Cheap tactics in competitive games

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Belzera

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Apr 14, 2009
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I used to play CoD with friends at university, LAN only. My set up generally involved using the 'noobtube' and Martyrdom, a set up that is probably considered cheap by most call of duty players, but I found it fun if not easy to counter. Heck most snipers dealt with me easily and in team games I had to remember not to charge at my foes cos most of the time it was simply bait to lure me into a snipers scope.
 

ElPatron

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Jul 18, 2011
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Knife running.

The "commando lunge" in MW2 was a clearly defective mechanic, specially with the one-hit-ko ability of knives and the huge area of effect (Black Ops somewhat reduced the area, so that you couldn't kill people right beside you with a knife swipe).

Even with the balance in Black Ops it's still annoying. Some people take pride in what they do and actually try to use their brain to be successful, but the game doesn't require that. Some people just sprint forward and knife you.

I believe that if someone shoots the knife runner, the hits should have an effect on the sprinting speed if the direction of shooting and running are opposite.

frobalt said:
certain units (I've heard about an early game tactic in Starcraft that's cheap) to basically anything that people see as making the game easy.
I don't see what you're talking about, I don't know much about Starcraft but I guess that if it can be done, then it also has drawbacks. Example: if you can't make a proper Zerg rush, you're crippled for the rest of the game.


TheMightyAtrox said:
I do agree that I hate quick scoping the most.
aguspal said:
Any kind os Sniper Rifle in competitive FPS are cheap in my eyes.


Sorry, I just dont get how people blame Noobtubes, RPGS and whatnot to be cheap when a Sniper Rifle is pretty much the same thing as them, an unavoidable 1 hit kill death. [...] Add Quickscope and its even worse than the noobtube IMO. At least most people dont like the noobtubes, on the other hand snipers are apparently leet pros. NO. specially those that quickscope. I know its suppused to be a 1 hit kill weapon, but dying in 1 hit from nowhere, with nothing to learn from your death except "Damn, thougt luck" its NOT FUN. Nonono, I hate sniper rifles with a pasion. At least in competitive FPS games.

Well, Call of Duty has a crapload of hitmarkers even with "supposedly" high powered rifles. I find the one-hit-kill part pretty annoying in many games, specially if it's on non-vital areas. But when you have a weapon that must be re-cocked every shot and you take a pinpoint accurate shot at an opponent and he just survives it I get pissed.

And what is the problem with quickscoping? As far as I am concerned it isn't a foolproof tactic, first you have to aim, look trough the scope, correct the sight alignment and shoot. If you're talking about consoles, then I'm not going to talk about how much aim-assist buffs snipers.
 

el_kabong

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Mar 18, 2010
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I think the reason people complain about cheap tactics is that they devalue the game. Essentially, these are the tactics that anyone can use...but if everyone was using them, the game would be no fun.

Cheap tactics are cheap because of an exploit in the system. They're easy, which what makes them so appealing to WAAC (Win At All Cost) gamers. However, as people progress in the game, most want to exert higher skill to be competitive. WAAC gamers are never fun to play with because they only care about the end goal of winning and not the process of getting there. In other words, they will have more fun racking up a killstreak of 20+ when the other team is having connection issues and gets destroyed than achieving the same killstreak in a heated battle that eventually ends in a loss (they usually talk shit for the first example and blame their team for the second).

If, at higher levels of skill, you can't compete with someone using the easiest of exploits just by virtue of you not wanting to use boring tactics, you aren't being rewarded for your level of time and effort you're putting into the game. Why play to get to the higher level when the exploit feature is unlocked early on? Gamers like feeling that they accomplished something in their gaming...that they get better or at least have better gear (it's what keeps most MMOs going). Exploits take away the sense of expertise from veterans of the game.
 

aguspal

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aguspal said:
Any kind os Sniper Rifle in competitive FPS are cheap in my eyes.


Sorry, I just dont get how people blame Noobtubes, RPGS and whatnot to be cheap when a Sniper Rifle is pretty much the same thing as them, an unavoidable 1 hit kill death. [...] Add Quickscope and its even worse than the noobtube IMO. At least most people dont like the noobtubes, on the other hand snipers are apparently leet pros. NO. specially those that quickscope. I know its suppused to be a 1 hit kill weapon, but dying in 1 hit from nowhere, with nothing to learn from your death except "Damn, thougt luck" its NOT FUN. Nonono, I hate sniper rifles with a pasion. At least in competitive FPS games.

Well, Call of Duty has a crapload of hitmarkers even with "supposedly" high powered rifles. I find the one-hit-kill part pretty annoying in many games, specially if it's on non-vital areas. But when you have a weapon that must be re-cocked every shot and you take a pinpoint accurate shot at an opponent and he just survives it I get pissed.

And what is the problem with quickscoping? As far as I am concerned it isn't a foolproof tactic, first you have to aim, look trough the scope, correct the sight alignment and shoot. If you're talking about consoles, then I'm not going to talk about how much aim-assist buffs snipers.[/quote]

Yes, I understand what you say, but I also get pissed when I get killed by a sniper in 1 hit with absolutly no way at all for me to even know that I was about to die at the moment. I dont really think its fair at all.


And Quickscoping just makes it all worse. It effectivly makes the Snipers viable weapons in close encounters. The ONLY bad thing the snipers usually have, essensiality got removed. So now its a 1 hit kill weapon at close, medium, and long ranges. Very fair and balanced, and cleary dosnt renders most of the other weapons in whatever game they are obsolete.


EDIT: Quote fail.
 

Waffle_Man

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Oct 14, 2010
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A number of people seem to have been focusing on the first half of your title.

If a game is meant to cater more to self expression and choice instead of raw performance, the thought of having something limit on that is unthinkable, but what if we took the idea of a cheap tactic to an extreme? Sure, one might hate how iron sights have "ruined" modern shooters, but is anyone going to take them seriously when they complain about how they can't hit people while running around and never aiming properly? No. It's an explicit part of the game. You shouldn't complain when fighter caters to people who used more than just basic attacks or when a strategy game rewards people for using the "cheap" tactic of using synergistic unit combinations. However, people seem to lose their shit the second that someone does something unexpected or not having an instantly obvious counter. Some games might have this as an inherently limiting factor, but games that are played competitively simply would not work if there was an undefeatable tactic.

Case and point: Counter-Strike. I suppose Star Craft or Dota and it's assorted clones might be better examples, but my knowledge of tactics and strategy with counter strike is a bit more intimate, so bear with me.

I don't think I should have to justify Counter-Strike as a competitively viable game when it's been played for more than a decade with new tactics still emerging. With thousands of dollars on the line and thousands of teams playing in the various leagues, the fact that a handful of different teams are constantly coming out on top should be proof enough that the winning is not a matter of chance. How can this be possible with cheap weapons like the AWP, the machine gun, the auto sniper, and the p90? Simple, they aren't the end all be all of playing counter strike.

The reason the spray heavy guns seem cheap is because they allow players to kill enemies very quickly without as much effort as certain other guns. However, you'll notice that the p90 and the machine gun are practically never used in high level league matches. The reason is because a perfect or near perfect performance with such a weapon will never be as good as a perfect performance with the more competitively viable assault rifles.

Against an armored opponent, both the p90 and machine gun will do less than the damage required to kill a fully healthy player with a head shot and it takes just as many bullets to kill someone spraying a p90 or machine gun as an m4. The reason a p90 or a Machinegun give an inexperienced player an advantage over a person with an assault rifle is the far more forgiving ammo capacity. A person with a p90 or machine gun has to worry far less than someone with an assault rifle about missing a shot because they have far more shots to miss. This puts them on par with the m4 in ideal situations, but the m4 has far more ideal situations.

The p90 can occasionally get quick kills at intermediate range, but good luck taking on an opponent at long range. Contrast this with the m4, which can score regular head shots at any distance in the hands of a competent user. The machine gun can be about as accurate as an assault rifle if tapped properly, but this makes it theoretically only as good as a much cheaper weapon. In practice, it's still easier to kill an opponent with an assault rifle. Of course, anyone who has been in a pub for more than a few matches is guaranteed to have a story about some idiot who ran around the corner spraying and got a kill with seemingly no effort, but believe it or not, any player can do the exact same thing with an assault rifle. Stopping any automatic weapon rush requires quick reflexes and good shot placement.

Now the AWP is a bit of a special case, because it's still a fairly widely used weapon in the competitive scene. However, even the all mighty AWP is still not as dominant as the M4 or AK47 in competitive matches. This is because it gives the user a very specific advantage in very specific situations, which is that they have a smaller target to aim for when going for a one hit kill. This offers a considerable advantage when coupled with it's near perfect accuracy. The downside is that the weapon requires quite a bit of time to fire off more than one shot and is incredibly hard to use in close quarters. Of course, a good awper can cancel out these draw backs far more easily than someone else can exploit them. As such, facing an awper is still a very big problem.

None the less, good teams and even good players can still kill awpers. The most obvious counter to an awp is another awp. In less equal circumstances, players can learn to peek properly, allowing them to avoid confrontations with awpers at optimal range. Even the best awper will have a hell of a time hitting someone who jump peaks. Teams can also rush the awper. It is probably going to end in a trade kill, but losing an awp is a big financial loss for a team. Grenades can also be used to take out an awper, or coordinated baiting. Correct positioning and angles can greatly increase one's chances against an awper. Lastly, using proper communication will almost always result in the death of a lone awper without support from a team. Believe it or not, few people complain about bad awpers, and I've never heard anyone complain about people scouting, despite the fact that really good awpers often hit people in the head and would be just as effective with a scout in many circumstances. One might even say that a big part of what makes someone good at counter strike is their ability to deal with awpers, either as a member of a team or as an individual player.

Even the all annoying camping isn't even that bad. If a person has played a map long enough, it's fairly easy to tell where people are going to be camping, and most bad campers aren't going to be prepared for someone firing rounds at someone the second they come into view. Aside from that, someone who stays in even the most high traffic area of the map will never do all that well in a game simply because people can go so many other places. Someone who makes effective use of the maps and simply move from good hiding spot to hiding spot while luring in players after them isn't cheap, they simply know how to use the map.

Now, some might have read all of what I just wrote and think "I'm sure plenty of professional players can do fine in such situations, but what about me?" What about you. Yes, countering cheap tactics effectively in any game requires lots of skill, but that's because most cheap tactics specifically exist to cater to people who don't want to get better at the game. Thus, you can either just use such tactics yourself and generally leave the outcome up to chance, or you can use good tactics with the knowledge that you're going to get offed by cheap tactics until you get better. Hell, I still have a kill-death-ratio in source that's slightly lower than one despite the fact that I usually do really well these days simple because I died that many times before I learned how to effectively stop a person rushing around the corner with a p90. However, once you've gotten good, you'll become the bane of anyone who hasn't gotten any better because the tactics they use have a consequentially lower skill ceiling that the ones you use.

This itself might be objected to because some people don't have the time to dedicate to getting super good. If that's that case, they should probably just find a different game. I love left 4 dead or killing because they're games that reward skill, but still allow people who have never even played a video game before to contribute to the team. In a competitively viable game though, every thing you do matters and people are allowed to actually set themselves apart from other players. Getting angry at people for not artificially limiting themselves or for not being able to do just as well as someone who has put in way more time into the game is selling the game short. If it doesn't cater to you, that's fine, you don't have to like it.

In short, are there cheap tactics? Yes. Are there cheap tactics in a fair and competitively viable games? No, and if they're really all that good, you should probably just use them yourself.
 

Ryotknife

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really is a case by case thing.

I do not like cheap tactics if it is unsportsman-like or if it ruins the game for everyone. For example, i will never play SC2 against other people because most of the tactics are cheap. Played the hell out of SC1 online, but not SC2. Yes SC1 had a FEW sheap tactics, but nowhere near the number SC2 has.

Another thing, camping in FPS. If it is an objective based map and you are protecting something, that is a little bit better. If you are hiding in a random corner of the map, you deserve to burn in hell. I will defend an objective, but i wont stay in one spot for long but rather patrol. Camping ruins the game for everyone (except for the camper).

nade spamming in FPS, especially CoD

I suppose i should add pillar humping to that list from WoW.

Ideally, a competitive game should be fun for EVERYBODY, not just the winners/people who use cheap tactics.
 

Username Redacted

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Dec 29, 2010
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2xDouble said:
To paraphrase David Sirlin: If you think something is "cheap" or "overpowered", try playing/using it yourself. You will find out very quickly what exists in the game to counter that, and a properly balanced game will evolve its meta to defeat that particular build/strategy/tactic/weapon/whatever.

Basically, there is no such thing as a "cheap tactic", only tactics that haven't yet been countered.

...unless there is something horribly wrong with the game. While broken game mechanics is a possibility, that's far less likely than most players would think.
Pretty much this...which most people seem to have glossed over. -_-
Hell, even that last part about broken game mechanics can be a good thing as these sorts of exploits, once mastered, often become integral to how a game plays. I really wish that more developers took a "Wait and see" approach to things (not 'wait' as in time but wait as in data accrual) before making changes to their products as I can't even count at this point how many times something got patched, banned, etc. that in hindsight probably didn't need to be.
The Wykydtron said:
Oh and UMVC3's Dark Wesker. Fuck you Wesker. You suck. I don't mind getting owned when it's someone cool like Dante because some of his combos are damn awesome, yet Wesker has precisely 2 or 3 boring combos all of them including the cheapest spammable self OTG gunshot I have ever seen.
Every time one of these threads pop-up someone will, without fail, bring up the character who is maybe the 7th best character in UMvC3 as an example and while yes Wesker is annoying (due to the rare overlap of being good enough and piss easy to play) there are a ton of things worse than him in the game.
 

Tippy

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I'll give you cheap tactics in BF3 - on the absolute shitfest that is Metro (Conquest or TDM) - picking support/assault, equipping grenades/M320 and spamming into the choke points regardless of whether they're hitting enemies or not. I don't care what you call it, it is a cheap tactic. There is literally nothing to do but M320/grenade-spam back, dropping smoke doesn't help because they simply keep spamming explosives into the smoke (they're not exactly aiming at anything) and killing you.

The entire purpose of Metro is to quickly level guns/attachments (otherwise it's really boring as fuck), but countless people still stick to M320/grenade spam all day.
It's about as fun as watching paint dry. I could set up an auto-clicking program to do their job.

Why do they do it?
Because they can.
Because it gets them kills.
Most importantly, because the server rules allow it.

And if the server rules allow it, you bet people will do it (this applies to any game).
 

Brendan Stepladder

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May 21, 2012
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TheKasp said:
SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
And I never saw the problem with camping, in most games anyway. It's so easy to kill a camper, much easier than getting someone that's always moving around intelligently.

For that reason I don't see camping as a good tactic either. If anyone in the enemy team knows what they are doing you're gonna get owned.
I can only agree. Unless the camper comes with exceptional awareness of his surroundings he is going to die. Never saw a problem with campers. Unless when I am called a camper because I hear you coming and lay an ambush *sigh*.
People only get mad when they can't kill campers with the usual set-up they have to kill non-campers.

That said, unbalanced games like COD openly welcome campers, thanks to the fact that all weapons kill near-instantaneously.
 

Exocet

Pandamonium is at hand
Dec 3, 2008
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The cheap tactics for me are the ones that require no skill whatsoever to pull off, and are just too successful. This is due to faulty balance, but still, spamming blatantly overpowered units, or using an exploit to get the upper hand(which is a tactic) is cheap, and no fun.

Example: sitting by a box of ammo and spamming grenades into choke points. That's fucking cheap.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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No one can say that spawn camping intentionally isn't a cheap tactic that ruins a game. Normal camping fine and camping when you are defending an objective fine but spawn camp however, and short of hackers you are pretty much the worst kind of person online.
 

WanderingFool

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The Jakeinator said:
I always saw camping as a legitimate tactic. I sure as hell don't have the attention span to do it, but camping has it's own risks and opportunities, so I never saw any reason to dislike it so much despite the overwhelming hate for it, it seems.
Camping is more a problem in objective-based gamemodes. Some cases, like camping your teams flag is more acceptable. It when camping is done for the allmighty K/D ratio that people will *****.
 

The Wykydtron

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Sep 23, 2010
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ThingWhatSqueaks said:
2xDouble said:
To paraphrase David Sirlin: If you think something is "cheap" or "overpowered", try playing/using it yourself. You will find out very quickly what exists in the game to counter that, and a properly balanced game will evolve its meta to defeat that particular build/strategy/tactic/weapon/whatever.

Basically, there is no such thing as a "cheap tactic", only tactics that haven't yet been countered.

...unless there is something horribly wrong with the game. While broken game mechanics is a possibility, that's far less likely than most players would think.
Pretty much this...which most people seem to have glossed over. -_-
Hell, even that last part about broken game mechanics can be a good thing as these sorts of exploits, once mastered, often become integral to how a game plays. I really wish that more developers took a "Wait and see" approach to things (not 'wait' as in time but wait as in data accrual) before making changes to their products as I can't even count at this point how many times something got patched, banned, etc. that in hindsight probably didn't need to be.
The Wykydtron said:
Oh and UMVC3's Dark Wesker. Fuck you Wesker. You suck. I don't mind getting owned when it's someone cool like Dante because some of his combos are damn awesome, yet Wesker has precisely 2 or 3 boring combos all of them including the cheapest spammable self OTG gunshot I have ever seen.
Every time one of these threads pop-up someone will, without fail, bring up the character who is maybe the 7th best character in UMvC3 as an example and while yes Wesker is annoying (due to the rare overlap of being good enough and piss easy to play) there are a ton of things worse than him in the game.
Oh I know he's not the best in the game. However all the super best characters are y'know, interesting? Swaggy TAC Doom combos? Ammy/Doom setups? C.Viper touch of deathing everyone? Cool. Awesome.

What's Wesker doing? Gunshot, teleport. gunshot, teleport all fucking day. Have you ever seen any awesome stuff with Wesker? Ever? I for one have not even in some epic UMVC3 tourneys. He's so boring and safe I hate him

Actually really cheap stuff is Nova/Frank West. I hate that team.
 

PinkiePyro

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BaronUberstein said:
Sounds like you came across a sniper that didn't fire-and-move and was a sore loser about it.
pretty much this in real combat snipers move about to different spots to not blow their cover(unless they are serial killers)
what you did was a legit tactic


also I say camping is a legit tactic
but spawn camping is not

opening up another can of worms
whats everyone's opinion on distraction sprays in TF2
 

Dusty Donuts

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Jul 16, 2009
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I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the G18 in MW2. There were 20 billion server plugins to block the players from using the darn things. Now, I played on my friends server, so we usually got as good as we gave (i.e. we screwed everyone over with every "cheap" tactic in the book, and it was bloody hilarious), but I never had an issue with people who killed me constantly except for one guy using a FAMAS, and he was actually good at the game. Every time some tactic came along, it was counterable. That goes back to the guy who I can't be bothered to find and quote who said that most tactics are can be countered but people are too stuck up in their own tactics to change and so, it's called cheap.

chickenhound said:
whats everyone's opinion on distraction sprays in TF2
Too small to count for anything. The area affected and the fact that it's usually just some kind of porn makes it easily skippable. If you fall for it, that's your bad luck then. Granted, I don't think it's a legit tactic, and it's probably just some person having a laugh at your expense, it's really not that hard to avoid falling for it.
 

Kargathia

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In case you didn't know: there is a golden rule to multiplayer gaming. If you win it's balance, if you lose it's a retarded OP cheap n00b win.

TheMightyAtrox said:
I mostly hate snipers because I suck with them, I'll admit that. I do agree that I hate quick scoping the most. I can't blame someone for exploiting a game mechanic though. Remove someone's ability to do that, and the game could be more balanced.
Personally I'd say that snipers simply don't have a place in close-quarter FPS games - but I'm perfectly ok with that people capable of reliably hitting at ranges past 200m are a force to be feared.
 

Mirroga

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Jun 6, 2009
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I always don't get the term cheap in competitive games. If it's a very annoying, abused, and a dominating strategy, then you would use such strats to win. It would be the game makers' fault for not balancing such things or never had the foresight for these dominating strategies. An example would be the infamous Noob Tube and the Combat Knife in FPS. If they care for the balance and fairness of the multiplayer, they would've nerfed or removed them. But alas, it's a viable strategy if they are never removed in the pool.

In other words, if it's a strategy or tactic that is still within the gameplay, and the balance providers have no intent to nerf or impair such strategies, then it is a viable and fair tactic. Cheap? No. Annoying? Yes. Makes the game unfun? Definitely.

Don't forget:
Competitive Gaming = Serious = Unfun to Victims = Posibly Unfun to Winners(when they are THAT serious)