Hypothesis: Ai is at fault

[spark spruce]

Every time I took a day off and play again my mind is blown by how bad the player pool is.
(or just watch VampireChicken as proof)

My new working theory:
They are that bad because they start out playing the Ai where they find success and get a huge ego boost from winning
Then they play the same online

Solution: have a tutorial for online play.
In Gran Turismo (for example) you have to watch a video about clean driving before you can enter online races.
(Not that it helps much, but at least it's something)

[stoic tinsel]

I would say people should win 1 casual game with the rules to be able to join them ranked. Never won a caps game? Can't play that in ranked.

[spring hull]

If people don’t have the motivation to look up a YouTube video on how to play, why would the game force that on them?

[prime pier]

Playing bot games might be part of it, but the odds are that novices land in games with a lot of novices. They get enough bad “positive” reinforcement for bad play there, that some of their bad habits may persist all the way up into high level Master ranks (take me for example 🤣) which just means the cycle continues in a lot of games and some novices have the bad luck to land in a series of games where they seemingly do well and so they continue in their bad habits possibly forever never actually learning how to play Risk.

It is almost miraculous that there are as many refreshingly well played games as there are in unranked restricted games. I am really jaded right now because of the excruciating game finish I just spectated. I’m trying really hard to focus on the string of gloriously interesting and well played games I had a few days ago, the kind of games I can be glad to be part of win or lose, otherwise I would never play a ranked game again.

[narrow hamlet]

You underestimate how dumb people are

[hybrid haven]

After sinking back down to 18k today, I’m really feeling this in my gonads.