Dear Zero-K community, Today, I struggled hour after hour. I visited big communities, waiting 30 minutes every time. And every time, after I got into the match, I either watched me contribute nothing to the team as it was winning, or contribute nothing to the team while it was losing. I never knew if I was doing good or if I was doing poorly. But this changed when I visited a 4v4 match (because I played so bad that the lob pot became a 5 player match), and... my actions mattered for once. I was surprised to know that the remaining team did not discourage me from playing, for I was my biggest discouragement. And finally... I learned. Truly, small teams are a way better learning experience than lob pots. [Spoiler]But lobpots are funny, so whatever.
+4 / -0
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What steps do you think you could take to learn to contribute more in larger games?
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1v1 games give the best skill growth, everything else is slow
+4 / -0
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True about skill, just think it's important to mention that team games can also be lost for more "social" reasons - like team thinks is loosing, and just resigns OR they don't ask for help OR they start 10 singus in parallel. I witnessed as spectator many of these issues.
+1 / -0
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Lobspot is useless.   izirayd is right. Playing lobspot is a slow way to grow and doesn't make you understand your strength and how to face the enemy, you rely too much on others. It is in the 1v1 game that you grow and gain knowledge of the game and how to face your opponent. Less valid than 1vs1, but still competitive is the 5vs5 team game. Beyond that it becomes Lobspot and shouldn't even have an Elo score, because the resulting rank is not as objective as the competitive one. Especially up to the blue rank casual level there is no comparison with a competitive player of the same level.
+2 / -0
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1v1's hone your macromanaging skills, like balancing energy, metal and buildpower, as well as expansion. It also generally teaches you how the rock paper scissors of raider, riot and skirmisher go, as well as some "game winning units" like dante or whatever is currently meta in 1v1. Effective raiding is also essential here. Small teams, however, teaches intense raiding, unit micromanagement, in depth strategy on a tactical level, and you have more apm to dedicate toward fighting a battle. More emphasis is placed on how you maneuver your units, compared to simply out ecoing or hard countering your opponent in a 1v1 (high level 1v1's excluded?) Lobpot is for honing advanced lategame tactics like silo, superweapons, striders, overdrive mechanics, breaking porc, and learning how to leverage attrition. In my opinion, at least.
+4 / -0
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Zero-k games are esentially identical, weather teams or 1v1. In 1v1 you only get 1 commander and factory to start the game, in lob pot you get like 16. In lobpot the teaams have a bit more inate income, and more attention. You can forever be lazy in teams, because your attention is not nessisary to do everything a team needs to do to win, like build energy, expand, raid, and all other micro. If you want to know what it takes to win a game, do it yourself. If you want to learn something in teams, you learn a niche micro trick, because you will ALWAYS be using your team's attention as a crutch for your failings.
+3 / -1
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An unimportant sidenote, but this is worth mentioning: I tend to avoid 1v1s because I only learn something when playing against tougher opponent. The toughest opponents are purple, but they don't tend to reveal their strategies when they are the opponent. In team games, however, every team is incentivized to share important tips so that the weakest player wouldn't be dragging the team behind. This applies to all good strategy games I've played. So, there's a bit of a social reason I avoid 1v1s. Still, this note is not important, because the thread is focused on lobpots, not 1v1s. [Spoiler]Also, I'm not going to blame purples for not sharing their game winning lifehacks, I think the mystery of game knowledge is what makes 1v1s so fun to watch.
+1 / -0
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  Cliver5quote:
The toughest opponents are purple, but they don't tend to reveal their strategies when they are the opponent. |
http://zero-k.info/Battles?Title=narrow&Map=&PlayersFrom=&PlayersTo=&Age=0&MinLength=&MaxLength=&Mission=0&Bots=0&Rank=7&Victory=0&Matchmaker=1&Rating=0Here is an endless feed to learn from. Can't hide MM replays, they're on the server available for all to see.
+2 / -0
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quote:
Beyond that it becomes Lobspot and shouldn't even have an Elo score, because the resulting rank is not as objective as the competitive one. |
isnt that why we have 2 rankings?
+3 / -0
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Learning to make a difference is what makes you good at lobpot.
+2 / -0
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lobpot sucks git gud and play palladium
+5 / -0
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but atleast in lobpot you can blame the guy who made a frontline detriment for the loss.. in palladium your failures cant hide and that maybe more pressure. not that failure is supposed to be a bad thing. its just meant to be a game and all.. but if your one of those serious players who always has to rage at somone every game and cant stand loosing.. needing to blame something.. it may be harder to agree on the target scapegoat among high ranks.. maybe im wrong idk.. i always felt safer in lobpot when i mess up i know there is somone else doing even more silly things already absorbing all the attention
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Not being able to hide behind teammates for your own failures is exactly why 1v1 (and small teams to a somewhat lesser extent) is much better for growing as a player.
+1 / -0
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Lobpots have a specific place in learning Zero-K because they allow a player to specialize in only a few things for the duration of the game. This specialization gives us time to reflect and improve and iterate during the game. In a 1v1 or small team game, much of that time and attention would go to all the mandatory chores for keeping a full gameplan running. But in a large team game after the opening moves, it suffices to do one type of chore and let the team handle the rest, which leaves enough time for deliberate experimentation. The one bit of information from the win/loss is less important than having the spare attention to observe one task in detail and figure out when our actions are having the intended effect or why they aren't. You'll be slow to learn the whole game that way, but perhaps faster at learning pieces of it.
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