Muramasa's Coop Trials and Tribulations

[Inaaca]

I'm not sure why you insist on playing with bots in L4D. For me, half the fun is going through the experience with people.

[Muramasa]

Nov 11, 2009 2:21:15 GMT -8 Inaaca said:

I'm not sure why you insist on playing with bots in L4D. For me, half the fun is going through the experience with people.

Just to double check, you're questioning why I'd rather play Versus mode strictly within our contained group as opposed to playing versus mode with 7 other people, and not why I play Left 4 Dead by myself with bots, right?

If the reason is the former, it's for the sake of having a "sterile" environment. Basically, I play and have fun with people I know. It also stems from a slightly anti-social policy I take with people online. I'd rather lose on a team with people I'm familiar with than win on a team full of people I don't know, so to say.

[Inaaca]

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

Hm.. I suppose I can understand... But assuming you have mic contact with the rest of the players, I feel it really tends to simulate the L4D setting. I mean, the characters in the game are pretty much a ragtag team of strangers, too. That being said, I do like playing with our group, I just prefer filling any unfilled slots with humans instead of bots. You pretty much can't strategize with or communicate to bots, and it always feels like this impersonal "dud" slot when I play L4D with then. Coming through with a strategy 4 people came together on always feels more rewarding to me.

I suppose that's just me, though..

[Muramasa]

Nov 11, 2009 7:28:04 GMT -8 Inaaca said:

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

Hm.. I suppose I can understand... But assuming you have mic contact with the rest of the players, I feel it really tends to simulate the L4D setting. I mean, the characters in the game are pretty much a ragtag team of strangers, too. That being said, I do like playing with our group, I just prefer filling any unfilled slots with humans instead of bots. You pretty much can't strategize with or communicate to bots, and it always feels like this impersonal "dud" slot when I play L4D with then. Coming through with a strategy 4 people came together on always feels more rewarding to me.

I suppose that's just me, though..

Okay then. How about this? I don't like the game THAT much to bother putting all of us in a situation where we'd play with strangers. I play multiplayer games with you guys because time is a limited resource, and I want to utilize that resource to it's maximum potential, and part of maximizing that potential is by limited the potential random asstards our team may encounter online so that I may spend the time playing a game and enjoying it with the people I care to enjoy it.

And if that's too technically, then we could look at it in this manner. You feel that playing with random strangers better compliments the atmosphere of Left 4 Dead, thereby making the experience more immersive, and therefore, enjoyable. That's fine, and I'm willing to agree. But I don't like the core Left 4 Dead experience enough to bother playing it in that manner. When I do want to play it, it's usually because Brian and my brother also in the mood to play as well. This gives us 3 people, and while we could wait for some random dude to show up to fill that slot, more than likely this person would be:

A) 5% chance of being cool
B) 90% chance of not being that much different from a bot other than picking up grenade class weapons due to not being within our Skype Channel
C)5% chance of being a real douchebag

Sure, I'm exaggerating the statistics obviously, but the point is that given the setup, that one random person wouldn't matter most of the time anyways. And in a versus mode environment, those other 4 slots from the other team don't necessarily count in a teamplay sense because they're obviously on the other team.

If I wanted to play with random people, there are games that I (and I'd like to emphasize the fact that this is a personal opinion) would rather play because those games' core gameplay is much more enjoyable, like Demon's Soul. In this case, I don't play Left 4 Dead often enough to warrant trying to.

[You probably can't touch this.]

I don't think Sean has been exposed to X-Box Live long enough to develop a round enough understand of the absolute, frothing sea of shit that is there rest of the first-person shooter world. They won't give a shit about your strategy and talking to them over the mic is the last thing on Earth you will want to do. Of course, though, when I played Left 4 Dead, I had an less the reputable copy and could not take it online. I still had a great experience with the game, at least for a while.

[Inaaca]

I don't even own an X-Box.

[Captain Galaxy]

I don't think it has to be an xbox or ps3. All those douchebags just migrated from the PC world.

[Inaaca]

Yeah, I've witnessed firsthand the risks of such encounters, but I feel that they're worth it because, for the most part, my experiences with L4D have been very good.

[Muramasa]

In all truth, when it comes to gauging the number of douchebag players, the grand truth is that they are a vocal minority. But because they are a vocal minority, we remember them much more readily. Much like real life, most people are just there, doing their own thing, mind their own business, trying to have their fun in their own way. Of course, the chances of encounter a nasty person on a video game server is much more higher than it is on real life. But, let me remind you guys that me not playing this game with random people is more of the game's issues (or perhaps my issues with the game) than a people issue.

[Kuat]

Personally, it's not that I mind nasty people, but they just don't do that much for me at all. I play team fortress with strangers, and actually prefer it that way because public with friends is essentially pointless, but I treat them as bots that talk. The majority of people, while harmless, are also sorta just there.

[The Dankness]

www.gametrailers.com/video/review-new-super/59073

Anta, I suggest you take a look at the review for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Not only is it everything we loved about classic Mario ON CRACK, but it promises to take Co-op douchebaggery to the next level of evolution. I'm going to post this in the gai ming thread as well.

[Muramasa]

When you get it, I'm totally going to come over to your house to play it. Of course, if the undertone of the multiplayer is to be an asshole to your friends, is it really coop at that point?

[Inaaca]

Counter-op mode?

[Muramasa]

-Phantasy Star Online(PSO): Part 1-

Hackn' Slashes, dungeon crawlers, useless time fillers. We've all played them at some point in our lives, sinking hours and hours into this type of game. The genre of games usually involves the main character donning a bladed weapon of some sort and hacking the crap out of some baddie in the name of virtue, material rewards, or just for the heck of it. In this author's opinion, what sets the genre apart from either a beat'em up with weapons, or an action rpg, is that unlike a beat'em up, there are more "rpg" elements included, such as stat point distribution, skill sets, and the juggling of equipment. On the other hand, the genre is not quite an action RPG which tend to have more deliberate (not necessarily better) story lines. One can argue that RPGs, especially japanese RPGs, use video games as a story telling format. For a hack'n slash, it's all about the killing and looting.

No matter what you call them, it's a genre that I still come back to from time to time. But it's hardly the hacking or the dungeon exploring that brings me back to them. It's usually not an engrossing story and an interesting world that keeps coming back to it. And while some hack'n slashes have some pretty fun gameplay elements, it's usually not the “game” per say that brings me back to game. It's all about the treasure.

Treasure hunting has been something that I've been enamored with since the days I first watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There's nothing more rewarding than going on a quest, and getting a trophy of your sweat and blood. Sure, the process of bleeding and sweating may involve killing the same monster 8 million times, but when you come out with a +6 Excalibur of the Apocalypse, it makes all that monotony all worth it. And I have not played a game that has made me more obsessed with getting stuff than Phantasy Star Online has. It's not exactly one of the more quintessential hackn' slashes, but it's certainly one of the more well known. Phantasy Star Online debuted in Japan in the year 2000 on the Sega Dreamcast. Many iterations of it has come and gone, but to this day, there are still people playing this game. It's a it's a game with rough edges, but I believe that it's still playable and enjoyable while offering a different kind of gameplay that still manages to stand against the tests of time, especially in today's world of first person shooters and point-and-click "muhmorpergers".

[Captain Galaxy]

I want to play that new super mario game.

[The Dankness]

Truly, I never feel quite as greedy as when I'm playing a hack n slash dungeon crawler, and Phantasy Star is one of the best. Where else can I be an afro-having scientist wielding a laser-halberd against legions of dragons and robots?

Also, do you remember the Great Cave Offensive minigame in Kirby's Super Star? That's another great way to satiate your hunger for treasure hunting.

[Muramasa]

-Phantasy Star Online (part 2)-

It's rather hard to describe Phantasy Star Online without playing it. Any verbal descriptions of it seem to make it a much more duller game than it actually is. The best way to describe it is like a space-themed fantasy where a group of space travelers are trying to investigate the mysterious disappearance of another group of travelers. In doing so, they will investigate a series of locations including forests and mines, and use a variety of weapons such as light sabers, photon rifles, giant swords, and what not.

I've honestly never really played Phantasy Star games when it was just a standard jRPG, and strangely, I never actually played Phantasy Star Online online. I just didn't have access to decent connection, so my affairs with the game had been largely solo. When it was re-released on the Gamecube, I was able to play with my brother, and then the game became a new breed of fun. With my brother in tow, we were able to complement each other much more effectively by being different classes. In addition to that, both our characters had different section IDs, meaning that we'd get different items, allowing us to open more treasure hunting opportunities. When free servers hosting Phantasy Star Online Episode 4: Blue Burst came around, it opened my party possibilities to 4 people. By this point however, I didn't have much people to play with. In addition to that, I was out of the Phantasy Star phase myself, and was busy playing other dungeon crawlers such as Diablo and Diablo 2.

In 2006, Sega released Phantasy Star Universe (PSU). It was Sega's attempt to "MMOize" Phantasy Star, with it's monthly subscription and promise of monthly content, populated cities, and varied environments, the concept didn't seem that bad. My brother purchased a subscription, and he and I played it for a bit. The core gameplay was actually pretty fun. It made combat more smooth, added Photon attacks, made shotguns super-awesome, and had much more character customizability (which you all know I'm such a sucker for). Unfortunately, it robbed me of the one thing I liked the most about the game, the rares. PSU decided to expand shelf life of the game by making it really difficult to make rares. This is because rares were crafted. One had a find materials, this meant grinding monsters. Of course, these drops had a low probability of occurring. Once the necessary items were collected, one had to bring these to “Partner Machine” which synthesized it into the rare...which also worked on a probability. That means that getting materials didn't guarantee the rare. The construction of the rare could fail, leaving your storage box a little more empty, and your heart a lot more broken.

In 2008, Sega released Phantasy Star Portable for the PSP. I had a chance to play it earlier this year, and basically it was what PSU should have been. They basically removed the material gathering part of it, made some tweaks to the combat system to make it more responsive and more engaging, and added more rare weapons. I could only play it alone, for alas, no one I know owns a PSP. And earlier this month, I bought Phantasy Star Zero, and I will say: I like it. Like it's predecessors, it has it's share of problems, but it's gold old Phantasy Online, with a few twists and a cowboy theme.

[Muramasa]

Nov 30, 2009 6:36:35 GMT -8 The Dankness said:

Truly, I never feel quite as greedy as when I'm playing a hack n slash dungeon crawler, and Phantasy Star is one of the best. Where else can I be an afro-having scientist wielding a laser-halberd against legions of dragons and robots?

Also, do you remember the Great Cave Offensive minigame in Kirby's Super Star? That's another great way to satiate your hunger for treasure hunting.

Heh, yeah man, the Great Cave Offensive. When I played it again recently, it was a lot more fun than it was the first time around. For some reason, when I played it back when, I couldn't really get into it, but sometimes things need a second visit to appreciate the flavor.

[Muramasa]

-Sven Coop-
Holy crap, it's Christmas Eve today.

A while back, when we were all little children, we always had a vision of how a holiday should be run. When you're a child, most of the time your schema of the idea of the “holidays” consist of snow, red and green colored cookies, of elves and Santa Claus, of days off from school and of presents under a tree. As we grow older, that general idea sorta begins to change. It becomes a chaotic holiday that involves tight budgets and last minute deadlines. It seems like the upcoming holidays just become something less welcome. But there are times when the idea of what we expect from the holidays just simply...evolves.

How we came about to play this particular game really comes back to one person in this case: The Dankness. He expressed wanting to do more activities associated with past Christmases. The Dankness suggested the idea of playing more video games online for this Christmas holiday. He inherently associated the idea of Christmas with us playing games. One of them was a Half-Life 1 mod that was only briefly discussed before, Sven Coop. It's historically been a game we did play when we were wee lads, and we did have plenty of fun with it. And truth be told, I don't think I've really found a game that was quite like it. I mean, the game doesn't do anything groundbreaking or especially innovative (though it was one of the few PC coop games available at the time). Honestly, there is a reason why some of the map makers are not professional game makers; it has some good ideas, but doesn't execute those ideas in a manner that is fun. Part of it is nostalgia, part of it is the fact that it was practically the only game designed around coop that was accessible to us, and part of it was that some of the maps we played were so damn good and so damn horrible that we couldn't have NOT remembered it.

The gaming session was notable for several reasons. Most obviously, it was one of the larger gaming sessions we've had (though not the largest, that reward may go to a particular Bhaal run in Diablo 2). The group consisted of The Dankness, Kuat, Vivi, Googly Minotaur, ShortPerson, and myself. Secondly, it's the first time we've included ShortPerson in the gaming session. She's not well versed in the world of the first person shooters, so it must've been an interesting, if not alien experience. Thirdly, there was a sweet freaking steam sale that probably helped make a lot of this possible. 90% off S.T.A.L.K.E.R. folks. Finally, this session probably had the longest set-up and trouble shooting session we had to work with. Getting a full game running with all of us playing took around 3 and a quarter hours. There were several road bumps that we faced, mainly acquiring copies of the original Half-Life. Secondly, we ran into a few installation and update problems. Kuat spent a majority of those 3 hours playing tech support and overall coordinator of the acquisition of the games and updates. I'd imagine it was a rather exhausting affair, but like a good sport, he went through the ordeal with little complaints. I, myself, forgot to update the game, though fortunately, it was one of the easier problems to solve as it took minutes to download the update. On the other hand, Vivi was experiencing rather annoying issue that would keep in a loop of disconnecting, reconnecting at the beginning of every new map. We were able alleviate the problem so he could play the map, not really fix it.

The night was pretty much a success. As far as this author can tell, everyone enjoyed themselves immensely and was participating in their own way. Shots were fired, aliens were gibbed, laughs were had. I can't say that we were doing anything special in a cooperative manner because the game doesn't do anything really special with the concept of multiplayer. Sven Coop is similiar to playing Half-Life 1 with other people (incidentaly, there is an option to play the Half-Life 1 single player campaign with multiple players using this mod). That being said, because the game doesn't have a strict class structure, or teamplay based restrictions such as a requirement for a "healer", this allowed us to rather free form our our gaming experience and play as we pleased without risk of depriving the team of a necessary element. It was almost like a glorified chat room, or an interactive, campy movie. It was less of a game with an explicit goal and more of an excuse to get together. We all played along with it, became a part of this experience, and enjoyed ourselves without ever taking it too seriously.

Of course, we did have our share of problems. While microphone communication is a godsend, it does become rather hectic when several people are speaking at the same time. Also, certain maps were designed without careful considerations to gameplay flow, so often did we find ourselves asking "What do we do next?". I believe that every map we played, we'd be in an intense firefight situation, only to find the action suddenly halted by a "puzzle", whose solution usually involved smashing or breaking something, so that it would open up the next passage. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if certain objectives were so unclear, it would take us sometimes 20 minutes to figure out what to do next. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly felt like a long time to be confused. Sometimes, certain maps would through unnecessary gimmicks at us to diversify gameplay, for example, there was a segment on the map, Toonrun, which required you to toss grenades into a set of funnels.

Of course, these gimmicks did lead to very hilarious situations, such as the map, SC_Persia, which required players to latch on to a climbable ceiling in order to traverse a long hallway filled with enemy snipers. The overall premise and execution of the idea was stupid, but I have to admit, watching the groups tribulations was like being apart of a Monty Python skit.

It was great to get back into Sven Coop, and even better to play in such a large group. A larger group comes with a lot of logistical problems, but usually, the outcome opens more options to us.

[The Dankness]

A fair reminiscence and re visitation to the video gaming of Christmas past. More to come, of course.