Low- and High-Ping Bastards
January 18, 2016 7:55 AM   Subscribe

The year is 2002, and Greg Costikyan wants to teach you to speak like a gamer.
posted by Pope Guilty (40 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Gamer speech has gotten so much more involved since this! Thanks mainly to MOBAs and MMOs.

It's weird that I had this future dream of playing a really involving MMORPG back when Everquest was first out where the graphics and scope and sense of place would be so good that I would really feel like acting out my character. Like Picard in the holodeck.

Now, of course, we have the graphics and scope and everyone runs around jumping constantly while saying "WTS 'ROBE OF ILLUSIONS', PST" and “LFM DPS”.

Any multiplayer game with an attempt at atmosphere breaks down at the first contact with players.
posted by selfnoise at 8:08 AM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


gl hf
posted by belarius at 8:23 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah, MY DnD campaign had three WoW players in it who designated themselves Tank, DpS and Healer (I understood Healer), and kept asking when they would ding.
Tee other players (and I) did not understand their lawyerly points about how they were aggroing the mobs to kite them.
They all got killed by an urchin.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2016 [17 favorites]


Any multiplayer game with an attempt at atmosphere breaks down at the first contact with players.

It's amazing how little you miss when you disable chat. I pretty much always disable general chat, or subjugate it to a tab I NEVER look at. Even group/party chat gets its own tab that I only look at if I feel I'm missing something or particularly tough scenarios requiring teamwork. Most MMOs nowadays have "looking for team" mechanics that require no communication. So you can easily hop from party to party doing stuff without ever talking to anyone. KOTOR:Online was a blast like that.
posted by mayonnaises at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


My current boss ends meetings with: "gg"; it took me a month to say, "Greasy goats? Good guys...?" and then everybody knew I hadn't played a game since Super Mario World.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:35 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Old Republic is my first and only MMO and it took a while to get all the lingo. Now I can "DPS LFG NiM 8m snv" with the best of them.
posted by kmz at 8:38 AM on January 18, 2016


They all got killed by an urchin.

As you are talking about D&D, I have to ask: Which kind of urchin? The spiky monster, or a child living in the streets? (Or a combination of the two?)
posted by erdferkel at 8:41 AM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah, MY DnD campaign had three WoW players in it who designated themselves Tank, DpS and Healer (I understood Healer)

It's been forever since I last got to play a tabletop RPG, but I feel like WoW has really encouraged metagaming in a way that didn't really exist prior to MMOs becoming a thing. The actual role-playing aspects seem to have disappeared from the online games in favor of a lot of dull math-jockeying that was always incidental to the tabletop games and campaigns that I used to enjoy. We used to make fun of people who did that sort of stuff in our games, and now it seems pretty de rigueur.

(IIRC, DpS stands for damage-per-second, i.e. guys who can do a lot of damage either by being speedy or strong or both. And Tanks are just guys who can absorb a lot of damage and keep it off of the other members of the party.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:43 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Which kind of urchin?

Please say Sewer Urchin.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:44 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


DPS actually really bothered me as a term because it's literally a statistic, but it's used as a generic term to mean dealing damage. But I got over it eventually.
posted by kmz at 8:48 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


This was 4th Edition, which seems lik eit's all set up to be basically WoW anyway, so they were probably playing it better than me.

(It was actually a Lower Quays Guttersnipe, not an urchin)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 8:48 AM on January 18, 2016


DPS actually really bothered me as a term because it's literally a statistic, but it's used as a generic term to mean dealing damage. But I got over it eventually.

The other terms I've heard for it (nuker, damage dealer) are gooby so dps is kind of a least worst situation.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:04 AM on January 18, 2016


I don't play MOBAs and still don't know what a "lane" is, or why I would want to play a MOBA.

The other terms I've heard for it (nuker, damage dealer) are gooby so dps is kind of a least worst situation.

D&D 4e uses Striker/Defender/Leader/Controller
Overwatch uses Offense/Defense/Tank/Support
Champions Online uses [Ranged | Melee] Damage/Tank/Support/Hybrid

Of them I think I prefer "striker" since it implies a mobile hit-and-run style.
posted by Foosnark at 9:15 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


But what kind of DPS were they referring to? Spike or DoT?
posted by dazed_one at 9:19 AM on January 18, 2016


I don't play MOBAs and still don't know what a "lane" is

The pathways units will take during the battle.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Low- and High-Ping Bastards

True story: I used to work for a company developing an online robot combat game. I had been testing it for a few days and had gotten slightly competent at it. When we opened it up for beta, of course we had a bit of an experience advantage over the influx of new testers.

After I killed one guy three times in a row he accused me of being a "lagger." I asked him, "You think I have an unfair advantage due to high latency on my end?" He agreed. I told him "I work for _____ and am sitting approximately 30 feet away from the server right now." He decided I was an LPB instead, because it couldn't possibly be that I was better at the game than he was with his vast 3 hours of experience.
posted by Foosnark at 9:25 AM on January 18, 2016 [7 favorites]


D&D 4e uses Striker/Defender/Leader/Controller

But wasn't 4th Ed. the version of D&D that drew a lot of criticism for borrowing too much of its feel from MMO conventions, in an attempt bring WoW players to tabletop RPGs?
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:34 AM on January 18, 2016


My favorite thing about "gg" is how it became such an aggressive/passive-aggressive thing to say. I played the Half-Life mod Firearms pretty much throughout its history and there were often balance issues version to version, the most legendary being FA 2.5 in which the FAMAS was ridiculously overpowered and overly accurate, which meant using it reduced you to a "FAMAS whore". Many a team would resort to "gg famas" at the end of a map after getting stomped by 3 dudes with FAMAS' and 3:1 ratios (most likely in a clan). This would immediately roll over to the next map being a race to join whatever team those guys were on and the overly snide gg's would begin right off the bat. Good times.
posted by gucci mane at 9:40 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


4E's crime was being obvious about something D&D players didn't want to admit.

(Okay it was mostly making Intelligence not a stat which allowed you to reshape reality and Strength not a stat which doomed you to forever doing subpar damage and being a burden on the party because there's a certain kind of nerd who gets off on the jocks being the least useful D&D class, but...)
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:42 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Really? Built into the game?

If you're entering a cheat code, yeah it's built into the game. Like typing "IDDQD" into the console in Doom gave you invulnerability.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2016


Yeah, aimbots and wallhacks usually required an outside executable running over the game.

Who remembers myg0t?
posted by gucci mane at 9:52 AM on January 18, 2016


Really? Built into the game?

Applies to single-player games only. Noob.
posted by neckro23 at 10:12 AM on January 18, 2016


if only I hadn't played so much Q3A in college, I might... um... have better grades which don't matter anymore?
posted by infinitewindow at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Can we make this a 100+ comment thread about our respective good ole days? I want to continue this trip down memory lane, back when I could drink a 24-pack of Dr Pepper to myself and roast fools on UT99.
posted by gucci mane at 10:31 AM on January 18, 2016


Never felt like post-99 UT games really felt good- the character movement always felt slower and weightier, and the guns always felt piddly.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:33 AM on January 18, 2016


My favorite teammates are those that start ripping into everyone else, yet when you look at their stats, 9 tims out of 10 they are mid table or lower. When you call them out on it, the typical response is some variation of "high damage output doesn't mean you're a good player". Unfortunately I have yet to win a match with the "do less damage than my opponent" strategy. Then you get the healers complaining about being left alone to defend an objective. Prima donnas. If you're alone at an objective point and not healing anyone, that's on you, dude. If the objective gets captured, it's your teammates fault, but if they can't capture an objective because you're dry humping a flag, well...
posted by Brocktoon at 10:41 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Never felt like post-99 UT games really felt good- the character movement always felt slower and weightier, and the guns always felt piddly.

On my worst days, I feel like all we've really done since OG UT is add a bunch of fucking input lag to everything.
posted by selfnoise at 10:47 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


4E's crime was being obvious about something D&D players didn't want to admit.

(Okay it was mostly making Intelligence not a stat which allowed you to reshape reality and Strength not a stat which doomed you to forever doing subpar damage and being a burden on the party because there's a certain kind of nerd who gets off on the jocks being the least useful D&D class, but...)


D&D was not designed for party play. It became about party play after it got widely adopted by middle school kids who primarily played it with their small group of friends. The idea that a 1st level fighter and wizard would still be adventuring side by side when they hit 12th level was foreign to the people who made the game. After 9th level, the fighter was expected to go be a lord in a castle and the player's actual adventuring would be with his 5th level henchman. And that henchman just might hook up with the 12th level wizard, not to act as equals, but to be a bodyguard while the wizard did some cool shit, in hope of getting a slice of the rewards. But it wasn't expected or necessary.

As designed it worked fine, but since people didn't just play the game like they were in Gary Gygax's basement in 1974, the way the later levels are written became problematic. By the time 3e was around and redesigned things while keeping the level scales in place, the result naturally felt imbalanced.
posted by graymouser at 11:18 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


4E's crime was being obvious about something D&D players didn't want to admit.

For our group, there were a lot of really nice things about 4E (the fact that Clerics could so something other than just run around converting spell slots into healing for instance, and fighters had interesting stuff to do beyond "attack" and maybe occasionally "grapple" (no please don't grapple oh god everybody hate these rules)).

What made us abandon it for Pathfinder was the short-term combat bookkeeping slowed things down too much. Which was supposed to be taken care of by the software that WOTC promised and didn't deliver.
posted by Foosnark at 11:25 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


D&D was not designed for party play. It became about party play after it got widely adopted by middle school kids who primarily played it with their small group of friends.

To be honest I'm not sure that the issues of balance were ever really considered in the context of "party play" or not. The concept of the adventuring party crops up even in the earliest rules, and the formalisation of the troupe style approach you describe didn't really come about until Ars Magica. I don't think your assessment is wrong, on a practical level, just that Arneson, Gygax and others weren't really aware of the idea of game balance as we are, because they were still in the process creating the paradigm of play in which the sort of balance we're discussing becomes meaningful.
posted by howfar at 12:46 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


After 9th level, the fighter was expected to go be a lord in a castle and the player's actual adventuring would be with his 5th level henchman. And that henchman just might hook up with the 12th level wizard, not to act as equals, but to be a bodyguard while the wizard did some cool shit, in hope of getting a slice of the rewards. But it wasn't expected or necessary.

Wait, wait, so the reward of the fighter's player for hitting level 9 was taking a four-level hit in order to play the wizard's hired help? That's even more profoundly fucked up than the standard linear fighters, quadratic wizards situation.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:16 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


the formalisation of the troupe style approach you describe didn't really come about until Ars Magica

It may have been formalized in Ars Magica, but it was how Gary Gygax's players played in his basement in the first half of the 1970s. Some players, particularly Rob Kuntz, would play solo (with Gary) as well.

Wait, wait, so the reward of the fighter's player for hitting level 9 was taking a four-level hit in order to play the wizard's hired help? That's even more profoundly fucked up than the standard linear fighters, quadratic wizards situation.

No, his reward was that his player got to play wargames with the other high level fighters who had established their own keeps, while the wizard just had his tower and was pretty much out of the kingdom building game. My point is that 12th level fighters did not frequently adventure with 12th level wizards, and wide level disparities were the norm, not the exception.
posted by graymouser at 1:37 PM on January 18, 2016


That's still pretty odd.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:44 PM on January 18, 2016


It's a lot less odd when you consider that there were something over 20 players in each of the original campaigns. It was highly unlikely that the same four or five players would come together more than a few times. Also, they were all wargamers, and nobody particularly cared that their fighter (heavy infantry) didn't take out as many bad guys as the wizard (artillery). That's not what each type was there for.

What's funny is that there were probably dynamics from those games that skew closer to MMOs than to the norms of modern RPGs. Though none of them are very big on 4e or MMOs that I know.
posted by graymouser at 2:13 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's been forever since I last got to play a tabletop RPG, but I feel like WoW has really encouraged metagaming in a way that didn't really exist prior to MMOs becoming a thing.

I don't know if Pun-Pun predates WoW, necessarily, but it definitely predates 4e.

Nerds metagame, it's what they do. For a lot of nerds, metagaming is why they game at all.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:22 PM on January 18, 2016


I forgot about calling bad players "llamas". Way better than throwing around racial, sexual, and homophobic slurs. (I mean, people did the latter back then, but it didn't feel like it happened as often?)
posted by tobascodagama at 5:34 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nah, "gay" and "faggot" go all the way back to battle.net as the go-to gamer insult. Maybe it didn't seem as bad because it would scroll off the screen quickly, a generation before voice-chat.
posted by Brocktoon at 5:46 PM on January 18, 2016


I forgot about calling bad players "llamas".

That was actually the term that led to the google search that led to finding this article!
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


One of my Quake handles was Dali Llama
posted by Lorin at 6:26 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


it couldn't possibly be that I was better at the game than he was with his vast 3 hours of experience

Oh man, this is something I don't miss at all about League of Legends. The entire strategy of many dudes is to play until they find someone to blame for the inevitable loss. Then likely as not they'd get into an argument with someone, so 2 of 5 players are typing instead of playing.
posted by zompist at 8:34 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older Are You Sure You Want To Quit The World?   |   Waffle poots Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments