Best descent player of all time?

[Isaac]

Who's the best descent player of all time?

Thank you!

[Avder]

Birdseye. The few times I played against him he made me feel like I didnt even know how the first thing about how to play.

[Sergeant Thorne]

I don't believe its ever been decided, and at this point it really can't be. It would be easier to narrow it to a specific Descent, but even that is difficult. Maybe I'm just growing forgetful, but I can't even remember a specific player that I would place as the best. In my mind there were several who were up there. There are many different aspects to being a top pilot, and some pilots specialize or excel in certain area more than others--it's a contest that I don't believe has ever been approached adequately.

[Spidey]

Too hard to say…

But, there was this one pilot that truly put the fear of god into me…I won’t mention the name because I’m sure it was an alias, and I hated not knowing who I was playing.

Always ran into this guy in the late hours on the east coast.

Other players could beat me at any given time…but man, this guy "always" handed me my ass.

[Sirius]

Going to agree, the problem with this question is that different people hit their peaks at different times in different games - makes it really hard to make a comparison. You could go through a list of the former #1 IDL players, and the definitive "best of all time" may well be in there, but picking who peaked the highest is not going to be an easy task, and I couldn't begin to do it.

[Foil]

It also very much depends on what context you're talking about "best".

The "best" players in anarchy, ctf, t.a., are different guys. Break it down by level or time frame, and you get an even bigger list. Heck, you could break it down by location (there have been some absolutely dominant players in different countries who never got to play each other on an even playing field).

[Duper]

Birdy pretty much dominated the D3 world, but he had very VERY close competition. I've forgotten the names. iirc, there was a group of about 5 guys that battled for the top spot.

Back in the D1/D2 days on Kali and Kahn, that was a whole nuther ball of wax. Lothar was good (hehe "was" lloll) but there were a couple of guys that, again I've forgotten their names.. that simple kicked ass.

[Isaac]

I now see the problems with the question. Thanks.

So that's two for Birdseye? Or is Birdy a different name? Sorry, it's not clear to me.

[Duper]

same person. .. hey.. does anyone still have that shop of him as Frodo?

[Foil]

If we're throwing names out there:

The best player I can recall from the D1/D2 days was named something like 'jediluke'. 'Course, I was rarely online, so I didn't get to play all the guys with the top reputations.

I started playing D3 online around 2004, so I also missed Birds' heyday, but since then, I've had the pleasure of learning from (i.e. being beaten up by) a huge number of players.

There are a number of players who I'd put above myself, but most of them I can hang with on a good dayn. The ones who I never beat (unless you count something like CTF flags) are probably: Genghis, Ryujin, Darktalyn, Behemoth, Bunyip, and Thorne. (I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple.)

[Foil]

So that's two for Birdseye?

Probably more than that, though it's still too vague to answer. There are a couple of threads like this one over on DBB.com, and Birdseye is frequently at the top of people's lists.

Makes me wish I'd had a chance to play him.

[woodchip]

I seem to remember a guy called Pinky (think that is spelling) that was pretty good.

[Sergeant Thorne]

{D3K}Gooberman and {D3K}Baal sometimes played as Pinky and The Brain, I believe. I remember the duo from back when Worlds Apart 2 was most active.

[CUDA]

Best at what??? Birds was not a D3 player but was awesome D1-2

Ender and Bama were the best I saw at Shakers

Warlord was the best Gauss whore I ever crossed paths with

Daz, Scoundrl, and Vlider, were Very good players

And I was the best shield contributor ever to hit the Mines

[CUDA]

Other players could beat me at any given time…but man, this guy "always" handed me my ass.

Sorry Spidey, I didn't know it was you.

[Hunter]

The best way to sum it up is who can handle themselves in all environments, all levels, all manner of mods and such - Some of the quoted 'best' pilots were very limited to their own levels. Outside of that they were much weaker. I put my hat off to KAHA for being the fastest sob to adapt to his environmen (applies to us Euro players more, since back then most of us were 56k..)

[Isaac]

lol @ "shield contributer"!

[Sirius]

If you can win in all of Min69, Vamped, Laserdeath and UES, you're probably pretty good.

(Minerva, Vamped, Ugh and Megadeth for D1.)

[Foil]

...us Euro players...

Ah, that's who I was forgetting! LEON and Smiddy are two more who I'd put at the top of my (admittedly based-on-limited-experience) list. The way those guys can/did dominate at 250+ms latency is just amazing.

[snoopy]

Well, if by "best of all time" you mean "won the most money playing descent", we have an easy answer - Fatal.

[Scoundrl]

My name gets tossed out there sometimes as one of the best, and in my time I was. Noone could beat me on the few levels I specialized in and very few could no matter the level.

I would say Strap or Glock21 were the best I ever played. Strap (pretty sure Dustin was his real name) could kill you over and over and over again and you would seriously not see how he could do it without cheating. His control scheme was backwards and he smelled of bourbon but he sure could shoot. He and Glock21 used to practice in private and work out better and better tactics, probably some of the first real students on the game.

-Ken

[Gooberman]

{D3K}Gooberman and {D3K}Baal sometimes played as Pinky and The Brain, I believe. I remember the duo from back when Worlds Apart 2 was most active.

You are half right, that was me and BFDD, but I highly doubt that was the Pinky he was refering to.

I would go with

Birds
or
Bah

I think their peaks were slightly offset. I don't think Krom ever got quite to their level, but he was probably the most consistantly dominating player I saw over a very long period of time.

I always had a really hard time against Barry, the guy could just predict my moves -- but I don't think others found him quite as bad a threat as those two.

[flip]

I've heard stories that WarCuda was a tough combination to beat. I wish I could find some demo's of the old great's. I've looked all over the internet with no success.

[Alter-Fox]

I've only been playing online since 2006, but I remember this one guy in D3 -- I played against him for a week without getting a single kill on him and then he disappeared and I haven't seen him since.
His aim was so impossible that he made any kind of tracking weapon undodgeable -- including smarts (and my best skill in Descent is dodging smarts! ). Strangely whenever I played him it was one-on-one (except one time when Xaihyv joined later) -- no-one else ever joined the game.

I remember his alias because it was taken from Sony adverts.
And I've improved since that one week (it was a couple years ago) so I want to face him again to see how I measure up now.

[CUDA]

I've heard stories that WarCuda was a tough combination to beat. I wish I could find some demo's of the old great's. I've looked all over the internet with no success.

That was Warlord and Myself. we had our moments, both good and bad

[flip]

Yeah Warlord is good people but he's failed me badly when it comes to getting some of those demo's If anyone has some from the IDL days I would love to get them.

[SirWinner]

Too many really players to remember the best one ever.

Descent 1, Descent 2, or Descent 3?

Each one had some really fine players.

Koolbear nice host and very good Descenter.

CajunAce showed me the ropes in my First Online Descent Game in Descent 1 Level 23 via Kali on a Christmas Day. Obviously I was hooked. (1997 or 1998)

Played a lot in Descent 3 with [D3k]Krom. One of the best players I had the honor to play with online.

Bama joined a game that I was hosting and I died so fast that I didn't know what hit me.

... I'd rather enjoy the memories and the fact that we were able to Play the 3 games in the Descent Series!

[Money!]

These sort of topics are always fun.

It's funny, I've played Descent 3 on and off since about 2001, and was never very good at it. Never played the first two Descents online either so I clearly would never reach the top.

I got moderately OK only after a little bit of training with Zero! and behemoth but have since regressed. By that time PXO was down and most of the greats weren't playing anymore. Still a shame that such a good game is so dead these days.

I still remember my first online game - Monsterball, I forget the level. It was a mind-blowing experience - Descent 3 online, with other people? I was completely hooked, and thus began my first few-year stint of being addicted to Descent.

I used to fly phoenix and for a while got really into the D3 version of shakers. I played and trained with the best D3 shaker player of the time: goku, later known as Dark Magician. He reached the rank of demigod before PXO was shut down.

Back then I was really young and not conscious of ladders, LANs, and tournaments, where the real guys were playing. This is to say I had no conception of a widely known "best player." But I always remember [ROX] Hostile as the guy who I pinned as the best. He'd simply destroy in Veins back then, and I always was the most scared of his name when I entered a game. I know now I was completely clueless, and he was never the best, but it's fun to think back.

I'd say about this time last year the best player online was behemoth (Zero! was up there too) because pretty much everyone else had retired. Since Ryujin and Darktalyn have come back though I couldn't say. Also, relatively recently there were a couple months where Krom was playing again. That was really fun.

Overall though, over the years that I have been active on the forums and talking/playing with the better players, Birdseye is the name that has come up most often in discussions of the best. I remember the one time I played him I was very early on in my Descent career. It was in a random online Stadium anarchy game. He joined and everyone went apeshit, saying "this guy's the best player there is" etc. etc. I (clueless) was staunch in my defense of Hostile as the best, having no idea who Birdseye was. I killed him once - his pyro was running an efficiency in the high 70s in a pretty decent field.

Thanks for letting me reminisce!

[Krom]

When he wasn't drunk; Nirvana was better than Birdseye. Which is why Birdseye is widely recognized as the best Descent 3 player.

[Money!]

Yea I was gonna say that I've heard a lot of positive things about Nirvana as well.

[SilverFJ]

A few of the players far greater than I was:

Bama

Warpig

Birdseye

Nirvsheep

Take your pick.

Player I found myself most even with:

Ferno

[snoopy]

There was a dude that played polaris some back in the early days of D3 - Xecutive - who was great at doing the hit and run routine.

He never stuck around long enough to make a name for himself.... maybe because he couldn't handle dogfighting, but I remember being annoyed that he get a shot on me and be gone before I could respond.

[Alter-Fox]

Phoenix pilot?

That's my favourite strategy too, but so far I'm not that good at it -- except on full servers that have an overabundance of mortars, megas, smarts, and napalm rockets :cough:Indika:cough:.

[snoopy]

Yes Phoenix.

He wasn't secondary dependent, though. His main MO was hit you with an MD shot and leave a secondary hanging around to bat cleanup.

[Krom]

I remember Xecutive. Once in a 1v1 in The Core I ambushed him, which caused him to jump, accidentally kick his cat that had been sleeping by his feet, and throw the bag of chips he was eating into the air spreading them over half the room.

[Enzo-03]

I'm not going to say he's the best (I'm pretty sure he's not), but I've been on the opposite end of that and similar situation several times with Theftbot, most notably the times in D2 that I opened a door only to be greeted by a smart missile that just happened to be coming my way, and right in my face - after it hits, it turns out he's behind me of all places and my mind is blown.

[Sirius]

Yeah, that was definitely TB's MO. Didn't tend to fight people face-to-face a lot, but he got good mileage out of that routine.

[Alter-Fox]

I remember Xecutive. Once in a 1v1 in The Core I ambushed him, which caused him to jump, accidentally kick his cat that had been sleeping by his feet, and throw the bag of chips he was eating into the air spreading them over half the room.

I'm... not going to ask how you know that.

[Ferno]

yeah, you and I had some good games silver.