Why do so many people not understand how to play a shooter?

[Daniel Ferguson]

Maybe I've only played the ones where it's about who shoots first. Also, inexperience. Everyone's inexperienced at some point.

I also have a mental disorder. It takes like 10 times as long for me to learn shit. I am better at FPS games than I was 10 years ago, mind you. Just not multiplayer, because I have only a little experience in it.

I'm not really an FPS player though. So that's probably the main thing.

 

[Owlslayer]

I'll rather have fun that play seriously, to be honest. Map control and all that sounds good and all, but I'd enjoy finding an enemy sniper, sitting on his head and waving my baseball bat around until one of my team's snipers find us, or until i get tired and start to try taunkilling the bugger. Sniping is difficult, and i'm mostly pretty bad at it, but i like to try it out every once in a while, as well. Why? Cause it's different. And i like different stuff every once in a while. I'll fail pretty badly, but it's still fun.

 

[Tribalism]

Understand that different people play games for different reasons. There are people who play Rock Band/Guitar Hero/DDR songs obsessively to get the best score on the hardest difficulty and people who play a variety of songs on a low difficulty for a bit of casual fun. There are people who min/max RPGs, finding the optimum gear, strategies to clear the game, others who grind to the point of completely destroying the game's content in a short period. There are people who play games not for the competitive aspect, but for sheer unrefined "fun" and that word is subjective. Everyone's definition of fun is different and if they don't want to play for a victory every game (not everyone does) and don't want to camp an objective, they don't have to. It's not that these people are bad at the game, it's that they're approaching it with an attitude geared towards their definition of fun and not treating the game as a skill that must be practised.

 

[natster43]

analog sticks are incapable of being used for any real aiming.

You can aim quite awesome with analog sticks (Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has no aim-assist). My accuracy stat in MoH Warfighter is higher than many PC users too. The following is me run and gunning as a sniper in GRFS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln231R_aJZY

OH PLEASE.

Don't even start.
If anyone, ever, says a shooter using a controller has no aim assist, they're either lying or ignorant.
It's impossible.
IMPOSSIBLE.

Google it.

I had to turn off aim assist in Battlefield 3 on 360 as it kept fucking with my aiming. Seriously it will stick to the asshole's face when I needed to lead my shots and it was getting really annoying. Yeah aiming isn't nearly as good with a controller as it is with a mouse, but it is still possible without aim assist being on.

 

[sanquin]

They do it because they'll get more xp, or points or whatever from killing people than capturing the objectives or whatever in the majority of online games.

Not true. Most online games reward you more for winning than for farming. It's just easier to farm since then you don't have to think or really pay attention.

 

[teebeeohh]

Shit campers are the ones sat behind door ways, in dark and obscure corners, aiming down sights for minutes at a time. What goes through these people's minds?

in the good old days we would call that and only that camping. because if you get a good snyping spot and stay there or wait in an area where your weapon works for enemies(like staying inside a building with your shotgun and not run around in the wide open space outside) that is not camping, that is not playing like an idiot.

OP: did you ever play Quake 3? because camping was not the point of that game, the point of that game was to rocketjump around a pillar and shoot people in the back with a railgun

 

[AVeryClassyCat]

Pubs on objective-based modes are sometimes annoying. I play KF so it's not exactly the same, but a bad random or two can ruin a round really easily by ignoring strategies or not supporting the team. I usually run a private server with a team if it's important that we all communicate and win, otherwise I don't expect much and take things as they come.

 

[hazabaza1]

analog sticks are incapable of being used for any real aiming.

You can aim quite awesome with analog sticks (Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has no aim-assist). My accuracy stat in MoH Warfighter is higher than many PC users too. The following is me run and gunning as a sniper in GRFS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln231R_aJZY

OH PLEASE.

Don't even start.
If anyone, ever, says a shooter using a controller has no aim assist, they're either lying or ignorant.
It's impossible.
IMPOSSIBLE.

Google it.

Timesplitters as well on top of everything else people have been saying.
You're basically totally wrong.

OT: People just wanna do shit and get kills. Sad but true, if you want to get a near guarenteed chance for a decent game you'll need to join a clan or something.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Kill counts mostly. Some people care so much about their stats (I mean the kind of people that would shut off their consoles if the game was about to end and their K/D was too low) that they'll just sit back and camp at their spawn or find some obscure corner somewhere and camp there too. I just think that the prevailing mentality is that in team based games, the other members of the team will do all the work for you. That's also how you get people using sniper rifles or hogging tanks when it's apparent to everyone that they have no aptitude for them. As long as their K/D is high or they don't have to exert themselves as much, completing the objective is a secondary priority.

I also get that some people just want to goof off. That's fine, I do that too sometimes. When I'm playing DM and objectives games in Battlefield 3 and I manage to sneak up on an enemy squad, I get knife crazy and try to assassinate as many as I can. Yeah, I'd be more efficient shooting them with my silenced pistol and be able to save my teammates/capture the objective faster, but I'd rather just throw their dog tags into my collection. In CoD my friends and I will choose ridiculous set ups in order to try and one up each other, even to the point of trying to get glitzy final kill cams when we're neck to neck with the other team.

 

[thedragon232]

analog sticks are incapable of being used for any real aiming.

You can aim quite awesome with analog sticks (Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has no aim-assist). My accuracy stat in MoH Warfighter is higher than many PC users too. The following is me run and gunning as a sniper in GRFS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln231R_aJZY

OH PLEASE.

Don't even start.
If anyone, ever, says a shooter using a controller has no aim assist, they're either lying or ignorant.
It's impossible.
IMPOSSIBLE.

Google it.

As a console player since N64 I can tell you that not only is it possible to play controllers with out aim assist but prefer to. There are several occasions in which two people were to close together and aim assist would drag my sights away from who I wanted to target to the next person. I personally feel that aim assist is unnecessary.

 

[Bestival]

It's not like this only happens in FPS. Most MMO PvP ends up like this aswell. People generally just want to kill shit, it's not that they don't know or understand the objectives, they just don't care.

 

[WanderingFool]

-snip

First off, you sound like a whiny little kid, upset that people are not playing the game like you.

Second (and a more serious answer), is K/D. It is the very bane of existence, and exists solely for fucking people over. It does so by making people, whether season vets or noobs, use the cheapest tactics to get a high kill count for as few deaths as possible. One of the best game modes to do this is in objective modes where the match victory isnt determined by number of kills, so they can play till the match reaches the time limit, increasing their K/D.

If you care about winning why would you play public? I for one play for fun.

If you don't care about your team why would you play on one?

Cause then I only half to worry about *Half* the people in the match trying to kill me.

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

I expected a rant, and that's what I got. You lost me at "the point of every shooter is to camp." You go on to say that you shouldn't be afraid of death. If you weren't afraid of death, you wouldn't camp (with the exception of snipers.)

 

[Mitsukuni]

I think it ultimately boils down to a tragedy of the commons type of problem. Most people want to win, but winning (in a strategic multiplayer scenario) requires some players to do not so fun things like standing guard or healing. Without a higher power of sorts, sanctioning good and bad team play, there will always be suckers who put their personal fun over the team goal and there will always be good willing people who turn to doing the same thing out of frustration. You can only guard a strategic spot for so long if you find out it's hopeless because everybody else on your team is ganking on their own.

The easy and obvious solution is to either play in premade groups with people you know and somewhat care about or to build a gaming system where you cannot easily NOT fulfill your role.

wrt players simply sucking: well, that's what you will find if there is no kind of ranking system. It doesn't make sense to group NFL level players with those who couldn't make the high school football team if their life depended on it. And no, not everybody will be intuitively good in those kind of games, no matter how easy you think it is.

 

[MrBenSampson]

I remember one round of TF2. There was only a few minutes left in the round, I was the only person pushing the cart, and all of my teammates were spies. We didn't win.

My most played class is the medic, mainly because most people don't pick that class. The people who do pick that class usually focus on one person, and ignore the rest of their team... even if their team happens to be on fire, and striking them with a bottle while screaming "MEEEEDIIIIIIIC!!" So, I'm usually the one stuck trying to keep everyone alive.

At least I got some cool achievements:

-First Do No Harm
-Specialist
-Placebo Effect
-Chief of Staff

 

[TreuloseTomate]

The only FPS I play is TF2, and the average player is so clueless it's really sad. It's only fun on a handful of community servers with many regualrs. And even then, at least 80% of the players on the server have to be regs, or the cluelessness and absolute imcompetence of your and/or the enemy team ruins the fun.
I play Medic most of the time and I'm always trying to keep track of everything around me. I can usually tell from experience if it's safe to peak around a corner or if it's time to retreat. But no matter how good you are, as a Medic you are also depending on your team making sure you don't die to Scouts all the time. As OP said, this isn't about DM skills, it's about trying to win and paying attention. If I get attacked by a Scout and my pocket Soldier just can't hit him and I die, I won't complain. At least he tried. But when my pocket doesn't even wonder why my health drops for no apparent reason, doesn't listen to me calling for help, doesn't hear the scattergun shots, etc... Why am I even playing Medic?
And then there is that general behavior. Having too many support classes and not enough attacking classes. Engies building a level 3 sentry nest on last, while the rest of the team is trying to cap mid. A spy having a backstabbing killing spree and nobody hears anything. I used to give people advice, not even in a hateful manner because I know how counterproductive that is, telling them it's better to do this and that. The usual respone is: "Dude, I just wanna have fun." As if I don't want to have fun. As if trying to win can't be fun by definition. I don't see the point. If you don't want to win, play Minecraft.

TF2. Serious business.

 

[Clowndoe]

Hardly unique to CoD, Halo and BF either. Games that should be the best bet at proving the existence of the PC master-race like Red Orchestra and Natural Selection are crowded with the worst type of noobs same as anywhere else.

It's like playing hockey outdoors over chipped ice.

 

[Therumancer]

Kill counts mostly. Some people care so much about their stats (I mean the kind of people that would shut off their consoles if the game was about to end and their K/D was too low) that they'll just sit back and camp at their spawn or find some obscure corner somewhere and camp there too. I just think that the prevailing mentality is that in team based games, the other members of the team will do all the work for you. That's also how you get people using sniper rifles or hogging tanks when it's apparent to everyone that they have no aptitude for them. As long as their K/D is high or they don't have to exert themselves as much, completing the objective is a secondary priority.

I also get that some people just want to goof off. That's fine, I do that too sometimes. When I'm playing DM and objectives games in Battlefield 3 and I manage to sneak up on an enemy squad, I get knife crazy and try to assassinate as many as I can. Yeah, I'd be more efficient shooting them with my silenced pistol and be able to save my teammates/capture the objective faster, but I'd rather just throw their dog tags into my collection. In CoD my friends and I will choose ridiculous set ups in order to try and one up each other, even to the point of trying to get glitzy final kill cams when we're neck to neck with the other team.

Well, that's the problem with ranked games, verifiable records, and shooters becoming one of the accepted "E-sports" out there with people in the "bro" crowd increasingly respecting skill with these games. Generally speaking nobody cares about how good a team player you are, and there is no way to verify that, but they can generally look up your profile if they are curious and see your K/D ratio.

In general when dealing with games full of random people, few people care what the rest of the people in the game really think because it's literally a 5 minute relationship, and odds are everyone is going to think everyone else is a butthole anyway. A lot of the time at least one person on the team is going to be a troll anyway.

If you want to play shooters "right" you pretty much need to do it socially, and get together with the same people constantly in a clan, guild, or whatever else you want to call it. Otherwise the only constant is your K/D ratio and tracked stats, which people care about more than your W/L ratio since you can always blame that as always being stuck with moron puggers, you can point to the K/D ratio as "proof" that your actually really good.

Truthfully I stay away from online shooters for a lot of these reasons, ditto for most multi-player, competitive games, because I don't have any friends who do them to play them "right" (and I have tried them). To be honest though at it's worst I don't think shooters have quite reached the level of douchebaggery as fighting games which generally lack the same social component on ANY level, and thanks to players like Justin Wong and their E-fame, have actually become even more competitive. With fighting games I wound up giving up on them to some extent because whenever you win there is a tendency by the losers to report you for things like "unsportsmanlike conduct", especially if you break a winning streak or something.