Not Fun Being '**********' in Game :(

[Ikaros]

Maybe that's a bad term to use but that's how it feels sometimes playing UT3 online. Okay, I'm an average player and 50 years old now. I've played every 3D shooter from the original Wolfenstein to Doom to Quake to all of the Unreal series. I even used to run a Quakeworld clan (Seismic Force) back in the old school dial-up modem days. But sometimes in UT3 it seems like a can barely take a few steps before I'm fragged again and again and can't get a single shot off.

I know the guys killing me that badly are great players but besides regular playing what makes them so **** good at it? Do they just have too much time on their hands to play constantly with no full time job or family to take care of like I do?

I average killing 2 players for every one time I die; that's a 66% efficiency rate which should be fairly good. But sometimes I get on a server, usually a Deck-only one, that has 2 or more urber players that just pummel everything in sight! It makes me feel like they are ganging up on me, even though I realize they are probably not teaming me.

Give me a constructive perspective on this instead of recommending I should hang it up because I'm too old.

[Infra`]

Well actually props to you for still playing ut.

Not sure how far along with ut3 you are. But they are probably predicting where you are moving easily. That's all ut is really. Prediction/aiming. Make sure you don't do obvious moves. Like if you just respawn, and someone sees you, don't just run straight towards the nearest gun because they will anticipate that and will be waiting to spam you.

Dodging is always important as well for movement and survival. Dodging makes it harder for someone to predict where you will move so thus its harder for them to aim. This is just in general b/c there are those l337 players you spoke of who will hit you no matter what :P

Anyways trying to keep this short b/c I hate when people type essays on here, and no offense if you already knew all this stuff.

[5uxeu5]

Do they just have too much time on their hands to play constantly with no full time job or family to take care of like I do?

Mostly this.

A lot of the people still playing ut3 are the ones that have invested a lot of time getting good at it. It's not like other games where there are tons of other noobs you can play with and kill easily.

My advice would be to watch these good players and see how they are killing you and copy that.

[Rhykker]

Do they just have too much time on their hands to play constantly with no full time job or family to take care of like I do?

That's a big part of it. Full-time job/family or not, some people play for a few hours every day, and if you're like me and only log a couple hours a week, you will never be as good as them.

Your age slows your reflexes, but that doesn't mean you're rubbish now, and shouldn't stop you from being a great player. We can't give you more information without more details about what you may be doing right or wrong -- this is really something that you need to evaluate yourself. I upped my game tremendously when I took the methodical approach of self-analysis, realizing what I was doing "wrong" and what better players were doing "right."

If you're looking for a good group of players with a wide range in skill levels, who'd be willing to help you bring the most out of your game, then check us out at taw.net

We've got players ranging from 19-56 years old.

[Ikaros]

Thanks for the advise to help me keep my head on straight. It doesn't help I took a break from UT3 for a few months because I was getting tired of the game freezing on me a lot forcing me to hard boot my PC and getting disk errors over it. I just started playing again this past week because I miss it.

[The Demon Slick]

You're not too old. I've been playing since release, and I'm in the same boat, despite many many hours playing. Try a clan, BOOM is full of nice guys. And gals. Many of us are older, although our membership crosses all lines, real and artificial. Skill won't get you in, you have to be nice! Websites in my sig. We hang out in vent and talk to eah other, you learn a lot that way. Learning curve in this game is steep, and there's a lot of tricks. Ping, hardware, and other factors can make a difference as well.
I can tell you though, based on the sig, your os is incapable of fully utilizing your rig, 32 bit os's are limited in the amount of ram they can adress. Ram includes gpu ram as well. If you want to stay with xp, and many prefer it, just get the 64 bit version.
Cheers!

[Ikaros]

A 32-bit OS (Vista) should be enough. I'm well above the memory and CPU/GPU specs of the game.

[The Demon Slick]

Sure, sure, np...... wah!

[Gameslaya]

Movement is actually a huge part of being a good player. Take shortcuts, dodge often, and if you come across someone who is better than you, rage quit.

[Rumple]

Hedsteem is mostly 30 years old and up. We have completely custom VCTF, TDM, & Greed/Warfare servers not to mention a huge community. We also have a 40 slot ventrilo server that has from 10 to 30 people on most nights playing or just bs-ing. Most of us are from mid to eastern United States but we have people from the west coast, Canada, England, Switzerland, Portugal, just to name a few. Our servers are located in Washington DC.

You can join us or just check out the site: http://www.hedsteem.com

[shombowhore]

Do they just have too much time on their hands to play constantly with no full time job or family to take care of like I do?

Lots of time a good player does not make -- although it certainly helps.

During high school (UT2003, up to mid UT2004) I played probably 2 - 3 hours a day, and became pretty good... now I play about that many hours in an entire week, but I don't feel that my abilities have degraded much.

More important than the amount of time I spent is that I spent it playing 1v1 and TDM with and against extremely good players, often asking for help in identifying my flaws, as well as general tips for improving my game.

[Ikaros]

Okay now I'm going to embarass myself. Here are my current UT3 stats as of this writing. My Eff was 66% before I got pummled today and my Kill/Death was 1.9 and Kill/Death was 12.75 before then too. My Eff had once gotten up to 68% and my ELO Rating actually got above 2000 this past Summer, then suddenly dropped even to below what I have now. I think I concentrate most of monitoring my Eff to measure my progress since that what mattered in the old school days before using ELO so much to rank. maybe that's a mistake now a days. I don't know if you can tell a lot from these stats other than I need not to use the Rocket Launcher so much giving me many of the suicides

Player 'FuryUnleashed' Stats:
ELO Rank = 23456
ELO Rating = 1535
# of Games = 3172
Kills = 40400
Deaths = 21342
Suicides = 1557
Efficency = 65.4%
Kill/Death = 1.89
Kill/Game = 12.74

[5uxeu5]

Well an easy way to quickly improve your game is to ignore your stats and never look at them again. They don't mean anything, especially not the ELO ranking which is designed for 1v1 matches.

Try to play with those better than yourself, learn what they do and enjoy the game rather than focusing on statistics.

[Masaai_Warrior]

Well an easy way to quickly improve your game is to ignore your stats and never look at them again. They don't mean anything, especially not the ELO ranking which is designed for 1v1 matches.

Try to play with those better than yourself, learn what they do and enjoy the game rather than focusing on statistics.

This.

Don't make every match a statistic. If you really want to improve, focus on your weak points and start from there. The big differentiators in UT are movement and aim (esp. shock/sniper in DM). If you spec some very good players, you will see the quality of their gameplay at this level is much higher than others. I would recommend you play some Instagib game types to improve your aim, and watch the better players and see what you can learn from them.

Also, age ain't nothing but a number. What you may lose in hummingbird reflexes, you will gain in wisdom, maturity and strength. And that applies to any competitive sport or endeavor.

[azurescorch]

As said it's practice. But also quality matters. I've improved more in the last 2 months by playing with skilled players on BTA and pick-up warfare matches than I did in a year of playing in public warfare servers (where I get **** fps anyway).

I know people who play unreal3 who have a wife and kids with full time jobs and they're better than me So don't worry, having too much free time might help but it's not essential.

ignore your stats and never look at them again

Indeed ignore the stats. My stats haven't changed in the last 3+ months (hoverboard usage time hasn't even gone up).