Question for the older gamers

[Thrash123]

I used to play Doom and Quake via modem-to-modem with my cousins.. man, that was a blast. I miss those days. Did the Kali.net thing once or twice, too, but had a rough go of it with my down-home-country-slow-dialup back then.

I've had some good and bad experiences with online play lately. I play Guild Wars and Battlefield 2 on rare occasions. I don't usually hop online with BF2, mainly because I just don't want to have to be arsed to care about the team aspect, and I may end up having to quit early if work calls. When I have played it online, though, the community is generally fairly decent, assuming you aren't playing with a bunch of clanners. GW can be hit or miss, though - you've typically got the people who sit there and chat about some of the most asinine things imaginable, going back and forth trying to compare virtual penis sizes.. Same with Asheron's Call, for the brief moment I rejoined. A whole lot of pvp BSing not entirely unlike FPSes.

 

[pine]

I'm not convinced that online communities have gotten progressively more idiotic with time. The Team Fortress 2 community is consistently more mature than I remember UT's ever being. Maybe it's because I don't play consoles online, but I haven't encountered many smacktards lately.

This forum's also no worse or better than it's ever been, despite common claims to the contrary.

I will say that the overall tone of interactions here seems to be more harsh than it used to be. And certain internet communities have gotten frighteningly insular and interbred. There are definitely isolated pockets of complete rampant idiocy on the internet, where ridiculous behavior is tolerated or even encouraged. It definitely goes by community though, you can't make any kind of statement across the board.

It's kind of interesting is how internet communication style has changed as its users have become accustomed to the medium. For the most part, I think this change is just stylistic. The people themselves haven't become dumber; that's kind of an ignorant thing to say. Drawing broad conclusions about the intelligence of the participants is a futile exercise.

 

[shadow_dragon]

I play with friends and say no to strangers...

 

[Matfei]

^

I play with strangers and say no to friends...

MMO's ftw.

 

[KaL976]

Voip was funny for the first week of the 2k4 demo but I had to turn it off cuz I couldn't aim for laughing & I rarely notice ingame chat messages so I can't say I'm overly bothered by smacktalk/abuse.
On the rare occassions I do notice & feel like responding I generally point out 'I've been playing for 5+ years & am actually pretty average' if they persist they become a priority target for the rest of the map

 

[Interbellum]

Personally, and speaking as a previous gen gamer, I kinda like the no holds barred rudeness and name calling. Spamming people with keybound taunts (UT2K4), or typing bizarre and colorful insults that are then read aloud by that silly robotic voice is almost as fun as fragging people, and an integral part of the online FPS experience, imo.

 

[Matfei]

Smacktalk is all a part of it. It's just the whingey kids who can't take getting fragged repeatedly as if they're supposed to be some sort of god as soon as they pop in the game disc are the ones that are annoying.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

It's not "whingey", it's "whiney"

Jeesuz flippin christ Mafei, support goot English.
________
GLASS BUBBLERS

 

[Matfei]

Whinge, whine, same thing.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

wharnet put farnet
________
ShyLorelai

 

[IronMonkey]

I think Azura pretty much caught the experience of the more mature player.

The answer to this is to play with friends (some of whom I have never seen in person) and on friendly servers. The latter is easy to say but not always easy to find.

iirc, "Play with friends" was John Carmack's advice to those worried about the impact of releasing the Quake (I/II/III) source code on cheating. And anyway, who wants to get gubbed by a stranger with dubious credentials when you can have the satisfaction of knowing that your friend has beaten you fair and square?

kali.net - no one has mentioned its essential role in allowing Warcraft 2 to be played online. Such a useful piece of software.

To answer the original question - yes, it is worse. The online demographic has shifted to have a proportionally larger youth element. In 1996, it was relatively much more expensive to have a "decent" (if you call 300ms lag decent) online experience and that tended to imply a somewhat older audience.

 

[Selentic]

I've been playing halo for the PC for the last 3 years, and UT2004 for the last 2, and TF2 & Crysis for the last few months.

In halo all I ever hear is botter, camper, aimbotter, wallhacker, stop using bluearrow, etc etc. So I only really play that when theres a gamenight or something going on with cool people who don't whine non stop :|

As for UT2004, I played online for a few months, and stopped because both the voice chat, which I eventually disabled, and the text chat were spitting out the same **** as halo was. I really didn't get any enjoyment out of having a wall of text ****ting up a portion of my screen with sore losers crying.

As for TF2, the community has seemed ok so far, there's still a lot of crybaby ****heads all over, but it's nothing compared to UT2004 and Halo.

As for Crysis, I've never really had any problem with people being total pricks so that online play is really enjoyable.

 

[DarQraven]

Playing with friends is certainly an option, and I tend to do that.
But considering the arena shooter's declining popularity, it's becoming increasingly hard to find said friends playing.

Also I feel it's a bit ..well ..not weak, but sticking your head in the sand to ONLY play against friends.
That's one of the things that annoy me in these clanners: They only ever play each other at their own level of skill, which reinforces their belief that they are gaming gods.
This makes it so easy to justify calling others cheaters as soon as they beat you.

I want to know what is out there, so that I have a realistic view of where I am skill-wise.

Just recently I was idling around on IRC warsow pickup, and I started chatting with some guy about entering a tournament, and another dude immediately jumped in saying that he didn't know me, and because of that I couldn't possibly be good enough to even APPLY for the tournament.
Simply because I hadn't been active in his little niche of the clan circuit.
After I mentioned I had already dueled some of the other players before and beaten some of them, his response was "lol, n00b". After which I was kicked.
Doing something like that IRL would make him come off as an arrogant cock, on the intarwebs it's common practice...

Another example. The last time I had a fun VOIP/text chat conversation with a stranger in a game was probably more than half a year ago. And that was one guy.
Most people don't even respond to text messages, let alone with anything else than 'pwnd' or 'lol'.

 

[NeoNite]

I play with friends and say no to strangers...

Yeah same here, I used to play on pubs quite a lot but ... nothing beats gaming with your mates.

 

[anaemic]

personally i just take every accusation of cheating to be a compliment, its the equivalent of some one shouting "YOUR WAY TOO ****ING GOOD, STOP BEING BETTER THAN ME".

occasionally ill rise to saying im not cheating, you're just ****. then ill carry on playing, because im not there to socialise im there to shoot people in the head.

 

[furby]

Stage 1) New Unreal Tournament game is released.
Stage 2) Leet player (not leet enough to leet the uberleet on another game) starts playing thinking it will be a breeze getting top score every night.
Stage 3) Oldskool player comes along for a 1x/week game and dominates the game.
Stage 4) No-so-leet player goes into mind vomit mode: "Haxor", "Lucker", "No0b", etc.
Stage 5) Oldskool player gets bored and decides to go back to RL.
Stage 6) Leet player is back to being leet again because he caused other player to leave.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

 

[Dark Pulse]

Stage 1) New Unreal Tournament game is released.
Stage 2) Leet player (not leet enough to leet the uberleet on another game) starts playing thinking it will be a breeze getting top score every night.
Stage 3) Oldskool player comes along for a 1x/week game and dominates the game.
Stage 4) No-so-leet player goes into mind vomit mode: "Haxor", "Lucker", "No0b", etc.
Stage 5) Oldskool player gets bored and decides to go back to RL.
Stage 6) Leet player is back to being leet again because he caused other player to leave.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

I seem to be Stage 3, at least on pubs. Last night I was tearing up some TDM server.

Surprisingly, Step 4 and 6 never happened. I actually got complimented on some of my kills. I was so stunned I played there for about an hour and a half.

The other day though, I played on a different TDM pub and some guy there who had shock rifle skills kept calling me a rocket noob every time I killed him, so I trashed him back. He challenged me to use other weapons. When I continued to tear him up (with about four different weapons) he quickly apologized, and then was stunned when he found out I was 1/4th Polish, as he is from Poland.

Friendship get.

And yeah, I love being called a cheater. I know it's skill, which makes me feel even prouder (is that a word?) and makes them even dumber. It's also easier to make fun of them when they're dead. Corpsehumping especially if you can get away with it.

 

[Nines]

personally i just take every accusation of cheating to be a compliment, its the equivalent of some one shouting "YOUR WAY TOO ****ING GOOD, STOP BEING BETTER THAN ME".

occasionally ill rise to saying im not cheating, you're just ****. then ill carry on playing, because im not there to socialise im there to shoot people in the head.

I agree. People can whine all they want, I'll kick their asses anyway.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

I agree. People can whine all they want, I'll kick their asses anyway.

You couldn't kick a can into stomething,
________
LittleBadNIKA live

 

[i.mosh]

i try and just play with my clan mates the most i can, scrims, practice, ext..

CoD4 has alot of immature kids, that either hack or call hax and it gets rather annoying fast.. Most of the time ill either ignore it or leave.. As for UT2004, theres alot of ass hats but the only reason there an ass hat to me is because im better.