Skill Ceiling: Heavy Vs. Light Bodytype

[Baumbo]

So you missed the part about guns that shoot in a straight line with no recoil taking more skill?

[Bridger]

I don’t buy that the Heavy needs more battle sense than the light. I think they can both benefit from it equally.

But it’s very hard to really discuss this further without playing the game. So maybe we aught to table it until then

Wait 2 months to go? We need something to do…

OMFG WHY NO SNIPERS AND HOW COME SNIPER HIGHLIGHTED BY ORANGE GLOWING GOO AND ALSO I THINK IT SHOULD HAVE PLANES!

That should keep us all entertained for a while

[Mad_Hatter]

So you missed the part about guns that shoot in a straight line with no recoil taking more skill?

I jest, of course. I’m one of the ones that believe that both bodytypes take equal skill to be good at. With Lights the emphasis is on movement and trying to avoid head-on firefights. With Heavies the focus is more towards tactical positioning and suppressing the enemy.

[LyndonL]

Noone is lobbying that the medium is the body that requires more skill… You’re all bodytypists! (My best attempt at merging racist and body type. I’m sure there’s a real word?)

[Otto]

Noone is lobbying that the medium is the body that requires more skill… You’re all bodytypists! (My best attempt at merging racist and body type. I’m sure there’s a real word?)

In the real world, wouldn’t the word be Shallow?
-Chubby Chasers (heavy lovers)
-Adonis Idols (medium lovers)
-Bean pole bangers(light lovers)

[Herandar]

As a heavy, I can assure you all that it takes much more skill to be a real-life heavy. Our skill-ceiling, however, is lower. When’s the last time you saw a 250+ pound linebacker competing in the high jump?

[Auzner]

I have been following this game for long time and reading these forums for months, and I find hilarious how so many people simply cannot let go of preconceived notions and paradigms of how this game is going to play.

This is all a majority of the community can think of to contribute to discussion pre-release. A lot of people cannot admit it or realize it, but the root of it is everyone wanting CS/Halo/CoD/BF again.

You better hope that Brink is not a big hit then, because if everyone starts playing Brink, you won’t be able to play it because it will be too popular.

I think they meant when the game is relatively new there will be enough to witness already. It will be months before a lot of people have a system worked out and start blogging about it. Experimenting with weird combinations is good for a game with this much variety.

How would you quantify how much skill that takes?

I’m glad you repeated this because it’s a very good point. Tactics in games like this can’t simply be quantified. You can explain the scenario and pretend you’re studying at West Point, but you can’t have a happy icon pop up rewarding kibble. Unfortunately that’s all most gamers can see now and don’t consider these things enough anymore. They never get that level of involvement to care. Achievements…

It sounds like it’s being agreed that less skilled players will gravitate towards the slow tank dps earlier. This is what we can expect to see, that too is a speculation but sounds reasonable based on our tactical experience in other games. A longer time spent alive sounds like more (personal) experience and makes it more comfortable to play. How many people were told to first play pyro in TF2 or protoss in SC? How many times did you get TK’d by a panzer for only one enemy? It’s kind of like that. There are only 3 body types though so it’s not very reasonable to drive a stereotype that every heavy will be a noob. I’m sure there will be plenty of lights who think they’re elite monkeys and end up dying against many walls.

[Weeohhweeohh]

I’m glad you repeated this because it’s a very good point. Tactics in games like this can’t simply be quantified. You can explain the scenario and pretend you’re studying at West Point, but you can’t have a happy icon pop up rewarding kibble. Unfortunately that’s all most gamers can see now and don’t consider these things enough anymore. They never get that level of involvement to care. Achievements…

Agreed. A lot of people try to fit military tactics into these type of games (I stand accused as well). They try to draw Chess or Go parallels into game play. The truth of the mater is, if you can die unlimited times, its more of a zerg fest then Generals planing TMs in a smokey sitting room. Just sayen…

[Shadowcat]

Well, there are only a few real ways to “quantify” skill that i can think of. You can use stats, or evaluate personal growth.

Measuring against yourself isn’t foolproof, you can be really bad and still be better than when you started. Still one of the most consistently rewarding types in my opinion. No matter how bad you are, you can always expect to do a bit better with practice and experience.

Using stats would be the objective way to measure, but that would only work if people didn’t go out of their way to inflate their stats. Its also not always the most intuitive numbers that matter. What is more important to show the better killer: kills per death or kills per game? What is more important, being better at killing or having a higher win percent? If people change their habits to get more kills at the cost of wins, or team switch/stack to get more wins, its not a mark of skill. People seem to have the correlation backwards. A highly skilled player will usually have good stats, but good stats are not proof of a highly skilled player.