ND

Today I took my first exam: Biomaterials. I was certainly much, much better prepared for this one, but I still missed some stuff in my review of material. I need to continue to improve my coverage to include everything.

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. If you care to read on, be ready for some abbreviations. This post is actually about…

This post is about CrossFire (CF), a free to play military first person shooter that has been a great joy (and pride) in my life this past year. The game is almost two years old now, having been released in January of 2009. I started playing in the summer of 2009, which was the first summer of my college years. Up until this time, my primary first person shooter (FPS) had been Combat Arms (CA). A friend from high school, Will, introduced me to CF in June, and I spent a ton of time playing. Back then, I thought the game was great; it was relatively hacker free (CA had tons of hackers) and even though there were less maps, they were pretty fun to play. It was always a blast to fool around with Will and do silly things like camping behind a box, patiently waiting for the next victim to turn the corner and be promptly blasted in the face with machine gun bullets. What a thrill.

That summer, I played CF almost religiously. I had also picked up MapleStory (MS) again earlier during spring semester (terrible idea), and I ALSO played that religiously. My first summer away from home, and I was juggling two time consuming games with research and breaking. Good times. So every day, or sometimes in the late afternoon before I left lab, I would boot up CF on my then all-powerful XPS M1530 with its GeForce 8600MGT (256 Mb dedicated) and shoot pixels all day. As with anything, and for me, especially games, with enough dedication you get to become pretty good pretty fast. Also, I had already played a ton of FPS from back when I got Halo: CE for the PC in high school. By the end of this summer, I got to the point where I could hit headshots pretty consistently.

Let me break for a bit here to discuss a little about how this game works. The game runs off of dedicated servers in Canada, so ping plays a pretty big factor. The lower your ping, the faster the servers receive the information, so every action you do reacts that much faster. In other words, for me who was getting ~50 ping at home and ~30 ping from my lab (T1 lines are so nice), the game registered headshots quite well. It was pretty simple to move my cursor to an opponent’s head and click. Also, many players were from South America, so their ping’s were horrendous (remember the servers are in Canada), upwards of 200, even 300. Obviously, this made the game harder to play for them. So, it made me seem that much more amazing (to them, at least). Anyways, back to the silly story.

So as sophomore year rolled around, this was my bread and butter game. I quit MS around this time, if I recall correctly, having reached level 123 (which is a colossal waste of time). I also played SC back then, but SC didn’t entertain me as much. Thus, most of my gaming time went toward CF. Having built up a decent level of skill, I sought to get better, and that led me to join clans. Clans are basically communities in gaming where people can join and grow to get better. I had spent most of my time playing in public games, and I had never played in scrimmages. (We call this “scrimming”). So even though I had gotten to be a big fish in a small pond, I wanted to hop out of my little puddle and join the bigger fishes.

By this point CF had switched companies to Z8games, but that doesn’t really affect the story. I just make this point because it shows how long I’ve been with this game (not really). Anyways, the clan system is quite developed, I feel, for a free game. It wasn’t too complex to understand, and so it was easy to scroll through the top ranked clans and find one I liked. Now, CF was open to players from all over the world, so there were many South American (primarily Brazilian) and European (Turkish, Greek, Italian) clans.

Let’s take another story break to discuss technical details. In CF your account can rise through ranks the more you play (ranks are military ranks, so you start at PVC and go up accordingly). So, clans are ranked according to clan points, which depend largely on how many players you have, and how much they play. A character who earns 500 exp gains 1 clan point for their clan. So the top clans had tons of people, up to 100 (which is the max), and that’s why they were ranked at the top.

Never having been in a clan before, my choosing guide was merely for the name. When you join a game, they show your clan name next to your name, so I wanted mine to be Phy6 and then something that sounded cool. This is how I came to be attracted to the clan “The Marksmen”. When I read this, I thought, “Oh my god, this name is so badass. I am totally a marksman.” So I applied to the clan, and took the try-out. This was a 1v1 game with one of their clan managers. Having played copiously in pubs, I did pretty well. (IIRC I won.) Anyways, I was accepted. I met a ton of people and I discovered how fun it was to be in a community. The Marksmen used Skype, so we would chat while we were playing, and of course there was a ton of trash talking, which adds to the excitement and fun. (I feel like most of my female friends don’t really appreciate the satisfaction of just having a good time at a game or a sport and friendly trash talking with your teammates). Needless to say, my first time in such an active community made the game that much more fun. Being able to log on, say hello to clan mates, and join their games to school noobs together was great. Winning clan matches was even better, especially the ones where we just curb stomped the other team. (WINNING IS SUCH AN AWESOME FEELING).

The other big thing that I got out of being in Marksmen was meeting the bigger fish (w00t metaphors). I finally consistently played with or against players that were significantly better than me. While it is really frustrating to play against better players (meaning you lose), it is truly a thrilling experience as you get to push yourself to get better. I can recall many games where I would be able to feel my heart beat fast in the heat of battle, albeit virtual.

Sadly, most good things come to an end, and Marksmen ended up going through some leadership changes. It got renamed to RGGaming or something, and a lot of people left the clan, so activity plummeted. Around this time was also when class were getting harder, so I also didn’t get to spend as much time on CF. The only thing memorable from the clan was this player named “CowGoesMoo” or something. He was the clan leader and I remember that he put tape on his monitor so he could snipe people without scoping (when you use a sniper rifle they remove the crosshair). I still think this is pretty amusing but actually quite effective way of cheating (undetectable).

But also, around this time, I had gotten to the point where I would be constant called a hacker. I am definitely not claiming to be the best at this game, but I was and definitely am very decent. Being clanless now took away a lot of the fun, and I was lazy to find another good clan to join. I went back to being a lone wolf of sorts, and I made a bunch of different accounts so I could use different guns. (Making gold to buy guns in this game takes a ton of time, and it was easier to just make new accounts for the gold bonuses and default gold you start with if you wanted to try different guns).

Actually I guess that last statement deserves another technical sidetrack paragraph of its own. CF has many guns to choose from. More importantly though, it differs from CA in a major aspect. In CA, you have to rent out guns. In CF, the gun system is that guns cost a lump sum, but you can keep them and use them as much as you like. In exchange, there is a deterioration system, so after every game the guns would “degrade” a little. You have to pay a little fee to restore them to pristine condition, otherwise they will break and the gun will actually lose some accuracy. I think this system is really good, it doesn’t force the player to worry about losing their guns.

Back to the main story; so it was a lot of fun to make new accounts and ridiculously stomp noobs (I went games with 40 kills and less than 10 deaths). During this time though, I also improved a lot from just practicing with so many different guns. Ready for another technical sidetrack? (I write this because I think most of my friends don’t play FPS. If you do, I apologize).

In more realistic FPS’s (not Halo), when you shoot a gun, there is recoil. This emulates what happens when you shoot real guns, except at a much smaller scale. But basically, when you hold down the trigger too long, the gun will keep kicking back, and your bullets will fly all over the place. Thus, a big part about getting good is learning to control your recoil. In my experience, there are two…let’s call them “schools of thoughts” regarding recoil control. The first thing you can do is to burst, which is to shoot 2-3 shots, and stop. This keeps your bullets focused, and for most rifles in the game, will kill your enemies if all three bullets hit the body. As you can probably tell, by not shooting like crazy, all your shots can be accurate, and you will quickly dispose of your enemies. The other school of thought is to say, “okay, so I have this ridiculous recoil and my bullets will fly all over the place, BUT, I can move my crosshair to adjust for the recoil.” In other words, you learn how the gun kicks back, and adjust your crosshair accordingly so that where the bullets will kick up to is directly at the heart/head of your enemies. So you can still spray and go in Rambo style, and still own the crap out of everyone. More bullets = more dead enemies, just by probability.

So now that you non-gamers probably know more than you ever want to know about recoil control, I will continue with the story. Back then, I was of the first school of thought, specifically the tap (which is shooting single bullets at a time). With accurate tapping, it is possible to get a lot of headshots. I didn’t like to spray, because I thought it was cheesy, and getting headshots (FPS Doug style “BOOM HEADSHOT”) was much more satisfying. So I worked on learning how to handle all the different guns in the game, and I got pretty good at using them. I still sprayed with sub machine guns (because they do like no damage), but with rifles, I got really good with hitting headshots.

Back to the story. So around this time, I considered quitting the game a lot, and actually stopped playing for a good month or two. It is incredibly frustrating to be on your A-game, hitting incredible headshots, and getting kicked because people think you are hacking. It makes ranking up your character incredibly slow and frustrating because when you get kicked form a game, you do not gain exp or gold. Basically, I’ve wasted many hours and gained absolutely nothing. Not even in-game experience or prizes. It sucked. But the thing that kept me going through these tough times was something my current roommate, Will (I seem to have a thing for Will’s), said. He would always ask me in a condescending tone when he saw me playing CF, “Why the hell aren’t you Lieutenant yet?” So earlier, like I said, the game has a rank system similar to military rankings. In retrospect, it is pretty interesting that Will picked that rank, because in CF, at Second Lieutenant, the rank symbol changes from a bunch of triangles to a cool golden vertical bar. That bar looked so badass! So I really wanted to get to this rank, and I set it as my goal.

Fast forward to the summer, and I find myself with more time to play CF again. This past summer, I took classes and also worked an overnight job, so I still had quite a good amount of time to play. (Especially since I played at my overnight job). With this much gaming time, I decided to start a new account (since I had deleted all my guns on my old account to prevent me from playing). At the same time, I looked for a new clan to join. This time, I looked not for a cool clan name, but for people with high skill level. I recall one game, one guy from the clan “SI”, was not only very good, but he had a good sense of humor. I searched up the clan, and saw that they were quite legit! I applied and got accepted without a tryout.

SI stands for Strategic Insomniacs, which is pretty amusing. Our motto was, “Caffeinated, restless, and kicking ass!” The clan was focused around having a good community. It had no tolerance for hackers, glitchers, and the like. In the description, it also stated that because of its stringent enforcement of this policy, it attracted many skilled players. I was immediately attracted to this. I wanted to meet better players for two reasons. One, they would know my skill was legit, and I wouldn’t get kicked. Two, I wanted to improve and get better still. So now, on my new account *Tri*Shot, I returned full force to kicking ass, this time caffeinated.

SI was a good clan. There were many incredible players that made up its core, and they were active on their forums. It was always fun to read their posts about real life, or random stuff. There was one player that I looked up to incredibly. He went by “Humphrey Bogart”, (Bogart for short). Bogart was incredible. He was the same type of player as me, a headshot specialist. Like me, he only aimed for headshots. Unlike me, however, he was ten times more consistent. He wasn’t online a lot since he had a son to take care of (people of all ages play CF), but the game I got to play with him, it was a really fun experience. I also got to be good friends with a bunch of other clan mates, like Derakel (who I still keep in touch with even though I’ve left SI), I’maAlive, to name a few. They were great players and each had their own specialties (I will discuss these at the end to avoid detracting too much). I got to use Ventrilo while I was in SI, and participated in many legitimate scrimmages versus other clans. I played a lot and improved, always trying to prove myself and earn the respect of my clan mates.

And so it went. Being in a high level clan and playing with high level players is the best way to get better. This applies not just to this game, but also to many skill-based activities in life. By surrounding yourself with people who are better than you, you force yourself to become better. By the end of this past summer, I had gotten *Tri*Shot to the same level Phy6 was before I quit during the spring, and I was going strong.

With the start of the school year, though, the activity in SI plummeted. Unfortunately, many gamers are also students, so they simply can’t play as much when school starts. In addition, many people got bored and moved on to other games. One way or other, SI died. I kept playing though, partly out of habit, and partly because by this time (which was actually a few months ago), I had learned of the World Online Gaming League (WOGL), and was seriously contemplating competing in it. It is basically professional level CF, so these players were the best players in the game. WOGL has a designated channel on the CF servers, so when I played there, not only was I not the best, but for the first time in a long while, the players were all incredibly good and it was a challenge to play! It was very fun.

All aside though, the game had still gotten repetitive and boring. I guess you can only hit so many headshots before it gets old. But like I said earlier, I still had never reached second lieutenant rank, so what kept me going after SI died as the idea of reaching that second lieutenant rank, and earning that “Butter Bar.” (A golden vertical bar looks like a stick of butter, in a way).

So a couple of weeks ago, I left SI. I went around playing games clanless, and was of course recruited by random players. On the WOGL channel, if you are clanless, people will try to recruit you if you appear to be good. The first people I met that seriously tried to recruit me were REALLY good. They were on a real wogl team that was sponsored by a company to play, and the guy asked me if I was interested in joining a sub team that he might be making soon. So he hadn’t made the clan yet, but I ended up lurking around their Ventrilo server and got to play with some of their players. I do okay against these big fishes. Regardless though, I was still clanless, so I finally decided to join a North American scrimmage clan called “#blank.” two weeks ago. So these past two weeks or so I have played a ton again, because they scrim a lot, and it has been a while since I’ve been in that kind of environment.

Anyways, all this backstory has served to lead up to the goal of this post. Yes, 3000 words later, I can now tell you and you will understand all the emotion and feelings behind this statement. I finally hit Second Lieutenant. Between studying for biomats, I managed to finally squeeze in enough games without getting kicked to rank to “Butter Bar” status!!!

But with this, I also realized that it is probably time to bid this game goodbye. Yes, I just joined a clan, but I haven’t grown too attached to them yet, so I will leave while I can. I think I have finally achieved my goal with this game, and now it is time to move on to bigger and better things. I am thinking about another game, but looking at how things are, I will probably pick something that is more fulfilling for my spare time. When I mentioned yesterday that I was going to quit this game to my friend Alex, he said something along the lines of, “really? I thought CrossFire was your stress relief.” Yes, he’s right. Yesterday I said I would quit, but then I ended up playing a few more games as a break from studying.

I suppose you can say that CF has truly become a huge part of my life in this past year and half. Doing something you are good at doing feels great, especially when it has that competitive spirit that CF has. It is a fact of life, people like to do things they are good at. But the other fact of life is that to do great things, you need to be a little uncomfortable sometimes. You need to resist your urges and hold out for that bigger piece of the prize. So, with that, I am bidding this game goodbye. Thanks for the memories, the stress relief, the stress, the fun, and the sense of community that I now appreciate greatly. As of today, I am done. This is like my SC ban that I enacted in April this year. (I still have not played SC, though Anthony really wants me to install and play with him, so I might humor him after finals). I expect this will be much harder to adjust to, because I actually like this game a lot, but… no pain no gain. This will free up a lot of time anyways, so I hope to get a little better at the other things I do in my spare time (dance, etc). Maybe I will start another personal project or something.

As a conclusion, I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned from this game is that there will always be people better than you. Even though I’ve become a really good player, there are tons and tons of players that are simply at a higher level. The world is really big, and people are truly amazing creatures. If anything, I always give people the benefit of the doubt when others accuse them of hacking. I think this concept and mindset can be applied to many things. The key point is that people will always use themselves as a standard to judge others. The players who called me hack did so because they couldn’t imagine that level of skill being possible. So that has taught me to always have an open mindset. Whenever I meet a better player, it drives me to think, “it is possible. I just need to practice harder.” I want to take this concept and apply it to everything in life. Doing amazing things are possible. Don’t let other people pull you down because they don’t think it can be accomplished. They are only saying that because they haven’t been able to taste the satisfaction of getting to that level of skill and accomplishment.

 

Extras: Random thoughts about the game/triggered by the game. I put these here to make the main story shorter. Don’t bother reading these if you don’t want to, they are just memories I had from playing this game.

·         Like I said earlier, I thought putting tape on your monitor was an extremely ghetto but effective way to cheat. I found this really amusing.

·         In a lot of games, when I played on public games with my 2^nd major clan SI, people would ask what it stood for. One of my clan mates jokingly said, “Sexually Inept”. I thought this was the funniest thing ever. I remember lolling out loud. From then on whenever people asked that question in game that’s what I responded with. Haha.

·         Some of the good players I played with had really interesting playing styles that I think is worth mentioning:

o   Derakel2 was VERY good at spray control. He wasn’t a headshot style player, though one time he tried it and smoked the shit out of me. But his spray control, man; it was insane. He was also excellent at knifing. Most of all though, he was really easy to talk to, and we still play games sometimes.

o   Catalysme was also a very good player who was sort of a hybrid between bursting and tapping, and he relied on body shots.

o   I’malive24/7 was just a really chill guy. I liked playing with him and we had some rivalry to see who can own each other harder.

·         I realized sometime this year as I got to a higher level that to be an excellent player of the style that I wanted, (headshots all the time), required RIDICULOUS practice. You have to be flawless if you want to beat out skilled people who aim for the body and burst 3 shots to get you down. That is, a perfect headshot player should beat out someone who hits chest every time. I am of the first type of player, but I am far, far, far from perfect. So this past few months, I’ve learned to incorporate spraying to become an overall better player in all situations.

·         The internet is truly all about the E-Penis. I’ve met so many people who told me that I am good, but my clan sucks. They all say their clan is the best, but I always think; please. The world is much bigger than you think. There are great players everywhere. Plenty of amazing players stop playing because they have more important things to do in their lives. But in the world of the internet, trolls are common and people flame brutally.

·         If you want to look at the butter bar image, you can see it here, under company officer: http://crossfire.z8games.com/guide_ranking_company_officer.aspx The other ranking icons: http://crossfire.z8games.com/guide_ranking_soldiers.aspx

 

This is one of the longest posts I have ever written, but it is documenting a pretty significant event in my life. I’ll probably look back on this and think about how childish/nerdy/lame I was, but right now, I think it is pretty meaningful. J

Now that I have more free time, look forward to more posts on other things, like my visit to Yale during Halloween.