.

A "skilled player" is someone with experience and knowledge of the game. How "good" those skills are, seem to be quite subjective as seen in the varied responses in this thread.

A "good player" is also subjective. I would say in a multiplayer game, a "good player" is one who can communicate and work effectively in a team environment.

Being skilled, does not mean you are good. You may know the best way to take down an AV, but if you get mad at others and grief and quit teams, instead of communicating such ways to others, you aren't very useful yourself. You're just a skilled jerk.

A skilled player is some one who knows what to do, when to do it, when NOT to do it, how to improvise when things go wrong, and when to run like hell. But a person can be a skilled player, but a terrible team mate. Part of being 'skilled' is knowing how to interact with the people around you, and not just forsaking everyone around you.

Can one be both a good and bad player?
I was dual boxing in an xp itf with my 50s, a corr & a brute. I dont say that i dbox.
Somehow my brute got on the bad side of the leader and got worse when my brute pulled rom & req *before* he typed to destroy pc, then hit rom & req. When rom & req came down, some players complained with colorful invectives, but my brute simply taunted r/r and held agro. Some lowbies were defeated by the phalanx, but not by rom or req.
Meanwhile my corr was buffing, tp'ing downed mates to safety, giving wakies, etc.
At the end of the itf, leader told my corr- you're a good player. Can I gfriend you?
No such request on my brute.

I haven't read many posts in the thread but I'll offer my opinion on the matter of skill in an MMO:


They don't require much. They do however require a knowledge and understanding of the various systems at play and gameplay mechanics to best take advantage of all of the mathematics going on behind the scenes. If you want to call that skill, then it's all just an argument of semantics.

Although there are ATs and powersets that require a certain degree of skill. Controllers being able to quickly identify and remove specific threats could be considered skillful play. SS/FA brutes running into a group and smashing everything... not so much.

And I won't comment on PVP because I never got involved with it in CoH and well... you know.

Skill in this game means that you're smart enough to realize that players are a poor judge of another player's skill level, and probably rate themselves higher than others would.

It might also be not only knowing what to do in a given situation, but actually doing it when it matters.

Realistic goals and knowing how the game mechanics work would also probably fit in there.

Everything else is just one player's preference on how to play, and no preference is good or bad.

I always felt that skill in video games was always more about intuition and instincts than being able to run things at the highest level. Anything is easy with practice I prefer to test my skill by noticing the mechanics of a game the first time through with no reference guides.

I define a player's skill by their attitude.

There is no skill; there is only that which is fun and that which is not.