So, I was just playing a little Call of Duty 4 online multiplayer and something crossed my mind. Like many posters on this website, and it may have just been alluded to by the fact that I was playing CoD4, I don't like Modern Warfare 2 very much. I'm not going to mention the myriad of reasons why that are typical however, because I am certain that most everyone had read about hackers, campers, dedicated servers, and obnoxious players to death. For me however, my reasons for disliking MW2 and other similar games over their online multiplayer has to do with something else.
First, lets get some basic stuff out of the way. I am NOT a hardcore FPS player. In fact, i'd say I am pretty bad at FPS games in general, rarely being able to get better than a 1:1 K
ratio. But if there is one thing in FPS games that I am tolerably good at, its sniping. Okay I know that sniping is kinda easy, but its what I like to do and, aside from occasions where I pick up an M4, yell "Kick Ass!", and start doing my best impression of 80's action movie characters, sniping is what I do best in all FPS games I play. The list of online FPS games that I have played is as follows: Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat, Day of Defeat: Source, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Where i'm going with this is that despite me being bad at online FPS games, I had alot more fun in Valve's shooters and Call of Duty 4 than I have with either WaW or MW2's online multiplayer. At first glance, none of them are that different: obnoxious players, hackers, campers, and plenty of guns that go bang and make people fall over. These games aren't that different, right? Why would I have more fun with some than others?
The answer I came up with can be summed up in one word: organization.
What I mean is that in the FPS games that I liked, the online games and maps that they were played on tended to create some sort of structure to each match. It may include flag points, bomb points, and other stuff like that but that isnt what i'm really thinking about. What I mean is that while in some of these games a player has a fairly good idea of where the enemy players are, others on the list I gave are such crazy madhouses where I am more likely to get killed from someone stabbing or shooting me from behind, even when i'm not playing sniper, than I am from the enemies right in front of me. I might just be some whiny person who does not like it when their sniping funtimes are interrupted with someone stabbing me in the back, but I find something seriously wrong with team online mutiplayer maps where it feels like I am playing in a free-for-all match.
In the multiplayer FPS games that I liked on the other hand, while there was still plenty of opportunity to sneak behind a foe and get them from behind, it did not feel like that was all that was ever happening. It was something you had to watch for, but those games did not give me the same frantic need to be alert for anything in a 360 degree radius feeling that I get in MW2's online multiplayer. In these other games, I could at least trust that even if my teammates were primarily a bunch of mindless yahoos who always charged blindly forward, I still could rely on the map designs funneling the idiots through my area and so being able to watch my back, if only for a few seconds. That is how it was in CS, DoD, or my limited experience in CoD4, but it got thrown out the window in WaW and MW2.
I understand that war can be crazy, disorganized, and messy, but I can't help but think that this sort of online multiplayer is obnoxious and takes the fun out of the games more than any 13 year old kid calling everyone a homosexual can do. I also recognize that not all matches in any of these games are either loosely organized or completely chaotic. This is just an observation based off the general trends I have noticed while playing.
Anyway, has anyone else had this same sort of feeling? Do you find there to be a significant difference in how these games play online? Or am I just a whacko being nostalgic and is just looking for another reason to belittle MW2?
- Rei
P.S. Sorry if this specific topic/concept has been brought up before, but i've not seen it in the three weeks i've been on these forums so I figured it was fairly safe.
First, lets get some basic stuff out of the way. I am NOT a hardcore FPS player. In fact, i'd say I am pretty bad at FPS games in general, rarely being able to get better than a 1:1 K
ratio. But if there is one thing in FPS games that I am tolerably good at, its sniping. Okay I know that sniping is kinda easy, but its what I like to do and, aside from occasions where I pick up an M4, yell "Kick Ass!", and start doing my best impression of 80's action movie characters, sniping is what I do best in all FPS games I play. The list of online FPS games that I have played is as follows: Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat, Day of Defeat: Source, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.Where i'm going with this is that despite me being bad at online FPS games, I had alot more fun in Valve's shooters and Call of Duty 4 than I have with either WaW or MW2's online multiplayer. At first glance, none of them are that different: obnoxious players, hackers, campers, and plenty of guns that go bang and make people fall over. These games aren't that different, right? Why would I have more fun with some than others?
The answer I came up with can be summed up in one word: organization.
What I mean is that in the FPS games that I liked, the online games and maps that they were played on tended to create some sort of structure to each match. It may include flag points, bomb points, and other stuff like that but that isnt what i'm really thinking about. What I mean is that while in some of these games a player has a fairly good idea of where the enemy players are, others on the list I gave are such crazy madhouses where I am more likely to get killed from someone stabbing or shooting me from behind, even when i'm not playing sniper, than I am from the enemies right in front of me. I might just be some whiny person who does not like it when their sniping funtimes are interrupted with someone stabbing me in the back, but I find something seriously wrong with team online mutiplayer maps where it feels like I am playing in a free-for-all match.
In the multiplayer FPS games that I liked on the other hand, while there was still plenty of opportunity to sneak behind a foe and get them from behind, it did not feel like that was all that was ever happening. It was something you had to watch for, but those games did not give me the same frantic need to be alert for anything in a 360 degree radius feeling that I get in MW2's online multiplayer. In these other games, I could at least trust that even if my teammates were primarily a bunch of mindless yahoos who always charged blindly forward, I still could rely on the map designs funneling the idiots through my area and so being able to watch my back, if only for a few seconds. That is how it was in CS, DoD, or my limited experience in CoD4, but it got thrown out the window in WaW and MW2.
I understand that war can be crazy, disorganized, and messy, but I can't help but think that this sort of online multiplayer is obnoxious and takes the fun out of the games more than any 13 year old kid calling everyone a homosexual can do. I also recognize that not all matches in any of these games are either loosely organized or completely chaotic. This is just an observation based off the general trends I have noticed while playing.
Anyway, has anyone else had this same sort of feeling? Do you find there to be a significant difference in how these games play online? Or am I just a whacko being nostalgic and is just looking for another reason to belittle MW2?
- Rei
P.S. Sorry if this specific topic/concept has been brought up before, but i've not seen it in the three weeks i've been on these forums so I figured it was fairly safe.