Online Gaming: Impossible to get into

[nickfil]

Whenever I play a new game online, I go in expecting to die. To die often. To die in embarrassing ways.

If the game has a kill cam, watch it. See what you did and learn from it. If the game has a mode where you watch other players before spawning, see what they are doing differently.

The thing with online gaming is that it is a skill just like any other. Some people start out better than others, but all got great via experience. I'll play COD games and crush people. I'll play counter strike source and get crushed. I just haven't put the consistent time needed to get good into CS:S yet.

Bottom line- the more you play, the better you'll get. If you can play with friends- do it. It'll soften the blow when you are all getting slaughtered and can joke about it.

[the7k]

Never have been any good at online fighters myself, but I usually rock at online shooters. I remember my first game of Uncharted 2, rockin' the house as a level one against a bunch of level 40-somethings. It felt so epic.

[alienjesus]

personally, i hate online gaming, partly for the reasons stated, but mostly because everyone just seems to be so unnecessarily rude and aggressive. Either way, I don't necessarily go in to win, just to play for a while and have a bit of fun. Unfortunately, because people online do know the game so well, my fun is usually hampered by spending more time spawning than playing. You all may say i need to put in the time to get better, but frankly, I'd rather just play another game than spend 3 months (!) trying to get good enough to win one match.


This is why I like local multiplayer better, people are more civil, and seemingly more likely to be of a roughly comparable skill.

[Flak Beard]

Keep in mind that people playing online aren't always necessarily kicking ass at the game, they just have no reservations being cheap and using exploits if they can. It's true though, sometimes these games take patience to have fun online. Consider many of these players might doing nothing with their time but play said game for hours on end.

Me personally though, can't get into online games because of the egos and rudeness of other players. I try to embrace co-op play online, because competition seems to bring out the worst in people. My advice is to stick with setting up matches with groups of friends and let all freaks bathe in their chaos.

[nickfil]

personally, i hate online gaming, partly for the reasons stated, but mostly because everyone just seems to be so unnecessarily rude and aggressive.

yeah- there is a lot of poor sportsmanship online. I think the anonymous nature of the internet coupled with aggressive games (you just don't see shit like aggression in games like peggle) just brings it out. And it is true that those kinda people can ruin the fun of a game.

However, the opposite is also true. I've had some of the most fun gaming when i was playing with people who were just joking around and having a good time win or lose.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

find a good group of people to play with. A good server etc. They do exist and while they usually have stricter rules on cursing etc. its worth it to play with inteligent people, thats whats made me go back to ETW and COD4

[J T]

I have mixed feelings about online gaming. I'm competitive, so I enjoy that aspect of it. The problem is that you usually have to start in the major leagues and spend the first thousand attempts just learning to stay alive for more than 5 seconds. It's completely brutal for trying to learn anything. Also, there may be some weird set up that ruins the experience for me. I am completely new to Counter Strike, for example, and that's a game where people have like 10 years of experience learning all the ins-and-outs of it. The odds are extremely stacked against me to begin with, but then you have to add to that the fact that I might end up on some custom map where you have to jump around on all these little platforms, which I'm sure is fun when you're a supreme master, but when you haven't even figured out the button layout yet, it's excrutiatingly difficult. Because I buy and play so many different games, I usually don't want to devote the time it takes to enjoy the online experience of any one particular online game. Occassionally I will do so and have a reasonably good time, but there really needs to be a better way for matching newbies to newbies and pros to pros, otherwise online gaming is only fun for the people with a lot of skill and a lot of time on their hands.

[fingersmaloy]

Alienjesus has essentially cut to the core of my point. You may call it whining, but when you have to practice rigorously for months to even stand a chance, it's not a game anymore. With Marvel vs. Capcom, sometimes I can sort of see how I did something wrong, but a lot of times it's like, match starts, I do something or NOTHING, and then suddenly I'm being rocked from all sides and bounced around and stuff and then I'm dead.

With Uncharted, I actually did kind of okay the first time I tried it, but then today it was like, I'd look around a bit, moving cautiously, spot an enemy, shoot him several times in the head region, get shot once and immediately die without killing him somehow. Twenty seconds later I'm dead again. I played three maps today and got ZERO kills. It's not like I'm just running around like a crazy man. I'm trying. I beat the damn story mode. It seems like that should be worth something.

I just think it demands too much. If the AI in the single-player game was that hard, people would call it a flaw. That's not to say online gaming is flawed, per se. Just, for me, impossible to get into.

[Jrecee]

The extent of my online gaming experience is microsoft checkers. I simply don't play games enough to be at any sort of competitive level with other people online. Most the people who play online play the same game at least a couple hours a day, a lot of them play more than that. That's how much I play all my games in an average week, and that's if I'm not busy. So basically I don't bother playing games online. I've never been that into competitive games anyway, I prefer co-op stuff. Although I do like mario kart 64 battle mode.

[the7k]

Vid Related. One of the biggest problems with online gaming is that, honestly, the developers don't plan ahead or think of all the ways the system can be abused. Even good developers do this.