I have echoed that exact sentiment before on this very forum, although it's probably two or three years ago now, around the time when COD4 was the hot topic I think. Suffice to say I think it's a wholly valid point, I still do.

Thing is though, for me it certainly isn't about the core gameplay and engaging in competitive fun lacking inherent motivation and incentive, I would go so far as to say that the opposite is almost the case. I've often lamented the fact that MP feels daunting because it's X hours spent basically treading water. Sure you've got numbers for how much water you've been treading, but without a sense of closure, I can't psychologically deal with it. The game won't give me any sort of nod as to when I'm "done", and if anything I could get just as stuck spending countless hours with a multiplayer game now as I did during my five years of late night PC gaming.

In terms of gaming memories, when I think back of that time it's ONE MOMENT that lasted five years. I couldn't possibly single out one year from another, one day's gaming experience from another, and that's pretty terrifying for me.

So what a thing like these cR and this appearance thing does for me is lend what's essentially a perpetual machine a sense of linear progression. I can set my goals and I can have my meta layer sense of closure and finality as a supplement to the fun of the actual game, and it will allow me to walk away.

There's also the factor of being new to the game and met with complete strangers raping the flip out of you with initially no tangible sense of improving, just the constant reminder of the kill/death statistic plummeting. I appreciate local games in this regard - a big reason that fighters generally appeal to me more - as you have a dialogue with people you're playing, as opposed to the faceless rape bots online. Having the cR/appearance stuff in there to keep your spirit up during this soul eroding phase definitely helps me out, too. The thrill of getting better and having your heart race as you're pulling off sprees is an inevitable appeal eventually anyway.Haha, thanks! It took some pretty serious concentration!

I've seen plenty of Captains and Majors, but not a single Colonel.

And Simon, you can walk away whenever you want. I don't really get the closure thing. If you actually enjoy playing the game, there's no end to it, and that's the same here, or with Call of Duty, or whatever. There's nothing wrong with there being no end, that's what makes fighters and shooters appeal most to me. I don't need to play every mediocre single player experience under the sun. It's not worth my time, when I could be shooting people on the innernets!

Firefight online is too frustrating. There's a horrid amount of lag in firefight. Score attack saves me from that frustration.

I've seen two Colonels. Just no majors!

Today's challenges have a decent amount of wedge in them, shame I won't be home tonight :(

See, I just don't agree with this. The gaming memories I cherish the most looking back are ones in isolation as opposed to the blur an mp game for years upon years becomes for me.

A singular moment in a singular game is so vivid to me. Jumping off the skyscraper at the end of NiGHTS, riding the elevator with Azel in Panzer Dragoon Saga. Outrunning the flood in Another World or finding Anita stuffed in the locker in Beneath a Steel Sky. Reaching the Technodrome in Turtles, winning the spitting contest in Monkey Island 2, reaching Eden in Rez and Lights in Lumines. Strafe jumping in Quake 2, being chased by the orca in Sonic Adventure.

I mean I can go on and on and on and on and on. About my multiplayer gaming during those five years though? Sure I was having fun, but my memory of them is a fucking vacuum, and I really feel that my memories of games are worth something, to me personally and as our generation's shared culture. Mp gaming is addictive in a way that means I can certainly get stuck playing something indefinitely, but that's not a *good* thing for me. That's like watching the same movie or reading the same book for years upon years instead of seeing new things and gaining new perspectives.

With a sense of closure I will meet a quota and get to points where I feel like I'm "done" with it though. It'll give me an out. Being a multiplayer gamer to the degree that you clearly are is a conscious choice, and it does mean abandoning a lot of the things I appreciate the most about gaming. It's not that I can't do it, it's that I don't want to do it. I've already created memories of this generation because I DID jump into all these different experiences, and had the only game I found meaningful been World of Warcraft or Halo 3 mp or CoD4 mp, that simply would not have been the case.

So yeah. The most fundamental difference in philosophy here is that games that never end is - or isn't - a good thing. Simple really.

Just because you're incapable of forming memories of MP experiences doesn't mean there's none to be had. Conquering a 5v5 ladder in BF2, or my first season of CAL in COD4 are great memories for me. Memories that involve people as well as games, and for me are much more interesting than canned experiences. Games are meant to be played, anyway, not mentally digested and done away with! That's a different philosophy all together, granted, and I'm not faulting your love for vintage single player experiences, as I love many of those same things, but they're becoming less and less meaningful for me. I mean, honestly, comparing the fun to be had in Halo Reach's (or any other Halo) campaign to what you can do online.. it just doesn't stack up.

I'd rather not.. since it might have a negative impact on my lag free experiences if I adjust to the floating physics in a firefight game :P

Sure, that is mainly what I'm afraid of. I don't really agree that it's a "better game" online, but the social component makes it infinitely more appealing by default to anyone who isn't a sociopath. That's what makes even wonky Gauntlet clones fun in co-op, but a complete chore by yourself.

So yeah, being caught up in that is a thing I'm just not prepared to allow myself to be again.

And I've memories of my clan days, of tournaments and big wins.. and my AQ2 map catching on some.. and the IRC clan channels we hung out in. It's not that I don't have memories, but the game itself never changed. Getting into Bayonetta and getting into Lumines does things to different parts of my brain (or same parts but differently) in a way that gets me totally and completely giddy. Not only is it an aureal and visual thing derived from the delightful genious of japanese madmen, but they're also these mind bogglingly different tactile, abstract experiences that somehow suddenly make sense in your head and in your fingers.

Lorne of Angel infamy once said he can hold a note forever, but it's the change we listen for, that's what makes it music. That pretty much sums it up for me.

But yeah, I totally understand your stance and I don't wanna come off like I look down on it or wanna change it. I just know me, I know that I commit pretty hard to things in general and I've got a pretty addictive/habit driven personality that's like a small naked child to the paedophilic monstrosities that things like COD and Halo's multiplayer components are hand crafted to be. I know that I can be put in a mindset where playing X amount more of game Y over the next Bayonetta seems like a good idea because that's what my habit tells me, but that's not what I *actually feel*.

Because the highs of stumbling across something that comes completely out of left field and tunes all aspects into the perfect Simon frequency is always ultimately much higher than another round of something I already know everything about.

Video games, huh? :)

Anyway! Let me put this topic back on track by saying that man, I wish game modes were explained better in the pause menu. I can't even begin to explain my bewilderment at the Headhunter game mode when balls of fire came shooting out of people's heads and serious man voice said "AREA MOVED" over and over.

You hunt heads.

That's a pretty accurate representation of the pause menu screen's "explanation" yeah. :P

It's not a big deal just sorta fumbling your way through it if it wasn't for the fact that people go apeshit when you're not immediately an any-game-mode wiz.

I would say some of the best stories I cherish, if that's the right word are from multiplayer games. Quite a few from Halo, some from other games as diverse as Ghost Recon, to PES, to Kung Fu Chaos. I can sit with quite a number of real life friends in a pub and talk about some of these over several beers. In fact, we do.

Not that I disagree with what Simon is saying, each to their own and I personally leverage the achievements to bring some "closure" on games just as I'm sure some people use 100% completion metrics etc. Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun posits that most players will be "done" with a game when they stop learning (If you read the book this makes sense).

I think there is certainly a point when you stop learning in multiplayer games, so I disagree that they have no end. I'm a MW2 player of middling ability and whilst I'm sure there are many things that I could still learn about that game, I've reached a point where learning them is both vastly disproportionate to the time I'm willing to invest (i.e. memorising every spawn) or just a matter of dedicated practice. As far as I'm concerned, I've fully explored that possibility space (coined by Randy Smith) or in other words seen everything that can be seen. Thus I can conclude I'm done.

I will of course play Reach an awful lot longer, in part I'm sure because I'm much more invested in that world, have a lot more previous and because I enjoy the gameplay and it's variety a lot more. I'm also of the opinion there is much more to learn in Halo, i.e a deeper/richer possibility space to explore but I don't want to kick off that particular bunfight in here.

I think as long as your opposition changes you can never really reach an end point for how much you learn in a multiplayer game. I think that's the very essence of what Grift likes about them.

People have been playing certain fighters for upwards of 10, 15 years. As long as there's an active community and the endless possibilities of the human mind is a factor, I reckon you will keep learning for"ever", if that's even an applicable term here.

What I CAN agree with however is that you reach a point where the investment needed outweighs the reward, for whatever reason. That's something entirely different though.

See, that's what I like about the "trial" way of thinking. The score attack, the time attack, is that you have such an obvious measure for your ability, such direct feedback for whatever improvements you make. In that case you have a graspable task in front of you and by the end of it a "reciept" for your performance. A score, a fastest lap, a grade, and you can look at that and try again, or you can leave it be. Either way that score/time is a definite thing, and with online leaderboards it's entered into a "diary" of sorts. A Crazy Taxi, a Geometry Wars. In terms of just getting better at mechanics that's really my go-to thing because the game itself is a constant.


Having played Portal, really experienced GlaDOS playing with you and hearing the theme song at the end. Playing Braid, figuring out its mind bending puzzles and being absolutely and utterly *stunned* by the ending to it. These things crop up from out of nowhere. Even as I play all the games I play (and I have a comparably measly 40k-ish gamerscore wise so I really don't get around to as many as some people) there are moments like that that I miss. I would hate that. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate.

Sure a lot of games are duds. Even games that supposedly aren't duds according to a bajillion review sites turn out to be duds sometimes. But conversely there are a lot of really affecting experiences in the less obvious score/format range too. The ending to Shattered memories had me reeling for weeks.


Games are incredible in that if one person can imagine something, he or she can craft it with magic numbers and invite you into that idea. Sure, most games are infinitely less ambitious and simply has.. Kratos in them, but see that's pretty amazing too. Climbing up the mast and having the hydra roar in your face was mind boggling, and it's an experience some people have had that I can say "remember the hydra from God of War?" and we'll compare how much we pooped our pants. That's regardless of where we're from and when we played that game. It's also an experience that exists, that you can relive or have other people seek out. It's a constant.

For me it's like a narrative - though it's about button presses and coordination and figuring things out - and for any story to be reflected on and gain a real comprehensive sense of meaning it needs closure. It needs to end. Sure you can say things about football, and you can say "do you like football?", but it's just a thing that is *going on*. Unless of course you refer to a particular match, but then it goes back to being a constant.



I think one of the most striking things to me about the accumulated "canon" of games was when Braid used "The princess is in another castle" - the phrase echoed throughout Super Mario Bros. as a default message for every castle that wasn't *the* castle - to convey the emotional sensation of being in an unfulfilling relationship.

I mean, sure, perhaps God of War or Modern Warfare 2 will never be used to that effect ever. Maybe Super Mario Bros. was a thing that happened for such *staggering* amounts of people that a reference like that flies, but somehow I'd like to think that it's possible. Somehow I'd like to think that games still weave a somewhat cohesive shared canon among gamers, and I truly appreciate being a part of that.

JESUS I GO ON, SOMEBODY SHOOT ME.

Oh, thank you! That's nice to hear. :)

Exactly! You are learning about the opponents, not the game. Games by definition are closed systems that have a fixed range of outcomes (even if that range is impossibly large to properly comprehend). The players in your fighter game example will likely have learnt everything about that system they are ever going to learn, presuming we are talking about the people who know how many frames of animation a certain attack takes and other such craziness. What keeps them playing is something else. They've certainly reached the point of mastery at which most people get bored and seek a new game.

For the most part of course, we're talking on different tangents so I get what you're saying :) You'd probably enjoy Koster's A Theory of Fun all the same, if you've never read it. It's good for gamers & non-gamers alike.

Anyway. Back to Reach. Today's challenges are up;-

More than a Handful
Kill 77 enemies in multiplayer Matchmaking.
0d23h53m22s 750cR

On Tilt
Complete a Campaign mission on Heroic or harder with the Tilt Skull on.
0d23h53m22s 500cR

Multiplier
Earn 5 multikills in a multiplayer Matchmaking game.
0d23h53m22s 1200cR

Oops! All Kills
Earn 7 Multikills in multiplayer Matchmaking.
0d23h53m22s 777cR

The Tilt one is a bit tight. I don't think that's an easy proposition at all. (Granted I've played no co-op yet but that's a good hour+ solo if not speedrunning). Wonder if they are trying to get people hooked on the challenges but not normally big fans of MP playing more by offering larger credit returns there.

Wow those are pretty damn weak today, especially after adding up to over 4000 cR yesterday. :/

deftangel rendered a video for me of a friend's fail: http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/FileDetails.aspx...

thanks ;)

What credit score are you guys getting in a firefight?

I just want to gauge where i'm at :P

Shocked.It sorta seems to go down over time, because you're getting fewer points for commendations. But add me, it at the very least shows your friends scores in score attack.

And there's a leader board on bungie.net.

Right, well i'm getting about 1500 credits in one match.

So be very scared or try to contain your laughter.

That sounds about right.. I was getting more in score attack until recently, but I guess you can only do score attack if you've got gold? Sorta a shame...

Okay Acert, I'm ready ;)