Words Gamers Need to Stop Abusing

[Roto13]

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago. I'm still seeing people whine about Sonic 4 being "broken" even though it's clearly not (this isn't something I've noticed here, but elsewhere on the intarwebs), so I want to talk about this.


I’d say I’m sorry for doing this, gamers, but come on. You’ve brought this on yourselves. You’ve abused certain words way too much, and now I have no choice but to take them away. You’ve thrown them around like meaningless buzzwords. If I don’t take them now, they’ll be ruined forever. You’ll thank me when you’re older.

Unplayable - Do you know what “unplayable” means? Well, no, I guess not. If you did, we wouldn’t be here having this little chat, now would we? “Unplayable” is the opposite of “playable,” which literally means “able to be played.” If a game is “unplayable” it means there is something preventing you from being able to play it. A game with a small technical failure is not unplayable. I’ve seen you whine about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, saying its framerate makes it unplayable. No. Stop. The frame rate is low by today’s standards, but if you really wanted to, you could sit down and play it from start to finish and the frame rate would never get in the way.

Floaty - Guess what! “Floaty” does not mean “bad platformer!” Whether the game you’re playing is good or bad, if the character stops when you let go of the control stick, or turns around when you push the stick in the opposite direction, the game you’re playing is not floaty. I don’t care if you’ve heard people use this word when complaining about LittleBigPlanet. It MEANS something, and that “something” is not “platformer I don’t like so I’m going to complain about it and throw words at it to trick people into thinking I’m smarter than I actually am.” Go sit in the corner, young man.

Narrative - Oh, you’re so close with this one. I almost feel bad for taking it from you. You do seem to understand the basic definition of the word. You know it basically means “story.” Still, you need to learn that, just because a word is next to another word in the thesaurus, that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable. “Narrative” implies that the a story is more complex than “The princess was kidnapped but then Mario jumped on some goombas and saved her the end.” Using the word “narrative” to describe most video game stories is a faux pas. What I’m trying to say is, you can have this word back when you stop using it to complain about Sonic the Hedgehog.

Pedestrian - If I ever hear you use this word again I will wash your mouth out with soap. Or bleach.

Broken - You can’t have this word back. Ever. You’ve done terrible, terrible things to this word. If a gameplay element is broken, it means it simply doesn’t work, or it works very inconsistently. If you press the jump button and you don’t jump very high, but you do jump high enough to make your way through every level of the game you’re playing, that jump mechanic isn’t broken. You might not like it, and you may wish you could jump higher, but what you want doesn’t matter. The jumping mechanic works. It’s not broken. However, if you come to a gap you’re clearly supposed to jump over, but you can’t because you simply can’t get enough distance, and this means you can’t progress in the game, then you can use the word “broken.” If you run and jump at that gap the same way five times, and the end result is different each of those five times, feel free to call it “broken” because it’s not working the way it was intended to. Or, at least, that’s what I would be telling you if you hadn’t thrown this poor word at every game you haven’t enjoyed in the past five or ten years. Your mother and I are very disappointed in you.

You are a human being. You are not a parrot. You don’t just repeat everything you hear without understanding the meanings behind the noises you’re making. You weren’t raised that way. Maybe someday, when you’re older, I’ll give these words back to you. You’ll have to earn them, though. Prove to me that you can be responsible with the English language. The next time you hear someone use a new word, before you try to use it yourself, look it up in the dictionary. That’s the way adults do things. It will save you a lot of embarrassment and a lot of pain. Trust me on this one. It’s for your own good. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t care.

tl;dr: What are some words that gamers throw around without actually understanding?

[Laddy]

Quality

[NorthernChaosGod]

Killer app

"video game title" killer

"video game title" clone

[Madame Adequate]

But what do I call all those pedestrians who I kill in GTA? :(

[Roto13]

But what do I call all those pedestrians who I kill in GTA? :(

Murder simulator victims.

[DMKA]

Nothing this lengthy should ever be written about this subject, ever.

It's worse than the people you're talking about.

[Roto13]

It's less than a page long. This is how I make my money.

[Yeargdribble]

I enjoyed it. But hey, I'm prone to long-windedness, so in turn I tend to appreciate things that are detailed so long as they're not overwrought, especially when they are well written and quippy.

As to the topic.... I think hyperbole is just endemic to gamers. I also think it's getting worse. It's growing in proportion to the entitlement of gamers to have exactly what they want. It has to appeal to them even at the exclusion of all others; it has to be completely unblemished; and it has to cost a low price... oh... and there had better not be any DLC shortly down the pipeline because then the developers are obviously just scamming the players out of money.

[Vermachtnis]

Jailbait, I hate the term altogether, but to describe a video game character as jailbait is just silly.

[Yeargdribble]

I think jailbait is just a broader term used outside of gaming quite a bit. Just because a game character can't technically be jailbait (well... maybe in some countries) doesn't mean the moniker doesn't fit for a character matching the description of its real counterpart.

[G13]

I don't understand, I'm looking at my vocabulary right now and I still have all these words. :confused:

[Vermachtnis]

If pedestrian counts why can't jailbait?

[Yeargdribble]

I could be wrong, but I figure he meant pedestrian as an adjective... as in dull, boring and unimaginative.

[Vermachtnis]

I know what that kind of pedestrian meant, I was being silly with that response. But I still don't think the term Jailbait should be used on a videogame character.

[Yeargdribble]

Why? Because they aren't real people?

I suggest we stop using the term woman or girl when talking about female game characters. They are neither because they don't exist.

Sounds more to me like you just don't like the word in general (as you stated) rather than actually having a beef with it as it pertains to gaming.

Back to the original topic, so long as we're talking about words other than those used to bash a game unfairly, I'd like to add epic to the list.

It has been watered down to the point of uselessness. It's to the point that people say things like, "Man I had great cereal for breakfast. It was so epic!!!" Really? Over-state much?

I've learned to read the word epic as a red flag that something is going to be extremely underwhelming. Epic should be reserved for... well... reserved at all. It's used with no reservations at all. It can describe anything now.

[kotora]

"Floaty" in the context of Littlebigplanet or any other platform game out there means you fall so slow when jumping it's like you're floating through the air

[Bolivar]

So that's how you make your money, Roto? Pretty good read, some of mine are phrases and not just words

"Mindblowing" - this has gotten thrown around a lot at current generation games, especially at ones with large set pieces. But just because more games, and popular ones at that, are emulating the hollywood blockbuster scene doesn't make it mindblowing. I understand a lot of this stuff happening in-game is a good trend, but Half-Life was how many years ago? This is overdue, not revolutionary.

"Design" - this can be put into one word because it's used so atrociously in many different contexts. It's a lot like the first few on Roto's list, where players will complain about "poor design" or say the design hasn't caught up with the times (saw this in an FF:4HoL review). Reviewers, and certainly not gamers are not game designers. In fact, video game reviewing, unlike other mediums, has no proper training regimes where you study the classics and learn about techniques in the medium.

"Personality" - This is a classic where the reviewer can use this to knock the game without having to actually back it up. I saw this about MAG, which had distinct art styles for each of its 3 factions. I saw this for John Daly's ProStroke Golf, which really set itself apart from other golf games with its ProStroke view, had one of the best commentators in golf, and of course, John Daly who's one of the most interesting...well, personalities! (in golf.)

"Immersion" - just gets used ridiculously all the time.

"Character Development" - used by this site's fantastic collective of literary critics day in and day out.

[Slothy]

"Design" - this can be put into one word because it's used so atrociously in many different contexts. It's a lot like the first few on Roto's list, where players will complain about "poor design" or say the design hasn't caught up with the times (saw this in an FF:4HoL review). Reviewers, and certainly not gamers are not game designers. In fact, video game reviewing, unlike other mediums, has no proper training regimes where you study the classics and learn about techniques in the medium.

That's terrible reasoning for thinking that reviewers or gamers can't talk about game design. Hell, most of the people making them today, and especially 10-20 years ago would have no formal training in actually designing games, yet they do it every day. All it takes is the ability to look critically at how the pieces of a game work and work together, which can come as easily as studying games themselves as through any formal education (which you'd be hard pressed to find outside of a few schools). In fact, having as much experience as possible with games from all genres and systems will help, not hinder this. And the more experience someone has with playing games, the easier it will be for them to know when something is of that they really llike or don't like, whether or not they're able to put it into words. Some people are really bad at it mind you, especially that last part, but the only way to get better is to discuss these things with other people.

[Bolivar]

That's terrible reasoning for thinking that reviewers or gamers can't talk about game design. Hell, most of the people making them today, and especially 10-20 years ago would have no formal training in actually designing games, yet they do it every day. All it takes is the ability to look critically at how the pieces of a game work and work together, which can come as easily as studying games themselves as through any formal education (which you'd be hard pressed to find outside of a few schools). In fact, having as much experience as possible with games from all genres and systems will help, not hinder this. And the more experience someone has with playing games, the easier it will be for them to know when something is of that they really llike or don't like, whether or not they're able to put it into words. Some people are really bad at it mind you, especially that last part, but the only way to get better is to discuss these things with other people.

Maybe. The reasoning at the end is a little weak. But the point of this thread is words that get misused, not that have no meaning. And I think it gets misused a lot. Like I saw 4 Heroes of Light get HEAVILY penalized because it hasn't incorporated any of the design advancments since hte 8-16 bit era. But what exactly are the design advancements? FF's battle systems have been all over the place you really can't say there's been any definitive milestones that have been reached that changed everything, unless you mean a dynamic battle camera and a highly customizable character development system, which are both things it has. It kind of adds its own spin to everything with combined moves and your ability resources for every battle. As far as DS games go, it's hard to imagine it's outdated in any way, and I seriously doubt the magazine said the same thing about Bowser's Inside Story or any of the other Mario & Luigi RPG's.

As to your point, that people can design without training at all, I'm not sure if I entirely agree, granted you have a lot more experience with that kind of thing that I do. To me it seems like most games today, if not nearly ALL Games, simply use a previously existed gameplay mechanic, tune it the best they can, and deliver it with a cinematic experience. You make a third person action game, a first person shooter, a racer, an RPG, it's all based on everything that's come before it.

As opposed to actual GAME design which I feel only a few developers today really think about, which is on the level of Milton & Bradley, or the Parker Brothers. When I think of Game Design I think of Hiroyuki Ito and the battle systems he's created for Final Fantasy like the Gambit System, the Learn-or-Switch element of FFIX's equipment, the Junction System (which may just be inherently broken...er, scattered!) or ATB itself. I think of the early Command & Conquer or Warcraft games and what a nightmare they must have been to balance (aren't you making an RTS right now?) And I also think about the map design in games like Killzone 2, Counter-Strike, and even Call of Duty. Also, the sheer amount of primary, secondary weapon, equipment, special equipment, and perk combinations there are in Modern Warfare 2. Yes, the game was crazy exploited at the beginning but a lot of tweaking has gone a long way to remedy that.

[Levian]

Casual

As in casual gaming.

[Roto13]

"Design" sucks when people are vague with it. Especially "level design" which I think at this point just means "fun."
"Floaty" in the context of Littlebigplanet or any other platform game out there means you fall so slow when jumping it's like you're floating through the air
Yeah, for sure. When you jump in LBP, it feels like you're just kind of rising into the air, rather than launching yourself from the ground with your legs. I love me some LBP, though.

Casual

As in casual gaming.
I remember when "casual" used to mean sports games and any game with violence for the sake of violence, like Grand Theft Auto. That was like five years ago. >_>

[escobert]

Nothing this lengthy should ever be written about this subject, ever.

It's worse than the people you're talking about.

[Roto13]

If you think this is particularly long, you're in pretty sad shape.

[Bunny]

For the medium in which it is written, the length is quite.. lengthy.

Personally, I don't care what terms people use to describe things. I just want gamers to stop whining about every god damn little thing that they don't agree with, regardless of whether or not it is good. People seriously whine about every little minute detail and it is annoying.

[Roto13]

The medium is a gaming blog post. It could probably stand to be longer, really.

[Shoeberto]

Epic.

I guess I'm thinking in a different context than you, but still. Stop arbitrarily calling everything epic.

[Wolf Kanno]

Revolutionary - Mostly in today's context cause seriously the word could only be properly used 25+ years ago and be somewhat accurate with a few here and there. Yet, I'm annoyed as hell how often this word gets thrown around cause half the time, its attached to games that haven't been around long enough to have a real impact on the industry so you really can't say its revolutionary unless, a year after, a bunch of clone games pop up. The other time its used is for games that really had no major revolutionary impact cause the game is no different from other anything else in its genre, it wasn't a complete change of form and procedure as the word revolutionary actually means. They are simply games that added new elements to set them apart from other games/consoles in the market and were successful. They didn't change how the genre operates (well there are some exceptions). So please stop using the word.

"Ahead of its time" - I hate this expression. Mostly cause its used for games that don't deserve it either by not really being ahead of its time (just on schedule thank you very much) or pertains to games and consoles who did something cool but no one really payed attention to it. So the term is used as an excuse to why no one liked it and sometimes its used in the opposite context where people love it because it was "ahead of its time". Seriously, how do you even know this when talking about anything recent? You have a crystal ball that tells you what the future of gaming is going to be and this one title just slipped by the crystal ball radar? Let's pretend the gaming industry exists in a determinist world view and just accept that games come out when they are suppose to and none magically missed the mark on the time scale cause everything is predetermined so it arrived exactly when it needed to, thank you very much. :p

Casual and Hardcore - Can anyone tell me really what the difference is here? Especially when it comes to taste in gaming? Why do I lose hardcore status cause I like my DS and Wii games? How come you're automatically inducted to being a more "serious and hardcore" gamer because you own a PS3, PSP, and X-Box 360? Why does taking a break from playing a gritty crime drama title and blood soaked FPS shooter to a mindless fun filled rhythm game or heaven forbid, Wii Sports automatically means that I'm out of sync with the hardcore crowd who somehow think that playing games with T and M ratings automatically makes them better? Its like saying you don't really like movies cause you occasionally watch a children's flick or some brain dead popcorn flick instead of watching the Sundance Film Festival. You can play both and not be either casual or hardcore, so stop using these terms as a badge of honor or as some silly form of an imaginary hierarchy that exists in your head. Most of my "causal" gamer friends don't own Nintendo consoles or even have a 360, some of my more hardcore gamer friends don't own any of the consoles but are still fascinated by motion gaming. So this idea of using these terms as derogatory statements about another gamer cause you don't like their games/consoles/gaming interface is just plain stupid. Grow up and stop being a fanboy douche, you fanboy douche. :mad:

As for Hardcore, there is a big difference between being hardcore and just plain obsessive and OCD like. I'm what you would call an OCD gamer, I have to complete certain tasks in a game finish every game I start, and understand the games underlying mechanics and exploitations. Is this healthy? No. So what makes me "hardcore" to some people makes me pathologically insane to other people. Whether you believe "Hardcore" is a positive term depends on which side of "obsessive gaming" you stand on.

[Dreddz]

Epic.

I guess I'm thinking in a different context than you, but still. Stop arbitrarily calling everything epic.
This was exactly what I was going to say. Nearly word for word.

I've found myself to disagree with a lot of the comments in this thread. A lot of the words and phrases brought up seem kind of crucial when describing the pro's and con's of a game.

[Madame Adequate]

Most of these terms do have legitimate uses in theory, but I agree completely with Roto that they're all rendered pretty useless because people misuse them entirely.* Oh and I agree with WK on 'Revolutionary' more than I can say, probably because I have played first-hand, when they were new, genuinely revolutionary games - DooM**, Populous, Civilization, and so on. And I'm well enough informed about games before my time to generally know which ones matter even though I wasn't there on day one. Seeing it applied to something like Gears of War, though a game I like a lot, is a bit daft.

* Except pedestrian. :colbert:

** And yes I know about Wolfenstein 3D but DooM had far greater impact and they're still making WADs today.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Casual and Hardcore - Can anyone tell me really what the difference is here? Especially when it comes to taste in gaming? Why do I lose hardcore status cause I like my DS and Wii games? How come you're automatically inducted to being a more "serious and hardcore" gamer because you own a PS3, PSP, and X-Box 360? Why does taking a break from playing a gritty crime drama title and blood soaked FPS shooter to a mindless fun filled rhythm game or heaven forbid, Wii Sports automatically means that I'm out of sync with the hardcore crowd who somehow think that playing games with T and M ratings automatically makes them better? Its like saying you don't really like movies cause you occasionally watch a children's flick or some brain dead popcorn flick instead of watching the Sundance Film Festival. You can play both and not be either casual or hardcore, so stop using these terms as a badge of honor or as some silly form of an imaginary hierarchy that exists in your head. Most of my "causal" gamer friends don't own Nintendo consoles or even have a 360, some of my more hardcore gamer friends don't own any of the consoles but are still fascinated by motion gaming. So this idea of using these terms as derogatory statements about another gamer cause you don't like their games/consoles/gaming interface is just plain stupid. Grow up and stop being a fanboy douche, you fanboy douche. :mad:

As for Hardcore, there is a big difference between being hardcore and just plain obsessive and OCD like. I'm what you would call an OCD gamer, I have to complete certain tasks in a game finish every game I start, and understand the games underlying mechanics and exploitations. Is this healthy? No. So what makes me "hardcore" to some people makes me pathologically insane to other people. Whether you believe "Hardcore" is a positive term depends on which side of "obsessive gaming" you stand on.

The term Hardcore gamer essentially means gamer with no life lol :bigsmile:

[Rase]

Rape.

[ljkkjlcm9]

I'm gonna have to say Next-gen. These systems have been around... 4 years? Yeah, not next-gen anymore, they're this generation.

I agree with most of what is being said, however those that actually know what the terms mean typically use them correctly. It's the common gamer that likes to think they're special and try to talk big that throw around most of these terms.

Little Big Planet does have floaty jump mechanics, as stated, but many people just call jumping floaty when they have difficulty handling it.

Unplayable... good points, but at the same time I feel most people use this as a personal meaning. I find Oblivion unplayable because certain aspects of it I DESPISE, does not mean it is an unplayable game, it just means it is unplayable for me because I loathe every second of it.

Broken is a good one though. Many people use it just because they keep getting destroyed by another person or can't figure something out. However other games are purposefully "broken" or unbalanced, like say Ninja Gaiden on Master Ninja.

THE JACKEL

[Shiny]

It's less than a page long. This is how I make my money.

I thought you made your money on the streets. I see you've quit hooking. Anywayz, I've never seen a gamer use pedestrian to describe video game content. How odd. I kinda hope people stop using noob. That's so 2001?

[Yeargdribble]

I don't hear pedestrian really overused in general, but in certain communities it has become meme-ish to classify run of the mill clones as such.

[Meat Puppet]

"Game" as in game.

Actually, let's just never let anyone talk ever again. We will communicate through interpretive dance.

[Levian]

Do people still use own or pwn? I wouldn't know, I don't usually play games where people would own eachother!

[ShunNakamura]

Unplayable... good points, but at the same time I feel most people use this as a personal meaning. I find Oblivion unplayable because certain aspects of it I DESPISE, does not mean it is an unplayable game, it just means it is unplayable for me because I loathe every second of it.

I just want to second this. Sometimes words can both be used Subjectively and Objectively. Unplayable is one of those in my eyes. For example any game that is too intensive click wise(some browser based games for example) can very quickly become unplayable for me due to the fact that I suffer from RSI in my wrists(or so I have been told, and I know that regardless of what it is that it hurts like hell to play such click intensive games). Etc. . .

Of course in the case of professional reviews use of the term should be rare in my opinion. Since professional reviews tend to be expected to be a bit more pro-like/objective than say a forum post or the ilk.

[Roto13]

Nobody uses "unplayable" to mean they physically can't play a game for medical reasons. :P

[ShunNakamura]

Nobody uses "unplayable" to mean they physically can't play a game for medical reasons. :P
:( I am nobody :(

Heh, that was mostly an extreme example. What I was really trying to get across is that in my experience unplayable effectively is used on a game with some serious issues and/or flaws(most of the time are easily identified in an objective manner) that simply bypass that particular persons threshold for adversity. Or somesuch.

Such as a story driven single player game that is far beyond someone's difficulty level without the ability to scale it down could very well be 'unplayable' to that group. On the other hand for some people games that are FAR too easy are unplayable. We play games for enjoyment after all, and if the game is the opposite than it is effectively unplayable even if it is technically playable.

Of course that is just my opinion.

[kotora]

a game that has a really :bou::bou::bou::bou:ty user interface is unplayable to me. Like Arma 2. Pretty cool game but I'm not gonna play a game that requires me to press 2 or 3 separate buttons at the same time for even the simplest tasks like looking down the scope of a rifle.

[Magixion]

This whole topic is broken and needs to work on its narrative.

[Jiro]

Rape.

This, actually.

Epic is way over used everywhere, not just by gamers.

Also you people are all lazy if you think Roto's post is too long. I wanted more words added to it.

[KentaRawr!]

Waggle.

I might just have the wrong idea of what 'waggle' is, but I was always under the impression that people used 'waggle' to refer to games on the Wii where a quick shake of the controller acts like a button. Like in Metal Slug, how you'd shake the controller to throw grenades. Or Zelda, where you shake the controller to swing your sword. You're waggling the controller, so there you go! It's waggle. But a lot of times people seem to use it to describe motion sensing in gaming completely, like with the PS3's 'Move'.

[Roto13]

Waggle.

I might just have the wrong idea of what 'waggle' is, but I was always under the impression that people used 'waggle' to refer to games on the Wii where a quick shake of the controller acts like a button. Like in Metal Slug, how you'd shake the controller to throw grenades. Or Zelda, where you shake the controller to swing your sword. You're waggling the controller, so there you go! It's waggle. But a lot of times people seem to use it to describe motion sensing in gaming completely, like with the PS3's 'Move'.

Yeah, that's annoying. The sword fighting in Wii Sports Resort is not waggle. There are people who even describe the pointer controls as waggle. :P Morons. I guess I waggle my mouse to highlight my text to change the colour, too.

[Hollycat]

Ive heard people say that things as stupid as "Need for speed, total ripoff of Gran Turismo"
I want to bonk all who say rip off on the head.

[Roto13]

I've seen people say that LittelBigPlanet is a ripoff of Mario. I guess because they're both platformers.

[KentaRawr!]

I've seen people say that Smash Bros. is the only fighting game where you can use mind games.

[Old Manus]

I was always under the impression that 'broken' meant that a gameplay element was over (or under) powered :confused:

Oh, and all y'all bitches hating on the usage of the word 'casual' are just hatin' on the knowledge I was dropping on omgmygame.

[Roogle]

I noticed that "broken" is used heavily in the fighting game scene to describe any aspect of a character that seems overpowered compared to other characters.

Previous generations of fighting games saw mechanics introduced by specific characters that really did have unintended effects like infinite combos or completely altered the way that the game was intended to be played. Infinite custom combos in Street Fighter Alpha 3, for example, can be considered broken as later updates of the game removed aspects of the custom combo system that allowed this to happen.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I'm with Manus and Roogle on 'broken'.


Waggle.

I might just have the wrong idea of what 'waggle' is, but I was always under the impression that people used 'waggle' to refer to games on the Wii where a quick shake of the controller acts like a button. Like in Metal Slug, how you'd shake the controller to throw grenades. Or Zelda, where you shake the controller to swing your sword. You're waggling the controller, so there you go! It's waggle. But a lot of times people seem to use it to describe motion sensing in gaming completely, like with the PS3's 'Move'.
It's pejorative.

[Peegee]

Agreed - especially with the word 'broken'.

People crying that xyz is overpowered is also very annoying. Whatever happened to skill?

[Jessweeee♪]

Personally I use the word "broken" to describe something I enjoy exploiting. Like "Pokemon Blue was pretty broken. It was fun because I could break it in so many ways with my glitched pokermen."

[Elite Lord Sigma]

I'd like "faggot" to be removed from the lexicon of online gaming. It's tiresome listening to random assholes whine about my voice and accuse me of being gay in an attempt to conceal their own insecurities instead of focusing on winning the damn match.

"Rape", "owned" and other synonyms are abused all of the time, too. To the men-children I played against on Halo: Reach last night, winning by two points is not an overwhelming victory. Seriously, pull your heads out of your arses.

EDIT: Maddox shares everyone's sentiments (http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=epic) on "epic", it seems.

[Yeargdribble]

Agreed - especially with the word 'broken'.

People crying that xyz is overpowered is also very annoying. Whatever happened to skill?

In the top echelon of fighting games people are actually counting frames of animation and making a science out of the efficiency with which a character can respond to the attacks and defenses of all other characters.

It can actually happen that at the top levels, no amount of skill can circumvent an overpowered character. They literally cannot be beaten by certain other characters.

I'm not a fighting game guy, but I understand how it works and I seem to remember when SFIV came out there were some issues with Ken being ridiculously overpowered.

Also, when I played WoW I became intimately familiar with how balance can overwhelm skill. During a particular season of arena it was literally impossible to be in the top tier of 2s unless you were a Druid+Warrior combo. That combination could literally nullify anything opposition could throw at it.

While there are people who just whine (and it's the majority) keep in mind that the concept of power balance can be very real, though it's generally only ever apparent at the upper most levels of play.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I'd like "faggot" to be removed from the lexicon of online gaming. It's tiresome listening to random assholes whine about my voice and accuse me of being gay in an attempt to conceal their own insecurities instead of focusing on winning the damn match.

"Rape", "owned" and other synonyms are abused all of the time, too. To the men-children I played against on Halo: Reach last night, winning by two points is not an overwhelming victory. Seriously, pull your heads out of your arses.

90% of the trash talk I do online is just to piss off the other gamers, your post makes it all worthwhile. <3

[Vermachtnis]

winning by two points is not an overwhelming victory. Seriously, pull your heads out of your arses.
.

I dunno about you, but I get more excited when we the matches end close like that. I was just playing Dynasty Warriors Online and we won by 11 K.O.s and it was awesome! 1236 to 1225 got me more excited then that time it was 1731 to 1136.

[kotora]

nah I prefer to completely beat the opponent on every level. Though it's also awesome when you look like you're losing and then you completely turn the tables on the enemy. When that happens I usually tell them to grab a napkin cuz they got served :colbert:

[Yeargdribble]

"Rape", "owned" and other synonyms are abused all of the time, too.

For me, these two words are on a spectrum. Owned would denote a pretty severe win/loss. Raped would infer and all-out, one-sided slaughter.

I don't mind them except when used the way that you explained... in paltry victories.

[Roto13]

I avoid that nonsense by not playing games online unless I have to.

[Yeargdribble]

I'm in the same boat. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing something by not playing online... ever, and I'm sure I am. But I'm not sure the frustration would be worth it.

[Depression Moon]

you can mute those people.

[Iceglow]

See sometimes you can rape people online but not actually win or you can rape and own them. For example:

In Halo Reach it has become a favourite thing of ours (Myself, DK, Psy ect) to enter the Team Objective playlist. This pitches us in 3 v 3 or 4 v 4 games against other people usually with a capture the flag/headhunter/king of the hill theme going on. We personally care little for the flag in a capture the flag game and will often just fight holding the enemy team at a standstill, we're not interested in securing their flag, they can't get ours away because we're raping them too hard. In a 4 v 4 sometimes the guy on our team with us if not one of the other Halo players on here will go for the flag which means we'll win, other times we'll draw and on occassion we'll lose. Regardless the enemy team gets raped, our kill/death streaks are often ridiculous we've had multiple running riots pop up in games we've raped that hard but we've still lost the game (especially if it's a hill game) Other times (especially Head Hunter type games) we'll simply work towards raping them then one of us will build up 10 skulls when they've scraped about half the skulls they need. It then becomes give the skull collector skulls any way possible, betrayals included if needs be the enemy team then come chasing that person who is getting the ultimate vip walk to the collection zone to then grab a Skullamanjaro instant win in which case we not only owned them but we raped them too.

Owned and Raped can be two very different things and Raped doesn't always imply winning the game.

[Vyk]

Its...still over-used though