Multiplayer gaming discussion

[Monocause]

This will be kinda philosoraptorish, but I think general gaming suits this thread much more than GD.

What do you guys enjoy about playing games with other people? This question is more loaded than it seems at a glance. Bear with me as I explain.

It's always been a mixed bag for me when it comes to multiplayer. As a kid I always loved playing board and card games with friends and relatives, and I found it always a thrilling experience. I was always more about playing and sharing the experience with someone than about actually winning. When I learned to play bridge I oftentimes made slightly suboptimal choices just to see how would the other players react; would they be certain that I made a mistake, would they suspect I'm trying to play some sort of a strategy they can't grasp or would they start doubting themselves and think that they must've counted the cards wrong or make some other mistake.

When I was fourteen or fifteen or something we had a stable internet connection installed. This, naturally, meant that online gaming has become open to me, and I was extremely enthusiastic about it. First thing I did was starting a game of chess over the net. I won, the other guy's been a crap player, but to my surprise I found that I barely enjoyed playing. Then I tried other things - I played countestrike (back then it was THE online FPS), but found it to be a completely different experience than what I had when playing with pals at LAN parties. For time I played Starcraft over the bnet but stopped when it turned out that the randomness of the other player meant that I couldn't reliably try to tailor a new strategy to counter him - as in, his personality - but had to go with a fairly optimal (and thus, safe) build order. Winning wasn't really a pleasure because most of the game revolved around executing memorised fast and optimal steps. Even doing something completely unexpected and out of whack wasn't enjoyable, because I never actually knew if the other guy's able to notice it, see through what I just did. I could never see his reaction.

Another thing is that winning or losing against someone I know always had the emotional side to it. Friendship or rivalry, sympathy and antipathy, it all weighed on both the game and the metagame and made it all the more enjoyable. With a random guy I don't care about winning or losing. I can't know if the game means anything, does it prove anything. Did the other guy give his best, or was he alttabbing and watching Twilight in between making his moves? Is he a bright guy with a carefully devised strategy, or is he an idiot who's just thoughtlessly repeating the steps he memorised from some internet sources to the best of his dexterity? Finally, if I met this person in real life, would I ever want to share any activities with him at all? It matters too. Some people you enjoy playing with, some people you don't enjoy, with some you just never want to play anything cause you find them repulsive in some ways. The notion that, for instance, I might be playing against one of these horrid no-life teenagers who're drinking soda via these incredibly fucking stupid "gaming helmets" with a straw fit in mouth that probably got invented by someone who watched "The Matrix" one time too many (or by some evil, evil man who doesn't care what kind of a wretched lifestyle "conveniences" like these silently promote) would be an example of me wanting to hit that alt+f4 immediately.

I could go on, but you probably get the point. tl;dr version is that I realised that I find the AI a more enjoyable opponent than an abstract and anonymous human being because, essentially, I found the AI to be a more human-like opponent. When you play a game vs. the AI you take your time to familiarise with it. Over time you learn how does it work, you learn its flaws and you exploit them, just like you do over time when you play games with a friend. A random human opponent, in comparison, seems something completely devoid of personality. Both you and the enemy apply some kind of logic to your actions, but the time you spend playing together is too short to see through it. Essentially, the metagame, which accompanies each PvP, is gone or extremely watered down; what remains is an execution of basically machine-like actions. At best it's a test of both players knowledge of the game's rules and their ability to find an optimal solution and apply it to the best of their ability, which - hah! - is what an AI should be doing. Funny thing is that people can become much more machine-like than most AIs because in complex games the coders are just unable to code the AI as optimally as people can code themselves.

Back to my question. Most of you will probably react with "well, of course it's much more fun to play with people you know, dumbass", and while that's obviously true it doesn't nearly exhaust the topic. When you pick any games with popular multiplayer you'll see servers full of people playing other random people and apparently enjoying it; while some of these people eventually enter some sort of communities (clans, guilds, whatever) that alleviates the issues that come with the randomness, most people never do. Be it strategy games, FPS's, action games - they somehow enjoy playing against this abstract, anonymous human being, and they not only enjoy it, they apparently prefer it to playing against someone they can metagame with.

Type away about your approach to this. I'm curious how similar - or different - our experiences can be; and if some of you are the type that enjoy the anonymous gaming, please explain how do you feel about it, what's in it that makes you tick.

 

[Destroid]

I can relate to what you say (outside of the preferance for AI, I prefer randoms), but are you aware of pick up games? There is an in-between place of online gaming that is neither random nor having the level of organisation and responsibility that being part of a clan has. The idea of not being able to select who you play with is one of the things I find most bothersome about matchmaking systems, as opposed to server lobbies. Funnily enough this tends to make games with modest, reliable communities a lot more fun to play online than very popular games, because its so much easier to find people you have played with before when there are only five or six servers (in the case of an FPS) as opposed to tens or hundreds.

 

[Kane]

Well it's obvious isn't it? Since time immemorial animals have been playing games with and against each other, to hone their skills for situations their life is on the line. Obviously the more complex human brain needs but also allows for more complex games.
The lack of personality when playing games over the internet is obviously an issue in high level competitive play, but many people develop an online persona while at the same time important tournaments require physical presence.
The vast majority doesn't care about the lack of personality, because the most important factor is honing your skills and to who you're playing against until you become competitive enough that it automatically starts to matter.

 

[Destroid]

Well it's obvious isn't it? Since time immemorial animals have been playing games with and against each other, to hone their skills for situations their life is on the line. Obviously the more complex human brain needs but also allows for more complex games.
The lack of personality when playing games over the internet is obviously an issue in high level competitive play, but many people develop an online persona while at the same time important tournaments require physical presence.
The vast majority doesn't care about the lack of personality, because the most important factor is honing your skills and to who you're playing against until you become competitive enough that it automatically starts to matter.

I don't think very many players actually care about esports and tournaments.

 

[Monocause]

I can relate to what you say (outside of the preferance for AI, I prefer randoms), but are you aware of pick up games? There is an in-between place of online gaming that is neither random nor having the level of organisation and responsibility that being part of a clan has. The idea of not being able to select who you play with is one of the things I find most bothersome about matchmaking systems, as opposed to server lobbies. Funnily enough this tends to make games with modest, reliable communities a lot more fun to play online than very popular games, because its so much easier to find people you have played with before when there are only five or six servers (in the case of an FPS) as opposed to tens or hundreds.

You mean something like a lobby system, right? One of the games I enjoyed playing online was AoE2. IIRC it used gamespy; you could see which players are online, chat with them before setting up a game, chat with them while waiting for enough players to join. After a while, yeah, I started to recognise people so you're right; unfortunately this kind of a multiplayer lobby seems to be becoming increasingly passe nowadays.

raw:

What Destroid said. Besides, people who want to become competitive are exactly the ones that join or create gaming communities like clans. Take a look at SC2 teams, for example; they hone their skills playing with their team-members or playing friendly matches against some other teams. I'd wager that entering random bnet matches is more akin to relaxing for them than serious practice. While every SC2 player except for SC1 vets starts with random bnet I'm pretty sure that those who are interested in esports try to join a community ASAP; frankly, I don't think playing random games can hone your skills to the point you're worth shit. The randomness means that you aren't learning efficiently.

SC2 tournaments are, btw, fun to watch and probably fun to take part in precisely because of the fact that the metagame is really there. Take IdrA for instance: I remember at least two matches when he lost because the other player took advantage of his short temper, making a risky move to get IdrA restless and reckless. One time he ragequit despite the match was far from lost and had he kept his cool he still had the chance to salvage a victory.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Hell is other people.

As an aside, Monocause, tons of successful SC2 players have gotten to GM by just mass laddering. Although, to be fair, at that point you mostly play against the same people anyway. Still, professionals likely spend most of their practice time laddering. That was always Starcraft's philosophy - grind it out, play 14 hours a day, until you become a perfect, immortal machine. And then lose your wrists to carpal tunnel a few years afterwards.

 

[Erzherzog]

I think it matters on the type of game.

I've mostly stuck with FPSes, such as TF2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Red Orchestra. In all three of those I had favorite servers, favorite players, etc. It was relatively easy to meet a good group of guys and game it out for hours and hours. Fuck if I lose, we're trying to see what crazy tricks we can pull off. "How did you even get there to shoot me from there?!"

Basically, what I'm saying is that for FPSes that aren't lobbied CoD-style are relatively easy to find what you're looking for.

RTSes are another favorite of mine. In Empire at War it was rather easy to find people I recognized. It was a small list of active players. Men of War was my other favorite. Game was impervious to the robotic, machine-like gameplay you talked about. So many options and so many tricks you could pull that it didn't matter.

So I think it's just a matter of what gameplay a game promotes combined with the right matchmaking system can easily make a game you feel at home with, that takes the robotic-ness out of it.

In game voice chat helps too.

 

[Phelot]

I normally don't like multiplayer. For some reason Myth 2 was the only MP game I really enjoy. Other than that, a few FPS games but otherwise I don't like it.

 

[Kane]

What Destroid said. Besides, people who want to become competitive are exactly the ones that join or create gaming communities like clans. Take a look at SC2 teams, for example; they hone their skills playing with their team-members or playing friendly matches against some other teams. I'd wager that entering random bnet matches is more akin to relaxing for them than serious practice. While every SC2 player except for SC1 vets starts with random bnet I'm pretty sure that those who are interested in esports try to join a community ASAP; frankly, I don't think playing random games can hone your skills to the point you're worth shit. The randomness means that you aren't learning efficiently.

There are many GM players that have never been in clans. However, if you want to make a name of yourself you need to attend LAN tournaments (or at least online tournaments, just playing ladder won't get your regonition). SC is special in that case, as it is essentialy a manly 1v1 fight club as opposed to the faggy drama llama dota queer scene and their 5 man buttsecks groups.
As for not many people caring about esports and tournaments, even if you don't care about that, you're still playing to improve.

 

[Monocause]

As for not many people caring about esports and tournaments, even if you don't care about that, you're still playing to improve.

Perhaps, that may be a way of looking at these things. Do you, yourself, have some games that you play multi without engaging in any communities? Just a random match or two, or three, than call it a day? What does your improvement matter then, do you feel that such improvement is autotelic in nature, that it doesn't need to serve anything because it is good in itself?

Also, let's imagine a guy who plays CoD. His name is John. He comes from uni, or work, or school, or whatever, enters a server and shoots random people for a couple of hours. Then he exits the game. Sure, he's getting better at CoD the more he does it, but how does it matter when there is not one person that can appreciate it and he himself cannot truly appreciate it as he cannot know if he owes his good results to his skill or just dumb luck resulting in him usually matching up with poor players?

EDIT: Just wanted to underline that I'm not trying to persuade anyone that I'm in the right here, I'm trying to enforce a more elaborate explanation.

 

[Kane]

Perhaps, that may be a way of looking at these things. Do you, yourself, have some games that you play multi without engaging in any communities? Just a random match or two, or three, than call it a day? What does your improvement matter then, do you feel that such improvement is autotelic in nature, that it doesn't need to serve anything because it is good in itself?

Plenty of RTS and yes to everything.

Also, let's imagine a guy who plays CoD. His name is John. He comes from uni, or work, or school, or whatever, enters a server and shoots random people for a couple of hours. Then he exits the game. Sure, he's getting better at CoD the more he does it, but how does it matter when there is not one person that can appreciate it and he himself cannot truly appreciate it as he cannot know if he owes his good results to his skill or just dumb luck resulting in him usually matching up with poor players?

First, he isn't getting better at CoD, he is getting better at shooters in general. He trains hand-eye coordination and reflexes. The drive to improve and train comes mostly from yourself, just like when you workout. I am not denying that there are extreme characters, that can only play for the satisfaction of others or work out only because her girlfriend tells them to, but for the vast majority, doing an exhausting task*, both mentally or physically is reward in itself. The same is true in science, especially so if dealing with basic principles. This inherent drive for curiosity and improvement (these two words are not quite unrelated imo) put us on the foodchain where we are today.
Biologically, the brains response to exhausting tasks is seeding hormones related to happyness, so I guess it even can be said that there is some evolutionary pressure behind the drive to improve yourself.
A very much related concept I want to point out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)


*exhausting in the sense of challenging. there are exhausting tasks that are boring as fuck, but i am not talking about those

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the only multiplayer i've been able to stand for more than 5 minutes has been mechwarrior 4's because with all those many mechs and weapons it was difficult to encounter always the same kind of opponent.
actually i see many more easily predictable patterns in people than in an ai which can be programmed with some kind of randomness or could put you off balance when you're not prepared to face its apparently sub-optimal playstyle.
modern multiplayer revolves around specularity in tunnel-like maps. how can't this be predictable?
but most of all, the reason i prefer a bot is because it's fair. it doesn't cheat, it doesn't grief, it doesn't teamkill on purpose, it doesn't disconnect, if you can give it orders it doesn't mind its own business anyway.

have you ever tried playing commander in bf2142? you can see the whole map, you can see enemy movements and you can give waypoints to squads which if followed give much much much more points to them. yet people keep scattering around, doing always the same idiotic stuff, like keeping being slaughtered at "grenade hill", standing in that place who's perfect for the sniper who's always aiming at you from his same spot, driving down that alley even if there are two turrets waiting and they know it.

 

[Destroid]

Possibly because only idiots care about getting points. Excellent game, but the commander always felt a bit redundant in BF series.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

yeah, idiots, yet the squads which behaved like squads always won.
idiots, really.

 

[Multidirectional]

Sure, he's getting better at CoD the more he does it, but how does it matter when there is not one person that can appreciate it and he himself cannot truly appreciate it as he cannot know if he owes his good results to his skill or just dumb luck resulting in him usually matching up with poor players?

Why would you think he cannot know this? In every MP game I played it becomes pretty easy to recognize whether you're dealing with noobs or pros after a while. Once you get to understand better how the game works, behaviour of other players becomes a dead giveaway.
I'd love to play with only people I know all the time, but mostly it doesn't happen because they drop games too quickly (like fucking CDS), so I end up honing my skills on public players. And as raw said, getting better at the game is enough reward in itself, I don't need other people to impress to feel good about it. Sure playing something like L4D2 Versus with publics isn't always ideal and your teammates will let you down often enough but it can also lead to very nice surprises, like your team being utterly raped for first couple of chapters and then finally learning to adapt to each other's playstyle. I couldn't give a fuck what kind of hat any of them is wearing at the time.

 

[Carrion]

I'm first and foremost a single-player guy. I prefer long-term challenges and goals to short-term ones, and multiplayer is in most cases about the latter (that is, if it has a set goal at all) so it just doesn't interest me that much. That's the biggest reason.

Then there's the fact that it's hard to find people who'd be fun to play with or against online. [Insert the usual rant about cheaters, exploiters, ragequitters, team-killers, kids screaming into their microphones etc. here.] Winning or losing to an anonymous opponent doesn't really give you that much of a sense of achievement, and in some ways I'd have to agree with the OP that the AI is sometimes the more interesting opponent. Visiting a friend, grabbing a few beers and playing a few matches of PES or FIFA is often insanely fun, though, because then there's your pride on the line as well and it's a much more personal experience. Playing a hot seat campaign in Civilization or HoMM is also great if you have the time for that. Basically, if a good single-player campaign might have elements that make it in some ways resemble a piece of art, a good multiplayer session with a friend could be compared to the adrenaline rush you get with sports. I don't know if you could have something similar in an online game if you joined a group instead of entering the public server hell, but I've never been interested enough to find out.

 

[JarlFrank]

The one game I regularly play is a WW2 sourcemod called Resistance and Liberation, and it's got a solid but comparatively small playerbase and usually there's just one, at max two, full servers (and generally a small amount of servers), so you tend to play with the same people most of the time and get to know their playstyles.

I like the realistic WW2 military shooter gameplay, and I also like that I'm playing against actual people rather than an AI, which makes it a lot more unpredictable, allows for different tactics, allows for teamplay, allows for trying out ridiculous shit, and since the game has an awesome in-game voice chat it also allows for incredibly silly fooling around, such as players playing as Germans always speaking with a nazi accent.

 

[Daemongar]

To Monocause, I read your points with interest, but your approach to online gaming and mine are quite different. I didn't go from standard games to online over high speed. It was a gradual playing with pnp D&D buddies over serial cable (Doom), to playing with buddies over modem (QWTF, TF1, Q1), to playing with buddies over online service (Gamespy, Kali, etc), to playing with buddies and clan in MMRPGs (UO, DaoC), over Battlenet (Diablo, SC), to playing with buddies and clan in Steam. At about the UO stage, I started to play less and less with friends and more with anonymous online folks.

My online gaming is a mess as I lack consistency in my private life due to work and family obligations. It's hard to plan out anything that I won't have to back out of. When I had more time, though, I ran guilds and did all kinds of online stuff. I can't get into any MMRPGs right now, as the effort is to meet people and create semi rigid relations with a rapidly shifting user-base and its not what it used to be.

When I play online now, I spend more of my time playing TF2 in pubs, and maybe one night a week it will be with friends. Right now, I'm satisfied enough to be in a place where I know the characters, even if I am not part of the contributing crowd. When playing TF2, I try to play whatever class is needed at the time, in an effort to win map. It's also awesome that some classes play better the worse your team is.

The only thing I can say that may be of interest is that after all this time I identified that I'm a social person and I need to get out, and the "online relations" I created didn't cut it. Right now, I go to a friends house one night a week or so and we are playing through BG2 with chars we created. I look forward to this each week more than I look forward to Christmas.