{"id":2595,"date":"2009-03-17T17:19:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T21:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2595"},"modified":"2009-03-17T17:33:19","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T21:33:19","slug":"left-4-dead-multiplayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2595","title":{"rendered":"Left 4 Dead Multiplayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Left 4 Dead offers a single-player mode but the heart of the game is clearly in the multiplayer. Single Player is quite fun, although perhaps not quite robust enough to justify the $60<\/del> $50 price tag on its own. The game is made with online or LAN play in mind. <\/p>\n

I have the PC version. This past weekend I signed onto Steam to check out the multiplayer. I’ve never tried it before. Outside of MMO games, I don’t think I’ve played online with strangers since 2003 or so, when I used to play Unreal Tournament (original recipe) Capture the Flag. (I used to play with these guys<\/a>. Can’t believe the site & server are still around, although I’m sure they’ve moved on to other games.) I clicked on the thing to join a game. Some people appeared. There was a long pause. Then somebody called us all “f**kers” for no discernible reason. I suddenly remembered why I don’t play with strangers and logged off. I haven’t been back since, although I still plan to give it another go. <\/p>\n

Then there is this thread<\/a> at The Escapist, where a player became frustrated with some random teammates who were most likely new to the game and struggling. Rather than communicating with them and expressing his frustration, he and a friend simply abandoned one and killed the other . His post is more or less a plea for ointment for his inflamed conscience. Most of his fellow Xbox Live players were all too happy to tell him he did the right thing, and brewed up a tray of rationales for him to sample. <\/p>\n

My goal in this post is not to pick on that player. He’s a very typical XBL player and raging against him is about as useful as raging against the fact that people are usually rude in rush-hour traffic. It’s one of the immutable laws<\/a> of the internet. <\/p>\n

But it does seem to suggest that we need better tools for filtering out jerks and idiots. You can report users on Steam, but this is for serious, “I-will-hunt-you-down-and-rape-you” level misbehavior and asininity. Like rating sellers & buyers on eBay, it seems like we need a automated way to remark whether or not someone was a good playmate without resorting to flagging people as abusive. Simply having a system in place<\/em> would probably cure a host of ills. If at the end of every game you had a chance to flag players as fun, neutral, or problematic, then over time the jerks would accumulate a large enough negative score that sane people would avoid them.<\/p>\n

I will say I like the way XBL users can choose what sorts of people they want to deal with – hardcore, underground, casual, or whatever those pigeon-holes are named. I’d avoid “hardcore” types because they’re probably playing to win<\/strong>, while I’m playing to have fun. <\/p>\n

At any rate, it does seem kind of odd that after all these years we’re still just leaping into a great big sea of random crazy people whenever we game online. And by “we” I mean, “all of you people who aren’t antisocial hermits like me and who socialize with other gamers”. <\/p>\n

Do you have any tricks for filtering people before a game? How do you handle the inevitable idiot?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left 4 Dead offers a single-player mode but the heart of the game is clearly in the multiplayer. Single Player is quite fun, although perhaps not quite robust enough to justify the $60 $50 price tag on its own. The game is made with online or LAN play in mind. I have the PC version. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-2595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames","tag-left-4-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}