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Disadvantaged Game Players
Hi All
I was just wondering if any other players with disadvantages in game playing, slower reaction times etc have problems with end game raiding eg being picked on.
I have and have had to stop end game raiding because I have a slower reaction time.
Before the WOW beasts start it is not only WOW this happens AOC, AION (especially) DDO.
I just wanted to write this to make aware players that do the name calling due to a player having disadvantages it hurts and really spoil end game.
Comments
unless you have a physical problem, you just need to learn to react quicker i use to be the same way. one way is to learn to use hotkeys which speeds up things alot plus add-ons help you speed things up for some classes. plus i notice alot players still like to use the mouse to click on there skills/spells which takes way to long. you should be using the number keys and your 3-4 most used skills should be set to 1-4
Refrain from eating cucumber sammies while in the middle of Onyxia.
Yes, that was the bigtime raid the last time I played this game. Make fun of the noob.
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I've met a few people in game who just weren't quick on their keys.
heh in aion there was this templar guildie who was absoluely terrified of tanking for the group, after being forced into doing it a few times I could see why, so I ended up tanking with my gladiator, but still brought him along often as he really wanted a drop out of this particular instance.
I find it's fine to still bring them along in groups/raids and just not have them doing anything they aren't comfortable with, usually just let them fill a DPS role. A lot of power/average gamers give you a hard time I imagine though.
The mmo community across all gamesare pretty rude these days, thus unfortunately there isn't much you can do except try to make friends with decent people in game who will include you.
Don't let something like that stop you. Gaming in my mind is about heart, not just skill, reaction time, stats, and numbers. Try to find a guild or community to join that is willing to adapt slightly and work together as a team. I know that is easier said than done, but you are not the only disadvantaged player out there. A slower reaction time really won't matter in the big picture of a raid. Planning, strategy, and teamwork are far more important.
Unfortunately there has been a culture spawned of if you dont' have this stat or this build or don't play this way you're useless in a raid. That is complete bull and don't listen to it. Those type of players lack heart and respect for gaming, and are the type of people I do not game with. For every person like this you find, you will eventually run across someone who will talk to you like a human being. Just ignore those that treat you like this, and find and surround yourself with those that respect other gamers.
So I guess the OP means he has a physical, perhaps nerve system-related condition. I do feel for you. I do have a sister that experiences somewhat the same thing. She enjoys FPS as much as the other siblings (and I) do, but of course, she has her limits. And they do have thresholds much lower than ours.
I suppose you can't defend yourself against everyone. Find people who do understand your situation, and you could reduce the banter aimed at you. Just like what Wolfenpride says, make friends with decent people who accept you for who you are.
Yeah, dude, keep playing games no matter what, and don't let anyone get to you. It's really hard sometimes because people can just be complete jerks, but if you look long enough you'll always find people who like you for you, regardless of any condition you have. They exist!
If you ever want to group up on WoW I'd be more than happy to, I always love making new pals on there.
REAL gamers would be understanding if you could only twitch an eyebrow to control your computer, and would be happy to have you along. Anyone who bitches about players whose best effort isn't up to their WTFuberness is an immature tosser with delusions of adequacy - probably the fat kid at school that no-one picks for sports or invites to parties.
A lot of raid encounters in WoW are based around people's reaction time. A good example, which many people will be familiar with, is Koralon in Vault of Archavon. Whilst fighting him, patches of flame appear on the ground, and players must quickly move out of the fire in order to avoid dying. Vault of Archavon is actually quite a simple raid, and it often doesn't matter if one or two players fail to move out of the fire (it's almost expected in PuGs). However, there are plenty of other raids in the game which use a similar mechanic, and where if too many people die due to failing to move quickly enough, then the whole raid will wipe.
Because these sorts of mechanics are so common, in one form or another, it's seen by the community as a basic skill for raiding. Players aren't necessarily expected to have the sort of hair trigger 0.2 second reactions of professional sportsmen, but unless you can react within a second, then your character will spend a large part of his raiding career lying dead on the ground.
Since dead people don't contribute much to a raid, any guild trying it's best to overcome challenging content won't want to bring people with slow reactions. The players want the guild to succeed, so the best raid team will be selected. This isn't much different from selecting a sports team at school, where less athletic kids are often left on the bench.
What this means to the OP is that unless he can find some way to improve his reactions (which may depend a lot on exactly why his reactions are slow), then raiding in WoW probably isn't for him. What he needs to ask himself is what he does enjoy about MMOs, and then he can strive to place himself in an environment where he can achieve those goals alongside other people.
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... Wouldn't that make you an Oldb?
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Good post OP..
However, I doubt mmo devs will ever learn to design games any different then they have the past 5 years or so.. In my experiences the computer games are becomming more of a e-sport of hand/eye co-ordination then anything. With the exception of turn based games (which has a very small market) like the Sid Meiers Civ games, everything is being focused on how fast can you react.. Today's games are focusing on the younger generation.. It's a proven scientific fact that as you get older, your reaction times become slower.. Just like losing your eye sight.. It's a shame you can't get MMO devs to focus on wisdom and intel, instead of how fast you can button mash..
/shrug
The OP is also probably suffering from the rudeness people tend to display on the Internet when protected by anonymity. It's not unusual for those who are seen as weak in some fashion to be bullied, and really - that's not surprising. Many of the kids playing these games are of exact same age and maturity level as school yard bullies. They are typically young males, striving to make their mark in the world, and prove themselves worthy - and a common technique to do so is to denigrate those around them.
If the OP is finding this rudeness to be too much, then he may wish to try to in some way remove himself from this environment. There are several different methods. E.g. he could try to find a game that caters to a more mature audience where the kids would be unlikely to show up (e.g. I doubt the same behaviour occurs when playing the original Everquest). Alternatively, he could try to limit his play to some sort of controlled environment. For example, finding an over 18s guild that is willing to take him despite his slow reflexes, and then trying to play as much as possible in guild.
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Unfortunately the trend seems to be towards pushing game mechanics to be more fast and twitch based.
I've personally never had an issue with reaction time, but I have been in raids where a few other of the regular participants tended to be unable to react as quickly as the encounter design required. But that's not the fault of those players so much as it is the fault of the developers who can't figure out a way to design an encounter to be more difficult in a way other than "mash key X as fast as possible when Y happens or you die!" The players in question weren't bad players either, they would otherwise pull their weight and do fine when the raid wasn't attempting particular encounters that were just ridiculous in their reaction requirement.
Ultimately all MMOs are video games.
All a video game can ultimately test, is whether the user presses the right buttons, and whether they can press those buttons quickly. As far as I can tell, many modern raids test both.
I don't really have a problem with that. Ultimately, if a game is going to present any sort of challenge, then there are going to be some people who fail that challenge - either because they aren't fast enough, because they aren't smart enough, or because they didn't grind hard enough.
So I don't really have a problem with the OP failing in raids. Games (even Warcraft) are designed so some people will fail at some tasks. The issues to me seem to be how this affects the interactions between the OP and the community around him.
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Thank you really have lifted my heart and will keep trying
Thank you again.
Thank you all for being smashing , I just lag in the real world, due to medication, I love playing online games.
Thank you all
Out of curiosity what kind of medication are you on and for what sort of problem? Feel free to not answer if you're not comfortable doing so.
I wonder if I grouped with this templar. I don't know if it could be the same guy but he was also a very timid tank and would drive the rest of the group nuts. I think I even got frusterated until someone explained why the tank was playing like he need to take a 10 second break in between pulls. I think its good to let everyone that joins the group know what to expect so that those that are jerks and can't put up with moving slower can be replaced early on instead of causing more problems later.
Seems shameful to pick on somebody for this or better yet anything
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
To the OP, I apologize on behalf of those who could not be understanding of someone in your position.
Your best bet, be selective of who you associate with and play to your gaming strengths. Not every game/class/build/encounter is about rapid reaction. You should be able to find a situation that works for you.
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Find a good guild with good people who actually care about their guildies.
I was in a guild way back in EQ2 and there was a guy whose wrists were broken so bad in a car accident the docs fused the bones. So obviously, he couldn't turn his wrists at all. But he loved the game. He could do okay in just standard questing and whatnot, but when it came to raiding or anything like that, his response times were really slow. Bunch of us would get together with him at least once a week and run him through a few raids. We just had him tag along and stand way back while we handled shit and then let him loot. We all had fun shhoting the shit and killing stuff, he got to experience the raid and get the stuff he needed. None of us felt "put out" by it at all.
It's all about the people, bro.
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This all the way. You have to look harder than you used to, but there's still a community out there.
My buddy and I were playing VG the other day running TK (an outdoor dungeon type place) and we ran into a pally who was having some issues. I shot him an invite and he kept telling us he wasn't very good and was slow (not sure if he was disabled or just slow, he didn't say, I didn't ask) but we kept him anyway, got him caught up to the quest we were on and finished that one too. He wasn't a very good tank so I slowed down my DPS (nec) and my buddy worked hard on heals (BM) and we made it work.
Best part? He was actually a pretty cool dude and we had fun, something people seemingly have forgotten about in the quest for epic lewts.
Keep your spirits up, amigo.
It's not just those who are disadvantaged that are the butt of name-calling. Anyone who is a member of minority in the game world: female, gay, black, asian etc. will probably get called the worst words imaginable at some point.
I was playing a dark skinned character in a game, and someone called me the N-word (I'm white). So I called him a cracker. The thing was, there was another player with us who witnessed the whole thing, and after the other guy left, he spent a few minutes showing me how to make a difficult jump (this was an FPS). I'm in my 30's, and this other I guy was a kid I think. But what he was trying to do was make me feel included. It restored my faith in humanity.
So the good people are out there, you just have to find them. I would post your situation in the guild recruiting forum of whatever game you play. I'll bet you get pm'd with offers from lots of good guilds.
If you want to keep your situation private, then look for a game with more open-ended events where the pressure isn't on to perform perfectly every second. Games like Everquest with group mob-grinding instead of raids might be worth a look. And believe me, it isn't just you who does not like being shouted at by gear-obsessed raiders.
Anyways, be strong. What other people call you does not define you. That comes from inside (and God too, if you believe in that sort of thing).
Someone wrote above that reaction times don't matter that much in raids, but from my experience that's far from true. You have two healers healing the main tank, one is slow and starts casting when the tank is already at 10%, tank dies, raid wipes. It's as simple as that.
Solutions:
1. Switch to a game where reaction times doesn't matter, like turn based MMOs (Dofus, Dofus 2 and the upcoming Wakfu).
2. Or switch to MMOs that focus on other things than combat like A Tale in the Desert.
3. Or switch to MMOs that group size isn't fixed where you can tag along with others while being sub-par player - open world PvP games are usually like that - Warhammer Online, Face of Mankind, and probably all the rest of open world PvP games.
4. Or MMOs that the difficulty on group content is tuned down so you can have players that slack in your group/raid. Vanilla WoW was like that and i guess there are more.
5. Or make a guild with slackers only.
If, at your job, you were giving 100% effort, while the other guy next to you on the same department gives like 30% effort, or gives 100% effort but for other reasons he is still 30% effective, making your whole team/department look bad, wouldn't you complain?
And in before someone replies games are not a job, it's exactly the same on any team activity. Even sex.
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I view online games as exactly that, Games, soemthign designed to help me to unwind and relax and have Fun.
I ahve often played in guilds and one of my best ones was SotD in Vanguard, I played a Paladin and used to tank the raids, I used to say that I was suffering lag when I was running slow and eventually one of the Raid leaders and me had a chat, I admitted that I am deaf and couldnt hear the Vent shouts and stuff from fellow raiders.
Eventually we reached a compromise, I re-rolled a Necro and played quickly through the levels with another guy who rolled a tank and we used to take turns, on New or Hard raid mobs I would either supply DPS from my Necro or Off tank on my paladin, and mobs we could roll over easily I would Main Tank and the OT was aware i sucked.
Those guys made my game they really did, online gaming is about a sense of Community, Younger players forget this in the mad rush to fit into an uber build WTFBBQROFLCOPTER avatar, most older players play for other reasons
For the OP, Stick it out, you will find a guild in the games you play who are not so elitist, if You end up on FFXIV give me a shout,
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Honestly man, the OP is 100% effective at what he does, and that is creating a decent environment to game in and respecting others.
And anyone who calls someone who is disabled, whether mentally or physically, a "slacker" is 0% effective as a human being, in my opinion.