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Why Online Gaming Isn't As Fun As It Should Be
Thanks to GameSpot for their 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing why online gaming can often be more frustrating than fun. The columnist finds two main reasons for frustration - firstly: "I don't like getting trounced by someone who is either flat-out, hands-down better at a game than I am or has simply invested many more hours in getting good at the game than I have." He also has issues with impolite players: "I think online gaming brings out some really despicable behavior in people, which I don't particularly mind but that I certainly don't like." Some possible solutions are mentioned, such as "effective player-matching services", but what can and should be done to make playing online a delight?
If you're new and get killed all the time, you need to get into a scenario where you have better chances. One good way is to play a team-based game where friendly fire is disabled - then half of the players won't be trying to kill you!
Another big factor is ping. My accuracy is much better at 80ms than at 130. Analogue modems really do suck. ISDN is good, as is DSL if your provider hasn't enforced the extra error checking. This is one reason why real LAN gaming is popular - no latency problems.
Try using traceroute to check the number of hops to various servers. It's not the exact same thing as ping response time, but fewer hops are better. The more hops, the more likely you are to have your data rate upset by something else.
Although it has less effect than high ping times, optimising your hardware can help. That doesn't so much mean getting the latest greatest, it means making the most of what you have. I know it doesn't look as good as higher resolutions, but 640x480x16bit may well help. Winmodems (software control/compression etc) also mean a performance hit.
-- Steve
I found my way out of this problem when I was playing Quake 2. I downloaded the Eraser bot (the same author wrote the bots for UT iirc) and played against a few of them for a few weeks. By the time I got back to playing online, my skill level had improved quite a bit (to the point of being accused of being a bot, though I now know that doesn't take much, depending on how rampant cheating is). Setting bots to adaptive is helpful as well, though the Eraser was particularly problematic because multiple bots would adapt to each other as well as the player.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Most massive online games like everquest require very little real skill to become good at. I could teach my grandmother how to play, and in a few months, she would be as good as anyone else. Games like quake and warcraft take hundreds or thousands of hours to develop skills, memorize maps, and develop strategies. Most importantly is that you have to have real talent. I will never be as good at golf as tiger woods, even if I had been trained from birth. The same holds true in video games, like it or not.