Are Elites Ruining Online Play?

I don't mean for this to be a brag thread. I'm looking for genuine feedback from the community.

I remember when I first picked up WOHD I could not even begin to fathom how I was getting beat by 10+ seconds. But I continued to race and get better determined to eventuality be a contender online.

Now I join a game, and empty a lobby after one race. I do see some other WOHD pilots now and again, but for the most part, I see new pilots in VR. Any suggestions on cultivating interest to get better instead of quit? I feel like all the older pilots from WOHD and even 2048 are too good to encourage new pilots to want to continue playing, which doesn't bode well for the series.

People like winning more than they do losing.
I think I would've given up pretty early myself if it wasn't for the community side of things ;-)

Yeah, but back in the WOHD days there was a strong desire to get better instead of quit. I took a 15 second loss as a challenge.

Are you sure that wasn't just because of the great atmosphere in the chats and stuff? (something we unfortunately don't really have anymore on PS4), people can challenge themselves on the leaderboards if they really want to, and ps+ enforces the thought of "time is money" online, so they might want to spend their online time on other games as well, instead of spending hundreds of hours trying to get better online

Wow dude, I forgot that it used to be free!

Still, if people have the money for vr, one would assume they could afford psn +

I'm having the opposite effect, ever since the VR update I've been getting an awful lot of grief and abusive messages from low level randoms (157 messages on record and potentially more since I made my privacy settings super strict).

Like Cipher said people hate losing, especially evident for me as people can't seem to stand the fact I fly Piranha. Apprently its super OP when I fly with it and its unfair on them, even though Piranha is one of the hardest teams to play with :|
Then these people start talking to others to gang up on me with weapons until I leave the lobby, and then send me messages saying "Git gud noob, ragequitter lol". Its a war I can't win with these hypocrites.

I've just given up and retired for now until I feel like returning in hopes people will mature.

I kind of fear that these younger gamers just have a bad attitude. I started maining Tigron now, and I get the same thing with the hate. I feel you though, because I played a substantial amount of Piranha and Icaras first. On average, I win by 8-10 seconds (less when I miss a turbo roll or shortcut. So it is well within the realm of beatable with enough skill. I'm saying that those times should inspire, not enrage. I used to suck. Now I'm pretty damn good. I got that way because it pissed me off when I lost and I wanted to do something about it. And I did.

With 2048 though, I almost always go with Feisar Prototype. Those races aren't even close. On Capitol Reach and Subway specifically, I'll lap people or win by 25+ seconds. I get called a cheater, that I use glitches, and that I should stop playing unfair. I mean, come on people, use the right ship. Feisar Prototype is totally broken on those tracks. Honestly though I sucked on the Vita. VR makes it so much easier on the console.

Anyways, I sincerely hope that people will be more encouraged to not quit. Maybe we need a get together event?

Last time I wanted to play online I waited for more than 20 minutes to even find a game that more or less suits me. I think I went back to offline races then, as there were simply no games. There’re mostly Flash or Rapier races but no Phantom or A/A+ – and I’m almost exclusively interested in the latter. So no luck for me. The times I do find the races I long for, it’s often me and just a single other player, which indeed can be a tad demotivating, for both the winner and the loser.

I have to say, though, those times you have the patience to get a game’s lobby filled up (yeah, you should invest an hour or more for that to happen) things become entertaining. There’re the pros on top fighting for the first place, the midfield and the less skilled and everybody has its contest. This is usually the moment I try search for the player’s ID to add him to the friends list – those players that are similar skilled to oneself are a rare breed!

When Sony removed the rule that unlike PS3 games, the 'Players Met' feature was not needed to be included on PS4 games, it also removed one of the main assets that actually kept HD/FURY online going for so long.
This was a decision probably made in the mistaken belief that PS4 system features like 'Communities' and 'Following players' among other things, were suitable replacements.....they weren't.

The ability to go back in your recent online gaming history and see in the Players Met list of all the people you had raced against was a real asset, especially if you raced in predominantly one race speed and type, it made it very easy to find like minded people that you could message saying things like 'Great Race' or 'Close race' etc, that broke the ice, and it was easy to talk about racing again, or telling them about the Wipeoutzone, which I think a lot of people found out about via this method.

It also helped when you ran across a player with a user name that otherwise was so obscure and strange that it would basically would have been impossible to remember, which is the situation you have now.

Online is a whole new generation playing, they don't know the history of the game,they have no idea about the unwritten etiquette of wipeout pilots, the "Let's be Friends" motto that the previous generation has lived by.
They also don't have the attention span needed to get good at the game, I also suspect most of the newbies have no idea of where all the alternate routes are on the 2048 tracks, or the short cuts on the HD/Fury tracks, so subsequently when they run across somebody that does and they kick their butts, their reaction is obviously going to be a negative one with the predominant calls of 'Cheat' or 'Glitch user' ....ignorance will do that.

My suggestion to those suffering that abuse is to rise above it and educate them, have the key words Wipeoutzone.com scripted on your PS4's keyboard, so it comes up straight away when you begin to type it, and just start sending a standard reply when you receive such abuse of "Learn the game, see the wipeoutzone.com on tips and tricks", I think you might be pleasantly surprised on how quickly it might turn people around, well those who aren't totally moronic at least.

If given encouragement they will challenge themselves to get better, and the pool of elite pilots will swell, and you'll have more people staying in your rooms to race against you.

I'm afraid it's the only way your going to do it, and it going to take time.

It's the Quake syndrome. New players getting matched up with seasoned veterans, eating dust, then leaving. Most people choose not to get better nowadays, either because they don't have the time for it, don't have the skills, or just don't want to go through the effort. Games that run on raw skill aren't that popular anymore.

You know, I've noticed that. I know a lot of monster hunter vets that were pissed that it was easier than the old school games. But all the new players groaned about how difficult it was. I have friends that all complain about dark souls too.

I think there is a widening gap between more casual less skilled players and committed gamers. There used to be some gray area, but the market seems very polarized now. Pay to play benefits like loot boxes don't help either.

I think the best solution for these people would be to simply not play online. I can't speak from too much experience considering how new I am to the series, but I'm perfectly content with playing against the AI. If I haven't gotten sick of it in Mario Kart DS after 13 years, I don't think I'll get sick of it here.

Plus, it'd be cheaper, not having to pay for PS+ and all. So that's always nice.

I find it hilarious that people find paying for a PS+ subscription an outrage, well TBH I used to be one of those people that thought the whole PS+ thing was a ripoff when it first came out, I can't remember what made me cave in, but I did eventually well before the PS4 was released, and serendipitously just when a whole load of great titles were given away for free around 8-10 moths in a row.:nod

Being caught out before subscription renewal time, I found you need to be smart and always keep it paid up before your renewal date and buy a yearly subscription when it's on special at 30% off normal price, which happens several time a year at least [it is currently], which in Aus full price for a 1 year subscription is $79.95 pa you end up paying $55.95pa, which works out at 15cents a day.

I do this whenever I have the spare $$ and I am currently paid up till July 2020.

It sure beats getting a alert from Sony just before your subscription is due and finding that your don't have the spare cash to pay for it.:blarg

Even when Sony stop giving away free PS3 games later next year, you'll still be getting 24 free PS4 games a year, and even if you only liked and bothered to download 5 of those, it's still got to be worth more than what you have outlayed.

Anyway, back on to the main topic.....I went online the other night and there wasn't a sole playing on any of the servers, even the PS3 servers had at least 'somebody' on them right up until they closed them.
It's really quite sad to see this happening, and I put it down to the decisions made by certain people regarding the separate servers, and the issues this has caused.......I mean I see their reasoning, in that to have the best lag free online Wipeout experience, being on your particulars countries server is the best option, but if the vast majority of wipeout pilots are based in the same global area, and using the one server, and your sitting in your countries lobby like a mug waiting for somebody else to turn up, what's the point?
Far better dealing with the lag, [which can cause some very funny things to happen] and at least get a race, that's if your lucky enough not to get booted from the UK lobby if your from elsewhere.

I think the whole online population for wipeout has diminished since the heyday of HD/FURY 2009 - 2014/15........ It diminished a lot when wipeout was only a PSP/VITA game.
And the problem with that demise is that the vast proportion of pilots that could hold their own at Phantom speed online have gone with it.
A lot of use have, due to age, sunk too far into the couch cushions of time to grab a controller, the French wipeout arena site is still up but is basically inactive and has been for several years now, which is sad because a hell of a lot of the fastest phantom pilots were/are French based.

Looks like there is a need to find a way to replace those phantom pilots, and also find a way to give impetus to new pilots to get to that level.....it's not a easy task, for those that want more people to be playing the game, as those who can race at the fastest speeds know just how much effort it took to get there.

I have to say, I find the notion that the good pilots are ruining online for the beginners quite disturbing. If anything, online gameplay is ruined by new players who don‘t want to learn the game offline before blindly joining a phantom or A+ race, getting their ass handed to them and then pestering the good players with messages accusing them of cheating and encouraging them to go fornicate with their mothers.
So, in a language that these kids seem to understand: GIT GUD.
I‘m not putting up with any of that. I really can‘t help you any more than using a quirex agility and still beating you.

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Originally Posted by eLhabib

I have to say, I find the notion that the good pilots are ruining online for the beginners quite disturbing. If anything, online gameplay is ruined by new players who don‘t want to learn the game offline before blindly joining a phantom or A+ race, getting their ass handed to them and then pestering the good players with messages accusing them of cheating and encouraging them to go fornicate with their mothers.
So, in a language that these kids seem to understand: GIT GUD.
I‘m not putting up with any of that. I really can‘t help you any more than using a quirex agility and still beating you.

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I think a LOT of the really new pilots online are totally new to wipeout as a gaming experience, and have only just got it because they have bought a PSVR.
Problem with that is I expect 'they' are expecting everybody else that is playing online to be in the same situation that they are, and a huge shock when they find out that is not the case.

Totally agree here. The vast majority of people I see are low level pilots in vr. You can tell by the new faces and the vr icon. They see me with the same icon and a relatively low rank and assume I'm new to the game. What they don't see is the 80+ rank I had on WOHD. Not saying that rank indicates anything at all because it doesn't. But to the eyes of someone starting out, they don't know that the difference between rank 1 and 30 is tons of hours.

Now as far as the phantom A+ speeds go, due to the lack of races at that speed I've gotten quite rusty at higher speed classes. Not terrible mind you, just not top 50 material like I used to be. Without other folks online, there isn't much of a chance to practice because the ai is a joke even at elite.

Another potentially controversial theory is that after videogames were finally popularized as a whole by the industry around 2009, the medium was flooded with people who were never that much into videogames and saw them more like a means of entertainment they could get quick enjoyment out of without putting much effort. Some may call this the "casual market". The industry shifted to appease them more when they became the majority of audiences, by producing "easier" games in general. It changed so much that games like Dark Souls and the recent Crash remaster were seen as hard games, even though they're no harder than what we used to have.
The same thing happened to computers in general around the same time when Apple launched their first iPhone, pushing their "The computer for the rest of us" slogan once again ever since the 80's.

Dude, you just gave me the feels. I beat kid chameleon on the genesis recently on an emulator with no saves. People don't know how difficult old school games like contra, Zelda 2 and golden Axe really were.

I imagine that if WO was ever an arcade game that my records wouldn't be beaten. I think we have the Wii to thank for the casual trend. If you can't pick it up and master it in 5 minutes, why play?

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Originally Posted by T-301

It's the Quake syndrome. New players getting matched up with seasoned veterans, eating dust, then leaving. Most people choose not to get better nowadays, either because they don't have the time for it, don't have the skills, or just don't want to go through the effort. Games that run on raw skill aren't that popular anymore.

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That is probably why Quake and Unreal Tournament don’t sell like the some of the dumbed down FPS’s, it was pure skill, no auto aim or close enough or any of that crap

I know this is super late. I haven't been on here in some time. But I still regularly play the game semi daily. I tend to avoid sticking around in lobbies with newer players for more than a couple of races just to give them a taste of what higher level pilots can do. If I stay longer they all start leaving, usually.

If I host and newer players around. I usually send them a friend request with a "GG" in the message. It tends to encourage them to keep playing and ideally improve.

I hope some of you guys that have PS+ come back. It'd be cool to play with some of you guys again. Especially before all the new stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 and PS5 release.

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Originally Posted by BlackReign

I know this is super late. I haven't been on here in some time. But I still regularly play the game semi daily. I tend to avoid sticking around in lobbies with newer players for more than a couple of races just to give them a taste of what higher level pilots can do. If I stay longer they all start leaving, usually.

If I host and newer players around. I usually send them a friend request with a "GG" in the message. It tends to encourage them to keep playing and ideally improve.

I hope some of you guys that have PS+ come back. It'd be cool to play with some of you guys again. Especially before all the new stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 and PS5 release.

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I would try it again if there's a new ps+ exploit, or if sony drops ps+ (unlikely)

There's a Server emulator for WOHD in development and it might work on RPCS3, so it should be cross-play between PS3 & RPCS3, so i will try it out when it's released

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Originally Posted by Racingfan

I would try it again if there's a new ps+ exploit, or if sony drops ps+ (unlikely)

There's a Server emulator for WOHD in development and it might work on RPCS3, so it should be cross-play between PS3 & RPCS3, so i will try it out when it's released

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Ah okay. :+:)