Cheap tactics in competitive games

[Azkar Almsivi]

Endure, adapt, survive, retaliate. Also ban hackers. If the game is balanced, there are no cheap tactics.

 

[Tropicaz]

I played a game of CSGO yesterday (UKCS server if anyone cares), when 3 of our 15 team was just sitting at our spawn with AWPs killwhoring. WHILST WE WERE ON THE ATTACKING SIDE. of the 8 rounds the CTs won, 5 of them we ran out of time because they wouldnt move. It's a cheap tactic that makes the game worse for everyone around, it's just awful.

 

[Anystic]

The only "cheap tactic" that comes to mind is camping around corners with the AWP in counter strike.

 

[Toxic Spectre]

I think if there are any sort of exploits or active tactics that most would consider 'cheap' in a multiplayer situation then it is fundamentally flawed.

 

[The White Hunter]

Thats not cheap, part of the core experience is taking out cover to expose enemy nests. He sdhould've been sniping from somewhere less shit, like a hilltop a kilometre away from you. Thats what I do > > especially on Kharg.

OT: USAS-12 with frag rounds was cheap in BF3, because it was just not balanced. A few things needed more balance, like the FAMAS with it's being a recoil-free F2000.

Otherwise a lot of the time there aren't cheap tactics, just people to dumb to effectively counter said tactic.

I also hate pay-to-win, I despise when the game has purchaseable unlock packs, it was fine in BC2 because it came so late that all early adopters who played still had unlocked EVERYTHING and the noobs needed the packs for any hope in hell because of how the game is structured (scopes and magnum rounds are mandatory.). In BF3 it pissed me off because it came quick after launch.

This may not really be cheap but I hate it anyway: the automatic spotter scope in Bad Company 2, I see nothing but noobs using it and all it says to me is that you're too blind to find your own targets. It's especially prevalent on smaller maps and much more annoying. On larger maps like Arica Harbour it's mostly irrelevant because they usually can't make the kind of shot you need to counter snipe me there.

Otherwise thats about it really, I don't get too annoyed at other things. Even the things smogon people get po'd at in pokemon battles, if you can't deal with evasion mods then have a perfect hitter, if you can't deal with having multiple pokemon asleep at once you should be packing a Heracross with sleep talk and more fool you for not doing so.

 

[Megacherv]

Cheap tactics can be fun occasionally, but the reason they're cheap is mostly because the enemy aren't necessarily prepared to deal with them. For example, last Friday I won my first FNM. Normally I play monored which people normally have answers to because it's an easy deck to play and not the expensive to build and is fairly popular with new-ish players since it's based on normal aggro strategies. However, this week I played monogreen infect. The deck was, like Red, cheap to build and easy to play; however it consists of paying a lot of life and can fall apart if you don't get that 10 infect damage through in the first 5 or so turns. Because of this, and because Delver (blue/white aggro control) and the sort being so strong in the meta, not many people play it, and therefore nobody really has an answer for it. I proceeded to win every round and won because nobody had played against a monogreen infect build like that (someone played it before, but it was before M13 came out which made it far stronger) so nobody had an answer to how fast it can win (just for clarification, players start with 20 life, but Infect deals damage in the form of poison counters which can't be removed, and it only takes 10 poison counters to kill a player).

 

[Vivi22]

I'd have to disagree.... I used to play on a server where there were no restrictions on the AWP. Half of each team would use it, and these were guys who spent hundreds of hours playing CS and using nothing but the AWP, and if you didn't us it it was no big deal. You could easily hang back and let the snipers whittle each other down for a bit before running in.

You are defeating your own argument. Lopende was grousing about CS being enjoyable until the Arctic Warfare Magnum comes out. The difference is that the two of you are trying to play two different games of CS. The CS he is playing is much more relaxed, and more fun for him. The CS you are playing is more challenging - but you normally played games where the AWM was a known element, and was expected to be in play. [Now, I stopped playing CS rather than switch to Source, and I know nothing about the new iteration, so my knowledge may be dated] There is nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting to play either way, but for him to try to play your game is going to be a serious buzzkill. The CS that I played was where I crept around silently with a shotgun, and scared the fertilizer out of other players - and they usually died at the same time. That wasn't really fair to players who weren't expecting it, but it also wasn't an exploit.

No, I'm not really defeating my own argument at all. My argument was that the AWP isn't unbalanced and can be dealt with. This is true. My argument was also that it encourages a different play style than the poster was looking for. This is also true.

I wasn't making a value judgement about the kind of game he wants to play though. Not wanting to play a game where sniping is a dominant strategy is perfectly fine as I said in a later post. But not liking something doesn't make it unbalanced which is all I was trying to get at.

 

[Wayneguard]

people get really annoyed by Blitzcrank. He is generally played as a support, he has a grab move where he shoots his arm out and grabs the first thing it hits then pulls it back to him, he can then knock them up and silence them while his lane partner pounds on them.
He is not an OP champ as you can dodge these grabs pretty easily but he is however pretty damn easy to play, he only has to land one grab and he has some of the best zoning capablity in the game. He is the most frustrating enemy for me and many others to face.

Blitzcrank... the hororr... THE HORROR!!!

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

There aren't really any "cheap" tactics in general though there are more than a few that annoy me. For example, I hate snipers when playing games on console. The reason is simple: the vast majority of people are actually quite bad at it. Even those who are good at the task generally accomplish little. In games where the objective is a body count (or that a body count directly assists with the objective in a meaningful way like Counter Strike), the sniper has some utility. Hell, even games where the sniper exists as a counter to some other unit (Like Team Fortress) is fine. But people who play games like Battlefield and simply snipe annoy me.

They spend their time neither causing appreciable harm to the enemy or helping make any real progress towards an objective. They have limited capacity to defend any particular objective. They don't even have the courtesy to hang out in useful locations for their non sniping team mates to spawn.

This problem does not generally extent to PC gamers as years of experience have demonstrated that while I can brave withering sniper fire on a console, one obsessive sniper on the PC is probably sufficient cause to find a different way to approach.

 

[Friendly Lich]

Oh yeah what about Ralpheal in soul calibur 2?

 

[GraveeKing]

W+M1 pyros are annoying. That is why it is annoying.
I wouldn't outright yell at someone for being cheap and lazy with a tactic that a 10 year old could do. Although I don't play the games much, I really don't see how rocket launchers are cheap... I mean I've seen those kind of games - don't they have stupidly long reload times and limited ammo? Which in a game like battlefield 3 is enough time for the insides of your head to be blown into next Sunday.
Nearly every 'cheap' tactic or weapon has a weakness, it's only when they don't that it's unbalanced and then people simply wouldn't play.
So yeah it can SEEM annoying but in the end it's not -that- bad.

 

[crazyarms33]

Reading a lot of these comments I have to say that there are "cheap" things that people do in video games, especially COD. I freely admit to being bad at the game but still enjoying it, however when someone hardscopes or quickscopes me I do get mad. Not because I died, but because I feel like when it comes to skill if I am better but they exploit a flaw in the game. Now maybe this is not their fault and its actually the game's fault for incorporating such a design but it really pisses me off. IMO a sniper is for accurate, long ranged, deadly, and well timed shots. Not running around the corner and throwing up the sight as quick as you can. But perhaps I'm alone in this.

 

[crazyarms33]

(On a side note... does anybody else hate RPG's in games? Not the use, but the way they are! In real life RPG's fire faster than the eye can track... they also airburst after a certain distance and they don't have smoke trails... but hollywood and games have made them rockets instead...! :/)

I effing HATE RPG's in games. Esp COD. BF3 they're ok, but in COD for some reason they are so much worse. I think its the random launches at random points that a lot of kids do that irk me. But nothing is worse than the XM-25 or whatever the hell it is. The 4 shot grenade launcher with a balling scope that gets whored out on the smaller maps. So much hate.

 

[2xDouble]

Bullshit.

Point proven.

Thank you.

 

[renegade7]

The only thing I see as cheap is spawn camping, because people can farm kills while depriving players of even getting a chance to get in the action.

Anything else, well if you don't like [insert sniper rifles, noobtubes, RPGs, Blood Angel Space Marines, Zerg Rush, smartbomb gate camps] then you're either going to have to stop playing the game or find a way to combat it, because that's just how it is- someone else's tactic was better than yours and is really good at killing you.

 

[hermes]

If the game is properly balanced, there are no cheap tactics. An example of improperly balanced games, in my opinion, include fighting games that let you spam screen filling powers with no recharge, or infinite combos.

Your strategy in Battlefield, though, is not cheap, its totally valid. RPG in those games are balanced by giving you little ammo and a long reload time. To spam a cover point being used for camping is a valid countermeasure.

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

In unbalanced games it's pretty much saying "Hey! I'm ass at this game so I'll just abuse this balance flaw to aid me online"

An example of this is the assault class in kz2. It has a boost ability that allows players to move like 2x faster for a minute or do, they have higher health off the bat than regular players, and their primary weapon is a rocket launcher. In smaller maps they are a ***** to play against because of the rocket suicide spam and players moving at super speeds. It's an obvious balance flaw in the game but people never ban them on servers so we always have like 4-5 people on either team spamming explosives everywhere

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

There are two schools of thought on this. The "pro" attitude is that you always play to win and use any advantage you can get and that anyone who complains about imbalance or unfair tactics is a scrub. The other opinion is that if a game is obviously broken, whole worlds of great possibilities off limits because the devs fucked up, then you set house rules and fix the game yourselves that way.

see, this is the problem: I have never played a broken game. Not one. Oh, i'll refer to thing as broken, and usually refer to a lowered difficulty through the abuse of game mechanics, (magic-immune zero-cost spellspam in skyrim), or occasionally to a gameplay mechanic that does not work despite the programmers attempting to make it so. For instance, the single-player of my constant *****-target Darkwatch is BROKEN. At literally any moment of the game any script can fail completely, leading to all doors vanishing, enemies gaining immortality, bullets not hitting, bullets not doing damage (all separate issue. seriously), and any number of amazingly incompetent glitches.

But I have yet to play any competitive game that is actually broken. That's not to say they don't exist, but I've never played one. (i'm not counting deliberate balance issues like playable bosses in fighting games. yes, those fights are unfair, but they are supposed to be)

Now, we all love SSB Melee, except those of us who don't. But, for some reason, fewer people like Brawl. Many claim that Brawl is broken, that its characters are unbalanced and there are incredibly unfair parts of the game.
This is bullshit. Now, I'm not going to say Brawl was perfect. I have several issues with the game, for various reasons. In the months following the game's release, "Damn you, Sakurai!" became a catchphrase.

But how is the game broken? Every character can be used to defeat every character. I personally can't win with Dedede or Olimar, but they aren't broken. I know several people who will ALWAYS win with those characters. The only character I think has actual issues is DK, since he's big, slow, and almost every character can beat him when your attacks clash. And i STILL have seen DK used against expert-level players and come out on top easily.
And on melee, supposedly item's unbalance the game. What you MEAN to say it that you can't use/counter items. Now, brawl has more issues with items than melee did, but even fan abuse can be stopped, countered, and punished.

There ARE no cheap tactics, except to limit what parts of the game are "acceptable" and then complain when someone uses them. Don't want Maxi to drum-tap your face for an easy win? learn to stop it. Don't want people splattering you with rocket launchers? learn to avoid the LARGE, SLOW MISSILES. Don't want to get shot by people lying in wait for a victim? learn to clear a room effectively.

On that last note, I have recently been made aware of series of videos concerning people "trolling" snipers in games like battlefield and CoD, for being "campers". THAT IS A SNIPER'S JOB. To stay in a far-off spot that is hard to shoot back at, and take potshots at unsuspecting people. Granted, they are crappy snipers if they don't notice you burying them in c4 and then sending them a message announcing your intent to murder them, but you can't complain about "camping" snipers.
seriously, what are you, idiots? oh, wait

 

[sethisjimmy]

snippity

Hang on there a sec, I didn't say I'm okay with it as long as it doesn't happen to me. In fact I've been on the wrong side of that deal multiple times, with people spawncamping the base, or spamming certain attacks or using OP weapons, and I'm perfectly fine with it, mainly because I can almost always counterattack. For example in TF2 if the other team is spawncamping I can easily go medic and prepare an uber to destroy their buildings, or go spy and mass sap everything while my team attacks, or take pot shots as demo. In fact I enjoy the challenge a lot of the time.

I guess your problem with my post comes with my discrepancy when I say I don't like it if it makes the game "impossible" for the other team (to clarify I mean that that situation is bad for both teams, when one is making the game impossible for the other, regardless of which side I'm on). That's fair enough, I guess I didn't realize that "unwinnableness" was actually pretty subjective when I wrote it. I suppose if I was using dirty tactics against the other team they probably wouldn't see it my way, as opposed to if they were doing so against me.

I'm sticking to my guns though, I enjoy being on both sides of the "so-called" cheap tactics, but I'm not gonna try and ruin the game for anyone. If someone tells me to back off I generally will unless they're being a dick or something.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

You didn't use cheap tactics, you killed a power hungry 13 years old admin.

Very much this. If you got sniped by a camper fag, you're -authorized- to return fire with rockets.

There are such things as cheap tactics, like selling your Construction Yard in Command & Conquer to get an Engineer then rush the enemy before he can even get -any- defenses up at all.

Then there's those absolute faggots in Team Fortress 2 that use the Pyro's Phlogistinator (essentially a mini-uber and healthkit) or the Engineer's Pomson 6000 (penetrates players, reduces ubercharge/cloak and can't be deflected), just to name a few.

Play any online game, you're bound to run into some scrub using omgwtfpwnage-something that just flat out breaks the game for everyone.