I can go with that, and like the idea of progression. I wouldn't pit progressed people against unprogressed people though; that's when it gets unfair. eg. I want to play a sniper. I can't because I don't have access to a sniper rifle. I have to run around getting shot s lot as a grunt until I've unlocked that ability. In R3 that comes early on, but in MAG it was a long way off and weapon superiority of the higher tier rifle would mean those who progressed further could rack up more kills and more points, which meant supressing the other players more. R3's little maps haven't had that problem, and I agree that a player can still hold their own somewhat just running around shooting and staying mobile. But then it gets chaotic.
Hence why I prefer U2's coop modes.
Actually U2's competitive was pretty good IMO. I could still do useful things even up against much better teams.My main beef with R3 is that it requires running around like a madman. Even behind cover shooting someone you can be killed from any direction, especially by an auger. The auger doesn't make sense to me as it's undefendable - it's a cheap weapon for cheap kills.
How rude!
I can agree to a point, as there have been games that have annoyed me somewhat but I've grown to understand them. Look back at all the games I've grumbled about over the years (and there have been a lot!) and you'll see that I have always persevered and progressed to give them a fair innings before giving up. Except KZ2 that was zero fun for me. However, I've played enough shooters this gen to know what I like and what I don't like. MAG had good gameplay for me when I could sneak around back with a supressor and go commando (had to slog a lot to get to that level), but the general mechanics of throwing bodies at a fight got tiring quickly. WH is good when there isn't an ace flier on the opposition, but is miserable when one team has air superiority. KZ2 was great when it was simple weapons but became a mess when among higher level players. R3 is too much going on for me. Too many variations and combinations to actually play with unless you dedicate a lot of time to learning. Knowing I'm in safe location inn plenty of cover attacking an enemy only to be shot through the wall is taking the biscuit.
I think it's a current design fault of the industry, or at least an incompatibility between me and contemporary tastes. For me the best space shooter of all time was the original R-Type. It needed tactical deployment of the Orb and success was 100% the player's skill without the player needing to have superhuman reactions. What really made it work was single-shot kills but bullets slow enough that you could plan a path through them. Modern shooters have health bars and zillions of bullets. You can't avoid them (unless an uber-player) but it doesn't matter because they won't kill you, and it takes away a lot of the precise control. My ideal T/FPS would have you thinking about movements and working your way gradually, with the ocassional high-paced encounter. U2's coop mode was great, especially beating hard mode with only two of us. We had to strategise and learn how to beat each encounter, and the end result was very satifying.
