Thesis: Online Play Not For Casual Gamers

[LordMorpheus]

When I first broke into the online scene (first was C&C Red Alert, then was Homeworld 1) I didn't play very often (didn't get broadband till later, and modem was a PITA).

What I would do was I would go into the game lobbies and find other noobies like myself. We would get together, and I guess it must have looked like a couple of dwarf children boxing to some of the more experienced players, but we still had a good time.

I'm still a pretty casual gamer, but my only real game right now is IL-2, and I can get good at that offline, so I'm a better-than-average pilot online.

So its kinda problem solved there.

I'd say don't give up on online, its too much fun to pass up. Just find other players at your skill level.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: Bigblades
I work at a LAN gaming center. I got hired because I played a crapload of games and was a perfect person to lead teams sponsored by the gaming center. And now that I work there, I play games at work. I destroy most people I see on random servers online. They may be playing every last minute of free time they get, but now that I do it at work as well as home I'm damn near a professional.

Though I play a lot fewer games at home now.. .when ya play all day at work its kinda pointless to come home and play games.

Sorry if I'm the exact opposite of the rest of you, but if it makes you feel better I don't get laid much.

Where do you work? I want a job there.

Not like I have anything to lose

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: Honkus

Originally posted by: Howard: Find a good noob server.

If I truly cared enough to do so, I think it would be a difficult thing to find. Think about it - The hardcore gamer obviously plays to win. Why else would he devote so much time to one thing? It then makes sense that the hardcore gamer would be attracted to something like a noob server, because it's easy for him to wipe the floor with the "noobs".

That's been my experience - when I used to run a Half-life server, whenever I called it "Newbies Only", I'd get a ton of jerks who were insanely good and insisted they were 'newbies'.

No, newbies were my co-workers and I, who played an hour a week, if that (and it showed). Nothing starts a hardcore-gamer-feeding frenzy faster than launching a noob server.

 

[bigalt]

my friends and i tried playing online halo, and ended up getting crushed like 50-5 in most games.

fortunately when you're with your friends, you can laugh at the fact that you're getting corpse humped. it's more depressing to lose when you're by yourself. regardless, we don't go online very often.

I don't really like playing against faceless opponents. It's kind of thrilling going against a stranger in a tennis tournament for me, but competing/cooperating with a nameless person somewhere in the world is pretty meaningless to me, especially when i'm losing.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I tend to play team games, so my "mostly harmless" skill level can still help the team a little bit.

UT2K4 Onslaught is fun even against better players, though last night on one Atari server it was a clan vs. us n00bs -- we lost pretty badly

UT2K4 CTF on the ATOT server was fun tonight, though I'd never played before so I had no idea where anything was and ran around getting lost

If you don't take it too seriously, getting schooled is nothing to felel bad about, though if the CTF / Onslaught teams I played on always lost I might change my mind.

 

[styrafoam]

Its not all that different from any type of competitive passtime, you can't really jump in and expect to hold your own unless you sink some effort into it. Heading over to PlanetWhatevergame.com and reading through the multiplayer hints and faq usually takes most of the guesswork out of some of the more complicated online games but it probably won't make your aim any better if that is the issue.