Things We Hate About Gaming: Multiplayer Unlocks
Back in late 2007 when Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released, I was introduced to the concept of unlockable abilities in a competitive multiplayer game. I’m well aware that CoD4 wasn’t the first game to employ these mechanics, it just happened to be the first one that I played. At the time it was almost intoxicating; I would arrive home from work and pour hours into CoD4‘s multiplayer modes. I inhaled experience points and exhaled guns, perks and attachments. Something about that mechanic tapped into a primitive, reptilian part of my brain and massaged it expertly. The illusion of progress was mesmerising and it held my gaze for months.
At some point, I don’t quite remember when, the illusion was broken. I’m no longer willing to tolerate the chastity belt locked firmly onto almost every modern multiplayer game. I feel like a dog being taught to beg for its food. More accurately, I feel like a sucker for buying games with half their multiplayer content locked until I reach an arbitrary playtime.
For me, the psychological effects of these multiplayer unlocks are far worse than their material effects. In the heat of the moment, when I’m killed by xxxganjasnipaxxx, I’m racked with self-doubt. Am I just plain bad at the game? Would a better player with a similar loadout have succeeded where I failed? Or was I doomed from the second he set the sights of his leveled up sniper rifle on me?
When the playing field is level, I can take real satisfaction in my successes. Even in defeat, the “clever girl…” moment where I realise my opponent has bested me with some innovative strategy can be satisfying if the contest was even. I fondly recall several evenings playing Left 4 Dead where only the quickest and most co-operative team would come out on top. I could learn from both my failures and their successes. On an uneven playing ground, even my victories are rendered meaningless. At best they might result in the shallow thrill of a freshly unlocked weapon or item.
Even a Bad Company 2 match, whose basic mechanics are a pleasure in themselves, can feel hollow when the realisation dawns that my only mistake was not to play more. Entering into a sniper duel and re-enacting Enemy At The Gates can be thrilling as my opponent and I bob and weave behind cover, daring each other to take the first shot. That thrill is soon crushed when I realise that although I struck first, I lacked the unlockable ammunition necessary to win.
The inclusion of an unlock system in Bioshock 2 put me off the multiplayer mode entirely. The thought of exhaustively grinding through the levels to reach parity with my opponents simply didn’t appeal to me. I’m willing to commit to a lot of things. My political beliefs, my friends, my family and my job are all things I’m willing to lay down time and effort in the name of. I’m not willing to embark on the long, slow march to the level cap just to indulge a developer or publisher’s fear of the pre-owned games market.
To me, the inclusion of these leveling up mechanics just smacks of a lack of confidence in any given game. I spent months playing Left 4 Dead with two maps and a measly handful of weapons, because it held up as a fun game by its own merits. If DICE had ripped the enter unlock system out of Bad Company 2, I’d still enjoy the scope of its battlefields and the interplay of the classes. Taking the model and applying it to any other field of human competition exposes how ridiculous it is. Would football be better if the players only got access to boots after 20 games? Would chess be more fascinating if one player started with extra pawns? Or how about Olympic swimmers removing a layer of clothing after every successive victory, only stripping down to a swimsuit after they’d hit the max level?
Rightly said, this is pretty much why I didn’t get mw2 and bc2. I hope this is a tradition that dies, and quickly.
As much as people complain about grinding in RPGs, they love it in FPS. Never understood that.
I don’t mind it too much in BC2, as most of the weapons lose something for everything they gain. Some of the unlocks are unfair though:
“Hey, you’re getting pretty good at this game. Know what you need? More powerful ammo, and more of it!”
I hated the unlock system in cod4, it felt like I was constantly grinding to get something decent… I actually like the unlock system in bc2, if it had given me everything to start with I would have been overwhelmed with choice and you unlock everything in a couple of weeks anyway. It’s more like a long tutorial than anything.
Magnum ammo is unfair to those who don’t have it though…
I never developed a craze for anything multi player.
Lou
If you play the game (BC2) from around release it is very interesting to see how the game play evolves with the variance of both skill and equipment. There is something to be said for a dynamic play experience that you wont find w/o an evolution of those playing (both through learning and equipment). Plus it makes for a more realistic experience as vets of a long war campaign would likely have higher experience of terrain as well as some non standard equipment picked up along the way (though that is a stretch in the variance of BC2)
I couldn’t agree more. Rainbow 6 Lockdown back on the original Xbox was the first FPS I ever played with experience, levels, and unlockables, and at the time it was something new and pretty neat. However, as time went on and the mechanic was picked up by almost every online shooter ever, the “new” factor wore off and it just became a chore. Now, when I look at games like Modern Warfare 2 that not only ask you to unlock anything and everything but then start over once you have it all and do it all again, I just see them as cheap tricks intended to artificially extend the online life of the game. Please, just make people spend a lot of time on your game online because of how enjoyable it is, not because they’re trying to unlock a certain gun, ammunition, and attachment that will let them actually play competitively. I’ve put the most hours into Halo 2 out of any online game I’ve ever owned, and it doesn’t have a single weapon unlock. It was just fun.
Games that don’t have MMO style grinding in simply don’t get played. Look at any game made before CoD4; nobody ever played them, at all, probably not even once.
I’ve recently gotten back into Halo 3, and it’s been a lot of fun playing a FPS where you don’t have to grind levels to unlock weapons. I think this recent wave of unlock-heavy, level-based FPSes are just ways for developers to extend the life of their games. If you take unlocks out of COD4, MW2, MAG and Bioshock 2, you’re left with games where the gameplay doesn’t hold up well enough to justify repeat play sessions.
I hate playing a game just to level up(WoW), as compared to playing one because it’s really fun to play.
I am pretty psyched about the fact that Halo:Reach will have purely cosmetic unlocks, though. That seems like the only good use of MP unlocks I’ve ever seen.
I think the problem with most games is not that they have unlocks, but that high-level players, with all the high-powered unlocks, get put in matches with beginners. A good match-making system where equally skilled players would be put up against each other would solve much of the frustration of getting pwned by a player with better ammo, armour, or guns.
In itself, the whole notion of grinding is very human. We do it all the time: we’re looking for a better job, a higher salary, a bigger house, a fancier car, a faster computer, etc. Even in the sports you mention it is like that: playing better football will ‘unlock’ better sponsor deals, so you can afford fancier training facilities, which will lead to ‘unlocking’ the premier league, where you can earn more money with which you can buy better players… The reason this doesn’t feel so unbalanced is probably because it’s a slow process for teams and individuals, and there is a pretty good match-making system in place.
In short, we’re hardwired to be suckers for unlocks: it’s in our genes. Make sure players of equal experience / points / unlocks get to fight each other, and the experience of an unlock system will be much nicer to everybody.
You got sniped!
I agree with you Bas. I have never felt that unlocks are ruining my game experience, a quite contrary I felt good when I locked AN-94 in BC2, it made me feel that have done something and I’ve been rewarded! Only thing that annoys me is that you sometimes end up in to a game with guys that ranked 40 ranks higher that you!!
This is one of the reasons why I always come back to CSS. All the guns are available to purchase by all players, so the only determining factor in a conflict is skill.
this may result interesting for you
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted_p1.html
honestly everyone here has pretty good and valid points. I’am not going to lie, when you mow down 6 or 3 guyz in a row it makes you feel good. No matter who has the better weaponary or equipment. But it’s not balanced and for that time I was enjoying it that whole team was paying the price. Bas has a good point, come up with a suitable match making list for people who r the same level so newbies don’t get crushed.But what if everyone that plays the game is already a high level? Or if the low level newbies r somehow hacking the server or the game? That isn’t fair for somebody who’s new to the game and wasted money on it and just wants to relax. not everyone is going to have option to play from 9:00-5:00 which makes this grinding rule unfair. I could definitely relate to it being unfair..I played for a good 7 games of BC 2 and lost every single one of them just cuz I didn’t have “magnum ammo” aswell as new weaponary. It pissed me off and it was a one sided game over and over again. true it’s human nature to grind and it’s true what the anon said. But like I’ve already stated. It’s not fair for the man who’s life is constantly busy.
Thanks Mark. The possible problems you give are imho not that big with regards to grinding. When everyone is a high-level player already, it only affects a small group of newbies. But generally, big IP’s will usually have a group of new players starting it at any point.
And hacking the server or game is just a whole different problem, that affects everyone, not just people new to a game!
@.51.Lestat: Indeed, lots of (successful) games are designed to trigger those parts of our brain that make us prone to grinding. I’m still undecided how bad that is though: would we pay top dollar for a game without those elements?
@Aaron “Wheatyâ€: funny how the other successful FPS series L4D and L4D2 has been called CSS with zombies.
Great article Mark! Awesome work.
Maybe I’m in the minority here but I found BC2 far less forgiving than MW2 with it’s unlockables. Going against higher level players just means they have more options in their loadout. They could have some pro version perks or some different attachments but at the end of the day we’re still firing bullets at each other and the person shooting quickest or most accurately will win. Contrast to BC2 where starting against experienced opponents means them shooting magnum ammo and me shooting into body armour. Heck you start the medic class not being able to heal =P
In general though I don’t mind unlocks so long as they provide more customisation rather than advantage over others. I only buy multiplayer games which I’ll be sure to put some significant time into playing so the process of unlocking everything isn’t much of a hassle.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the some of the conclusions here. For some of BC classes, yes the starting weapons suck. That being said, the starting weapons for medic and recon are the 2nd best for their classes – the m60 being better than the PKM but only because the m60 is better than EVERYTHING else in bc2.
Magnum does 25% more damage, and body armor gives 25% more health. The assault and engineering classes have the two other ‘best of’ guns – the AN-94 and the Carl Gustav, with assault also having the grenade launcher with unlimited grenades (!!!). Recons M95 has the ability to shoot down helicopters and(i think, not entirely sure) tanks.
I agree. Leveling/Unlocking should be satisfying. Working hard to achieve something is of the great things about Multiplayer. Getting leveled up & unlocking weapons/gadgets too fast doesn’t feel the same.
An example is BF2. It took a pretty damn while to reach certain ranks/badges/stars etc. But it sure felt a lot more satisfying and fun! Some ppl may thing it took too long, but it actually encourages teamwork and determination.
BC2 is a great game, but if the unlocking would’ve taken longer, it would have been a lot more satisfying. A lot of ppl unlocked pretty much every weapon/gadget/spec in a few days. That’s no fun.
Another thing games should take into consideration is that unlocks should be an even field to all players. Sure, some unlocks are better than others, but they should never be overpowered. Unlock to unlock should be more even.
Try Warhawk!
@ParaParaKing: Big difference is that when you’re grinding in RPGs, you’re going out of your way to level up or get better equipment. In multiplayer FPSs, the whole point is to get more kills anyway. So is just killing more folks grinding?
Given that I’m not big on multiplayer in the first place, having unlocks only alienates me further from that side of things, because I feel like I won’t play it enough to get to the good stuff – so why bother. But I agree with Wardrox’s assessment: it’s a way to make sure the game keeps being played. No point having a level playing field if nobody is ON it.
Great write up by the way.
Maybe someone should make a game that’s actually FUN enough to play repeatedly over a long period of time, instead of making grind-fests.
I agree… to a point. on one hand you can think of it as you mentioned. on the other hand, if you couldn’t upgrade or personalize your gear and I mean more than cosmetically. People would talk shit about how the game was too “generic” (my most hated video game descriptive word) or they’d say that the lack of customising was laziness or crappy game making.
game makers usually follow trends or use other peoples ideas, but many would say that this particular idea was a good one.
I love BFBC:2 and I never once thought that I was unprepared for a fight against a guy twice the lvl that I was at. sure some guy may have armor, but if he does he doesn’t have a scope so the scope guy probably saw the armored guy first. its funny too because I play hardcore mode on BFBC:2 so everybody dies in a couple shots, its the only way to go. The example may not work like that in all case’s but you get my point, I think if the game maker did it right balancing isn’t an issue. but I’m sure we can all think of game makers that aren’t so good at what they do.
My only deterrent in starting a multiplayer game late (in the game haha) is the asshole guys that were there from the start and have a ridiculous chip on their shoulder, they talk shit to you because your not the best one in the squad, even though I consider myself pretty damn good at MAG, I found myself quiting MAG to play some BFBC:2 because some prick wouldnt stfu, he kept on ordering people to do shit and at the same time ripping them a new one for going the wrong way or whatever. I never felt outgunned going into a match, I can hold my own in any multiplayer game, maybe I wont shine but not many do when they first start something, I think people should grow a pair and jump in if they want to.
@Bas thanks for not being a dick, I’am not being sarcastic btw. I was just pointing out that not everyone has that kind of time to be wasting on games with said grinding in them. And it is true that hacking is in general a problem for everyone. But from every game that I’ve experienced online, people with the better guns usually took out the person hacking fastest. That’s if the player can even move or do anything to defend themselves of coarse. I just think everyone counts, and I was just making it clear that people new to the game would be alienated thanks to grinding in current FPS.
The problem is that every multiplayer shooter started trying too hard to be Cod4. Developers seem to have got into the mindset that if a shooter has online multiplayer, it needs to have unlocks. I haven’t got really into a multiplayer shooter for ages for precisely that reason.
@wardrox:
I hacked COD4. I cheated and got all the unlocks. I played that game more than any other in my entire history of gaming.