MLG: Not interested. Not even as a spectator.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Earthman, Nov 4, 2013.

  1. Earthman

    The title says it all, but to elaborate, I play Planetside 2 for the purposes it was sort of originally intended for: logging into a persistent online battlefield spanning multiple large areas (that will hopefully be connected stategically someday), for as much free time as I have, and then logging out again and going about my life, a few certs richer and maybe a BR higher.

    I'm not interested in MLG tournaments, not as a participant where it feels like a second or third job, complete with rigid commitment requirements and obedience to yet another boss, in this case an outfit leader.

    I'm not interested in watching these, especially after the most recent disasters. Arrogantly congratulating warpgate campers and lots of ugly self-promotion isn't entertaining for me.

    I'm not happy about the ways big and small that MLG politics will influence the game for the rest of us. It's clear that lock-on weapons, grenade launchers, and lots of other equipment that exists both in real life and in this game as "unskilled" yet tactically interesting choices are on the chopping block if their lobby has their way.

    I'm here for the big battlefield, not the little ones. I'm not interested in battle islands. I probably won't even be allowed to play in one without a large outfit and an invitation the way things sound like.

    Socially, even culturally, I've seen a coarsening on this forum over the past year. Yeah, sometimes my worst posts can be a part of it, but with or without me it's been a steep slide into the League of Legends style of "your video game statistics are terrible so you must be a bad person and are not permitted an opinion in an opinion-based forum".

    I am willing to co-exist with these MLG guys. But I don't want to be them, nor do I care about their antics. I hope there's enough of a game left after they're done with it to play and enjoy in the time ahead.
    • Up x 60
  2. Giggily

    okay
    • Up x 8
  3. Earthman

    Yes, I think so too. :)
    • Up x 1
  4. Chipay

    No one is going to force you
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  5. Earthman

    That's an old cliche that sometimes has relevance, but in this case it is a bit incorrect.

    I am being forced to play this game (if I want to play at all) with diverted resources. I am being forced to deal with the endless nerf-a-lympics that also infested World of Warcraft when its arena lobby went out of control. Anything that needed to be changed for the "esport" also affected the rest of us.
    • Up x 25
  6. Chipay


    You're already forced to deal with endless nerf-a-lympics here on forumside, nerf ZOE, nerf Striker, nerf Vulcan, nerf Fractures, ...
    Anything that'll be changed for the "esport" will be changed because it isn't balanced in the game, not because MLG people made SOE their personal slave.
    • Up x 4
  7. Mustarde

    The game is balanced around in-house metrics SOE uses to determine if certain classes/weapons/abilities are outperforming others. And yes, they have let a few things linger that needed to be balanced sooner, during this drought of optimization. But it is not being changed for "MLG". It is because of liver server statistics.

    I have no idea why you felt the need to create this post, after the other, very toxic thread was just locked. We get it, you don't like MLG. Great. Don't watch it. Just play PS2, and make sure to keep your forumside KDR up.
    • Up x 10
  8. Earthman

    This thread, far as I know, is not toxic. I felt after that other thread to make a point that other points of view and other interests exist in this game other than what MLG wants. A singular focus isn't called for here and that's exactly the problem that I brought up.

    "if you don't like X don't do X" is well and good, until that X intrudes elsewhere in the same sphere of interest. A relevant example would be arenas in WoW. "If you dont like arenas dont do arenas", right? Too bad that half of the powers on my rotation got changed, most for the worse, based upon what they did in arenas and how arena politics demanded they be changed.

    Yeah, I'm already expecting to be flamed for that comparision, but I stand by it. Sometimes "if you dont like X dont do X" isn't the be-all end-all solution to problems.

    Look at this forum: how many weapons and gameplay options are being demanded to be removed entirely because of some "skill" quotient? "It doesn't take skill to use, remove it or nerf it bad". See it all the time here. Surprise! Not everyone here is an e-athlete that is interested in being in some sniperlympic decathalon.
    • Up x 3
  9. Yuukikun

    all PVP games need some kind of balance. You're not farming bots, and the way you talk, since using aimbot is considered no-skill but a strategy, it'd be okay with you right?

    i don't want to be in MLG nor do i care about watching them. But if there's anyone placed to talk about balance, it's the high skilled players.

    If you accept that people abuse of ''skill less weapons'' for their own fun while ruining the fun of so many others, then you better go play runescape.

    "Anthing that needed to be changed for the ''esports'' also affected the rest of us'' -> because people people spawn camping with ubgl and tanks doesn't affect the new players trying to enjoy their first fight but can't even go out of that spawn building without dying instanly.

    There was never a game that was perfect since the beginning. There's always improvements possible. Suggestion forums and gameplay discussion are for that exact purpose.

    Making things fair has always been more fun for me, but i guess there's people like you who prefer stepping on people with less means with your pro ''skill less'' weapons. This game is not for you if you can't understand that your fun should not ruin other's fun. If you want to be the best of the game without even trying, i'd suggest you play PvE games :D
    • Up x 1
  10. DeusExForever

    Planetside 2 is like WoW's RBGs, but more interesting, in a MMO setting (not instances nor having to wait on queues). I consider it the old AV 24/7 and that's what's addicting to me, endless battles without ticket bleeds.

    Only thing missing is a random massive world boss to kill (some alien since this is Planetside 2), that will pit all 3 factions against it, to give it that patchwork MMO feel.

    But as for MLG, PS2 just isn't balanced for it. If the battles are won by face rolling with MAXes and vehicles, might as well just make the game only about vehicles (as that's what MAXes are, mobile humanoid tanks). For MLG all roles need to be supported and balanced for it -- and now you know why WoW PvP isn't played in MLG (Blizzard refuses to balance the classes, they have FoTM instead).
  11. Earthman

    Big strawman in the very first lines. I have written at length my concern about rampant cheats and the growing problem the game has with them, and that more active and regular enforcement is needed.

    The problem with balance the way MLG players tend to see it is that it requires a perfectly symmetrical arena with an even number of pre-invited participants to even count. How does a massively-multiplayer game reconcile the idea of "log in and fight" with this? I'd say the answer is "very poorly".

    I do agree that these forums exist for the very purpose of trying to improve the game. Where I don't agree is the notion that esport people and their followers automatically have more valid opinions. It's an artificial heirarchy based entirely on self-importance and nothing more.

    Odd that you say my "fun" is the one ruining other people's fun. I don't feel the need to measure each and every thing I do in a game based upon what the MLG lords decree is "skilled", so I'd argue that they are the ones determining what is "bad wrong fun" and what is divinely-ordained and permitted behavior in this game.

    The condescending "if you don't like it go play PVE games", smiley included, doesn't help your post either.
    • Up x 3
  12. Earthman

    I was into battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. I suppose that's why I felt that Planetside 2 was a game for me: it was the same idea from a first person shooter perspective and a very old-fashioned persistent style of battleground.
  13. Yuukikun


    MLG is not the best, but they mostly gather high skill players, which almost all the time have more experience and better understanding of game mechanics. If they think something is unfair i prefer believing them than a 0,2 kd kid that gets mad because he got killed from behind by a medic using the default pistol. It's the same principle of people going to university. It's like saying that lawyers should not have more decisive power than a normal person knowing nothing at all about laws in making new laws. They studied years in college/univ so they get a bigger decisive power. People who reach mlg level are the same, they didn't go for school for it, but they have worked hard to understand everything in the game and have a better understanding of the game and its mechanics, therefore their opinion is much more relevant.

    Population is something that fluctuates every minutes. You can never use this as a reference to balance this game, the best way possible is to balance for even numbers.

    All pvp games need to have fair teams and fair situations for players in both camps. Yes if a team has an advantage over the other one because of a certain weapon or vehicle, it will reduce the fun of the other team. If you use something considered ''OP'' by everyone, yes your fun ruins other's. If you ruin someone's fun by beating them with equal chances as them, then it's their own immaturity.

    You don't have to calculate everything yourself. Just let the high skilled players who invested so much of their time in this game and know alot better than you about it do what's right for everyone. If you don't have fun because you don't have a disgusting advantage over your opponent, PVP games are not for you. It's as simple as that.
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  14. Earthman

    Sounds curiously like a "trickle down" promise to me. And it's back with the same "trust me" guarantees that say that it works that way because, well, you say it works that way.

    I didn't like the way the self-declared competitive people in World of Warcraft determined for the rest of us how the game ought to be played and how our powers should be adjusted. They probably said the same thing about how they knew "what was right for everyone" and made entire styles of gameplay impossible after they were done with them.
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  15. DeadliestMoon

    Just like I said in the other thread. MLG isn't working because people (much like the OP) don't want it to work.
  16. Earthman

    On a side note, it's clear and obvious that part of the agenda is "everyone will used skilled weapons only, no exceptions" with a strict dictation of what a "skilled" weapon is.

    Not all of us want to play sniper tag with each other. Period.
  17. Earthman

    Are you saying I don't believe in it strongly enough and haven't clapped my hands loudly enough to resurrect Tinker Bell?

    Or do you mean that I'm not actively supporting it, watching the videos of it (the ones I saw convinced me that I don't want to see any more), nor cheering it on in the forums and demanding the reign of my MLG overlords?

    Guilty as charged.
    • Up x 2
  18. DeusExForever

    The 10% telling how the 90% how to play?

    We saw what that did for EQ/EQII, too (how many play now? Less than 20k combined?). -_-

    The idea is to have some fairness in a game. Where a newbie can jump in and get into the action -- and feel he's part of the game, not just cannon fodder. The more he feels he can make a difference, the more players will play and stay to play.

    What's the point in getting to level 100 when there's too few to fight against to be enjoyable?

    There's a difference between fairness and ease. Too many are associating them together, when they're separate concepts. Fairness is 1v1 combat there's 60/40 chance of succeeding. Ease in jumping into a new game and being able to contribute something without waiting months to actually kill all the "end-gamers" (which is a problem in MMOs, have to have a steady stream of new players, or the game dies simply because there's not enough players to keep the group warfare going). Too many publishers miss this, and why so many MMOs don't last, or barely hanging on.
    • Up x 2
  19. Yuukikun

    I never played WoW but the way you describe it, it's an irrelevent example. You're saying that the pvp balancing ruined pve gameplay, that's completely different. There are games like Dragon Nest that have stats for both pvp and pve separately. Planetside2 was a pvp game from the start and balancing was part of the game life since start also.

    I understand that you wouldn'T trust the decisions of these mlg players so easily, seeing all the corruption in the world, why wouldn't they do the same for this game. That's a very strong argument. All i can say to reply to this is, the mlg players are from all 3 different factions, and there is no money made out of the game balancing like governments get for ruling. This reduces by alot the chances of corruption.

    I never said it's perfect, but it's probably the best we can get. SOE is a company and by default, a company's goal is to make profit. That being said, the devs prefer doing new stuff that will make them get more profits rather than play the game for the only purpose of balancing, and the most relevent opinions are those of the people with the best understanding and most experience on the game, which strongly correlates with people going to mlg.

    Again, it's not perfect, since it's made by humans, and managed by humans, but a game that tends as much as possible towards fairness for PVP will be a more fun than an unfair games with people abusing the balance flaws ruining other people's fun.
  20. Earthman

    I agree with this guy, wholeheartedly, and he added stuff I failed to mention in the OP.

    It may fly over the head of self-declared "skilled" elite players that the rest of us exist and pay money and are a part of the game too. They may not approve of some play styles, some weapons, that sort of thing, and in their selfish outlook on the game demand that everyone use only what they deem "skilled" weapons or simply go without. It's petty and condescending to repeat that tired meme that these guys know what's best for us.

    Sometimes, there's a big swarm of camped around a Sunderer, and my UBGL happens to be present so I can lob a shot over a hill that breaks the stalemate. NO SKILL, I know, but damn it, I'm not playing this to please the "pro" lobby.
    • Up x 3