Because I feel like my last few posts were rants and criticisms, I need to say something in the other direction.
I stepped in for a quick play on champion. Found myself teamed up with a bunch of mostly low level players: a 22 iron breaker, a 10 way stalker, and 6 battle mage. My take was the lower two were learning new classes.
First game, we got horde wiped.
Second game, we got monster wiped.
Third game, we got special/horde wiped.
And they stuck around for a fourth.
I’m used to seeing angry rage quits after the third wipe on champion. But not these folks.
For the fourth map I started talking more – and keep in mind I was the only one talking – trying to give suggestions about weapons and strategies. We fought tooth and nail – hell, I went down and that ironbreaker survived the onslaught of a chaos spawn over bridge, found us, got all three of us up; we killed the spawn… but we still got wiped.
Fifth map, no wins; it’s Halescourge.
By this time the elf has switched from daggers to spear; the mage is working with conflag. The start of the map is rough; early chaos spawn drops with a horde at the gates. We get split: spawn’s on me and the mage is trying to help – I tell her she’s on crowd control, with the elf – don’t worry about me. The battles tight, but the elf and the mage handle the crowd while the dwarf and I (Bounty Hunter if you’re wondering) handle the spawn.
I could give you a play by play of what followed, but it would take two damn long. People kept falling down, they kept dying, but the kept getting up. Sometimes people got cut off, or missed their blocks, or didn’t see the horde coming… but… in that one battle, I saw the two lower level folks get a damn sight better. The elf learned how to dance along the edges of hordes, and the wizard learned when to plop that conflag right in the center of the bastards. At the beginning of the map, when a person got cut off, they died; by the end of that map, when a person got cut off, they buckled down and we came to them.
I’m good, but I went down all the same; they’d fight damn hard to get me back up. And when a fellow takes a death blow to get you back on your feet. Ya feel that. Point is, we started playing like a squad, working through a bad situation – and that is the game at its best.
We didn’t lose the fifth game. And even after the fat bastard fell, we still almost wiped trying to leave no one behind at the end. No books. Just a hard won victory with folks still learning to kill rats.
Worth more than any Emp Vault I’ve ever picked up.
So Fatshark, for all my bitchin’ and moaning – I’ll give you credit for this one.