i got killed by big crabs in dark souls 3
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Thatās disappointing to here because that writer is Tom Bissell and heās actually kinda alright. There are some good chapters in his book āExtra Livesā
@dongle completely agree with this. Itās an incredibly well designed game because the destructible environments ensure each match is unique and chaotic. Not to throw shade at Overwatch because its a completely different game but Siege is a game about using your senses, communication and tactics. It can be such an incredibly tense experience. You arenāt playing on xbone are you?
Iām playing RSS on PC. Bummer we canāt play it together!
Yeah, Overwatch can become extremely repetitive, and I feel that that is somewhat by design, or by focusing its design too much on pros. I had a great time with the game with my friends, but I have harsh words for how much it relied on perceived performance and metrics and stuff. Iām a Filthy Casual, but I made sure to get OK with at least two characters in each class. I never excelled at any character. By paying attention to team comp and the meta, I was able to significantly contribute to team victories ā not that I was playing amazingly well, but there were times when we really needed that extra healer or tank or DPS and we went from losing/stalemating to steamrolling. Because I wasnāt āon fireā all the time etc, the game perceived my performance as being average. Which I guess is technically true if you trained your lens only on my abilities with that character. In the larger picture, however, I would say that I offered quite a bit of utility. (And I oftentimes got gold/silver elims and objective time, but iirc those donāt contribute to MMR nearly as much as āon fireā percentage.) And some tactics were not recognized by the game as being useful. If Iām Pharah and I contribute massive amounts of suppressive fire to the point where the enemy team canāt get on the point, but donāt get many elims or much objective time (due to being in the air), why is that considered not contributing? The game pushes character specialization and certain types of play to please its algorithm and Iām deeply uninterested in that.
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RSS avoids that frustration by allowing you to feel as if you are contributing even when you arenāt getting kills. There are some rounds where I donāt get kills but I mightāve provided a useful sightline for a teammate or deployed a drone which gave my team useful intel. I find these moments just as gratifying as a headshot.
Oh yeah, definitely. Siege understands that it is impossible to algorithmically understand a team game.
Hereās another Overwatch example. A friend was a Mei main. He played her very defensively ā rarely got kills, but did tons and tons of harassment with walls, blocking ults and rein charges and singling out squishies, blocking chokes, etc. All great stuff. But because he didnāt get enough damage production, the algorithm considered him a ābadā player, and he kept getting placed in Bronze each season before working his way up. He got frustrated and switched to Genji so he could just get the kills and be on fire all the time and placed Plat the following season after a couple weeksā practice. Blizzardās algorithms are probably fair for pro-level play, but it seems like itās skewed really badly all the way up through Plat-tier depending on playstyle and hero.
I think Iām reacting so strongly to this because thereās algorithmic overreach encroaching on everything. I can already see how, for example, my job performance will be downgraded because Iām more strict about learning outcomes than making sure everyone does all their weekly homework, because an algorithm canāt determine that my studentsā large projects are significantly better than those from other sections of the same class taught by different teachers.
Side question: what other games use questionable algorithms like Overwatch?
all of them, humans make terrible game designers
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Well, sure, but other games arenāt quite as heavy-handed about how they apply those algorithms.
Oh I guess I never ran into this because I didnāt play ranked. Thatās a weird thing to do; most games just calculate your rank by wins and losses (even heavily team-oriented games, like League of Legends or Dota 2). I think theyāre trying to prevent a ābadā player from teaming up with a āgoodā one and getting to ranks that donāt line up with their actual skill, which could potentially make games very lopsided if the two split up? But that seems like a very heavy-handed way to deal with something that probably isnāt that common to begin with.
And even if it is common, the worst that can happen is you get some blow out games while it figures out your actual skill (which already seems to happen to me a lot, even with the current system).
Overwatch still fundamentally decides if you go up or down based on pure wins and losses, but thereās an invisible multiplier which is calculated similarly to mastery grades in League, where you will climb much faster if you are playing ābetter than averageā on the hero you chose, and climb much more slowly if youāre playing under average. The issue isnāt so much in that system existing, but that thereās still strong playmaking potential with characters like Mei that isnāt quantifiable in metrics. Even if a well-placed wall gets you a team wipe, unless you were directly involved in any of those kills, the algorithmic value of that play got redistributed amongst your teammates and you get nothing out of it.
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Rainbow Six Siege is the first online game Iāve actually put significant amount of time into (ca 250 hours at this point). Thereās just so much new you learn every time, even after so many hours of gameplay. For example, just a few days ago I finally found out that:
- Thatcherās EMP grenades disable weapon holos
- In Theme Park particularly, thereās a few entrances where you can pretty much see and predict any defendersā movement based on their shadows.
- With a good C4 throw from the window high above main lobby in Chalet, defender can wipe out easily a bunch of people who are holding an angle outside garage because itās really difficult for attackerās to notice that incoming C4
Support is very important. Even when youāre dead, looking at cameras and drones to give team members callouts can be decisive in winning the match. You also get points for utilizing gadgets. If people pick up your Rook armor, you get points for that etc. And that can often be decisive in getting an MVP (many instances where Iāve had 12 kills while someone with 4 kills but through use of gadget is an MVP)
Anyway, I play on PC. Send me your Ubi username if you are interested in playing together. Fair warning though that Iām in Euro timezone, which limits available times and possibly leads to shittier ping rates.
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I keep trying to talk myself into buying either battlefied 1, player unknown battlegrounds, or rainbow six, to have some kind of multiplayer shooting thing where payday 2 used to be. b1 is interesting to me because I like those old wood and steel weapons in that era. I was told rainbox six was good for satisfying visceral Kinetic Violence and Gunplay by okcupids number 1/only dog days fan. I just worry it might be too slot machiney if I get the poor manās version. pubg seems the most popular but I was only thinking about it because my sibling and people keep trying to talk me into getting it. it sounds more every man for himself than I care for. I like teamwork and camaraderie. and itās got a whole two maps. I feel like Iām going to play it for a whole three rounds before Iām tired of it.
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BF1 is Battlefield, but with a WWI veneer. You can always get a bit of what PUBG is doing in Fortnite for free. R6S is probably the most unique of those 3 games, ignoring that it is CS with destruction and heroes if Iām being really cynical
Funnily enough, Blizzard is moving OW to no longer give SR based on individual performance, but only for diamond and up (though one would hope they would have that across all tiers). They also introduced individual performance rating adjustments into HotS, so they donāt know what theyāre doing. I have no opinion about OW because I am a dirty support main and therefore am boosted 
I bought the season 2 pass for Siege when it was first available and then proceeded to forget I had the game for the entire year. I just donāt open Uplay that often!
Iām going to remember this when I play Pulse next, thanks!
i justā¦ i just donāt know how i feel about this.
badly, i think
It is, by all indications, a shit show
Oh hmm, mastery wasnāt I thing when I was playing League.
Ugh, regardless of the algorithm individual performance metrics feeding into your rank is always going to promote something that is slightly different than playing strictly for the team. At best this means you need to play a different character to rank up quickly, and at worst it means your team is bickering and fighting with itself because each member is trying to do the same thing to pad their stats. Promoting individual performance has the potential to make the gamesā communities more toxic than they already are.
I find it troubling that these fundamentally team-focused games miss the point that badly, even if itās mostly on principle.
my hots experience is quick match only and it feels good!
quick match is your pickup basketball game
ranked is an amateur league basketball game
and I would very much rather play a pickup game than go through the trouble of signing up for a league ok
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unranked draft is the sweet spot!
This has been the case with KDA stats before MMR became A Thing in the multiplayer environment. Turns out if you put those numbers front and center or easily accessible, the majority of people are going to try make them better to the detriment of the team. Itās a hold over from when team multiplayer was an afterthought because the infrastructure wasnāt there (split screen, low network bandwidth, etc.) and that sort of language to describe āwinningā is easy to grasp and is sticky.