Should Games Always Be A Level Playing Field?

[BaudAttitude]

Is this meant to be just a discussion of MP/online stuff?

How about Shmups? Should they have different difficulty levels? Shouldn't we all just play them on the default level? Last Hope doesn't count

I think you've got your two basic classes of Shmup players - people who are good at them, trying to get better, and always shooting for that next high score... and then people like me who can't play them to save our lives, but who like to slap them down to easy mode, turn on unlimited continues and watch things explode for a while.

Obviously I should never show up on any kind of online ranking or leaderboard At the same time, though, a company who doesn't cater to my "I want to watch the pretty explosions!" taste has lost a sale.


To get back to the original question in the thread... I think that, if the benefits of playing for a long time are plainly attainable to anyone who can put in a reasonable amount of playtime, new players will start playing for as long as there are other players of the same level to play WITH. If it becomes a matter of "everyone's level 50, you should have started playing 2 years ago if you wanted to find newbies"... then that's not good for the longevity of the game.

That comes from a seven year Everquest veteran and high-end raider. Before I managed to kick the habit, I got to see the server I was on go from massively overcrowded to ghost town status to merged with another server (which helped the population quite a bit, you could find people to group with again)... and then back to ghost town status again. That's a game where a new player is looking at literally hundreds of hours put in before they can even think about playing with the majority of the player base, which is overwhelmingly max-level people.

[eastyy]

In my opinion, any multiplayer game that has a system that gives an extra advantage to skilled players is ridiculous.

Skilled players are, by definition, and so do not need an extra advantage. Having equipment perks for better players just worsens the barriers to entry for new players.

Games that provide better equipment for longer playtime are bad, but not quite as bad. For example, a multiplayer racing game that needs you to complete the single player to get the best car (e.g. PGR2) is pretty badly designed. Again, that just rewards experienced (if not necessarily "better" players).

I'm told WoW is the worst though. PvP in that at high levels is determined to a degree by armour and equipment that you need to be a certain rank to wear. Your rank is basicallu determined by play time compared to other players. I've read that to get the best stuff, you need to play for 11 or 12 hours a day. If you don't play enough, you lose the right to wear the good armour. I'm not a WoW player, but that system just seems hugely explotative.

In my opinion, multiplayer games should have all the players with the same tools at thier disposal. Noobs should get the same kit as the pros. Like a fighting game -everyone should step into the ring equal.

Well thats kindoff why i dont like turnbased combat i would much rather have real time combat thats based on skill and timing rather then on level and armor etc

i was so frustrated last night in WOW i was against a mage and he challenged me to a fight .....he then summoned a wolf and did freeze spells so i couldnt move i couldnt even get close let alone land a blow....gahhhhh

well anyway when it comes to stuff such as call of duty 4 the ideal thing is to have a ranking system so that people can play at the same skill levels

oh did anyone here about hell gate london...apparently its free to play online but if you pay you get access to better equipment and stuff...now THAT is wrong

[peeveen]

Of course they should always be fair. Anyone who doesn't appreciate and embrace fairness is basically a cheat.

R6V is another online FPS where the more experienced players get the added advantage of better weaponry, body armor, etc. Never quite understood the logic behind that.

Shmups have been mentioned, and some shmups are actually the worst offenders, with their "ranking" systems that make the game harder depending on how well you're doing ... granted these are usually the reserve of the coin-op, where the aim of the machine is to get as much money out of the player as possible, but still, it's cheating, especially in those games where it becomes impossibly hard and you have to die ON PURPOSE to make the game think you're not that great.

[eastyy]

cough cough "ibara" cough.
i always said with stuff like catch up in racing game if you are better you should win by the amount your better like i think in need for speed 2 underground i was doing the perfect race but on the very last corner i crashed and i then finished the race in 5th place i was so annoyed as if it didnt have the catch up i reckon i could have been at least 20-30seconds ahead

now imagine playing online in virtua fighter 5 a expert against a novice and the expert was beating him and before his energy ran out he suddenly got a full energy bar back....that would be unfair so in the end i dont think you can really penalise people who are good at a game ......however might be a good idea perhaps to have optional handicaps that if both partys agree to might make it a more fun game for the novices

[Number45]

I think the catchup in racers isn't such a clear cut case to be honest - it's crucial that AI in games maintain a challenge in my opinion, always being 30 seconds ahead of your nearest rival would seriously detract from the experience.

[dataDave]

I'm told WoW is the worst though. PvP in that at high levels is determined to a degree by armour and equipment that you need to be a certain rank to wear. Your rank is basicallu determined by play time compared to other players. I've read that to get the best stuff, you need to play for 11 or 12 hours a day. If you don't play enough, you lose the right to wear the good armour. I'm not a WoW player, but that system just seems hugely explotative.

That's been changed although it was never that bad anyway (from what I've heard I prefer the old honour system).

Nowadays you take part in PvP; capture the flag, territories, etc... You gain 'honor' points from kills and games won, you then save these points up over the course of several months and purchase gear and armour sets that fit the PvP role specifically (ie: overclocked stats in certain areas).

The previous system was the same, however you were rewarded far more honour for killing people of a higher rank than yourself, and your rank was determined on the amount of honour points you'd racked up. Now there are no ranks or any cool titles that go before your name I'd be called 'High Warlord Vona' now for example. So yeah, with the old system you could essentially gain more honor points faster by simply taking part in the killing of somone higher than yourself.

HOWEVER, there is a horrible term in the game known as 'twinking'. Basically that means you're bored of your nine or ten lvl70 characters and decide to syphon off 3,000gold to a new lvl19 creation so that you can enter the 10-19s battlegrounds with your overclocked lv19 demon creation wearing mediocre gear completely saturated in lucrative, high-end enchantments (applied stat boosts). I take pride in that I'm getting most of that stuff done on my first character without the aid of any high levels or previous characters.

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MMOs really don't deserve a mention in this thread... there would be no point to them if I could sit down for two hours and get all the best gear in that time. They're all about status and being the first person on the server to end up with a 0.0001% drop from some impossible difficult boss that requires a week to get to and then 40 people to take down.

Well thats kindoff why i dont like turnbased combat i would much rather have real time combat thats based on skill and timing rather then on level and armor etc

i was so frustrated last night in WOW i was against a mage and he challenged me to a fight .....he then summoned a wolf and did freeze spells so i couldnt move i couldnt even get close let alone land a blow....gahhhhh

I wouldn't really call WoW turn-based. It's the MMO equivalent to Halo... And there are 101 ways out of crowd-control spells. ;p If you think mages are bad with that freeze move I have three spells I can annoy you with, and even send you running into aggro in world PvP

I can't wait for Arena... all lvl70s wearing the best PvP gear in game taking part in seasonal 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5.

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I take it this discussion has spawned from the CoD4 multiplayer features? I've heard that you gain more abilities the more you play... fair play I say, if anything seasoned players become too lazy when given overpowered means, and caning some 'noob' whilst they're saving up for their own upgrades is only going to make them better than you in the longrun... providing they have the patience.

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lol, should games be kept a level playing field? What about 'real' games like Football, where money is probably the sole deciding factor?

[charlesr]

people like me who can't play them to save our lives, but who like to slap them down to easy mode, turn on unlimited continues and watch things explode for a while.

That used to be me, but then I had to do a review for Border Down, so I decided then and there to learn how to shmup. I did a bit of research both on shmups in general and on the details of Border Down (killing yourself deliberately???!!!???) and got stuck in, refusing to use extra credits. It was painfully frustrating for a while. I also tried "zoning" where my mind blocked out stuff it didn't need to see at any particular time. Later, I tried Psyvariar2 and some bullet hell (Cave) shmups and realised that if I actually thought what I was doing and used the game rules to my advantage, I was getting far more than my money's worth. I played for 8 hours in the first 24 of getting it! Days slipped into weeks on end of just playing Psy2 I never got REALLY good at it (I never got to see Gluon on my own ) but knew that I'd done my best and played one of the greatest games of all time. Since then I've overdosed on shmups (addict?) so am glad there's not been any of note recently (DC or PS2). Now, far be it for me to say you are playing it wrong, because you aren't - that's what the credits and difficulty levels are there for (I was just posing the question earlier) - but you should try playing the other way again some time. You may find that the extra years since you last played will give you a different perspective.

As for MMOs, of the few people I know that play them, they all mention getting battered by higher exp players as if it's just a fact of life. Seems a bit too much like a real jungle to me

[eastyy]

border down confused me ALOT.....i mean you die and the game gets harder

[dataDave]

As for MMOs, of the few people I know that play them, they all mention getting battered by higher exp players as if it's just a fact of life. Seems a bit too much like a real jungle to me

Yep, that's what's so good about them.

Then you have the (obviously 'older' player) alliance premade groups of PvP guilds that come into PvP with underlevelled characters and totally crap gear, yet they win repeatedly by playing like a really well oiled dungeon group (all party buffs, teamwork etc). A pickup group wearing the best gear in the game wouldn't stand a chance.

[fuse]

Great topic. It's a subject very close to my heart, as whilst I'm not overly competetive, nothing grates me more than seeing a player of great skill losing out to someone new to a game purely because a game has stupid 'catch-up' features.

Whilst I can totally understand developers needing to appeal to new audiences, not everyone is spineless and is willing to sacrifice their integrity for a nice bit of ego-stroking. I'm much more inclined to learn a game where I can see the challenge for what it is, rather than having things dumbed down.

In the same way, and to get a bit more back to the original topic, I can see why balancing things the other way, and giving experienced players an extra advantage is just as bad... if not worse. If a game's balanced well enough then a skilled, experienced player should already have all the advantage he needs, and whilst in certain examples I can understand it (most notably in MMOs where competition is not quite so rife, and time is a more prominent commodity), in an FPS game? No thanks.

Serves as a further reminder why I stopped playing FPS games after Q3 :P

[merf]

games should be a straight test of skill with players gradually exposed to a higher level of play through ranking systems and the like.

i found my first foray into online Pro Evo a massive shock this year, I'd always assumed I was quite good at it ! i got thumped regulalry for a while but then it started to click and I really had to learn how to play the game all over again.

i really don't like it when games try to engineer close finishes and give everybody a chance aand these will not be the games with longevity for me.