Things you learn about yourself from video games

[JointStrikeFighter]

I've learnt that Stark hates himself. He played Oblvion AND Amoured Core 4 Answer today.

[Crazedwraith]

I've learnt I'm really bad at video games.

[Tasoth]

I've learned that I'm horrible at free for all deathmatch and I love objective games.

My play style is flexible. At the start, I'll rush the closest objective and either wait with a grenade or a burst of fire for the first fucks that show upto it or keep steaming a head and get to cover/pick up the bomb before anyone else does (really applicable in CoD4 with a SMG and Extreme Conditioning). After the opening moments, I'll either drop to defense if my team is full of morons more focused on killing or offense if I can make a cap.

I die typically more then I kill, but I tend to have the highest overall objective points in the game.

I tend not to snipe in games where the slot is limited, but in CoD, I'm the dick who counter snipes from the awkward positions most people don't look at. I still keep a low K/D ratio because I move up instead of camping.

[Losonti Tokash]

I've learned that I'm much better at every sort of game than my friends. And that is why the only people who will play competitive game modes with me anymore are people on the internet. I mean I do call one of my friends an incompetent cockbag (for example) but that's only after he's thrown the 360 controller into the couch hard enough to turn it off.

Also when it comes to PC gaming I can tolerate a ridiculous amount of technical issues because I'm too cheap/broke to buy new computer parts. So I come up with workarounds like never looking at nukes or carpet bombing in WiC because the framerate drops into the single digits if I do. Or on my old old old computer I would play solitaire on my phone while Half-Life 2 would do its mid-level loading for a few minutes.

[chitoryu12]

I've found while playing free-roaming RPGs like Fallout or Elder Scrolls that I have an irresistable urge to grab whatever valueable stuff I can find so I can sell it later, and will often go through my massive inventory to try and find things I can afford dumping to keep my weight down.

Of course, I generally get distracted on my way to the shop and end up finding even MORE loot to bog myself down with.

[Glimmervoid]

That if I was French and a general just before the out break of WWII, I would think that the Maginot Line was the best thing since sliced bread.

Attacking is for idiots if you can sit behind defenses and shoot every one who comes. Pity video games don't work like real life.

In case it is not clear I like to turtle when playing RTSs. I like it a lot.

[CaptHawkeye]

The problem with guard duty is that no one wants to do it. The advantage of having your enemy come to you is offset by the fact that you don't know *when* if ever, he's going to do so. It turns out no one wants to stick around at some abandoned flag and do nothing for 15 min.

This is the biggest reason I hate the battlefield games though. Me and a bunch of dudes cap a whole bunch of flags in order, only to look back on the mini map and see some retard in a drop ship or buggy has taken all the flags we took 5 minutes ago. Why play the game when you can just stat-pad without challenge? Posers.

[Ryan Thunder]

I tend to turtle like nothing else. My standard strategy in TA involves about 40+ advanced construction aircraft building creeping defensive lines and multiple RFLRPC firebases. Oh, and one of those targeting facilities, of course.

In shooters, I'm cannon fodder. I just kill whoever I can, and try to distract the enemy so my teammates can do whatever it is they need to do.

[Darmalus]

This thread made me realize that I haven't purchased or played another video game since I got World of Warcraft in 2005. Well, I gave EVE Online a shot, the people I played with were cool, but man was the game ever boring.

[Stark]

Wow, there are people who don't understand that rts games have a unit/defence balance and some games support turtling and others don't? I guess when I build giant defence in TA it's because I'm a skilled, intelligent mastermind and not that the whole game is built for the idea and it's never work in a unit-focused game or a skirmish-, raid-focused game.

I'm not sure if that makes people stupidit just delusional. Let's turtle in Age of Empires and wonder why we ALWAYS LOSE. . That said it's another great example of disguised cowardice; this thread is quite fascinating for revealing this.

[CaptHawkeye]

At least nobody brags about being a coward for the most part. Like Mr. Uber-Snipez on InsertFPS who thinks his backwater hiding spot at the Burger King was at all clever.

[Glimmervoid]

I turtled plenty in Age of Empires II. Once of my favourite thing to do was going Japanese and set the map in skirmish mode to be world map. I would then build a giant wall across the entire bottom half of Japan. I spent a lot of time designing that wall. It went something like this if I remember correctly.

Key
c – Cannon tower
w – Wall
t – Trebuchet


Them
^ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc^
|wwtwwwtwwwtwwwwtwwwwwtwwwww|
|wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww|
Me

Or at least that’s how I remember it. It’s been a while since I played the game.

If I remember correctly I turtle a lot in Age of Empires I as well.
Also no one claimed to be ‘a skilled, intelligent mastermind’ just because they turtled. I just said it’s what I do. I enjoy it. I like designing defences. So I really don’t understand why you are pointing out that some games make it hard or impossible to turtle. So what!

[Stark]

Oh yeah that's practical in a competitive sense. That's like saying units are good in TA because your 'strategy' is to build krigoths; it'll never work unless youre already winning or your opponent doesn't raid, which is generally the case in 'friendly' games.

Breaking a turtling habit will -always- make you a better player, and it's just another word for cowardice or cheese depending on the game. Oh look warzone 2100 deteriorated into a fortress slugfest - IM SUCH A GREAT TURTLER LOL.

[Master_Baerne]

I'm the guy who sets up elaborate traps in FPSs - land mines, Claymores, exploding barrels, what have you are my best friend. In RTS games, I'll spend half an hour building interlocking webs of fortresses supported by continuous air patrols, in Rise of Nations, or huge columns of spearmen (in Age of Empires) and siege weapons and warships up the wazoo.

Then I basically wait and see how long it takes the enemy to turn it all to dust with no support from me. I enjoy convoluted scenarios and experimentation.

[Vehrec]

I have a deep and abiding love for delegating authority in games. I love RTS's that let you automate parts of the process, so I can sit back and watch my beautifully designed machine to the work for me. I also tend to count on people to do their share of the work-which admittedly has backfired on me more than once when someone didn't understand how teamwork is supposed to go.

I've also learned that I'm pretty easygoing about most things, and don't tend to stress out over winning and lossing much. After all, it's just a game.

[Glass Pearl Player]

What I learned from gaming:

• I suck at micromanaging, and I do not know what MM has lost in a Real Time Strategy game. Yes, Blizzard, I'm looking at you.
• Cheating is boring. Tried the duplicating trick in the original Diablo maybe twice, then lost interest.
• Most of the time, I'm mediocre in FPS games (or is it my 260ms ping?)
• All of the time, I am stubborn. Yes, I will rush that ramjet rifle sniper with a shotgun. Yes, this is my fourth respawn at doing so. No, I'm not getting bored.
• Sniping is fun, even if I miss a lot. Until these godly countersnipers notice me, which they always seem to do.
• Some people think that NOD Stealth Black Hands in C&C Renegade are invincible if they are invisible. I remember headshotting two of them while they were really, REALLY invisible to me. One was intentional.
• Predictability equals getting fragged (that explains the previous point).
• Always mine your base. Always. If one goes off, replace and investigate.
• Communicate. Just because I can see it does not mean the team noticed it.
• There's no reason to leave your vehicle if SBHs could and therefore will be around. Even if someone tells you that you have been C4ed and are about to blow up like New Years Eve. That somebody is a SBH standing right next to your vehicle.
• Speaking of C4: If you have something, use it before you are forced to respawn.

[Stark]

Watch out everyone, you can't win in FPS with a 260 ping!

[Alyeska]

Watch out everyone, you can't win in FPS with a 260 ping!

I beg to differ. I hopped into a tank in BF2 with the weirdest damned lag. It made me nearly impossible to hit with AT weapons. I couldn't shoot worth shit, but the tank gun has splash damage and the machine gun isn't super accurate meaning the spread made kills easier. I raked in the kills and people complained that I was cheating or some such.

[The Romulan Republic]

That if I was French and a general just before the out break of WWII, I would think that the Maginot Line was the best thing since sliced bread.

Attacking is for idiots if you can sit behind defenses and shoot every one who comes. Pity video games don't work like real life.

In case it is not clear I like to turtle when playing RTSs. I like it a lot.

What games are you playing? The only RTS I have is Age of Empires 3, where turtling has always seemed to me a sure way to die.

(If you're wondering why I don't have other RTS's, its because the one's I want to play usually don't work on my computer).

[The Yosemite Bear]

RPG: I'm he who kills all... (Litterially, I'm William Mony from Unforgiven, I kill men, women, children, animals, and just about anything that walks, flies, swimms, or crawls on it's belly)

[Admiral Drason]

FPS I'm in the middle of the firefights. When I play team deathmatches with my buddys we usually put me on some form of light machine gun because I'm not afraid to stick my face out and lay down some brass. I generally don't snipe becasue I can't hit amoving tarket without semi auto or auto on.

RTS I like to hook around my opponents and flank them with heavy armor. Like in CoH I'll have my buddies pin down the main opposing force in the center while I'll swing around and put tanks in the base.

[Zablorg]

When I play TF2, if either team starts spawn camping, I leave. There is absolutely no reason for me to play if the people I'm playing with can't get out the door, enemy or no. I like to play people with lots of health like Heavy, because I find that people are all too eager to rally around the guy with 300 health, and that makes things more fun for me.

In a FPS like UT3 or something (which I can only play with bots because of lag/few people online), I like to play in large sprawling maps in the open. There's a really fun custom map where you play in a huge-scaled living room. *massive ut3 update coming whee*

I don't actually mind so much if either team starts turtling their intel in TF2, because it's pretty easy to solve with at least one Ubercharge. That's not to say I actually turtle myself because I find it boring as hell, but as long as it isn't a game breaker and the folk in the basement are having some deranged form of fun that's okay.

[El Moose Monstero]

I'm a lone wolf, a stone monkey, a single warrior who has time for no other person and doesn't want my amazing skills to be dragged down or sullied by online play... or alternatively...

I'm a coward who never really had the connection to get into online gaming when it first began, then was too nervous about online gaming and the fact that from what I'd hear from my friends, online gaming seemed to mainly consist of swearing 12 year olds yelling at you for not being as good as them - if I wanted that experience, I'd go back to that laser quest in Morecambe. And then since then it's been a mixture of crap connection, no time and the self same online mistrust/cowardice - mainly singleplayer games or SP mods for me.

On a lan, things are much more pleasant - but I still suck and occassionally get side tracked by doing something which sounds cool but doesn't do much for the game (i.e. stealing enemy spawn plane on old BF and parking it just on the edge of the map - hilarious at the time, and won us the match, but took me most of the game to get it positioned right).

[RazorOutlaw]

If I'm understanding the OP correctly, so I don't follow the trend of rationalizing my actions, then I've learned that in FPS games I'll do just about anything and I usually do it because somebody else wasn't doing it at the time. The only online game that I had real experience in that wasn't a shoot 'em up deathmatch like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament or even Svencop for Half-Life was Battlefield 1942 and its various mods.

If there needed to be a medic, I was a medic, if we needed a tanker I was a tanker, and if there needed to be feet on the ground for an assault on a capture point, well then, I was a foot soldier. I typically tried my best in whatever role I could manage and I learned I could have fun in every class except a sniper. This also extended to the Star Wars mod, Desert Combat, and even Forgotten Hope (the two or three times I played it online) although to be honest the classes there were just variations, I wasn't doing too much differently. I noticed that somebody else mentioned playing defense and occasionally I can stomach that, but it's true, it's a boring job. And most of the time the guy going to capture the point seemed to be always able to kill me.

And Stark, where this idea coming from that snipers and people who re-capture points are simply trying to point-pad themselves? I've gone back to capture points because I'm concerned about the other team, you know, winning. I also don't understand why you say that snipers are necessarily in the game just for the kill-count and not doing anything useful. If those other players aren't in the game because they were just killed by a sniper isn't that technically helping out? I suppose my thinking just might be wrong; the capture of points and killing of opposing players is helping out but that's usually what matches seem to boil down to. It doesn't matter how they might die, or how the point is captured, it was done and that's good for your team.

[chitoryu12]

In RPGs, I have a strange urge to kill everything. I usually don't act on it, but once in a while, when the mood hits me, I'll just massacre everybody. I always try to be stealthy at first, but if I get into a major fight, I have no problems cutting down everything I see walking by.