By Will Borger
The first week of Albion Online’s current season feels like a dream. We were winning then, you see. Our merry band was crushing it, walking around the Crystal Arena like we owned the place and beating other teams like they owed us money. We were, at one point, 18-1. That seems like a very long time ago. I don’t remember the last time we won a game. Part of it, of course, is me. I don’t know what I’m doing, and the schedule of a freelance writer who spent the last month wracked with illness and overloaded with deadlines that leave me little time to practice doesn’t help.
But the real issue, of course, is that I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t know what the weapons that aren’t mine do. I don’t know what abilities I need to watch out for. I don’t know what visual cues I need to look for that tell me when, for example, people are immune to damage. It would be a bad idea to attack them at that point, right? Well, you don’t know what you don’t know.
And then there’s the positioning game. It’s easy to get out of position in Albion, and I’ve been guilty of it more than a few times. Being out of position usually means you’re dead. But it’s hard to be in position when you don’t know what the other team is doing, what their builds are, and so on.
I can’t expect the team to carry me. I never really did - games like this are too dependent on everyone pulling their weight - but if I’m struggling and another member of the team is struggling? That’s bad news, and not something I can necessarily fix.
Then there’s the stuff beyond your control. We’re an hour-long show, and I don’t always know who I’m going to get for teammates. There’s not a lot of time to practice with them. A decent, well-coordinated team that knows each other can beat a better team. I’m not saying we’re not well-coordinated, but, well… maybe watch our last stream, where everyone is yelling about whether or not Shozen is at fault for one play (he was: love you, Shozen).
Speaking of stuff beyond my control, sometimes we fight one team over and over and over again in the arena and they have our number. Not much you can do there, either, except laugh as you get one-shot by a meme build or stunlocked to death or, my personal favorite, stunned and then one-shot. As we say in fighting games, “It can happen to you.”
You may read this column and think “Wow, Will, you sure are making a lot of excuses,” but that’s not the case. I’m trying to figure out what I need to do to improve: what I can do, and what’s beyond my control. Talking out loud, as it were. I can’t control my teammates or how well they play. I can’t control who we draw in the arena. But I can control how much I practice, what I know, how well I position myself, and how much damage I do (more or less). Maybe I need a new weapon. Maybe I just need practice. Maybe the answer is somewhere in between, but I’ll need to play more to find out.
Before our last show, I said “When you hit rock bottom, the only place left to go is up.” It’s not entirely true: you can stay at rock bottom forever. You can get a jackhammer, and start drilling down deeper if you’re really determined. I don’t mind losing in Albion Online, or any game. We’re making capital-C Content down here, after all, and despite it all, I’m having fun. More importantly, it teaches me what I’m doing wrong. You don’t learn at 18-1. But you do down here. And I don’t plan to be down here forever.
Want to see how Will's journey unfolds? Follow his journey every Saturday at 19 UTC on AlbionTV.
