240°

The Noob Tube - What it is, Why we hate it, How we can fix it

It's a nickname for the Grenade Launcher used in all sorts of shooter games that makes the Multiplayer veterans of the genre cringe. Infamously derived from it's absurdly cheap kills and the blatant lack of skill needed to use it. It has existed in the FPS and TPS genre for a long time. While the weapon has been notoriously overpowered in many games for years, Many Developers fail to try and fix the problem at hand. With the general public's expectations of pretty explosions, 'Modern' weapons and essentially a pretty fireworks show, the 'Noob tube' unfortunately has always found itself a role, somewhere and somehow in almost every Shooter game, giving new players an overpowered 'noob-ish' weapon and giving Veterans of particular games a reason to break their controller (or keyboard).

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w0ngle5633d ago

I hate them in multiplayer, not so much in singleplayer

Agent Smith5633d ago

Use the Danger Close Perk and you don't even have to try aiming the noob tube.

Madusha5632d ago

Hate all of it. Good writing.

The Meerkat5632d ago

I use Danger close, Noob tubes and thumper when I go Nuke Booster huntin' in FFA.

Its the least they deserve!!!

DarkTower8055632d ago

How can a grenade launcher be overpowered, lol? If anything it's underpowered in MW2. I've been using it for about a week now and I love how it pisses people off. Grown men will cry like babies and send hate mail lol.

People need to stop worrying about how others play and mind their own business.

camachoreloaded88065632d ago

Been using the noob tube with danger close and one man army long before anyone started writing about it, and man, I haven't had this much fun in a long time.

I always thought that the grenade kills at the start of matches in COD4 were a helluva lot cheaper. I mean, 10 seconds into the match and everyone just points up to the sky and throws all three grenades they have on them? THAT annoyed me. This, not so much. Well, cause I haven't encountered anyone yet with the same perk/weapon loadout as me, haha.

StanLee5632d ago (Edited 5632d ago )

TAR 21 with Grenade Launcher
RPG7 x2
Claymore
Stun x 2
Scavenger Pro
Danger Close Pro
Sit Rep
Martyrdom

Killstreaks rewards: Predator Missile, Stealth Bomber (underrated), AC130.

You'll blow up the world. Got 90 kills in a Ground War Domination game. Literally got 11 kills in 10 seconds on Sub Base. Spawned at C and ran to the window overlooking B and caught 3 on the B flag with the RPG. Ripped the second RPG into the tunnel for another triple and caught 5 of them running out their spawn at A with the predator missile.

Alcon Caper5632d ago

I think a good counter would be a "Dive" response, where a quick button hit option and directional pull would allow you dive out of the way of a (delayed) launched grenade. It would significantly reduce the damage from the blast if you successfully dive away in the right direction.

You could even make a perk where you could automatically recover faster from the dive.

The dive would only be accessible when the grenade icon pops up on the screen.

TotalPS3Fanboy5632d ago (Edited 5632d ago )

Even the grandes are homing, so that if you throw one not even near an enemy, it will roll around until it hit that enemy.

So how is noobtubing cheap?

Want to play a real game that's not cheap? Go play Killzone 2 or BF:BC2.

The Happy Baby5632d ago

Whats your GT? I wanna play with a guy who appreciates the effectiveness of the stealth bomber.

I never used the Nade Launcher, until I read about the whole One Man Army loadout. Now I only really use it with that loadout. To be honest? Its fun. And its not like these Veterans cant do the same. Besides, if they are that badass, then they shouldnt have a problem beating me still.

:)

Sm0k3y_Bac0n5632d ago

@ Stan Lee.
Its a good loadout, but using explosives has its limits. You can go further with bullets imo. Ive tried explosive loadouts, but i can still get more kills with an MP5. Best with explosives is about 80, but ive had 100+ with MP5 or Scar

+ Show (7) more repliesLast reply 5632d ago
ASSASSYN 36o5633d ago (Edited 5633d ago )

Another cry article. They are useless in close range. Get close and fight harder.

White phosphorus can cause injuries and death in three ways: by burning deep into tissue, by being inhaled as a smoke, and by being ingested. Extensive exposure by burning and ingestion is fatal.

Just goes to show a lot of people have no idea WTF they want. Using phosphorous grenades is lethal and it lingers in the air causing persistent burns. In MW2 it would be one hell of a denied access weapon.

Believe me you don't want to get hit with this crap.

Claudinho695633d ago

single handedly destroying mw2........ok and the commando

LA-Z-BOY-_-5632d ago

DONT LIKE IT DONT PLAY THE GAME SIMPLE HAS THAT POOR ARTICLE

pimpmaster5633d ago

i dunno who to hate more the noobtuber or the akimbo shotguns, when it comes down to it there both gay.

DARK WITNESS5632d ago (Edited 5632d ago )

they are... but the commando speedos are worse in my opinion.

I have had people try to noob tube me and miss...

I have had people try to the models and take shots at me and miss...

the commando's, they just run straight at you, you shoot but because of the bullet lag they just skip through it and stab.

I am not big on complaining, I still generally believe in letting people play the way they want. If you are good you will adapt and find ways round them.

I use to have a code when i play cod but with MW2 i have to say i really don't care. I won't think twice about using a noob tube or models on anyone i see running round the map with a knife. most people i seem to come across using commando can't shoot for Sh$5t... so they use the easiest thing for them. hey, i will do the same.

mrv3215632d ago

It's a game, it's not designed for you. It's designed for you to adapt to it.

I never find NooBTuBers annoying because A) I don't stand back against the wall oh and B I tend to pick my fights for example go close range and flank them.

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290°

The Real Enemy of Gaming Isn’t DEI. It’s the CEO

From Horse Armor to Mass Layoffs: The Price of Greed in Gaming. Inside the decades-long war on game workers and the players who defend them.

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rushdownradio.net
jambola14d ago

maybe a real enemy is people who use terms like "the real enemy"
there can be more than 1 bad thing, t's not like a kids show with 1 big bad

senorfartcushion12d ago

This is very much a “dummy who volunteers themselves to the middle” comment.

The real enemy is a common phrase, people use it all the time.

Calm down.

jambola12d ago

i'm very calm
you seem very upset however

Notellin11d ago

You don't seem calm at all. Don't take this so seriously, you seem desperate responding to others defending your opinion that lacks any value or critical thought.

jambola11d ago

stop projecting
i'm not desperately dong anything, i'm tapping at keys on my keyboard bud

PapaBop11d ago

It's not like kids show with one bad guy? I present to you.. Bobby Kotick

ABizzel111d ago (Edited 11d ago )

DEI was never the problem and it was an ignorant take to begin with.

DEI is why games like Kena Bridge of Spirits, South of Midnight, and Ghost of Tsushima exist.

DEI is why we have a huge resurgence in Japanese, Chineses, and Korean developers producing games like Stellar Blade, Black Myth, and why Nintendo & Sony exist.

DEI is why more and more games have HUGE accessibility options with both Sony and MS fully behind this.

DEI was never a bad thing, the entire purpose of DEI is representation of all people, genders, disabilities, etc…

The problem was people used DEI as a default derogatory term to describe what they believed was forced representation, which allowed colorist, racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, and xenophobic fools to run away with the negative DEI narrative.

jambola11d ago

you don't get to decide other people's motivations
sorry to break it to you

ABizzel110d ago (Edited 10d ago )

To each their own, however, nothing you said invalidates why some people take offense to DEI incorrectly.

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Sciurus_vulgaris13d ago

Executives seem to often have an obsession with perpetual revenue growth. There is always a finite amount of consumers for a product regardless of growth. Additionally, over investment is another serious issue in gaming.

Killer2020UK12d ago

The fact that they also rarely have any real expertise in game development compounds things. They'll look at what's been successful elsewhere, lack the knowledge to properly understand why they have been successful and then force a team to 'reproduce' their badly interpreted idea of that success.

We see it so often with sequels to games that were successful too. The team are left well alone, they have a break through hit and all of sudden the money men descend on the IP and completely railroad the dev team's ideas. Usually winds up being 'make the same game but MORE'

LoveSpuds11d ago

This is true throughout all of the corporate and public sector organisations to be honest. CEO's generally move amongst the corporate world without any need to have experience of a particular industry, they simply need to rely on their senior leadership credentials. A CEO of a retail giant will just as easily transition to a CEO role in the energy sector for example.

Not defending CEOs here to be clear, I think it's a huge part of the reason the western world is so fucked up. CEOs don't need to care about the sector they work in, in fact it's better if they don't care if they want to screw everyone to make profits.

GhostScholar12d ago

Companies don’t hire executives to break even. If the goal is breaking even then why start the company in the first place.

Soy12d ago

That's understood; it's getting record profits and expecting to always beat those record profits, and seeing anything less as a total failure. Then they lay people off and raise prices to reach those record profit levels again, just to sate shareholders. It's setting expectations way too high just to spike share prices, then inevitably falling short. It's feeling entitled to being more successful than everyone else. It's the CEOs doing all this to boost their own bonuses.

ABizzel111d ago

Growth benefits the company’s profits and therefore the company’s stock if publicly traded, which pleases the shareholders making them more and more rich, which is why Growth is always at the forefront of the vast majority of any publicly traded company.

More growth = More Money and the people at the top want all the money they can get. I can’t really blame them anyone would love to see their profits go from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, to multi-millions it’s almost like a gambling addiction.

But it also goes to show someone how morals can go out the window for a lot of these people, and how amazing some CEOs are when they catch this early and provide a balance solution that takes complete care of their employees across the board while keeping the business sustainable IE: Insomniac Games ALWAYS on the best places to work list. The rest of the industry could learn.

jambola13d ago

honestly, the "real" enemy of gaming, is ourselves
if nobody bought horse armor, shitty dlc would have died almost overnight
if we stood firm and nobody bought games from companies that were bad with layoffs, it would be solved
we're the idiots supporting awful business practices, we are the ones enouraging it

TiredGamer12d ago

I think the reality that we don't want to convince ourselves of is that without the rise of "horse armor" and DLC, game budgets would have essentially stagnated (smaller teams/smaller games), or game prices would have risen much more dramatically than they have. There was an incessant drive for bigger worlds, infinite detail, and hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the last two decades, that while perhaps a natural evolution of things, needed a suitable funding stream to accomplish.

HyperMoused11d ago

What...CEOs make tens of millions and that doesnt include SLT etc etc...we now have multiple editions of games, in game currency, MT's, battle passes.....and what do we get..worse game than what was coming out 20 years ago....dont drink the cool aid, its this nickel and dime crap that is absolutely leading us to gaming destruction.

senorfartcushion12d ago

This is the worst possible answer to this conundrum. Blaming the masses is blaming the only people who are constantly “told” to buy.

Consumers are the only ones not to blame here. People make their own choices all the time. Disney movies are bombing and DEInis being blamed. Has that been enough to put Disney out of business? No and it never will.

Christopher12d ago

Disagree. Businesses are able to do what they do because people are bad consumers and don't think critically about purchases. Disney got away with doing shit stuff for years and it's just the last year where people got tired of it. It's not like it didn't work for 5 years or so for Disney to do the things they've done. They'll just move onto another way to get people to see movies and it will be just as bad but more profitable until people wake up and realize it.

TiredGamer12d ago

Consumerism drives business behavior. It's not so much "blaming" as it is observing behavior. The point I'm making is that the direction that games have gone are driven by the spending. Consumers are spending on DLC and they are driving the expectation of more glitz and padded out (lengthier) games. If they continue to pay, they will continue to drive that direction until a threshold is reached that forces a change in behavior.

senorfartcushion12d ago

Corporate advertising is the most powerful force on the planet.

This is N4G for god sake, every day there are arguments between people who are Team Xbox and Team PlayStation because they’ve been convinced that having an identity built on paying money to Sony and Microsoft matters more than having one as individual gamers who can play whatever they want.

And THEN we get to the corporate advertising part: to play whatever you want is to sink MORE into the advertising pits, making it so that you can more than one specific product.

jambola12d ago

ah you're right
they were told to buy it, it's clearly impossible to avoid that
if enough people stopped supporting, it would stop
disney not stopping would only be because enough people didn't stop

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 12d ago
victorMaje12d ago

Agreed. I’ve been saying for years, announce you won’t be buying the upcoming game because of the practices of the previous game, then you only have to stick to your guns once, see how quickly things change for the better.

We have to unite in what we shouldn’t purchase.

jambola12d ago

just imagine a world, fifa came out worse, nobody buys the next one until they see proof it's better and stick to it
or games being forced online for single player and nobody buys it
things would change so fast

HyperMoused11d ago

Just like scooby doo, you have shown us the real monsters are us

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Inverno12d ago

Greed and greedy people have and always will be the main issue for everything wrong in the world. Everything is a product to be exploited for monetary gain. Even when there are things that could help progress us along for the sake of making our lives easier that thing must be exploited for monetary gains. Anything that tells you otherwise is propaganda to make you complicit.

coolfool12d ago

I've never thought "DEI" (although the way most people use it doesn't match it's real definition) is the problem with games. Good games have continued to be good when they have a diverse cast, and likewise, bad games have continued to be bad. There isn't a credible example I've seen where a diverse cast has been the direct cause of a game being bad.

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70°

Why We Partnered With St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Matt Miller: "Every subscription to Game Informer now raises funds for St. Jude. We want you to know what that means."

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thorstein16d ago

I subscribed to this not knowing about how some of the proceeds go to St. Judes.

Really cool that some of the money goes there.

Even if people don't subscribe to the mag, it might bring people to the charity.

jznrpg16d ago

One of the main charities my wife and I donate to. They help a lot of children and being a parent of 5 children I can’t imagine what those parents go through. I’ll probably get a sub to GI because of St Jude and of course because I love video games.

80°

Dungeons and Dragons is About to Break a 6-Year Trend

Though Unearthed Arcana's content primarily consists of subclasses and spells, WOTC's latest UA drop is set to shake up Dungeons and Dragons' future.

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