The Frustrations of Competitive Multiplayer

On the latest GRcade podcast, we discussed how competitive multiplayer games can become frustrating for various reasons. Sometimes I feel that I don't have the time to invest in a game to get better or unlock gear which can put me off getting too into Splatoon or Overwatch. On the other hand, I enjoy playing Mario Kart from time to time because its chaotic nature can level the playing field for others.

How do you feel about competitive gaming?

If you'd like to hear what we said on the podcast, check it out at the link below.

https://archive.org/download/grcade-pod ... st-e19.mp3

Not a fan at all, I spend most of my time spawning and then being killed over and over again. Much prefer co-op where at least I have a chance of staying alive for a few minutes.

I had a frustrating time on Rainbow Six Siege recently where because I'd somehow managed to win the majority of my buildup to ranking games I got shoved into category of players who were just so sweaty it made the game unplayable.
I was being shot and killed by people I couldn't see or that had barely a pixel in sight and constantly pulled of miracle shots meaning the game was honestly less fun than when I was at work a few hours before.
I don't mind getting owned as I generally suck so I'm used to it but this was a whole new level of ownage and I just ended up telling Studawg (who was playing with me and doing slightly better I fully admit) that I was done and finished the game and quit.

I actually enjoy the game if I can now and again get a kill or survive a round but being continually hammered into the dirt gets tiresome.

And before anyone suggests this, no it isn't because I'm old and decrepit it's because I'm gooseberry fool at games my age has nothing to do with it

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Gemini73

I'm quite good at online shooters and can hold my own with most FPS titles, particularly of the twitch variety, but I never take winning or losing seriously, choosing instead to just enjoy my time playing. That said I can see where frustration with these games can arise with more competitive players. Cheating, pay-to-win, or just getting ones ass handed to them by players who have time to master the nuances of any given online shooter.

Console racing games, however, I avoid like the plague online. Too many Peter Crisps who want to play bumper cars as opposed to actually wanting a proper race.

Generally, though, I don't consider myself an avid online gamer.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Wed Aug 16, 2017 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tried competitive Overwatch for maybe a day before deciding it wasn't for me. OW is so entirely based on the team of player you get, playing it with randoms is a losing game. Now, I am (EDIT: NOT. I am NOT good) at OW but I made a point of selecting my character thoughtfully and in line with the other player picks, and that I would try to work as a team with characters I knew paired well with mine. At the rank I was in, silver, this was an apparent rarity. Every team had a strawberry floating Hanzo, then a second wannabe Hanzo screaming "Hanzo for me plz?" "Hanzo, change so I can Hanzo plz?" "strawberry float u cocksucker" [quits]. No-one plays healers, everyone plays DPS and generally the whole thing is a clusterfuck.

Tafdolphin wrote:Tried competitive Overwatch for maybe a day before deciding it wasn't for me. OW is so entirely based on the team of player you get, playing it with randoms is a losing game. Now, I am now good at OW but I made a point of selecting my character thoughtfully and in line with the other player picks, and that I would try to work as a team with characters I knew paired well with mine. At the rank I was in, silver, this was an apparent rarity. Every team had a strawberry floating Hanzo, then a second wannabe Hanzo screaming "Hanzo for me plz?" "Hanzo, change so I can Hanzo plz?" "strawberry float u cocksucker" [quits]. No-one plays healers, everyone plays DPS and generally the whole thing is a clusterfuck.

When I played Overwatch I only played healers and the sheer number of times people ran away from me while I was healing them or simply called for healing from the other side of the map with no intention of trying to move towards me made me rethink my decision to play the game and I quit.

The Last of Us Multiplayer will I think always be the best example of multiplayer shooter style game I've ever played and we had fun even when we lost.

I've pretty much fallen off competitive multiplayer - as the old PCS crew may remember I was decidedly average to shite at CSS with the very rare spike of competency:

The problem is that for me the rewards of gitting gud are not worth the time and effort involved, and what with getting older and the grave opening up before me like a...big hole in the ground, I would rather go on a decent adventure or experience an interesting story than spend the time getting owned over and over. Even casual matches on Overwatch, the irrelevant padded ball pit compared to the masochistic ivory tower of competitive, is full of try-hards and wannabe MLG pricks who treat each match like a tournament final. I'll admit this can be unintentionally funny sometimes:

Its still not something I would do compared to pissing about with cars in Forza or playing The Witcher.

Gemini73 wrote:Console racing games, however, I avoid like the plague online. Too many Peter Crisps who want to play bumper cars as opposed to actually wanting a proper race.

I know online leaderboards are nothing new, but I really like how Forza has integrated rivals modes into the online suite; creating comprehensive asynchronous multiplayer which I can engage with on my own terms. I just wish there were more options to filter results beyond car class; I want to see the times for a specific car to see where I stack up when I take weird stuff like my off road rally-spec '49 Mercury Coupe to a dirt course for example.

Even when I raced in an organised group for Forza 4 I was coming dead last more often than not, and even though they were patient and I wasn't the only shitter, it wasn't an enjoyable experience.

TL;DR - I'm getting old.

I'm never usually interested but Splatoon 2 is basically like crack for me.

Peter Crisp wrote:The Last of Us Multiplayer will I think always be the best example of multiplayer shooter style game I've ever played and we had fun even when we lost.

Man, that game had a great run. Unfortunately over time even it fell foul of the dreaded K/D ratio, where the strategy/teamwork went out the window (plus, all the cheating/hacking).

Peter Crisp wrote:
Tafdolphin wrote:Tried competitive Overwatch for maybe a day before deciding it wasn't for me. OW is so entirely based on the team of player you get, playing it with randoms is a losing game. Now, I am now good at OW but I made a point of selecting my character thoughtfully and in line with the other player picks, and that I would try to work as a team with characters I knew paired well with mine. At the rank I was in, silver, this was an apparent rarity. Every team had a strawberry floating Hanzo, then a second wannabe Hanzo screaming "Hanzo for me plz?" "Hanzo, change so I can Hanzo plz?" "strawberry float u cocksucker" [quits]. No-one plays healers, everyone plays DPS and generally the whole thing is a clusterfuck.

When I played Overwatch I only played healers and the sheer number of times people ran away from me while I was healing them or simply called for healing from the other side of the map with no intention of trying to move towards me made me rethink my decision to play the game and I quit.

Yup. In one of my last matches I had a Pharah who was getting salty that I wasn't healing while she was on her own, on the ground, away from the rest of the team.

Last edited by Cumberdanes on Wed Aug 16, 2017 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I rarely play competitive multiplayer online. Dickheads just take all the fun out of it.

I used to play quite a bit of Virtua Fighter 5 online a few years ago and was almost competent at it but I stopped playing as I used to get loads of abusive messages in my PSN inbox from people I beat saying I was cheating and other such nonsense. The best message said something like "You brush your teeth with knobs" to which I replied "Nah dude, your mother brushes her teeth with my knob".

I used to play a tonne of Guitar Hero 3 online which I was actually pretty good at, I think at one point I was in the top 400 in the world but again the fun went out of it when every time you beat someone you'd get abuse and accused of cheating.

I did play quite a lot of Splatoon online until I got rid of my Wii U which I rather enjoyed.

I dont really play on line all that much, I used to but got so annoyed by people being dicks or just getting creamed by people that clearly had no life and played all the time.

Racing games were the worst as you would just get driven through a lot basically ruining your race so they didn't have to break so hard.

I think playing with people you enjoy talking to is the best thing to do with online games. Though you'd all know this if you listened to the podcast :evil:

Single player games only for me please, or couch co-op. Never play anything competitively, can't handle the frustration.

Preezy wrote:Single player games only for me please, or couch co-op. Never play anything competitively, can't handle the frustration.

Generally, I'm the same.

I love playing some games online.

> I play a lot of Pro Evo (PS4) and I only play online modes. It can be annoying when you come up against a player who is just wasting time (i.e. by either not touching the controls, using every time-out to the maximum and/or just passing the ball back to his keeper constantly) but generally it is great fun.

> I play Mario Kart 8 (Wii U and Switch) but only in the GRcade Monday and Tuesday online sessions. It's fantastic! Sometimes, of course, it is frustrating when things don't go you way but I'm generally pretty chilled about it.

> I play Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online (PS4) although I tend to have phases of this; when I do play them, I enjoy it even though I find it pretty tough just knowing what to do sometimes. The gameworlds are both amazing and most people are approachable and helpful.

In fact, they're the only games I have played much of in the past few months and they're all online. I never use a headset, though, as I don't want to get involved with bad-mouthing and abuse. Of course, I am pretty rubbish at most games but that doesn't really bother me; although I would get frustrated if I had some oaf yelling down my headset.

I'm kinda in Brers boat. I love objective games but have the same frustrations of people dicking about rather than play the objective.

It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. I tend to stick to games in which people mostly play the objective, Battlefield 1, squads generally now obey the Squad leader because all the noobs have moved on to some extent. As such I can generally have a less rage induced time compared to a few months ago.

I was playing Halo 5 BTB last week on a remake of Halo 3's Stand off map (it has 2 satellite dishes) playing 1 bomb assault, it was brilliant. The bomb was being carried back and forth with both teams knowing what to do, it was 1-1, then 2-1 to the other team then 2-2 and we had both armed it with 5mins to go without scoring then our team did it in the end, now had we lost that I'd still have enjoyed it, games of CTF in Valhalla on Halo 3,4 & 5 variants all play extremely well, really tight. Zanzibar on Halo 2/3 again is great but some of the other recreations in Halo 5 have messed up respawns. Played it over the weekend and got spawn killed on some weird map, it was a complete gooseberry fool show. Also, I'm strawberry floating AWFUL at Halo 2, like I'm terrible, I have no idea why, I'm ok at Halo 3-5 but 2 especially anniversary 2 I just can't make it work.

Recently 3v3 Rocket League has been pissing me off, 99% of the time I have to stay in goal. Like nobody and I mean NOBODY stays back, the odd time I have to clear my lines by flying into the air and nobody covers the goal, I've reported and blocked so many people! Then you have the smurfs, Crazy pro players on second accounts! Crazy annoying and It's the only game I think I own that makes me verbally angry and loud at these tossers!

This brings me to Ark, when first played it it was amazing, simply amazing, was on a nice island with nice people and there was myself and a mate, we kept to ourselves had a nice house and then a fort further inland. Went back in and our fort and house was demolished, all our gear and dinosaurs gone. Some bastards did it when we where off line, we got them back and it kept kicking off, we had an exciting game of cat and mouse for a week, we'd hit them, then hide in multiple shacks but soon they had several members and raided us all the time, we had crossbows and they had assault rifles cos they seemingly had endless time to play the game. We left it then it was patched so you could upload your character if found a portal and go to another server with levels intact so we did, ended up on an even worse place and people roaming around on mechanised T-Rex's! The jokes on them tho cos both these servers are now dead, they just kept killing anyone who joined and I know the last place were constantly arguing in chat to stop raiding everyone. I may go back but it's a microcosm of people, who generally are complete dicks.

I love competitive games. Just look how much StarCraft Broodwar I play. The only thing I would never do is play a team based multiplayer game as a solo queue. That is hell as you never know what people youll be matched with. Playing with friends though is a ok.

The Frustrations of Competitive Multiplayer

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