Let’s get this straight. Stalking isn’t cool. If I were to step out of my front door and walk to the shop right now, I would find it creepy if someone followed two foot behind me the whole way. I would also find it very annoying if that person tried to trip me up every 20 yards, or knock the shopping bags out of my hand on the way home.
Given my, quite reasonable, stance on stalkers (not keen) I was a bit dismayed to encounter one in my first experience of the Red Dead Redemption ‘Friendly Free Roam’ mode.
Friendly Free Roam was added to RDR back in October, in response to community feedback. It was designed to remove player vs player killings in the free roam part of the game, so that people who want to play the game ‘properly’ can get on and do so, without being randomly shot whilst going about their business. In theory that sounds great. In practice, however, it is not quite so rosy.
Please bear witness to my great ‘Friendly Free Roam’ cowboy adventure. Yee-Haw!
- Spawned into the game. Had a look around. Quite some view. Whistled for a horse.
- Hey this horse is cool. Oh, someone shot it.
- Never mind. Whistled for another horse.
- Horse is dead. Oh dear.
- I think I’ll just walk into town instead.
- OK, this guy seems to be following me. Really closely. Hmmm, a bit too close.
- Best give him the slip – time to run for the hills.
- Dynamite. Yep, that’ll stop me. Great idea. Thanks.
- Dust myself off. Eventually make it to a ‘transport’ point to jump across the map.
- Great, a bit of distance. Think I’ll clear out a hideout.
- If I can get to one. My stalker is back. On a stagecoach.
- Another dead horse.
- Right, I’m out of here. Off to kit up, and switch rooms.
- Loading screen…
- I’ve been put back in the same room… aaargh!
This went on for a good thirty minutes, until I finally had enough and quit the game. At one point I tried talking rationally to the stalker, as I usually have my headset on when playing online, and there is a proximity chat system in RDR. It didn’t help though. Neither did shouting at him to kindly **** off.
At the end of my short and unsuccessful RDR session, I was feeling really hacked off. I don’t get that much time to play games these days, and that was half an hour that I wouldn’t get back. I recalled that Sony had recently put a grief reporting system in place, but soon realised that it only allows the reporting of messages received over the PSN. So that was that. I believe that XBox Live has a more in depth system for rating players and reporting grief, which sounds a lot more robust. This would probably have been quite cathartic for me at the time, regardless of the outcome.
I love playing games, and most of the time I love playing multiplayer games. When I play a game I like to feel transported to another world, and feel immersed in that world for the short time that I am playing. In the case of RDR I wanted to feel like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter. What I actually felt like was Martin Fowler being stalked in Eastenders.
From talking to other gamers, it seems that I am not alone in encountering such problems, be they in-game stalking or more generalised griefing. They appear to be quite widespread, and are not limited to a certain game type or system. Only the other day I was reading the GT5 review by Nick, which talked of the problem with players in multiplayer races driving the wrong way around the track. That kind of thing might have been fun (for five minutes) in Super Mario Kart, when played with friends, but we’re all a bit older, wiser and more sober now… right?
Have you been stalked or griefed in a game? Feel free to vent below. Better out than in, as they say.
Given my, quite reasonable, stance on stalkers (not keen) I was a bit dismayed to encounter one in my first experience of the Red Dead Redemption ‘Friendly Free Roam’ mode.
Friendly Free Roam was added to RDR back in October, in response to community feedback. It was designed to remove player vs player killings in the free roam part of the game, so that people who want to play the game ‘properly’ can get on and do so, without being randomly shot whilst going about their business. In theory that sounds great. In practice, however, it is not quite so rosy.
Please bear witness to my great ‘Friendly Free Roam’ cowboy adventure. Yee-Haw!
This went on for a good thirty minutes, until I finally had enough and quit the game. At one point I tried talking rationally to the stalker, as I usually have my headset on when playing online, and there is a proximity chat system in RDR. It didn’t help though. Neither did shouting at him to kindly **** off.
At the end of my short and unsuccessful RDR session, I was feeling really hacked off. I don’t get that much time to play games these days, and that was half an hour that I wouldn’t get back. I recalled that Sony had recently put a grief reporting system in place, but soon realised that it only allows the reporting of messages received over the PSN. So that was that. I believe that XBox Live has a more in depth system for rating players and reporting grief, which sounds a lot more robust. This would probably have been quite cathartic for me at the time, regardless of the outcome.
I love playing games, and most of the time I love playing multiplayer games. When I play a game I like to feel transported to another world, and feel immersed in that world for the short time that I am playing. In the case of RDR I wanted to feel like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter. What I actually felt like was Martin Fowler being stalked in Eastenders.
From talking to other gamers, it seems that I am not alone in encountering such problems, be they in-game stalking or more generalised griefing. They appear to be quite widespread, and are not limited to a certain game type or system. Only the other day I was reading the GT5 review by Nick, which talked of the problem with players in multiplayer races driving the wrong way around the track. That kind of thing might have been fun (for five minutes) in Super Mario Kart, when played with friends, but we’re all a bit older, wiser and more sober now… right?
Have you been stalked or griefed in a game? Feel free to vent below. Better out than in, as they say.
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