I've been gaming since I was a child, and like most things in life I was never gifted at it. I'm one of those people who isn't stupid enough to be happy and not smart enough to be successful.
The only way I learn and 'get good' at anything is through repetition. That's why I'm so good breathing, I'm doing it right now and not even thinking about it, okay, NOW I'm thinking about it.... And breathe!
My tastes in games changed as I got older, from classic platformers, beat 'em ups, RPG's and now predominantly shooters of the first person variety.
I still enjoy story driven action games like The Last of Us or Uncharted and still dabble in the occasional RPG but mainly I just like to shoot things... Other players mostly!
The first game I played online was actually on my Xbox 360, I had a PS2 and an original Xbox but never took them online. The first game I ever played online was Saints Row 1 and it was a revelation. Not good by any standard but playing with and against other people is just fun on another level.
This was also back when nearly everyone used their headsets, I made many friends and sunk countless hours in to the online portion of games. I'm not sure the exact moment in which it switched for me to favour the multiplayer to the single player but it did, the buzz you get from taking out another player is unparalleled in my opinion, single player is fun, but I get less of a buzz out of it. A lot of the time it feels like a warm up for the real thing and unfortunately in some games it is.
The shooter that gripped me most and held me the longest was Battlefield: Bad Company 2 from EA's top studio DICE!
The sights, the sounds, the gunplay, the mayhem. I'm not sure I'll ever truly replicate that feeling no matter how I try.
Back then I wasn't the best shot, so I played the medic class so I could come out on top simply by healing and reviving team mates.
As I mentioned earlier, practice makes perfect or in most cases: practice makes slightly better.
I'm a much better shot these days, not bad with a sniper, better with a PDW or assault rifle, after literally hundreds of hours of play my muscle memory is better than ever. I still get shit on of course, but I usually find my kills to death (K/D) to be positive, especially in the Battlefield games. I couldn't understand why until I listened to a great YouTuber called BDobbinsFTW (you should really check out his channel, and mine too, search 'The Unashamed Gamers') what Mr Dobbins?! Described is 'skill gap compression' which many major shooters have adopted to close a noticeable skill gap between better players and weaker players. For me the bubble has been burst and I can't unsee it now that I know(yee know too much!) and gaming online will never be the same for me.
I always wondered why I didn't understand why people loved Call of Duty so much(after World at War) yet I found it so frustrating but he explained it all so well.
I'm going to try and summarise but remember, I'm average at most things...
The main tenant is that for a player to be having a good time in shooters they need to be killing someone but if you're a skilled gamer you're going to get more kills which in turn means someone has to die and as anyone who's played just about any game there's rarely fun in losing.
Games are a business so if a lot of players are losing, getting constantly stomped on by better players, they're likely to stop playing or go play something else but you're a business and you want them to stick around to keep the servers populated and hopefully to buy more content e.g. map packs and weapons.
So what's the best way to do that? How do you keep an arguably 'bad player' to keep playing?! You make it harder for the skilled players - by adding RNG(random number generator) something that doesn't account for skill and will in turn give players either direct kills or an advantage in a gun fight without the need for skill.
Big games that have done this recently have been the last 4 or so Call of Duty's, Battlefront and Battlefield Hardline.
This can be achieved many ways but the most common is random spawns so that chances are you're going to come across another enemy player in a very short time and likely one of you will be behind or to the side of the other giving you a slight advantage and 9 times out of 10 you'll get the the kill.
Of course this doesn't mean a noob will win the game but it will give them enough kills to keep playing.
Another skill gap compressor is kill streaks, especially of the autonomous variety such as auto firing turrets or attack dogs or helicopters. These will give you kills for a single button press and you still get the buzz of a bunch of kills even though there's little skill involved.
Also map design, if you design a map with so many lanes and angles that you can never cover more than 2-3 at a time then you're going to die a lot even if you're a 2.0 k/d player.
Like I've said, I'm a pretty average gamer and when I do well I want to enjoy it like the rarity it is and these compressors partly ruin the fun as they bring the gap between kills and deaths closer for a lot of undeserved deaths. I've played a round on Battlefront where nobody actually killed me with a gun, it was in overpowered vehicles and autonomous turrets and that's just not fun for me, it cheapens it for me. Someone will undoubtedly say or think 'just get better' but if you're on a 10 kill streak and a helicopter kills you, not a player, the computer, tell me that doesn't fill you with rage and you can have a cookie and a medal as the only calm child on Xbox Live.
I understand why companies do it, people love a quick fix and I myself don't have as much time to game as I did when I was younger but I'd still rather slog away to get better than get an empty kill by pressing a button to deploy a 'Cerberus' or 'R.A.P.S' on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.
I think I just need to get a gaming PC and play CounterStrike while eating Cheetos... Not really, I'm not that good!
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