This is fairly common thing in online games, as people with weak personalites and egos continually refine gameplay issues until they literally take the game out of them game in order to win.
I often compare it to a young healthy college kid who will only engage in a competitive sport with someone physically handicapped.
Idea is they would rather win a no competition fight than have a challenging engagement and loose. Sadly in general the type of people who get invloved in computer gaming fit this personality profile, somewhat of misfit, loser type the last guy picked to join a team in phys ed, always it at the park etc. Online things change they get a chance to manipulate things, things you dont get away with in real life where people can see you face to face and call you on stuff.
I refer to this as stacking the deck and it ends up being the demise of most good games. My first experience with it was in quake clans, I was in one of the top clans and there were these clan matches, once upon a time ago they were a blast very fun, competitive, sportsmen like.
Things were great! then came the proliferation of online access suddenly you get people who have no idea who to interct with others morphing into these online persona's mostly 14-18 ish types who would have had Internet acess before it was too limited or expensive. Suddenly things turn, isnt good enough to just play and have fun. NEed to have voice com's to get a leg up loads of other cheats, you cant even have fun a a pick up server anymore, as people use aliases and try to all play on the same team to take advantage of the fact the other team will mostly be average players just trying to have fun.
See the same thigns happening in this game and it kinda blows, since alot of the playerbase doesnt have the time to invest into building the perfect team.
Is actually sad reflection of a player when they build the gank group. To be it is the admission that you beleive you cannot compete yourself thus you take extra ordinary steps to leverage your poor play and boost your performance with the stacked deck.
RvR used to be fun, you just get a few people and go out have fun vs other people. Win some loose some. Now though? PEople build the perfect group, they use voice com software, they use radar, they exploit the skill list to the very max to take the GAME out of the GAME.
Great example hey guys lets all pl up some wizards, a minstrel and a cleric, we will run around and demolish full zergs HAHAHAHA. Dont get me wrong sounds like a funny gag for a couple days, but the reality is it just isnt fun to run upto a group and have 5 wizzes plug 1 key and instant kill the others. There is NO GAME, there being played.
Or you get these 2healer, skald, shammy and 4 savage/warrior groups with a pair of buffbots parked at the keep. Wow talk about taking the game out of the game? This is the type of group that will literally mow down 2-3 groups of your average pick up players at once all night every night. There is no game there, they often have radar running, voice comms etc... don;t tell me ya don;t cause you do, you know why I know and everyone else? Anyone who goes through the steps to roll up that specific group setup isnt gonna stop there, your goal is clear the tools are there you are surely gonna use em.
This is just the way it is, and I am not saying EVERY single last of these groups 100% uses both radar and voice comms, but alot do, it is part of the program.
Not sure you can do anything about this either. Mythic built the perfect core ruleset to encourage this, there is a HUGE advantage to be gained from "going all out", literally a gank group is unbeatable by an average group of players, often they wont loose a single person in thier group in an encounter.
Is it because they are great players? 99% of the time nope. HAs nothing to do with play quality, it is simply the fact that in this game x+x+x will always trump x+y+z. Is predetermined outcomes you know your going to win before the fight begins, the only game left is using radar to locate these other sure kill groups.
You know your gonna win too and you know it isnt your skill you know why? Cause your group isnt a thane,hunter,healer ,shaman, warrior, skald , runemaster, savage. You know why your group doesnt look like that? You know your not a good enough player to win with an average group.
Ya this is a rant, it really doesnt affect me that much I play a gimp stealther gives me a chance to avoid that crap asI dont have the time or desire to nurture a "gank" crew. Just wanted to comment how it is this progression that ruins online games, and see what if anything can be done to build in some protection into a game to at the minimum ease this progression if nto stop it.
I didnt get off on planetside but it did do a few things to help offset this.
1) built in voice come to the game, idea here is well since somepeople will useit anyway, remove the advantage they gain by simply making it acessible to everyone.
2) build in radar, again same IDEA since it is literally impossible to prevent these types of software with todays technology limits, idea here is remove the advantage is grants by simply making it very acessible.
3) More open flexible class system, allow people to change "classes" on the fly. In Planet side you simply gain training points which you use to specialize into certain class builds, it takes at most 24 hours to "reclass". Again what does this do? Removes the advantage of people who have the time energy to level up new fotm combinations to ensure they always have a more power group build than others. Making this change again simply removes the "accessibilty issue" where the average person says I am not gonna start over in realm xyz and roll up xyz just to be UBER. I just wont play much anymore, and take my lumps when I do.
Don;t be afraid of your game imbalances showing, they do anyways, embrace them allow the player base to migrate to the imbalances fast and easy at the least what you have done is provide fair acess to the imbalances while you try to fix them.
I have always said any game truly afraid of re trains or respecs is a game who knows it has SEVERE imbalances if not you would have no fear of respecs since all things being equal and option is a equal option and you would be afraid that only 5 of your 38 classes will get played and spec'd always in the same manner.
No idea even if that was planet sides intentions when they created those features but that is however what it accomplishes.
Would still love a game someday that put heavier controls on your choices at generation. I dont think it is a good idea that you can pull your whole guild over to xxxx game and "take over" should be randomly assigned a side when you activate your account, sure people would trade resell accounts to line up, but really ALOT of people wouldnt. This is another aspect of stacking the deck, it is detrimental to the game more than it helps. You dont need to carry over your guild with the uber plan of domination in place starting up in the beta even, it doesnt help the game. You can still be friends, keep in touch etc.
PRolly have the game also assign you to a guild at start as well.
Just some ramblings etc as I see yet another game genre going down the toilet due to people being afraid to compete, and hoping a developer finds a way to block this stuff
--------------------------------------------------------
just figured i'd share this in case it gets locked / deleted by a mod...here's the link to it on vn boards...
http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=53590861&replies=23
Lets see.. He defends the average player who doesent have the perfect group/the means to roll ot in Rvr, and hes basically saying thath in this day and age without that, youre screwed. This much is true. The online game world has no real place for soloers anymore and its too bad. back in the days of old Rvr, there were very few people around, so rvr was competitive on a small scale, but now with the growth of zergs its become a numbers game, not a skill game. In this he has valid points.
His criticisims of perfectly built beatsquads tho, i disagree with completely. how he can say that people who run in these groups have no skill is beyond me, i can see that hes obviously never run in a tight kniot group before, because he would know that it takes even more patience and skill than running solo. in a tight knit group (composed of all the elements he mentioned, blah blah) each person has a role, cleric role to keep ppl alive, tanks role to kill, pallys role to twist and protect, or kill, whatever.. in this guys illustratrion, he makes it out to be that just because you have the essential classes, theyre, by default, going to zork together well and creat a perfect group. That is completely wrong and very follish to assume. like i said, each member of the group has a role, and if they dont fill that role by playing well, then a void will be faced in their department that may not be fillable, which can make the group fail. If a group has 2 clerics, and one is busy smiting his ass off, the other cleric has to make up for the healing, and if this cleric gets slammed, stunned, the group will die unless the other guy knows what hes doing. My point basically is that elite groups are elite because they have 2 things:
1. Commitment
2. Teamwork
And in my books 1+2= skill
Im afraid to say it, but this guys post looks like a rant of someone who got rolled over one too many times and got pissed off and decided to talk about it. this i have no problem with cause i do the same thing all the time, but trying to support it by saying that people have no skill, just good composition is wrong.
Also the voice chat thing. i agree with him that everyone shoyuld have acess to it if they want, because it can prove very useful. I play Counter Strick on a server where we usually use VC and i can tell you it helps coordinate (we also used to use RW in uppland with Zoot Siphon and Fare). i dont think this gives an unfair advantage at all, and really everyone has access to it.
This guys point is basically that anything that you use that can give you the extra advantage in Rvr means that you have no skill. example:
1. he mentions a good group and says theres no skill cause theyre a perfectly composed group
2. he mentions voice chat which is not an in game feautre therefore using it gives an advantage and therefore shows that they have no skill
3. he mentions Buffbots that up people stats and therefore show they have no skill.
4. he mentions Radars. Now those are cheap because theyre illegal in game. I know some squads use it, but that just sad, it doesent belong in the game. Claiming however that every good group out there that works well basically has one is follishness, and just an attempt to black eye beatsquads that work well together.
Theres my rant. Vengeance is not one of those Ubah beatsquad groups and i frankly dont want us to be, but ive rolled with good groups before, and i know they dont suck. Ive found myself so unable to keep up with them on several occasions cause they know what to do, they know what theyre all thinking, they work well together. This guys post is like a worker in the industrial revolution attacking a well oiled machine, with a better productivity than him
ok i think im done
"I have always said any game truly afraid of re trains or respecs is a game who knows it has SEVERE imbalances if not you would have no fear of respecs since all things being equal and option is a equal option and you would be afraid that only 5 of your 38 classes will get played and spec'd always in the same manner. "
Planetside lets you respec one specialization every 24 hours. It actually encourages you to try some of the "gimp" specializations. Sure, 90% of the blue team uses their uber shotguns, but you will still see people in the gimpy blue MAX armor giving it a try, whereas how often do you see thanes in a beatsquad today?
Interviews with Mythic devs have, on several occasions, quoted them saying the balance issues in dark age were known to be horribly imbalanced, and they wish they'd been able to address that earlier.
Take whichever 8 players in the game you can think of as having the l33t3st sk33lz, make them pick toons "in the blind," and throw them up against a lesser-skilled group with "properly" composed beatsquad. I for one wouldn't put my money on the l33t folks to win 3 out of 5 engagements.
Class imbalances are the heart of most of the issues which "plague" the game: zerging, "elitest" guilds, and server-jumping among them.
It's impossible for Mythic to ever fully balance the game as long as they keep adding to it. As such, while "skill" will always be an element in any encounter, It will never be the only (or even the primary) deciding factor.
If you want a skill-based game with an even playing field, go play chess.
nice quote, i like that
This is complete BS and he has no data or numbers to back up that huge assumption. Look at Vengeance. The majority of our guild does not fit that stereotype. In that light, his whole post is just a bitter rant.
I'll agree that the devs should eliminate player's need to seek out 3rd party software to give them an advantage, but his argument falls apart because it's based on a false premise.
lol