Things that you find annoying about FPS games

[warty goblin]

So I've been playing an unseemly number of FPS games of late, and loving nearly every minute of it. Some things however continue to annoy the snot out of me, and I'm sure all of you have a similar list. Here's mine:

1) Bad HUD displays. The amount of information I actually have to keep track of in most FPS games is really quite small: what gun I'm using, what guns I'm carrying, how much ammo and health I have, that's about it. Built right this can be really easy to do as well, but no, this information has to be scattered all over the place. Health bar in the top right of the screen, ammo counter in the lower left, weapon indicator someplace else and the minimap right over the healthbar, making it hard to find in a flash and so on, and somehow I'm supposed to aim the reticule in the middle of the screen while keeping track of this? This is one thing that Star Wars Battlefront 2 got perfectly right- wrap the ammo counter around the reticule, so you could keep track of not only what you were shooting, but how long you could continue to shoot it in just one glance. This can be particularly bad if the game insists on being all 'immersive' and having a minimal HUD, obstentatiously to free up screen real estate, and instead makes you squint at some miniscule little transparent number in the corner of the screen to figure out how long before you bleed to death, allowing somebody to sneak up on you and ventiliate your body with enough lead to start a line of collectable pewter miniatures.

2) Moron uncooporative AI: I'm playing Rainbow 6 Vegas right now and end up dying a lot, because I'm fighting idiots. As weird as this may sound, it's true. I go into some room filled with bad guys, and a massive firefight ensues. I generally discharge around 300 rounds of ammunition in a room the size of a small bathtub while mowing down a small army and am making my way out of the room afterwards when I hear "I think I heard something" and Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary jumps out from behind a convenient bulletproof crate where he's apparently spent the last fifteen minutes in a catatonic stupor which has allowed him to ignore the 27 flashbangs that have gone off three feet from him, just in time to unload a shotgun (these guys always have shotguns) into my face. As I stare at the loading screen I am forced to ask- who the hell actually acts like that in the middle of a firefight? Does each terrorist squad in the game consist of the following members:
1 guy with a pistol who does nothing
1 guy who throws flashbangs every three seconds
2 guys with AK-47's who apparently have specially modified their guns to be even less accurate
1 guy with an SMG that apparently fires laser guided high explosive depleted uranium antimatter rounds given how fast he seems to kill me from across the damn room. Unfortunately when I use his gun all of the bullets seem to have been replaced with ultra soft pellets containing feathers.
2 guys who are talking about somebody named "Chris"
1 Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary, who apparently has an IQ of 30 on a good day and may also be partially blind and deaf. Ironically, aside from SMG of Doom guy, he's the most effective member of the squad. I'd imagine that when they hear me coming, the terrorists send two guys to the door to talk about Chris in order to distract me while SMG of Doom guy gets into position and somebody puts Jimmy behind his crate and takes away his Special Doll, so that in about fifteen minutes he'll notice and get angry.

3) Weird ammo limits on guns. Now sometimes this makes sense, I mean rockets are pretty big, so carrying a lot of them is probably not really practical, but sometimes it's just plain weird. The Magnum from Half Life 2 is a prime example of this, I get a grand total of like 18 bullets for the thing at a time, yet I can carry 240 for the SMG, not counting grenades? The sniper rifle from Halo is another great example, I can carry 8 rockets, 8 grenades and 600 rounds for my asault rifle at once and still be able to jump 12 feet straight up, but only 24 rounds for the sniper rifle? Seriously, by the time I finished that game I felt Master Cheif should track down the moron who designed the ammo handling capabilities of the MJOLNIR armor and shoot him. He probably would have, but he was out of sniper ammo again...

4) Any 'you got hurt' effect that keeps me from seeing what is going on: Particularly bad in games with regenerating health, since you end up seeing the effect so much that it really just becomes sort of a standard piece of a gunfight. Seriously, oversaturation, screen blur and so on is cool and intense the first maybe dozen times you see it. After that however you basically just sit there behind cover drumming your fingers until you could see well enough to go out and kill the people who kept fogging up my damn screen. R6V is particularly bad about this, since every one of the bad guy's bullets seems to end up lodged directly in my eyeball, given what it does to my vision. Needless to say this just adds to the lethality of Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary, since I can't actually see anything. I'm not against effects to let me know when I'm getting the crap beaten out of me, the background heartbeat in Halo for example was really cool, and the red screen blur in Dark Messiah was allowable if only because you saw it rarely enough that it was genuinely intense, but I wanna be able to play the game, which tends to involve being able to see it.

5) Really stupid 'impassible' barriers: This oftens seems to be tied to games without a jump button, which also weirdly coincided with games featuring a strong cover mechanic. Generally these 'impassible' barriers are used to send you down a really annoying route. For your convenience, this is often explained by the mandatory Earpeice Woman, who seems to know everything 10 seconds after it would have been really handy to have had her tell me. Usually she says something like:
"OK, the path to the right is blocked off." You look to the right, and see a pleasant, tree lined avenue, down which mothers push strollers and children frolic. More importantly to you however is the sight of a massive pile of weapons and ammo. Having just killed a giant robot Hitler from the future who may or may not have been your father, you are running somewhat low on ammunition, and your body's lead concentration seems to be rather higher than recommended by leading physicians. Between you and this idealic vision however lies: a single fallen beam. It's not even that much of a beam, maybe three feet high and two wide, and is clearly resting on the ground with no chance of falling and crushing you. It is the sort of thing that the actual you playing the game, despite last having visited the gym six years ago, would have no trouble bypassing. Given that your character in the game has a minigun and a portable laser cannon capable of killing starships in low orbit strapped to their back, it seems well within your capabilities to transerse. Most annoyingly yet, that beam only fell during the scripted cutscene death of Robo-Hitler, and you had really been looking forward to picking up some more ammo for your plasma esciverator. Earpiece Woman continues:
"So I'm afraid you'll have to go to the left"
At this point the game will usually show you a shot of your horrendously manly looking character looking concerned and frustrated, or perhaps constipated, and he'll grunt something about not liking that.
"Yeah I know, but the only way you can reach Abandoned Crate Warehouse before Mecha-Saddam gets there is to go through the Valley of Flaying and the Pass of Gibs" Things go downhill from there.

6) Earpiece Woman: As I said, she generally dispenses advice just after it would have been handy to have heard it. You'll be sauntering down a corridor, having just killed six dozen Nazi ninjas with your atomic minigun and come to an open area. In the middle of this is a single little robot type monster, looking not that much more intimidating than the target drones in the tutorial level. Next to it lies a really badass looking gun and some health packs. This looks to good to be true, and your seasoned gaming senses are screaming caution, so you decide to play it safe. You pull out your death laser sniper rifle, charge the shot to max, and let the little beast have it right in the head. Before the muzzle flash subscides however you see a giant blue wave of death heading your way. When your vision clears and you glance at the grey on dark grey bar benieth the cryptic minimap, you discover that you now have only a quarter of your health. Earpiece Woman than helpfully tells you that "those things are dangerous."

7) Escort missions: So you survive the canyons of dismemberment and the Totally Unique Alien Parasite Zombies in order to beat Mecha-Saddam to Crate Warehouse. After an annoying and unskippable cutscene (which you have to watch 57 times because you failed to immediately guess that the key to beating the fight was to shoot Mecha-Saddam in his little toe using the weakest gun in the game, alternating which toe you shoot), you kill said, and save Princess Flowers Love'n'Peace and now must escort her home, protecting her from the evil Terrorist Vampires. Tragically Princess Flowers makes Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary look like a rocket scientist. In order to make up for this she dispences health via another long and unskippable cutscene. Eventually you just leave her back at the first checkpoint, and go on to clear the entire level by yourself, healing be damned. Tragically you get halfway across the stage, only to have the "Mission failed" message show up on top of a scene depicting Princess Flowers getting killed by Terrorist Vampires who just:

8) Spawned in: "But I cleared this room! Twice!" You yell in frustration as a whole new wave of enemies appears out of thin air. Seriously, you wonder why exactly the big bad is bothering with all of this world taking over stuff, I mean he's already mastered the art of assembling people out of the aether, you would think that would be enough.

Anways, anything I missed?

[EvilElitest]

nicely written very well done

I just hate how very often you can take so many bullets then simply recover in a few seconds
from
EE

[F.H. Zebedee]

Most delcious rant, WG.

I tend to get annoyed by some games that rely on STUPID mechanics, even if it is thematic. Though I love the 2-D games, Metroid Prime pisses me off with the "Don't take cover: Just jump like a loony!" strategy. And Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles also ticked me off pretty quickly. "SHOOT DOWN THE VOMIT!"

Why would I shoot a liquid projectile instead of getting my ass out of dodge?

[EvilElitest]

Warty Goblin needs to write his own book about these tropes
from
EE

[an kobold]

I'll admit, I mostly play online fps's. Actually, just Red Orchestra. So most of your annoyances I don't have to deal with, but I have a whole other set for my specific niche in a single online shooter. A shooter that emphasizes realism, from reload times, having to click the mouse again to use the bolt on a rifle, and the lack of health (what health?) and ammo counters. Which is all fine and dandy, yet they've kept the whole "lol, it only takes a second to get in and out of a vehicle" stance. Which is annoying as all get out when you're lying in the grass with your PTRD, either lining up a shot to the ammo cache or reloading your massive single shot, and a tank driver notices you, gets out instantaneously, and caps you with a pistol.

That, and bad tankers. Having a bad driver will kill you more quickly than a bad gunner will because angling and mobility are the two most important parts of tank combat. And the collision scripts on vehicles with the environment is so frustrating sometimes.

And the bane of all online FPS's, though, is the voice chatters. You know. The 13 year old kid talking about Inuyasha while driving his half track full of other soldiers into a tree/wall/house while a T-34 casually swings its turret around to say hello.

/rant

[Demented]

"OK, the path to the right is blocked off." You look to the right, and see a pleasant, tree lined avenue, down which mothers push strollers and children frolic. More importantly to you however is the sight of a massive pile of weapons and ammo.
[...]
Between you and this idealic vision however lies: a single fallen beam.

For some reason, I want to make a game with exactly this scenario.

[2xSlick]

Wow, I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you, that was both hilarious and informative. I totally agree with the random ammunition restrictions. In Half-Life 2 you can carry more shotgun shells than magnum bulllets. But the worst was the Combine assault rifle. You could blow all your ammo in like 3 seconds with that thing. And if you look closely at the gun, you notice the ammo stored in these little chambers that rotate around the barrel letting you auto-reload. You only get enough ammo to load three chambers yet you can look at the gun and see at least 3 empty chambers. I've got a couple of peeves with FPS that I'd like to add as well.

1.Death=Pathos
I'm sick & tired of npc's dieing during cutscene where we are supposed to go "oh no, that guy was cool." Call of Duty 4 is a perfect example of doing it right and doing it wrong. During the missions, you are often supported by friendly units who all get their own names over their heads. I actually find myself redoing levels in the hopes of saving as many of these guys as possible. Yet there are cutscenes at the end levels where you get to watch the npc's get gunned down. It works when it's during a mission and I can actually save these unimportant npc's. Yet during cutscenes I have to sit idly by and watch them die. Why should I care if I have no say in the matter? They didn't die because I screwed up, they died because the plot called for it (usually rather arbitrarily since FPS always center around you doing everything yourself). The most offensive example I've played was that horrible escort mission in Max Payne 2. After failing countless times to protect a minor character from the first game (if he gets shot once he explodes the whole building) I finally beat the level. In the very next cut scene the bomb is disabled . And then he is shot to death. Were they trying to annoy the heck out of everyone with that?

2. Crude dudes with 'tudes
You briefly mentioned the bulky, hetero-manliness that seems to be sweeping these games, but my biggest gripe is the dialogue. Remember the funny lines and catch phrases of Shadow Warrior or Duke Nukem? It now seems they've been replaced with lines specifically designed to make me roll my eyes. Now, it's all "Come git sum!" "You think you can take me?!" or "I scraped yo mama off'a my BOOT!" How generic can you get? Bring back the humor.

[Ranis]

Wasn't there just a thread about all of this?

[Stormthorn]

1 guy with a pistol who does nothing
1 guy who throws flashbangs every three seconds
2 guys with AK-47's who apparently have specially modified their guns to be even less accurate
1 guy with an SMG that apparently fires laser guided high explosive depleted uranium antimatter rounds given how fast he seems to kill me from across the damn room. Unfortunately when I use his gun all of the bullets seem to have been replaced with ultra soft pellets containing feathers.
2 guys who are talking about somebody named "Chris"
1 Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary, who apparently has an IQ of 30 on a good day and may also be partially blind and deaf. Ironically, aside from SMG of Doom guy, he's the most effective member of the squad. I'd imagine that when they hear me coming, the terrorists send two guys to the door to talk about Chris in order to distract me while SMG of Doom guy gets into position and somebody puts Jimmy behind his crate and takes away his Special Doll, so that in about fifteen minutes he'll notice and get angry.

so...perfect.

I was playing Crackdown tonight. Its not a FPS in a technical sense but it has this problem. Just a few minutes ago i walked into a room with several guys in it. The ones at the back threw grenades at me (a LOT of grenades), or shot rockets at both me and their allied (or so it seemed). In the front was a merc who couldnt hit the broad side of a barn and WOULD NOT SHUT UP about how he was gonna get me. Behind him was a guy who took about 80 rounds to kill (no exageration. Most of three clips) from a powerful assualt weapon who was taking out my shield with his PISTOL. He also had two more innacurate badguys with him but a rocket (from a guy in the back) took them both out. So sad.

[Xefas]

Well, I'm too poor/cheap at the moment to buy a real FPS, though I do play Tremulous, which is free, and besides having terrible graphics and sound, is still fun when you really need to shoot something but would rather not pay for it.

That said, of this game, and others I have played in the past, my least favorite aspect of FPS' is well...the other people.

There's nothing quite like being drenched in blood, with fully upgraded equipment, having just mowed down wave after wave of bloodthirsty aliens, out of ammo and grenades knowing that each and every one had sunk deep into sweet sweet xeno flesh, taking 20 kills to your 1 life, invigorated by the knowledge that you have maybe 1 "hit point" left, and no healing kits...and then the words "Asshat_69 has killed you" flashes across the screen as you burst into flames. As the camera pivots over your fallen corpse you see a single lone teammate with a flamethrower running down the 60 yards of completely straight, open corridor, and he says "Oooops, dint see yu their, m8".

I think that, in my entire, (admittedly small) FPS career, I've died more times to the direct friendly fire of my own teammates than I have to any machination of the enemy's.

Not to mention the times where I've had one single continuous BRIGHT RED laser beam, big as life, going down a corridor for maybe 15 seconds straight, only to have a teammate standing right next to me for just as long, WATCHING, walk directly into it and die. Of course, afterwards I'm accosted by "OMG NOOB! WTH WRONG WITH YOU?!"

[SurlySeraph]

So true. So very, very true. Stupid Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary always gets me. He doesn't always have a shotgun, though; sometimes he has plasma grenades.

Also:
1. Weapons features that you don't get to use. The gun has a grenade launcher and a scope on it. Either the grenade launcher works or the scope works. Which is which depends on the game. And, in the rare few games where your rifle has a working grenade launcher and scope, you can't fire grenades while zoomed in.

2. Melee smacking. Enemies who knock off your aim by punching you are realistic, yes. But if they punch so fast that you can't recover your aim, it just sucks. I'm looking at you, Half-Life 2 fast zombies!

3. Indestructible enemies and obstacles. I realize that that mech is just there to kill the resistance members so I'll know how dangerous mechs are. But it should still react when I hit it with multiple rockets. As for indestructible obstacles, it's like you said about the tiny obstacles. If nothing is holding me back but a sheet of plywood, why the hell can't I get through the plywood with my Omni-Destructinator? It's freaking plywood!

[warty goblin]

9) Continuing my critique of user interfaces and their general crappiness, allow me to talk about aiming reticules in specific for a moment. The way I see it the reticule is there to do one thing and one thing only, help me aim the gun. Some games make all reticules the same, regardless of what gun I'm using, which is fine, as long as the one in use doesn't suck. Others have different reticules for different guns, often denoting something about their accuracy, which is also well and good. After all having a big aiming reticule for the shotgun makes sense when compared to the sniper rifle. Unfortunately they are never content to just have reticule shape be determined by how accurate the gun is, no they have to get fancy. Usually this is with some alien gun that you pick up, which, in order to denote its alienness, has some sort of weird upside down triangle with rounded off corners and shaded rim. This naturally leaves you expecting some sort of weird triangle shaped beam with a hollow middle or something, so you expectantly squeeze the trigger and get...a stream of bullets whose ballistics have nothing to do with triangles, rounded or otherwise. But of course you can't count on that, because sometimes the reticule shape tells you something important (like say this gun fires explosives), and the gun has a very small ammo limit, so you can't just go firing off test shots to find out, leaving you guessing "OK, so the reticule is shaped like a horned skull with little kittens dancing around it, and the gun is called the 'Pulverizer'. I can ony carry three shots at a time. What in the name of Fraggage does this actually do??"

10) Another one, useless crap blocking up my scope when zoomed in: Usually happens in games trying to be 'realistic' or 'immersive' (read: same as every other FPS, you just have less health). Every single time you zoom in with a gun you get all of this garbage scattered around the scope, range-finders, degree tickers, relative humidity, dewpoint, distance to nearest Burger King, Ron Paul campaign adds, stock prices, etc. . This would be all well and good if any of it actually helped you aim, but none of it does. All of the actual aiming is done with the little crosshairs (or UFO shaped platter of cheeze doodles, depending on whether or not this is an 'alien' gun) in the middle of the screen, everything else just serves to block off pieces of your view so that Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary can get the drop on you. Know what I really want in the corner of my scope? A rearview mirror, that's what. A similar effect occurs in a lot of games that let you zoom the pistol,which never just gives you a magnified reticule or something useful. No, instead the zoomed pistol takes up half the screen, forces you to use the defective iron sights (which never actually point at where the bullets go), and takes away your reticule, making aiming more difficult, and making it easy for guys to walk straight up to you under the cover of your massive, use impaired handgun parked helpfully in the dead center of the screen, and kill you with a single blast from their:

11) Shotguns: Now don't get me wrong, shotguns can be a lot of fun every once and a while. The problem is that they are either useless or the only gun you'll ever need, depending on whether or not you are in Snip-camping Valley or Crate Warehouse. They also seem to spread their pellets out with truly amazing speed, so that against any target over about 30 feet (33 if the game's generous) they are completely useless. The manual always says how they are good at 'close to medium range' and can also 'engage multiple targets.' What they mean by this is 'works at distances where you can count a guy's pores, all the way out to where you can just see his zits' and 'sometimes, if two guys are six feet away and standing right next to them, you can minorly hurt both of them, causing them to turn around and riddle you with holes." The most annoying bits to me at least is that you can be a space marine from the distant future, wearing most of a tank and capable of surviving having a building fall on you, but one guy with a shotgun can kill you, provided he's three feet away. It's not even some sort of special futuristic alien shotgun either, just a normal run of the mill pump action. Which reminds me, the way most games act, you would swear that nobody in the history of the universe had ever designed a shotgun that was clip fed and didn't take the better part of a Presidential administration to reload. Usually you pick up said shotgun just in time for the Mandated By Law Zombie Level, where you will get mobbed by those Totally Unique Alien Parasite Zombies. This leads to you performing the Shotgun Dance, where you circle strafe like a gnat whose drunk six gallons of Mt. Dew while desperately jamming shells into your gun. Usually you get two or three in there, before having to unload them into another descicated corpse with designs involving your ass and a Happy Meal, before repeating. This is of course made all the more' thrilling' by the fact that you never, ever, have enough ammunition for the shotgun, so gods' save you if you miss or run out, because then you will have to resort to using the pistol, which was apparently designed to be given out as party favors for 5 year old kid's birthday parties, owing to how you can shoot something in the head 26 times and it doesn't die. Unless this is Halo 1, in which case the Pistol is more like some weapon forged by the gods themselves that fires perfectly accurate miniature tank rounds. Also on the topic of shotguns, has anyone ever played a game where you can shoot slugs from one? Wouldn't that be great? Just remap the zoom key to toggle slugs/buckshot, and you are good to go...it's not like anybody actually ever scopes the shotgun anyways, owing to, you know, its complete inability to do jack out past spitting distance.

[Triaxx]

On the theme of realism, I'll mention: Checkpoints, and in particular, poorly placed ones. GRAW's fourth level on the PC is a good example. After humping it the entire way towards the 'safety' of the destination, I'm informed I have to take out two AA emplacements. Take out one and I get... nothing. Fine, take out the other one, run to the resupply, and get a check point. Now, I get a section with no enemies, followed by a check point. This is immediately followed by a long, two part battle with multiple incursion directions, and VEHICLES. Half way through is a sharply marked pause. Can I get a check point? No.

Single-minded enemies: If you want to make the game realistic, then don't make every enemy around concentrate on the tiny little eyestalk I'm poking around the corner with, when my sniper team mate is standing blithely in the middle of the street, 'lining up his shot'. The Call of Duty series is also bad about this.

[Semidi]

What pisses me off the most?

Single-player is soooo short. In recent memory, the only game I can think of that was a good length was Half-life 2. Most games have me beating them in around 10-12 hours, and I'm not even that good at them. I paid 50 bucks for that? It's even worse when there's not multiplayer or the multiplayer is dull.

What else...

Oh right... Enemies who suffer from some sort of mental handicap tactically, but they all seem to have superhuman accuracy and vision. It's no fun to get riddled by bullets from two hundred feet away by a guy with a pistol.

Oh yeah...

Why does my flashlight have a ten second charge again? You're sending me on night missions with a ten seconds of light? How about some night-vision? Oh, and a roll of duct tape to put my flashlight on the gun, so I didn't have to switch them around would be nice too.

And...

Bodies that vanish. I like to know where I’ve been, especially if all the levels look the same.

How about...

Jumping puzzles. Man, those suck. I play an FPS so I don't have to deal with stupid platform jumping

[warty goblin]

Ah yes, short single player...for those of us with a clinical alergy to multiplayer nothing is more punishing than buying a game and realizing that you beat it in four hours.

I can't say as I mind my enemies being good shots. After all I have a disturbing tendancy to bust caps into them from obscene distances myself.

The flashlight thing, man I love this one. It is particularly egregious in a game like Halo. I mean really, your armor can propel itself straight up like six feet, allows you to flip a tank, and can regenerate from a couple dozen bullet hits in under five seconds, but can't keep the bloody flashlight running? Further proof that future armor designers are borderline incompetant. Halfway through the tests somebody should have been like:
"Dude, this being able to survive being shot with machine guns is great. But you know what else would be great? Being able to find my way to the outhouse at night without my light turning off. As it is, I've gotta run a dozen feet, then stop and wait for my light to recharge. Meanwhile my bladder feels like somebody stuffed a couple grenades up there, my ass is freezing off, and bugs are crawling up my legs inside the armor. You wanna know how hard it is to sleep with bugs inside your hermetically sealed hard vac suit? Damn hard, that's how. No, I don't know how the bugs manage to get in the suit, even though its vac proof. All I know is that they manage it, and nothing sucks more than having to fight alien scum with bugbites all around your crotch, given how much the armor rubs there already. And lemme tell you something else, Mr. Armor Designer, now try all that while being stalked by Alien Parasite Zombies, which you can't bloody see, because your light's out of batteries again!"
Really, given the generally high level of professionalism seen in the UNSC forces, this sort of lapse surprises me. I mean in Half Life 2 it makes a certain amount of sense. It's not like Gordon ever provides any feedback on anything, so how are the designers supposed to know better anyways?

Oh, another one, stealth sequences: I don't mind the concept, and done right they can rock, ala the Thief games. However if a game doesn't make stealth a focus, there is a very high probability of said stealth sequence seriously sucking (actually, even if they are a focus, there's a pretty good chance of 'em sucking, come to think of it). No, the problem with most FPS stealth sequences is that they are to binary, and getting seen even once ends the mission, unlike say the Thief games where if you were seen, at least most of the time it didn't end the mission and you could recover. Making this worse is the almost certainly craptacular AI, which can sometimes detect you beely-crawling along a sandy ditch in the pitch black at 600 meters, and sometimes fails to notice you firing off 6,000 rounds of ammunition from your man portable 30mm "Atomic Deathscreamer" howitzer right next to their heads (see: Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary). You can't count on this however, so most of the time you end up crawling around, quicksaving every 40 seconds and hardsaving every 2 minutes, and muttering increasingly dark things. So instead you end up using the 'silencer' which only works on your pistol and drops its damage from 'nerfball' to 'getting hit by a lethargic gnat while walking in slow motion' meaning you have to shoot guys upwards of 50 times in the head just to get them to notice. This allows you to pick off the guards that inexplicably wander the base alone, until you come to the door. The door is a normal looking door, except that instead of one guard, it has two. This of course means that you can't kill them both without raising the alarm and losing the mission, as Earpiece Woman helpfully informs you after you try it and just before the "mission failed" screen pops up. This means you need a 'distraction' which is code word for 'find and trigger the stupid scripted event which causes the guards to move.' Usually this will involve hacking a primary control console located on the other freaking side of the map, which gives you a five minute window to get back to and through the door, nevermind that it is a 4 minute thirty second journey if you sprint and don't make a single wrong turn, which you almost certainly will because the interior layout was done by a guy who played Halo and went "you know, this is cool, but the interiors are really too diverse. I'm thinking for our game we should only use the one color of grey." There is an upside to this however, when you finally get out of the stealth mission and into the fight with the Mega Zombie, which throws normal Alien Parasite Zombies at you, you are a happy gamer because you get to use an actual gun again, nevermind that you have killed a grand total of 27 Mega Zombies to date, and every single fight was a long, drawn out and horribly repedative experience as you dodged the flying alien parasites and tried to maneuver so you could shoot that one big pustule on its back.

[2xSlick]

Oh man you're dead on about shotguns. I love to shoot clay pidgeons so I know a thing or two about them. Video game shotguns have less range and accuracy than a blunderbus. Do the game developers even stop to think that a gun that can reliably shoot flying birds, walking turkeys and the occasional deer has to be deadly at more than a 10 foot range? I harped on it pretty bad in my review but it bears repeating, the worst shotgun ever was the one in Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green. If a zombie was more than 5 feet away, you couldn't shoot him in the head. I think the only game that has done a reasonable job with shotgun models is Counter Strike as you can actually hit people a good 50 feet away.

I can only think of one game where you could load a shotgun with slugs, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And yes, it was fairly accurate and would drop anyone you hit.

Short games are also a huge nag. Call of Duty 4 was awesome the first five hours. Then the credits rolled. On the other hand, sometimes you get games like Doom 3 where a monster spawns behind you every seven feet. That got annoying quicker than the flashlight gimmick (binding flashlight to mouse 3 was the best advice since circle strafe).

[Stormthorn]

Checkpoints, and in particular, poorly placed ones

First two Halo games i didnt really have a problem with this. Third one i did. I sometimes walked over checkpoints (that i knew should trigger and thus took for granted) and for soem reason it wouldnt trigger. Other times (im lookin at you, flood level) the checkpoints would trigger at the entrance to a room whith enemy shots incomeing. Everytime i respawn i lose half my shield off the bat. Worst of all, i had to deal with, on several occasions, a checkpoint triggering as my vehical was blasted (or bumped by another vehical) off a cliff. Then i have to wait for the game to descide to send me back two checkpoints to make up for its own mistake.

[Sholos]

Arbitrary spawning of enemies bugs me. As do incompetent allies.

As far as shotguns? Yeah, shotguns annoy the heck out of me.

In Aliens vs Predators 2 you could load the shotgun with slugs.

[Wraith]

There are 2 things in FPS games that annoy me: The Enemies and the Players.

Th enemy in particular that I am referring to are the ones that ALWAYS Insta-Gib you from the mildest touch, and yet you are never given any chance to avoid them unless you have played the game multiple times and have memorized them.

Aliens vs. Predator was particularly bad for this - either you'd walk around a corner in an ancient, abandoned Temple and straight into 2 high-caliber gun turrets without warning, or you'd get your head bitten off by something hanging above a doorway as you walk through it, and the only way it can be avoided is to throw 3 grenades into the "empty" room before you enter it.

I should not be expected to know where each encounter is before I play the game, and then act accordingly as though I knew it from heart!

As for Players.... I'm sure we have all listed a type of Player that we don;t like. Be it Little Timmy, chattering about his favourite anime as he runs his truck full of allies off a cliff, or maybe Bobby Frat-Guy whose sole impulse is to hump corpses and generally be a jerk while everyone else just wants to kill each other in a fun and friendly way.

My pet-hate is Mister Tourettes.

Here's the anecdote: I play Unreal Tournament and end up in a game where the level is inside a spaceship; small, cluttered and hard to hide from your opponent. Right in front of me, a guy runs into a corridor that I know is a) a dead-end and b) has a big gun at the end of it. It's an easy kill to catch him in a corner, and if I don't try it he'll pop out 10 seconds later and make a big mess with his big gun.

2 Flak shells to the back of his head, and the guy IGNORED me, continuing his lemming-like sprint down the pointless corridor. With a shrug, I tossed a grenade and finished him off. My Score +1, and I can pick up the gun he was after in the first place. Result!

And yet, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a familiar name in the text-traffic:

"Mister_Tourettes: f*kin n00b!"

Apparently, going into an online FPS and shooting people on the opposing team makes me a 'n00b'. This does not make any sense at all and to this day I'm convinced that this message was sent due to a nervous twitch. He didn't particularly mean it, but instinct took over and he just couldn't help himself from spouting an obscenity to try and cover for his own mistake.

Weird...

[Khanderas]

n00b has nothing to do anymore with being new or unskilled in the world of games.
Much as gay don't mean happy anymore in the Real World.
Or how gay don't mean homosexual anymore in the gaming world.

Nice story, he must have ment "I'm a f*ing noob" :smallbiggrin:
(No I dont quite belive that either)

[Lorn]

Aside from the stuff mentioned... lack of feet.

You know, when I look straight down, a circular shadow is all I see a lot of the time. I'm just hovering. In midair. With no legs.

[Mando Knight]

n00b has nothing to do anymore with being new or unskilled in the world of games.

Perhaps n00b now means "freakin' overpowered because he actually has a grasp on close-range combat tactics?"

I think that Battlefront 2 does indeed have one of the best HUDs in FPS existence, but the Metroid Prime series doesn't have that bad of a system either... (though that might be just because I usually ignore it when I'm fighting, and have time to look at the map and ammo gauge when I'm interested in those... and that I've played the games enough that they're second nature...)

[Triaxx]

Halo is actually the best placement of checkpoints I've ever seen. CoD had pretty good check points, especially since it also featured a quick save option.

And on the topic of shotguns, one of the best shotguns in a game I've ever encountered, was in Turok 2. I had normal buckshot, but also 'explosive' rounds. That way I could either blast up close or have a shot at hitting something farther off. (Or more punch up close.)

[Inhuman Bot]

Dead on warty goblin. I still laugh in despair thinking of how jimmy: wonder mercenary does it.

[warty goblin]

Dead on warty goblin. I still laugh in despair thinking of how jimmy: wonder mercenary does it.

I know. It's not that I mind dying if I screw up or something, it's that I get killed when the only thing I did wrong is assume that my enemy was going to behave like my enemy and actually try to kill me. This is why I've started to carry the Riot Shield. Sure I move slower than a one legged moose after a dozen too many beers, and sure I can only use the handgun, but I no longer get one-shotted by guys with shotguns. So. Totally. Worth. It. To finally frag Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary with a pistol the size of a cannon from the complete safety of my man-portable cover point...

[The Linker]

1.Death=Pathos
I'm sick & tired of npc's dieing during cutscene where we are supposed to go "oh no, that guy was cool." Call of Duty 4 is a perfect example of doing it right and doing it wrong. During the missions, you are often supported by friendly units who all get their own names over their heads. I actually find myself redoing levels in the hopes of saving as many of these guys as possible. Yet there are cutscenes at the end levels where you get to watch the npc's get gunned down. It works when it's during a mission and I can actually save these unimportant npc's. Yet during cutscenes I have to sit idly by and watch them die. Why should I care if I have no say in the matter? They didn't die because I screwed up, they died because the plot called for it (usually rather arbitrarily since FPS always center around you doing everything yourself).


What Call of Duty 4 cutscenes? I can only think of two which could even be considered cutscenes where NPCs die; the heli getting hit by the nuclear explosion, and your squad getting cornered on the broken bridge. Certainly can't call those deaths arbitrary (at least as a result of the plot centering around you), since you die in the heli also (for a very good reason, being that your squad decided to stay behind to help the downed pilot), and very nearly die on the bridge. Both parts were, I thought, very well done and definitely my favorite parts of the whole game. If I misunderstood what you were saying, please let me know. :smallsmile:

[Darkone8752]

On shotguns: I miss the Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear (Yes, a clancy game actually MADE BY clancy and not a stupid marketing ploy) shotguns. Buckshot, slugs, or rubber battons and DAMNED BE YE if you load rubber battons and one of the terrorists happens to have body armor on. In fact, rubber wars with modden fast reloading shotguns with 200 round automatic clips were slow in heavy armor. Nevermind trying to kill the beached whale with a regular 9 round clip of anything smaller then a 120mm APFSDS round. Or the barret 82A1- Yea. *CHRRRINSSHHHHH!!* Foot shot, ohsht hes not gonna- oh nevermind, he just exploded into a cloud of blood leaving a 40 meter deep crater behind him. And while that game was awesome, the dragunov sniper needs some fixin-

##.Awesome games with bugs that are no longer patched- Yea. Said bug being the fact that the 7.62mm dragunov round might as well have been a light anti-planet round, capable of wiping out players on another server, who werent even logged in at the moment. It was so powerful, their great grandchildren would spontaneously detonate every now and then as the temporal distortion caused by the weapon firing finally dropped the round out of the warp and took out a city block. Not to mention, the weapon was downright deadly at short range due to the random spray of its semi-automatic 10 round clip of moon neutralising fusion sabots being guaranteed to hit with at least one round.

[Cristo Meyers]

For some reason, I want to make a game with exactly this scenario.

They already did, it's called F.E.A.R.

Wall full of open windows, but you can only go out the one with the planks over it...

[TheBoneSplitter]

I honestly don't see the point in getting overtly frustrated while playing any FPS game online because when it all boils down to it, the amount of times you kill and be killed relies more on dumb luck.

And any AI with anything resembling a shotgun that can take away half of your health = very unfair... it almost ruins it. I've had enough of cheap shot kills from Doom with this, I don't need them in anything beyond Doom where you have little to no room to strafe, or you're as slow as a turtle doing such. :smallannoyed:

[Coplantor]

What is it about crates full of ammo everywhere???? I remeber duke nukem 3d wich was one of the first FPS I've played. There where crates at the strip house, the cinema, private houses, a freaking moon station!!! Come on!!!!! Why was there a Rocket Luncher in the middle of a sign in the street?????

[warty goblin]

I honestly don't see the point in getting overtly frustrated while playing any FPS game online because when it all boils down to it, the amount of times you kill and be killed relies more on dumb luck.

And any AI with anything resembling a shotgun that can take away half of your health = very unfair... it almost ruins it. I've had enough of cheap shot kills from Doom with this, I don't need them in anything beyond Doom where you have little to no room to strafe, or you're as slow as a turtle doing such. :smallannoyed:

I think there's a bit more to it than luck. I just got 351 kills in a single map of ET:QW (offline) without a single perma-death (I think I was revived like maybe 3 times), and I've been playing since the demo came out. When I started I felt pretty good if I dropped a guy to half health before biting it, and now I am an avenging angel of death unto the Strogg, armed only with my scoped assault rifle and 250mm howitzer...Now that is how a gaming experince should be IMHO, not frustrating, no cheap deaths, and where every tactic and strategy has a clear counter. Also any game where strapping high explosive to a four-wheeler and then driving it into stuff is a viable tactic rocks.

Actually anymore I don't mind the half health removing shotguns, it's the ones where they apparently have replaced the buckshot with 20mm cannon shells that send you flying across the damn room in pieces that I dislike (Gears of War, I'm lookin' at you). Given how short ranged most shotguns are, taking somebody down to half health seems pretty reasonable, but I have a pathological dislike for one shot kill weapons, although strangely snipers don't bother me as much and people with shotguns. Maybe because sniping requires skill, whereas shotguns (particularly in the hands of Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary) don't.

On the topic of hidieously overpowered weapons, allow me to nominate the Elite Rifle from Battlefront II. Seriously, one headshot would drop anything in the game, heavy armor or no, and a bodyshot would do for any light character once you factored in the almost certainly present damage increase bonus. Now the rate of fire was somewhat low, but it made up for it in accuracy. Sure the shots spread a bit, but they happened to spread in an equilateral triangle, which made it almost trivial to compensate for. Up close it even held its own against the shotgun, since both were pretty much one shot, one kill, but played right, nobody would ever get close with a shotgun, particularly on one of the more open maps. It also did enough damage to be a semi-effective anti-tank weapon, I'm not even kidding. The Precision Pistol was also pretty over the top, seeing as how it fired sniper rifle accurate nearly hitscan speed rounds and was well and truly semi-auto, which meant a skilled player could actually shoot faster than somebody with an assault rifle.

[SilentNight]

For some reason, I want to make a game with exactly this scenario.
You really are demented man. Kudos to WG, eloquently put.

I second short single player and immovable barriers( Ravenholm:smallfurious: !) seriously, why is it that Sam can slip through and you can't?

In Mercenaries though, Jimmy generaly has an RPG and freakish aim.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

For online FPS's I hate swearing filters for chat. Now, I'm the kind of guy who swears in game chat regularly, whether I'm happy or mad. Now lets go over the different KINDS of swear filters

1. There's the kind which just makes your swear word a bunch of $%%^ things or some asteriscs, and while this is mildly annoying at times, its nothing big.

2. The kind where you get booted or banned for swearing. Now these really piss me off, because even if I'm NOT swearing, I can get kicked anyway. For example, I was talking about something to a teammate, and I was trying to say "i got shot" but I accidentally misclicked an i instead of an o. Now in type 1, it would have bleeped it, and I would have corrected my mistake, but NO, booting swear filter kicks me for several minutes and maybe bans me. This kind of spam filter is particularly annoying as most FPS's are rated T or M, and the purpose of spam filters is to be "family friendly" or "there are kids here" when there shouldn't be kids, or if there are, I doubt someone swearing is going to shatter their innocence or anything

3. Something that combines 1 and 2, not only is it the dumbest idea ever, its totally unnecessary, you're already bleeping my text, why kick me for swearing?

Another thing that pisses me off, is how somehow all of my enemies seem to have some supernatural sense for when I'm not ready. I could sit there camping forever, or run around the map endlessly, but the second I look away, or change my gun, or itch my nose, an enemy pops up from NOWHERE. I mean seriously. I once sat waiting for TEN MINUTES for someone to come along. Now there were a middling amount of people, and the map was medium size, so noone coming along seemed odd. I reached up to scratch my head for not 2 seconds, AND SOMEONE COMES ALONG AND SHOOTS ME. How is that possible? :smallannoyed:

[2xSlick]

What is it about crates full of ammo everywhere???? I remeber duke nukem 3d wich was one of the first FPS I've played. There where crates at the strip house, the cinema, private houses, a freaking moon station!!! Come on!!!!! Why was there a Rocket Luncher in the middle of a sign in the street?????

You've just reminded me about the biggest greivance in nearly every fps of the past 15 years.
http://hlcomic.com/comics/concerned022.jpg

As for my comment about deaths during cutscenes, I was also refering to the Asian guy in Gears of War (there's a reason he ain't on the box) and several cutscenes in Crysis and the like. As for Call of Duty 4:
Don't forget the part where you're the president. I think the only person to make it out of that game alive besides Soap was MacMillan but he probably died of old age since the flashback. It doesn't help that the whole slow motion following an explosion leading to an entire squad being wiped out on a bridge was taken directly from Saving Private Ryan.

[Grath]

Alright, things that I find annoying in FPSes:
Other players.
Mainly seen in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
The types:
Whines about getting owned with a powerful weapon
- Any time someone uses a Panzerfaust in W:ET, you're likely to have someone bitching about getting shot in the face with a panzerfaust rocket. Even if they were sniped by the person with a rocket from half the map away.
Whines about legitimate gameplay tactics
- Mainly seen with my tactic for winning Siwa Oasia in W:ET, personally. I can build the old city water pump with lets me get through the enemy lines before they start spawning at a later fort. Then I can blow up the map-winning objectives at ease. People whine and say I cheated and jumped over a wall (that you have to blow up to progress, normally).
Crazy good players
- People who've mastered the super speed bunny hop trick, can cross the level in half the time as the rest of their team, and get about 50% headshots in firefights.
Noobs
- Honestly, if I'm stuck on a team with noobs against people on the clan that hosts the server and regulars who frequent the server, I'm probably going to go into spectator or leave. Spectator's more fun because I can laugh at the noobs.
Morons with high explosive weaponry who apparently don't know that if you're on the allied side, you shoot the nazis, not the other allies.
- 'Nuff said. Although the flamethrower also applies, despite not being heavy weaponry.

However, not so annoying is the swear filter on the server I play on. Censors the word and instagibs you.
However, instead of the normal four letter words, it censors 'Happy', 'Cigarette', and 'Bundle of Sticks'. All of which are misused way too often in online gaming.
(All three words are synonyms of the original meaning incase using those is frowned upon here)

Edit: Remember kids, grammar is good for you.
Edit 2: Added not-so-bad swearfilter comment

[lumberofdabeast]

Whines about legitimate gameplay tactics
- Mainly seen with my tactic for winning Siwa Oasia in W:ET, personally. I can build the old city water pump with lets me get through the enemy lines before they start spawning at a later fort. Then I can blow up the map-winning objectives at ease. People whine and say I cheated and jumped over a wall (that you have to blow up to progress, normally).
Crazy good players
- People who've mastered the super speed bunny hop trick, can cross the level in half the time as the rest of their team, and get about 50% headshots in firefights.
Just thought I'd point this out.

[Grath]

Just thought I'd point this out.

First situation:

---[Enemy team bottleneck]===[Objective of level]
I take the bottom path instead of the normal top path
They accuse me of using the superspeed bunnyhop trick and hopping over the wall blocking the normal top path, instead of them not destroying the pump that empties the tunnel that is the bottom half.

Second situation:
They're abusing a glitch in the physics engine (Very quick leaps retain your speed, while you can speed up for the split second you're on the ground) and ridiculously good at aiming.

[Om]

3) Weird ammo limits on guns. Now sometimes this makes sense, I mean rockets are pretty big, so carrying a lot of them is probably not really practical, but sometimes it's just plain weird. The Magnum from Half Life 2 is a prime example of this, I get a grand total of like 18 bullets for the thing at a time, yet I can carry 240 for the SMG, not counting grenades? The sniper rifle from Halo is another great example, I can carry 8 rockets, 8 grenades and 600 rounds for my asault rifle at once and still be able to jump 12 feet straight up, but only 24 rounds for the sniper rifle? Seriously, by the time I finished that game I felt Master Cheif should track down the moron who designed the ammo handling capabilities of the MJOLNIR armor and shoot him. He probably would have, but he was out of sniper ammo again...Two words: game balance

Imagine if you could hold hundreds of magnum bullets in HL2. Now ask yourself why you would ever use any other gun

[warty goblin]

Two words: game balance

Imagine if you could hold hundreds of magnum bullets in HL2. Now ask yourself why you would ever use any other gun

Oh I think that's perfectly solvable. Just reduce the accuracy a bit, or up the reload time, or have any shots not fired be lost when you reloaded, or something. And yes, I would still use the crossbow, and probably the shotgun as well. I'd imagine the pulse rifle would find its way into my arsenal as well, simply for the fusion cores, as would the SMG for the grenade launcher and general bullet sprayability. In fact the only weapon I see myself as totally not using anymore would be the snub pistol, and frankly that's not much of a loss, since I already don't use the snub pistol. I wouldn't even demand hundreds of Magnum bullets, but you know, fifty would be nice.

[lumberofdabeast]

First situation:

---[Enemy team bottleneck]===[Objective of level]
I take the bottom path instead of the normal top path
They accuse me of using the superspeed bunnyhop trick and hopping over the wall blocking the normal top path, instead of them not destroying the pump that empties the tunnel that is the bottom half.

Second situation:
They're abusing a glitch in the physics engine (Very quick leaps retain your speed, while you can speed up for the split second you're on the ground) and ridiculously good at aiming.

Well, is there anything stopping you from using it, too? If it's a glitch that all can exploit equally, then exploiting it is a legitimate gameplay tactic, just not one you like because you haven't bothered to take the time to master exploiting it. See: Halo 2 reload glitch, just about anything used in competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee, snaking in Mario Kart, et cetera.

[Demented]

They already did, it's called F.E.A.R.

Wall full of open windows, but you can only go out the one with the planks over it...

I specifically wanted the pleasant tree-lined avenue with the mothers pushing strollers and frolicking children. Possibly to prevent you from reaching a Big Pack O' Health, which is the only health pack you've seen since the last two boss battles.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

Two words: game balance

Imagine if you could hold hundreds of magnum bullets in HL2. Now ask yourself why you would ever use any other gun

That's right. Game balance. Making it so that every gun is worthwhile, but each appeals to a different style of play and/or mentality.

[Cainen]

Well, is there anything stopping you from using it, too? If it's a glitch that all can exploit equally, then exploiting it is a legitimate gameplay tactic, just not one you like because you haven't bothered to take the time to master exploiting it.

Honor. For one, if you want to be abusive and show off your 'l337 technique", you play Warsow. It's specifically meant for competitive gaming, and it has nearly every movement technique you can imagine. ET isn't, and turning it into a game of Let's Be The Jackass and ruining other peoples' fun is not going to make you look any better.

One thing I really hate about the FPSes I play: My computer sucks, and their netcode usually does too. My ping shows up at 40-80, and it usually performs like so... until I get into a firefight/step outside, at which time my FPS count will dip into the single-digits and my ability to play vanishes. So I get called a n00b for being completely unable to play the game on outside maps, which make up the vast majority of maps. It's not even my fault - given ideal conditions, I usually end up dominating or at least breaking even with even the most skilled players. Usually, it's lagging jerks that cause problems, as on my side I'm well beyond fully covered. It really breaks immersion when people start using tactics that you cannot counter, such as leaning around corners to fire; my computer is not fast enough to deal with that, so I have no choice but to sit there and die.

[EvilElitest]

What is it about crates full of ammo everywhere???? I remeber duke nukem 3d wich was one of the first FPS I've played. There where crates at the strip house, the cinema, private houses, a freaking moon station!!! Come on!!!!! Why was there a Rocket Luncher in the middle of a sign in the street?????

um, they were arming themselves, in case the zombies/communist/robo nazis/real fascists/giant bug monsters/nuclear monsters/Vampires/aliens. Of course, when these things show up, everybody has already died of cancer

My question is, in war game the total lack of civilians. War is hell (Sherman) and i prefer that description
from
EE

[Grath]

Wavedashing and shorthopping in Melee will get you hated outside of tournaments. And they took those out of Brawl, get with the times.

The main problem I have with elite players is playing against them and knowing you will HORRIBLY HORRIBLY LOSE no matter what, just because the other team has one specific person on it.

The glitch is accessible to all, but a lot of people have custom autoexec.cfg files that let them hit a button and go into the glitch mode.

[Mr._Blinky]

Personally, so long as I'm not dead last and don't get OMFGPOWNZORED every time I spawn in, I don't actually mind playing against people who are better than me. I don't improve much when facing people who are worse, since I get lazy and stop aiming as quickly, since I know they're likely not as fast. When playing elite people, I know I constantly have to be on my game, and that helps a lot.

[lumberofdabeast]

Wavedashing and shorthopping in Melee will get you hated outside of tournaments.Irrelevant.


And they took those out of Brawl, get with the times.Also irrelevant, and vaguely flameish. Plus, Melee is still played in tournaments, and Brawl has its own share of glitches.


The main problem I have with elite players is playing against them and knowing you will HORRIBLY HORRIBLY LOSE no matter what, just because the other team has one specific person on it.Practice more.


The glitch is accessible to all, but a lot of people have custom autoexec.cfg files that let them hit a button and go into the glitch mode.So why don't you?

[TheThan]

I play team fortress 2 online (heh like there are any other modes). One thing I’m getting tired of is the constant bitching about the soldier class’s rockets. Now keep in mind this is from the perspective of a soldier so your experience may be different.

Honestly I rarely die from other soldiers. I die from that one spy I didn’t spy check, the pyro which needs to have this flame on you for .25 of a second to kill you and the blasted turrets.

You got it. The turrets are the most broken thing in the game

These things have a rate of fire second only to the heavy’s mini gun. They knock you back when you get hit, deal nearly crit rocket damage per shot, have perfect (and I mean PERFECT) aim. On top of all that, they are reparable by the same guy that drops them (a soldier has to walk over medic kits to do that, just like with everyone else). They can be placed anywhere and are tough as nails (takes three or four direct hits to kill one, unless a crit is involved). Then they get upgraded to have the same rockets the soldier has, which makes things even worse. On yeah, and they never run out of ammo with the engineer’s station nearby. (Hell I don’t think they run out of ammo anyway.)



The only thing that balances them is the fact that most engineers have an intelligence of 75. Seriously if you drop one of these things in the right spot and keep it up; it’ll take half the other team to get to it, and the other half to kill it. When you do, you have to kill that engineer or it’ll be back by the time you respawn and fight your way back to that spot.

Some people will say “what about the spy? They can sap the turrets”. Well ok, let’s talk about the spy. The spy has two purposes, sapping turrets, and gankin’ noobs who don’t know to spy check everyone. Seriously an engineer that’s paying attention will wrench you to death in half a second, and the turret will still be there and be repaired by the time someone else gets close enough to kill it. You have to kill the engineer first, and then you’ll get shot by the turret during the melee since any engineer with an IQ over 75 will have his back to a wall, so no backstab for you.

Now despite all this, people still have the gonads to bitch at me that the soldier’s rockets are too powerful. hah. That just gets a laugh out of me. Now what do people have to say for rockets, they’re accurate and deal splash damage (quite a bit of it). That’s their only advantage.
The splash damage is really only bad against the classes with glass armor (sniper, spy, scout… if you can hit them). Against anyone else they’re still good, but not unfair. On and to top it off I only have 20 shots before I have to run to a station or crate and rearm. Oh yeah, lets not forget the horribly long reload time when you fire you’re four shots. That’s right you only get four shots before you need to reload, and you only get four reloads before your out. (4 in the gun, 16 reloads). That’s hardly game breaking.


I refuse to play the engineer because I know I’ll constantly own with the class. I want my skill to show for itself and win with skill, not just because I have an IQ over 75. I’ve been playing FPS games for years and I have never heard such whining as I’ve been hearing over the soldier’s rockets. So I say to all people who whine about the soldier “suck it up”.

*huff.. puff*

[Demented]

The "but everyone can use it" excuse is one of the most grating things I've ever encountered in multiplayer games. While it's not exactly restricted to FPS games, I play those games most of all and see it in those games most of all. The excuse is merely the symptom of a disease.

There is a terrible lack of bounds when it comes to games. Actually, it's more of a societal/human thing. Left to its own, a child isn't going to care if others enjoy a game, so long as that child is winning. In essence, that child has an attitude of "if I can do it and win, I should be allowed to". It's going to cheat and cheat some more until someone does something about it.

Eventually, someone does, and after a little crying and banning, things change. Rules must be followed and cheats must be avoided, and there's this fuzzy concept called 'fairness' that must be paid service too. That child develops an attitudeo of "if I can do it and win and the rules haven't banned it, I should be allowed to". However, rules are difficult things to enforce, and as games get more complex it becomes a herculean effort to make them fool-proof. Thus are born exploits and abuses.

That's about where the argument over things like bunnyhopping and other exploits enter the fray. Because exploits, by definition, bend or manipulate the rules of the game without actually breaking them (and inviting overt punishment), it's assumed that they can be used. In truth, exploits
are exactly like cheats, the only difference being implementation: Cheats break the rules while exploits abuse the rules. Both are improper, but unless a your attitude has matured enough to look past the childish impulse of "I must be allowed to win", you will always try to justify as much as you can get away with.

Picture this:
You're playing some game, say, roulette.
Through some miracle, you discover a way to play it that ensures you will have a significant advantage over someone who doesn't also do the exact same thing. The only "fix" it is to change the nature of roulette in a way that makes it exceedingly boring (an impressive feat for roulette).
What do you do?
Keep the method to yourself and play until the casinos change the game? Cheater.
Tell everyone the method and complain when the casinos change the game? Exploiter.
Tell everyone the method and demand the game be changed? Carebear.
Get a large number of people to use the method at the same time and break the casinos? Griefer.
Don't play that way, and expect others to do the same? Fool. (Or possibly, Game Developer.)

[Wraith]

Two words: game balance

Imagine if you could hold hundreds of magnum bullets in HL2. Now ask yourself why you would ever use any other gun

Backtracking a little bit, but this was one of the many reasons that I thoroughly enjoyed Deus Ex. While primarily a FPS, it's RPG elements added a heck of a lot to the game - specifically in this case, a limited inventory.

You COULD walk around carrying nothing but 500 bullets for the Magnum if you wanted. The only thing that usually stopped you is that it meant you had no room in the inventory for carry any grenades/rockets/healing kits/etc.

If more games adopted this sort of inventory system (or something like it at least) and allowed their players to choose what kind of things they were carrying around, rather then simply putting an arbitrary numerical limit on them, I probably wouldn't have stopped playing them years ago.

[Maxymiuk]

If we're talking about people's behavior in online games...

Take Battlefield 1942. Yes, it's an old game. Yes, people still play it, me among them, though I'm a relatively new player to the scene.
I have nothing against aircraft. The planes are, from my experience, fairly tricky to use, and if you've spent the time to master them to the point where you can fly inches above the ground and mow down other players with the friggin' propeller, more power to you.
However, if you insist that the most optimal strategy for defeating armored targets is to come in flying low, pull up at the last second and drop the bombs is the most optimal strategy - and from what I've seen it probably is - understand that there still will be a counter to it. Understand that on your bombing run your angular velocity in respect to me is a big fat zero. Understand that as soon as I hear you coming (and I will), I will stop, swivel the turret around, wait patiently till you come closer, and put a shell straight through your cockpit. Hells, I'll do it with a coastal defense gun if you're dumb enough to approach it from the front. So if I do, quit your damned whining.

[Om]

Oh I think that's perfectly solvable. Just reduce the accuracy a bit, or up the reload time, or have any shots not fired be lost when you reloaded, or somethingSo if you're imposing artificial constraints why not limit the amount of ammo you can carry? Frankly complaining about a dozen bullets doesn't make much sense when you're lugging around enough firepower to equip a small army :smallwink:

I'm sure that HL2 went through extensive playtesting to establish just what was the perfect balance. By and large I think they got it just right

[Arang]

The "but everyone can use it" excuse is one of the most grating things I've ever encountered in multiplayer games. While it's not exactly restricted to FPS games, I play those games most of all and see it in those games most of all. The excuse is merely the symptom of a disease.

You're saying that doing things that allow you to win is inherently unfair? How about using the mouse? People with mice beat the ones with gamepads and joysticks nearly every time. Keyboard? You can't expect just anyone to have a keyboard. That's unfair. How about a screen? It is technically possible to play the game without the screen on, or even a screen at all. I think you'll find playing without a screen is a lot more difficult than using one.

You know what grinds my gears? The notion that there are things within the rules that are not fair play. Lots of people call the AWP an "unfair" gun, but guess what? You have the opportunity to use it too. Just because you choose to impose arbitrary limits on what you will and will not do does not mean you're right. If it ruins the game it'll be patched out. It's that easy.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

You're saying that doing things that allow you to win is inherently unfair? How about using the mouse? People with mice beat the ones with gamepads and joysticks nearly every time. Keyboard? You can't expect just anyone to have a keyboard. That's unfair. How about a screen? It is technically possible to play the game without the screen on, or even a screen at all. I think you'll find playing without a screen is a lot more difficult than using one.

You know what grinds my gears? The notion that there are things within the rules that are not fair play. Lots of people call the AWP an "unfair" gun, but guess what? You have the opportunity to use it too. Just because you choose to impose arbitrary limits on what you will and will not do does not mean you're right. If it ruins the game it'll be patched out. It's that easy.

See, thats stupid. Its like if two people were arm-wrestling, and one guy used his off hand to smash a bottle over the other guys head, and when the guy called him out for cheating, the first guy said "well you had a bottle too, the option was there." See, its stupid because doing cheap and unfair things because you "can" is annoying as hell. When you do something inherently cheap (like bunny hopping, lamest strategy ever) and someone else doesn't, its because they think its cheap. Doing things because someone else does something doesn't suddenly make it fair, it just means more people are being cheap *******s. Telling someone to go against their belief (that something is unfair) and telling them that they can do it too is kind of insulting, its insinuating that we should do something we are against and wish would stop, just because someone else is doing it. Just because something in a game "allows" you to do something, doesn't mean you should.

[Arang]

See, thats stupid. Its like if two people were arm-wrestling, and one guy used his off hand to smash a bottle over the other guys head, and when the guy called him out for cheating, the first guy said "well you had a bottle too, the option was there." See, its stupid because doing cheap and unfair things because you "can" is annoying as hell. When you do something inherently cheap (like bunny hopping, lamest strategy ever) and someone else doesn't, its because they think its cheap. Doing things because someone else does something doesn't suddenly make it fair, it just means more people are being cheap *******s. Telling someone to go against their belief (that something is unfair) and telling them that they can do it too is kind of insulting, its insinuating that we should do something we are against and wish would stop, just because someone else is doing it. Just because something in a game "allows" you to do something, doesn't mean you should.

No, what would be unfair was if the one guy had muscles ten times as large as the other guy. If both parties can use a strategy then it is fair, regardless of whether they'll be using it or not.

[Emperor Ing]

1 guy with a pistol who does nothing
1 guy who throws flashbangs every three seconds
2 guys with AK-47's who apparently have specially modified their guns to be even less accurate
1 guy with an SMG that apparently fires laser guided high explosive depleted uranium antimatter rounds given how fast he seems to kill me from across the damn room. Unfortunately when I use his gun all of the bullets seem to have been replaced with ultra soft pellets containing feathers.
2 guys who are talking about somebody named "Chris"
1 Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary, who apparently has an IQ of 30 on a good day and may also be partially blind and deaf. Ironically, aside from SMG of Doom guy, he's the most effective member of the squad. I'd imagine that when they hear me coming, the terrorists send two guys to the door to talk about Chris in order to distract me while SMG of Doom guy gets into position and somebody puts Jimmy behind his crate and takes away his Special Doll, so that in about fifteen minutes he'll notice and get angry.


Ah yes. Classic generic enemy squad
In Medal of Honor European Assault, (worst game ever) squads looked something like this
4 expendable cannon fodders with rifles who ran at you while you mowed em down with your MG
1 annoying guy who melees you from behind corners as you turn through them.
2 SMG of Doom guys. But these guys are different. They just didnt settle for laser guided high explosive depleted uranium antimatter rounds that shoot you from across the map, apparently, they upgraded their ammo to fly at their targets no matter where the gun is aimed, and can shoot through 5 feet of solid concrete. :smallsmile:

[Lord_Asmodeus]

No, what would be unfair was if the one guy had muscles ten times as large as the other guy. If both parties can use a strategy then it is fair, regardless of whether they'll be using it or not.

Just because someone else can use something doesn't mean using it is fair, it just means that someone else can be equally unfair. Like, the aforementioned bunny hopping. Bunny hopping is cheap and stupid. Sure anyone can bunny hop, but that doesn't mean jumping around like a freaking kangaroo isn't cheap as hell.

[Were-Sandwich]

On the topic of hidieously overpowered weapons, allow me to nominate the Elite Rifle from Battlefront II. Seriously, one headshot would drop anything in the game, heavy armor or no, and a bodyshot would do for any light character once you factored in the almost certainly present damage increase bonus. Now the rate of fire was somewhat low, but it made up for it in accuracy. Sure the shots spread a bit, but they happened to spread in an equilateral triangle, which made it almost trivial to compensate for. Up close it even held its own against the shotgun, since both were pretty much one shot, one kill, but played right, nobody would ever get close with a shotgun, particularly on one of the more open maps. It also did enough damage to be a semi-effective anti-tank weapon, I'm not even kidding. The Precision Pistol was also pretty over the top, seeing as how it fired sniper rifle accurate nearly hitscan speed rounds and was well and truly semi-auto, which meant a skilled player could actually shoot faster than somebody with an assault rifle.

Yeah, but you have to earn those weapons, and you can't use them on multiplayer. It takes dedication to get 60-odd Frenzy awards. ThHis reminds me of something that pisses me off:

Imbalanced challenge/rewards. Taking Battlefront 2 as an example. Frenzy and Gunslinger (Award Rifle and Precision Pistol, respectively), whilst requiring you to put a lot of game time in to get, are pretty awesome when you do get them. Has anyone ever actually got a Marksman award? Not only is it bloody hard to get, but the bonus you get for it (the Beam Rifle) is actually worse than the normal sniper rifle.

[lumberofdabeast]

Just because someone else can use something doesn't mean using it is fair, it just means that someone else can be equally unfair. Like, the aforementioned bunny hopping. Bunny hopping is cheap and stupid. Sure anyone can bunny hop, but that doesn't mean jumping around like a freaking kangaroo isn't cheap as hell.

Last I checked, anyone being able to use it was the very definition of fair. If you choose not to, it's your problem, not mine. And being unable to beat it does not mean that it's cheap as hell, it means that you need to practice more.

[Artanis]

Going back to singleplayer...

A lot of my annoyances with games have been covered, but another thing that I really, REALLY hated was in HL2 when they took away all your guns at the end. Yes, the super grav gun was cool...for all of the ten seconds it took to get to one of the all-too-many parts where bad guys were shooting you from a zillion feet outside of your firing range, which got REAL old REAL fast. Seriously, when you wish you had the effing pistol instead of the techno-wank supergun, something is very, VERY wrong.

It was like they had looked at Xen, looked at how much people hated it, and said to themselves, "rather than avoiding that mistake this time around, let's instead make it even BIGGER and even MORE soul-searingly annoying!" It was a terrible, terrible feeling when I realized that the last level was Xen on crack.

/rant

[warty goblin]

Yeah, but you have to earn those weapons, and you can't use them on multiplayer. It takes dedication to get 60-odd Frenzy awards. ThHis reminds me of something that pisses me off:

Imbalanced challenge/rewards. Taking Battlefront 2 as an example. Frenzy and Gunslinger (Award Rifle and Precision Pistol, respectively), whilst requiring you to put a lot of game time in to get, are pretty awesome when you do get them. Has anyone ever actually got a Marksman award? Not only is it bloody hard to get, but the bonus you get for it (the Beam Rifle) is actually worse than the normal sniper rifle.

You actually can use the weapons in MP, you just have to earn them during the match, which can be pretty impossible, although the sniper rifle and shotgun upgrades should be doable. And earning the award sniper rifle isn't actually that hard, it's pretty accurate and if you are an evil bastard like me, you just headshot the AI from outside of their detection range. Of course I don't actually do that, because the beam rifle is one of the worst guns ever, what with the crappy scope, inaccurate beam and seemingly massive inaccuracy. About the only good thing I can say for it is that you can kill two guys at once. Sometimes. As for getting perma-unlocks, I've managed it with all of the passive bonuses (just do lots of bombing runs in space) and the blaster rifle, I think three times now, or generally right before my harddrive dies and I lose my player profiles.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

Last I checked, anyone being able to use it was the very definition of fair. If you choose not to, it's your problem, not mine. And being unable to beat it does not mean that it's cheap as hell, it means that you need to practice more.

ahem: legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair fight.

You're right, by some definitions because anyone can use it makes it "Fair" but its still cheap, and its still stupid. Bunny hopping is "fair" by that definition, but its stupid and cheap. Nade spam is "fair" but its stupid and its cheap. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

[lumberofdabeast]

ahem: legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair fight.

You're right, by some definitions because anyone can use it makes it "Fair" but its still cheap, and its still stupid. Bunny hopping is "fair" by that definition, but its stupid and cheap. Nade spam is "fair" but its stupid and its cheap. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
So, you're imposing an entirely artificial limitation on your own gameplay, and insulting those who choose not to abide by your entirely artificial limitation, because you personally don't like it. As long as we're clear on that.

Something well and truly game-breaking, like the uber characters in fighting games, I could understand. But jumping? No. I don't see why jumping is a problem.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

So, you're imposing an entirely artificial limitation on your own gameplay, and insulting those who choose not to abide by your entirely artificial limitation, because you personally don't like it. As long as we're clear on that.

Something well and truly game-breaking, like the uber characters in fighting games, I could understand. But jumping? No. I don't see why jumping is a problem.


http://forum.spacebattles.com/forumimg/smilies//rolleyes.gif I'm not "imposing" any limitation, and I didn't insult anyone. Sure, you CAN bunny hop, but the game is not designed to specifically allow you to, its just a side-effect of a balanced system of jumping, which players take advantage of to make themselves alot harder to hit. And its not like I'm the only one who thinks stupid stuff like that is cheap. If I'm on pretty much any game server, and someone starts bunny hopping, people quickly get angry, because most players DONT DO IT because its CHEAP. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

[lumberofdabeast]

http://forum.spacebattles.com/forumimg/smilies//rolleyes.gif I'm not "imposing" any limitation, and I didn't insult anyone. Sure, you CAN bunny hop, but the game is not designed to specifically allow you to, its just a side-effect of a balanced system of jumping, which players take advantage of to make themselves alot harder to hit. And its not like I'm the only one who thinks stupid stuff like that is cheap. If I'm on pretty much any game server, and someone starts bunny hopping, people quickly get angry, because most players DONT DO IT because its CHEAP. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Either the system is balanced, and thus he isn't doing anything unfair, or the system is not balanced, and thus there's no reason why he shouldn't if it improves his chances of winning. To be blunt, why should he care about your opinion on whether it's "cheap" or not?

[endoperez]

Either the system is balanced, and thus he isn't doing anything unfair, or the system is not balanced, and thus there's no reason why he shouldn't if it improves his chances of winning. To be blunt, why should he care about your opinion on whether it's "cheap" or not?

One person's opinion isn't any more important than any other's. However, if everyone but one on a server agree to something (which was his example) giving in and working with their rules is diplomatic, while breaking them is cheap and unfair.

[Scroofy]

I play team fortress 2 online (heh like there are any other modes). One thing I’m getting tired of is the constant bitching about the soldier class’s rockets. Now keep in mind this is from the perspective of a soldier so your experience may be different.

Honestly I rarely die from other soldiers. I die from that one spy I didn’t spy check, the pyro which needs to have this flame on you for .25 of a second to kill you and the blasted turrets.

You got it. The turrets are the most broken thing in the game

These things have a rate of fire second only to the heavy’s mini gun. They knock you back when you get hit, deal nearly crit rocket damage per shot, have perfect (and I mean PERFECT) aim. On top of all that, they are reparable by the same guy that drops them (a soldier has to walk over medic kits to do that, just like with everyone else). They can be placed anywhere and are tough as nails (takes three or four direct hits to kill one, unless a crit is involved). Then they get upgraded to have the same rockets the soldier has, which makes things even worse. On yeah, and they never run out of ammo with the engineer’s station nearby. (Hell I don’t think they run out of ammo anyway.)



The only thing that balances them is the fact that most engineers have an intelligence of 75. Seriously if you drop one of these things in the right spot and keep it up; it’ll take half the other team to get to it, and the other half to kill it. When you do, you have to kill that engineer or it’ll be back by the time you respawn and fight your way back to that spot.

Some people will say “what about the spy? They can sap the turrets”. Well ok, let’s talk about the spy. The spy has two purposes, sapping turrets, and gankin’ noobs who don’t know to spy check everyone. Seriously an engineer that’s paying attention will wrench you to death in half a second, and the turret will still be there and be repaired by the time someone else gets close enough to kill it. You have to kill the engineer first, and then you’ll get shot by the turret during the melee since any engineer with an IQ over 75 will have his back to a wall, so no backstab for you.

Now despite all this, people still have the gonads to bitch at me that the soldier’s rockets are too powerful. hah. That just gets a laugh out of me. Now what do people have to say for rockets, they’re accurate and deal splash damage (quite a bit of it). That’s their only advantage.
The splash damage is really only bad against the classes with glass armor (sniper, spy, scout… if you can hit them). Against anyone else they’re still good, but not unfair. On and to top it off I only have 20 shots before I have to run to a station or crate and rearm. Oh yeah, lets not forget the horribly long reload time when you fire you’re four shots. That’s right you only get four shots before you need to reload, and you only get four reloads before your out. (4 in the gun, 16 reloads). That’s hardly game breaking.


I refuse to play the engineer because I know I’ll constantly own with the class. I want my skill to show for itself and win with skill, not just because I have an IQ over 75. I’ve been playing FPS games for years and I have never heard such whining as I’ve been hearing over the soldier’s rockets. So I say to all people who whine about the soldier “suck it up”.

*huff.. puff*

I have to disagree here with you. My primary class is the soldier and the one of the most annoying things I find with the class is how ridiculous the critical rockets are. When I am in the middle of a good 1 v 1 with another class the last thing I want is to get a crit rocket or for my opponent get one. I feel that it cheats me and him/her out of a well earned kill. Those aside though I think the class is pretty balanced out to the others.

I have also extensively played the engineer and the turret can be a little on the strong side if positioned properly and the engineer always maintains it. However, they are far from over powerd, it is very easy for a soldier or spy to take them out, even with the engi on them. Strafing in and out from a wall will make you nearly unhittable, and if there is an engineer, just aim for him first or his dispenser. As for the spy, sap turret switch to knife and backstab then clock and there goes the turret and the engineer. If you are good at that, it can be done in under a second giving the engineer no time to react.

Back on topic, most annoying thing for me is the enemy that manages to see me from half a mile away and starts plinking me with his pistol...

[TheThan]

Either the system is balanced, and thus he isn't doing anything unfair, or the system is not balanced, and thus there's no reason why he shouldn't if it improves his chances of winning. To be blunt, why should he care about your opinion on whether it's "cheap" or not?

Because how you play reflects upon you as a gamer (and a person), that’s why. It’s easy for someone to tag another person with names and get an opinion of someone based solely on how they play a game.

Just like in real life, if you’re a jerk to people, people won’t want to be around you. People don’t like to associate with people that are jerks. By using such tactics, you show a personality (whether you intend to or not), usually its part of you own personality, but sometimes it’s an artificial one that comes out when you play. Most people will tag you with a title or name or something else. Whether you intend on it happening or not.

Someone may say,
“Hey you know that guy TheThan, he’s a cheap bastard, I don’t want to play with him again”

Or someone else may say,

“ Hey you remember that guy lumberofdabeast? He was pretty cool, and good too. I hope he becomes a regular on this server!”

Which one would you prefer to happen? Someone getting pissed off at your conduct online, or someone actually enjoying your game. Personally I would rather have the second thing happen than the first. But that’s because I’m a good sport about gaming in general.


I have to disagree here with you. My primary class is the soldier and the one of the most annoying things I find with the class is how ridiculous the critical rockets are. When I am in the middle of a good 1 v 1 with another class the last thing I want is to get a crit rocket or for my opponent get one. I feel that it cheats me and him/her out of a well earned kill. Those aside though I think the class is pretty balanced out to the others.

I have also extensively played the engineer and the turret can be a little on the strong side if positioned properly and the engineer always maintains it. However, they are far from over powerd, it is very easy for a soldier or spy to take them out, even with the engi on them. Strafing in and out from a wall will make you nearly unhittable, and if there is an engineer, just aim for him first or his dispenser. As for the spy, sap turret switch to knife and backstab then clock and there goes the turret and the engineer. If you are good at that, it can be done in under a second giving the engineer no time to react.

Back on topic, most annoying thing for me is the enemy that manages to see me from half a mile away and starts plinking me with his pistol...

It’s a bit of an exaggeration. But still the turrets are a bit overpowered.

That bit about it taking out half a team of guys. True story. Like I said, your experience may be different.
I’m just tired of people bitching about rockets, (particularly crit rockets… which can get bad). Really it depends on how often crits happen, I’ve been in a game with no crits. And I’ve been in a game where ever other shot was a crit (no joke, it was really bad). There is a huge difference in gameplay. The no crits is probably the most fair for everyone (since It keeps one-shot kills down).

[Neon Knight]

Mr. lumberofdabeast, Mr. Arang: I find your attitudes to be most reprehensible and distasteful.

Mr. lumber, your reply to everything seems to say this to me: "I care only about winning". Honestly, do you want to make the claim that the point of multiplayer is to win? Because you'd be wrong. The entire point of video games, online or offline, is to have fun, regardless of the circumstances. To amuse ourselves so we don't put a bullet in our heads out of sheer bloody boredom.

You say "Practice more." Are you attempting to state that the only people who deserve to have fun playing video games are those who have time to waste? Because I know quite a few individuals who have far more pressing concerns and can spend only limited periods of time on any sort of pastime, and certainly cannot devote anymore to gaming. I honestly feel this attitude this "Practice more," mantra only enfranchises 12 year olds, and punishes breadwinners and hard workers for daring to have responsibilities and real life commitments. Oh, the gall of those fools! :smallamused:

Secondly, the idea that one must practice and work at one's hobby, something purely for amusement and escaping from the daily grind, in order to gain amusement from is is an attitude I find so broken it is difficult to express my true feelings without violence.

Mr. Arang:

As I've stated, the true purpose of video games is to have fun. If it any time the game ceases being fun, it has become a waste of time.

Strategies are supposed to be balanced. There isn't supposed to be one true strategy that completely and totally overpowers all others; each tactic is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages.

This is because certain strategies and tactics appeal to different kinds of players. I myself prefer charging forward with a shotgun to sitting around sniping. These two tactics should each have their plusses and minuses so that we both have fun.

If, however, sniping is out and out better than CQC, then I will not have fun, because even if I can snipe, I don't like sniping all that much.

For a real world example, consider CoD4. There is a strategy I despise: Nade Spamming. Taking the Frag x3 perk and throwing grenades in high arcs so that they explode as they land, thus denying anyone in the vicinity the chance to run away or do anything about it.

I could practice this, but I find so to be so utterly boring as to make me cease to have fun, and thus make the entire experience pointless.

While nade spamming is technically a better strategy when coupled with map knowledge and radar, I find shooting people to be vastly more entertaining and thus do not practice the behavior. Because whether I'm doing it, or someone else is, it is simply not enjoyable in the slightest.

[Jibar]

Has anyone ever actually got a Marksman award? Not only is it bloody hard to get, but the bonus you get for it (the Beam Rifle) is actually worse than the normal sniper rifle.

Oh God yes. I actually felt punished for trying to have fun.
I wanted to play a Sniper, yet when they reward me for doing so they took away what it was to be a Sniper.
I actually had to stop, lest I get so good that I cross over and start sucking, because I no longer get to be good.

[Arang]

Mr. Arang:

As I've stated, the true purpose of video games is to have fun. If it any time the game ceases being fun, it has become a waste of time.

Strategies are supposed to be balanced. There isn't supposed to be one true strategy that completely and totally overpowers all others; each tactic is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages.

This is because certain strategies and tactics appeal to different kinds of players. I myself prefer charging forward with a shotgun to sitting around sniping. These two tactics should each have their plusses and minuses so that we both have fun.

If, however, sniping is out and out better than CQC, then I will not have fun, because even if I can snipe, I don't like sniping all that much.

For a real world example, consider CoD4. There is a strategy I despise: Nade Spamming. Taking the Frag x3 perk and throwing grenades in high arcs so that they explode as they land, thus denying anyone in the vicinity the chance to run away or do anything about it.

I could practice this, but I find so to be so utterly boring as to make me cease to have fun, and thus make the entire experience pointless.

While nade spamming is technically a better strategy when coupled with map knowledge and radar, I find shooting people to be vastly more entertaining and thus do not practice the behavior. Because whether I'm doing it, or someone else is, it is simply not enjoyable in the slightest.

What if people find winning to be the most fun part of playing a video game?

[Neon Knight]

What if people find winning to be the most fun part of playing a video game?

That's alright, so long as you don't impede on other's fun. Denying other people pleasure for your own is not the epitome of altruistic or gentlemanly behavior.

Best way to settle it is to call it a conflict of interest and play with people who are like-minded and don't care what methods you use.

[lumberofdabeast]

My comments in bold, because I'm too lazy to break up the quote tags.


Because how you play reflects upon you as a gamer (and a person), that’s why. It’s easy for someone to tag another person with names and get an opinion of someone based solely on how they play a game.

Just like in real life, if you’re a jerk to people, people won’t want to be around you. People don’t like to associate with people that are jerks. By using such tactics, you show a personality (whether you intend to or not), usually its part of you own personality, but sometimes it’s an artificial one that comes out when you play. Most people will tag you with a title or name or something else. Whether you intend on it happening or not.

Someone may say,
“Hey you know that guy TheThan, he’s a cheap bastard, I don’t want to play with him again”

Or someone else may say,

“ Hey you remember that guy lumberofdabeast? He was pretty cool, and good too. I hope he becomes a regular on this server!”

Which one would you prefer to happen? Someone getting pissed off at your conduct online, or someone actually enjoying your game. Personally I would rather have the second thing happen than the first. But that’s because I’m a good sport about gaming in general.

All right, before I continue, let me say this: If I'm playing a game to improve my competitive skills, I'm not going to be playing it on public servers, because I can learn more by getting my butt kicked by a more skilled player than by going on a pubstomp any day.

Now, that said, I'm not particularly irked when someone does go on a pubstomp. The reason being simple: It doesn't matter. If you're truly playing for fun, why does victory or defeat matter? Just avoid the offending player, or gank him, or something. If it's a private server, kick him; if it's a public server, move to a private one.


Mr. lumberofdabeast, Mr. Arang: I find your attitudes to be most reprehensible and distasteful. Chill out. We don't want to get this topic locked.

Mr. lumber, your reply to everything seems to say this to me: "I care only about winning". Honestly, do you want to make the claim that the point of multiplayer is to win? Because you'd be wrong. The entire point of video games, online or offline, is to have fun, regardless of the circumstances. To amuse ourselves so we don't put a bullet in our heads out of sheer bloody boredom. To say the only point of multiplayer gaming is to have fun is every bit as flawed as to say the only point of multiplayer gaming is to win. Which, if you'll notice, I did not state at any point.

You say "Practice more." Are you attempting to state that the only people who deserve to have fun playing video games are those who have time to waste? Because I know quite a few individuals who have far more pressing concerns and can spend only limited periods of time on any sort of pastime, and certainly cannot devote anymore to gaming. I honestly feel this attitude this "Practice more," mantra only enfranchises 12 year olds, and punishes breadwinners and hard workers for daring to have responsibilities and real life commitments. Oh, the gall of those fools! :smallamused: Right, because there's certainly no such thing as a person who plays games competitively for a living, and all those professional gaming circuits are just figments of my imagination.

Secondly, the idea that one must practice and work at one's hobby, something purely for amusement and escaping from the daily grind, in order to gain amusement from is is an attitude I find so broken it is difficult to express my true feelings without violence. Really? Because I can't think of any hobbies that both 1) don't require practice and 2) aren't only marginally more interesting than watching grass grow. If you don't have to work at it, it's probably shallow and boring.
One last point to make. I play Magic: the Gathering. A new set is coming out soon, and the prerelease tournaments are next weekend. Prerelease tournaments are generally a time where a lot of fun is had; it's a new set, with new cards, and everyone is learning about them all at once, and exploring.

I do not intend to have fun.

Why? Simple. Because the best performers get free boosters of the new set. I want those prize packs. Thus, I have been keeping on top of every leak; while most of the people attending will be dealing with a completely unfamiliar set, I intend to have memorized every single relevant trick, along with as much of the set as possible. Fun? No. It's a lot of work. But every advantage I can get makes it that much more likely that I'm going to be the winner of a number of prize packs.

As another way to maximize my chances, I do not let up when I am practicing. I always play to the best of my ability, and I always seek to improve that limit. They say practice makes perfect, but that's a lie; perfect practice makes perfect. (And to that end, I also rarely play with people who aren't also trying to improve; it gives us both drive. And yes, when I'm not preparing for a major tournament, I relax and bust out some of my fun decks, like my Doran EDH deck, or my multiplayer Enduring Ideal deck. <3 enchantments.)

[Neon Knight]

To say the only point of multiplayer gaming is to have fun is every bit as flawed as to say the only point of multiplayer gaming is to win. Which, if you'll notice, I did not state at any point.


You'll pardon me, but I don't see how the statement is in anyway, shape, or form flawed.

I don't care if you never directly stated it; your words and attitude logical lead to that statement. If you want, I will comb through every single one of your posts and collect every single syllable and show you how they correlate into something that, if not directly that phrase, is only a few steps removed.



Right, because there's certainly no such thing as a person who plays games competitively for a living, and all those professional gaming circuits are just figments of my imagination.


I, personally, would never pay anyone to play a videogame, no matter how good they were. I despise the spectator entertainment culture of the modern day world were you can get paid for practically anything.

Secondly, professionals are a minority.

Thirdly, no one has the right to impede of detract from another's fun. Period. You may refrain from going onto public servers, but many so called "professionals" do not, and in fact go onto public servers with the explicit purpose of "pwning nubs lol." These are the people we object to you, and your defense of them is ,quite frankly, from our stance, inexcusable.



Really? Because I can't think of any hobbies that both 1) don't require practice and 2) aren't only marginally more interesting than watching grass grow. If you don't have to work at it, it's probably shallow and boring.


I have never, ever worked at reading, and it remains interesting and deep. Secondly, I have never ever worked or put any special effort into airsoft and it remains a stunningly exciting past time.

Thirdly, I have not worked at Call of Duty 4. I have not pursued efficient strategies or tried to master the highest sensitivity. In fact, the majority of my CoD4 time has been spent running around with RPGs and giggling like a schoolgirl at the mayhem I occasionally cause.



One last point to make. I play Magic: the Gathering. A new set is coming out soon, and the prerelease tournaments are next weekend. Prerelease tournaments are generally a time where a lot of fun is had; it's a new set, with new cards, and everyone is learning about them all at once, and exploring.

I do not intend to have fun.

Why? Simple. Because the best performers get free boosters of the new set. I want those prize packs. Thus, I have been keeping on top of every leak; while most of the people attending will be dealing with a completely unfamiliar set, I intend to have memorized every single relevant trick, along with as much of the set as possible. Fun? No. It's a lot of work. But every advantage I can get makes it that much more likely that I'm going to be the winner of a number of prize packs.

As another way to maximize my chances, I do not let up when I am practicing. I always play to the best of my ability, and I always seek to improve that limit. They say practice makes perfect, but that's a lie; perfect practice makes perfect. (And to that end, I also rarely play with people who aren't also trying to improve; it gives us both drive. And yes, when I'm not preparing for a major tournament, I relax and bust out some of my fun decks, like my Doran EDH deck, or my multiplayer Enduring Ideal deck. <3 enchantments.)

If I pursued my hobbies like this, I would probably end up either getting new hobbies or shooting myself. My real life responsibilities are more than stressful enough, and demand too much time for me to dedicate this much effort.

[Demented]

Can we just ditch the arguments and get back to the rants about poor game design tropes? Not that arguments are against the rules, but they're killing all the fun and good vibes in this thread.


:smallbiggrin:

[Cybren]

i hate FPS that have weapon unlocks and centralized databases for multiplayer, despite being played on decentralized servers.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

I'm sick of how easy it is commit genocide with a melee weapon, yet the act of EQUIPPING a gun results with me dying TWICE from the same headshot. I love melee and driving, don't get me wrong. I just wish that I could play an FPS where the "shooting" part of the game was a viable option. It's not a first person fistfight game for a reason dangit.

[Arameus]

Ah, yes, the Insurmountable Knee-High Fence has brought more would-be Rambo clones to their knees than all the virtual Nazis in the world combined. And the worst part is that every ounce of despair you feel from your impotent attempts to circumvent these inscrutably impassable mockers of your ken fuels and emboldens the abyssal programmers that relish the taste of your anguish.

Damage effects that block your screen are another big offender. Particularly recently, Thing-Thing 4 (while not an FPS) displays this flaw in spades. The Diseased Productions logo, of all things, appears over the action as an increasingly opaque blood smear as you take damage, obfuscating the action when you need to be more aware than at any other time. And with the slow regeneration rate on Hard mode and the ramped-up difficulty vis-a-vis previous iterations of Thing-Thing, it's been responsible for a lot of hair-pulling recently.

While I have to agree that facing off against an elite player can be very aggravating for weekend warriors and Johnnies-come-lately like me, I do acknowledge that there is nothing inherently unfair about it. I'm never going to stand a hearty chance against these players because I can not and would not spend the time necessary to hone my skills to their level; as long as I'm better than my big brother, I'm satisfied with myself, and I don't really bear any ill sentiment towards the people better than me, with the possible exception of wondering if their time is well-spent. (Yes, they could be one of the small but growing number of professional gamer, but the smart money says they've got a 9-to-5 and two kids to which to attend.)

Psychologically, perceiving an exploit as fair because there is nothing punishing its use is a product of the equation of a lower moral age than the level that recognizes the inherent breach of sportsmanship in competing in a manner clearly in violation of the makers' intention, their ability to regulate such play notwithstanding.

I can't put my finger on who exactly said the best solution was to simply play with like-minded players, but there's a lot of good to be said for that sentiment. Although the health of refusing to examine your standpoint and instead merely distancing oneself from any immediate pressure to do so is rather suspect, its efficacy with regards to pacification is without question.

But I really do have to call Kasrkin out on this one: if you truly have never worked at reading, then I can bet a fiddle of gold against your soul that says it hasn't provided even a whit of the depth you claim. Not only do even the most gifted readers have to put forth a great deal of effort to truly appreciate literature, the most intelligent readers are usually the ones putting out the most effort. But that's where the marrow is.


Can we just ditch the arguments and get back to the rants about poor game design tropes? Not that arguments are against the rules, but they're killing all the fun and good vibes in this thread.


:smallbiggrin:

Didn't you read? It's not about fun, it's about winning. :smallwink:

[Arang]

You'll pardon me, but I don't see how the statement is in anyway, shape, or form flawed.

I, personally, would never pay anyone to play a videogame, no matter how good they were. I despise the spectator entertainment culture of the modern day world were you can get paid for practically anything.

Thirdly, I have not worked at Call of Duty 4. I have not pursued efficient strategies or tried to master the highest sensitivity. In fact, the majority of my CoD4 time has been spent running around with RPGs and giggling like a schoolgirl at the mayhem I occasionally cause.

If I pursued my hobbies like this, I would probably end up either getting new hobbies or shooting myself. My real life responsibilities are more than stressful enough, and demand too much time for me to dedicate this much effort.

In essence, your fun is just better than any other fun?

[Scintillatus]

I really do wish there was a Patch-God from beyond the stars to fix all the little screwups in vidyagames, you know, because then the "I'm just better" argument would work. But taking advantage of tick rate, poor hitbox design, weapon imbalance etc - this isn't "teh skill", it's exploits. Whether these are legalised exploits (like in GunZ, oh god) or soon-to-be-patched-away exploits, you're still screwing other people over because you know one extra way to break the playing field.

I'm sure we'd be hard-pressed to call the dude who sits on the edge in Street Fighter, just hammering low punch a cheater, but I bet we can all call him a meanie. Like the guy who ninja jumps around with the knife out, bunnyhopping everywhere and oneshotting people, because apparently a six inch knife means instant death for all.

Funny story: Or rather, the relation of a funny story: I've heard of a guy who plays TF2 with one of those tablet PCs. Goes Sniper, sits himself somewhere high, and then clicks on your head.

Sure, he's not cheating. VAC doesn't have a rule against alternate input devices. But what a douchebag, eh?

Edit: Self-censor powers activate!

[Swordguy]

In essence, your fun is just better than any other fun?

At least better than yours. Because his definition of fun doesn't take away from the enjoyment others derive from the game. Yours does. That's not an arguable point - if the only definition of "fun" you accept is winning, and there can be only one winner, then by definition most people who play are losers and thus not getting to have fun. Moreover, by sheer statistical probability, you will not win as often as you will lose. So, if the only way for you to have fun is to win, why do you engage in an activity where you won't be having fun most of the time?

Anyway...

2 points re: FPS's (both under the assumption that a modern combat FPS a la CoD4 is supposed to represent realistic modern combat).

1) Nade Spam. Valid tactic. It's been done in Afghanistan. I watched people do it. I understand that's it'e been done in Iraq - but a lot less since the potential for collateral damage is more of an issue there. Regardless, it works in RL, so a simulation FPS should allow it.

2) Bunny hopping. Not a valid tactic. Jumping in games is artificially made easier for purposes of gameplay and in RL (which FPS's are generally supposed to represent), jumping makes you MORE likely to get hit - not less. You also don't get tired in an FPS, which you would do so in RL. Ergot, bunny hopping is not a valid tactic, because it breaks any semblance of simulation.

/waits for cries of how Halo isn't real life...

[Arang]

So, if the only way for you to have fun is to win, why do you engage in an activity where you won't be having fun most of the time?


I haven't said that I derive pleasure only from winning. I don't. I do, however, find the belief that some strategies are not kosher just because of some invisible moral yardstick, or that it's correct to call those strategies unfair when they are clearly not.

That being said, I would engage in an activity where I would have fun winning because I would try to win and by extension have fun. Straightforward, non?

[Drascin]

Goddamnit, I stumble upon Competitive vs Casual arguments even at GitP?! Okay, Dras, breathe deep and get away from it. You have already got into this same discussion so many times at Smash World Forums, once more would not make any difference except raising your blood pressure.

*breathe*

All right, back to the topic. Of all the irritating tropes mentioned, I have to give one vote to the whole "cluttering the screen" thing. When I'm hit, the last thing I need are some flashy effects obscuring my vision and telling me that hey, seems like I've been hit - the momentary recoil and the grunt of my character was enough for me to notice, thank you - what I need is a clear field of vision to the guy who just shot me so I can return the favour without having to squint my eyes and try to aim for his general shape as if affected by a flashbang grenade ¬¬.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

I haven't said that I derive pleasure only from winning. I don't. I do, however, find the belief that some strategies are not kosher just because of some invisible moral yardstick, or that it's correct to call those strategies unfair when they are clearly not.

That being said, I would engage in an activity where I would have fun winning because I would try to win and by extension have fun. Straightforward, non?

Think of it as a matter of honor. Sure, one strategy IS available to you, but its dishonorable and people look down on it for that. And saying "why can't you just use it" is insulting someones honor, that they would have to stoop to using something they find dishonorable, just to beat people who feel the need to use dishonorable tactics to win, and take away the enjoyment of games for others.

[puppyavenger]

back to FPS tropes,
The fract that, no matter how invunrable you are to other wepeons, you will either die or be at zero health after a sniper headshot, now I don't care about zero health but instant death in a game where a glacing shot from a rocket launcher won't kill you is pretty anoying.
also the fact that in more "realistic" games (for example COD4) a desert eagle to the head will kiill you but a sniper bullet to the heart won't.

[Neon Knight]

But I really do have to call Kasrkin out on this one: if you truly have never worked at reading, then I can bet a fiddle of gold against your soul that says it hasn't provided even a whit of the depth you claim. Not only do even the most gifted readers have to put forth a great deal of effort to truly appreciate literature, the most intelligent readers are usually the ones putting out the most effort. But that's where the marrow is.


Of course, "depth" and "literature appreciation" are subjective terms with subjective amounts of effort required to meet them.

At what point does one move beyond fulfilling the minimum requirements to call what one is doing "reading" to a higher, optional level of effort? At what point can you say you've moved from a casual or beginner's level to a professional or elite level?

Keep in mind when I listed those three activities, I used a definition of practice that runs something along the lines of "optional effort put into that activity for the express purpose of getting better at that activity."

Practice isn't mutually exclusive with enjoying an activity, but you don't have to work at an activity and reach a certain level of performance with an activity before you can start enjoying it, and you can remain at the same level of performance (or at least one very similar) and still enjoy an activity.

It is truth, though, that by and large you get better at an activity by performing that activity. Even if your purpose isn't to get better, familiarity and experience with the activity tend to make you better. So if you use a definition of practice as "any effort that makes you better at a given activity" then you you may not be able to engage in any activity to a meaningful and interesting degree without practice. But that is a very loose definition of practice.


In essence, your fun is just better than any other fun?

Short answer: No.
Longer, but still short answer: Definitely no. At least, not objectively.
Longer, longer, actual explanation answer: Those statements that you quoted where me giving my opinion on various matters. They represent how I feel, my personal subjective opinion. I may personally not like these things, but that doesn't mean I think my tastes are better than a professional gamer who loves the circuits and the enfranchisement of his activity.

It means I just don't like those things. I'm allowed not to like the modern institutes of professional gaming and sports. It was quite a simple statement. I don't see the worth in these things. That doesn't mean I can't conceive of someone finding worth in these things, but when these things hurt my interests and fun, I react harshly. Naturally.

If all professional gamers stayed on servers especially reserved for the purpose and never affected casuals, I wouldn't care what they did. I have personally witnessed large numbers of "professionals" whose sole purpose and intent is to "pwn noobs." These people degrade my fun and the fun of others for their own amusement, in fact deriving their fun from the ruination of our enjoyment. It is these people that bother me and that I speak out against.

People doing their own thing on a private server concern me not. Feel free to indulge in whatever behavior you want when you have the keys to the kingdom.

If I join a server, and there is a significant clan or professional presence, I take my leave. As I said before: conflict of interest. I'll have more fun on another server and you'll have more fun without me on this server.



That being said, I would engage in an activity where I would have fun winning because I would try to win and by extension have fun. Straightforward, non?

That is not logical. The conditions for having fun under the question where winning. Not trying to win. Winning. Period. The proposed person would have no fun unless he actually won.




2 points re: FPS's (both under the assumption that a modern combat FPS a la CoD4 is supposed to represent realistic modern combat).



Significant portions of CoD4 act in a non-realistic or simulationist manner. One hit knife kills, for instance, regardless of where the knife hit actually lands (if it even hits at all. Darn hitboxes.)

[lumberofdabeast]

*sigh*

You know what? Screw it. I was making a rather lengthy post, but screw it. This isn't gonna change anything. People will still use "unfair" tactics on public servers, other people will whine and moan instead of simply doing the same or going into a private server/game where they don't have to worry about it, and the people using the "unfair" tactics will continue to ignore the whining and moaning and keep right on using the "unfair" tactics.

[warty goblin]

OK, I've got another couple things that irritate me.

Killing enemies by shooting them in the feet, hands or other non-vital extremity: Now I don't mind it being possible, it's a basic limitation of the health point system after all, but it sometimes seems way to easy.I don't even particularly mind it in games with super advanced futuristic weaponry, having a weapon called "Hell's Reaper" that fires hypersonic tungstun plated high explosive guided slugs auto kill isn't quite so bad, but less with the .22 pistols killing people by shooting their big toes, please? Rainbow Six: Vegas is a particularly galling example, where occasionally I realize I just killed a mercenary by shooting his left foot twice with my Desert Eagle. One time I'm reasonably certain I killed an enemy by, how I wish I was joking, shooting his gun while he was blindfiring from behind cover. Making him drop the gun would have been awesome, but killing him was just stupid and made me feel all dirty. How awesome would it be if various limbs had damage limits, so you could only drop a guy to 50% health by shooting his extremities, and after that your bullets just did way less damage if you kept shooting his left little finger? With some decent hit decals it wouldn't even be that confusing either. To make up for this, have repeated leg shots reduce player max speed, and arm shots reduce accuracy. Now that would be seriously fun, and much more interesting than the current system. Either that, or just make extremity shots do way less damage.

non-sensically semi-destructable worlds: Specifically how the end table you were hiding behind just got blown all to hell by SMG of Doom guy, but the rotted out wooden crate Jimmy: Wonder Mercenary is hiding behind just took three hits from your bazooka without any effect, not even a scorch mark decal! If your gonna make parts of the envioronment destructable, at least make sure its done sensibly and not randomly. I don't mind indestructable buildings, but if one crate can be shot apart, they all should be able to, or at least be clearly deliniated between those that can and those that cannot. Glass is another frequent offender, where for some reason some windows are bulletproof, but quite a few aren't, and there's no way to tell one from another without shooting them a couple times, or until that bullet from the sniper across the map comes through it and impacts your skull. People, unless every window can be shot out, please give us some way to tell one from another, because the AI certainly seems to be able to divine just how many bullets our current hiding place can take.

Any time whacking people with my gun does more damage that shooting them with it: You know the situation: You are pinned down behind a rock half way up the side of a mountain, alien weaponfire screaming past over your head, trying desperately to formulate a plan before you are hopelessly flanked. Health is running low, but ammo is plentiful Thinking quickly, you review your options. Do you:
A) Fight a slow, careful offensive, hopping from cover to cover, suppressing your enemies with bursts of fire from your high powered energy cannon and strategically throwing grenades to oust enemies from cover?
B) Cautiously retreat back down the hillside, again making careful use of cover and suppressing fire, so that you can reach the wreck of your dropship(of which naturally you were the only survivor) in order to restock on health, then return to finish the fight?
C) Slip around your left flank, pincering the alien scum between the cliff edge and the hail of bullets from your chaingun?
D) Plant a few explosives, then swing around the right flank, wait until the aliens sense that by moving you left your side and rear open, then blow them into high orbit when they take advantage of your weakness?
The answer of course is:
E) Charge straight out and start beating aliens to death with the butt of your railgun, secure in the knowledge that it actually does more damage than shooting them with it, and if you bunny hop enough, they won't do significant damage. And of course you should not use the melee only weapon, because it takes to long between swings, unlike the railgun, which is fast enough to stun-lock most enemies.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against melee attacks, and they can be quite fun when the going gets desperate enough, when the situation is more like this:
You take cover behind the pillar and wait, knowing that there's only two enemies left in this weird church-like hallway. Unfortunately you used the last of your chaingun ammo half an hour ago, and your energy cannon's battery went dead killing that last alien. You can see his gun, laying next to where his body was before it inexplicably vanished, but it's out in the middle of the darkened hall, and you know that you'll be cut down by the plasma cannon weilding alien behind the third pillar to the left before you get halfway over to it. Instead you slip back carefully, working your way over to that computer terminal, behind which you can hide in order to get over to the other side of the hall safely. After that it's a simple matter of working your way up to the twisted alien mutent, who is still convinced you are hiding behind your pillar, and is shooting off the occasional shell to make sure you stay there. At the last minute it hears you coming, but by that time it is far to late, and you press the attack button, bringing your plasma esciverator down in a clean ark and removing most of the alien's torso. The noise however attracts the attention of the other alien, and you barely have time to grab the first one's gun and dive behind the pillar as the floor around you errupts in a volley of flechette gun fire. But you realize the sudden burst must have left your opponant's gun temporarily overheated. With a roar of triumph you leap out and, before your startled prey realizes it, cut the beast cleanly in half, your esciverator flashing brightly in the darkness. Laughing to yourself, you collect the fallen alien's gun, then start to make your way out of the room. You pass the doorway, then hear that dreaded noise "I smell human food!" You turn, just in time to see Jimmy: Wonder Alien, bringing his gibber-gun to bear on you. You barely have time, but you still manage to kill the bastard before he can fire with another beautiful slash of the plasma esciverator. Revenge you think, teabagging the corpse, is very, very sweet.

[Arang]

Those statements that you quoted where me giving my opinion on various matters. They represent how I feel, my personal subjective opinion. I may personally not like these things, but that doesn't mean I think my tastes are better than a professional gamer who loves the circuits and the enfranchisement of his activity.



But you said you would probably shoot yourself than enjoy games in a different manner from your own preference.



That is not logical. The conditions for having fun under the question where winning. Not trying to win. Winning. Period. The proposed person would have no fun unless he actually won.

Fine, I admit you caught me saying something slightly different than what I meant. This person could not derive any fun without winning. Consequentially, he would play the game in an attempt to have fun.

Look, I never meant to get into any big discussion on what makes games fun and what doesn't. I just think it's bad form to label things "unfair" just because you think there is some higher standard that everyone must be held to. There isn't.

[Cainen]

...but when these things hurt my interests and fun, I react harshly. Naturally.

Funny. I've been attacked for doing just that.


If all professional gamers stayed on servers especially reserved for the purpose and never affected casuals, I wouldn't care what they did. I have personally witnessed large numbers of "professionals" whose sole purpose and intent is to "pwn noobs." These people degrade my fun and the fun of others for their own amusement, in fact deriving their fun from the ruination of our enjoyment. It is these people that bother me and that I speak out against.

Same, and by the same token they're going by, they may as well allow cheaters - there's no rule saying you can't, and who are you to set the bar where 'cheating' is concerned? Include poor coding, glitches, outside exploits, or what? You don't get to set the bar, the server owner does. The fact is that any of these can make a game less fun for a 'noob'.


Fine, I admit you caught me saying something slightly different than what I meant. This person could not derive any fun without winning. Consequentially, he would play the game in an attempt to have fun.

Some people find different things fun. But you know what? If I had a server, and a guy who found hacking/cheating fun got on the server, started playing, and started cheating, he would be banned in a millisecond. It doesn't matter if he can't get fun without doing it - he's ruining other peoples' fun by doing just that, and he can go to hell if he thinks I'll bend to support his idea of 'fun'. It's mutually exclusive with my idea(and a lot of peoples' ideas) of fun. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, he should be banned from ever playing the game again.

[Arang]

Some people find different things fun. But you know what? If I had a server, and a guy who found hacking/cheating fun got on the server, started playing, and started cheating, he would be banned in a millisecond. It doesn't matter if he can't get fun without doing it - he's ruining other peoples' fun by doing just that, and he can go to hell if he thinks I'll bend to support his idea of 'fun'. It's mutually exclusive with my idea(and a lot of peoples' ideas) of fun. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, he should be banned from ever playing the game again.

I've never said anything about cheating. It's a different matter altogether and I completely agree with you.

Cheating, of course, being defined as breaking the rules of the game to do things others cannot. That, by definition, is unfair.

[Neon Knight]

But you said you would probably shoot yourself than enjoy games in a different manner from your own preference.


That was a rhetorical device; an example of hyperbole. Although mental disorders related to depression do run in my family. I, however, appear to be luckily unaffected by them.

I would not literally commit suicide if forced to play games in a manner different than that which I loved. I might choose to pursue alternate entertainment avenues, or depending on how much it differed from my preference I might just suck it up. If I was simply not being entertained at all by the play style bing employed, I would leave, not only making me happy but making room for someone who would enjoy it.



Look, I never meant to get into any big discussion on what makes games fun and what doesn't. I just think it's bad form to label things "unfair" just because you think there is some higher standard that everyone must be held to. There isn't.

Well, you can say that, but a lot of people feel differently. If people want to associate only with others who met a certain social standard and behave in a certain way then that is their right. The labels they choose to apply to the standards and those who break them aren't really that big of a deal, are they? In addition, they probably don't want everyone to follow the social standard. Just the people that they play with. No one objects to servers dedicated to alternate play styles; they just don't want that behavior in the regular servers they frequent.

Its not such much the "honor" thing for me, and much more so that I find professional play styles, tactics, etc. are not fun to employ or to be on the receiving end of.

[Cainen]

I've never said anything about cheating. It's a different matter altogether and I completely agree with you.

Arm wrestling. Go reread what you said.


Cheating, of course, being defined as breaking the rules of the game to do things others cannot. That, by definition, is unfair.

What's stopping someone else from doing it, just as well? They can do it too, now, can't they? It's not unfair under your definition, and the 'rules of the game' aren't strictly outlined - who's to say abusing glitches isn't cheating? The game isn't going to make the distinction. Furthermore, there are some 'glitches' that are outright unfair - for instance, in TC:E, a game I play very often, there's a glitch that will change your skin and give you fifteen grenades(you're only supposed to be able to carry one of a certain type).

There is no way I would not call that cheating. It's not breaking any rules, it's using the game against itself, but it's unfair.

[Inhuman Bot]

Can you argue in another thread or over pm or something please? Theres a thread for arguing over stuff like this.

[Oregano]

Something that I ver realised annoyed me until the a few days ago is the difference in animations due to perspective, this is anything such as reloading, hitting someone with a weapon. I first noticed this when playing halo 3 with the grav hammer, when I bludgeon people, I see the end of the haft hit them on the head but they just see me bonk them with the hammer.

[VForVaarsuvius]

Dude, you hit it more then right on the nose. I mean, honestly, that's FPS problems right there.

And yes, honestly, enough with the zombies already! Their not original anymore...

I may post my own in a bit.

\V/

[EvilElitest]

I notice everybody seems to have missed WG's very funny post.
from
EE