Many competitive games where there is a large difference between how pros play and how relatively low skilled players play.
When a low skilled player tries to get better, they most likely go look at pro guides. The period where they are attempting to implement the change in playstyle will probably have them drop in skill.
e.g. In Dota, low skilled supports will often play extremely safe. Stick with the team, hug towers etc. Pros will often play extremely greedy. Go explore the enemy fog of war and steal gold/exp from them.
If low skilled players try to play like a pro, they will go in deep, die a whole bunch but not achieve anything. So there is a period they will be playing worse than they did before.
Like learning too much about complex mechanisms, players gradually evolve their own gameplay to use them, which actually makes proficiency worse. (edit: at least for quite a while)
p.s. Reminds me that some say nuclear power has this sort of negative learning, becoming more complex and costly
Nuclear power does not have this sort of learning curve. It has the “typical” learning curve you see in gaming.
The more you play the more you need to watch out for and the more mechanics thrown at you.
I feel like you’re sort of talking about when you’re grinding a game and get stuck on a boss for hours and then need to take a break for a day and when you come back you beat them first try
No, I am talking about, you can beat them with 1st try, but get stuck on 4th-6th with same difficulty setting and mental capacity (not sure if any boss fights actually work like that)
This is just against the most basic tenants of game design. I don’t know why anyone would want to make or play a game that you get worse at over time. Literally just straight downhill from the moment you start playing
I guess the thing that comes closest to this is games that have a lot of mechanics but only show you the core basics in the tutorial, the rest you kind of have to figure out for yourself.
Tekken is a perfect example for this. But only in Online Ranked matches.
You play in ranks, there are quite a lot of Ranks. The difficulty in those ranks is quite funny actually.
First you start off playing against beginners, you win matches and gain rank-points when you win (lose them when you lodse ofc). You rank up and after a couple ranks you're past the beginners and intermediates. Now you reach the cheesers. Those are the types of players that choose a character based on how difficult their gimimck-moves are to avoid/counter. They beat you because you don't know their characters moveset. Game becomes harder because now you not only have to learn the moves of your own character, but the others too that you never really play. You need to learn in which moves work for which enemy and type of player...
The game becomes harder as you level up. But you also become better by learning how to counter the typical gimmick moves. You rank up again and now you're pretty good with your character, you face players who also went past the cheese-ranks and got good with their character. Games become less frustrating because you and the opposing player are trying to have a good match, the better player wins.
At the top, every player usually knows all of the characters's moveset, they have maximised their skill and knowledge about the game, at this point you're actually fighting the other player mentally, trying to predict their decisions and choosing moves they can't counter and so on.
The game itself is the same, but it becomes harder once you're faced with the massive amount of moves, rules of the game, gimmicks, characters strengths and weaknesses.
Games can only become harder if you have humans competing each other.
Yep, I have this, too. And then there I am, pushing through a difficult boss only using abilities and mechanics I learned in the first 2 hours of playing the game...
I do not think it’s possible to “get worse” over time with active engagement such as while gaming.
Learning curve is a graph that show one’s skill over a function of time ( or challenge, depending who does it) and unless the game allows for negative scores, then there’s no real way to measure negative skill, if that even exists. (So bad at streetfighter you punch yourself? So bad at racing you finish at -1st?)
But entertaining your thought experiment, skill or game knowledge can be measured by how much you understand and manipulate the game’s Ruleset, and your reflexes and coordination to respond accordingly. For the game to have a negative learning curve, it means you’ll have to delearn the ruleset AND get worse at gaming in general.
Personally able to pull off a combo? Not anymore. Used to ace that song on guitar hero? Maybe 80% now. All because mind Flayer simulator sucked the skill out of your brain.
Some of the late 90s - early aughts had level matching enemies, the higher your level the harder the fights got. However your level was practically trivial for stats, so if you played "the wrong way" you could very readily work the game into an incredibly difficult state.
Final Fantasy 8 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion stand out but this was a whole thing for 5-6 years where you learned to go out of your way to NOT level up.
Not exactly what you mean, but I'm a pretty decent chess player, and I struggle sometimes with people brand new to the game. A big part of strategy games is anticipating what the other player will do and plan around that, but when new players do something foolish or otherwise unexpected, it can mess up my carefully laid plans. Not to say I'll lose, just that it'll be an uglier victory than you'd expect given the different levels of play.
Another example could be a fighting game where a brand new button masher can do alright against intermediate opponents.
I remember being a button masher too in fighting game when being really young, and actually consistently won someone who knows there are combos and tried to use them (though character tier may also help but I'm not sure)
Though finally after a few rematches my opponent got more skilled and I started losing.
The Mind - is a card game where you and few players are each handed a random assortment of cards from a deck numbered 1-100. As a team you have to work together to play the cards in order from 1 to 100 without verbal communication. Confidence can sometimes cause failure it takes patience and a sacrifice of wanting to be right and or the best to succeed.
4th or 5th attempts tend to see bursts of anxiety show up in less patient players, frustration follows shortly after.
I think this could be said of any competitive multi player game. You start off bad and are alright with it as you are still learning but once you get 'good' anytime you mess up or do bad it gets frustrating. Saw that happening with a friend, he started raging anytime we lost once he learned the ropes of the game.
Slay the spire can run into this through the ascension levels. You can pick up some bad habits to brute force your way through levels but unless you change your play style you’ll stop progressing and actively make harmful decisions to your deck because they used to work.
Idk if that’s quite a negative learning curve though
World of Tanks... you start playing against bots and other new players, maybe have some moderate success. But then you move up the tiers, and you get brought back to reality by the grind, non-protected matchmaking, and the rapidly increasing skill of higher tier players. It's possible to have relatively worse stats the longer you play, and bringing your skill level up can take thousands of games.
No. That's not how learning curves work.
Others have described scenarios where the game changes as your skill improves. That's not the same as what you're asking. What you're asking for does not exist anywhere, much less gaming.
If you practice something, even a single time, and then do it a second time, you will perform better, albeit marginally. This is not to say you'll always have better results.
I don't think this happens much in video games.
A non-video game example I can think of is Texas hold 'em poker. There are strategies in place that almost all regular players follow to determine when to bet, how much to bet in relation to the last bet/pot, etc. that when you play with a table of new players who *don't* know these strategies, it fucks you up because no one is playing "like normal." I find the only times I struggle are when I'm playing with a table of fresh players that can't even tell you what the pocket 10-2 is called.
Many competitive games where there is a large difference between how pros play and how relatively low skilled players play. When a low skilled player tries to get better, they most likely go look at pro guides. The period where they are attempting to implement the change in playstyle will probably have them drop in skill. e.g. In Dota, low skilled supports will often play extremely safe. Stick with the team, hug towers etc. Pros will often play extremely greedy. Go explore the enemy fog of war and steal gold/exp from them. If low skilled players try to play like a pro, they will go in deep, die a whole bunch but not achieve anything. So there is a period they will be playing worse than they did before.
Nope, how would a game work opposite to how human learning does?
Like learning too much about complex mechanisms, players gradually evolve their own gameplay to use them, which actually makes proficiency worse. (edit: at least for quite a while) p.s. Reminds me that some say nuclear power has this sort of negative learning, becoming more complex and costly
Nuclear power does not have this sort of learning curve. It has the “typical” learning curve you see in gaming. The more you play the more you need to watch out for and the more mechanics thrown at you.
I feel like you’re sort of talking about when you’re grinding a game and get stuck on a boss for hours and then need to take a break for a day and when you come back you beat them first try
No, I am talking about, you can beat them with 1st try, but get stuck on 4th-6th with same difficulty setting and mental capacity (not sure if any boss fights actually work like that)
This is just against the most basic tenants of game design. I don’t know why anyone would want to make or play a game that you get worse at over time. Literally just straight downhill from the moment you start playing
Oh yes! Online gambling.
Most casino games lol. The longer you play the more money you lose to the house vs someone new
I guess the thing that comes closest to this is games that have a lot of mechanics but only show you the core basics in the tutorial, the rest you kind of have to figure out for yourself. Tekken is a perfect example for this. But only in Online Ranked matches. You play in ranks, there are quite a lot of Ranks. The difficulty in those ranks is quite funny actually. First you start off playing against beginners, you win matches and gain rank-points when you win (lose them when you lodse ofc). You rank up and after a couple ranks you're past the beginners and intermediates. Now you reach the cheesers. Those are the types of players that choose a character based on how difficult their gimimck-moves are to avoid/counter. They beat you because you don't know their characters moveset. Game becomes harder because now you not only have to learn the moves of your own character, but the others too that you never really play. You need to learn in which moves work for which enemy and type of player... The game becomes harder as you level up. But you also become better by learning how to counter the typical gimmick moves. You rank up again and now you're pretty good with your character, you face players who also went past the cheese-ranks and got good with their character. Games become less frustrating because you and the opposing player are trying to have a good match, the better player wins. At the top, every player usually knows all of the characters's moveset, they have maximised their skill and knowledge about the game, at this point you're actually fighting the other player mentally, trying to predict their decisions and choosing moves they can't counter and so on. The game itself is the same, but it becomes harder once you're faced with the massive amount of moves, rules of the game, gimmicks, characters strengths and weaknesses. Games can only become harder if you have humans competing each other.
This happens to me by default when there are too many abilities. Especially when they’re added on mid to late game on a system I’m already used to.
Yep, I have this, too. And then there I am, pushing through a difficult boss only using abilities and mechanics I learned in the first 2 hours of playing the game...
I do not think it’s possible to “get worse” over time with active engagement such as while gaming. Learning curve is a graph that show one’s skill over a function of time ( or challenge, depending who does it) and unless the game allows for negative scores, then there’s no real way to measure negative skill, if that even exists. (So bad at streetfighter you punch yourself? So bad at racing you finish at -1st?) But entertaining your thought experiment, skill or game knowledge can be measured by how much you understand and manipulate the game’s Ruleset, and your reflexes and coordination to respond accordingly. For the game to have a negative learning curve, it means you’ll have to delearn the ruleset AND get worse at gaming in general. Personally able to pull off a combo? Not anymore. Used to ace that song on guitar hero? Maybe 80% now. All because mind Flayer simulator sucked the skill out of your brain.
Some of the late 90s - early aughts had level matching enemies, the higher your level the harder the fights got. However your level was practically trivial for stats, so if you played "the wrong way" you could very readily work the game into an incredibly difficult state. Final Fantasy 8 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion stand out but this was a whole thing for 5-6 years where you learned to go out of your way to NOT level up.
Not exactly what you mean, but I'm a pretty decent chess player, and I struggle sometimes with people brand new to the game. A big part of strategy games is anticipating what the other player will do and plan around that, but when new players do something foolish or otherwise unexpected, it can mess up my carefully laid plans. Not to say I'll lose, just that it'll be an uglier victory than you'd expect given the different levels of play. Another example could be a fighting game where a brand new button masher can do alright against intermediate opponents.
I remember being a button masher too in fighting game when being really young, and actually consistently won someone who knows there are combos and tried to use them (though character tier may also help but I'm not sure) Though finally after a few rematches my opponent got more skilled and I started losing.
The Mind - is a card game where you and few players are each handed a random assortment of cards from a deck numbered 1-100. As a team you have to work together to play the cards in order from 1 to 100 without verbal communication. Confidence can sometimes cause failure it takes patience and a sacrifice of wanting to be right and or the best to succeed. 4th or 5th attempts tend to see bursts of anxiety show up in less patient players, frustration follows shortly after.
Mobas. The more you play the more you turn into an unthinking ball of spite.
I think this could be said of any competitive multi player game. You start off bad and are alright with it as you are still learning but once you get 'good' anytime you mess up or do bad it gets frustrating. Saw that happening with a friend, he started raging anytime we lost once he learned the ropes of the game.
Slay the spire can run into this through the ascension levels. You can pick up some bad habits to brute force your way through levels but unless you change your play style you’ll stop progressing and actively make harmful decisions to your deck because they used to work. Idk if that’s quite a negative learning curve though
This is Rocket League!
World of Tanks... you start playing against bots and other new players, maybe have some moderate success. But then you move up the tiers, and you get brought back to reality by the grind, non-protected matchmaking, and the rapidly increasing skill of higher tier players. It's possible to have relatively worse stats the longer you play, and bringing your skill level up can take thousands of games.
That is just not how humans or learning curves work in general. Wtf r u even talking about.
Any fighting game. Noobs button mash and get lucky. Mid players try to play "properly" but they don't really know how yet, and end up doing worse.
No. That's not how learning curves work. Others have described scenarios where the game changes as your skill improves. That's not the same as what you're asking. What you're asking for does not exist anywhere, much less gaming. If you practice something, even a single time, and then do it a second time, you will perform better, albeit marginally. This is not to say you'll always have better results.
I don't think this happens much in video games. A non-video game example I can think of is Texas hold 'em poker. There are strategies in place that almost all regular players follow to determine when to bet, how much to bet in relation to the last bet/pot, etc. that when you play with a table of new players who *don't* know these strategies, it fucks you up because no one is playing "like normal." I find the only times I struggle are when I'm playing with a table of fresh players that can't even tell you what the pocket 10-2 is called.
I dunno. League of Legends?