Online Gaming is too Hardcore

[Lightbulb]

So to follow my own advice how could ranked servers be implemented:

So who will run these servers?

Devs - No money

Publishers - Whats in it for them? Games already sell why spend more?

Third Parties - This already happens, started way back when with Barrys Wolrd and Wireplay. However they are not the majority of servers and is it right for a dev to implement a feature which relies on a third party to work? Though i admit it could be argued that the whole of multiplayer relies on someone hosting a server...


Halo 2 and 3 ranked servers were run by users were they? Or were they run by Microsoft?


So whats the solution? Subscriptions are the current method of dealing with high bandwidth costs of running servers. Do you want to have to pay a subscription to play whats always been free (on the PC)? I sure as hell don't. Especially for a feature of dubious benefit - but then maybe i am being elitist...

 

[maxjae]

So WHO is going to run these newbie, intermediate, and normal servers?

With games that rely on servers, yes, my idea would be ridiculously expensive. But Xbox games have players host the matches without a server. This doesn't cost any money. Using this system, it could work. Give every player a ranking of his/her skill...determined by average killrate, lifespan, whatever works best. When a player hosts a match, the only players who can join his game would be the players close to him in rank. That way, noobs play against noobs and good players play against other good players.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Halo 2 and 3 ranked servers were run by users were they? Or were they run by Microsoft?

The matching for ranked (and social) MatchMaking is done by Bungie's servers; the games run on peer-to-peer connections between XBoxes. Custom games on consoles and all PC matches are run by players, though for a while Halo PC did have some servers hosted by Bungie (and Gearbox, IIRC). Don't know anything about Halo 2 Vista, as I don't have a Vista machine, so I can't and won't comment there.

TrueSkill isn't perfect, but it's a heckuva lot better than dropping into a random server and hoping you won't get butchered or bored. (Or booted for being too nooby/killy.)

-- Steve

 

[Lightbulb]

Ah i see, peer to peer can work and i guess with the xbox the specs are known so you know you can run the game in an acceptable manner.

Yeah if thats the case then i can see no reason to implement it...

Only thing i would change is that you should be able to set your own skill level if you want so you don't have to grind to the top if you want to jump in the deep end...

 

[be0wulf]

Start out with "easy" FPS games like Battlefield 1942. Then slowly move up to harder games.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

As people have said, Team Fortress 2 is an excellent example of an accessible online game, that even with little experience with the game, or it's predecessor, you can pick it up, get the hang of things, and be fairly competitive.

Valve did a great job with it.

But, when you read the Steam forums (I do a lot of reading, this thread made me want to register here, still haven't bothered to on the Steam forums) you see a lot of complaining about just that, how simple and easy it is. A lot of the more hardcore gamers (typically the ones who bother registering for a game's message board) really hate the Critical Hits in Team Fortress 2--they mean that no matter how good you are you can be cheap shotted by an inferior player, and however bad you are, you can get lucky and knock out a far superior player. The fact that the game isn't an unrelenting grenade spam fest since they they are not in the game at all has stickied thread on the Team Fortess 2 forum explaining that grenades will not be coming back, so stop asking.

There are other issues too, people complaining about the lack of advanced movement or skill multipliers...that the game has very few tricks to learn, you can just get up and go, and some people actually don't like that.

I find the whole thing about hardcore and causal gamers very interesting. I've recently been playing online Team Fortress 2 (great fun being a Medic, healing and running around bonesawing people) and Call of Duty 4 (some of the modes, especially Search and Destroy, are just brutal, watch someone dispatch two players through a wall, pull out their pistol down another, then knife a fourth inside a few seconds).

Personally, I think a lot of online gaming and how good you are at it comes down to a combination of practice and just ability. It seems silly to say that there is natural ability at all when it comes to gaming, but players who have very good twitch type reflexes or are capable of very high Actions Per Minute can really excel at a variety of games with practice, while if for whatever reason you don't have these in you, you won't be very competitive.

Sadly, few games First Person Shooters (and Strategy games, to a lesser extent) are all that accessible to a casual gamer. I think that Team Fortress 2, and World in Conflict really have probably been the most accessible casual online games in the last year, and are both worth a look. Fairly simple games, some more advanced stuff to learn with experience, and can be a lot of fun.

 

[burnit999]

If you are really into UT and don't like the "hardcoreness" of the servers you see out there... set up your own server. Doing so is alot easier than you think and there are many how to tutorials on the www. This way you would be able to kick any one who was too hardcore for you and allow you to play with people of your skill set or who just enjoy playing casually.

Also, I know this has been beaten to death, but, you shouldn't lump all online games into the hardcore category. Even in games like World of Warcraft you have people that run the gambit. Some guilds run the hardest raids daily and enjoy the sense of achievement by getting the best loot, while others don't raid at all and are just in it for the social fun and RP.

Basically there are always people out there with the same goals as you. Just figure out what game they are playing and have fun. After all thats what gaming is all about. The only problem is that not everyones version of fun is the same thing

If you enjoy FPS I would recommend TF2 as a more casual player based game. For strategy games you would have to buy any of the newest ones. RTS fan basses tend to follow the newest releases with mostly just the most hardcore playing the old ones from time to time. One more thing that could help you would be practice. I have noticed that even for me the learning curve in games can be large. By picking a game you enjoy and playing against the best you will become better .

Good luck finding the game that suits you.

 

[Garzahd]

The problem with Halo 3's matchmaking system is that it totally kills all the customization they included with Forge and the new game-type options. Plus the fact that Bungie shows you your rank, so it just becomes a stupid trophy that idiots can hold up and say 'look how I good I am' while they are boosting and cheating their way up to get it. I'd much rather a server browser than have Bungie tell me what I like to play.

That said I am one of those hardcore people, not that I enjoy pounding noobs into dust or anything; I like to have at least the semblance of a challenge. However, I feel that some games go too far in the direction of helping the skill impoverished by sapping the amount of potential skill a hardcore gamer can achieve. Take Halo 2 in contrast to Halo 1, massive amount of auto-aim were introduced, the guns practically aimed themselves, snipers were piss easy to use, not to mention fire and forget rockets. I'm all for giving the noobs a chance but I don't think it should come at the expense of skill potential or customization.

I like the idea of having a secret skill rank associated to a player so you could say what range of skill you want on your server, it seems like a nice compromise and saves me the frustration of being booted because 'I'm too good'.

 

[Kikosemmek]

I hear ya. I personally am a mediocre CS:S player and an even worse RTS player (my favourite genre, no less). I hate it when someone is able to blow my head off when I reveal nothing but a pixel for the span of a single frame. Thanks a lot, how could I have prevented that? Now what? Wait for respawn? Wait for a new round? Great. Getting rushed in every RTS game I ever enjoyed yielded the same feeling. RTS rounds last less than FPS rounds do, for the love of God. That's just not right.

The games I enjoyed on multiplayer are Soldat, TF2, and R:TW.

Speaking of R:TW, I'll indulge in some shameless advertizing and point out that if you enjoyed it, you should definitely check out EB (Europa Barbarorum), as it is an excellent mod for the game, changing every aspect of it and making it prettier and more historically accurate.

 

[corronchilejano]

I'm a guy that enjoys goofing around in games. In CS I only buy two flashes, throw away my pistol and look for tight corners to blind and knife unsuspecting real players. In Halo 2 I grab Banshees to crash them directly on other banshees, I drive warthogs aimlessly and enjoy sniping people's feet to make 'em dance. In UT? I jump down acid holes and the bio gun is my best friend. When I played StarCraft I usually had 30-40 zerglings dancing around in merry go 'rounds. It was really entertaining to watch and I even had observer audiences.
For hardcores there´s the looney. Sure, I play serious every now and then, specially after all the looning has made me realize some very good strategies and well, the eventual experience. Maybe the floor stays clean with all the wipe they do with me, but I have plenty of fun.

 

[EdForever]

currently i carnt play CSS cause my comps having a fit at me but i did like that game

now i wasnt the greatest at it but i normally came out with a top ranking high score. now let me point a few things out
1) i am about an average shot at best
2) i do not have amazing reflexes.
so how the hell do i get a good score?

well i can use sound amazingly well and allways have been able to (if ur a average player get a good head set and use it correctly) back on CS 1.5 my bro realised despite him being a blatent better shot i kicked his ass most of the time, and so being the nice brother i am i set up a headphone splitter and whatched him play, he was kinda amazed that i could say "theres a mp5 arround corner 3/4th of way down the wall right hand side less than half a clip" and under stood that i never needed to see the target to be able to aim and now with CSS its got easyer as they have that crappy radar so any half dead monkey should be able to perfect it during a few nights of gameing.

if you can use sounds correctly in CSS 90% of the time you dont need good reactions, just start firing at them before you make it arround the corner (yes i get called a hacker a lot cause i can hear a heard of elephants and shoot in that direction a bit). i was also a natural with grenades and with sound placing people so precicely it means when i got into a gun fight i normally had enough advantage to negate my averge aim.

i find in games you just gota specialise a little back on desert combat a battle field mod i was about average to below average (exspecially snipers can never do bloody snipers) at 90% of the game but once again i ranked top a lot this time, because i could fly helecopters so damn well a lot of people bailed out cause they thought i was gona crash. luckaly my bro once again was quite happy to hold his nerve and try give me warning of incomeing missiles from behind.
parachuting my bro outer the chopper only to race him to the floor n swoop between 2 buildings the width of the chopper and pick him up with the chopper at full speed as he grabs the flag and then barrel roll into a canyon cause hes screaming "misslies" was a reasnably standard thing (of course it didnt go all that well quiet often).

now quite often i didnt play these games for a few weeks and then come back to them so im not one of these people who have no life at all (although i do have moments of addiction to them)

for online game play i advise 2 things
1) get in voice chat with friends (it makes it more fun and you can cooperate better)
2) do something diffrent, its so easy to copy what the masses r doing but doing something diffrently can often give you an advantage or put you in a situation to make u smile or laugh ur arse off.

 

[QuickDEMOL1SHER]

It doesn't HAVE to be hard. It's only hard if you not only want to do very well, but also play totally fair. Try doing some cheap stuff, camping and when all else fails, get in a fast vehicle and drive around in circles.