How I became an RTS geek. God I hate it.

SubJeff on 1/8/2009 at 10:41

These days I mostly still play Company of Heroes MP. Yes, I dip into other games but I have Stalker and I've not even started it. There are lots of games I'd like but I don't know that I'll play them whilst I'm playing CoH.

At first I liked CoH because it made sense. Machine guns don't destroy tanks, even if there are 10 of them. The paper-scissors-stone mechanic is rooted in reality and I don't need to learn that exo-armour (chitinous type) is vulnerable to plasma weapons or whatever. So I played thinking that the reality in it made it simpler and more intuitive.

But now I've developed strategies. I've read the expert advice.

I now have a build order. A frikking build order. Yes. If I'm Brits vs Wher I have one, vs PE another. If I'm Wher I have one against the Brits and another vs USA. And it changes slightly depending on map type or what tech I see the enemy bring to the field.

I'm officially a CoH geek. I can give advice to lower level players. I play against some guys from work and I always win and, worse still, in the match post-mortems in the coffee room at work I can tell them what they did wrong and right and why the lost. And it works! They've got alot better.

The final straw was passing on my Whermacht build order vs a USA rifle start (which I learned from a high level player on some forum).

And now there is this: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8177878.stm) so when I start my next placement in 4 days I'm going to have a lot of time off (yeah, maybe not compared to people who work 35-40hrs a week but I get "enforced" days off if I've done 12 hour shifts back to back). That means more temptation to grind my RTS skills.

I don't want to but I want to. I want to play other games. Where has my gaming life gone? I see the "what are you playing thread" and if I reply I'll be saying the same thing as last time. :(

Xenith on 1/8/2009 at 10:47

This reminds me of how I played nothing else but Dead Space for 2 weeks in a row while not paying attention to ANY other game. 'Course for me it was that I was just bored of everything else and for some reason Dead Space delivered a certain feeling. Now I haven't touched it for some time, but then again I haven't touched anything else either (though I am strangely feeling compelled to start a marathon of C.B. Jericho and keep it up until I throw up or something).

june gloom on 1/8/2009 at 11:17

I'm the same way with long games or long series of games. Doing a Thief trilogy marathon takes forfuckingever, and I may not play Fallout Tactics again for a very long time after I'm done- it's just so much goddamned work, yet I want to finish it. There's something satisfying also in unloading 3 SAWs and a bursted CAWS on a crowd of supermutants and watching 3 out of 4 die horribly because I scored some bullshit lucky criticals, and my two snipers finish off the survivor.

I finally finished Kansas City- where I'd left off the last time I played this game. Looking forward to Osceolla and beyond.

EvaUnit02 on 1/8/2009 at 11:28

Quote Posted by dethtoll

I finally finished Kansas City- where I'd left off the last time I played this game. Looking forward to Osceolla and beyond.

What happened last time? Did ZylonBane cause you to ragequit?

june gloom on 1/8/2009 at 11:37

Nah. Got a new computer. (This was December 06 btw) Suddenly the prospect of playing games like FEAR outpaced fucking goddamn bullshit supermuties in Kansas. I'm playing much better this time around. Only 3 ghouls died.

EvaUnit02 on 1/8/2009 at 11:52

I see. Did you get my joke though?

Anyway, in the grim dark future, there are only bargains.
(http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/THQ/) Steam weekend deal: 50% off all Dawn of War and CoH titles.

I finally got DoW2 + Tales of Valour at good prices, thanks THQ.

Trance on 1/8/2009 at 13:01

What are your automatch ranks, SE?

SubJeff on 1/8/2009 at 14:45

7s in 1 v 1 I think. I don't play much of anything else. I got to 5s and 6s pretty quick considering I'm not making such fast progress now. I win some and lose some now, I used to have longer winning/losing streaks.

june gloom on 1/8/2009 at 17:49

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

Did you get my joke though?

At 7:20 AM?

DaBeast on 1/8/2009 at 20:59

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

The dissappointment should subside once you get past the first few missions.