Player Categories

I’ve noticed that, since the dawn of online play, there are basically four categories of players in online shooters. They continue to persist even in recently dropped games like Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4.

• Offense. The people that charge into withering fire and kill everyone in sight. Good duelers, excellent in free-for-all or team deathmatch, usually tops the scoreboards. To use a football analogy, these would be like the wide receivers or star running backs.
• Defense. The people that primarily defend objectives in team games from the opposing team’s offense. Also good duelers, but differs from Offense because they usually wait for attackers to come to them. In football, these would be defensive backs or safeties.
• Support. These include all the other team players that don’t particularly specialize in face-to-face combat. Medics, engineers, those sorts of things. They basically provide support or covering fire for the offense or defense during an operation. Not a very glorious job but crucial to team success. These would be possession receivers or linemen or blockers.
• Snipers. People that hide far from danger and look for cheap kills from a distance. It could be argued that snipers fall under the category of support personnel, but I like to single them out for ridicule. In football, these would be, like, I dunno, punters or something. :) Occasionally useful, but largely irrelevent and/or aggravating.

The very best players, of course, can shift roles as necessary, depending on the circumstances of the game. For all the forgettable clans out there recruiting from pub servers, those are the kinds of players you want to look for - not just the people at the top of the scoreboard.

I have not included “clueless noobs” as a category because they are usually confined only to pub servers, and don’t show up so much in competitive games. These are the people that block and shoot their teammates, spam grenades when friendly fire is on, etc. It’s one thing not to be familiar with the map or the weapons, but certain aspects of team play are universal.

In olden days I was probably in the Defense category (sometimes Offense depending on the map), but now I think I’ve fallen down to the lowly Support category. Partly because I don’t have a beefy enough computer, partly because my reflexes aren’t as good, partly because I don’t practice enough, and partly because I just don’t give a damn. :)