Advice on dealing with frustration when playing with my low-skilled friend?

Me and a friend play 2v2v2v2 together. Playing with him can be pretty frustrating due to the big skill difference between us. For reference, I hover between 1350 and 1450 Elo, while he doesn’t understand things about the game that I would consider very basic. I am convinced that when we win the game, it’s usually due to me carrying him, and when we lose, it’s usually due to him making the same mistakes as in the previous games:

    1. He doesn’t research loom at all (unless I remind him).
    1. He doesn’t wall.
    1. He doesn’t have a strong idea of which resources to prioritize.
    1. He doesn’t spend his resources.
    1. He doesn’t build farms next to the town center.
    1. He doesn’t scout his opponent early enough.

These aren’t his only mistakes, but they are the most significant ones. He also has absolutely no interest in using hotkeys or following a build order, which is completely fine for me. And you may argue that he simply could have no interest in improving at all, so I should deal with it one way or another, which is a fair point. However, what frustates me is that after every game that we lose, he asks me how our opponents are able to mass such a big army, to which I try to explain to him the basic principle of a fast castle → boom → army while keeping in mind that I am not trying to teach him a build order. This simply leads to nothing, though. By the time we lose the next game, he comes up with the same question. Most importantly, some of the previously mentioned mistakes, for instance, should be extremely easy to fix. I always tell him that after finding his starting resources, he should scout his opponent, but he rather scouts completely useless parts of the map. I am simply extremely frustrated after every game, regardless of the result, and I am wondering if:

    1. I should stop playing 2v2v2v2 with him.
    1. Change my mindset.
    1. Keep trying to teach him very simple things.

I feel you, I play with my girlfriend sometimes and while she knows the basics she doesn’t know how to really play the game.

My suggestion is to play against the IA, so you can adjust the difficulty for him, but from my experience it can be a bit boring…
Usually I defeat my opponent quickly and then I tutor her to try to teach her how to play, keeping my army in reserve.

My best advice is to not play meta games, play unique and strage maps, game modes or even coop campaigns, where build orders are less important and you can enjoy the different setting.

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I appreciate your advice and will definitely ask my friend if he wants to play some Co-Op campaigns.

This is also my experience. While the extreme AI is definitely better than some players, it is still not as intelligent as them. For some reason, I also don’t like the idea of giving the AI a handicap.

I would like to, but my friend mainly likes to play the same maps over and over again.

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Your friend seems like the 80% of us, the player base
Weird that you have a friend like that 11
Just enjoy the games and have fun

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Just play ranked. You will reach a balanced elo between you two and you can carry. Like if you are 1400 elo teammate is 600 elo and you guys will play,vs 2x1000 elo

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I already asked him, and he said that he has absolutely no interest in playing ranked.

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I play at medium level… I can feel you… The fact is that she wouldn’t be bad, but we can’t play together consistently, so she can’t consolidate his experience.

Then try to do some quirky and strange strategy, for example do a gunpowder rush, or a champion rush, or a pure ballista elephant army…

That kind of strategy that usually don’t work but since you are above your skill level you can pull it off. This way your friend will have a standard game, while you will have some fun on doing something different.