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Deathmatch mode: like pissing in an ocean of piss
FyreWulff
YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
So I did something the other day. I took out the design doc for one of my games and deleted everything that had to do with deathmatch/slayer/player vs player shooting and dying.
I did this because I came to the realization that implementing a deathmatch in a FPS this days is like pissing in an ocean of piss. Everyone has it. Run forward, shoot, die, come back, shoot die. Not much about it has changed since the early days and nothing will probably happen with it anytime soon.
Having deathmatch in your game usually means:
- everyone plays just that and not any of your objective/strategic gametypes that you spent $texas on developing, because it requires no real thought.
- for some reason this game mode also attracts the assholes of the playerbase.
- people constantly try to turn the deathmatch mode of a game into the deathmatch mode of another game, to the point that most game have homogenized into each other.
I mean, look at Natural Selection. One of the best strategic mods, great objective mode. Then they implemented Combat. Now good luck finding a reliable server that hosts the original mode, because everyone just wants to run around shooting each other.
Look at TF2. No deathmatch mode up until recently and it is doing very well, so you don't need it to sell copies. And I think Valve made their implementation intentionally annoying to keep the game from degrading into deathmatch.
Look at GoW2. The most popular mode is... well, basically deathmatch, but against bots, aka Horde. This is probably due to the fact that it's way more fun to play WITH people against bots that don't call you racial slurs and have a vocabulary of five words that they mimic once reading MLG's website.
Finally, Halo 3. Ranked Slayer has a population of 50,000+ people constantly. Ranked Objective struggles at times to have over 500.
tl;dr Do any of you actually care about deathmatch in newer games? Are you more likely to buy a game based off it's objective modes (CTF, Bomb, etc) or more likely to base it off deathmatch modes?
I did this because I came to the realization that implementing a deathmatch in a FPS this days is like pissing in an ocean of piss. Everyone has it. Run forward, shoot, die, come back, shoot die. Not much about it has changed since the early days and nothing will probably happen with it anytime soon.
Having deathmatch in your game usually means:
- everyone plays just that and not any of your objective/strategic gametypes that you spent $texas on developing, because it requires no real thought.
- for some reason this game mode also attracts the assholes of the playerbase.
- people constantly try to turn the deathmatch mode of a game into the deathmatch mode of another game, to the point that most game have homogenized into each other.
I mean, look at Natural Selection. One of the best strategic mods, great objective mode. Then they implemented Combat. Now good luck finding a reliable server that hosts the original mode, because everyone just wants to run around shooting each other.
Look at TF2. No deathmatch mode up until recently and it is doing very well, so you don't need it to sell copies. And I think Valve made their implementation intentionally annoying to keep the game from degrading into deathmatch.
Look at GoW2. The most popular mode is... well, basically deathmatch, but against bots, aka Horde. This is probably due to the fact that it's way more fun to play WITH people against bots that don't call you racial slurs and have a vocabulary of five words that they mimic once reading MLG's website.
Finally, Halo 3. Ranked Slayer has a population of 50,000+ people constantly. Ranked Objective struggles at times to have over 500.
tl;dr Do any of you actually care about deathmatch in newer games? Are you more likely to buy a game based off it's objective modes (CTF, Bomb, etc) or more likely to base it off deathmatch modes?
FyreWulff on
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Or team rabbit servers, sadly.
It's all I played in Warhawk, it's all I played in Halo 3, all I played in Resistance 2.
Fuck other people. I like having fun on my own without relying on teamwork through an interface that I hate (headsets).
I came to this realisation around the time Counterstrike was released, yes. Deathmatch is only fun to me now when in genres other than FPS.
or there was BTL (I think) that added temporary block destruction, so you could have castle wars
I have my save file of that somewhere
I'll ask you an honest question then:
What was the point of buying and playing Halo 3 after playing R2 (or the other way around) if all you want to do is basically not have to be a team player? I'm excepting Warhawk here since it's a plane combat game. I mean if all I wanted to do was play deathmatch, I'd probably be happy with just playing against bots in Counterstrike or something like that.
While I don't agree with him pretty much at all, you have to agree that the settings become stale after awhile in any game if played over and over and over again.
The last couple of FPS I played competitively had almost zero DM going on, but the gametypes everyone played were even quicker, most of the time, so I could see why. Still, I missed it.
But, on the other hand, DM needs to be balanced in different ways from other gametypes, and if your DM doesn't work then I don't really see the point. You could just replace it with some form of RA or CTFS to get the same pick-up-and-play that most DM players are looking for. Bad DM and bad DM maps are painful to play, but good DM on good DM maps is amazing fun.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Bought Resistance 2 after Halo 3 because I no longer had a 360.
And I play against human opponents because when I die I feel better knowing it was someone more skilled than I rather than a computer.
Playing against computer AI (especially predictable computer AI) isn't fulfilling. Not for me anyway. And it's *extremely* hard for me to care about winning a game when I'm playing with a bunch of people I don't know, who also probably don't care about winning the game and just want to kill stuff. That's why so many people (well internet people) flaunt K/D ratios and not win ratios.
And that's generally where TDM/Deathmatch shine. Everyone (usually) has the same goal in mind. Kill shit.
No to both questions. I care more about the mechanics/gameplay than I do the modes. I don't care what sort of modes a game has as long as the core gameplay is awesome. It never bothered me that CS didn't have CTF (well, they did have hostages... meh) or that Natural Selection (at the start) didn't have a TDM/DM. It's not a selling point either way for me.
That's another thing about DM and TDM. If your base gametype that you built your entire game around is objective-based, and you build weapons and abilities around it, chances are those weapons simply aren't going to work so well in a deathmatch setting. Natural Selection's deathmatch (what I remember of it, at least) suffered because of that. Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught suffered because of the opposite: weapons made for close-to-medium-range indoors deathmatch suddenly pushed into enormous open maps
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Deathmatch is free-for-all, every man for himself. It's a game where you pit your own skills against others' skills. You don't win or lose because the rest of your "team" (and I use that term lightly because most "teams" are a bunch of idiots running around doing what they want, not necessarily what's strategic) isn't very good, or isn't good enough. Some people, like myself, enjoy the fact that when we compete, and score or rank at a certain place at the end of the match, it's because of our own skills and victories/failures. Not because some other random jokers screwed over the whole team, or because we flopped around and a few key players brought the team to victory. You won because you won, or lost because you lost. For some people like myself, there's more satisfaction in that.
And then when playing on teams, almost always required for "objective based" multiplayer modes, you often end up without anybody really playing all that well together. There's not much actual planning or execution. Everyone knows the basic gist of what needs to be done and then goes and tries to do it. Sometimes you'll help or be helped with cover fire, but that's about where it ends. It sucks. It does indeed basically merge into a "deathmatch" because of this attitude, this self-serving nature of players (not because they're necessarily selfish, but becaues they don't know and don't care about the other random jokers on their team that they've never met or spoken to). So you basically do this: deathmatch deathmatch deathmatch until an "objective" is cleared, then deathmatch deathmatch deathmatch, until the next thing is "cleared." It becomes so.. samey feeling as deathmatch, except you're limited to shooting players of a certain color instead of just anyone.
What's the remedy for this? Playing with people you know or people in an online community like Penny Arcade. It's great if you can get players together and have fun together because you can strategize and listen to one another and accomplish things. But the caveat is that some people don't have the time or the schedules to meet up with several other people on a board or with friends online at certain times to play these games. And even then they may not be able to play for long or certain periods of time. Friends may not all have the game or something. The main problem is scheduling. Most people prefer to play when their own schedule permits; and you can't always meet up with people for a good team. But your schedule doesn't matter with DeathMatch. You hop on and off anytime you want. It's quick and easy, play as little or as long as you want. No scheduling, getting in touch with people, getting on at certain times, don't have to "disappoint" others if you can only play for 5 minutes. On, fun, off. However long/short you want.
So that's the issue for a lot of people.
For the record, I'm not an "asshole" online when I play deathmatch. I just love arcadey, fast-paced free for all, for certain games. I enjoy it. I'm very polite and I don't overkill my oponents, because I want them to learn and have fun. I give tips if they ask for it or want to know something.
But I just don't get the same kind of satisfaction out of objective-multi. And when I do it's only because I've had the time and scheduling to get together with friends/online groups. And that's rare rare rare because of my schedule/social life.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I played way too much UT2k4 deathmatch so now when I play an FPS I look for a great single player mission and/or great teamplay based multiplayer (L4D, TF2, Battlefield 2142 are my favorite multiplayer FPS games at the moment).
The only game to somewhat solve this problem was CoD4 where you join matches 'in progress', but it didn't solve all the problems.
Oh I was referring to Free-For-All deathmatch, not team-based Deathmatch.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I'm all about FFA.
The unranked FFA playlist is the only one in Halo 3 that doesn't penalize you EXP for quitting, for example.
It'd be nice if more games could pull off something akin to the Smash Brothers Brawl implementation and make people that leave be taken over by bots. Honestly, for the short 10 minutes I played UT3 on 360 before trading it in, it was hard to tell or care if the character i just killed was a human or a bot.
I think there's a PA comic about that related to UT 2k4. I've had the same thing happen to me, too.
However, I don't much like CTF either. Prefer the objective-based play to make a little more sense.
Why? Because I'm less likely to die when playing team-based multi. And when I die less I have more fun. It also doesn't help that I gravitate toward support roles rather than front line roles. I spend a lot of time on TF2 as a medic.
My pet peeve is when people play the other modes as if they were deathmatch. So you have people doing things to increase their kill count that don't necessarily help the team win. So it's good to keep vanilla deathmatch around to keep these people from ruining other games.
That is probably the most annoying group. You win a flag game 3-0 but the guy that was sitting back and sniping you says "but I went positive! 25 kills!"
Yeah, congratulations on totally helping your team by pumping up your kill/death ratio.
What's funny about TF2 is that Snipers are mainly used to sniper other Snipers.
So it's just one of those things we'll have to deal with from now until the end of days.
Only halfway, a decent sniper who is not being counter-sniped can decimate an attacking team. They'll stay in the back all day if they can, blowing off people's heads.
Unreal Tournament 3, on the other hand, feels floaty and disconnected, and the weapons lack impact. So it is no surprise that gamers have passed it up in favor of other games.
Because people don't know any better.
Never played three, but UT99 to 2k4 were fantastic.
Yeah that's true. Basically you take out the other sniper(s) and then use the respawn timer to your advantage and kill more important targets.
Because it may not be the deathmatch that's drawing people in, if so. It would be the feeling of accomplishment with having a group of people function as a team, and lay waste to an opposing team.
It's what make Halo fun at any rate. Pure FFA slayer gets pretty dull pretty fast.. but when you and 7 other buddies fight tooth and nail for 20 minutes to capture a flag and come out on top, I guarantee you everyone will want to go back in for one more game.
There are only so many gamers so it's not hard to believe that some of the old Quake/UT DM vets have moved on to other franchises.