Multiplayer Rules of Engagement

[cojo965]

What do I mean? Simply put, watch this Dark Souls pvp montage:


Notice anything? If you said that every fight started with some kind of gesture go get yourself a cookie. It is the unspoken, but ever present rule of dueling in Dark Souls that every duel begin with some kind of gesture in greeting. It is also understood no lagstabbing and no Estus (though it never seems to stop people doing it). So I say lets make rules of engagement for other games with multiplayer, lets hear what you come up with.

P.S. If you invade my game in Dark Souls and find yourself in a three on one, you have no right to complain about being ganked because I didn't summon you into it, you invaded me yourself with a Red-Eye item.

 

[machblast]

I was a low-level Dickwraith for a while. I have around 88 humanity collected on my level 13 +5 Lightning Uchigatana darkwraith, in a special maxed out armor set for the highest amount of weight I could wear to fastroll. Each of those humanities was gathered from killing some poor guy I invaded at the Undead Parish, or Blighttown, or whatever.

I like sneaking around and backstabbing in any multiplayer game. Even at the expense of HP (my dickwraith had 10 vit)

 

[disgruntledgamer]

There are no Rules of Engagement in Dark/ Demon Souls When someone bows that's just a free BS.

 

[machblast]

There are no Rules of Engagement in Dark/ Demon Souls When someone bows that's just a free BS.

Yeah this, it can be fun and polite and everything (I was completely into the whole 'bow politely and duel thing' when I played and platinumed Demon's Souls) but it's not required.

In Dark Souls I went full asshole because it felt so fulfilling.

 

[Luftwaffles]

Easy. If someone looks different to you click until they cease to move.

 

[White Lightning]

Gears of War had some. In Gears 2 when the smokes didn't stun people would twirl the Smoke Grenades or they would melee the air and shoot and fail an active if it was a 1v1, however other then that it was just kill everything. People in Gears 3 don't do this anymore though.

(Sometimes) in Runescape (Before the pvp went to shit) people usually challenged one another to a fight unless it was deep wilderness. Now it's just massive groups ganging up on you or the guy is a whiny pure in the duel arena who won't fight without absurd restrictions because they only trained one skill.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I don't know. I'm generally of the opinion that unless you're talking exploits or glitching the game should be approached as it is. PvP im Dark Souls is, quite frankly, built around being a dick. Invasions aren't asked for and can be avoided simply by not going human. Twinking, glitching and outright cheating sucks, but it's sort of just the way the game is structured.

People always talk about honour and such in fighting games but the fact is, if you're getting beaten by something constantly, you're just not learning or adapting and it's your fault, not the fault of the person you're playing against.

 

[Smooth Operator]

But if you are playing the honorable fighter thing then why engage in a 3-1 match, wouldn't you then work it out to go at it one on one...

For the most part these rules are meaningless without means to enforce them, and with match making the players usually get zero control over the numpties they end up with, on top of that with most games the skill ceiling is so low the troll shots can't be warded off.

That is why the best game for an honor code is still Jedi Outcast, there you had direct and indirect control over the server and a skilled player was near untouchable when he didn't want to engage you.
Near all players understood a few minutes in that shit was played with dignity, and those who kept on trolling around got torn to shreds.

 

[srm79]

But if you are playing the honorable fighter thing then why engage in a 3-1 match, wouldn't you then work it out to go at it one on one...

For the most part these rules are meaningless without means to enforce them, and with match making the players usually get zero control over the numpties they end up with, on top of that with most games the skill ceiling is so low the troll shots can't be warded off.

That is why the best game for an honor code is still Jedi Outcast, there you had direct and indirect control over the server and a skilled player was near untouchable when he didn't want to engage you.
Near all players understood a few minutes in that shit was played with dignity, and those who kept on trolling around got torn to shreds.

Much the same in IL-2 as well. Servers were player-run and rules enforced. While the RoE's varied from server to server the one that applied almost universally was that you didn't leg it over to the enemy airfield and start shooting up aircraft that were on the ground or just getting airborne.

Similarly, when the trolls did turn up a skilled player could generally avoid engaging until the tactical situation favoured them. Trolls were rarely kicked as it was far more fun to turn the tables on them, and on many an ocassion I've seen the trolls team mates back off for a bit to watch when it became apparent that the entire opposition team was targeting the troll. They usually got fed up and left quickly!

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Yeah, I've never seen anyone do this in Dark Souls. Whenever someone invades, they just sneak around and strike when I'm occupied fighting another enemy.

 

[MiskWisk]

Aside from not camping at a spawn, I generally don't have any rules. Everyone is fair game be they afk, lagging or just plain thick. But I will never spawn camp.

 

[CAMDAWG]

It is the unspoken, but ever present rule of dueling in Dark Souls that every duel begin with some kind of gesture in greeting.

Key word there being duel. When everyone's expecting what's going to happen, like the accepted duelling areas, then almost everyone does this. But just about everywhere else, it's almost too risky. I never bow straight out of the gate anymore, because too many people are dicks about it. What I do instead is hover just on the edge of lock-on range, with my shield raised, waiting for them to go first, or to make some sign that they're not a dick.

As for the estus rule, I've never actually come across that, which is strange given that I've spent almost 500 hours playing dark souls. But again, i guess it makes sense in the context of an expected duel, not a random invasion.

As for lagstabbing, while I try to avoid it, sometimes it happens by accident, and sometimes what you think is an acceptable, well timed dodge-and-backstab actually comes across as a ridiculous lagstab to the opposition, which is unfortunate. I'd love to be able to play dark-souls pvp splitscreen with a friend, because that'd remove all the lag issues, but I doubt that will ever happen, with splitscreen gaming becoming a thing of the past.

 

[CAMDAWG]

Aside from not camping at a spawn, I generally don't have any rules. Everyone is fair game be they afk, lagging or just plain thick. But I will never spawn camp.

The people that irritate me the most are the forest hunters who just leave the game to run itself, and hope that other players will kill the target and give them free souls. They can be hard to track down, and take up spots for actual players in my world. That being said, I have a system of bow, wave, use a wood carving, and if they still don't respond, they're gone.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

If two cloaked spies bump into each other in TF2, you do not acknowledge them presence, try and follow them, or give them away. You just keep on going as if it never happened. I don't even know how this rule even came about, but pretty much nobody ever breaks it. It's just part of the unwritten code of TF2

Jedi knight 2: Jedi outcast had a really strict honour code in the deathmatch servers as well. Since it's pretty much impossible to jump someone who's not expecting it (3rd person + open maps + wide FoV), and the game is so skill based that it's ridiculously hard to beat someone better than you. The fights take so long that there's very little luck involved. Big FFA's/Team fights are often a huge clusterfuck, so it's mostly 1v1. If you broke the "Don't attack unless challenged" rule, you'd be destroyed by everyone on the server until you left. Same thing if you kept jumping in on other people's duel.

Reading that description, it sounds damn awful, and very boring. But it was really fun, and completely worked. I can't see that sort of rule working in many other games though :/

 

[Hawk of Battle]

There are no rules, victory at any cost.

 

[Shadowstar38]

Rules of engagement are useless. The first time I come across a guy not using them, my faith in it will be lost and just go to being a dick.

Playing fair is not an ideal strategy in any conflict.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Don't camp spawns in FPS games purposefully and if you do that you're quite frankly a scourge on gaming and I will spec nade you if you do it in CoD 2 or CoD 4.

 

[RJ 17]

One of my favorite FPS's of all time - Alien vs Predator 2 for the PC - had a lot of Rules of Engagement. Some of them were general which most players played by, others were ones that I made up for myself.

1: Marines are not to use the Smart Gun and Preds are not to use the Shoulder Cannon. (My Personal Take On This Rule: "Marines may use the Smart Gun if a Pred is using the Shoulder Cannon, and a Pred can use the Shoulder Cannon if a Marine is using the Smart Gun)

2: Marines are not to use Guided Rockets and Preds are not to use the Disc. (Personal Take: Same vice-versa rule with the Cannon/Smart Gun)

3: Marines are not to use the Grenade Launcher and Preds are not to use the Pred Pistol (Personal Take: Again with the vice-versa.)

4: Preds are not to Cloak-Camp-Snipe with the Spear Gun (the reason being for those that have never played is that a cloaked, camping pred is 100% invisible to marine players. This one I fully agree with, it's a real dick move.)

5: Marines are not to use glitches. (There's two glitches that I can recall that gave the marines a ridiculous advantage. With the Sniper Rigle - which was one-shot-kill with no bullet travel time, there was a way to fire off two bullets in rapid succession by quick-scoping. And with the Pulse Rifle, tapping the fire button allowed you to shoot way faster than the gun was meant to fire, allowing you to completely light someone up in a matter of moments.)

Given that the Aliens are the most frail of the species...and their only weapons are their claws, tail, and a pounce attack, there's really no way for them to be cheap (which the above rules are meant to prevent for the marines and preds). Gotta be sneaky and cunning to get kills as a bug. Or just be a Predalien. :3

 

[AngloDoom]

So long as nobody is extorting a glitch in the game I really don't have any 'rules of engagement' besides being polite at all times. If you kill someone tell them it was a fun fight and if you get killed by someone tell them you enjoyed it anyway.

Other than that, I dislike when people tell me I'm not allowed to use such-and-such weapon or such-and-such strategy in games. If you think a certain weapon is overpowered then I'd advise you to use it as well - I see no reason why everyone should run around with pea-shooters and sharpened sticks when there's rocket-launchers and zweihanders laying about.

 

[Username Redacted]

There are no rules, victory at any cost.

I would amend that to say: "...victory at any cost within the rules of the game". No one likes actual cheaters.