This question has been plaguing me lately, and I’ve noticed that a good amount of the community has been as well. Perhaps it’s the game’s age getting to some of us. Perhaps it’s the game undergoing changes to gameplay and to the way it looks. Perhaps it’s the bugs that continue to live on in the game after all of these revisions.
While writing this up, I changed direction a bit. Therefore, things at the beginning may seem unrelated to things at the end. However, I feel that it all intertwines somewhere along the way, and at the least gives you all a bit of an introduction to where I’m coming from, and some of the things I believe in. It’s probably one of the worst samples of my writing you’ll ever see, but it all needed to be said eventually. May as well get it out of the way now.
I played TF in many of it’s revisions for NetQuake and QuakeWorld, taking occasional breaks to play other games that caught my eye. Still, I couldn’t let go of TF completely, even with Quake2 CTF, Diablo, and numerous other games pulling for my time. While I was waiting for TFC, which promised a much needed visual update to the game I spent so much time playing, I continued with TF, staying mostly to a particular Canalzon server that lives only in our memories now.
TFC brought something else that really drew my attention, something other than the visual updates. It brought a much-needed end to the cheating that plagued QuakeWorld after 2-3 years of it’s existance. It also brought a fresh community that seemed mostly untainted by the arrogance that existed among many in the TF clan scene.
I’m beginning to think that perhaps that arrogance is a part of a game’s age, something that grows within a community as the newbies that were dealt harsh blows by their elders become elders themselves, and the elders that believed in helping others and spreading honour in the community decide that it’s no longer worth their effort, usually leaving the game behind for something else.
As I’ve played this game, I’ve gone from a veteran of the TF pubs to a player just on the virge of completely giving up on the TFC pubs. When that happened, though, there was a group that caught my eye. I had been opposed to playing in clans in TF because the bad side of that particular community was very evident when I started looking. TF had gone through some nasty cheating scandals, and some of the arrogant few were winning matches, feeding their arrogance even more. However, when I started looking at TFC clans, the vast majority (with one noted exception) were upholding honour in the game and showing that you could play a straight up game and get the wins. The TFC clan scene was, at that time, the pillars of the community.
Somehow, for reasons barely known even to myself, I managed to make my way into the best clan in the game at that time. Their beliefs were the same as my own, that the game was to be played for fun, that cheating was not to be tolerated, and that although winning was not the sole purpose of playing, it was something worth working for.
Somewhere along the way, my clanmates started to grow tired of the harsh regimine of practice that we held, and of the game itself. Many of them had been playing the game equally as long as I had, however most of them had never had the occasional breaks that I had taken as a pub player. New mods came along for Half-life that had playing styles that, while rehashed to someone like myself that had spent time with various Quake 2 mods, were new to people that had not spent much time with that particular game. Needless to say, I didn’t agree with my clanmates, though I needed a break as well.
I took a month off, barely even touching TFC for 2-3 weeks of that time. The TF1.5 patch came out during my time off, and pushed me a little further from the game, making it easier to spend that time away. Still, eventually, something called me back. The game was different, but it still held the same call. It wasn’t long before I found a new group of people that held similar beliefs, and was back to playing clan matches again. It also wasn’t very long before I started noticing that, with 2 or 3 of the major forces in the clan scene gone in a short time period, the scene had started to change.
I guess, to some extent, this shift had started much earlier, it was just hidden to an extent. There were numerous flame wars between various clans regarding the tactics people chose to play. Some clans play the game to win, and some play for fun. Unfortunately, on occasion the tactics used to win don’t leave a lot of room for a fun game on the parts of the clans being played against. This leaves a clan that came to have fun feeling cheated, even if they won.
What does this mean to everyone out there that isn’t in a clan? Well, think about why you play this game. Think about how your actions effect the other players in the game. Are you in the game to have fun, or to win? Is your idea of fun or winning causing problems for other players on the server that may be trying to have fun? Respawn campers are usually having fun, so are the cheaters, but the people being camped aren’t having fun, and in many cases neither are the people being cheated. It may be fun to ask for an all-crowbars game every once in a while, but what about the people that came to play a real game of TFC? The players that wish to play offense are often discouraged in a pub game by the incredibly heavy defense. The players that are highly skilled at defense are often discouraged by the near total lack of offense.
People have lost site of why they play the game. When people stop having fun, even if their reason for playing is to have fun, they never just leave the game. It doesn’t work that way for most people. We drag it out, we try to find the fun again, we ask for other people to change things to make it fun again. I went and joined another clan, with which I had a great deal of fun, but slowly certain things started wearing on me again. It wasn’t the fault of the clan I was with, the game just stopped being fun again.
Still, I’m here, ranting about bunnyhopping and running a league that mandates use of Punkbuster to detect cheaters and expose them, effectively keeping them out. From time to time I’ve also been known to rant about chasing, turtling, respawn camping, and a few other choice issues. In the last week I spent an hour spectating TFC matches, one hour actually playing TFC, 8 hours playing Black & White, and 4 hours playing Tribes 2. I’ve also spent 4 hours working on a program that some people might find useful, should I ever manage to finish it (it’s certainly not the first time I’ve started work on a similar project).
Why am I still here? As much as I hate the state this game is in, the changes are possible. Maybe if I shout loud enough, pound on the walls hard enough, people will start to listen, and the changes will happen.
Punkbuster mandated in every league and playing on more of the public servers is just a start in the right direction. It’s time to start removing the dark seeds that have tainted this community. The end does not justify the means. There is no substitute for honour and a game well played. Dishonour should not be met with flames and angry villagers, it should be met with a brick wall and solid refusal to accept it as part of the game or the community that has formed around the game.
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(For more information on Punkbuster, visit Punkbuster, for more information on Black & White and Tribes 2, visit PlanetBlackandWhite and PlanetTribes , respectively).
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