The ANNOYANCE!

[Greybane]

I am a grinder in most games I play, willing to sit down for a few hours and do some semi stupid repeatable task over and over and over...but everyone gets sick of that sort of play eventually, especially when it is actually needed for the plot to proceed. Earlier I was burning time stealing tons of items off of various creatures in Final Fantasy X. I wanted to max out the number of some of the common stolen items before moving on, even though I am way over-leveled at this point. So I decide to spice it up and try the lightning dodging at the same time, thus having to fight random monster battles that I cannot kill at the the drop of a hat if I want their items, dodging random freakin' lighting bolts like Zeus is out to get me, all the while being unable to save my game or get the free healing I would normally indulge in when my characters run low on HP and MP. I managed to dodge 223 in a row ( as needed to unlock some uber weapon later) but at the end of it all I was rather peeved.

Anyone else have similiar stories/frustrations that they wish to vent about in their game(s) of choice?

[Chuckg]

TF2.

I have hundreds of hours logged. I've pulled off some really sweet shots. I know my favorite maps and all their quirks and hot spots. I'm no uber-sniper-master-of-disaster, but you give me a demoman, a soldier, or an engineer, and I will do my job and hold the line. In less than a year of play, I've accumulated enough total points to put me in the top 1% of the clan stats.

... except that my favorite server community, the one with all the settings tweaked just right, a VIP fee that's not a rip-off, rules enforced by mods that aren't asses, and in general all the things that make online gaming actually worth playing...

... is a longstanding community many of whose members have been playing the game ever since it came out... and I started in 2009.

So its purely luck of the draw when I log on, if I'm going up against a team full of clan members like me, or a team full of the old veterans, the people who occupy the top 0.1% of that scoreboard. Because when the latter happens, I average about 15 goddamn seconds a life. Less if I actually try to leave the ba- *boom headshot*. And they are online all the time.

And I seem to be hitting a skill plateau...

Yeah. Its frustrating to love a game that you're competing out of your league in. Its just, No Heroes is a really, really, well set-up community. I've seen pub servers, I don't want to go back there...

Agh!

[Kirai]

League of Legends

I play Ashe.

She has an ability that sends a stun out over the entire map.

This ability has travel time. So I need to time the arrows rather well, either when the enemy is standing still for an attack, or when the enemy is moving in a straight line.

This can lead to awesome combos of me shooting an enemy half a map away and stunning him for my allies.

Or me shooting a fleeing enemy in the back, killing him.

Or me saving my allies from an enraged mob.

On the other hand missing is frustrating, as the cooldown for this ability is rather long.

It's even more frustrating if you miss from close range, because the enemy decided to change direction a second before you fire.

Curses are heard over skype regularily^^

[Dervon]

On the topic of League of Legends (great FREE game BTW, get it, join us):

As Kirai (and as any other forumite that plays LoL) knows, I do one thing constantly well, more so then 95% of others attempting to do the same thing.

I tank.

I tank like a moving adamantium wall of vengence whose sole reason for existing is keeping one batch of dudes alive while they kill another batch of dudes, all the while taking potshots at the first batch of dudes and occasionally getting kills too.

My tank-character of choice is a champion named Shen, the Eye of Twilight (video spotlight of him, if you are curious). One of three ninjas in this game, Shen is, in my humble opinion, the BEST, BAR NONE, tank in the game.

He can mark opponents so that attacking them heals him and his allies with an ability called Vorpal Blade. He can dodge damage with a move called Feint. He can FORCE opponents to focus and attack him with a move called Shadow Dash. And his Ultimate is incredible: the aptly named Stand United creates a shield of Ki (Chakra is you prefer XD) around ANY ally ANYWHERE on the map. Shen generates a similar (but slightly weaker) shield around himself and then he channels for 2 seconds, at the end of which he is teleported to the ally he chose.

...

So anyway, here's the issue: remember how I said I was in the upper 5% as far as tanking goes? THAT'S BECAUSE NO ONE SEEMS TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM! GODDAMN, I SEE PEOPLE PLAYING TANK-CHARACTERS AND GOING "derpa herp derp, imma' build me this champion as a DPSer, DURP!".

This means that, if I don't want our team to crumble too fast, I NEED TO TANK.

Which is good and all (since I find Shen to be VERY fun to play), but it ALSO means I can almost never play any other character.

...

Talk about being a slave to your own success...