Hello, Mr. Malstrom.
Although this e-mail is about Team Fortress, it is not really about Valve like most of the e-mails that get published in your blog.
It’s about a new mode that was recenly launched into TF2, called Mann VS Machine. To say it in a feel words, it’s a mode were a team of 6 players fights a number of waves, composed of AI controlled robots. Those robots come in a great number, and many of them are way stronger than human characters, so players must use of their skill and strategy, as well as choosing the right upgrades between each wave, so they can defend their base from the robots.
It was made with two difficulty levels: Normal, and Advanced. Normal level is usually hard, but you can beat it without much problem if your team is good. Advanced level is hell. It was made to be very hard even if all 6 players are good, and it takes a very good strategy and lots of tries for a team of good players to win. On a side note, to make some extra cash, Valve made a system (Mann Up Mode) where you can buy some tickets to play Advanced in a special way, that rewards players with exclusive hats and items for beating it, as well as recording their progress on their steam accounts.
Now I come to the point of this e-mail: you won’t believe how many people are crying about Advanced’s difficulty in Steam forums. They demand it to be nerfed, they complain they can’t win, and that they can’t get the hats because of the difficulty. I’m also having trouble at beating this difficulty (I only came close once), but I’m having a lot of fun because of the difficulty, and I want to play it more.
This reminded about those posts in your blog about Diablo 3, and how people were complaining about it, so I decided to write this e-mail to show you another example of that. People just think a game they can’t beat is a bad game. They never want to train and get better to win the game, they want the game to become easier for them.
Isn’t it annoying how gamers, today, get online and just demand things? They write all these things and might even start a blog over it.
(Suddenly, laughter erupts at Nintendo of America…)
Yeah, perhaps I am part of the problem. But then again, those gamers out there aren’t saying what I am (at least, not until it is said here first).
This is a huge issue with online games. Obviously, it occurs with games like World of Warcraft where it is subscription based. But now the behavior has spread to all feedback to online games. People just make demands. They don’t bother with constructive feedback.
Maybe I’m just getting older, but I’m becoming more and more fond of the days of gaming before the Internet. The only ‘complaints’ a person could make was to write a letter to Nintendo Power. Our disinterest was communicated by not purchasing the product. But with Free-To-Play, how is disinterest to be communicated? This is the question.
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