Does anyone care about FUN anymore?
I played a bit of Amplitude online today, the first time in nearly a month. I've got to maintain my status so it doesn't get purged due to inactivity, you know. ;)
So, I joined in a game, hosted by the #17 ranked player of the game. I thought that was amazing, and even remarked in chat that I had never participated in a game with a player with a ranking better than triple digits. :) I myself was somewhere in the 600's at that moment; the other two players were someone in the 300's, and someone in the 2000's.
The first game commences; it's some wacky, frenetic remix in which you have no hope of making any headway unless you're the creator, or someone who has practiced it 100 times. Naturally, the host wins (bumping his ranking up to #16), followed by the 300's guy, then me, then the 2000's guy. It's a safe bet many of you veteran Amplitude online players have seen a similar scenario on at least a few occasions.
OK, no biggie, so we start another game. It's another not quite so crazy remix, and actually somewhat manageable. I jumped on a couple of the easy tracks, grabbed a couple of good powerups, and proceeded to take a quick lead. The 2000's guy apparently had a similar strategy and was close behind in second. A quarter of the way through the song, the 300's guy drops out of the game. So the game goes on, and at the halfway mark, I'm racking up a fairly sweet score, the 2000's guy is providing really good competition (maybe about 10-20 points behind me), and the #16 ranked guy is about 200 points back of both of us.
Suddenly, the host (the #16 guy) pulls the plug. :curse:
What the hell? Take it like a man. The guy's played over a thousand games before; this can't be his first loss ever. Then again, it might be his first loss to someone ranked 2000 places lower than him. I suppose he figured the penalty in ranking he gets by dropping might not be as big of a hit as if either of us (or possibly both of us) had won.
OK, no biggie, I'll just find another game to play. I jump in a game where there are two players waiting. I'm the third player, and then a fourth player jumps in. After about a minute, he jumps out. The 2000's guy from the other game jumps in, and we chat for a moment about what happened in the other game. Then, he suddenly jumps out. Then, another guy jumps in for about 2 seconds, and jumps right out. I thought nothing of this at the moment.
Finally, the host decides to start a three player game. At the 1/4 mark, the host (who's ranked in the 300's) is doing predictably good, I'm doing OK, and the third player (someone in the 1400's) had some ridiculously low score in the single digits. I couldn't fathom how this guy could be doing so badly, as this wasn't a terribly difficult song. After that, I suddenly noticed what his strategy was. He was simply grabbing the powerups, especially the ones to use against other players (mainly the bumper and crippler), and using them against me--and only me. The other guy was also using powerups only against me, not the other guy. It was especially noticeable when the 1400's guy would just camp out behind me in the same lane, wait for me to almost finish a track, and then pull out a bumper. It's like that was his only purpose in the game. During the second game, it was quite evident he was in collusion with the host, so I left the moment that game ended.
I decided to seek out another game. I found some other guy who was ranked in the 300's. He starts the game with just two players. First game he started was a maniacal remix that he composed, much like the first game I mentioned earlier. He whipped me soundly, no surprise there. He started a second two-player game on a standard song. After I got extremely lucky with a good string of combos and a score doubler powerup followed by a freestyler powerup on 4X (you Amplitude veterans know what this means :D ), I'm suddenly about 300 points out in front at the halfway mark, and...wouldn't you know it, he pulled the plug! :curse:
Freakin' A! What is it with these people? Is the online ranking that important to them? It's fun to gauge against other players sometimes, but really, unless I'm competing for CA$H OR FABULOU$ PRIZE$, the online ranking doesn't really mean much at the end of the day.
Here's something else that gets on my nerves, which I've seen a few times in the past. It used to be that the host would ask "Would you like to try one of my awesome remixes?" before starting. Now, the host will often just load it up, then bolt right into the game before you can decide that you really don't feel like playing a mess of a remix titled "s00perfazt" which has no redeeming merit from either an musical or "fun factor" standpoint.
I sure hope the game hasn't gone to the dogs, now that it's been out for so many months and some of the old veterans have moved on. I've seen the occasional sore loser or collusionist in the past, but never so many in one night! :wtf:
Anyway, that's my rant for now. Does anyone else have a similar story to share?
