by Jin Lovelace, HSM team writer & filmmaker

Lately, I’ve had the itch to devote my time into an online portion of an action/RPG title, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, to reach certain goals: mainly, to get a grip on the game’s system direction and to soon record my progress. Over the course of a month and a half in playing this game, I’ve had the treat of running into some decent players and learn from their play styles.

In the duration of my progress I would host games for a bit of social gaming with other players to farm for weapon and clothing material to power my character up. On quests, your group shares three life tickets; if anyone dies, the ticket is then docked from the said group. There are times where a player that’s stronger than the entire party would spout “how easy” high-ranked monsters are, and would be on the plane to the “Quest Fail” screen (first-class peanuts served and all), and then would exit the group, which causes an imbalance to the party.

And if you have any more players in the party, well, that’s your morale dwindling into obscurity, because they will leave the group as well. I’ve also experienced players who would just stall the quests, standing there not doing anything while you’re trying your best to defeat every monster on the screen, helpless. Oh, and if you just die once, don’t try again; just leave your party by simply ragequitting. 

As an avid gamer, online gaming is still a bit fresh to me. There are some wild stories of how many players would load up a session of Call of Duty: Ghosts to be met with disturbing people on mics that would ruin the experience for everyone by trolling and using profane language profusely. What’s strikes me as odd is that many would find how players that would scrutinize a hapless female gamer that just want to run ‘n gun players in said game just because she’s a woman absolutely funny, and have the audacity to allow such organizations like Machinima or even Youtube themselves monetize their antics, with views around eight to even nine figures. In theory, these people are making money at your expense.

Do you think players are ruining  online video games? There’s not a time where I’m on Skype with my best friend as he’s logged himself into a session of Uncharted 3 online multi-player mode and is raging on the speaker because some “idiot” would make a mistake to cost the entire team the match (not exaggerating on this; this has been quite a streak, as a witness to some of the most asinine events in my history of gaming).

Lets put it into perspective; on one end, you have players who are completely new into the game they are playing. They log in, play, lose matches, sessions, whatever. You have some that learn from the mistakes made, become more efficient to their roles purveyed, and simply try their best to do better to accomplish the game’s objectives.

On the other hand, you have those that would repeatedly make the same mistakes over and over until it becomes apparent that nothing will ever be accomplished while playing with these individuals. In some cases, these players would intentionally do these acts to either cause disruption to gameplay or to annoy players, disparaging group morale and creating total tension among themselves.

The latter spectrum would dub these sort of players as “nOObs”: a derogatory term used towards beginner players (or in some cases, players who lack knowledge on the game they’re playing).

These scenarios here have caused many players that would log into their favorite games for legitimate personal agendas to just give up and never play again. In one instance, I belonged to an online community known as Metal Gear Online (popularly known as MGO). The game was, by far, one of the best online games you can play for the PlayStation 3, with the system direction and gameplay just superb. Though not perfect, the community aspects were there and Konami even would try their best to create patches to enhance the gameplay experience for everyone.

However, my love for the game waned thanks to the community itself. Players would come on to cause stupidity and ruin the game by lagswitching against other players. It was so horrific that these cheaters would go as far as to hack the online server to distribute denial of service (DDoS) against other players in competitive modes such as Survival and Tournament. MGO was active for four years, with their service closing around July of 2012.

Aside from cheaters, you have other players who would become “salty” (a term meaning when a player would complain, whine, and gripe about how they lose in the game) and berate others on how they lose the match; some legitimate, most just because they were bested. And if there’s a “Kick Player” option in the game, many will abuse it when they feel the game isn’t being tipped into their favor.

The simplest solution here is to ignore these people that wish to ruin the game that you took your time in and love but it’s starting to become pretty stale on how online gaming has grown into a troll’s nest. Back during the arcade scene, very little of this was present, for if you were to do the things you see in any online game you play (even in PlayStation Home) or what’s documented on video and posted on YouTube, then you were physically taught a valuable lesson on the things you just don’t do to others for the sake of entertainment.

And that’s the thing with me personally; ignoring just isn’t enough these days. The most developers could do is just terminate the user’s service when they violate the game’s ToS, but in some instances, they can just easily override their ban by simply either creating another account, or waste their money in buying another system to just do the latter. And whereas most admins wish to avoid utilizing the “one bad apple” theory, actions such as shutting down the whole server to rid the trolling populace aren’t as rare as you think.

The thing is, as much as I like to meet new players and compete in my favorite online games, it has started to become a bit of a bore to me these days. I can’t win a Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate match without a user sending me rage messages to tell me how much of a “scrub” that I am because he lost to me eight times in a row. I can’t lose legitimately in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 because I lost to a player who would lagswitch the match in his/her favor. I can’t seem to have fun in Co-Op games like DC Universe Online because you have one or two players that think they are the savior of the group and not at all perform in a team manner, sacrificing every element of the role’s objective — i.e., not healing or giving power to players on your team.

And lastly, I just can’t seem to learn the game efficiently in my own favor–in my own time and pace–because some impatient individual decided that I’m on his/her time even if I’m hosting the room. And if I’m playing against a high-ranked player where my own rank is nowhere near, face them and win, I’m then belittled because I’m a low ranked scrub: how am I winning against them? Never mind that it’s due to my progression in the game and, just somehow, I’ve managed to best them because of what I’ve learned; it’s just that my level is supposed to magically limit my talents and learning process and allow them to wail on me and to never be great (if not better than them) in the game I took the time to practice and learn.

And good gracious, if you do manage to be a high ranking player in whatever game you chose to mainly play and you face against a player that approaches the session casually, you truthfully have no life. Don’t worry on how you happen to enjoy this game so much that you wish to progress skillfully; not at all. You just don’t have a life at all, because to the casual gamer, it means they have a career, a house, bills, a girlfriend/boyfriend, kids, and cotton candy in their mouths that prevents them to be as good as you, but if they were to put in that extra amount of time as you did, they will assure that you it would be a different scenario.

And lastly, if you’ve purchased every DLC in the game, there is no such rank as “entitlement”. You don’t get to cause disruptions, berate other players, act with an elitist mindset, do idiotic actions with or against players that are illegitimate and/or against the server’s ToS

It’s like this all the time, and it’s sad. It’s rather sad that the developers that took the time and labor to implement an online option and purvey such great features for everyone that wish to explore beyond the single player campaigns and take their talents against others.

So what’s the point of exploiting what you love in an online game any more? In fact, what’s the point of online gaming any more, if every game is riddled with your average Joe that can’t comply to rules and feels they are above everything and everyone?

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One Response to “Are Players Themselves Ruining Online Video Games?”

1. McJorneil says:

   June 2, 2014 at 8:09 pm

   So much truth to all you wrote.

   The denial of service attacks aspect in particular is the worst form in my opinion (after having experienced it firsthand in PS Home). When online bullies have the capability to shut down your entire internet service through a game, that should sound an alarm that serious action must be taken to address the problem. Unfortunately, the alarm system is off and no one is doing anything about it.

   Maybe if the creators of some of these online games experienced the activity for themselves, then they would approach development a bit differently with these kinds of problems in mind. Or maybe I’m wrong, and they have, and there’s no effective solution they can come up with, other than “Just turn the game off and stop playing.”

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