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For the sake of the noobs who feel it's a long way to the top...

It took me about 150 hours of play for me to stop getting a negative score. Then to start being among the top three or within 10 kills of the leader, about 300 hours more after the first 150. Even now, I still see I have lots of room for improvement; it will probably take about 500 hours more of training before I can always make it to the top of the score list and stay there.

Keep working at it.

Just to clarify:

Good = Can keep a positive score
Excellent = Can keep in top three or within 10 kills of leader
Awesome = Always the leader

And of Course:

Cheater = 0 hours of play, but an obscenely high score. And when you go head-to-head with them and get them, they cry.

Please see the sister-post, "What Did It Take To Get Good?": http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=9590&highlight=

Well around my 4th year playing I was doing fantastic...then started going down, then Im kind of back to where I was 3 years ago. So in all it took me 7 years to get this good, which isnt nearly as good as some.

And "Vet" how long have you been playing

Onto my third year.

What do you mean as "good"? Good can mean many different things. You could be good at mofo, or hix, and suck at badgerkings. (not saying anyone does...) But I'll be modest, i suck at many servers because I hardly play at them. Well, ok. Maybe it took 1-2 years to get a positive score (i wasn't hardcore then) Then the last year or so I got "good".

I consider myself good at GMs. I don't consider myself good at BZFlag in general. Hmm... I guess I'm stuck between good beginner and almost intermediate. But since I'm writing a BZFlag book, maybe I am medium... I'll ponder on that for an eternity.

What you have to remember about a game like BZFlag is that 250 BZFlag hours translates to 500 real world hours. You can go for days without eating, drinking or sleeping.

As for me, I'd say it took about 499 hours. That would be about 998 hours that I missed out on in real life.

--A Distraction

B.T.W. I don't know the exact formula for converting time spent on BZFlag into understandable terms in the minds of the real worlders. But I do know time flies when you are on BZFlag.

The Vet wrote:For the sake of the noobs who feel it's a long way to the top...

Just to clarify:

Good = Can keep a positive score
Excellent = Can keep in top three or within 10 kills of leader
Awesome = Always the leader

and when you get to the point of being able to include yourself in the Excellent to Awesome status, be prepared to be called a cheater on almost a daily basis.

Just an FYI.

Defman wrote:

The Vet wrote:For the sake of the noobs who feel it's a long way to the top...

Just to clarify:

Good = Can keep a positive score
Excellent = Can keep in top three or within 10 kills of leader
Awesome = Always the leader

and when you get to the point of being able to include yourself in the Excellent to Awesome status, be prepared to be called a cheater on almost a daily basis.

Just an FYI.

Not true. Maybe on servers you play on but in most places I play that isnt true. Maybe there are qualities the leaders have at the servers you play on may be considered "cheaters". I greatly frown upon all these cheating accusations.

Dark Zodiac wrote: Not true. Maybe on servers you play on but in most places I play that isnt true. Maybe there are qualities the leaders have at the servers you play on may be considered "cheaters". I greatly frown upon all these cheating accusations.

hehe - I've been playing this game too long. Maybe not on a daily basis - but it's getting old, being accused of cheating.

I have to agree with your last sentence.

Defman wrote:

Dark Zodiac wrote: Not true. Maybe on servers you play on but in most places I play that isnt true. Maybe there are qualities the leaders have at the servers you play on may be considered "cheaters". I greatly frown upon all these cheating accusations.

hehe - I've been playing this game too long. Maybe not on a daily basis - but it's getting old, being accused of cheating.

I have to agree with your last sentence.

I have come to consider it a compliment, being called a cheater, something I get on a regular basis

lol TRB. As long as you dont get banned I quit GU not because of the complaints, but because of facts.

GMMan wrote:I consider myself good at GMs. I don't consider myself good at BZFlag in general. Hmm... I guess I'm stuck between good beginner and almost intermediate. But since I'm writing a BZFlag book, maybe I am medium... I'll ponder on that for an eternity.

Lol... who isn't good with GMs? GM gives you a lofty advantage over all the other players.

The Vet wrote:For the sake of the noobs who feel it's a long way to the top...

Unlike most games I find, there is no "top" in bzflag.
Sure, you might be able to get the highest score quickly, but usually there
is someone who can do it faster than you(and I don't mean cheaters)

Getting into the end of my first year(being a rookie as I understand it),
I find that I have greatly improved, going from "bullet magnet" to
"bullet repeller and running into them"

I have a life, thus, i've been playing below 150 hrs. (this counts for playing, not observing)

I've been playing for just under a year and i'm able to stay in the positives on all courses (excluding HIX and Pillbox). I'm sometimes at the top (mainly if the leaders leave, or i scare them away..... ). I can name a bunch of people on public servers who I can never get ahead.

guys read my presentation in topic Player>You have to read that. Its my story being played bzflag

{janis} wrote:guys read my presentation in topic Player>You have to read that. Its my story being played bzflag

Awesome presentation. So you've probably been at it for 500 hours?

Id say it took me around 400 or 350 hours. This is because im always busy typing or banning somebody and don't pay attention to whats on the screen.

my second year was when i got good

but now i am into my fourth year

i don't play it as often as i used too...so i plateau

I started back in July and would only get scores of like, -90. I started to see an improvement within a week, I'd stay at around -20 to -30. Soon after I stayed at a constant zero, around the middle of August. Then I started to go positive, and now, on Planet MoFo at least, I get about 100 everytime I go, and I don't stay there for hours trying to get that high of a score, I get it within a few minutes.

I think it took me about 30 or 40 hours to get good! Maybe it is a talent. But it shouldn't take that long to be good? U have ot know some strategy and u have to memorize keys thats all!

The thing about bzflag is that there are so many levels of skill... a few hours of playing and you'll own your friends. I'll guess that I have about 50 hours; I can usually hover around 0 at Badgerking's or MoFo. But also remember that (not counting TKs) the sum of all players' scores is zero... so a negative score does not necessarily mean that you're bad, just below the median skill of your rivals. On no-place-to-hide maps like Pillbox I'm happy if I can pull a 1:2 kills-to-deaths ratio

"Getting good" is really very vague. There are multiple factors to being a skilled player.

First off, the map you play on has an extreme key role in skill. If you practice on a lasersniping server a lot, you're bound to get better at laser sniping eventually. However, if you've been playing at a fast paced laser sniping server where most combat is far off, and then you try to play at, say, a standard ctf map, you might not be as skilled as the other people playing there, because some of them have been playing *that particular map*. If you play at any style, map, or server long and frequent enough, you're bound to get better at it. I'd say it takes, oh, I don't know, a week to be showing a lot of improvement. That might be overshot...or undershot. I don't know! I do know that it all depends what I said above. IMHO.