Does anyone else find online multiplayer in games to be really really hard? I'm sick of jumping into a game of Unreal Tournament and getting completely owned when I just wanna have some fun playing with other people. Online gamers take their games way too seriously, and make online multiplayer inaccessible to all but those gifted with cat-like reflexes. Game developers should put systems in their multiplayer games that match you up with players of similar skill. Halo 2 and 3 did it, but not very well...even on the lowest ranking a newbie doesn't stand a chance.

When I play a game, I play it to relax, not to burst a vein trying to outwit masters of the gaming art. Single player games let you choose how hard you want your game to be, so why not the same for multiplayer games? The technology is there, so why is Bungie the only developer even attempting it?

*shrug*

Most servers are run by people like you and I not the game providers. Few developers can afford ot run their own servers. As they are all run by users of the game there is no reason for there to be servers for different skill levels.

In general i would say that most servers are run by clans - clans ARE hardcore by their very nature. Therefore they are unlikely to run newbie servers.

I suggest that the best way to get good at a game is to play. Yes you will get 'owned' but gradually you will improve. I started off rubbish at Counter-Strike and eventually i could play in a Div1 clan. Its all just a matter of practice. Also the skills learned in one game are usually transferable to other games.

However games like UT and Quake - ie Death Match - are the MOST hardcore of all games i would say. If you want a more enjoyable gaming experience i recommend a team game. Team Fortress Classic was always less demanding - your team mates compensate to a certain degree and you tend not to get one person owning everyone else. I imagine that Team Fortress 2 is similar. :)

Other ones to consider are Day of Defeat or possibly the Battle Field games though to be honest i found them firstly to be abit lame and secondly full of griefers. Each to their own however...

Well, with something like that, you have to remember that it is based upon certain criteria that aren't constant. If someone has about average reflexes, but is a brilliant strategist, they probably won't be able to beat someone in a twitch game that has amazing reflexes and average-ish intelligence, but they will decimate the others of lower ranking, but be owned by those of higher ranking, rather than a computer that will be pretty much even in all areas for a particular skill level. This kind of thing is an inherent difference between people, which causes some to thrive in one place, and not in another. So it can be difficult to gague how good a player is unless they are observed closely as to how they play.
I certainly understand the relaxing thing, which is probably what drove me from Starcraft Battle.net (what with all the bastards team-killing, kill stealing, hacking, or just otherwise being douches). And Bungie are probably the only people un-lazy enough to apply themselves as far as they have =)
Although I can't say that I'm not with you on the getting owned thing, because I can do one thing good on Halo: use missiles over long distance and nail people (for the two to three shots the missile has and only on one map). Otherwise in closer combat or even controlling the vehicles, I suck total ass.

Play TF2.

Don't play Unreal if you don't want to get owned. It is in fact a hardcore game.

While I agree that online first person shooters are just filled with insanely good players that are only out to deliver a virtual bullet to the head of a newbie, I wouldn't go as far as saying that Online Gaming -In General- is too hardcore. If you're sick and tired of getting sniped by people who've played the levels enough to work out exactly where to hide, where the best weapons are, where are all the health is etc etc... then a play an online game that doesn't involve fighting against other players, but rather one that involves fighting alongside them.

Obviously it doesn't really matter where you go, you'll still get jackasses that get a major kick out of taking candy from babies. But (for example) if you start up a game of Diablo 2, the more experienced players will happily HELP you level up. Because maybe they need a strong group of people to defeat some... thing, or whatever.

Your only other alternitave is to just play the games you're getting whooped at... and play them a lot.

I agree with theYellow. While a game like COD4 or UT is going to have a lot of pros that are amazing to watch in a fragvideo, I would say TF2 evens the field a bit, and actually tries to make things easy to pick up on when you're new to the game.

Part of it depends on the game, and that includes the matchmaking. There are more games using it nowadays, but some games mix it up. The best thing to do is, even if you find yourself at the bottom, keep playing and you'll improve. Playing humans is a lot different than the computer, and you end up needing to learn to adapt to that.

I found TF2 to be a great game online. Only once did I have a twelve year old on Xbox Live trying to tell me how I should play the damn game. Every other time, people not only were able to accept I was new, but understand when I experimented with a class and totally sucked at them. Meanwhile, the Call of Duty 4 game I played online was mad quiet, except for my occasional cussing, crying "Look out for a grenade!" and the Germans or Russians playing the game online speaking their crazy heavy metal language. Nonetheless, no one flamed, no one insulted (well, maybe the foreigners...I think I heard them mention my handle a few times, but usually after I pulled off a kill or something), just...quiet people.

Play the games that the UT and Halo gamers aren't going to play. TF2, Shadowrun and Call of Duty 4 have great gamers on there.

I felt this exact same way about Halo 2. I sucked, SUCKED, at Halo 2 online. I bought Halo 3 and went online, and by some miracle, I'm actually good at it. I think the kicker was that to some extent everyone playing was a bit new. What I'm trying to say is- Get a online, multi player game right when it comes out, so your on equal terms with everyone else. Don't wait till a year later, expecting to win ANY game your first match, when the games been out a year and people HAVE been playing it that long.

That aside, like everyone said- Team Fortress 2. The great equalizer is the fact that all the classes are so fun most people hate to stick to one, and so are constantly forced to change tactics. Of course this isn't always the case, but whats great about TF2 is that its just fun, win or lose.

I didn't play halo1 or 2 online so when I bought halo 3 I was worried I was going to get my ass kicked. I do play a lot but when I bought Halo 3 I hadn't played a console game in a long time. When I first played I found out there were a lot of players that were noobs too.

General tip: play a team vs team game and stick with your teammates so you don't get pwned since you're likely to lose 1v1 if you're not that good.

maxjae:
Halo 2 and 3 did it, but not very well...even on the lowest ranking a newbie doesn't stand a chance.

From what I've heard this is because there are still idiots who get sadist kicks from "pwning n00bs" along with those with new profiles burning their way to their proper level.
It would be nice if more developers make some kind of noob friendly matchmaking system or server but these systems are so easy to fool that the aforementioned weirdos will still break in and ruin the fun.

Oh mybad i thought this was a thread about WoW.

How to be good at an online game in five easy steps.

1) quit job.
2) have friend bring you food and change your bedpan.
3) overdose on C8H10N4O2 (Caffeine) to remove that pesky need for sleep.
4) sever all ties with the human race outside of your input/output friend and those on your headset.
5) "pwn" "n00bz"

A lot of first person shooters seem to be less based off of having fun, and more based off of an obsession to compete. Unfortunately I don't really see any way around this. As Penny Arcade has pointed out, a normal human being plus anonymity equates a creature only defined as a male copulatory organ.

I have to agree with Ranzel, get a game shortly after it comes out and you should be fine. I used to play Counter-strike and TFC and did quite well, I still got slapped around in UT'04 when I got that one a year after release. I picked up CoD4 on release, never having played a CoD before, I've consistently been in the upper half of the games I played. I'm 24 years old, so my reflexes should have been on the downward slope for a while now. Maybe trying to compete in fighting games (VF5 at the moment) is good training for the reflexes?

Also, I never ever play Deathmatch, team matches only. Objective based if at all possible, team death match is usually a bit bland. I'm a UT/TFC flag runner and play CS as far away from the sniper rifles as possible. Yep, I'm also one of those die hards that played Scout in TFC. Many games have got ranked stuff nowadays, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, Resistance, Halo, Warhawk.

Gildedtongue:
We're 12 posts down and John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory already pops up, that was fast.

what it really comes down to is impressing people, not some therapy you get from button mashing (ie heroin hero). supposing you play a cooperative multiplayer game, like wow, and during boss fights, you just set your char down by the boss, set the auto attack and go off to the kitchen for a soda. your teammates, actually putting effort into the game, do copious amounts of damage and compliment each other for being so awesome, you aside from having a tasty beverage, got nothing out of it.

in all actuality, noobies are rare. people dont make the same mistake too often before figuring it out or googling for an answer. a good game makes you learn, adapt, think :)

I've found that it's not so much the difficulty level of online games as the difficulty in finding people who I actually want to play with. Plus I'm not a particularly competitive person so that's a factor as well.

It really bothers me that a large number of games are ignoring single player campaigns - i.e. "Shadowrun" - for multiplayer action. I realize that there's a lot of money to be made on a popular multiplayer game but still...

I've been some what patiently for "Kane & Lynch" to come out - it's the first game I'm actually excited to play online.

It depends on the game- generally, older titles are going to have a more hardcore audience as everyone else moves on to the next big thing.

That said, not every game is full of self-promoting assholes who get their jollies blowing you six ways to Sunday- Online RPGs outside Diablo/II tend to have a pretty good player base if it's any older then six months old (gives the chaff time to fall off and find new persuits) and any team-based game can let you glom onto somebody for a little while and try to learn what you're doing under their wing. There's also games you don't have to be particularly great at to feel like you're contributing- Team Fortress 2, for example, has the Engineer and Medic classes that work well as gateways into the game for someone not used to everything else yet.

Most importantly is that, if you really want to get good at a title, stick with it. You'll do poorly at first- that's fine. Everyone STARTS there unless you're so abnormal freak of gamer nature. But if you go in, suck, and quit, you'll never get anywhere in any game.

it is quite annoying that many people do spend most of their time perfecting their noob killing qualities, instead of blowing each other to smithereens with equal levels of skill, i myself, do enjoy playing unreal tournament with my brother, who also enjoy's it, as we are both natural gamers of equal level, and we do have lots of fun outsmarting each other and finding interesting ways of launching each other into unreachable places.

Hey, thanks for the game suggestions guys. Mayhaps I will have to get me one of them Orange Boxes and play TF2.

V.Sixenth:

it sounds like you played Unreal Tournament and expected to be on the same level as everyone else or something,

...Don't whine just because you walked into the lion's den and expected the game to be played at an intermediate level, especially since it sounds like this isn't a new revelation to you.

I fully expect to get my ass kicked online if I'm not up to par on a game, and that's the problem. You shouldn't have to be really good at a game just to be able to enjoy it. You shouldn't even have to be moderately good. It's not a pro sport. It's not even pee wee football. It's a video game. If some people want to take their video games seriously, that's fine. But I shouldn't have to play against them. There should be a decent matchmaking system in all competitive online games. If there was, more people would be able to play these games, resulting in more money for the game companies. Everybody wins.

maxjae:
But I shouldn't have to play against them. There should be a decent matchmaking system in all competitive online games. If there was, more people would be able to play these games, resulting in more money for the game companies. Everybody wins.

So WHO is going to run these newbie, intermediate, and normal servers?

The devs? The publisher? NO!

The users of a game run the servers. Most servers are run by clans, clans are almost by definition hardcore.

Clans run servers for 2 reasons:

1) They want somewhere to play with friends - they are good and theres no fun in "pwning n00bs" so why run a ranked server?

2) They want to attract new players for their clan. You only want good players for your clan so why run a ranked server?

What you are saying is like saying there should be world peace! But not setting out a way to GET THERE. Ideals are good but without a way of implementing them they are abit pointless.

So to follow my own advice how could ranked servers be implemented:

So who will run these servers?

Devs - No money

Publishers - Whats in it for them? Games already sell why spend more?

Third Parties - This already happens, started way back when with Barrys Wolrd and Wireplay. However they are not the majority of servers and is it right for a dev to implement a feature which relies on a third party to work? Though i admit it could be argued that the whole of multiplayer relies on someone hosting a server...

Halo 2 and 3 ranked servers were run by users were they? Or were they run by Microsoft?

So whats the solution? Subscriptions are the current method of dealing with high bandwidth costs of running servers. Do you want to have to pay a subscription to play whats always been free (on the PC)? I sure as hell don't. Especially for a feature of dubious benefit - but then maybe i am being elitist...

Lightbulb:

So WHO is going to run these newbie, intermediate, and normal servers?

With games that rely on servers, yes, my idea would be ridiculously expensive. But Xbox games have players host the matches without a server. This doesn't cost any money. Using this system, it could work. Give every player a ranking of his/her skill...determined by average killrate, lifespan, whatever works best. When a player hosts a match, the only players who can join his game would be the players close to him in rank. That way, noobs play against noobs and good players play against other good players.

Lightbulb:
Halo 2 and 3 ranked servers were run by users were they? Or were they run by Microsoft?

The matching for ranked (and social) MatchMaking is done by Bungie's servers; the games run on peer-to-peer connections between XBoxes. Custom games on consoles and all PC matches are run by players, though for a while Halo PC did have some servers hosted by Bungie (and Gearbox, IIRC). Don't know anything about Halo 2 Vista, as I don't have a Vista machine, so I can't and won't comment there.

TrueSkill isn't perfect, but it's a heckuva lot better than dropping into a random server and hoping you won't get butchered or bored. (Or booted for being too nooby/killy.)

-- Steve

Ah i see, peer to peer can work and i guess with the xbox the specs are known so you know you can run the game in an acceptable manner.

Yeah if thats the case then i can see no reason to implement it... :)

Only thing i would change is that you should be able to set your own skill level if you want so you don't have to grind to the top if you want to jump in the deep end...

Start out with "easy" FPS games like Battlefield 1942. Then slowly move up to harder games.

As people have said, Team Fortress 2 is an excellent example of an accessible online game, that even with little experience with the game, or it's predecessor, you can pick it up, get the hang of things, and be fairly competitive.

Valve did a great job with it.

But, when you read the Steam forums (I do a lot of reading, this thread made me want to register here, still haven't bothered to on the Steam forums) you see a lot of complaining about just that, how simple and easy it is. A lot of the more hardcore gamers (typically the ones who bother registering for a game's message board) really hate the Critical Hits in Team Fortress 2--they mean that no matter how good you are you can be cheap shotted by an inferior player, and however bad you are, you can get lucky and knock out a far superior player. The fact that the game isn't an unrelenting grenade spam fest since they they are not in the game at all has stickied thread on the Team Fortess 2 forum explaining that grenades will not be coming back, so stop asking.

There are other issues too, people complaining about the lack of advanced movement or skill multipliers...that the game has very few tricks to learn, you can just get up and go, and some people actually don't like that.

I find the whole thing about hardcore and causal gamers very interesting. I've recently been playing online Team Fortress 2 (great fun being a Medic, healing and running around bonesawing people) and Call of Duty 4 (some of the modes, especially Search and Destroy, are just brutal, watch someone dispatch two players through a wall, pull out their pistol down another, then knife a fourth inside a few seconds).

Personally, I think a lot of online gaming and how good you are at it comes down to a combination of practice and just ability. It seems silly to say that there is natural ability at all when it comes to gaming, but players who have very good twitch type reflexes or are capable of very high Actions Per Minute can really excel at a variety of games with practice, while if for whatever reason you don't have these in you, you won't be very competitive.

Sadly, few games First Person Shooters (and Strategy games, to a lesser extent) are all that accessible to a casual gamer. I think that Team Fortress 2, and World in Conflict really have probably been the most accessible casual online games in the last year, and are both worth a look. Fairly simple games, some more advanced stuff to learn with experience, and can be a lot of fun.

If you are really into UT and don't like the "hardcoreness" of the servers you see out there... set up your own server. Doing so is alot easier than you think and there are many how to tutorials on the www. This way you would be able to kick any one who was too hardcore for you and allow you to play with people of your skill set or who just enjoy playing casually.

Also, I know this has been beaten to death, but, you shouldn't lump all online games into the hardcore category. Even in games like World of Warcraft you have people that run the gambit. Some guilds run the hardest raids daily and enjoy the sense of achievement by getting the best loot, while others don't raid at all and are just in it for the social fun and RP.

Basically there are always people out there with the same goals as you. Just figure out what game they are playing and have fun. After all thats what gaming is all about. The only problem is that not everyones version of fun is the same thing :P

If you enjoy FPS I would recommend TF2 as a more casual player based game. For strategy games you would have to buy any of the newest ones. RTS fan basses tend to follow the newest releases with mostly just the most hardcore playing the old ones from time to time. One more thing that could help you would be practice. I have noticed that even for me the learning curve in games can be large. By picking a game you enjoy and playing against the best you will become better :).

Good luck finding the game that suits you.

The problem with Halo 3's matchmaking system is that it totally kills all the customization they included with Forge and the new game-type options. Plus the fact that Bungie shows you your rank, so it just becomes a stupid trophy that idiots can hold up and say 'look how I good I am' while they are boosting and cheating their way up to get it. I'd much rather a server browser than have Bungie tell me what I like to play.

That said I am one of those hardcore people, not that I enjoy pounding noobs into dust or anything; I like to have at least the semblance of a challenge. However, I feel that some games go too far in the direction of helping the skill impoverished by sapping the amount of potential skill a hardcore gamer can achieve. Take Halo 2 in contrast to Halo 1, massive amount of auto-aim were introduced, the guns practically aimed themselves, snipers were piss easy to use, not to mention fire and forget rockets. I'm all for giving the noobs a chance but I don't think it should come at the expense of skill potential or customization.

I like the idea of having a secret skill rank associated to a player so you could say what range of skill you want on your server, it seems like a nice compromise and saves me the frustration of being booted because 'I'm too good'.

I hear ya. I personally am a mediocre CS:S player and an even worse RTS player (my favourite genre, no less). I hate it when someone is able to blow my head off when I reveal nothing but a pixel for the span of a single frame. Thanks a lot, how could I have prevented that? Now what? Wait for respawn? Wait for a new round? Great. Getting rushed in every RTS game I ever enjoyed yielded the same feeling. RTS rounds last less than FPS rounds do, for the love of God. That's just not right.

The games I enjoyed on multiplayer are Soldat, TF2, and R:TW.

Speaking of R:TW, I'll indulge in some shameless advertizing and point out that if you enjoyed it, you should definitely check out EB (Europa Barbarorum), as it is an excellent mod for the game, changing every aspect of it and making it prettier and more historically accurate.

I'm a guy that enjoys goofing around in games. In CS I only buy two flashes, throw away my pistol and look for tight corners to blind and knife unsuspecting real players. In Halo 2 I grab Banshees to crash them directly on other banshees, I drive warthogs aimlessly and enjoy sniping people's feet to make 'em dance. In UT? I jump down acid holes and the bio gun is my best friend. When I played StarCraft I usually had 30-40 zerglings dancing around in merry go 'rounds. It was really entertaining to watch and I even had observer audiences.
For hardcores there´s the looney. Sure, I play serious every now and then, specially after all the looning has made me realize some very good strategies and well, the eventual experience. Maybe the floor stays clean with all the wipe they do with me, but I have plenty of fun.

currently i carnt play CSS cause my comps having a fit at me but i did like that game

now i wasnt the greatest at it but i normally came out with a top ranking high score. now let me point a few things out
1) i am about an average shot at best
2) i do not have amazing reflexes.
so how the hell do i get a good score?

well i can use sound amazingly well and allways have been able to (if ur a average player get a good head set and use it correctly) back on CS 1.5 my bro realised despite him being a blatent better shot i kicked his ass most of the time, and so being the nice brother i am i set up a headphone splitter and whatched him play, he was kinda amazed that i could say "theres a mp5 arround corner 3/4th of way down the wall right hand side less than half a clip" and under stood that i never needed to see the target to be able to aim and now with CSS its got easyer as they have that crappy radar so any half dead monkey should be able to perfect it during a few nights of gameing.

if you can use sounds correctly in CSS 90% of the time you dont need good reactions, just start firing at them before you make it arround the corner (yes i get called a hacker a lot cause i can hear a heard of elephants and shoot in that direction a bit). i was also a natural with grenades and with sound placing people so precicely it means when i got into a gun fight i normally had enough advantage to negate my averge aim.

i find in games you just gota specialise a little back on desert combat a battle field mod i was about average to below average (exspecially snipers can never do bloody snipers) at 90% of the game but once again i ranked top a lot this time, because i could fly helecopters so damn well a lot of people bailed out cause they thought i was gona crash. luckaly my bro once again was quite happy to hold his nerve and try give me warning of incomeing missiles from behind.
parachuting my bro outer the chopper only to race him to the floor n swoop between 2 buildings the width of the chopper and pick him up with the chopper at full speed as he grabs the flag and then barrel roll into a canyon cause hes screaming "misslies" was a reasnably standard thing (of course it didnt go all that well quiet often).

now quite often i didnt play these games for a few weeks and then come back to them so im not one of these people who have no life at all (although i do have moments of addiction to them)

for online game play i advise 2 things
1) get in voice chat with friends (it makes it more fun and you can cooperate better)
2) do something diffrent, its so easy to copy what the masses r doing but doing something diffrently can often give you an advantage or put you in a situation to make u smile or laugh ur arse off.

It doesn't HAVE to be hard. It's only hard if you not only want to do very well, but also play totally fair. Try doing some cheap stuff, camping and when all else fails, get in a fast vehicle and drive around in circles.