Has Slayer Marred Shooters?

ctfI have been an FPS guy for years. Years upon years, even. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D, Quake and Doom on my slow-as-balls PC, gunning away to my heart’s content. Eventually, as the Internet actually became a living, breathing entity that took hold of our collective psyche, I started jumping into multiplayer matches like they could sustain my very being.

I loved playing CTF gametypes in shooters, or planting bombs in Counter-Strike: Source. These were fun and interesting ways to play games that were essentially the same, and they added lots of depth to keep you playing for endless hours. But sometimes, things change.

Fast-forward to 2009. Battlefield 1943. My teammates and I haul ass across Iwo Jima, the jeep is giving us everything she’s got. We power slide towards the lighthouse, and promptly capture the point. We immediately get back into the jeep, and proceed on to capture the next two points. After all of our toil, we look up to see that not only have we lost the lighthouse, but also the next capture point as well.

If the 3 of us could take 3 points like that in succession, why could our other 9 teammates not capture or hold a single one? A quick look at the scoreboard shows that while our teammates have killed plenty of Americans, they don’t have nearly enough points to win. Conclusion: in their minds, they are playing a slayer gametype in a team game that is nothing like slayer.

splintercellThis is a problem that I’ve started to encounter a lot in multiplayer games. People don’t know how to play anything besides slayer or deathmatch. Oddly enough, this isn’t exactly a recent problem, either. Years ago, I remember playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow in online multiplayer matches. I had never experienced anything like it, getting to sneak around and away from mercs in multiplayer, getting to employ all of Sam Fisher’s moves against other active users.

Unfortunately, the game didn’t always work that way. More often than not, people just ran the spies headlong at the (supposedly) more powerful mercs, flip kicking them and putting all kinds of crazy deathholds on them. These crazy espionage experts didn’t even go for the objective half the time, they just went straight after the soldiers, balls-to-the-wall. In a sneaking game! This upset me like crazy at the time, because people were treating Splinter Cell like Halo, and not like the game it was designed to be.

The more I play new multiplayer games, the more I can see this idea spreading. I’m not exactly sure what caused it. Maybe Halo did have something to do with it, I’m not sure. But as far as I can tell, the same problem exists on other consoles as well as some PC games. Playing a match of Call of Duty 4 in any mode besides deathmatch will show you the same results: people don’t know how to play other gametypes.

tf2Oddly enough, the one exception to this that I’ve seen seems to be Team Fortress 2. Sure, it’s got its own private retard army like any other game, but more often than not, I see teams actually functioning together in that game.

Now, maybe that speaks to Valve’s more adult fanbase, but maybe it speaks to something else about the game’s design. It makes me wonder if some of these other shooters aren’t designed in a way that promotes teamwork, teamplay and following the objective’s rules. It would be interesting to note how these things all come together to affect the way gamers play these games, and whether or not they participate.

So what do you guys think? Do you notice this problem a lot, too, or am I just a crazy dude? Do you ever experience people not performing the objective in multiplayer gaming. If so, how do you react to it? Is Halo to blame, or is it the overall design of these games that hampers the experience? Give us your thoughts.

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

26 thoughts on “Has Slayer Marred Shooters?”

  1. I play tf2 and i agree with the idea that it is built as a teamwork game, because say on a payload map your just a the final stage only a few yards away from the end, you cant push because they have 4 sentrys level 3 so you need a medic to uber some1 to break them. Its a teamwork game because your dependancy which other games dont have.

    Your example of splinter cell you were all crack agents all same skills so there was no need to work together. This also works for halo games.

  2. It also seems that in these more tactical games, like no respawns etc, it gets to the point were just killing the other team is probably the best and quickest way to victory. I think that the game has to be based firstly on teamwork for it to have it.thats why in TF2 there is alot more teamwork because they have to be a team to win.
    For combating the retard armies, just make it more worthwhile to complete objectives rather than just having just straight deathmatch.

  3. You’re too right, Eddy. I have the same problem in ’43, haha. Good thing I’m a friggin’ beast with the M1 Garand or Type 5, or else I wouldn’t be as successful when I’m talking on the entire enemy team by myself, capping points and out-sniper Scouts.
    But about Slayer, I think we have to blame the FPS genre all together. For the most part, FPS’s have taught 12-year-olds how to hold down mouse buttons or right triggers, but up until recently, have never really tried to focus on teamwork. I suppose you can blame games like DOOM and Halo and Quake, but since those are all classics, you must therefore blame the genre’s roots.
    I think that one problem is the overall immaturity of many gamers. AKA 12-year-olds, or younger. Seriously, why the hell are their parents letting them play CoD and Battlefield? WHY!? Only PC games don’t suffer from such an overpopulation of underdeveloped persons. In fact, as an example, I was playing Shi No Numa a couple days ago, and one of our teammates – who happened to be 11 – was on his own in the hut on the other side of the map, claiming he was better on his own, that we’d slow him down, and a whole lot of other garbage that he stole from badass movies and Duke Nukem. Whenever we demanded he haul his ass over here, he’d question the length of our penises, the condition of our mothers, and our sexual orientation. Problem is, he would constantly get downed by swarms of Imperial Zombies, so we were laughing hysterically every time he would talk all tough, then get pwned, then scream at us because we didn’t help him. Hypocricy is glorious.
    That’s probably why Valve games, especially CSS and TF2, are so fun is because the people playing are older – because young’uns don’t buy PC’s – and therefore are willing to have fun with a new gametype that requires communication, coordination, and teamwork.
    Now don’t get me wrong. Not EVERY game I play is swarming of lone wolf kids and simple-minded slayer fanatics. I have played games of CoD, ’43, etc. where, thanks to strong communication, coordination, and a real drive to be a team and help each other out, we raped the enemy team. The other day, I was with a full squad of guys in ’43 – one college-age guy, one other kid around my age, and a kickass guy from Estonia. It was Iwo Jima, and we all jumped into a landing craft (the driver actually waited for us, instead of driving off on his own like a douche), rushed Lighthouse, then got Fishing, then climbed Surabachi’s back and capped the mountain, as well as bayoneting some fools who were touching themselves in the bunkers. It was fun because we were a team, and it really felt like what a Battlefield game – what any war FPS that relies to teamwork – should feel like. I’ve had similar experiences in the HL2 full mod “Insurgency”, which is a highly realistic tactical shooter set in Iraq and Afghanistan that has high bullet damage, several capture points, and cooperative players. Seriously, you’ll NEED to work together and have a strong squad leader to just survive, let alone capture all the points. It’s a really fun and FREE mod, and you can DL it from the Insurgency site.
    Anyway, advertising aside, games like Insurgency force the player to work together and not treat the game like a Slayer game, and I hope that these kinds of games can release the stranglehold that slayer has on the FPS community in exchange for team-based extravaganzas.

  4. That shit happens to me all the time in 1943. I’ll be a one-tank wrecking crew, blowing through enemy positions like there’s no tomorrow, and when I reach the other side of the map, all my progress will be for naught. Why? Because my entire team is on the carrier, waiting for the plane to respawn!

    Red Faction also suffers from this. I played some Slayer stuff on that, then Siege, which works as the destruction comes naturally to the game. Then, I played CTF.

    I was the only one who ran for the flag, dodging sniper fire as I barrelled across a small ravine in the center of the map. I cut around the back of the enemy’s base, sledged a sniper camping there, and ran all the way back to my base with the flag on my back. (This was a very large map)

    Two feet from the drop point, I get an assault rifle mag in my back. The flag drops, and my teammates swarm the enemy to try and kill him. But not a single one goes for the flag.The flag resets at the EDF base, and I rage quit.

    Seriously, it was aggravating. The position of the my death-cam shows my entire team bum-rushing the one EDF trooper who made it into our base, but one of them can’t peel off to complete the damn objective?

    Team Fortress 2 I enjoy playing for teamwork, as I think people realize that you actually need to kind of work together to win. And everyone likes winning.

  5. I am guilty of this myselfin CoD 4 but then again I rtry to play mainly Hardcore Deathmantch. Although, it really does anger me when I see people just killing and not going for the obj, in the end, the game design is to blame. CoD might be good, but it doesn’t come close to promoting teamwork, even in Singleplayer when you don’t even NEED AI teammates.

  6. BF: Bad Company suffers from this greatly. Everyone plays as snipers, and they are absolutely horrible! No one goes for the gold crates, and the attackers inevitably lose. I, like you, Mitch, quit when I realize that all hope is lost. People *need* to be the arty support, and they do absolutely nothing to help the team. This really agrivates me in one of my favorite shooters.

  7. Trying to be a one man army in TF2 will get you a shitty score and lots of deaths (With the exception of being a spy or sniper if you’re really good)

    “Playing a match of Call of Duty 4 in any mode besides deathmatch will show you the same results: people don’t know how to play other gametypes.”

    Ah yes, I remember this. But the best thing about that was/is that they don’t last long in those games. I always played hardcore in COD4, and it was easy to spot those “balls to the walls” players. Needless to say their score went down, and the scores of people who were good at hardcore like myself went up. It is still a shame though =/

  8. “People don’t know how to play anything besides slayer or deathmatch.” True that. I especially see that in, well, Halo 3, when everyone does their damned hardest to veto anything that isn’t slayer. People will even LEAVE the game just because it’s something that isn’t where they can just run around shooting shit. I will blame Halo because that is where it happens the most out of any game on the Xbox, and it’s only a matter of time before it was displayed elsewhere by the players. TF2 on Xbox, surprisingly, has very few of these kinds of people, and for that i’m glad.

  9. I notice it, I can completely see what you are talking about. I think its kids and how they care more about “Oh I killed you X amount of times I rock” than anything else.

    I agree TF2 doesn’t have this problem as heavily. Thing with that is I think that the class options make that better. You HAVE to work as a team.

  10. Think of the problem this way. Most people are online and are assholes. You will always get the team killer, or the guy who just wants to kill and screw around. If anybody could change a game to were it’s all team work that would be impossible. nobody is to blame but the parents really for growing an asshole kid or not caring for what they get in class or doing illegal things. The only way to ever get a good game of people who care about the objective is with your friends or lucky with people online. That’s the way i’ve always thought about gaming, like how i always think about this statement ” You can always change the game, but you can never change the people.” and that’s always how it’ll be with online gaming.It’s really the luck of the draw in the people you have in online gaming.

  11. This is an interesting topic. I noticed from my CSS days that when I played in ‘fun’ servers people sometimes mess around and you basicaly have to defend yourself.

    However, at some point in the match, one team ALWAYS starts to co-operate and when they do that the match gets amazingly good because the other team will get owned unless they do something back.

    BF2 has many balancing issues with vehicles and such but a lot of servers will promote you to squad up and work together. When that happens, the game can be amazing when you have heli’s, jets, tanks, infantry all working together. The only problem you have then is that nobody defends. Everybody attacks for some reason so flags are really hard to keep.

    That’s where I come in with a lot of points. It’s like a hole i nthe market. If evrybody is doing the same thing and forgetting to do something else – that’s an opportunity to get some kills! Then again, I can’t speak for any games other than CSS, CS1.6, BF2 and BF1942…

  12. Roger that, Muaddib.

    Anyway, about CoD4, the reason I only play Hardcore Search (or Reggy Search, sometimes) is because if anyone doesn’t know how to play Search, let alone Hardcore, they die within the first 20 seconds, and then rage quit. So it’s a fairly exclusive gametype, and that’s what I love.
    A lot of games come quite close to inspiring everyone to work together – games like L4D, Innie, etc. – but I really think that past a certain point of population, that you’re inevitably going to end up with those assholes who can’t comprehend the concept of teamwork and cooperation and the fact that dicking around is no fun, and probably gets old for the around-dicker.
    But for an FPS war game, I think I have a fairly good theory for a formula requiring teamwork but not being too exclusive so that the population limit can increase somewhat, but it’s mostly to allow for a more mainstream yet still mature audience:
    Have a gametype that requires teamwork; but not like “defend this flag or we’re screwed”, more like “everyone attack, now secure, now we get a reward like faster respawns, more money for better loadouts and equipment, etc.” So far, I’ve created a gametype called Frontline, where two Strongholds are at opposite sides of a map, with several Checkpoints between the Strongholds. If one team has the majority of infantry on and beyond the Frontline, it moves forward. As the team closes in on a Checkpoint, the Checkpoint is neutralized, then if the attacking team can physically capture it and secure by keeping enemies from recapping it, the Checkpoint is successfully captured and it becomes a new spawn point, and gives every soldier on that team a boost in currency to use for better loadout equipment when they spawn. Since Frontline is a purely forward-or-backward game, there is no sneaking around and capping the Stronghold without capping the Checkpoints in front of you. There can still be Blitzkriegs and similar strategies, but it’s quite realistic.
    As for the game’s gameplay, it would be cover-based, squad-based, and the weapons would have realistic ballistics and recoil and such. For the damage, it wouldn’t take just one bullet, but a burst of fire to a vital area will kill an enemy. For example, shooting a person’s leg once will slow them down, but not kill them UNLESS they bleed out because their Medic can’t patch them up. They’re leg will still be damaged, but they won’t bleed out unless wounded again. Also, shock and fatigue can kill a soldier who’s been wounded too many times or too severely. It’s fairly advanced, but it’s doable. Plus, it gives Medics a purpose in such a realistic environment. As for the respawning, it’d be in waves, perhaps 10 to 30 second delays, depending on how far up you’ve advanced. This way, the long respawns will force players to value their lives, but be fast enough if, say, you’re close to an important Checkpoint like a HQ or airfield, or your Stronghold.
    For the squad gameplay, 6 to 8 soldiers with their own class-specific loadout options (i.e. Riflemen can hold more ammo and hand grenades, while Grenadiers can select rifles with grenade launchers or rocket launchers) belong to one squad. Instead of each man getting their own kills, each kill adds to the squad’s total. Assists and Savior or Avenger kills add bonuses to your personal score and the squad’s score, thereby rewarding teamwork over one man’s success. These points will affect their rank on the leaderboards as well as the currency they can use for their loadouts. This currency can be gained or lost depending on kills and objectives. The squads can have a bit of competition for kills and points, but if they assist each other with kills or objectives, they also get bonuses for each other with eventually adds up to a Platoon, then Company, then Division total, the Division being the team perhaps. Essentially, every man needs the men next to him, and they’re all small cogs in a large machine, driven by the will to help each other and the rewards that teamwork gives them. With each objective, the team becomes stronger, not just the one man.
    Also, communication is crucial. By bringing up a simple menu, each man can set waypoints and call out enemies or say their attacking, etc. The squad leader has the most options, encompassing special waypoints and orders. This way, even if a soldier doesn’t have a mic, he can still communicate rather effectively. Also, the waypoints and some orders are not obsolete when a mic is introduced. As for who is the squad leader, it’s the highest ranking soldier, combined with their service record (team assist bonuses and objectives and points and such) as well as their service in the battle. Soldiers can be promoted to squad leader or demoted for poor command, and then succeeded by another. However, it’s still stable enough so that if you get a good squad leader, he’ll stay your squad leader.
    Oh, and there’s no teamkilling. Maybe it takes away from the realism, but it adds to the cooperation potential.

    So that’s my basic idea. I have ideas for other gametypes, but Frontline is my pride and joy.
    Yes, I will become a video game developer when I grow up, and I plan on making this shooter a reality.

  13. Oh, and one more thing: Morale.

    The closer you are to teammates or controlled Checkpoints or your Stronghold, the higher your morale. Morale affects your stamina, your ability to cope with shock and fatigue, your battle preformance like accuracy and melee power, and how effectively you can push the Frontline up and capture Checkpoints.

  14. I think TF2 works because of the class system. It’s tailored to make it impossible fot there to be one overall ULTIMATE PWNAGE CLASS a la BF:BC where support have powerful guns, health restores AND mortars. It means they can do pretty much anything on their own, like hog the health packs. My friend is a notorious git when playing support.

  15. [quote comment=”7594″]Roger that, Muaddib.

    Anyway, about CoD4, the reason I only play Hardcore Search (or Reggy Search, sometimes) is because if anyone doesn’t know how to play Search, let alone Hardcore, they die within the first 20 seconds, and then rage quit. So it’s a fairly exclusive gametype, and that’s what I love.
    A lot of games come quite close to inspiring everyone to work together – games like L4D, Innie, etc. – but I really think that past a certain point of population, that you’re inevitably going to end up with those assholes who can’t comprehend the concept of teamwork and cooperation and the fact that dicking around is no fun, and probably gets old for the around-dicker.
    But for an FPS war game, I think I have a fairly good theory for a formula requiring teamwork but not being too exclusive so that the population limit can increase somewhat, but it’s mostly to allow for a more mainstream yet still mature audience:
    Have a gametype that requires teamwork; but not like “defend this flag or we’re screwed”, more like “everyone attack, now secure, now we get a reward like faster respawns, more money for better loadouts and equipment, etc.” So far, I’ve created a gametype called Frontline, where two Strongholds are at opposite sides of a map, with several Checkpoints between the Strongholds. If one team has the majority of infantry on and beyond the Frontline, it moves forward. As the team closes in on a Checkpoint, the Checkpoint is neutralized, then if the attacking team can physically capture it and secure by keeping enemies from recapping it, the Checkpoint is successfully captured and it becomes a new spawn point, and gives every soldier on that team a boost in currency to use for better loadout equipment when they spawn. Since Frontline is a purely forward-or-backward game, there is no sneaking around and capping the Stronghold without capping the Checkpoints in front of you. There can still be Blitzkriegs and similar strategies, but it’s quite realistic.
    As for the game’s gameplay, it would be cover-based, squad-based, and the weapons would have realistic ballistics and recoil and such. For the damage, it wouldn’t take just one bullet, but a burst of fire to a vital area will kill an enemy. For example, shooting a person’s leg once will slow them down, but not kill them UNLESS they bleed out because their Medic can’t patch them up. They’re leg will still be damaged, but they won’t bleed out unless wounded again. Also, shock and fatigue can kill a soldier who’s been wounded too many times or too severely. It’s fairly advanced, but it’s doable. Plus, it gives Medics a purpose in such a realistic environment. As for the respawning, it’d be in waves, perhaps 10 to 30 second delays, depending on how far up you’ve advanced. This way, the long respawns will force players to value their lives, but be fast enough if, say, you’re close to an important Checkpoint like a HQ or airfield, or your Stronghold.
    For the squad gameplay, 6 to 8 soldiers with their own class-specific loadout options (i.e. Riflemen can hold more ammo and hand grenades, while Grenadiers can select rifles with grenade launchers or rocket launchers) belong to one squad. Instead of each man getting their own kills, each kill adds to the squad’s total. Assists and Savior or Avenger kills add bonuses to your personal score and the squad’s score, thereby rewarding teamwork over one man’s success. These points will affect their rank on the leaderboards as well as the currency they can use for their loadouts. This currency can be gained or lost depending on kills and objectives. The squads can have a bit of competition for kills and points, but if they assist each other with kills or objectives, they also get bonuses for each other with eventually adds up to a Platoon, then Company, then Division total, the Division being the team perhaps. Essentially, every man needs the men next to him, and they’re all small cogs in a large machine, driven by the will to help each other and the rewards that teamwork gives them. With each objective, the team becomes stronger, not just the one man.
    Also, communication is crucial. By bringing up a simple menu, each man can set waypoints and call out enemies or say their attacking, etc. The squad leader has the most options, encompassing special waypoints and orders. This way, even if a soldier doesn’t have a mic, he can still communicate rather effectively. Also, the waypoints and some orders are not obsolete when a mic is introduced. As for who is the squad leader, it’s the highest ranking soldier, combined with their service record (team assist bonuses and objectives and points and such) as well as their service in the battle. Soldiers can be promoted to squad leader or demoted for poor command, and then succeeded by another. However, it’s still stable enough so that if you get a good squad leader, he’ll stay your squad leader.
    Oh, and there’s no teamkilling. Maybe it takes away from the realism, but it adds to the cooperation potential.

    So that’s my basic idea. I have ideas for other gametypes, but Frontline is my pride and joy.
    Yes, I will become a video game developer when I grow up, and I plan on making this shooter a reality.[/quote]

    I think the monmentum would be too strong. after capturing 2 to 3 checkpoints one team would have much shorter respawn, much better weapons, and much more currency. how would the other team come back against such odds. also, this would encourage rushing which goes against team play unless you can plan extremely fast which most people can’t with random strangers. overall fantastic idea though

  16. Hm, good point rgarrow. I guess I could change it where the team with Checkpoints farther forward has longer respawn delays at those advance Checkpoints. Maybe the team with fewer Checkpoints and therefore that’s closer to their Stronghold would get a boost in capping speed, or maybe it’d be a sort of command ability called Desperation where that side gains much more morale and faster capping speed. Maybe something like WaW’s War’s Momentum and Blitzkriegs.
    Well, thanks for the feedback!

  17. I agree, that is why I don’t play CoD online. People only care about their rank and will teamkill each other to get XP. It’s hilarious to see people play Gears of War like a deathmatch game and then just burst into meaty chunks. That game forces you to work as a team, which is why I still play it often.

  18. “Anyway, about CoD4, the reason I only play Hardcore Search (or Reggy Search, sometimes) is because if anyone doesn’t know how to play Search, let alone Hardcore, they die within the first 20 seconds, and then rage quit. So it’s a fairly exclusive gametype, and that’s what I love.”

    Ah me too comrade =D

    “I think TF2 works because of the class system. It’s tailored to make it impossible fot there to be one overall ULTIMATE PWNAGE CLASS”

    Demoman. Makes it all the more fun stabbing them in the ass time and time again when you get behind them and their team.

  19. Public is for beginners,casual, n00bs and keeping your aim in good shape. At least that’s how I was thinking about it when I was a active FPS gamer.

    If you were playing public you A) Had just started playing and hadn’t yet found a clan to play proper games with yet B) Didn’t have time to play with a clan, or at least thought so C) Were so fucking bad so no clan wanted you or D) Already hade a clan but weren’t enough people online to actually play a game yet.

    If you, as I , was from category D you didn’t play public to “win”. It was just a way to get warmed up or training your “skills” for the real game. When you saw someone actually doing the objective you went”Aaa man, what the fuck are you doing?! This is public, let the objective be!” for your self.

    So I think that to some part that the “slayer” phenomena you are talking about here is actually about the competitive gaming scene growing. I don’t think its that people take the game less serious but that they can’t be bothered to take the game serious when you play with random asshats.

    And I would say I still agree with the D category about public. You play to get better at the game so you can play in proper matches with a proper team.

  20. Killzone 2 is different too. Usually people do go with the ojective, but this is also because the game is set up. You play all game types in one match and people who have played killzone for awhile have played all the game types plenty of times to understand what to do. Plus the game match you up with people of equal ability so more advanced players wont have to play with a bunch of noobs that dont know how to play.

    But in other games… sometimes in capture the flag/set the bomb the other team has no idea what is going on and just focuses on killing people and you can run and grab the flag with no problem and score many times because the team isn’t guarding. Its kinda fun when you get in games like this because you can score a ton of times by just running back and forth and just rack up a ton of points.

  21. Oh, definately. The same happens to me in 1943, I think mainly because it was designed more for fast-paced shooting action opposed to their other shooters like Bad Company, which is why I’ve been a fan of BC for a long time now, along with BF2/BF2MC/2142. You actually have to have some teamwork to win matches and rank up, and you have to be good at more than just shooting. I don’t play much Halo or CoD MP anymore since it is only just 12 year olds with a trigger finger, it’s kind of boring and not fun anymore, especially after the 100th time you get T-Bagged. Hopefully ODST will be a little better, I know Halo Wars cut down on Halo noobs, though it still was condensed for an RTS compared to, say, Endwar.

  22. Personally i think its the games drive of people getting points. Like COD4 prestige mode, everyone wants to be the best and has the farthest progressien. i know a lot of people who can get more points sitting outside a main capture point and sniping the people that come to capture it than running in and trying to rambo everything with an assault rifle.

  23. Thats not really a new problem. I remember back in 2000/2001 when I still played CS and the game became more popular, that you’d have more and more people ignoring their actuall job and just going for the kill. Of course in Counterstrike you’d win if the opponent was obliterated, but more often then not, just getting the hostages or blowing the place up, would have been way easier to win.

    That people play Slayer-Style and not team-focused is something that all Battlefield-games suffer since the series started.

    In my opinion, most people are just triggerhappy morons, and I am just happy they just get to hold a gun in a game. At least here in europe, where I live. Sorry for you americans…

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