what the fuck is wrong with some gamers?

The BBQ Pit
41

Big Perm:

And when one of these people become disruptive, does the entire game room tell them to calm down? Quit whining? Explain to them that they were greased, fair-and-square, through either their own stupidity or their opponent’s superior playing ability?

IRL, in a table-top game group, first of all everyone is most likely friends, or at least good aquaintences, which has a tendency to minimize jerk-ish behavior. Then there is the real-life social pressure of some level of conformity with the group norm, reinforced by visual cues provided by the rest of the game group through posture, tone-of-voice and other signals.

Just last Sunday we had the beginning of a situation with a player; but social pressure interrupted the cycle before it could devolve into jerkish behavior, and the game resumed smoothly, with barely a hiccup.

The “one-in-a-hundred” (or whatever the ratio of online jerks) drops even further down when you’re in ass-kicking range of the perpetrator.

Tabletop may not give you the thrill of 3D accelerated graphics, high-end sound and yanking a joystick around and smashing buttons, but it has the advantage of meeting people, friends, face-to-face for several hours of fun and socializing.

I just remembered that I’m in the Pit, so I’ll throw this in as well:

“Fuck the bozos!”

42

Extank:

Well, I obviously agree with the “tabletop” argument. We have to conclude that both online and tabletop games have their advantages and disadvantages. The largest advantage to the online game is the option to play a game 24/7. You can’t just call your buddy at 4am on Tuesday when you have insomnia to come over to your house.

I love both types of games, online games are just more accessible to me. I am an admin for a TFC server, and we keep tight ropes on who is doing what. So if a jerk does come in, we just boot him :slight_smile:

BP

43

Yeah, that’s one of the problems with Counterstrike… if you ever do well (say, you get lucky in one round), everyone accuses you of cheating and then you get booted. On some servers, anyway. I’ve found a few servers that are pretty good about that sort of thing.

44

I’d love to do more online gaming, but I have a problem. I’m on a satellite connection, with the built-in latency… not compatible on Zone servers. I wonder if anyone knows a way that I could play on a server- name the game, I’ll buy it. (I write maps for Quake 2.)

When I borrowed a machine from my nephew to play Q2 online, on the Zone servers, the problems I ran into were people who would stand at the spawn points and kill those coming in. I did have a few good games, but most of the players i encountered had an attitude of no quarter for a newbie. I’m working on my tabletop gamer friends to get computers that can play some online games.

The problem with tabletop is waiting for someone to make a decision, or waiting for the gamemaster to come up with an answer. Rules arguments and people wasting time are also irritating. Whole evenings have been wasted in this manner.

I was a Star Fleet Battles player almost from the time it came out. We spent hours playing out simple battles, and a lot of time was spent in debating the rules. Several players made a habit of being “rules lawyers”, that is they tried to win by exploiting ambiguities in the rules rather than by good tactical play. This culminated in a convention I attended in Ohio; the game was over before it started because the gamemaster and one player refused to budge on a simple rule (i forget which.) They argued for hours, I entered another game and played for 3 hours- when I came back to the table nothing had happened.

So Starfleet Command comes out, and now the same battles that took hours to do on the tabletop take just a few minutes to play on the computer. But I have to play against the computer only, I can’t play online because of the damn sat connection!

I’d rather deal with the l33t than not be able to play at all.

Feel free to contact me if anyone wants to game.

45

See, that right there is your second mistake. Your first was even playing one of these braindead games, but it’s equally a bad idea to assume that the developers (particularly developers of such games) had any clue as to what the fuck they were doing. Here’s a tip: most don’t. Some even deliberately put in ridiculously overpowered items so that stupid people can think they’re hot shit for being able to use it (Quake’s railguns come to mind here) Some just think poor game design is worth it for a “cool” idea or “hey, this’d be neat”. In any event, just because something is in a game DOES NOT mean it’s well-designed and fair game.

As for the people griping about finding idiots in online play: this should come as no surprise to you. When you play a game geared towards mindless 14 year olds, what’s the big shock to find that it’s actually played by (gasp!) mindless 14 year olds? It goes with the turf, folks. Find yourself some better games and maybe you wouldn’t have that problem (hell, playing a better game than the crap y’all are is its own reward of itself)

Since y’all seem to be action-oriented (except for ExTank’s tabletop bit: hey Tank, ever heard of Steel Beasts? Might be right up your alley) then I would suggest military simulations as a start, as the good ones provide a healthy fix of non-mindless action, some with a bit of wargame thrown in. While I won’t try to claim that all players of such are some erudite elite, in general you’ll find a notch above “u sux0r” when you’re looking for folks to play with.

46

Mekhazzio:

I have to say I’m slightly offended that you presume to know who this game was designed for. Obviously the game was not targeted for certain people, but most developers take their games more seriously than what you give them credit for.

The reason your “military strategy” games don’t have mindless 14 YO’s playing it, is because they simply can’t comprehend it. However, they CAN comprehend click and shoot… BUT, does this mean that this game was designed for them? No.

There is an entire world of (gasp!?) mature and intelligent adults playing these games! I don’t like the fact that mindless boys play this game, but that doesn’t make it any less fun for me. I play the games that I play because I find them entertaining. I don’t always want to sit down and think of a WWIII offensive strategy.

Anyway, you’re entitled to your opinion… although I don’t think it’s even close to accurate.

BP

47

Steelerphan: you sound like you’re a victim of the breach of the #1 Rule of Tabletop (TT hereafter) gaming: The GM is always right.

It’s his or her’s game, they have the final say. Asking for a clarification is one thing, belaboring the point is another. As a GM, I’m pretty up-front about rules changes (my players get a little hand-out I printed up) and I’m fairly lenient with newer players if they do something contrary to my rules and get in a jam.

But above all else: I am the GM! If you don’t like my rules, or my interpretation of the rules, start your own !@#$%&* game!

If your munchkins can wrap their little minds around that simple concept, your TT games should run a lot smoother and quicker.

Mekhazzio: I’ve laid off the games for a bit, since returning to college after a 17 year hiatus. Gotta get my brain into that learning groove.

48

When I play FPS online, the reason I do it, is because there is some satisfaction in the fact that best reflexes and best aim don’t always win the game for you. You can use the Terrain to your advantage and all those sorts of things, which against bots, where they are programmed to be better or worse based on aim and reflexes for hte most part, are boring to play against. One of the most fun times I had when playing Quake 1 was at work when I was tracking my enemies using the sounds of opening doors and picking up items and things like that. I avoided those, using stairs or jumping or whatever and I would always pop out of nowhere to frag their asses and they would freak out because they just never knew where I was and I always knew where they were and one of the guys figured out that I didn’t use any of the noisemakers on the board and that’s how I eluded them. While I have good aim and good reflexes there are many that just annihilate me in head to head combat, but I oftentimes can take them down pretty well when those aren’t the only recourse.

Erek

49

heh, one of the reasons I plan to play some Dark Age of Camelot, you can’t see the names of your enemies, nor can you talk to them! It’s going to be fun.

50

This thread (sans complaining) has started overe Here in an attempt to actually get some people together to play these games, instead of just poo-pooing the l337 d00ds.

I’m setting up a counter-strike server, at the least, but I’d like a few adventuring buddies over in Dark Age of Camelot. So long as you can stand a charismatic troll who makes rediculously colored armor.

John

51

I don’t play FPS’s myself, but I have a few philosophical comments about game design to toss out there…

(for what it’s worth, I’m a professional video game programmer)

One of the most frustrating aspects of playing games is the conflict that arises in some games between winning and having a good time. For instance, back in the early days of popularity of Streetfighter II, there was an enormous controversy over what was called “ticking”, which was the tactic of attacking someone just as they were standing up, forcing them to block, and then throwing them. Lather, rinse, repeat. At the time, many people believed that ticking was basically inescapable, and thus “cheap”, and in many places it was de facto outlawed. Several points:
-Presumably, beating someone by ticking them to death isn’t very exciting. So if you’re someone who is competitive and likes winning (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but you also enjoy aspects of the game other than ticking, you’re stuck having to choose between fun and victory, which is, imho, a sign of bad game design (or would be, if ticking were, in fact, inescapable).
-Secondly, this leads to the question of what the rules are. If someone from an anti-ticking playgroup plays against someone from a no-holds-barred playgroup, they’re not going to have a very fun game, and one of them might well end up accusing the other of being an incredibly poor sportsman. In the case of Streetfighter II, or at least later versions of it, it turns out that ticking is, in fact, escapable, and in fact is quite necessary for game balance. But one can easily imagine a game which is frequently a lot of fun, and thus people want to play it, but which has one particular strategy which is overbalancing and boring, or which is perceived as such, and which will likely lead to the kind of accusations of “cheapness” that are mentioned in the OP. If you’re stuck in such a situation, play a better game, or make sure that there are house rules agreed on before play begins. (Of course, some people are such immature little shits that they will find something to whine about no matter what… but not much can be done about that.)

Similarly, when I first started playing Magic: The Gathering, there were a couple of strategies (land destruction, heavy discard, and heavy countermagic for those of you who know what I’m talking about) which I thought were totally nonfun. And in fact, Magic is quite a poor game for casual play in many respects, because it can be very hard to agree upon what is or is not fun. Thus, I now approach every game of magic with the philosophy that I am trying to do nothing but win, and so is my opponent, and I’ve been enjoying it heartily with that attitude for more years and dollars than I would care to admit to.
One final thought: One of my biggest gripes about a specific online gaming issue involves online Hearts (which, by the way, I will kick anyone’s ass at, any place, any time :slight_smile: ). I play a lot on the Microsoft Gaming Zone, which is a fine service in most respects, but has one super-frustrating flaw, which is that in a 4-player game of hearts, it has only one method of scoring, which is that it gives a lot of rating points to whoever came in 1st, some to 2nd, takes away some for 3rd, and takes away a lot for 4th. Now, what makes hearts such a wonderful game, imho, is the de facto teamwork that comes in when one person is ahead and everyone else is trying to cooperate to give that person the queen of spades, and that person is trying to fool everyone about what’s in their hand, and so forth. But this works the best when everyone is playing for 1st. On the zone, some people play for 1st, but some are happy to settle for 2nd, and honestly, I can’t really blame them. So there’s this horrible tension in which I’m at 90, player A is at 50 and player B is at 70, and I don’t know whether player B is going to cooperate with me in getting player A, or screw me and take 2nd place, which constantly leads to people being pissed off at how other people played. It would take Microsoft about half a damn hour to add an option for winner-takes-all scoring, but they’ve never done so. Grrrrrrrrr.

Anyhow, I’ve kind of rambled here, but my primary points are:
(a) it’s true, some people are loser jerks
(b) but some games are poorly designed, balanced, or implemented, leading to situations in which people who would normally accept loss more-or-less gracefully can easily get quite frustrated with the other players

52

Actually, yes, it does. When the full extent of the game IS “click and shoot”, and the simplest, most obvious, most basic level of play is always sufficient to win, then yes, the game IS designed for that. Sure, you -can- probably play the game in more interesting ways: if you really wanted to, you could probably play Quake as a deep head game if you take various restrictions upon yourself, but when the game itself does not support or encourage deeper play (and very often penalizes it) then you’re pretty much wasting your time, and you have no right to gripe about meeting mindless players. No matter how “advanced” you might think you are, it’s the mindless players that are truly playing the design as it was made to be played. A game’s player base is 100% determined by its design, and it should be a clue when a game starts bringing in the lowest common denominator…

And yes, I really do think that “mod designers” are that clueless. Even old pros can (and do) make games that wind up being played in different, lesser ways than they intended, because they missed this or that flaw in development. The average joe “mod designer” is basically a hack, and even ignoring that, most of them aren’t the least bit interested in good game design anyway. They just want to make something l33t0 k00l

53

I did something similar recently playing Unreal Tournament at work on the LAN.

I’m normally pretty good at FPS deathmatches, there are only a few people who provide any real competition score-wise at work, and only one who consistently beats me when he plays - usually with a fight to 30 kills, he hits 30 while me and the guys on my level of ability are around 20. I don’t mind at all, and when I occasionally beat him I know I was really ‘on’ that night.

Well, the other night I started playing around with the teleporter device in the game - basically you can throw a small disc with the left mouse button when it is selected, and hitting the right mouse button teleports you to where you threw the disc. At first I was just using it to be a difficult target to hit, I wasn’t trying to score kills, just disappear whenever someone was about to kill me, until I accidentally telefragged one of the players.

For those who aren’t familiar with telefragging, in some FPS games when you spawn or teleport into the same space another player occupies, it instantly kills them.

I decided to start using the teleporter thing offensively. I would throw it at other players and when it got close to them I would teleport to it…if you time it right, you kill the other guy. If the timing is off, you are still right next to them and can repeat. After a match and a half I had the timing down perfect, and was using it exclusively, and was winning every time. It was ridiculous how easy it was to win using this strategy…the guy who normally won would run from me and start jumping around like crazy whenever he saw me coming. The last match he only got 11 kills by the time I hit 30. I got accused of cheating and the guy stopped playing.

Now, this isn’t cheating, technically. I was just using the game mechanics in a way that the designers obviously hadn’t planned for, as this tactic made me almost 4 times as deadly as when I used normal weapons. But it wasn’t really good sportsmanship.

54

Sorry, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you here. Valve made a game that was fun… which is why it is the most played online game of all time. You say it IS intended for 14 YO’s, yet the entire community of people I hang with, are all basically as old, or older than I am. (I’m 25 btw) We are all mature (at least somewhat :P) adults that just enjoy the hell out of this game. To win at the highest level takes military strategy and tactics and thinking beyond what any little kid can accomplish.

Anyway, just because you don’t enjoy it, doesn’t mean it’s mindless. People have devised ingenious strats and plans for this game… even though it’s just “click and shoot”.

BP

55

Badtz Maru, that sounds like a pretty hard maneuver to pull off, so if you do it well I don’t think it’s any cheaper than they guy who can pick you off from the air with a railgun while running in the opposite direction and eating some cheetohs.

My personal favorite is 1 on 1s with people who are fairly evenly matched. Then it becomes like a hunt. You try and track them with spawning items or whatever method you use to track people, and then it becomes quite psychological as you pound each other and suicide attacks are much stupider because one kill for a suicide attack is pretty dumb. I mean I am all for running into a room dropping a million grenades if I know I am gonna take out six guys, but when there is one guy I try not to die and so do they for hte most part and it becomes very much like the hunt. Trying to outmaneuver them and disappear when they can’t figure out how you disappeared. That’s my personal favorite, and it can be very stressful and gutwrenching which is why I love it.

Erek

56