The Mess Hall

10 most frustrating things about gaming online
Online gaming is completely different to offline play. There's a tangible buzz and quickening of the heart-rate when you're leading a race on the last lap or sniping some guy in Australia, which you simply can't get from a single-player experience. But this experience can be so easily ruined by a few small things. Technical or man-made, these obstructions threaten to tip otherwise well-balanced men over the edge of madness and into the pits of frustration-fuelled rampage mode. And these are they.

1) Not being able to pause

The phone's ringing. Your girlfriend's at the door. The cat's brought in a live bird. You've got an itch. You need to pee. There's a swarm of bees and the window's open. Your pizza's ready. Your baby brother's reaching for the flex that dangles from the still-hot iron. There's a UFO hovering outside the window and the aliens are posing for a photo.
But you can't pause the game! What's it gonna be?

2) Other people's crap connections

If there's one technological issue even more frustrating than the game taking ages to create a match, it's lag. This is where players with a slow internet connection jump around the screen as the game tries to calculate their position and actions in relation to everyone else. Modern games are very clever in their methods of concealing lag, but these often compound the issue. For instance, driving behind a laggy car, you'll see it flicker around, jumping from a short distance ahead of you to about a mile down the track, and back again in a second.

This is fine, until it materialises halfway through your own car, immediately making the game think you've hit it at 3,000mph and destroying your vehicle. Keeerrrunch!

3) Lobbies emptying just before a game

We've got a full game – this is it. 8 vs 8 team deathmatch. All players are ready. Let's start the countdown. But wait - people are dropping out. Where are they all going? Now it's 4 vs 5 and we need another player. Nope, now it's three on three. Game starts in 5… 4… Oh, now it's 2 vs 3. Someone leaves. Game starts in 2… two more leave and now it's just us. Game start? Yes. Let's play single-player team deathmatch.

4) Shooting someone a zillion times doesn't kill them, but one shot from their gun kills you instantly

Dududududuh.
Dududududududududududududuh!
DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDU…

-Pap-

*dead*

5) People who quit when they're losing

You massive baby. You've thrown all of your toys out of your pram and started to cry because you're 2-0 down at half-time. Sometimes you don't even register a loss. You utter, utter bastard.

6) Incessant chat in a foreign language

We're ready to start the match. Huh - someone's talking in French. That's fine, it's a beautiful language and we're keen to try our parlez vousing. We wait, patiently. They're certain to finish what they're saying soon.

But they don't. And there's nobody on the other end of the conversation. And after a minute or two, we start to wonder. Are they reading the news? Are they delirious? Is this some kind of prophecy or warning that the end of the world will come if we don't finish this race in the order he's telling us? And of course you can't mute them immediately because, as we already know, you can't pause the game. Sacre bleu!

7) Having to install updates to play

If you haven't downloaded the latest patch, you can't even get online. But even if you have got the latest free patch you can't play with people who have bought the latest DLC. And then if you do go ahead and buy the DLC on day one, your mates won't be able to join you. Hardly the 'anyone in the world' that was promised on the box.

8) Connecting to the server

Let's assume for a moment that we don't know how the technology works. We don't care if the server is busy, broken or bewildered. All we want is a quick game of Street Fighter IV. Or UT3. Or Halo 3. Or anything, for that matter. We don't know what's worse – being unable to connect to the lobby in the first place or being told that we lost our connection to the server. If we ever see that server, we'll be forcibly connecting it to a sledgehammer.

9) Other people

Ironic, really, that the greatest thing about playing online is also its worst. Meeting an idiot in an otherwise stupendous game is more of a downer than a tranquiliser dart to the spine. Yet, sadly, it's pretty much an inevitability.

Sometimes it's people deliberately ganging up on another player (even in a co-op game like Left 4 Dead), or noobs wading in and destroying the best laid plans of tricky raids (Leeeerooooy!). Then there's the Hip Hop guy who plays distorted 'beats' through his headset mic and the kid who insists on singing a made-up, tuneless song to everyone.

Sure, you can add them to your blocked list, but by then, the damage has been done. It's just too easy for a brilliant game to be spoiled by one person.

10) Trying to play with friends

The easiest way to avoid idiots is to play with people you know (unless you know idiots, then you're screwed). Some games are beautifully simple to use socially. Pretty much anything from Valve will give you a specific 'play with friends' option that lets you connect seamlessly to your online buddies.

But other games are not so easy. Whether it's the procedure of setting up a clan or simply getting the game to connect to your mate's machine, the process becomes a game in itself. IP tweaks here, NAT types there - everyone's working towards a common goal until someone wins. It would be a beautiful thing if it weren't so laden with expletives.

#2 Look who's talking.

If you spend most days building kitten orphanages and serving hot soup to homeless rainbows, then yes, you can tell us that gaming is "a waste of time." If you sit on the couch instead - watching sports, voting for reality television or browsing celebrity gossip blogs - then please shut your hypocritical mouth.

#8 Shush!

If you don't like people talking during movies, walking in front of the television screen or singing over your favorite songs, then - for the love of God - don't interrupt us during a game's cutscene. The alien, the dragon and the talking spellbook were having a very important conversation...

#20 Hold the eff on.

Whatever you want from us, we can't do anything until we save. No, really. No, nothing. You want to lose the last 45 minutes of your life, too? Then deal with it.

#21 Learn your shit.

Some ignorance is understandable, of course - we're all beginners at some point. If you can't muster enough patience to sit through a five minute tutorial, however, don't whine when you forget the controls. Don't bitch and complain when you end up interacting with a clearly non-interactive crate instead of the glowing, obviously interactive computer right next to it. And exactly how many times do we have to remind you which screen is yours in a multiplayer match before you memorize that simple, binary piece of information? This isn't calculus, genius.

#23 Look up, damn you, look up!

There are no enemies on the floor. There are no doors on the floor. There is no nothing on the floor. So why does every non-gamer spend every minute of every FPS zigzagging drunkenly into obstacles while staring, dumb and confused, at every pixel of every floor? Frustrating. Nauseating.

#25 Don't be an enabler.

By purchasing licensed dreck (and the shitty sequels to licensed dreck) simply because you recognize the celebrity on the front of the box, you're pulling down the entire industry. Enter the Matrix sells millions while Okami sells thousands. Space Chimps and Van Helsing get multi-platform releases, while Psychonauts is denied a sequel. We all suffer because of your poorly informed taste.
Buy good games or don't buy games at all. PLEASE.