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Games with large Skill Gaps

I don't really understand the question. I skimmed the thread and the answer appears to be "every game and every genre."
I think some stuff is misleading to the thread topic, though not purposefully. Take Devil May Cry or Bayonetta for example. Sure they take incredible skill to master and pull off feats, but it doesn't "look" that much different compared to other examples out there, such as Tetris.
 
As someone who primarily plays FPS on consoles, I'd say Halo and earlier Call of Duty titles.

Can't deny that Quake and Counter Strike also have a large skill gap.
 
Melee and to a lesser extent Smash 64. It's also one of the few games where you can instantly tell an experienced player from a beginner just by looking at their movement. Show a high level Melee match to someone who's familiar with Smash but unaware of the tournament scene, and they'll often ask you if the players turned up the speed in the game's settings.
 
At first I found it damn near impossible to stay alive in the air in Warhawk for more than 30 seconds, then when I became experienced, I could survive almost indefinitely and almost never got beat in a dogfight by a player less skilled than me. And I still found it incredibly hard to even get a lucky kill against the real experts.

The ground game is pretty chaotic and accessible though
 
Counter Strike. I love how challenging it is. I have my 5 year veteran coin in Global offensive. I'm silver rank 2 and i think i'm really good.

Besides that i would have to say any RTS.
 
Competitive games in general can be easy to list, so instead here's some DMC4, since the main reason to get good is to style. This is from a truestyle tournament, there's a lot more like this out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORgSuIIesIE

Notice how Dante kills a boss without touching the ground.


Damn, I didn't you could dual-juggle enemies like that. So this is what it's like at the peak of the skill curve in DMC.
 
No way. A good Halo 2 team that knows weapon spawn times and map control and work together are nearly unbeatable except for other top ranked player's.

Halo 2 and 3 to some extent have huge skill gaps.
That's not really what a skill gap is though. Any team of experienced players will win over the inexperienced in any game of skill a reliable amount of time regardless of the skill gap; that's the point of a skill based game.

To have a large skill gap means that there will be a pronounced difference in results between players of a small difference in skill. Quake 3/Live is probably the best example that I know of of a large skill gap (outside of Chess and Go, which are a different kind of game). In Quake Live, an elo difference of anything more than around 50 usually results in a score difference in the twenties or some other ridiculously large number. It's not unusual to see, for example, 20 to -1 games between two highly skilled players that have similar -- but not identical -- skill. In fact, I'm pretty sure Quake Live's famously large skill gap is a real hindrance to its popularity, as the large skill gap results in a pretty lofty baseline amount of skill required to have any fun at all playing the game.

There's a definite trend towards reducing the skill gap. Capcom's comeback mechanics are definitely a part of this, which generally don't allow a less skilled player to win but certainly help them get closer.
 
Fighting games and MOBAS tends to have large skill gaps, Dota 2 massively from personal experience.
It's hard to make a judgement call on MOBAs but I think that most fighting games, compared to other competitive-oriented genres, have a pretty small skill gap.

Having said that, Melee's is pretty big. The biggest names in the game are on a level all by themselves, and it's rare that a match between a good tournament caliber player and, say, Mango is even an interesting fight.
 
It's hard to make a judgement call on MOBAs but I think that most fighting games, compared to other competitive-oriented genres, have a pretty small skill gap.

Having said that, Melee's is pretty big. The biggest names in the game are on a level all by themselves, and it's rare that a match between a good tournament caliber player and, say, Mango is even an interesting fight.

Play Tekken and VF and come back to me. There is a pretty massive skill gap in those games. To the poin in Tekken I say there is a skill gulf.
 
seems to be that all competitive games and genres would fall in this category. i mean when tetris is a viable contender, i think we've reached that point. that jin8 video is something to behold man.

anyways my choice would have been competitive RTS' but after going thru the thread i'll change it to almost any competitive game.
 
I'm not saying Halo doesn't have any skill gap at all. But there are just so many games that have a higher skill gap, imo, that it doesn't make sense to bring it up in this thread as an example of a game with high skill gap. I mean there is a great difference between a bad and a great TF2 player, but games like Brood War or Q3 are just on another level.

Lumping Halo 1 in with the rest of the series isn't really doing it any favors. That game has a skill gap and mechanics so far removed from the rest of the series it's not even funny. High level 2v2's are easily comparable to Q3/QL 1v1's, if you remove the aiming aspect, as that's not really applicable in a PC/Console comparison. And please don't mention H1 on PC, that's the retarded little cousin.

Halo 2 also had a pretty high skill ceiling at the end of it's lifespan because of all the button glitches and team mechanics, but nowhere close to H1. Rest of the series is a joke competitively.

But yeah... Starcraft, Street Fighter, Dota, SSB:Melee, Quake 3, CS and Halo 1 in that order have some the highest skill gaps in my experience. At least as far as relatively high profile multiplayer games are concerned.
 
Since the most common and representative examples have already been mentioned, I'll (non) contribute to this thread with:

Chess 2: The Sequel

It's like regular chess, but in the form of a sequel. I assume that the skills you acquired in Chess 1 (aka regular chess) translate pretty well to Chess 2.

For anyone interested in it, you'll probably need a friend to play this with though or you'll rarely get an opponent.
http://steamcharts.com/app/314340
Game is new but was dead on release because of a ridiculous $30 price. It later had a price cut of $15 but it was long after front page of Steam advertising ended. Also Chess isn't the most popular thing for Steam.
 
As simple as it might seem, I was floored by what people could do in Fzero. Don't think I can think that fast or process that fast. Velocity is new to me as well, but those speed runs are crazy.
 
Warhawk

I was getting slain the first few days.

lol

CSGO has a pretty big skillgap. My first match on a fresh account

ED6296486B497C8BEA600BB4D882143FB2207229
 
STILL blows my mind.

WHY IS SC2 SO DEAD? :(

Whoa now SC2 is not dead. It may have been eclipsed by DOTA and LOL here in the states as far as popularity goes, but the game has a very strong following. Like myself I have to get a few games in everyday or I start losing my mind. I have been playing for the 4 years the game has been out and loved ever bit of it, other than widow mines being able to detect cloaked units back in the HOTS beta days.
 
fighting games
dota
Fighting games and MOBAs are actually really bad for showing off large skill gaps as the meta changes dramatically depending on what skill range you're in, so newer or less skilled players won't understand the differences unless it's actually being explained to them in words.

Well, except perhaps for fighting games with massive and complex combo chains, I guess. But even then that only shows execution skill, not mind reading skill which is the more pertinent issue in a 1v1 match.
 
As simple as it might seem, I was floored by what people could do in Fzero. Don't think I can think that fast or process that fast. Velocity is new to me as well, but those speed runs are crazy.

Yep. It took me 40 hours to platinum 2x. But now I've "acquired" the game: yesterday I got to play it again(after over a month) and I almost managed to get the perfect on level 50 on the second try.

It took me 1 and a 1/2 hour of tries to perfect it back then lol
 
Dwarf Fortress. New players can't even see the game.

King of Fighters (series) - New players usually can't handle the more involved move sets compared to street fighter, never mind hops, and some of the more fancy stuff in XI or 02.

Some of the top times put up in Gran Turismo were also unreal to me, and I've been playing forever.
 
for actually displaying it in a manner that a layman can understand just how drastic the gap is?

someone already said it, but gunz: the duel (the original, 2 is fucking bad)

the way an experienced player with a high skill level moves and attacks is completely alien to an unexperienced/unskilled player to the point of where it actually looks like hacking- unskilled players will roll around or run around while skilled players will literally be flying through the sky at a minimum of 3x the speed while blocking bullets and attacking with their sword/shooting their gun at the same time

like in a 10 v 1 situation where there were 10 unskilled players vs 1 highly skilled player, i would put money on that highly skilled player winning a significant majority of the matches, if not 100%- i've played/seen enough times where 1v8 was won in low ranking TDM games by smurfs simply because of how drastic the skill gap is. even someone as mediocre as i am was able to do it consistently while also purposefully handicapping myself simply due to the monstrous gap there is

edit: damn, there's no vids of it, but imagine 8 players running around/rolling shooting automatic weapons at someone airdashing around, flying up walls and through the air while blocking their bullets. every time that person got near one of those unexperienced players they would get stunlocked and die in two seconds while the experienced player was continuing to move around, blocking the bullets from the other 7 players.

that's not a hypothetical scenario- i played it hundreds, if not thousands of times. if you add in actually using guns rather than only using the sword then it becomes even crazier due to the sheer rate that the other players will die against you. even moreso if you use the early level shotguns- you will sneeze and destroy 2-4 people out of an 8 man team in a dozen seconds with them when they have no ability to move around to dodge the shots
 
I remember when CS first came out and became popular... precisely because it required less skill than the former popular mod TFC. People pop out and you pop them... like whack-a-mole with a different coat of paint. TFC, had way more modes of play and tactical variety based on the classes. Irked me so much when the servers became ghost towns. /cry
 
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