1. #1

    Different Types of "Skill"

    This is going to be an opinionated thread, so hopefully we can all get along. This is also just for fun and curiosity on what you guys think, it won't represent how anyone perceives anyone else.

    If I spent 20 hours on Inferno II and beat Lestropie's time, and then he spends 30 minutes and ties my time exactly, who has more skill? Our end results are exactly the same. But he took less time to do it. No one will ever know how long we each took to do it, so according to the leaderboards, but would be equal in skill on that track.

    I've just been wondering this because I usually spend hours getting a good time on a track. I spent 3 hours on Groundhog Forever tonight and was never able to beat me previous time. Once I finally do beat it, do I really deserve the recognition of that ranking compared to the others around me? I just spent so much time on something so that eventually I was able to pull out a run where I strung everything together, even if it was only 1 in a million chance of happening. What if the people I beat only spent an hour getting that time, are they more skilled than me? Or because I spent so much time on it am I more skilled than them?

    Hopefully all of those sentences make sense.

    So I guess overall I'm asking this: Does playing a lot make you a more skilled player or does it just give you more chances of having a better run? And if you get that better run are you more skilled than the person you beat?
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  2. #2

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Oooh, we're floating around in a very grey area here, this should be fun

    This is likely a common issue in a lot of games, particularly hotlap-style games. Ultimately, someone who has either put a lot of time into a track, or just got very lucky once, can match another player who is considered to have more 'skill'; but if the disparity in play time taken is hidden, they are perceived as the same result. Now for the corollaries:

    * If total play time is shown, then the more 'skilled' player could be determined based upon who has played less, depending on your definition of 'skill'. Trials2SE had total play time; trouble is, some people would become embarrassed by it, and either use a second profile for 'practising', or erase their profile and set new times for all tracks, effectively erasing those play hours whilst keeping the 'skill' developed during that time. And good luck coming up with a robust metric which considers both your results and your play time taken to determine who is more 'skilled'.

    * The achievement of a good track time is a mixture of skill, repetition and probability. However the proportionality of those factors can change. For the sake of the argument, let's use ski jump as our example. If someone who has never played Trials in their life attempted this, they would only need to get maybe 10 combinations of direction and timing inputs correct in order to match the world record exactly. The small number of required inputs means that a 'lucky' result is more probable than it would be for a long & difficult track, where many more accurate inputs are required and therefore skill is more heavily weighted (but repetition is still more of an effect than probability).
    - For an alternative interpretation, consider this: A bot is designed to play ski jump. At every frame, it makes a decision as to whether to apply a new input, or remove an existing input (for instance, lifting the throttle). When the rider crashes, it starts again. If a track is short and requires few inputs, the expected number of retries before a good run is achieved is smaller than it would be for, say, Diabolic. Now replace 'bot' with '700,000 players around the world'.

    * Some would argue that it is not your past performances, but your capabilities at a moment in time, which defines 'skill'. If this is your mindset, then to have a genuine comparison of 'skill', you would need to remove repetition (and probability as much as possible); and that could only be done by giving each competitor a single attempt i.e. multiplayer of some sort. But this can convolute what 'skill' is, in that the skills to produce fast hot-laps are different to those required to consistently produce reasonably-fast runs. The sources of pressure/anxiety are also different in the two environments.

    * Now let's confuse ourselves further; if two players are of identical 'ability', but one has required less play time to reach that ability, is that person more 'skilled'?

    Personally I put greater emphasis on the harder tracks and the tournaments, because based on my interpretation, these give the greatest contrast in weighting between skill and other factors; I can't put in as much repetition as others. They're also closer to what the sport of Trials really is, which is where my heart lies.

    (For those unaware, time is rarely a deciding factor in Trials in the real world; it's about who can get through a number of difficult courses with the least number of faults, and riders are not permitted to practise the courses whatsoever before the competition. So the closest thing to this would be to have Trials HD 2 with a turn-based multiplayer *nudge nudge*, and for larger-scale competitions riders could compete in tournaments where none of them have ever played any of the tracks included.)

    So... yeah. Hope you weren't looking forward to a yes/no answer . It's not something that you can put a finger down on; ultimately it comes down to individual perception and opinion. And hopefully the ski jump record holder and I can still 'get along'.




    If TLR - Never ask Lestropie a philosophical question.
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  3. #3

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    A short answer would maybe be tournaments leaderboards since you cant really rely on a lucky attempt on those ones (the harder ones atleast).

    So if you have a close or tied time on Inferno 2 with Lestropie but have 100 faults and 15 minutes time on the midnight club torney its safe to assume you had a lucky run or are only playing or are capable of a good time on Inferno 2.

    If you need to practice 100 hours to get a time below 1 minute on inferno without faults and lestropie need maybe 4-5 attempts then obviously lestropie is the more skilled player.

    If however you practice 1000 hours on Inferno to get below 1 minute consistentlyl while Lestropie maybe only needed 100 hours of play on inferno 2 before being consistent on that track I would say you are equal in skill although Lestropie needed less time to achive that skill.
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  4. #4

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    You can achieve anything if you put your mind to it and have infinite time. However i believe the better players are those that get to the top in a shorter time scale. If your throwing time into the equation then imagine how good lestropie would be for example if he spent 300 hours on a track. Everyone has what we call a natural gift at something, which essentially means they improve much faster, whereas others have to work hard to get where they want to be. Its the curse of life and things always balance out=D
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  5. #5

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Using just your example, if two people got the exact same time, one putting much more time into getting that run, I would generally think that the person who achieved it more quickly is more "skilled". However, there are many factors to consider, as that is just a very basic opinion, one of which is determination. Sure, he might have gotten a good run faster and might be considered more "skilled", but as far as determination goes, you might out-match him in that. On the other hand, if he didn't pull out that run that quickly, he might have been willing to spend twice as much time as you did, so determination is impossible to determine, but it's a factor.

    As lestropie very well put, it's really your interpretation and opinion of the term "skilled". One possible argument would be consistency vs. best run. If someone is gets a good time very consistently, while another person gets decent times but made a great time (at least) once, who is more skilled? Since I know who you are, I'll use a Rock Band reference (you've probably seen me around Scorehero a bit):

    Yesterday I FC'd Shoulder to the Plow (on guitar). It was on my second run of the day (and pretty much my second real run in months, not including all the time spent in practice mode). The first run, I missed before the Odd Riff (the weird triplet strumming part before the solo). The second run, not only did I FC the Odd Riff on the first try, I FC'd the solo on the first try too. Through my time in practice mode, I estimate that I hit each of those sections about a quarter of the time. My FC, therefore, was very lucky. If I were to play the song tons of times, I would probably average a -10 (considering if I missed in the solo I would probably miss many notes at once ). But I FC'd it.

    Now, let's take a second person. He hasn't FC'd it. But, on almost every single run, he gets a 100% with an overstrum. Who is more skilled? That's up for interpretation. Some would say me, some would say him. Some would say why the heck are you using a Rock Band reference when you could've easily used a Trials reference, and honestly, now that I think about it, I don't know. But I can't be bothered to type one up, especially given what time it is
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  6. #6

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Now, let's take a second person. He hasn't FC'd it. But, on almost every single run, he gets a 100% with an overstrum. Who is more skilled? That's up for interpretation. Some would say me, some would say him. Some would say why the heck are you using a Rock Band reference when you could've easily used a Trials reference, and honestly, now that I think about it, I don't know. But I can't be bothered to type one up, especially given what time it is
    If you change the above example to real guitar playing I would easily say that "he" is the better player.
    Its all about consistency, luck is a factor in achieving supergreat times but to be a great player you should be able to put in great times most of the time.
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  7. #7

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Originally Posted by wmadoss
    Its all about consistency, luck is a factor in achieving supergreat times but to be a great player you should be able to put in great times most of the time.
    This is what I was going to say. You can compare the times as much as you want, and you can compare the time it took to post those times, but the more skilled player is the player who can perform the best over a number of runs on the same course. That's why certain sports use heats to determine the winners. One competitor can get lucky and post an extremely good time (look at my Groundhog Begins - I still don't know exactly what I did to get the air I did before coming down for the shortcut), but it doesn't mean that they are more skilled than someone who may not have been able to post that time.
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  8. #8

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Sorry, couldn't be bothered to read your post Lestrophie =p
    But how long do you take perfecting a really fast run? (on a hard or extreme track)

    And how long did it take you to get your Midnight Club run?
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  9. #9

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    Thanks to everyone who has posted so far. And lestropie, I couldn't have really expected there to be a yes/no answer for this. You bring up a good point in relation to how many exact inputs are needed to have that "perfect run". Ski Jump makes it a lot easier to get a world record based on luck than Inferno II, that's something that we can all agree on.

    Also, NfskMjmMal, I believe you are actually in my squeezing guide...good to see you on Trials as well I do understand your example and it's pretty much the exact same thing. Trials and Guitar Hero are actually the same game for the most part. You have a number of tracks (coincidentally, that term can be used for both games) to use and they are always the exact same every time you play them. All you do in the games is try to beat a previous score/time on each track that you can play.

    Like many of you said, it really just comes down to what we each determine as skill. Is it fastest times on tracks or least faults and fastest times on tournaments?

    I do agree, however, that if it took me more time to do the exact same thing as someone else, then they are more skilled than me.

    The real question is once I finally beat someone just because I played so much more, am I really more skilled than them?
    It's more or less a pointless question to ask, because there are just so many factors that go into it that it's nearly impossible to "calculate" which person had more skill, even if we had some sort of method to do so. Oh well, I was just hoping to spark up a little conversation about the topic and see what people thought about it.
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  10. #10

    Re: Different Types of "Skill"

    This has got to be one of the most interesting threads I have seen anywhere for along time.
    Any game that has leaderboards doesn't necessarily have a direct reflection on skill. Games like CoD have a running total where playtime is more of an advantage than anything else.
    The Forza hotlapping vs Trials HD is a good comparison though. I agree that people that have more time to practice a track will have a better probabilty of producing a good time, but it still requires skill through consistancy and that is the point that seems to be coming to the forefront in this discussion.

    All my track times on Trials are from hours upon hours on the same track until I get a clean run and by that time it is more about muscle memory than reading what I need to do next. Obviously there is some degree of human error which results in minor differences in each run and I'd say that true skill comes from adapting to whatever is needed in the blink of an eye.
    Am I more/less skilled than other people? It's hard to say but I know I will never get near any of Lestropies/RedRiders times.
    Maybe it's my technique, or lack of consistancy (<<this) but any game that has a measure of time I feel the best will always rise to the top.
    After all there is no way that you can get a blistering run without consistancy and skill of some sort.
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