MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

One of the best things to come to Left 4 Dead in a long time is the new survival mode. I have been having so much fun with it, as I know that the longest I have to play a round for is around ten minutes and it is rare for it to go longer than about five minutes. The idea is that you just need to sit in a map, and wave after wave of zombie horde come at you. The maps are contained to smaller areas, and they released two new maps for the mode.

It is hugely entertaining, especially with the right team of people. Finding spots that work well to defend from, dealing with the randomness of the spawns. I find after playing, my pulse is always a little up. If you haven’t played survival mode, I suggest checking it out. It doesn’t take much time, and can be a great little break or distraction.

Today, I was playing some Left 4 Dead, and I was doing rather well. I was playing online, and there were four of us versus four players as the infected. I was scoring the most kills, and sticking with the group. We got to one area, basically near the top of a building, and a Tank came out and was running around.

The group were hiding in an area, and the Tank was between me and them, so I started shooting the Tank. It turned, and came after me. I did everything I could to both get out of its reach and kill it quickly, but in doing so, I made the other three players on my team mad because they had to leave the safety of the spot they had picked out and come and assist me. I also was getting the most damage on the tank, an honor that one of the others had wanted, and thus, a dialog came up on the screen asking to “Press F1 to Kick David, Press F2 to Vote No”. And a few seconds later, I was met with the wonderful message that I had been kicked.

I was really frustrated. They were a perfectly synched up team of friends. They had a system, and I compromised it. Despite being a good player, scoring tons of kills, and basically taking down a Tank on my own, I was pushed from the game without a reason, second chance or anything. It really soured my gaming experience that evening, and I was in no rush to get back on.

These types of systems for kicking are so easy to take advantage of in games like Left 4 Dead where there are only four votes to count. On Team Fortress 2, it can take upwards of ten or twelve votes to kick someone, thus making it more social, and in my opinion, a little more fair.

I understand that there are people that ruin the gaming experience for other people, and need to be kicked, but I don’t think that my inability to psychically mimic the moves of the other players deserved such an immediate ban. It wasn’t like I was half the map away.

I know it is only a game, but rejection, in any form, isn’t very fun, and always bruises the ego.

Has a kick system ever been used against you in a way that you thought unfair? Let me know in the comments below.

One of the things I enjoy the most about Left 4 Dead, other than the fast pace, is the ability to play as the Infected in online versus modes. What I don’t like, is how they force you to also play, as the survivors. I don’t want to play as the survivors anymore. I just want to play as the Infected, and it is a shame there is no option to do so. I also wish I could “select” which type of Infected I want to play, as I have little skill when it comes to using the Smoker.

I could see why some people would find it frustrating if there were always three Hunters or three Boomers, but if you did a “class limitation” like they currently have in place automatically, then everything would be fair. I would play on servers where I could consistently be the Boomer or the Hunter. They could also add regular Infected to the selection list, giving players that use it a lower re-spawn time, as they don’t have any special abilities, and die fairly easily.

My cousin and I, when we play Left 4 Dead together, and are on the same team, and play as Infected at the same time, are usually able to co-ordinate some pretty effective attacks, thus increasing the difficulty of the game, and exciting the most hard-core players. There should be some effective ranking and slotting system, that also allows people like me to focus on being the Infected, and raising the difficulty for those expert Survivor players looking for a new challenge.

It is a minor complaint about an otherwise fun game, and while I understand that they’d really like us all to focus on being a survivor and giving survivors the best chance to survive, I’d still rather play as the Infected constantly and consistently, at least until I get bored of it.

Note: I know this isn’t “massively multiplayer” in the traditional sense, but it is still an online game with a massive number of players online at any one time, and I enjoy it and think is worth talking about.