Can we rant about the idiots on public game servers?

The Game Room
1

mods: It’s a rant about games. I don’t think I cursed enough for the pit, but meh.

This post is inspired by an experience I just had on Left 4 Dead, but it applies to pretty much every online game I have ever played.

The vast majority of players on public servers couldn’t find their own asses even with two hands and an ass map. I don’t say this to be specifically broad. I know there are lots of good players out there playing on the public servers of many games. But then there are some players I just don’t understand. Terrible, terrible players. These players act as if the things going on around them are completely confusing in nature. It’s as if the use of a mouse, keyboard, and monitor all at once confounds them to such an extent that they revert to knuckle-dragging simians whose only ability is to bang on their keyboards and make grunting noises that mimic their inability at actual communication.

A few minutes ago I quit what has got to be one of the most frustrating games of Left 4 Dead I have ever played. As the game starts I notice one of the players has decided to not pick up his health kit. Maybe he thought we had invulnerability turned on and he didn’t need it. This is the only explanation I can come up with.

“Player,” I say in chat, “Get your health kit and weapon.” He ignores this. “ZOMG GET YOUR HEALTH KIT AND WEAPONS!” I type in all caps, in case the larger font helps his eyesight some. He ignores this again and leaves the safe room, running off with only the pistol. I mean, I know he saw my message. He must have, it appears right there on your screen. How can anyone not see it? It’s right freakin there!

I tell the rest of my team that I am not leaving the safe room until this player picks up his equipment or we kick him from the server. About 50 feet outside the car, he is jumped by a hunter. The other 2 members of my team go after him and are promptly pounced by the other hunter and grabbed by the smoker. My entire team incapacitated, I sigh quietly in sorrow and leave the server.

This doesn’t just happen in FPS games. I can remember my Starcraft days. Twenty minutes into a 4 on 4 game, I’d invariably find at least one of my allies had spent the entire time doing god knows what, and wouldn’t even have a military yet. I can only hope they were AFK getting a sandwich or something, because then at least they would be terrible at games on a full stomach.

Even World of Warcraft (actually, ESPECIALLY World of Warcraft) there would always be that one guy who would just aggro everything in sight and then proceed to get lost in some dark corner of the dungeon, getting us all killed.

What are these people thinking? Do they think? How do they not get better at these games after the first few attempts of their failed strategy? If I saw a message on my screen from another member of my team, I’d take heed. If I had just spent $50 on a game that specifically states on many places on the box that it is co-op, I’d actually, you know, COOPERATE with the rest of my team. I have trouble believing that there are this many drooling idiots that cannot comprehend even the basic mechanics set forth in video games, yet somehow they manage to populate just about every game I have ever played.
Anyone else got some good stories or ranting they want to get out of their system?

2

Not really, but I enjoyed reading!

I don’t play games on-line except occasional forays with Microsoft Hearts/Spades/Backgammon. That gets extremely frustrating when you get idiots who quit as soon as one hand goes against them, or your partner bids “nil” (in Spades) when holding the Ace of Spades. Mind you, these games are free, so it’s more to be expected - still annoying though!

3

Reminds me of a time I was playing checkers on MSN-Zone (I think). There was a rating system, so losses were to be avoided. The game reached the point where I and my opponent each had one checker, with no clear advantage. I offered a draw and it was refused, so I made a futile move, waited for him to make a futile move, then offered a draw again, and was refused again. I don’t know what he was thinking - maybe that I’d make three bonehead moves in a row and throw away the game, or that he could outlast my patience and I’d resign, but I showed him: the game had a one-minute-per-move timer, so I waited 55 seconds each time. After a few of these long delays, with me getting his hopes up just to be dashed each time, he got the message and we had a draw.

4

Dude, I don’t even associate with the Timmies anymore. There are many communities of people that play together online and therefore, rarely have to deal with them.

5

It’s even worse on the free flash games. There’s a certain website that requires you to be hooked up to chat to score a game properly, so I’m regularly subjected to mind numbing idiocy whenever I play there.

6

Reminds me of one run with a guild tank and a team from another guild that knew my tank, one of whom thought he was a tankadin.

Tankadin runs up and tries to pull the lefthand mob just inside, and immediately gets agro from the patoller and right hand mob…,

everybody leaves the zone. Lather rinse repeat, all the time my tank is telling the idiots from the other guild to have me [a demon sped warlock] do the pulling,

THey keep arguing about it, and finally he tells them to stand still and watch.

I pull the left guy and let my tank tank him, and i nuke. He dies. I pull the right hand guy, pet tanks, I nuke he dies. The pat shows up, pet tanks, I nuke he dies …

My tank finally explains that as a 70 demon lock, I solo a fair amount and he and I duo a lot together and as a nontank, I am a seriously good puller if I know the dungeon.
We finally get them to let me do the targeting and pulling, and we run without a hitch, this is the trio that kept whining that they were trying to finish the dingeon and they always get wiped…

Honest, if a 70 lock and 70 warrior tell you to let the 70 lock pull, and you are a group of 53s … listen to them. They might know what they are talking about…

7

See, this is why I never play multiplayer. I know I suck at games, and I don’t want people to yell at me. :slight_smile:

8

Uh… yeah!

9

Let me translate…

aruvqan plays a heavy damage dealer. His friend plays a guy who can take lots of damage. They work together, with Tough Guy forcing the monsters to hit him while aruvqan hits hard.

They went to a dungeon (with powerful monsters) to help out some weaker players. Much weaker. One of the weaker players (Wannabe) does not know his stuff, and tries to act like Tough Guy, but succeeds in getting himself killed. Wannabe tried to attract attention (or “pulled aggro”) from one monster, but didn’t know his stuff, and got three instead!

aruvqanand Tough Guy told them off and proceeded to beat down the monsters with just to two of them, to show them how it was done. They proceed to do so. aruvqan was pissed because the trio had gotten up to fairly high level without ever learning how to actually do anything of use. He was further ticked that these idiots apparently went down the same dungeon and died repeatedly, because they never tried to change tactics. Instead, they bum-rush the nearest monsters with the delicate subtlety and precision of a dumptruck.

10

People who take online games seriously bore me.

There is always one… the guy in TF2 who is constantly barking into the mic that there is too much of one class. The guy in the OP who tries to micromanage everyone than pouts in his saferoom while people just roll with an unusual circumstance. The guy in WoW who wants to dictate the Raid.

In fact, that is partially why I stopped playing WoW. Not once was I ever able to “experience” a dungeon. There was always some pro in the group who knew every in and out of the level and explained each encounter before hand. There was no surprise, and failure was usually just an indication of not being powerful enough, rather than the wrong use of tactics. 99% of WoW was a grind, and even the unique well crafted and exciting dungeons were turned into a grind by “all knowledgeable super awesome” players.

I roll my eyes at the OP and others in this thread get their undies in a bundle when players experiment or goof around. For me, that is what gaming is. I don’t care if I “win” because there isn’t such a thing. If you beat the raid because another player explained it all to you, what did you achieve? If you win a round in L4D what does that mean?

For every person in this thread who comes in and complains about the people “playing it wrong” there is another guy on the other end thinking “who is this tool telling me how I should play?”

I am always amazed at WoW players. You guys actually point and laugh at the people who “don’t know how to play!” Well, screw you guys. I don’t want to plow through every dungeon on the first try. I want to try different stuff, and sometimes failing spectacularly is a consequence of that. You guys aren’t playing video-games anymore, you are looking at spreadsheets and levels and loot tables (Thottbot). Why even bother playing?

11

Um. To…beat the game? To be better at the game than your opponent?

12

Absolutely. Like everyone is born with an inate ability to play a game… Some people have to learn, and learning is done best on their own. Try and fail. Mess around and fail. Try and get a little success and enjoy.

I’m almost proud of my general suckitude at games - reminds me that I do other things with my life that I enjoy besides mastering every intricacy of a title. I sometimes feel bad for the player mnemonics I see at the top of leaderboards - I’m thinking “What else could you have been doing with your life?”.

I’ll still hop online and play from time to time despite by shortcomings. Watch out for me!

13

Sounds like Kongregate. What I do there is hit the high scores panel when the chat gets too stupid. It overlays the chat panel so you don’t have to see it. :slight_smile:

14

I’m with you 100%. Fuck off, bozos. I’m trying to play the game over here.

15

‘Other people’ is the reason I avoid MMO end-game content and interacting with most players.

Occasionally, you will meet people who know what they’re doing, who care about doing a good job, who can get things done with minimal fuss or pain. I love these people. The majority of the time, though, there’s incompetence, willful ignorance, selfishness, assholishness, and drama.

If you want to take a game lightly, that’s fine. I don’t expect everyone to know the ins and outs of the game and their class and their roles in a group setting. However, if you don’t care and don’t plan on starting, stay out of groups. You can be the biggest soloing carefree spirit you want. It’s when your don’t-care attitude takes from other people’s time and effort that it bothers me.

I don’t treat these games like they’re my life or my second job, but I do take them seriously enough to figure out what I want from my playtime, and to research my role accordingly. I don’t consider this “taking it seriously”; I consider it to be part of knowing what I’m doing. Otherwise, I’m wasting my time. I regard my play style as a reflection of me, and I am not an idiot or a douchebag, so I make sure I don’t play like one.

I team up with people sometimes, like if we’re all waiting to kill the same quest mob, but I keep general chat turned off and don’t seek out group play. I do instances with my guild every now and then, which is kinda fun, though we’re not as mindful of patrols as we should be, and we had a hunter who would shoot at targets the tank wasn’t tanking… wtf?

Pretty much the only group activity I like in MMOs is large-scale battlegrounds, where I can run around and anonymously heal or DPS or whatever, and then run off somewhere else and repeat.

16

That’s the weird thing though… I don’t play games to “do a good job” or “get things done.” I play to shoot fools and goof around. Some people call that “playing.”

Whaa? I (and I think 99% of people) see internet gaming like a pickup game of football. Some people get together and are like “hey lets throw the ol’ pigskin around” and everyone is having a good ol’ time. Than you come along and freak out because we are down two touchdowns and are call us a bunch of noobs who aren’t taking it seriously. Stop ruining our pickup game!

For me, some of the best times in online gaming have been spontaneous moments of goofyness. I grow so tired of all the people who want to take the game so seriously and those moments are growing fewer and fewer. Stop ruining our pickup game!

17

99% of online gamers do not, sorry to say. MMOs make up the bulk of the internet gaming scene, and those lend themselves much more to the OCD types who want to be the best. You can’t even play EVE Online, much less enjoy it, unless you like spreadsheets. Sure, there are people who like to get on MMOs and goof around, but they’re barely in the majority if at all.

Now, hopping on a random Team Fortress 2 server and going to town on folks? That’s a different story. Unless I coordinate a game with other friends, I don’t listen to a damn person. I try to play well and not make dumb strategic errors, but I’ll play my own way, thanks.

18

Which is exactly right. If you want to hop on and fuck around, cool. Go for it. But if you want to be serious about it, then go on with a group.

19

We get Game Informer (awesome bathroom magazine!) and there’s a regular column in there that’s “meet the guy at the top of the _____ leaderboard!” The intention is obviously to allow me to drop my jaw in awe at this model of gamerness, but instead it makes me alternately howl with hilarious laughter and feel really, really sad.

20

Which is where the WoW people start grumbling. In an FPS, you die, you respawn, you get back in the game. No harm, no foul. In MMOs, though, dying tends to have notable consequences for a group, especially when you’re deep in a dungeon. The stakes are higher, and thus there’s generally less tolerance for someone who’d rather fuck around than contribute to the team.