This game and its popularity, both as a 'why people play it' and 'why people watch it played by anyone but the super-elite' just passes me by.
Like I get that I am clearly either just the absolute wrong target demo, or missing something key. But I've tried watching most of these series this game has produced and its been "spend about 15-30 minutes looting up, encounter better players, immediately die, spend 15-30 minutes doing the same."
I'm just completely in the dark on this one. The game looks like a massive waste of time to play unless your absolutely amazing at it, and aside from 'The GB guys interacting is great!' there seems no point in watching anyone bang their head against a wall for an hour plus.
Ah well. I can't say I didn't give it an honest try. But this is the like..3rd or 4th video I've come away with feeling like I completely wasted my time watching it, and so did they playing it. Again..its gotta be me, given this games rankings on steam and the amount the GB guys are playing it (and the mostly praise in the comments from fellow fans of the site). But whatever it is I am missing..I'm unable to glean it on my own.
It's hard to understand the intensity of playing the game, even when nothing is happening, until you are actually playing it. The first time someone sneaks up on you and instantly kills you is terrifying. The game has given me nerves unlike anything before, especially when you are in the top 10 and you have been playing so well and you know the win is so close yet so far. The mechanics feel like nothing else.
Also, GB is honestly terrible at showing off the game. Like any other game there's the amazing players but there is also the OK players who can win sometimes. GB makes it look like a massive waste of time because they don't land near anyone and try to hide for the majority of their games. The reason they get absolutely crushed the majority of the time is because spending 20 minutes hiding and looting every game means you aren't actually getting better at killing people, which in most cases you are going to have to kill a few people to win.
If they spent more time landing in high population areas and taking fights they would get better at the shooting mechanics, get better loot fast by taking it off the players they killed, and eventually get better at the game, which would lead to better videos.
It took me quite a few hours to understand the fact that the chances of me winning were slim and that I needed to start just trying to kill people instead of hiding all the time and since I've switched my play style I've won a few games.
I think the biggest thing people fail to learn in this game is engagement tactics simply because not taking engagements early on can get you easily to the end game, which gives a false sense of "learning the game" because you are commonly making it to the top 10 or so. This causes a lot of frustration that Jeff was expressing early on the video about getting a full kit to then just die at the first encounter.
You really have to force yourself to learn by taking engagements. Yeah, you are going to die a lot, but you are going to get the experience.
Yeah, definitely. They seem to be getting a little better at working together when things are placid, but as soon as shit pops off, they start to panic. I see them struggling to switch weapons, running for cover, charging forward, etc. They just need to go through the grinder so they harden their nerves a bit and, like you said, get that tactical experience fighting a firefight.
Yeah. They need to do one of these where all they do is land at the military base over and over until they get better at shooting people. It's what me and my friend started to do and I feel like it made me 10 times better at the game. The guns have bullet drop, knowing how guns shoot around angles is important, knowing how many shots it takes to kill someone with specific guns is important, and you never learn that stuff hiding all the time.
I think it's just a mental thing about trying to win rather than just trying to have a good game and knowing that even if you kill 10 people you can still (and most likely will) lose. Once I accepted the chances of me winning were slim and I needed to just play to kill people, I ended up winning some games.
- Looting is bad. Like loot your first area. Loot another area nearby. After that all buildings should be avoid avoid avoid unless you want to apartment camp. The buildings are either going to be already empty ( because by the time the circle has closed twice everyone has looted basically everything inside the circle ), or you'll get murdered by campers. After the second circle the treeline/trees/rocks are significantly better cover.
- Y'all love to split up, especially Dan. That's fine for those first two loot zones since it's rare you'll encounter anyone else ( and a loss barely matters since restart is so easy ), but when you are all splitting up at 20-30 left it's led to a lot of bad deaths. Especially on teams since everyone else is going to be rolling up squadlike.
- Camo is actually super important. Try to find grey or green stuff and wear it. Lategame is all about tree/rock cover, and the better you blend in to those the longer you'll live.
- On that note, shooting dudes might be the first impulse ( and obviously you guys are trying to put on a show for us and we appreciate it ), but it's usually the worst impulse. As soon as you move/fire at all you've given up your position and given them a chance to fire back at you. If you sit still and let enemies think a place is empty/feel safe and turn their back on you, you can do SO MUCH murder without ever taking a hit.
I can't even remember how many dudes I've murdered now with a pistol because I stood next to a tree and they either ran past me, or ran straight to my tree for cover. Since I didn't start firing until they couldn't do anything about it I won all those encounters.
The biggest tip I can think of though is speed. You guys are super slow. You shouldn't be following the circle as it closes, because as Jeff points out constantly "there will be dudes shooting the people coming back to the circle.". You can get lucky breaks for a whole game, and never get fired back at as you follow the circle but it's rare, and it's what kills you guys 9 games out of 10. Even with those lucky breaks, once the circle starts closing faster/closing into no building areas/fields it's all over for you. You are suddenly running across an area with no cover to a space where dudes are on top of a hill with better guns then you.
The better idea across the board is to be the first people to the "middle", so you can murder the campers/endgame players as they slowly trickle in to set up in the various trees/murderzones. Even if you have awful close range guns, you can murder the people that have better guns by just being there first. Being the guy in the field waiting for people to run to him nets you all the best equipment in the game just by banditing, and keeps you safe as you can see where everyone goes when they arrive at the final areas.
Loot your first area, loot a second area if needbe while you wait to get a general feel for where the center will be, then make your way there. If all you have is junk guns and no scopes, take them from murdering dudes making their way along.
Staying on the edge of the circle is a perfectly viable strategy, especially if you are a good shot. You will generally have your back completely covered and you can spot the campers/get good angles on people. There is also many times where the circle closes on the edge rather than the middle and you can run around the blue border using it as cover. This way you generally only have to watch in front of you and to one side. If you are roughly in the middle then you have 360 degrees of where people can come from and then if you have to leave your camping spot everyone is sure to see you. If you have good loot and are confidant in your shot/team coordination being on the edge can often times be better.
Of course both strategies can work equally, and I'm sure getting to the middle of the circle would be much more helpful for the GB crew.
Glad you enjoyed Horizon. I agree with everything you said, the combat just felt so good and unique. Satisfying is probably the best word to describe it. Also I loved the story. While post apocalypse stuff is done to death nowadays, Horizon found a great way to put on a spin on it that felt entirely new.
I actually realized Vinny hardly ever blocks...that would help, lol.
I was gonna say the same thing! He doesn't block, gets combo'd and then...doesn't block. Dan just spams pokes most of the time and Vinny just walks into them.
I've been playing on PC and have had two hardlocks, one crash, and an assortment of tiny little bugs that don't particularly matter. The main issue with the game is the writing, as Brad says, it's horrible. It feels like they had a bunch of random people who never wrote a story or cared about writing one in their life write this thing. Everything is so generic and boring. Nothing has any weight to it at all. Dialogue choices don't matter. You make everyone happy no matter what you say or do. And boy does everyone love the Pathfinder...for absolutely no reason.
I do enjoy the combat, the guns feel good and the combos are fun to do...the multiplayer is also fun. But man the writing is just so bad.
Another great Moosies! I was pretty sure DOOM would win your game of the year, but I forgot how much you love Uncharted.
I really like your description of No Man's Sky, I have the same exact feelings about it. I also agree with you that Dark Souls 3 is really, really good. And I agree with your asessment of Hitman. I liked playing it a bit more than you did, but I think your discussion about the gameplay is spot on. It's more fun to watch people play it and get excited about it then it is to play it by yourself.
I'm still shocked you love Overwatch as much as you do. Also you should play more Titanfall! I just unlocked the 5,000 pilot kills skin...(I like that game).
I understand how you feel about Deus Ex. I was convinced Dishonored 2 would be my GOTY this year and it instead became my most disappointing game.
I'm also surprised you liked Mafia 3 that much. That game just seems so boring to play. You will have to tell me more about the story.
I really enjoyed Lucio Ball! Also I really like the new Junkenstein mode...It's not great by any means but I like idea of it and I think its very good at helping practice aiming, especially when 3/4 characters they let you play can be tough to aim with. It's especially good for practice repeated headshots on moving targets and it's quite difficult on hard.
I know a lot of people are annoyed that the cosmetic items are so expensive but I'm glad they are so overpriced. I think it keeps the items rare, which is important to make people enjoy the items more. Also it lets people feel like they got their money's worth if they spend real money to get the items. Also, if they didn't overprice the items, they would lose a lot of money, and people buying boxes is what is going to keep Blizzard adding new maps and characters for free, as well as more events. Also, now people will know to save up their Overwatch bucks for every event and hopefully be able to buy the skins that they want.
This is one of the best, if not the best, Giantbomb Guest Columns I've ever read. Certainly the first time I've ever laughed out loud reading one.
I definitely suffer from the same "I don't want to lose" anxiety, except for me instead of quitting games I keep playing them and get better or get frustrated. Starcraft 2 was/is my biggest anxiety but greatest achievement in being good at a fake thing. I went from having absolutely no clue about strategy, micro, macro or anything at all to eventually reaching top Diamond and hitting Masters players on ladder. I made top 8% on the North America server during Heart of the Swarm. It felt really really good to be "ok" at Starcraft but no matter what, even after playing over 2,000 games, I still couldn't shake the idea that I "needed" to win. I hated losing and felt like shit when I dropped down the ladder. I was always terrified of losing my rank. When I did start playing Master league people, I lost most of the time because I would get nervous and think how they would be so much better than me. They really weren't but my negative mindset made them be better.
I quit during Heart of the Swarm and picked it back up again with Legacy of the Void and then quit again. A combination of frustration, not wanting to spend time practicing, and loser anxiety has kept me away from the game. Even so I still consider it to be the best competitive multiplayer game ever created and hopefully with the new patch allowing every player to have a separate rank with each race it will allow my brain to stop caring so damn much about ranks and just play to have fun. It really is so silly to care so much about something on a computer screen, that doesn't actually "exist" in the real world. And yet my brains always demands I do well and get better.
I do agree that Overwatch is helpful to get involved in team games and fun, but it being a team game makes it have its own set of frustrations. I think what Blizzard did best with the game is create that MOBA feel for players, where people like the look, feel, and personality of the characters. This makes people like playing certain characters and keep people coming back to the game even if someone is an ass to them in chat. It's certainly an easier game to get into than Starcraft.
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