Monthly Archives: January 2012
Yes, I have felt like this many times…
Especially after watching the Republican debates…
Written & Directed by BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT.
Yes, that notorious TAB drinker from Police Academy.
Unfortunately, Momma taught me that two wrongs don’t make a right. So kids, don’t try this at home, mmmmkay?
The BF Diaries: USAS-12; let’s have some perspective shall we?
Anyone whose been 1 mile out from the business end of a USAS-12 shotgun (yes, shotgun, ONE MILE OUT) loaded with frag rounds knows just how mother f—ing beastly and OVERPOWERED this SHOTGUN is, especially at range.
Senior Gameplay Designer, Alan Kertz, wants us to take it in perspective;
“Shotgun buck is effective IRL out to 30m or more with good chokes. Slugs 100m or more…”
Really? You’re going to go there, Mr. Kertz? How’s about giving us a little perspective on this:
In real life soldiers don’t get revived from fatal headshots by defibrillators. In real life soldiers don’t get healed by MedKits simply by standing next to them. In real life soldiers don’t sprint around the battlefield with unlimited ammunition they can pull out of their pockets on a whim. In real life soldiers can’t ride glorified toy helicopters with cameras up to obscure vantage points (another glitch that needs fixing.) In real life said glorified toy helicopters with cameras on them can’t gently nudge you to death after crashing into the mountain and ground next to you fifteen times without taking any damage. In real life soldiers don’t chase the enemy down with plasma torches so they can unlock a weapon. In real life soldiers need more than a plasma torch to fix a vehicle (they need duct tape too)… … … I could go on.
This doesn’t upset me, I had to have a laugh at it though. I love, love, LOVE Battlefield 3. It is a well balanced game out of the box IMHO. Nothing in BF3 has made me rage quit once; bitch, whine and moan a little but absolutely no rage quits.
Like any game, things are going to need tweaking once you see how the general population reacts to and manipulates it. I don’t mind getting blown away at close to mid range by a shotty but from halfway across the map? In my honest opinion these frag rounds need a closer examination. Using explosive rounds this powerful should produce some backsplash damage at close range, especially indoors. And they shouldn’t have more range and be more accurate than a traditional grenade launcher. The USAS-12 is a wee bit unbalanced, not as unbalanced as a CoD no-scoping-spin-dizzy sniper but enough to warrant an investigation and an eventual fix. I’m sure DICE will get around to it, IF the PC hackers leave the development team alone long enough.
Skyrim: Why rush the journey?
Here, read THIS. When will these uber-noobs ever learn?
What’s with the Gordon Gekko axiology in our culture these days? Greed is good. Life should not be enjoyed, it must be devoured. Everyone wants the best of everything and they want it right away. Who cares about a carefully crafted sunset when you can spend countless hours analyzing and manipulating the game’s mechanics so you can produce the most 1337-uber-pwning player character ever seen in a single player game.
Like Wall St. hedge fund managers these purveyors of all things uber stack the odds of survival so far in their favor I’m surprised the NPCs in the game don’t get all OWS on them.
Ironically, the exact same thing can be accomplished by taking a moment to slide the difficulty far left of easy. I don’t get it. I don’t understand. What is the point?
I don’t want to be first, I want to be perpetually next. Where’s the excitement once you have what you sought to attain? Where’s the thrill of discovery? Where’s the anticipation? The adventure? Being the “best” in a single player game is the quintessential exercise in mediocrity.
“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” ~ Greg Anderson
So far my stroll through Skyrim has been a leisurely endeavor. I’m level 20 and I haven’t even met my first dragon yet. I’ve dabbled in smithing, alchemy and cooking. I’ve watched a sunset and a sunrise. I watched a pack of wolves attempt to take down a bear and I’ve kept my distance from giants while silently marveling at their size. I’ve gone through great pains to avoid using any magic whatsoever which was surprisingly easier to do this time around. In short, I’ve bloody well enjoyed myself.
Because I’ve played previous iterations of the series, I went out of my way to do certain things in the game right away that would have come in time. I bought a house and pimped it out before level 5 because I wanted a place to store my stuff. I raided dungeons and worked on my smithing skills so I would have a better than decent set of armor and weapons when I took on the first dragon. But I didn’t go crazy. And I didn’t resort to the type of leveling antics that some people get up to.
Bethesda did so much right with Skyrim to bring the series out of its maliase. Above all they introduced a leveling system that doesn’t require you to jump through flaming hoops to get a 5x multiplier to your attributes so you can keep up with the creatures leveling alongside you. Still, as it was in Elder Scrolls past, you know you’re going to end up being the most uber-dude/dudette in the realm; why rush the journey?
I wrote the following ‘final thought‘ for my Morrowind Game Book Companion Guide, it aptly applies to Skyrim as well;
After all is said and done always play a character you want to play. Game difficulty is arbitrary, playing the character within the confines of the depths of its essence will add difficulty, challenge, and a deeper, richer experience to the game and I believe that this is the spirit that The Morrowind Team had in mind. Don’t obsess over completing every aspect of the game, every quest or finding every treasure, for that is not the designers intent. ‘Uber-ness’ is not a bragging right in this game, it’s a fallacy. A misconception that will leave you with a less rewarding experience. Morrowind is not a game that you can simply ‘beat’. Take a vacation from your real-life woes and spend it in Vvardenfell, immerse yourself in it, relax, and let the experience envelope you.
Battlefield 3 Basics
Learning and exercising the fundamentals are imperative to success in anything you do. When my dad coached our middle school basketball team, he worked hard teaching us the fundamentals. And even though I subsequently forgot them all, made dinosaur noises on the court while we lost every game, and bounced a basketball off my dad's head during a team prayer, got in big trouble, and then never played basketball again, I learned an important lesson.
The BF Diaries: A Band of Brothers.
In Call of Duty you’re constantly getting berated by other players. The spoiled brat screecher whose parents lack the basic social skills to teach their kid something as simple as respect for other people. The spotty teenager whose current goal in life is to be the best CoD player he can be and any lack of skill on his part is obviously the fault of everyone else because teens know everything. The twenty something who has yet to figure out the world does not revolve around him and is heading for a very rude awakening in life. The pathetic soul older than thirty whom, at this point in life, no amount therapy could help the issues he has. These folk are commonplace in the CoD community and they are always more than willing to explain to you in the most derogatory way possible just how bad you are at a game.
Coming from CoD and jumping into BF3 is kind of like moving to France. The French don’t care how well you speak their native tongue. They just want you to make a sincere effort at it.
I haven’t come across this in Battlefield 3. Sure, there’s been the guy talking his frustrations out on the comm but nothing like the level of castigation and cruelty I’ve witnessed from the CoD crowd. Not even close. Folks in BF3 seem to fall into three classes:
- The quiet, clueless ones running around doing their own thing, not really hurting the team, just not helping it either. They’re probably ex CoD players like myself who are utterly jaded with the gaming community. Maybe they’ll come around one day and start using their mics again. Maybe not but I can’t blame them.
- The mic-less ones running around, playing objectives and falling into a silent synch with the rest of the team. Maybe English is not their first language. Maybe they don’t know English. Maybe they’re just the quiet, introverted types. Who cares as long as they are getting the job done.
- The BF veterans in party chat who will send you an invite the moment they’ve sized you up. Surprisingly, their standards are quite low. I know this because I’ve received quite a few invites into this “elite” club. Coming from CoD and jumping into BF3 is kind of like moving to France. The French don’t care how well you speak their native tongue. They just want you to make a sincere effort at it. The BF Vets aren’t obnoxious about their skills. They don’t tote their K/D like it’s something that should be carved into one’s tombstone.
I will concede that part of the reason I have failed to come across any asshats so far may be the abysmal VOIP system in BF3. Comms fade in and out or break up entirely in squad chat, most notably when you have more than 3 people in the squad with mics on. This makes party chat the only viable option for dependable communication and I am sure this is part of the reason you don’t hear many people in the game or shit talking each other during load screens. I will also concede it appears that a majority of BF3 asswipes play on the PC (if that linked article is not enough proof, read through the comments for further evidence of this.)
Or (on the console at least) can this phenomenon be attributed to the fact that there are no killstreaks available to elevate your ego to perceived heights of uberness? That no matter how poor or well your team is doing in BF, most everyone realizes that what they are doing they are doing as a team, as a Band of Brothers.
And THIS is why I won’t play CoD anymore.
Some 20 something mountebank named BFRESH9, bragging about his 19th world rank, gets owned by Woody and dashboards (quits to the Xbox’s dashboard so his stats don’t get recorded.)
I came across this in Black Ops a lot. A LOT. These vile miscreants would brag and brag and brag about their K/D in one exhaustively long run-on sentence and then openly admit to dashboarding in the next. Disregarding the implications of these individuals intellectual levels some of the parents out there have done really exceptional jobs at raising their offspring. CoD’s a wonderful game. The CoD community? Not so much.
The BF Diaries: The journey so far.
What I have learned so far…
Squad up and communicate. Four mediocre players that communicate trump the player(s) beasting, every time. Use party chat if the in-game VOIP is giving you trouble.
Stop sprinting everywhere. Time in BF3 is an illusion (lunch time doubly so.) You have the time to make it back to your squad. Slow down, find cover and never go up the middle unless you have no other choice. For the record, in BF3 there is always another choice.
On maps with water look for the wanna-be Navy SEALS taking a bath just off the shoreline.
If I was the enemy, that’s where I’d be. Look for sniper/support nests (rocks, bushes, trees, a grassy knoll…) surrounding the objective and come up behind them. Circumvent an area and patiently observe before rushing in (remember time is an illusion in this game.) Look for enemy lurkers. If you can’t find them but you know they are there have an engineer or tank remove their cover. Don’t go after the lone-wolf on your own unless you have eyes on and the advantage (he has not seen you.) On maps with water look for the wanna-be Navy SEALS taking a bath just off the shoreline.
Switch to your sidearm before reloading EVERY time. It will save your ass from the tango you didn’t see. Coming from CoD this one was hard for me to get used to. I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with the sidearms in CoD so I never relied on them.
Don’t be afraid to try new guns when they become available. When you find your soul mate spend time getting its most useful accessories (heavy barrel, silencer, grip, etc.) unlocked before trying something new. It never hurts to have a go to weapon, specially on those bad days.
Think twice before chasing someone down. Stand still if he’s close enough to dispatch quickly, you may get lucky and another will spawn on top of him. If he’s too far or running too fast it may be better to just spot him for the team and remain unnoticed.
Observe, learn, adapt, change, and survive to win. There is a class / weapon / accessory set up for every map, mode and situation in BF3. Be patient, this knowledge comes in time through trial and error. Keep at it, don’t get frustrated and enjoy the game.
Turn off vibration. Trust me.
Cover and suppression specializations do diddly squat. Use something else.
WAIT for your teammates to grab the empty seats in your vehicle(s) before rushing off to glory. Note that I did not learn this one, I just wish that other people would!
Today we fight back against SOPA & PIPA.
Tell our lack-luster, feckless politicians
corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE.
We are the people. Together, we decide the laws.
