Multiplayer too difficult to enjoy. Anyone else ever had this?

[Blaster395]

I have personally found many online mp games to be too difficult to actually enjoy. The difficulty of them is, of course, inherently based upon the experience level of everyone else.

The most recent example is PS2, where I was simply completely unable to play the game at all due to the difficulty of opponents I was routinely up against. After 4 hours and a KD ratio of about 1:10 I gave up with it. It wasn't fun, it was physically painful to play. It's like a game metaphorically knocking you down and then kicking you while you are prone.

Has anyone else ever had this problem with multiplayer games?

 

[Foolery]

Kind of. I tend to stay far away from multiplayer unless it's co-op. I always got my ass handed to me playing any of the Tribes games. Also, Dota 2. I do not get any joy out of playing MOBAs.

 

[porous_shield]

Many multiplayer games seem to work on the premise that first you suffer and later, after you've invested enough time, you get to have fun. That is a pretty high hurdle to surmount when you're an adult with limited time to play games and facing off against people dedicated to the game or have all the time in the world to being good at it. I remember my nephew trying to play one of the CoD games and dying over and over again before he could really do anything and then giving up in frustration and that mirrored my own experience from back in the days of the Microsoft Gaming Zone (I don't play multiplayer much).

Tiered play would be the best way of going back things so long as there is no way to easily circumvent things and have experienced players making the lives of novices hell.

 

[farscythe]

kinda.. but only realy when i joined the party late ( as in a few months after release) not knowing the maps/tracks makes all the diference.
crappy equipment kinda sucks.. but at least it still gives you a chance.

now multiplayer games that leave me frothing with rage often as not.... those i have a problem with heh.

 

[stroopwafel]

I'm not really a fan of multiplayer in part indeed also b/c of the time it takes to gain a decent enough skill level to compete with other players. However there is one exception and that is NFS: Hot Pursuit. I played the Interceptor mode(1 cop vs 1 racer) for probably dozens of hours. That was just insanely fun! I got pretty decent at it too. In the end I think beating 7 or 8 out of every 10 opponents. I got bored by it at the time Most Wanted came out but didn't find that game nearly half as fun.

 

[Blaster395]

Kind of. I tend to stay far away from multiplayer unless it's co-op. I always got my ass handed to me playing any of the Tribes games. Also, Dota 2. I do not get any joy out of playing MOBAs.

Dota 2 and LoL have the advantage of giving you bots of consistent difficulty you can play against.

 

[Foolery]

Kind of. I tend to stay far away from multiplayer unless it's co-op. I always got my ass handed to me playing any of the Tribes games. Also, Dota 2. I do not get any joy out of playing MOBAs.

Dota 2 and LoL have the advantage of giving you bots of consistent difficulty you can play against.

This is true. I find bots to be dull company though. If I'm playing multiplayer the primary focus is usually to socialize and have a good time.

 

[RJ 17]

Kind of. I tend to stay far away from multiplayer unless it's co-op. I always got my ass handed to me playing any of the Tribes games. Also, Dota 2. I do not get any joy out of playing MOBAs.

Sorry, saw this posted in another topic

Spoiler: So I felt like posting it here. :3

OT: Yeah, that's the thing about most competitive multiplayer games. With the exception of "pay to win" games, for the most part if you're getting curb-stomped you really have no one to blame but yourself and your lack of skill at said game. Take me for instance. I rented Marvel vs Capcom 3 a while back and enjoyed playing through the Arcade mode by myself. I thought I was pretty good. Even playing against some of my friends who had the game I would win more often than not. Then I went to the general multiplayer to mix it up with some random people annnnnnnnnd........well, lets just say I wasn't as good as I thought I was.

Same thing with Halo. I'm great in the campaign and I'm really good in the Fire Fight mode. But put me in a competitive game and I might as well just be standing in the map with a big neon arrow above my head saying "Shoot Here For Free Kills".

The point is that there's no shame in giving up on a multiplayer game if you're no good at it. I've seen a topic like this before where people kept insisting that you're being a poor sport if you quit a game just because you're no good at it, that you should keep trying and practicing to get better. They're neglecting the point that if you're just straight-up NOT having fun, then there's absolutely no reason to be playing the game...seeing as how the entire point of the game in the first place is to have fun.

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

With any competitive game you have to be willing to invest time in to it. It's the same with FPS,moba or fighters. You'll start at the bottom and move up. I think most people are kinda approaching the challenge in the wrong way though. A lot of people i imagine bash their foreheads bloody against the wall that is the learning curve until they become decent at it, at a casual level. But if you do your research and understand the game and how it works, and then you'll still have one hell of a time with the learning curve but the higher level play will start to make sense and after a while you can sort of start learning by seeing high level play and so forth. Reading tutorials/guides ftw!

Now a lot of players will bat the second option away, saying that they aren't that serious about gaming and so forth but in my humble opinion the game just gets more enjoyable when you at least understand the high level play. You don't have to win the DotA international to have fun with it, but getting to the level where you can watch a pro-level game and understand what is going on will most likely make your own games a lot more fun as you can start to implement better strategies and builds.

But yeah, multiplayer requires a lot of work in my experience. For me personally i really disliked DotA 2 at first, it was way too hard and punishing. Once i got over the threshold though, it started being a lot of fun. I'm still pretty shit at it, but at least i've gotten to the point where i understand the basics of the game and use that knowledge to play and have something like a 50/50 win ration. Now obviously this is also indicative of the matchmaking, but when i started out i just got thrashed every single game.

 

[PFCboom]

I can barely play modern military shooters online for this exact reason. I'm not too great with console shooters to begin with, and something like CoD/BF/whatever requires some established skill and experience, if you want to be MLG.
That said, some multiplayer games require a minimal amount of skill beyond a working understanding of the game mechanics. Solforge is a card game, and as such, you just need to know how to build a halfway decent deck. If your deck is good, the rest is up to the luck of the draw.

Many multiplayer games seem to work on the premise that first you suffer and later, after you've invested enough time, you get to have fun. -snip-

It's unfortunate, but true. Also, completely unnecessary. Mass Effect 3 had multiplayer that I was able to enjoy thoroughly from the very first match. Yes, it still took some time and effort to gain levels and stuff, but I still had great fun along the way.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

That's basically me trying to play games like Marvel vs Capcom 3 or, Injustice online...only MY K/D ratio is more like 0:50+ because I'm just terrible at fighting games. I can get through single player sometimes (primarily in fighting games from this past generation) but when I'm playing against other people I'm completely hopeless.

I'm halfway decent with some shooters though. I wouldn't have kept my XBL account for as long as I did if it wasn't for TF2 and I even had a bit of fun with Halo Reach (Halo 3 would constantly fail to connect or just up and crash on me).

 

[MHR]

I play TF2 and I freakin kick ASS at it, but the difficulty is really up there on most servers, and sometimes I'm getting stomped, especially if I'm on the team getting stomped. I can see why someone new would be very outclassed there. I wouldn't find it any fun if I were them. Even the lvl 3 sentry turtling engineers are wrecked in <10 seconds against a demoman who's even decently skilled. It's not even fair.

 

[Blaster395]

But if you do your research and understand the game and how it works, and then you'll still have one hell of a time with the learning curve but the higher level play will start to make sense and after a while you can sort of start learning by seeing high level play and so forth. Reading tutorials/guides ftw!

It really shouldn't be necessary to be a walking encyclopedia before you can attempt play something.

In my opinion the best way to integrate a tutorial into a multiplayer experience is to play a series of matches that teach one concept at a time. For example, a multiplayer 20-min dota tutorial match against real opponents where the winning team is the one with the most last hits. Expecting players to learn a dozen mechanics simultaneously is unreasonable.

 

[rofltehcat]

It really depends. Some games can really be kind of hard for less hardcore players to get into. Game modes where you meet more enemies of about your level (or just coop vs. computers) as well as good matchmaking can definitely help.
However, when playing against human players you really have to concentrate and also improve.

Normally, I'm one of the "better than most but still gets stomped by the very good enemy players. One thing that I don't like is that in some games you might just want to play a few rounds without concentrating too much but you are matched with your original Elo rating, so it is either ruining your rating (and losing a lot) or not playing the game at all.

One thing you have to get used to in multiplayer, though is that you most likely won't have a win chance that is abnormally high (when the game has actually working elo matchmaking). People like to win a lot, winning is fun. But you can't expect to constantly win and people tend to feel like they are losing too often very quickly, even when statistics (e.g. W/L ratio) show this is clearly not the case. Don't get me wrong, I'd like winning 75% of the time just as everybody else and I also don't enjoy it when I lose because I faced someone much better or because I made stupid mistakes. But then again you might also get a bad run of 4 losses in a row, maybe ruining your gaming evening. But this is part of it.

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

But if you do your research and understand the game and how it works, and then you'll still have one hell of a time with the learning curve but the higher level play will start to make sense and after a while you can sort of start learning by seeing high level play and so forth. Reading tutorials/guides ftw!

It really shouldn't be necessary to be a walking encyclopedia before you can attempt play something.

In my opinion the best way to integrate a tutorial into a multiplayer experience is to play a series of matches that teach one concept at a time. For example, a multiplayer 20-min dota tutorial match against real opponents where the winning team is the one with the most last hits. Expecting players to learn a dozen mechanics simultaneously is unreasonable.

So while i agree that it is a huge turnoff it's mainly not the game that makes this happen, it's the players. If you go in knowing nothing you will get your ass handed to you and no amount of tutorial can make up for the mind set of actually learning the game. It's something you'll have with ALL competitive games. Not to mention emergent gameplay. A lot of the tactics and mechanics that are used in games were not put there intentionally. You can't have a tutorial for something that the developer never intended for, but is still there, nor can you have a tutorial for the current meta game, because that is also something that is shaped and molded by the players over time.

I mean in the same way you don't expect a person to be excellent at a sport without practicing, researching and training the same is true of competitive games. You can't expect to be good at it unless you practice, do your research and put loads of real matches behind you. Now obviously this is very dependent on what type of skill level you are aiming for, and you don't have to spend your entire life learning a game to have fun with it. What i mean is that if you get a grip on at least the basics, rather than just mashing and hoping for the best, that will heighten your enjoyment of the game considerably. Even if you are just aiming for some casual fun. But yes, it consumes a lot of time, i'm not trying to deny that.

And a quick comment on the post just above mine: Losing is just a part of playing online. Good matchmaking has you at about 50/50. And that's good. What you need to do is see every loss as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. That way, if you learn something new and use it next game it'll feel like it was worth it.

What i do in dota if i just want some casual fun is i play All Random or Single Draft, that way i don't have to feel all that responsible since i just got handed a hero and i don't expect anyone to be super good with a random pick

 

[Blaster395]

I mean in the same way you don't expect a person to be excellent at a sport without practicing, researching and training the same is true of competitive games. You can't expect to be good at it unless you practice, do your research and put loads of real matches behind you. Now obviously this is very dependent on what type of skill level you are aiming for, and you don't have to spend your entire life learning a game to have fun with it. What i mean is that if you get a grip on at least the basics, rather than just mashing and hoping for the best, that will heighten your enjoyment of the game considerably. Even if you are just aiming for some casual fun. But yes, it consumes a lot of time, i'm not trying to deny that.

We are not talking about mastery here, we are talking about competency. The point at which you understand most of what is happening and most suitable responses, though not always picking the best response to every situation.

While to master a sport you need to practice, research and train, to play the vast majority of sports you do not. The most frequently played sport in the world is all the informal street football variants, and those have a competency requirement of about 15 minutes of play following a quick rule explanation of kicking the ball so it goes between 2 points.

It might be a bit unfair to bring a casual sport into this, so next I shall discuss something that has equal rules from highest level to lowest level play.

Chess. It takes 15 mins to learn what all the rules are (except maybe en passant but that's extremely niche) and perhaps an hour to begin grasping basic strategy of protecting your pieces. Yes, you will be absolutely slaughtered by the higher level players, but you are playing by and understanding the same things they are and you will know why you lost, and the game can still be fun. Hence I think competency at chess takes only 3 or 4 hours to achieve.

Dota, meanwhile, requires encyclopedic knowledge of a vast range of information to even achieve competency. If you do not have this knowledge, you WILL fall behind within the first 10 minutes and with the very mathematics of how almost all MOBAs work (1 arbitary unit of power now is worth 1.2 units in 5 mins time) you will be stuck in this extremely dull situation for the remainder of the game.

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

I think your comparison to chess is rather unfair. To me, understanding the moves of each piece in chess is about equivalent of understanding how to move, attack and use abilities in DotA. Also, come on, 3-4 hours for competency in chess? The only people you'll be able to follow at that stage are other players that are about as far in to the game as you are, while more advanced players will be planning far ahead of you, most likely reading your game like a book.

But i do agree, the learning curve for a game like DotA is huge and i've never really claimed anything different. But then again, chess is still around because it is a bloody masterpiece of a game that really does have simple rules yet very complex strategies. It's survived in it's current for for hundreds of years. Dota has been around for what, 8-9 years? I wouldn't expect it to be some sort of elegant masterpiece that transcends time tbh

Getting in to competitive gaming is complex and there are a lot of hurdles. I never said anything else, i just offered my thoughts on how to handle it, that is all. The right mind set will get you a long way, rather than whinging on the games for being too complex; something that will, in fact, get you absolutely nowhere.

 

[deathbydeath]

If you're having trouble getting into multiplayer games, play TF2 as the Medic. All you need is common sense and a hand with at least one finger, and you can still be a cornerstone for your team.

 

[rofltehcat]

If you're having trouble getting into multiplayer games, play TF2 as the Medic. All you need is common sense and a hand with at least one finger, and you can still be a cornerstone for your team.

To be honest, common sense is probably one of the least pronounced traits most players in multiplayer games have.
Not running out of fire is a MMO classic, for example.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I tried Halo Wars online multiplayer a few times, I was destroyed very quickly every time. I can't imagine going online for a PC RTS, definitely not sticking my foot into that death trap.