To the Call of Duty players ruining this game..here's your wake up call..

If there's anything PS2 and COD players have in common is the utmost undeserved arrogance and condescending attitude. I just find it funny PS2 players have a tendency to look down at COD players while they both have a smug way of looking at life and think they're superior to everyone else. If you need any example, just look at threads from mine nerf and etc.

But I do agree with the Tripwire dudes, gaming has gone from varied mechanics to a single sprint and spray we see now. There's not much variance because people now don't like change.

the kids who say "call of duty player" lol whatt???

seriously, /practice

The thing about twitch skill is that it is always prevalent in any shooter regardless of TTK. With lower TTKs it is the primary skill that predominates any other skill needed such as the ability to aim/track other players or the ability to "dance". Even in longer TTK situations if you have two players who are on equal ground with their ability to aim/track usually the player with the higher reaction time will come out on top. In RO2 you still needed twitch in situations where a guy would come around a corner, usually who ever reacted the fastest got the kill if both of you could aim decently well. It still required the reaction time "skill" but it wasn't what was primarily needed for the game.

This interview is amazing. The guy name-drops Deus Ex like it's indicative of the quality of games around that time. It's not. It came out in 2000, when everybody and their dog was shoveling ****** FPS games to the market.

Then he tells us how he thinks CoD players are dumb and he made them a game mode that should be dumb enough, and when they turned out to be too dumb to appreciate what Her Royal Highness had offered, he was all "Y U NO LIKE MY GAME!??!?!?!" When your attitude towards your customers is that bad, you don't deserve their business.

Yeap.

Its really has.

People equate its rather abitary design choices and game mechanics with a game being 'good' or not now.

I think his point is more about the comerical and critical success of Deus Ex and how that appears to relatively be more difficult for a game trying to do something like that in the current market.

I think its a fair point.

That's the thing, they AREN'T his customers because he's not making CoD. That's what saddens him. All these gamers want is CoD. Every game must play like CoD. Every combat situation must be like CoD. If it's not CoD or a CoD clone, they hate it. So these people wont buy his game because it's not CoD and doesn't use CoD mechanics. He's not treating customers bad, he's treating mindless idiots like mindless idiots.

Whilst there are a lot of good points in the article, this is illustrating what I think at least for the community of forumside is the biggest problem with the players preception of the game.

Fundamentally we are in a giant combined arms game, in which, yes. sometimes you just going to get shot to **** by the guy you never saw, or bombed into oblivion.

You need to be able to just loose with a bit of grace from time to time.

A lot of the PS2 community, really struggles with that. In large part I think becuase of the skinner box that is CoD

I am coming from ArmA2 / Americas Army Online and also RO. There you need patience and skill. And it is very true what he says about the CoD players. A good CoD player cannot compete in sniping, aiming and teamwork than a good ArmA2 player.

CoD is FPS fast food. You get it fast, eat it fast and you become good at it very fast. The CoD Players hate games like AAO or ArmA in general. These games are too demanding. Either they cry about the "clunky" movement, the hard sniping (ArmA ACE mod, if anybody knows what I mean) and the patient movement to achieve your goal as a team.

I completely agree with the article the OP posted.

Wrong. Just because Call of Duty is a mindless shooter doesn't mean everyone has to use it as a scapegoat. It has nothing to do with the Call of Duty players, it is all to do with bad players being mad and seeking something to blame.

Before you throw me with a Call of Duty kid insult keep in mind my first Call of Duty was Modern Warfare 2.

Their last game was the largest selling cultural artificat (music, film, anything..) in the UK last year
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21769023
It would be suprising if the UK was a complete outlier here.

It is thus a work which in virtue of being one of the most popular has a influence not only on the industry, but gamers perception of the industry.

It's a fairly banal observation at this point. CoD has become a working paradigm for the FPS industry. ITs what people are used to, thats what a paradigm is.

And its fairly simple game mechanics, have thus unforunately,also become the paradigm for the industry. A good FPS, becomes a good FPS in virtue of being like the good FPS CoDx:eletric boogaloo. Its a more than a little platonic.

Ok?

I think MW1 has fairly good story telling the others less so, doesn't change the fact its barely changed its game mechanics since the first one and they were only anything other than 'simple' back when iron sights was still fairly innovative.

sorry, i have to chim in...

thats absolutly not true
in my opinion and experience the games that went in the redicioules low ttk direction, read 1 shot kills or incapacitates, are the ones with the highest learningcurve and highest amount of skill requiered by the players...

this are the games that tend to the simulation side of the spectre (aka realism) like arma or the (fantastic) red orchestra.

im under the impression that you use a really limited definition of "skill" like twitch reflexes and gamey behaviour like "bunnyhopping", "rocketjumping" etc... which are very important in classics like unreal tournament, quake, etc... or in other words, were used in arcade shooters

personally im very glad that ps2 is NOT an arcade shooter and has a much wider definition and use of skillsets, allowing for a wide range of playstyles

...and i hate all those nerf this, nerf that threads of whinnie people in this forums... there where only three nerf/buffs in the game that were neccessary, all the others is succumbing to the forumwarriors that are just a very vocal minority.
and, yes the trend to dumb down EVERYTHING in games in the last 10 years is stupid as *****, but the guys who want to play deep engrossing games that require you to deal with the game (aka learning) are , hmmm... lets see... 300k to 400k people if you are lucky.
call of duty mw or wow (or any other high street smash hit) sell over ten million copys... thats a magnitude more. people who love a deep, engrossing experience are a tiny minority in comparison.

food for thought: the old hexsystem and the proposed new hexsystem. the new system LIMITS the player, it takes away from the sandbox approach and the options a player has. yet its applauded like the second coming of christ. only a few bravehearts oppose it.
why?
because most people dont like open options, they prefere a (small? )set of predefined options. most people cant handle freedom, they feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed, they miss direction, often paired with the inability/unwillingness to figure things out by themselfs.

if you take a singleplayer sandbox like mount and blade, where you start the game after a short (and not so well done ) tutorial in the streets of a town with a LOT of posabilities but literaly NO direction of what to do you end up with a dedicatet fanbase that LOVES the game and 5 to 10 times as many that give up after several hours because they cant figure out what to do (hint: its up to you)

another observation
when i started gaming, you had to write a configuration file for EVERY game you play anew (autoconfig.bat anyone?), when the first lan capable games emerged you configured your lan literally for hours, and every time a new guy joined up you started at square one... . needless to say, if you went through all this loops a difficult, deep, complex and engaging game with a steep learningcurve was not a problem, it was the reason to go through all this problems

times have changed.
dont understand me wrong. i love the fact that accessability is much easier today, i love the fact that many have come to the point that complexity doesnt mean complicated. i love the fact that you just have to start the game and you just play it, no hassles around. what i miss is the mindset of the "old" gamers...

cheers

evilduck

Depends on your definition. It's certainly an accountants defination, which is largely why we've not had any FPS eveolution in a decade and endless clone games (as well as clone films and largely music).

Nice insight. I'd never thought about it before in the way he phrased it, in terms of aspects that compress the skill distribution. We have them in PS2; Max units (NC specifically I'm thinking), old style libs, grenades and anti-infantry rocket launchers.

But you know what, I think PS2 is in a good place. I've played and competed in a lot of FPSs, and don't often feel when I die in PS2 that it was "the stupid game" that killed me, more that I did something wrong.

Gamers dont realize that our hobby wouldnt be as big as it is now if it didnt cater to the more casual market. Many gamers today wouldnt have been gamers 10-20 years ago.

You cant blame CoD for "spoiling" gamers because we wouldnt even have that population of new gamers to begin with if not for an easy entry game like CoD. If games like CoD and WoW never came around, gaming would not have grown and it would have remained a niche hobby. You would still be playing games, because you are a hardcore gamer- but those millions upon million in sales wouldn't exist.

So the RO2 developer is not "losing" any customers. The same people who wouldve played his game before will play it now. He cant expect to appeal to the new generation of gamers who would have never even been there in the first place if only games like RO2 were made.

no the older hex system had gigantic problems like ghost capping
you could be defending a facility and a group of 2 people could take have the continent away from you

That looks a lot like a broken window fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

I mean its akin to saying without Micheal Bay movies the Hurt locker would never have made any money.

The guy from the interview is completely RIGHT.
Ask yourself why no real new Counter-Strike or Quake or Unreal Tournament or any other competitive e-sport online shooter came out for over 10 years? Call of Duty destroyed the potential playerbase for such games. Today almost everything feels like CoD. Halo, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, they all go into the CoD direction and it's a shame, as they all had unique gameplay when they originally came out. A new Quake would probably die out just because CoD kids are already done because of the sheer pace of the game, gameplay elements like circle jumping and strafe jumping let aside.

That Activision makes a lot of money with tricking players into believing they are good at something is a good move for them, no question. Made them rich to dumb people down. Real teamplaying dies out with that too. Look at PS2, people play what gives them the most easy Certs (Engineer) or let's them live the longest (HA), not what the team actually needs in given situations. Ok, it is also a design fail by SOE to make everything so expensive that people see the urge to only play what gives them the most Certs, but it becomes absurd when medics don't heal wounded mates so they die and get more XP for a revive or don't revive other medics so they can grap more revive XP. Egoism today is a much bigger issue in teamgames than 10 years ago.

Disagree. Games like Starcraft(1998), CS1.6(2000?) and Q3A(1999) had a massive competitive scene. COD, and games like it, strived to appease everyone and thus started a time where companies realised the money wasn't in catering to the competitive gamers anymore. It has since then watered down the term E-sports to the point where it means nothing at all.

Why? Because there are so many games. Too many game's worth run out, and with them the possibility for a growing E-sport/competitive scene. Modern games, sadly, are like music on the Top40. Designed to draw people in with fancy graphics and easy to understand gameplay. The problem is these games have zero staying power.

In other words, the many and shallow titles of today is diluting, and oversaturating, the market with so many games we're choking on them. It sucks, because I am a gamer, I don't want the same regurgitated fast food experience over and over. What's worse is that the new generation of gamers are brought up with this "consume and discard"-mentality, and go on to "try to make every game like COD/WoW."

It is ironic really, but as gaming as a hobby has been publicly accepted it seems the avid gamers have once again become a subject of redicule. Being really into a game makes you a fanboy, being really into a game makes you a "no lifer", and so on.

So yeah, I'm not grateful at all to COD or WoW(or rather what WoW, over time, became).

One nice thing about the changes every patch brings to PS2 is that I like it less and less. I'm not alone in this. One of my outfit members found a game we never heard of and has been around 10 years+ now. Its basically Privateer in space. No idea how I never heard of it for 10 years but we started playing last night and it was good. So thank you PS2 devs, a game I've been hoping for since I was a kid is basically out there already and due to what you are doing to PS2 I accidentally found it!