6
Jul
2009
There’s Winning, And there’s playing
So title update 3 is almost here, and one of the main and arguably most anticipated features is the attack on Gauss hogs and spamming them. With their build times increased and Ander’s research time extended we may just see the end of that (mostly) unstoppable Gauss rush.
What i’ve learnt through my 600+ games on Halo Wars though, is that there’s a huge difference between ‘winning’ and ‘playing’…
First off you have to decide what winning is. I either ‘boom’ or i ‘turtle’, i think i’ve only properly rushed someone in 10 or so games overall, it’s just how i like to play. But this does mean every game i take a bit of a risk, because against that Gauss rush i’m relativly defenceless; so the chances of me losing against a rush are higher. I just accept that and get in to a new game.
If you scan the top of the leaderboards, you’ll notice a few things. Most of the playeres there rush, and most of them do so with Anders; that’s not open for debate, it’s a fact (take a look). Most of their games rarely run over 10 or 15 minutes. I’m not having a moan, it’s just how it is.
Me however, well i’m not that kinda guy. I’m a ‘points guy’ rather than a ‘win guy’. I might lose a lot of games but in score terms, those games i lose, i rank 1st. ‘TruSkill’ is based on if you win the game itself, not if you get the highest score, and that’s a big difference.
My ‘score : games played’ ratio is actually better than most of the players who call themself ‘pro’, and that’s good enough for me. My TruSkill sucks, but there’s reasons behind that, and it’s made up for my overall score.
People will say ‘your TruSkill is more important than your rank’, and in some respects that’s true, but in most it’s not. If you’re going to use tactics exploting the game’s weak spots which will almost definately get you a win, of course your TruSkill will be high; but for the people who like to play the game in different ways, and play ‘outside’ the box; their rank is the true testiment to their skill.
