[Adjutant Stormy~]

So I've been thinking tonight about multiplayer gaming styles. Largely because I've been getting in HUGE arguments with my friends when we play online (been playing League of Legends recently).

There are a few archetypes that I've seen, just amongst people I play with, but I'm curious if anyone else has anything to add.

There's the Solo. He might as well be playing by himself, because he insists on doing everything his way, or tends to act essentially independently, expecting everyone else to follow his lead. This player can be very useful, if fulfilling a role, such as a tank that can go head-first into every fight, or a sniper, that enables them survivability independent of the team.

There's the Micromanager. He always gives instructions to everyone, he attempts to puppetmaster to a degree, but sometimes this breaks down into 'god damn it you're playing the game wrong.' A Micromanager that really knows what's going on, and has the ears of everyone playing, can make your team CRUSH the opposition. If not, they become extremely annoying.

I tend to play the Accommodater. I'll take whatever role the team needs, or I'll be the one to jump in to a hopeless fight to save one or more of my teammates. I frequently land auxiliary / support roles (since these are typically ones that nobody wants), but since I tend to bounce around roles, I'm not a power player.

I'm sure there are other personalities in games that have made or broken teams we've been on. What are you, or is there one that you've noticed over and over?

[Tapper]

Used to play a mage in WoW (non-PvP), which meant (in vanilla anyway) good damage output, frailty and getting no healer attention except a HoT every now and then. Always loved being expendable and having to take care of myself and my aggro - as raidleader, I could use the dead time anyway to encourage and coach others.

So not so much a Solo, more Auxiliary

[Silencer]

Oooh, well, it depends a lot on the game.

I mean, I tend to be the solo guy - probably because I've always been a big single player gamer, only really got into MP in lan/game days with friends until recently...which is when we tend to plan out more what we're going to do, and because I'm usually a hard-hitting survivor class, like a sniper or something similar. I like to be (and often am) the guy with the best kill/death spread...unless CrusadingKiller/Stalker is playing, in which case he makes me look bad, heh.

But it does really change when playing, say, an RPG over a shooter. In a shooter, I find it really hard to co-ordinate with the kids playing, and a lot of the adults too, for that matter, and team games are almost always won or lost on the relative ratio of good players to bad on a team (unless there is one stellar player, ofc) in my experience. It doesn't matter if the worse team is playing smart, they'll still lose by sheer number of deaths. In Halo: Reach, for example, on one map there is an elevator to the top floor (the most often held, go-to place on the whole damn map) which inevitably leads to someone at the top getting multikills when an entire team decides to fly up there one after the other. It's stupid to go up there, basically. But not only do people do it repeatedly, more often than not, when I do it I manage to push out. I'm astounded that you can hold it so well when at least three quarters of the time I can win through.
But that doesn't mean that holding the elevator and the general area around it is a losing strategy. It just means that if they've got someone on their team who is good enough, it is irrelevant.

Then take Medal of Honour (2010): different game, same principle. You get someone on a team who has, in a Combat Mission game, a k/d of 40:3. I mean, holy fuck. You can't compete with that. But in your average game, my k/d of 25:18 or something means that my team wins most of the time, if I'm backed up by one or two other decent players. It doesn't matter if I play assault class, sniper class or spec ops, it pans out about the same.
There's NO team co-ordination in that game. Period. We're talking people just running around, doing what works. If you get a team cycling together (no lobbies, drop-in drop-out game) who are really good, you'll lose because the individuals are just better.

But throw into something with smaller teams, more dedicated team action...it changes things. I'm much more comfortable adopting different roles to suit in such games. If we're sticking with the military FPS games, it doesn't matter what I am, I can be useful. If you branch into more fantasy series, I prefer to be a mage or stealth character, but that's up to the setup. Though for some reason magic characters seem a lot harder to use in MP when supporting your team than in solo, like in NWN. Just doesn't work quite as well for some reason.

I guess it comes down to what game it is, and the other players. If you have people working together, and the guy(s) co-ordinating aren't being stupid or dicks, then you can be highly effective in games that allow for strategy like that, and people should (and I do) fill what roles are necessary and you're best suited to. In simple smash-and-grab, every-man-for-himself type games (like most popular modern FPS'), it comes down to preference - what you do well with, personally.

*shrug*

[Adjutant Stormy~]

I played a mage (well, my brother's mage, to cover his raid-absences) in WoW, and they're definitely a role with freedom of movement and independent action. They're almost like the WoW version of snipers - they're there to get the kill, but they're basically on their own.

[Roldom]

Auxiliary in LoL, i allways try to cover people to help them escape and it all ways bites me in the ass, but i usually go for anne and tibers everything

if my team seems pretty decent i dont mind trying to solo, but when ive got anne lvled up i can usually hold my side, even at odds of 2 to one if i lvl up quick enough, but if i have to run around trying to save each lane it all falls apart

havent played in months though

[Ulrik]

Depends on game...in Killzone 2-3 its Engineer, so purely supportive role with its own mechanical pets (turrets), in Lineage it was firstly Gladiator, soon changed for Bladedancer, buffer, so...its probably support too...

[Gothos]

In WoW I've played it all, pretty much. Healer (support) for vanilla, melee dps in TBC, Tank for most of WotLK, then back to healer and healing now in Cataclysm now. Sometimes it really ticks off my inner achiever because there's a certain limit to the HPS (healing per second) you can do, and it's situational if you can shine in combat logs and get into the world top 200 at World of Logs (I managed, like, once - place 69 on Al'Akir 25N at that time!). DPS are pretty much free to do their best and be recognized for it every time.
So, supported most of the time in WoW (even when melee dpsing I was an enhancement shaman in TBC - massive buffs for other melee guys). But in, say, Unreal Tournament, I always end up taking it into point blank combat with a flak cannon in hand and a manic grin on my face, total berserker style. Probably the worst teammate ever! In DotA (not played much ever, mind you) I loved being able to finish off fleeing enemies, deny them escape.
Which makes my tendency to be the stealthy bastard in games that I can do it decently in (Thief, Oblivion, Deus Ex - so, I guess, single player games ) quite surprising, to me at least.
Then again I did absolutely LOVE world pvp on my rogue when my second TBC raid guild fell apart and I turned to alting. So much fun engaging 1v2 or 1v3 and emerging on top (mind you, I ran around with pvp enabled on a Normal server, so they usually had the first strike, which for a rogue makes things... challanging).

Come to think of it, I haven't played all that many multiplayer games...

[Tapper]

In LAN/team-grouped hack and slash (Diablo, Hellgate London) dependent on the people I play with, I usually end with a utility role if I play with one group, either healer or tank, because they can't be bothered to do that - with my long standing tiny group of Danish game friends, I'd be completely free to pursue a dps role (and did so, in AoC and Aion) because they love the core utility roles. And are effing good at them, too.

EDIT: don't play many shooters, and certainly not co-op/online. L4D made me the laughing stock of many a party.

This post has been edited by Tapper: 10 March 2011 - 09:41 AM

[cerveza_fiesta]

in fantasy games, I really enjoy being a caster class of some sort. I was a healer and mage DPS in PvE WoW. Both are fun, though healer is by far the more challenging.

In Guild Wars I played almost exclusively as a healer with an off mage and necromancer that I played occasionally for a change of pace.

In Oblivion, I really got into playing a fighter character, after finding the rogue archer style and caster styles too cumbersome on a console controller (ps3).

In MP FPS games like modern warfare, I switch up depending on the map. No set class there for sure. That's why I kinda like that type of game. What gets you wins on "Mansion" map with sniping gets you dead on maps like favela.

But certainly in the RPG fantasy MP games, I prefer a caster and I almost always stick to the healing class cause it's so easy to find groups. You take a lot of flak from the group when you drop the ball but there's waaaay less faffing about waiting a stupid healer to join the group when you happen to be one. Since healing is kind of a thankless job too there are usually only a few healers to go round dozens of healer-less groups, so you can take your pick of the group that looks the least shitty and get better results on missions for the most part.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 10 March 2011 - 12:47 PM

[Gothos]

Well, true, one good part of playing a healer is that you won't run into retards trying to fill the spot... but that rarely happens now as I think healers became harder to find than tanks (which is another thankless job).

[Adjutant Stormy~]

My biggest problem being healer is finding a reliable tank. When I could play support with someone who could actually control the fight insofar as I wasn't getting my ass handed to me, it was glorious. But the other times suck.

Back when I played Everquest, I loved being a Shadowknight, because there was absolutely, positively, no way to pull aggro from you. You were the target of the enemy's ire, period.

[Gothos]

Sounds awesomely boring and overpowered...

[drinksinbars]

bit solo support. I can play happily on my own and rarely try to get others to do stuff, but if i think someone needs help or theres a way to pool our resources i am quick to jump in. unless its left 4 dead in which case i always try to lead.

[Tapper]

Gothos, on 10 March 2011 - 12:56 PM, said:

Well, true, one good part of playing a healer is that you won't run into retards trying to fill the spot... but that rarely happens now as I think healers became harder to find than tanks (which is another thankless job).

Thankless? Really?

The good tanks I worked with in and out of my guild were, in a ratio of about 3 out of 4 the biggest showboats I knew - all of them really enjoyed the job and being in the centre of the spotlights and of the attention.

The immature over-aggro-ing nukers were mostly our best healer (who always tried to get aggro-pulls on mobs during raids to keep the tanks on their toes), and our casters - we had the annoying habit of going into full nuke mode on bosses on farm status.

[Gothos]

The thing is that most dpsers never played a tank, or a healer for that matter. They really can't comprehend what the hell it is we do. They don't comprehend how reactive the gameplay is for healers, and how responsible it is for tanks.

[Tapper]

Hmm, well. Stay below the tanks aggro-curve and listen to them when they say 'no dps' or 'slow dps', and always buff your healer first. But maxing dps while staying on the inside of the aggro-curve with a neat margin is also an art

[Tattersail_]

if i'm playing with my mates, we'd compete to see who gets top place, so i guess we all go solo but they may group together whereas i'll try and do the unexpected every time, i'm definately never a sniper, assualt rifles are my carnage, love them, i'm always changing classes though so I don't have a particular favourite weapon.

[cerveza_fiesta]

The vast majority of my healing was in Guild Wars and by the nature of that game warriors (the only tanking class) are fairly equal power / level-wise except the occasional guy that has a high DPS unique sword or something. I never had a severe problem keeping the tanks alive, but that might just be a simpler aggro system at work, where the tanks just naturally have an easier time of it.

I found healing in WoW super reactive and really really difficult by comparison. Not only because there were way more spells to contend with, but it was so much more dependent on the tank quality - ie if he could keep the baddies off the casters and me. In Guild wars the baddies tended to leave me alone as long as I kept sufficient distance and it was easy to "hang" them on other less important (mage/rogue) players by maneuvrering through the group.

[Tarcanus]

On the rare occasions that I play an MP or co-op game, I'm almost always a support character. I can't stand being the one running into a storm of bullets with an assault rifle. I leave that to the folks with better aim than I. I'd much rather slink around the edges of a map trying to take heat off of my front line by attacking the enemy from behind or staying close by with healing for anyone that needs it. Weapon of choice is generally an assault rifle.

[Illuyankas]

I'm the "OK, now don't walk into the fire on your way thro- wait no fuck GET OUT OF THE FIRE I LITERALLY JUST TOLD YOU NOT TO DAMN IT NOW YOU'RE DEAD AND I HAVE TROLLS EATING MY DUODENUM YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO NERDS EVERYWHERE GET OFF THE PC AND GO WATCH JERSEY SHORE WITH THE REST OF YOUR KIND YOU COCKGUZZLING DICKGARGLING THUNDERCUNT" kind of player.