Thanks for watching! I'm kinda new to these essay-style videos so let me know how I did! Come chat with me in the community discord! Bonus points if you like Rocket League: discord.gg/eB5Yp83
you did a good job, didn't realize that this was a smaller channel until i was 23 minutes in. first vid of yours i've seen and i'll be keeping an eye out for more.
Very professionally done. But if you allow me this "criticism" it's abit generic. I don't think people coming in will be able to understand the style of your channel from this video, they will enjoy it but it's no different than most gaming channels out there. I'd say this is a very good baseline to develop a more unique and identifiable editing style. It is more risky but it'll result in more authentic and imo enjoyable videos
Fortnite is actually a perfect example of what you were explaining in the BattleBit segment. When the Battle Royale mode came out it was hugely popular a lot of people really enjoyed it but a year on the player counter was dropping as there were more and more people mastering the building mechanics in the game which a large portion of people didn't like dealing with. Then they had that fun little mode where building was disabled and suddenly a HUGE wave of people either picked it up for the first time or they came back because the building mechanics were unfun to them. It was so popular now they just have a zero-build mode permanently.
which. is. a. good. thing. zero build fortnite to someone who doesn't want to grind a game for months to be able to eiffel tower in 3 seconds is infinitely more fun than getting one shot off on them, seeing them construct all the wonders of the world at mach speed, only for them to snipe u from a pixel gap at the very peak of said structure
@@TouruZen It’s super funny because when my friends ask “do you want to play Fortnite”, the question is really “do you want to play no build” and if building is enabled we all let the party leader know because we assume it’s a mistake
@crnoo2779 But why would you be stressed? It's a video game. It doesn't matter. I have fun in games whether I'm winning or losing; because they're literally just a video game and I play to have fun, not win.
Okay, what's your point? Is someone forcing you to play EPL? There are millions of casual games and almost every competitive game has casual modes... Play the games that don't stress you out and enjoy yourself.
I agree. Used to play R6S religiously, and it was miserable. Now I hop on the odd multiplayer game when friends call me on, but mostly am just playing story games or Minecraft single player.
I feel that there's less incentive to have a causal playstyle in most pvp games. There's not much reward to messing around and finding your own enjoyment in the games mechanics, so everyone subconsciously defaults to a tryhardy playstyle. If the majority of players are improving and following the meta, you're left to either adapt or abandon the game
i feel like this is why "trolly" types of characters in a game is very important and shouldn't be overlooked, they provide a kit for people who likes experimenting, trying something new and be unpredictable. It gives these players incentives to find new ways of utilizing that unpredictable kit. I feel like this is why LOL became so successful, even though meta existed, so much champions, items and player skills and expression became a factor that many players instead focused on trying all of the things they could think of, now that RIOT is kind of leaning away from all of that, so many players aren't enjoying the game as much, as there is only a little bit of playstyle variety left and not a lot of room for experimentation. I also think fighting games utilize "trolly" characters much more better with characters like Yoshimitsu and the likes.
@@1x5x7that is the saddest and lame way to put it you should be able to play the game your own way and at your own pace it's why some single player games can be a good thing to do but if you want to play something multiplayer try coop or something that can be chilled like battlefield or tf2
Some of my friends have basically been getting into video games for the first time lately and it's interesting to see how... utterly unfriendly to beginners many games are.
Its the Meta mindset. Essentially before you used to learn to play while playing. Now people expect you to essentially take a course on the game before you actually play it. People have optimized the fun out of games and are also extremely against any methods that might stop Metas from forming. Example: V rising playing a new server now, the game is essentially on late game and hardy playable after 3 days cause people max out castles due to optimized farming routes and builds.
@@reason8439 Its certainly not my main genre but I've played games and some amount of shooters all my life. PUBG was absolutely brutal you have no tracers on bullets so you can't tell how your bullets are traveling over long distances on top of a heavy bullet drop compared to most shooters, Bullet impact is also very minimal I could only tell if i hit someone from afar when I actually hit them because of the blood splatter. On top of that most people know to take cover so you'll realistically only be shooting the shoulders and up, that coupled with random weapons made the game absolutely brutal. It wasn't hard to get into the top 8 or so off of just picking up basic gear and camping but getting into a fight was either a close range bullet slug fest, getting gunned down running down the road because I couldn't find a car or being unable to figure out the bullet drop off against all the different guns. Its definitely a type of game you need to watch before you play it knowing adjacent games in the genre simply isn't enough. I'd consider it more friendly then the camper heavy COD warzone by a fair bit.
Personally I think one of the issues with modern pvp games is the insistence on 5v5 or 6v6 team size format. "Back in the day" when you'd have 16v16, or sometimes even 32v32 matches in games like CS 1.6, Quake or Unreal Tournament, it didn't matter nearly as much if your team won or lost, as your personal contribution was usually much more limited. So what truly mattered was the fun of the experience. But when you're supposed to contribute full 20% of your team's effectiveness, suddenly the outcome of a match matters much more.
@@Askorti when I ask friends why they don't like games with bigger team sizes, they say that they don't like having only a small impact on the outcome of a match. So it definitely goes both ways.
Having a 16v16 balanced lobby is a herculean task and the moment the game starts losing players by any reason it will be funneled into a death spiral as nobody could find game
@@serhiizinkivskyi3464 it's not the early 2000s where a handful of game are effectively monopolies in their genre and people threw their future away to grind them anymore
The cod community doesn’t like cod. That’s the problem. They hold onto hope that the next will be better, praise it for a week, then say it’s the worst one ever a month in. I’m sure if you keep buying the game and it’s micro transactions it will improve. People never learn.
Every community doesnt like it's game. I am in chat with some of the skilled builders from Space Engineers and they quite often write how they dislike devs and state of game.
the cod community agrees that mw2019 is the latest best cod. But IW actively killed the game and doesn't update it anymore. They actively made the game worse when MW2 released (removed maps, removed playlists, etc...), to force players to the new mw, even tough it's objectively worse.
@@vivago727 Agreed. MW2019 was the last CoD we all had fun in. It had it's issues, but the gun sounds, gun feel, ttk, etc all just felt right and it felt fast when we discovered slide canceling. The gunsmith was actually one of my favorite additions. MW2019 also had really clean aim with reasonable recoil. The newer games introduced this dumb aim sway, visual recoil, and visual particle clutter that makes playing on KBM a worse experience than playing on controller. Cold war was a non-starter. Vanguard was an insult to god. MW2 was objectively the most hated cod in recent history, and MW3 is just MW2 with EOMM/SBMM tuned so hard you can't even scratch your balls without someone hearing you and pre-firing you around a corner. That on top of the rampant cheating in the higher skill brackets (3 K/D+).
@@Tobiasnelius Dont forget doors. Not sure who thought it was a good idea to make players stop and press X to open doors all the time, or sprint through them and put yourself at a disadvantage if there is an enemy watching said door.
@whyiwakeup6460 ironically, this last issue also goes towards gamers in general. "Damm, this 70$ game that I bought on release has a lot of bugs, and it sucks. I'm pretty sure the next one won't disappoint me."
A great example of this is Star Wars: Squadrons. That initial "casual" period was great - you get to fly Star Wars ships! - but difficult-to-learn exploits in the game engine quickly became the backbone of player-versus-player matches, which killed its prospects of longevity. No casual player was going to stick around after that.
@@gmodrules123456789 then you're a hypocrite, It's either all glitching/exploiting is bad, or none of it is bad... You cant pick and choose what exploits are/aren't ok...
Battle Bit early tester here. Your take is spot on. I've pretty much stopped playing because of the sweat. I don't have any problem with all the funky mechanics and jank, but the anti-teamplay sweat killed the game. No one uses proxy chat any more which was its most fun feature. No one really even team plays at all, they just sweat around working on their K/D.
@@bennyb.1742 I also played the early tests of battlebit and I strongly agree with this take, when I played the game on play test/launch it was full of people talking in the proxy vc and now it’s almost DEAD silent
Battlebit disappoint me. I try when it's free and it feel like cod and not milsim. Where is proximity chat and teamplay that youtuber promotes as plus.
Used to play battlebit casually and yeah it sorta just really wasn’t fun from the sweats. Truthfully, I enjoy playing insurgency sandstorm. Basically realistic shooter that allows you to fuck around since everything and anything is viable.
At first the game was fun becuz of all the goofy stuff I did with random ppl on open mic, then it turned into a sweat or die game over time. Stopped playing before I knew it. Ain't got no energy to sweat after work :/
The Finals got in a negative feedback loop where there weren't enough players to get a fair matchmaking so high level players got matched up with noobs and stomped them, which in turn made the noobs leave before they could get good, which made the problem worse and worse...
@@ZZWWYZ the thing that keeps me from comparing tf2 and the finals to games like xdefiant is that xdefiant was a grindfest for guns, equipment, and attachments. Tf2, other games from the early 2010’s, and the finals had quick progression which meant that the skill ceiling was less attributable to what your “class setup” was, and more with how you had mastered the mechanics. I wouldn’t put games like xdefiant that die due to a repetitive gameplay loop and lack of noticeable progression to older games with a more cult following, simply because newer games, especially AAA, are more subject to microtransactions and player retention gambits being present.
Previous Battlefield games were the perfect solution for this. Playing a Medic or Support or Engineer or something allowed you to play a role and not have to constantly put yourself in direct firefights in order to contribute, make an impact and have fun. Even if your team loses, you'll likely have had some thrilling moments that make it feel rewarding. That whole dynamic really needs to come back for the next BF, cuz it caters to both hardcore players but also those without the reflexes of a 15 year old who plays competitive FPS games 10 hours a day.
Gears of war 3 there was no rank only personal level and nobody cared about that people just hopped to get better and to kill enemies you could lose or win but if you were top frag EVERYONE knew you were the best player in that lobby and it was fine, basically everyone was trying to win in their own way and everyone was fine with it, you could be annoying and use only rifles or be a god and use the gnasher and wallbounce or be a pro and use the sniper and headshot no-scope everyone all was fine, all were a challenge to deal with and all felt good to get a kill with
You're describing a phenomenon I've been studying for over a decade, which I have named "Competitive Gameplay Reduction". This is the trend in all PvP games where enjoyment decreases as player skills grow and Dominant Strategies become increasingly the norm, often completely overthrowing the designer's original intention for the users experience. Best example here is: Most (if not all) so called "Strategy" games (RTS) usually devolve into speed-management rapid clicking contests. The original notion of making tactical decisions like a battlefield commander goes out the window, and the sheer number of orders given vastly outweighs the tactical merits of each of them. Shooters tend to devolve into amphetamine-grade twitch reaction competitions. Few are the games out there where tactical movement and careful aiming of each shot counts much at all against the higher "skilled" speed-freak type players (or more commonly than ppl think, plain old cheaters) I have yet to see a PvP game design that survives contact with all-out competitive players. There are a number of people out there who seem to derive their "fun" exclusively from winning, rather than enjoying the experience that leads there. These players will "reduce" the game, killing off any features or mechanics that don't offer the highest possible advantage. This usually introduces detrimental emergent dynamics (eg: How Squad44 logistics can overrun any opposition when employing in a speed-run tactic) and this can easily wear down on a playerbase, driving away players by anything from ragequitting frustration to long term attrition of the overall enjoyment. There is little actual Science about this. So far, most developers seem to just throw stuff at the wall and hope something will stick, as far as ideas go to deal with this. I'm more and more of the opinion that the Gaming Industry needs its own equivalent of NASA. An organization devoted to researching best game design practices, understanding their effects and how player behavior affects the results of each decision. Providing solid scientific advisory and establishing industry standards, so that a wrong step doesn't have to ruin the careers of hundreds of people and waste millions of dollars, as it usually does with today's all too frequent failed attempts at design by trial-and-error.
I mean you won't. I don't agree with your sentiment about shooters and RTS. I think you reduce their depth way too much to their mechanics but it doesn't even matter. PvP games are naturally going to attract competitive people which is going to make the games inherently competitive. I don't think it's really that complicated. PvP games aren't any different than any other sport and I'm sure you know how competitive those are right? Highly skill dependant. If you play casually you're going to get destroyed by someone that's been playing 8 hours a day for years. This isn't unusual there. Why is it unusual in games? Because it's a video game? Where games fail is matchmaking in my opinion. We still have no effective ways to put similarly matched people against each other in video games, especially in team based ones. So you absolutely should get crushed by someone who has min/maxed the hell out of the game...the issue is that you shouldn't ever be matched against this person in the first place. I'm certainly not going to try to go on to a D1 soccer pitch and try to keep up. The idea is laughable and I'm not going to have any fun doing it.
I'd be interested if you have published anything on this topic. It's interesting how tf2 accidently provides a solution. The community has a spectrum of players who range from casual to competitive, but the game caters to all because casual players tend to stick to the maps (and gamemodes) that don't reward skill expression. From a competitive mindset, these maps are poorly designed, so optimizers avoid them. It's difficult to express just how miserable these maps are to those who want to play the objective, and so they're a hotbed of stalemates, meme strats, camping, friendlies, taunt kills, new player bullying, DMing, etc. The big problem is that it can take a while for new players to identify the pattern and realise to which maps they are best suited.
agree completely... especially your theory of reducing... the most common example I see is the demand for better and better graphics, but the competitive players immediately turn them off (most common IMO being grass in shooters) for maximum FPS..
As I get closer to my 30s, I turned away from pvp games to casual games that I can pick up and put down any time I want. I don't need more stress and frustration after work, I just need to relax and have fun. I also turned to real life hobbies like guitar and fencing, becuz these hobbies never run into the End of Service problem
Also hitting my 30s soon and now feels like its been years since I played a pvp game. Online games are still my favourite genre after open world single player ones but I only play PvE ones now like warframe. A big part is probably that Im a crappy gamer since i was a kid (my only achievement is being in the top 100 online ranking in 3 naurto ultimate ninja storm games but nothing else) but I believe that in a game i would need to grind more time than what I have or else I either have a terrible time by not winning a single game or even worse making others have a bad time by dragging the team down. The best example is trying to play fortnite once with my cousin and absolutely not at all getting the speedbuilding meta right.
I'm a Gen X gamer and I will tell you that there was definitely a wall I hit where the games got so hyper speed that I felt I needed to be hopped up on Adderall to even make a good showing.
@@hotpenguin607 that’s where I’m at. I’m 40, I’ve got a family and career. On a good night I can get an hour of gaming in. I just wanna jump on run some rounds with my buddies and then go to bed. It’s why Helldivers 2 had so much potential before they messed it all up
Incredibly based and I do feel and act exactly the same way. Instead of trying to sweat in multiplayer, I now sweat throwing around my weights and I do feel I get better rewards by doing this - both physically and mentally.
I miss online gaming before ranked matchmaking systems existed. Just a server browser that gave you a huge selection of servers with gameplay of your choosing. If people wanted that experience, they played clan matches, modded stat tracking servers or third party tournaments. Majority of the playerbase is casual and plays for fun, they don't play to get abused by those who don't play for fun but for competition. Nothing kills a game faster than it's casual playerbase leaving.
I've been preaching this. I'm one of the people who enjoyed "Clan matches" back in the day. We had to go to websites to set up time & date. It definitely sorted out the trolls & non competitive types out & made people actually want to work together as a team.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 PlanetSide 2 wins at this very thing a lot. You're in a battle so huge that the losing a skirmish is likely met with GG in thoughts and a retreat to a nearby territory or moving to a better front to fight.
Had one game of Battlefront 2 that was very back and forth it was SO MUCH FUN. I don't even remember if I won or lost, I just remember how we pushed them out of our ship TWICE before we made it onto theirs... I wish for more games where the fights feel evenly matched and very back and forth. makes the games so fun that you stop caring if you win or lose one sided battles do not feel fun. the unfortunate part? devs can only do so much to ensure this happens it's not really within their control and it's also rarely within the players control
@@morgensheeeern it doesn't have to be *more* fun than winning. Look at something like Titanfall 2. If your team loses, respawns get turned off and all your surviving players try to make it to an escape ship for a little bonus. You at least get something to do and compensate for your loss somewhat instead of just sitting there and taking it.
The "solving the fun out of games" is why I gave up RTS MP games - they're at least 90% numbers games and once you're matched agaist pros who know the best build queues the fun just dropped off.
@@damil5721 Not at all. The basics are just the base requirements to beat the campaign. In an RTS you need to MEMORIZE the most optimal build orders used online. Discarding a large part of the game in the process. And it isn't something you can learn yourself either. Because those strats have been built over years of metas and is far too much for you to learn in a reasonable time by playing on your own. Take Warcraft 3 for example. Siege units are vastly useless. Only existing to counter some cheese and being the only reason said cheese is risky. Some heroes simply don't work well and in the competitive scene the game is decided as soon as one of the heroes falls too low on HP, rarely getting a game that goes past T2. In SC2, if you want to play zerg, you have to follow a build order and react to the other races with a specially tailored build order. Against other zerg there is only 1 viable build and the most positive opinion i've heard about it is "at least it ends quick". If you play terran, you have to spam marines and medivacs. Thors are a T3 that only exists to counter the massing of specific units. Reaper is literally made ONCE per match at the beginning and NEVER again. Protoss is a mess. The units are so expensive and powerful that you either count EVERY single one you make or die to the numbers tipping slightly off. And these are issues that happen in all RTS.
@@damil5721 Not really. There is this assumption that if one is a fan of RTS games, they must also play them with a high-level competitive/e-sport style mindset. That the whole point of the genre is to optimize and adhere to whatever the "meta" happens to be in a given patch cycle. In reality. The RTS genre started as a much, much more "casual" affair where (believe it or not) players got (kinda) immersed in the "I am commanding a military force" fantasy and didn't view it as some kind of sporting event.
In what RTS game will you be matched against pros when you aren't one? Must have a population of like 10 people. Starcraft II, for example, while being pretty old at this point still has a ton of players that are complete shit at the game. Noob leagues there are pretty chill.
Battlebit legit got ruined for me, I played it believing it to be more like older Battlefields where teamplay mattered but you could still be goofy only for the game to become a twichy wiggleshooter where you sprint around all the time. If I wanted that I could've kept playing bf2042. Not even blaming the devs, the game blew up in their hands I also wouldn't know what to do with 3 people working on it.
No, you can purely blame people like Oki on the game becoming like that, he's genuinely the reason why the game went down into the dumps, they're doing some "big update" but they're so braindead that they don't actually make any bugfix updates or balancing patches.
Main I feel ya, used to play with my buddies fucking around. And then SMGs became laser beams that kill instantly even in a head to head fire fight when you had a proper assault rifle.
@@styxriverr5237 Yeah. I just can't justify using an AR or even a Battle Rifle in BattleBit anymore since SMGs dome you with ease at the ranges where the ARs and BRs can hit targets decently.
Here's my hot take. PVP is inherently competitive and has always been, but games used to get around this roadblock to casual enjoyment by having a server browser where you could find a chill private server full of other casual players. In fact this still exists in games that still have server browsers, like Squad or Mordhau/Chiv 2 or TF2. Server browsers and private servers let casual players willingly separate themselves from the competitive crowd and enjoy/learn the game at their own pace. The simplest way to solve the problems of casual players in competitive games would be to reintroduce this feature instead of brainstorming how to make losing a competitive game not suck.
People keep talking about these chill, low time investment friendly TF2 servers, where people who aren't very good can play at their own pace against other people who aren't very good, and that sounds like EXACTLY what I'm looking for. I don't want to goof off and taunt all day or that sort of thing, but I also don't want to get stomped by people who are just way, way better than me in terms of raw twitch skill reaction speed and all that. I just want to play my not-very-good best against like minded, and skilled, players, with no particular focus on getting better. Just have fun as my sub-par self. The problem is, I can never, ever find any actual names of these seemingly mythical casual friendly servers to look for. People talk about these servers in general, but nobody seems to know of any useful specifics. Or they're some sort of super closely guarded secret I'm not to be trusted with.
@@AWanderingSwordsman Thats a result of all this competitive gameing, people becoming jaded and bitter. But, don´t worry, games that have such server systems have alot less players like that. As the game doesn´t generated such awfull people through being highly competitive.
Does not sound like it solves the issue. I tend to play off-meta strategies very well, so I would curbstomp casual players with the wierdest stuff, but the meta tryhards are too unplesant to play with or against so I have no place to play. Where will I go? My answer is to stick to extremely rng heavy games because it forces the tryhards to use non-meta tools.
This is the wrong assumtion i hear alot. Just because a game has PvP, doesn´t mean its inherently competitive. Else, games like garrys mod and minecraft would not excist. Back in the 90s/early 2000s the default attitude for gaming was to immerse yourself and have fun. But around 2010 marketing took over and tryed its hardest to push competitive games, as they smelled alot of revenue potentional there. You know, E-Sport. The same counts for microtransactions, "Grafical Fidelity" and much much more.
So true man. This is why single player games are superior. Don’t gotta worry about little Timmy or sweat lord 69 sniping my ass and then tea bagging after
This is why i just don't play PVP games. I have slow reflexes due to some brain issues and EVERYONE is just so damn fast and i get nothing but stomped and its no fun. I stopped playing PVP years ago because of the skill wall. And it only gets worse over tyime.
@@draglorr5578 Myself, I have strong enough ADHD and I cannot bring myself to stick with a competitive game long enough to actually get good enough to really, really enjoy myself. I reached a point where the average playerbase in League of Legends was *so* sweaty that I had to decide between stomping the hardest bots into paste or having the same happen to me against literally any players. I gave up and stopped playing competitive games pretty well at all since then. It's been half a decade or so since then.
@@Zectifin There's strategy games, turn-based and 4K. There's card games, but it's hard to find one that isn't a money pit. There's also team fighters, but most of them are gatcha games. There's racing games, only simulation games race competitively. And finally, fighting games, but you have to be prepared to make a commitment to learn or you will lose for eternity.
I've had a beef with esports since their beginning. I had a strong hunch that nothing good will come out of pushing competitive/seriousness in gaming.., and I couldn't have been more right in the long run.
Here's something annoying: Timesplitters Future Perfect had lobbies, but wait for it, after a game it booted everyone back to the menu.......... no fun getting your custom map full of people having a great time then just emptiness before you can let them loose on the others.
I finally understand the focus on the "Turf War" mode in Splatoon and the inclusion of the single player games. It's how you keep the casuals coming back and give people a more controllable experience without leaving the main game.
It is actually a really well designed mode, specifically because it's not that fun if you want to take it seriously, it's a gamemode where only the last 30 seconds count, which is interesting.
This is actually something some people have noted with RTS games, where a good single player campaign helps draw in that initial casual crowd, while additional tools like custom map builders and arcade games keep less pvp oriented players engaged. Giant Grant Games (GGG) has a whole video on this concept and I think it’s something that can be applied (in some ways) to other PvP games.
yea, CooP game mode or just a PvE version of the regular game with tunable difficulty is just nice when you don't feel like pushing to the limits of your ability.
The problem with every game trying to fit the "Games as a Service" model is that not every game should be a "Games as a Service" title. More and more these days, I just want a really solid single player experience. And there's still a huge market for it.
@@theKashConnoisseur this video is talking precisely about multiplayers why are you even mentioning single player? There's plenty of single players out there
@@laius6047 hot take: helldivers 2 "game as a service" works against the fun of the game the "narrative" element is cringe and as a matter of fact even is the player stop fighting the automaton they will misteriously do a U turn because the devs didn't plan for it hell diver would already have -more content -No PSN login -and i don' tknow if you heard about this TINY bit of the PC comunity: mods helldivers 2 live service is dripfed content at best a "gee i wonder if alexius gonna nerf the game"/"this weapon is fun to play with it BEFORE THE DEVS TAKE THE FUN AWAY" and even now as the recent update remade the game fun because it's a life service all me and my friends can think of is "quick let's have fun before weapon start turning to useless again" live service game are a threat to fun because if you have too much right away you can't make enticing battle passes
@@laius6047 Most "multiplayer" games have a single player story mode, even those that do games as a service. I'm responding to a specific comment within the video, not the whole video as a monolith. I'm not sure why that's a problem to you, any comment helps the video through increased engagement.
There is a big market for single player games but game producers of big games don’t want big markets. They want the biggest market. That’s why they release a 70 dollar game with seasons passes and a skin marketplace. So regardless if a lot of players don’t like it. The ones treating it like a day job or massive streamers will keep it afloat with all the skin sales
No matchmaking for good players: "I can try all sorts of builds and still succeed" No matchmaking for bad players: "No matter what build I try, I still lose" It IS a zero sum game, if you focus on winning. I'd love to see statistics on how likely good vs bad players are to play unranked modes in games with both. I tried explaining that I want my EFT arena rank to go lower faster so I can play. People were very confused, 'what, so you can smurf?' 'Why do you want to play with the bad people'. I AM BAD AT THE GAME :D Very telling how rare it is for bad players to stick with a game or actually talk about the mechanics involved. OP is too good at FPS games to natively understand low skill players.
one of the problems with competitive games having a casual mode without matchmaking is that it can easily devolve into a stomping ground of competitive players who are tired of the grind and want to wipe the floor with casuals to refill their ego, only having matchmaking very crudely at least solves this (except when people start smurfing)
Most high level players smurf so they can try new strategies and experiments without negatively impacting the ranking of their main account which makes competitive games less fun for new and casual players.
the easy solution is dedicated custom server options. In Tf2 if i want to sweat, i go to uncletopia. If I feel like messing around, i go to 64 player dustbowl
Professionals shouldn’t even play the same games as the rest of us. I wasn’t playing NBA regulation ball in highschool, that woulda been insane. Even if I’d tried really hard and warmed a bench for a college team we woulda been playing in a very different ruleset that the actual paid professionals.
I think the solution to that is to have a game type variety, the classic Halo games were the gold standard for non-ranked competitive multiplayer in their heyday mostly (imo) because they had a huge variety of social and competitive matchmaking playlists to choose from ranging from straightforward team deathmatches of multiple sizes and metas to silly oddball game types with loads of different unique objectives. And then of course a thriving custom games community with an endless amount of community designed maps and gametypes almost as synonymous with the game's multiplayer as the official matchmaking itself. Too often now a competitive multiplayer scene relies solely on 1-3 game types, mostly different versions of each other.
This is a result of having a competitive mode AND a casual mode. Most players are going to be of average skill, so most of your matches over time in a non matchmaking system should be with and against average players. People who lose more often than not in a situation where there is no matchmaking would be below average players, and people who win more often than not would be above average. When you add a competitive mode to the mix, you split the player base, you get a situation where all the below average players who want to refill their egos as you put it basically play competitive exclusively. Sure they have to deal with more smurfs, more trolls, and more horrendously bad players, but if they were to play with no matchmaking at all they'd probably lose even more often, since the matchmaking system is trying to artificially inflate their win rates. This shifts the bell curve to the left so that most players are probably above average, and your average players are now the ones getting stomped.
The lack of incentive for team-play is something that plagues every modern multiplayer game. The Battlefield franchise has been absolutely obliterated over the past decade due to this.
Tbf, arguably the most toxic and hated games are teamwork based ones. LoL, CS, Valorant, Dota, Siege, Rocket League. All games where you contribute 20% to the outcome of the game. Teamwork is cool and all, but is it really that fun when you get killed in Battlefield, hold the button the game tells you to so you don't bleed out, see a medic right above your body, he looks at you, he's not being shot at, he's not shooting at anyone, and then proceed to run off instead of using a defib on you? The mechanics can be in the game, but they won't do anything if your teammates are the equivalent of playing with 5yo special needs kid
Cooperative/Competitive games (aka Team Games) usually have the most toxic environments of all, because not only are you regularly getting beat-down by people who are just as good or better than you - you have a team of several other people you can *blame it on*, regardless of whether your own performance was up to par. The least toxic games are generally Cooperative V Environment games, like Deep Rock Galactic, where the team is in fact purely cooperative, and you can have a fixed array of difficulties that allows everyone to play to their own preferences. If you like to get beat ~20% of the time, you can select a challenge level that'll do that for you. If you just want to casually crush bugs, you can keep coasting on low levels and just hang out with the team. HD2 is similar in that regard - as long as you ignore discussion forums, the IN game environment is generally very relaxed.
@@revanofkorriban1505 Yeah, it's true that if you're going to go with team competitive, a big team makes it less problematic. It doesn't allow for as many 'hero' moments or hard carries, but by the same token someone who isn't doing well isn't very noticeable and can easily be covered for.
I think it mostly stems from one big, fundamental design flaw: That the only way to have fun is by winning. You get a game that boils down to a competition to see who can get the most kills, because more kills = more dopamine. This extends to games designed to be esports, because they care even less about being fun, only being 'balanced'. Look at the Finals, or Rainbow Six, or Overwatch, or League, all the worst offenders for being 'sweaty and toxic' games - they're all esports and made to be one. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason Team Fortress 2 has lasted so long is because it does everything it can to encourage players to make their own goals and make sure that the objective is something that just happens while you're doing whatever. Virtually nothing is completely reliant on a teammate to function, you don't need to have all players properly positioned to get to play the game, the longer TTK keeps the game from being as feast-or-famine as a game where whoever clicks first wins, blah blah blah. Virtually never does a player lose agency because of what a teammate is (or rather, isn't) doing.
I often think this is why I could sink so much time on COD BO2. There were so many goals: difficult camos, diamond camo to encourage getting every one, tryharding for nukes, quickscoping , trick shooting, camping with friends. I wonder if modern shooters don’t do as much to diversify, or maybe I was just a kid who was happier to not be the best.
@@manoflead643 oh, Rainbow Six... I spent so many evenings in this game. Played every day. And the reason i liked it so much is because you can just hold your ground as defence team and slowly approach to your goal and wipe enemy with good prepared attack with attack team. The game created so much tension without reliance on pure mechanical skill. At least that was in first year-two. After that i remember reading "Ubisoft is advancing eSports scene" and the feeling of the end covered me. And i was right, first they banned all "unbalanced" maps in rating mm, and every hero patch added new traps heroes, so defence players could just run all building to hunt you down (and you are attacking team!) and you can't use it to got the objective, because the objective room is more like puzzle rooms from SAW. And as defence you should run all building around, because siting in the toilet is not an effective style anymore. I don't know what changed in the past years, don't play the game anymore. Shame, I really liked it.
While i "Mostly" agree some items in tf are not working in favor of that second statement Mainly many snowball weapons can take your agency as a player away cause you got JohnGonzalles.2012 feeding the enemy kills buffing their weapons to a point you have no counterplay (Weapons that come to mind but not exclusiveyl: Bazaar bargain, Eyelander, Diamondback)
When Call of Duty decided to replace their matchmaking with EOMM in 2019, 'every' single one of those guys that they were keeping like a quarantine zone infiltrated anything they possibly could to start optimizing the fun out again, exacerbating the mechanical arms race for PC games even harder. I know this because shooters on ROBLOX funnily enough never felt like unplayable stress simulators prior to this era. Not even infamously sweaty games like Bad Business. The likelihood of you joining a *unranked* public server on *Arsenal* just to run into a kill feed full of headshots for 15 seconds is WAY higher than it was 5-6 years ago before all those "Best perk & setup for BO4 BO3 blah blah blah" lunatics poured in. And that's saying a lot considering RNG is supposed to be against you in that game. Meanwhile on console, the platform I'm especially not as proficient at, I don't even feel this arms race as much, *even with a lot of post-launch shooter titles.* America's Army Proving Grounds before the servers shut off, BF2042, CoD WW2--their console versions never felt like they were 'as' filled with tryhards trying to optimize the fun out of everything. I mean you had a higher chance of running into a 12 year old black child who has got no clue what planet he was on than on ANY of these games PC versions. Even in console GTA Online with the dedicated Rockstar Created Deathmatch Maps I 'still' find more clueless idiots than anyone else could probably hope to find on the PC version. There is simply no reason to play any shooter on PC anymore other than to compete as a result of this. The mechanical arms race for PC has DEMOLISHED casual play in comparison to console. You either have to completely re-practice your playstyle to something you never liked, or you HAVE to go to console now where the bigger populations especially reduce your chances of running into these "optimizers" (unless it has forced SBMM lmao) If it isn't a specific shooter I've familiarized myself with for years or offers dramatic playstyle changes to counteract sweats like in Battlefield, I literally *hesitate* to play *new* PvP shooters on PC. It's cancer what developers and playerbases both do to these games on this platform. I'm effectively using a $1,000 setup just to not have fun after the first month of a new game. That. Is. Crazy. Quickly editing this comment to add that I'm very sure closet cheating is far more rampant on PC games than the usual stick-out few that people point at. For the longest time I've avoided saying this because it's not something I can easily prove and it's a broad enough assumption for people to come to me and go "nah bro nobody's out to get u skill issue," but honestly I sincerely doubt half the top fraggers I'm going against nowadays are legit. Not even on ROBLOX. I have to constantly question if I accidentally queued into a game's Ranked mode before inevitably finding a balanced match line-up that makes me realize the math just wasn't mathing. It's not the same as it was a decade ago, because I got over that hurdle. How do you go *back* to it like that? I am definitely 'not' that old or drowned in life's treacherous waters. I know it can't compute, and I know it has something to do with this arms race making PC's barrier of entry even higher. There's no other way.
It's by design, there are no casual pvp games to play these days. But it's been always by game design. Devs can make matches don't matter in terms of who wins or loses, but no, you get challenges for progression (skins or whatever), XP from matchmaking ranks, and so on. If you gain nothing from winning matches, then there's a lot less incentive to tryhard.
I was there for the dawn of online gaming. Back then, it was a novelty and almost everyone played casually for fun. What changed everything was Xbox Live, which introduced player profiles that displayed your stats, but it also introduced a younger playerbase to it. We're now in an age were most people playing won't remember online gaming not being a thing, and those people often ONLY play online games. UA-cam/streaming didn't help matters because the younger players wanted to be like / play like the creators they were watching. You won't believe how many players I've known who HATE playing online games but they do it anyway, and it's all they play.
Yeah, the entire approach has changed over time, thanks to the multi-faceted corporate push to turn gaming into a for profit sport. When Left for Dead 1 came out, people were trying to get cool hunter kills by bouncing off off multiple walls or something, because that was an interesting and unique mechanic the game had. Nowadays, L4D2 versus is the sweatiest experience you can find, which is ironic since it's so random, considering that it's 8 strangers loosely cooperating. Remember when the word "toxic" was used ironically to make fun of tumblr drama queens? Now it's just a fact of life, people raging more in games than for real life failure.
The player counts matter most. That means there are way more mechanical skilled players than in the past. The longer you play the better you get. With youtubers came tutorials or rather a how to play. People now search for the meta online to get better. Now you need to learn all the tricks to be better than the enemie with the same loadout but there are videos on that aswell. Thats the reason why you feel different about the pust. Everyone plays casually for fun even now. That never changed. But in the past everything you have done to improve yourself was learned by yourself. Today everyone learns from the best because otherwise the learning curve is too slow so you fall behind. Thats the difference. More players and learning from the progamers is the difference from the past.
@@xloltimex38 You could find tutorials and entire websites dedicated to the meta for competitive games in the past too. There's also another difference, these days people treat every game as a do or die experience, even games that are obviously balanced for casual fun. People just don't know how to have fun. More and more often you see situations where the community metaslaves so hard that the entire playebase misses a couple of just as viable approaches, it's insane and sad.
@@Snufflegrunt It's not just that. You also saw this happen in individual games. The skill ceiling rises and you get to the point where lame but effective becomes ever more important.
One aspect you didn't mention about multiplayer games, is the team size. Generally the smaller your team is the more responsibility you have as a player. As such your skill level matters a lot more. This also goes hand in hand with toxicity. In a smaller group people its much easier to recognize your teammates mistakes or shift blame onto a single person who "inted" or "ran it down" . still an interesting vid.
@@korosoid matchmaking, team size, playstyle etc. are all tuned intentionally by the developers, cheaters, though impactful, aren't an intended part of the experience and are much harder to control.
BASED. I love 100 player, or 60 player TF2. Been playing for 12 years now, but I am so glad with the updates happened, there's just that extra bit of life and performance (from 64bit update) that makes me keep on playing it. Deep Rock Galactic is the same when I'm too stressed from TF2 casual or other games just being unfun. I'm trying out deadlock right now, it's alright, but I try to ignore PVP nonsense (holy heck the STUNS, especially long-range stuns or grabs on a stacked enemy team god I DONT WANT TO PARRY AAAAAAAA)
Helldivers 2's evolution certainly has been an enlightening sight. A sizable fraction of the dev team was pushing for difficulty-based balancing, making enemies stronger and players weaker, making victories feel "earned", and players kept leaving cause it was not fun. Then the recent rebalance update happened where all player tools were made overpowered and incredibly satisfying to use, while also making enemies more threatening to turn players into g lass canons(and suddenly, the 20 respawns per mission no longer feel like "too much"), so the actual difficulty stayed roughly the same... but it became a lot more fun, both for the tryhards and the casuals. - I'm also reminded that, at least early on, a huge appeal point of fortnite and the other battle royale games was that, in 1v99 matches with a single winner, losing wasn't really a big deal to the point everyone was a winner. Some people just hot dropped in highly contested areas, got into fights quick and fully expected to die quickly, and they got their fun out of that early rush without caring about not winning; some played smart and survival-y, but still had no expectation to win and had their satisfaction from seeing how much the player count could dwindle before they finally died. The secret sauce is in making the struggle itself satisfying, rather than tryharding for a win as the ultimate condition to have had fun.
Even Splatoon 3 isn’t immune from this problem. While it’s gyro controls can be learned with enough practice, it’s literally a 4v4 for every single PvP mode, meaning that if you even remotely suck at movement or aim, you’ll drag your team down enough to lose to a team that outranged yours.
Oh man. Splatoon 3. Lemme just dump my experience here because that game actually fits this video pretty well. It's so ironic how a Nintendo-developed shooter ended up being the sweatiest game I've ever played. And all because of the atrocious matchmaking they implemented which I am pretty sure they still NEVER fixed, since I can check the Splatoon thread on 4chan and people still complain about Turf War. You'd hop into the Turf War (casual) mode and be treated to the sweatiest 4v4 of your life half the time, meanwhile the actual competitive modes were a lot more balanced out. I mostly played Turf War and got pretty good with motion controls, I mained Splattershot because of its "average at everything" nature and had a lot of fun when the matchmaking wasn't bending my team over. The matchmaking sucked the fun out of the game so I stopped playing after 5 months, I bought it at launch. The way the matchmaking worked was the matches were always balanced to favor one side, and usually it would go off of your freshness level which went up with win streaks. Once it got high enough you would guaranteed start to get matchups where the other team absolutely steamrolls yours and you literally get spawncamped because the skill diff is so huge. Matches were either you stomp the other team or they stomp you. It would also put 1 or 2 players on a team who had a massive skill diff between them and the others, it was common to lose matches because the game put 1 or 2 people on your team who barely knew how to play while the other team would have 4 players of consistent skill level. That was one way the game would "force" you to lose. It was also common to lose 5+ matches in a row and then the next day you were winning matches left and right. Whenever I was on a losing streak it was always followed by a winning streak. This is my objective experience. I played the game for over 200 hours in a few months, I had plenty of time to notice and observe the patterns and quirks of the game. I also was very active in the Saltoon (yes you read it right) subreddit and discussed it to death with the other players there who corroborated my experience. Ironically we ran into a LOT of toxicity and "get good" types of players, in a _Nintendo_ game community. I had so much fun though when the teams were balanced, which was sadly pretty rare. Splatoon 3 is a game where your enjoyment in the casual mode is completely at the mercy of the flawed matchmaking system. Which is such a shame since the matches were the most hectic, fast-paced, and strategic gameplay I've ever enjoyed in a shooter.
This is exactly why I quit Splatoon 2 right after hoping it was better than 1. Everything you described about matchmaking is exactly what happens in those games and I caught on in the first game. You can have 30 kills or more every game and your team will wind up getting stomped. Sometimes I wondered if they put brain dead AI on your team masquerading as a player because sometimes they literally wouldn't even shoot.
@@BaronCreel It was unfortunately exacerbated in Splatoon 3 since it introduced allowing friends to invite and play with each other in turf war. So you'd then have coordinated teams communicating over discord which provided an absolutely massive advantage over the other team. I enjoyed the sweaty matches the matchmaking provided me, but I found playing the game stressful and frustrating since I felt like I had to give 110% in a lot of matches.
i took a very strong mental try at this game just recently i 100% the story mode and i mean 100% some of those missions were not fun and bonkers frustrating ( Bet you Mist us ) but the moment i played the main reason one would buy splatoon that being the multiplayer DEAR LORD IS IT HYPER SWEATY most matches all end up the same my side of the turf 20-25 % covered in ink where the opposing teams ABSOLOUTY DESIMATES and dominates the entire turf not exsactly a fun first impression i kept with it till reaching level 10 by then i decided i will be a roller main as im acturly doing some that most teams do from what i see is paint the home base floor so i usualy stay in the far back not really getting into fights you could say im a passive but im just fixated on the task at hand to defend the home base turf and maybe expand out to mid but now that my 7 days free trial for NSO had expired i lost all intrest and went back to my gaming PC
I’ve played Splatoon since it launched on Wii U and have been a massive fan of the series ever since. The world and really fun mechanics drew me in, but while it didn’t keep me playing 24/7 after the first few weeks, I had lots of fun with the matches and regularly was a top contributor in Turf War and performed decently in Splat Zones and Tower Control too. But one day when I came back to Splatoon 3 after a break, I found that I was struggling to keep up the sweatier and sweatier lobbies, to the point where I wasn’t having fun with the multiplayer anymore. Maybe I was just suddenly worse at the game now that my sweat had washed off, or the skill levels had just risen too high. Either way, I didn’t play much multiplayer aside from a few Splatfests after that. The matchmaking definitely didn’t help my enjoyment after my metaphorical shower. I think that because of my sweaty performance in the launch season where I was chasing the funny dab emote (which was at the end of the battlepass) I was now relegated to these really hard lobbies with no end out. Not to mention that it’s really hard to rank down in the ranked modes because the punishment for losing is significantly less impactful than the reward for winning. I still enjoy the world and characters of the game, so I would like to still engage with it, but there’s not much left to do since I don’t enjoy the multiplayer anymore, and I had basically 100%ed the singleplayer modes when they launched
Yeah this is exactly why I never touch pvp games anymore. It’s that mechanical arms race that differentiates the overwhelming stress I feel from counterstrike, and the motivating challenge I feel from Elden Ring. I find myself constantly asking “how can I possibly feel any sense of improvement in this game when the goalposts are constantly being moved?”
if you can feel the goalpost being moved, that's the improvement. "sense of progression" and "sense of accomplishment" aren't necessarily the same thing.
@@Lee-fw5bdno, it was newest hotpatch making the play style you are comfortable with be less effective. Developers changing percentages every update to keep the facade of healthy gameplay alive.
@@hibbs1712 I mean if your preferred playstyle is doing incredibly well then surely it would warrant getting nerfed? I'd adapt regardless so I guess I'm the opposite to the commenter above. Pvp is just too exhilarating to me.
@@Lee-fw5bd the problem is you don't nececerally have this "sense of progression" because the goalposts are not sometimes moved, they are constantly moving. At any moment you have no idea if this loss was because of your poor play, or your goalpost was moved. Of corse on a larger scale it's obvious that you are improving, and two month ago you was way worse than you know. But because you being balanced with other players that progress at the same rate, you don't feel any improvement.
@@imfinishedgrinding638 no. And honestly, you should be weary if you comfortable with that. Maybe try sitting down and reflecting on your total play time and the reason you like video games.
Also you should have mentioned that, when you play the game like a tryhard, winning feels like... default: " I was sweating so now I have my reward" but losing feels absolutely horrible: "I have done everything I could, how am I still losing this???" And my second point is that in this type of games you can't just play with friends. E.g.: If you have a friend that plays Finals every day and you try to return to the game after like 3 months, you will be annihilated in first match if you play it with your friend because of SBMM. But that was your whole point of returning - to play with your friend! :(
So, I play multiplayer with friends only. Currently this is stellaris. With up to 20 hours for one game. And, since I invited some friends there, they struggle on normal difficulty, while I have 1200 hours in game since it was released. So, what do we do? I take a challenge. My friends make the most insane and ugly starting build for me, which makes game fun on lower difficulty. And we don't kill each other, there's no fun in that. Unless we make a scenario of strong vs everyone. As for the rest... Only sandboxed and strong narrative experience in singleplayer.
I think Counter-Strike is the perfect game, because no matter how many years this game has been around, it is still the most played game and you can always start playing because there are no shields, hero skills, weapon attachments in the game, there is only pure skill.
This was my exact issue with MW 2019 me and my friends couldn't play together because at least one person always got the short stick and had a bad time since we were all at different skill levels. After about a month of trying to make it work we all just moved on. We wanted to play games together, but one of us always having a bad time didn't sit right with our playgroup, so we moved on.
It's strange. The biggest hits of recent years are single player games where the focus isn't competition; however the companies are making these games as a service nightmares that no one really wants.
It’s mostly corporate higher-ups making out-of-touch decisions like this because they want to be the next World of Warcraft. That game was such a huge phenomenon that every CEO wanted in on that kind of success, so they doggedly pursue the same business model of making a single game that will endlessly rake in money with little more than maintenance costs. What they don’t realize is that WOW was lightning in a bottle and that success like that is basically impossible to replicate.
Fortnite makes like a billion dollars every couple months lol, not sure what biggest hits you are talking about but even BG3 or something doesn't compare on any level.
its because the potential reward is infinite. they are fine with failing 1one, two, three or four projects, because they are gambling on giant success. This is also why you dont see this from indie companies. Much smaller companies cant gamble like this, they actually have to offer a good game,
Because you only need 1 hit with a multiplayer game. The replayability is always out of the charts, so 1 hit can last forever. Look at league for example. Released over a decade ago, yet still going strong with millions of players and breaking viewership records every year, with over a billion views every world championship (not even counting China, where league is huge)
@alex2005z I have yet to see a league player who seems to be actually enjoying the game. It feels like a bunch of people who have it as their addiction. And as such, like addicts, they end up being downright monstrous and abusive.
just keep in mind that could be said for anybody. every player on every team is taking up a slot to be substituted in with one of the top players in the world that could be paid to play for you.
why? i started league of legens last year and the game been out like 14 years and i inted like 200h of games and now i have learned the game and i rose from iron to plat in one season , nothing to be ashamed about if you are bad you always learn
that's a personal issue brother. I've felt it myself, it will only hinder you when you do take the chance. be confident in your belonging and you'll quickly realize only the shitty human beings will be vile toward you, and you know they are pretty much worthless so their opinion is the same. you do you and ignore the dorks. - signed by a rocket league player that started 2 years ago and had to learn to be confident in my ability
I especially like when competitive games have non-shooting gameplay that allow you to be useful even if you are not better than everyone you're up against. In combined arms games like Planetside 2 if you are up against someone who kills you easier and faster, that matters less if you have teammates to follow up on your death (medics reviving, suppressing fire from allies, just more fodder in general). Or if you are bad at one aspect of gameplay, there is strategic choice you can make to counteract someone who is kicking your butt (switching to dealing with aerial combatants mowing down your troops, coming with vehicles from a different base to provide support). Or in games like Valve's Deadlock, you aren't forced to beat your opponent in lane to win, because gaining more currency to buy stronger items provides a much better power boost, so disengaging when you are losing to focus on getting stronger is encouraged. If your game supports hyper-mechanical play, thats fine, but you need to find the balance between it contributing to the win and simply not letting other people play. I'd say the easiest way is to simply have systems that arent "mandatory", yet contribute to your objective but that pure mechanical play can't beat (like the opposite of what battlebit did when it nerfed the need for medics)
would be nice if stronger gear would not be locked thru paywall. Only way to get that gear is getting thousands of kills or creditcard,but good luck getting thousand of kills against people who have better gear and kill you lot faster ,not to mention playerbase is not that strong as it used to be.(planetside2)
Splatoon really cooked that up by 11 with its ink mechanic. Basically sets a skill floor so low even toddlers can contribute some value while still retaining high skill ceiling for skill expression.
@@einarsa7196 nature of moba. And you can still farm those ‘huh level mobs’. As long as you don’t die a lot to the enemy and keep them from destroying your stuff, you don’t necessarily need a lot of kills
@@einarsa7196 I have been playing again since this january and I concur with the old timers that the guns dont really perform much better than stock. What is inconvenient rather is the fact that if you want to have access to many playstyles that is when the grind holds you back, because the game never was designed for one person to have the solution for that many things. If you dont shoot first you often die with any type of combat, you can't swap into a loadout to stop being overwhelmed. Its grindy yes but the new team in charge have made a lot of improvements to reduce it a lot and promote your performance even if your kda is bad or you happen to be online when all the vets want to farm stats
PS2 has never in its lifetime been easier and accessible than it is now, and it's practically dead. "Sweats" didn't kill the game, players like you did. The farmers left years ago and all that remains are braindead zerglings who haven't improved since they started. They were the ones who were ceaselessly catered to. Y'all got the game you wanted, and to no one's surprise nobody wants to play when there's no depth and skill no longer matters.
very well edited and well written video from a relatively smaller channel I hope the algorithm picks this video up and gives it the attention it deserves!
@@ben9003 I absolutely agree, this was a well made, well edited and scripted video that highlights the correct things in gaming. Would love to see more
Back in the days of team fortress classic, and to some extent, team fortress 2 era, people didnt take games so seriously. As such, they were just unanimously fun games where you could goof around in. Now every game is a competitive tryhard fiesta where no critique is allowed without ad hominem
Its also how the games are designed. Back in cod4 or mw2 days, 2007-2010 lets say, I could spawn in a lobby, run around the map picking up random guns and shooting people and get a nuke. Modern shooters are specifically designed to be more around teamplay and to stop better mechanical players from being able to hard carry their team. Mechanics like extremely limited gun accuracy, random spray patters, tagging (you move slower if you get hit), nerfing bunnyhopping and strafe jumping into the ground, are all designed just to make sure you cant beat multiple enemies just by being better at the game. This means that the higher the skill level gets, the more reliant you have to be on teamwork instead of mechanical skill, and that means if someone on your team plays badly, you will lose the game, and they will get flamed by the team. Because you cant win 4v5 or 5v6 by just playing better.
You missed the point. Wasn’t even a hard point to grasp We always had competitive games. Tribes is one of the most high skill ceiling games out there. You had unreal too, they existed. But so did games where the fun came from having fun, team play and such. Not just winning. You could play TF goofily and have a good time. Now EVERY room plays exactly like the competitive rooms. And every game plays the same too. Everyone knows this if you’re old enough to have experienced it.
You can till goof around, you'll just end up in a low mmr lobby. Lower than you otherwise would with your skill level if you optimized everything. If you truly enjoyed goofing around more than winning, you would be ok with that.
Player skill and toxicity killing online gaming? Look no further than chivalry. The bayblading elite couldn't chill for a few minutes to let one person kill them to the point that the playerbase crashed. They were literally too powerful for the 98% who couldn't bayblade.
well they shouldn't have to let you kill them, that's not good game design. the correct game design is to make sure the skill ceiling is never too high. an amateur should be able to kill an expert on day 1. that's the golden rule.
@@007kingifrit Thats a shit rule, because then there would be no point in playing the game. A random noob can just connect on day 1 and kill you anyway, so why play it for thousands of hours to improve?
@@TheSuperappelflap definitely a balance. it should take a few dozen attempts for a new player of reasonable "noob" skill to put a huge dent or completely kill a highly experienced player in competitive games
@@007kingifrit No, the correct game design is whatever achieves the developers' goals. The problem with Chivalry, and most other first-person melee games, is that they fail to design a combat system that delivers on the fantasy of being a melee warrior. Chivalry and its ilk are almost always just stupid moshpits, where people randomly flail at each other with no sense of individual or group tactics. Because these systems aren't well-suited to enabling anything else. And for a while, the silly moshpit is acceptable, because it still feels loosely within the fantasy of being a pre-modern warrior. Until eventually someone finds some weird, arbitrary trick that abuses the game's hitboxes (or something like that), and doing that arbitrary trick becomes the meta. Which collapses the fantasy of being a warrior, and people stop playing.
I just feel like the best place to be as a casual/chill gamer is in PVE Coop games. Space Marine 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Helldivers 2, Deep Rock Galactic etc. These games are always fun, they can be challenging and the community will never get toxic due to the nature of the game.
try running a realism expert lobby or expert lobby in general in L4D, you'll get someone joining ur game on the final level of the campaign, playing normally, helping u get to the rescue then emptying a mag in the three of u and escaping by himself granted, i don't want to say trolls like this haven't existed back in the day, but i think we've just become bigger and bigger assholes in general in games and the rise of competitive gaming could be contributing to that in some form, the state of mind u get put in playing those games spreading to other, casual games, like a cancer.
@@sapunjavimacor There are trolls in every game ever made. This is just super rare. I played a couple hundred hours of L4D1 and L4D2 and I never met someone who did this. Was I trolled ? Sure but I just move on. The kick function works 99% of the time. BUT these are rare occurrences. I play all my coop games on the hardest possible difficulty. I never got kicked in HD2 for my loadout or at the end.
@@almightybogzaI really don't believe you have played L4D2 in recent years if you want to call it casual. While it is casual, but only when you aren't playing with randoms. I'm saying this with ~650 hours on L4D2 alone. Verses mode is almost entirely made up of sweats. They'll either quit if they sense their team isn't sweaty, if part of the team is grouped up, or if you mess up 1 or a couple of plays, or if you go down. Or they will votekick you if possible. It's not that rare tbh. Not always, but I expect it to happen at least once everytime I do play. TF2 is more casual than L4D2.
@@sapunjavimacor The amount of trolling back in the day compared to now was astronomically higher, despite the fact that gaming is now bigger than it ever was with every single home having a computer by necessity The reason you'd think otherwise is because we now have a set expectation, meta, and social code/culture of how we interact online and how one plays with others. Everyone plays with the same goal in mind, with (roughly) the same knowledge, ideas, strategies, what to do etc etc, whereas there was no such precedent before. People did all kinds of crazy stuff that would be considered trolling today, especially in MMORPGs where you'd have guilds controlling entire areas and forcing people to pay entry fees and becoming so dominant they drove others away Add to this hackers, catfishers, phishers, multibox macro for ganks and what else and as much as people deny it, that really was the true dark ages of the internet. The type of stuff i witnessed as a kid during that era is what no one would ever conceivably make a child go through today (or even then if parents knew lmao, or even in the past more so) Just think about the infamous CoD lobbies from back in the day. We look at that today and reminisce on those times but looking at it from a modern lens, we're actually better than we ever have been and i say that as a League player So, the fact that encountering trolls or toxic people today feels worse, says more about the environment we're in today
People were killing their teammates in Helldivers 2 public matches at extraction because they thought samples weren’t shared with everyone, or just to troll. I carried a whole team for 30 minutes just for that to happen. I never played in public after that. It’s not worth the toxicity that usually happens with randoms in a game that has friendly fire
Surprised you didn’t mention Fortnite and its building mechanic. That game is probably the single best example of a “mechanical arms race” that went too far. 5 years ago if you could edit while fighting, you’d be famous streamer. Now the average build player is as good as pros were just a few years ago.
@@prophetofwatersheep8100 because it effectively boxes out a huge chunk of potential new players to build mode. It’s demotivating to new players who just wanna play a normal shooter, and not spend hours cranking 90s in a practice lobby. This is shown in the player numbers. Player numbers were declining, and when you read posts about why people quit “building being too hard” was a major reason. After the decline, Epic implemented Zero Build, and as of recently Zero Build has nearly overtaken build mode in terms of player count.
@@KumaIsKing123 Some people writing about not liking the mode is not representative of actual numbers lol. Fortnite literally shut down the servers and then reopened them in a surprise, the popularity of no build was literally just because epic forced you to play it after preventing any gameplay at all.
Another good example would be Rocket League. Way back when, in 2016, I sat comfortably around diamond rank with what I was able to do. Put the game down at some point, returned to check it out again years later, and the players in silver rank regularly pulled off moves I would have associated with pro play back in 2016 when I was active. As the skill ceiling rose and the mechanical possibilities became better understood guides were written, training regiments were developed, and at some point if you weren't "practicing like a pro" you basically weren't fit to play any form of competitive at all.
@GamerKey91 Yeah it's really fucked up atm, I got like bronze mechanics by today's standards but I barely cling onto diamond 2 purely through positioning and rotation. It is a nightmare though, I don't have fun whilst playing at all.
so many people act like they want others to play as perfectly as a computer that can play perfectly, but would hate playing with a computer that could play perfectly.
No one wants to play against a cheating computer lol they just want to play challenging matches against competent players with teammates that are worth their weight
@@theX24968Z the point of playing a game is to agree to a set of rules then compete on that basis. A cheater (or a bot playing in a way that a human cannot replicate/compete with) doesn’t add to your experience as a team mate or as an enemy because they are not competing in the same way. You can’t learn from a cheater and get better from advice or adversity in that scenario.
@@BrickPerpetrator I think that depends on the cheats. I’d they can see through walls but are still shooting you, you can definitely learn from them. If they’re killing everyone with a knife from spawn then sure, I agree with you.
@@theX24968Z Almost like the entire purpose/enjoyment of competition is to play against people because people are living creatures with varying levels of understanding, decision making, and emotions and thus can make mistakes which you can capitalize on. That's the entire fun of competing for something. To strive to improve yourself because you enjoy that thing and you know how hard it is to get better at something especially the higher up in competition/skill level you are. Playing vs a cheating computer isn't exciting because it's not a person. It's literally that simple.
Back then 10+ years ago, because there were no social media and limited internet video prevalence, game meta and skill creep develop much slower than today. Also if you're mostly by yourself, intelligence is more important in improving skill. Where as today there are so many tools and tutorials for anyone with the time and desire to improve their skills so intelligence is less important.
This is the comment i was looking for. Having to get good by experimenting is part of thr fun, and nowdays everything is done by using tutorials. And if you dont use tutorials to learn stuff that others know, you are going to be left in the dust. Basicly an arms race of who can get the fun out of gaming faster. I usually play cs2, but recently decided to try out valorant. And in comparison to cs fighting against people who know stuff about the game was way worse than doing the same in csgo many years ago, probably in no part thanks to valorant being so complicated compared to cs2 as without tutorials you get ass ducked by something you couldnt even imagine like somebody teleporting or thowing a pet in a cs styled game.
@@inqizzoagree. I've picked up MK11 a month ago, saw Erron Black and picked him as my main. Got comfortable with the moveset, watched a couple of tutorials and all that was left was to improve at building them and punishing. It wasn't really fun. So I decided to learn Jax on my own and even tho I'm still pretty bad at him, I like learning him a lot more
Perfect description. I feel a lot of people who complain about competitiveness in games and then reminisce on "the good old casual days" forget that key point, the landscape for how knowledge is obtained has majorly changed. If social media was in the state it is in now back then, there never would have been that "casual" period of games, the way metas and such were formed back then were people taking note of what was killing them the quickest and most frequently, which took more time than just Googling it and then sharing it with their friends, who then shared it with more people and so on and so forth. On a more personal note, which feel completely free to hit me with a "I ain't reading all that" if you so desire, it's because of this that I rarely use any form of tutorial for games (with exceptions for things like achievements and such) because I find that experimenting with loadouts, playstyles and setups feels more rewarding than just using what everyone else does. Being a gremlin with a shotgun, making the definition of "suppressive fire" out of an LMG, turning a building into a discount Saw movie with traps and such, that's what makes games fun, not becoming one with the hivemind and using the best option and still wondering if the game is fun yet. Is what I do often cheesy? Yeah. Is it ineffective? Frequently. Do I have miserable times at points due to other people's competitiveness? Absolutely. But I've found that I don't need to top the scoreboard every single match to have fun, I need to solve the "puzzle" that is making my inherently ineffective strategies more efficient. I'm not interested in following THE meta, I'm interested in developing MY meta. Basically you CAN still have fun in games, but what your version of "fun" is, is obviously unlikely to be what mine is. It may feel restrictive and unfair, but if you are this far through my comment and not having fun I strongly encourage you to diversify, do something different to everyone else, be it your playstyle or maybe just a different game entirely.
I keep thinking about why TF2 is a game that has seemingly avoided this trap. I consistently go back to TF2, despite not being particularily good at it. And i find that it's because, in short, it wasn't made for streaming. I legitimately think that games being made for streaming and "highlight" moments are what ruins a casual experience. For there to be a highlight, a "screaming jump out of the chair reaction moment" that can be uploaded and monetized and marketed, there needs to be stakes. BR's are perfect for this. A constant tension, where each step is a potential death, and overcoming that obstacle and getting your "chicken dinner" is a rush that TF2 will never really have. However when everyone is looking to get that chicken dinner, then by definition there is going to be a large lobby of players who get nothing and who will feel awful for missing out on that dopamine rush. Just a lot of tension, then slouched shoulders and slurs in the chat. TF2 instead is more along the lines of an arcade shooter. There are no real stakes, the only difference between winning and losing is whether the game plays the "boo" of the "cheer" sound at the end of the match. In addition to this, there are no "search and destroy" gamemodes. Every time you die you are at most 30 seconds from getting to the frontline and blowing up the opposition. This is why, as absurd as it might sound to people who have never played the game, sometimes people just decide to not fight, and instead have an imprompty conga line in the middle of the map with players from both teams. When you lose nothing of importance, you are allowed to take the time and just do something silly when you feel like it. Something i do when feeling dumb, is to run up to people i've cornered. Their gun is empty, they have no way out. I hold all the leverage and i offer a lifeline; Rock paper scissors, whoever loses, dies. Then next respawn i might select sniper and throw pee jars at those passing by before going back to sweaty tryharding. The only way for the casual experience to be truly relaxing and without consequence, is if the game itself is generally without consequence. But that doesn't make for billion view highlight compilations that give free advertisement.
I dont disagree or anything i love running up to people and kill binding and watching them go spontaneously limp a second later as everyone joins in on some fun group suicide but. Random crit rate increases proportional to your damage output, this was done specifically for players popping off to pop off even further in a large showy glowing electric explosion where they kill half the enemy team. Theres also mechanics such as domination which is a showy and Loud display publically to the server that youre pwning skrub. And, you were probably here for muselk where he would do tryhard teusdays and dress up in the most outlandish fit with an australium rocket launcher wnd try to get a godlike killstreak on casual upward. Which is another colorful announcement to the server that youre hittin the biggins’. Anyways the point is that the playstyle of tf2 where every player on a server has their personal little goals and objectives where goofing off is strange to see absent is p r o b a b l y due to a Decade of player culture and injokes rather than some kind of unified design choice.
@@owostub5399 I mostly agree. TF2 wouldn't be a game to come back to time and time again if it wasn't also just really well designed. I'm not saying that any arcade style casual shooter could do what TF2 has done, but I am saying that it is a necessary component. The current most common game design of "streamer bait" is not just poorly done, it fundamentally lessens the casual experience rather than subtly elevating the sweaty one.
2fort and hightower are one of the reasons for this, honestly. Having two maps that are so badly, horribly, terribly designed that they're basically unwinnable no matter how competitively you play gives a safe haven for casual players who don't care about winning or losing. There are still good, balanced maps for the sweats out there, and the general mechanics and playstyle of the game are so solid as to be enjoyable.. But there's a subsection of the game where no matter how good you are, it doesn't really matter in the long run.. So you're encouraged to just chill and have fun with it.
The problem with the "casual experience" you want, playing against lower skill players, essentially requires those real people to become props in your power fantasy. Fun for you maybe, but where are you gonna find a steady supply of lower-skill players to shit on?
yes, so well said. I always wonder about what these people mean when they even say "casual experience" in referecne to a pvp game. and invariably ts this: players who are somewhere above average want randomized matchmaking so that the majority of players they get matched against are below them.
I mean this is half right, Yes There are ppl thats "casual experiance" is just trashing anyone worse than them. I Think the best way to explain it is my personal situation with rainbow 6 siege. All the way up until one of the most recent patches the operator Black beard was considered a throw pick, If you pick him you might as well throw the game if you are trying to win. The issue comes in with his weapon selection. He is the ONLY operator in the game that can use the scar H, Which has been my favorite gun to use in almost every FPS since battlefield bad company 2 From a competetive point of view (And how i play the game) Is just simply dont pick black beard, Why put myself at a disadvantage knowing everyone else (Because of SBMM) Is going for meta builds and will beat me in 9/10 engagements From a casual point of view, Why should I be complained at, kicked from the game, Or teamkilled, For simply picking the operator I want to play and i think is cool? (THIS IS LITERALLY JUST IN STANDARD, I AM NOT TRYING TO CASUALIZE RANKED ITS THERE FOR A REASON) If the game had a standard game mode that didnt use SBMM I could justify to myself (And other ppl would be alot less upset about) using a weaker operator knowing the ppl on the other team, May not having the skill to capitalize on using a better operator, But knowing everyone in the match, Is around my skill level, And only playing meta builds and weapons, It would literally be ignorant, and idiodic for me to pick black beard. That is the "casual experiance" Most ppl are refering to. Not trashing everyone thats worse, But having the freedom to pick what I want to play weather its good or bad, Because not everyone in the game is playing like their familly is being held hostage.
I miss community server based games. The remaining ones are often so concentrated with extremely skilled players who have been playing for decades that its impossible to break into. Perhaps that is just nostalgia talking though.
Community server based games have one distinct advantage: as a player you can see your skill improve in a measurable and concrete way. You play on a server with a dedicated community and see the same players again and again and again,you find yourself suddenly beating players who were dominating you before. This feeling of climbing, progress kept people going because they saw they were getting better with proof. Until they themselves reach their peak, but even still they are happy because of how far they had come and can now focus on having fun. Competitive games or games with SBMM steal this from you. You are always on a knife edge just barely squeaking out a victory every game. You don’t really think you are improving. You feel inconsistent. It’s miserable. In community servers even if the server has some sweaty tryhards who dominate, getting to the point where you can offer them a fight is one hell of a reward. I recall playing a tf2 server for like a year. 24/7 2fort. This one guy always went sniper and would rack up like 500 kills in an hour or two and leave. I hated this dude. I kept training and training and training and getting better and better until one day I had enough, went sniper…. And promptly lost. But not without providing openings for my team to push forward and start spamming projectiles in his sniper nest basically ending his tirade. He sent me a message later and said: “That was one of the best duels I had in a while. Thanks.” That feeling is forever unmatched. Reaching top rank means nothing to me, but recognition of being a threat by someone I once viewed as unstoppable feels great.
5:54 Paladins has suffered this to an extreme. The matchmaker can’t work properly with so little players so it ends up matching you against the highest skill players and you end up spawncamped the whole match. With no chance due to the skill gap.
I don't even play online games, I'm into single-player games, but I really enjoyed the video. I found it informative and very clear and well presented, and was surprised to find it's your first of this type. Well done, keep it up!
I don't think "optimize the fun out of your game" is about a deliberate process, or an overly-sweaty attitude. The game itself can accidentally encourage players to do this. If there's one option that's way more fun, but will obviously lose more, players may not give it enough of a chance to learn why it's fun.
@@Gonzalo_105 not really in civ 6 though. Only with mods. The game is so easy that you can play whatever playstyle you want, even in deity. Domination canada? Good to go. Simming macedonia? Also works
I have one major point of critique - you say that you are often above average in games. Probably because of your years of experience playing games in general. Then you mention that you dislike The Finals because after you were generally winning a lot, you were matched against other above average people. The point here is though that because you are above average, your "fun" games before matchmaking adjusted to you were entirely on the back of below average players suffering and losing. The only reason you were able to fool around with weird strategies and less optimal classes is because your enemies were worse than you. But this is not sustainable! Casual gamers dont want to endlessly be mowed down by good players just because good players want to play "casually". That's not how you keep a player base. So in effect, SBMM is a garant for player base retention, because it allows the average player to have a good game with other average gamers, and not get destroyed by above average gamers like you. In the end, your wish for "playing casually" can't possibly work in such a game, because of the fact that you are above average. You can't expect a game to continuously offer you worse players on a silver platter just because you don't want to put effort into playing - because that messes up the other players days.
And that's why sui- *cough* SBMM isn't the answer. If you get good enough it locks you out of the comfort zone and constantly pushes you up. You can't possibly both improve and stay casual in SBMM. You either purposely remain bad/restrain your growth or get locked in an environment you don't like. It's just not fun
@@BLET_55artem55 read my comment again. There's no alternative other than not playing PVP games. Because you are good, you don't get to play casual because allowing you to do so would pretty much always be at the expense of someone else.
@@alexpaww there is. It's called being cultured (playing worse against worse players, having fun with others, voice chatting, etc). But that is akin to communism - a fever utopian dream crushed by basic human nature. Another solution would be... Uhh... Yeah, I kinda agree. Either be cultured and don't ruin games for others by flatlining them or play at your mmr level with other sweats (or play games with no SBMM, but that's a whole other topic).
@@BLET_55artem55 Playing intentionally worse/relaxed works for me, so when I do get better it's always at a sustainable level I didn't have to struggle to reach, so I'm still playing worse than my best but better than before and letting loose sometimes for short periods of time to unwind and test my real limits then back out again to a normal or bellow level, all that matters is determining how hard you should actually try given your current state so you don't crash, you can play slower, think less, intentionally ignore paying attention, it's probably harder to do in many shooters because they are very reflex based but it's easy in RTS, FG or mobas because you don't get instantly punished with downtime when playing worse, I also suspect that this is likely how some really good players already subconsciously self regulate the intensity with which they play since it would produce better long term results to avoid frustration like this.
@@yozshu yeah, that's my point. The only problem is in most popular games you'll be called "trash" or "a waste of team slot" if you do so. Even in casual gamemodes. It either requires everyone to collectively agree to play relaxed (impossible) or playing non team based games like classic Fighting games (and keeping it good spirited and light-hearted)
Hmm, this is an opinion I didn't quite think of. That's really cool and interesting so thanks for sharing that. For me as a competitive gamer I'm the opposite way. I'm not a super sweaty gamer but I do like to feel like I'm in a competitive match that I have to play better than my opponent to win. SBMM to me feels bad because it makes playing well feel like a punishment rather than a reward for learning the game better than other players. I understand both sides of it now with your comment though.
@@YuYuYuna_ Oh I totally get you. I'm not a monk, I'm fairly competitive and I still get mad when I play well and my team doesn't. But I'm trying to adopt this mindset where I see the silver lining in a loss.
@@fufu1405Another good mindset is, ironically, the monk's mindset. "Be here to improve and have fun doing so, to to win" aka enjoy the process and treat each loss as a hint on where you need to improve. Helped me to Stockholm syndrome myself into loving fighting games 😅
I can’t believe that this is an opener for anyone but eh, it is what it is. Playing someone that I’m destroying over and over again isn’t fun for either party. There is no other solution than SBMm.
When I played Fortnite with friends, I would get quite a few kills. Made me feel bad though, because then my friends had problems playing without me. Then, it got to the point where I struggled to do anything. Get one or two, then get wrecked by some laser god or castle builder if I'm lucky. Now, if I play, I just play creative game modes. Feels pointless to play the other stuff tbh. I love what people have been doing with the newer creative tools. I'd rather play some goofy clicker game than battle royale.
I appreciate you touching on how some of the issues with SBMM maybe exacerbated by the complexity of how games play now with their insane movement tech
I've seen many similar youtube videos on this topic. People trying to rationalize why they don't enjoy a certain game anymore and how it applies to the game industry as a whole. What it comes down to, usually, is that people just want to pwn noobs and that noobs are the most important players in a game. They are the most numerous which means they bring the most money. If the noobs start leaving then the mid skill level players will leave as well as they have no noobs to pwn. It's a domino effect from the bottom to the top.
I prefer matchmaking to be random with minor skill based added. I don’t want to stomp on noobs but I also don’t want every match to be a sweat fest that deincentivizes playing well because you know by doing so tells the algorithm your next match will be you against a much better team for their mandatory win. Modern sbmm is a mess, it’s not designed to be fair but to keep player retention and keep them spending in the shop. That means the game letting you win sometimes and being fodder for better teams for the rest of it
this is such a common and faulty argument. destroying noobs consistently isnt fun because theres no challenge. people literally simply just want a more varied gameloop. where you ocassionally do the stomping etc.
You're entirely right, I do more or less just want to pwn noobs at the end of the day. To be clear though, it's not that I want to pwn noobs specifically, so much as I want to win far more often than lose and do so without having to get amazingly top 10% of the entire world good first. (I honestly don't think I have that potential in me at all, for that matter.) Which yeah, effectively means that at my skill, pwning the noobest of noobs is the only practical way to actually have any fun. But still, and I know, this is a "is the glass half empty or half full" kind of thing, the point is about me winning, not noobs losing. The noob suffering is an unfortunate byproduct, not the goal. But yeah, the problem ultimately being that the biggest reason people do or don't like a game is that they aren't winning enough? I'll admit, that's basically what it comes down to for me. And I'd bet that's the primary issue for at least like, 80% of the total potential players out there. Everybody vastly prefers winning, and in PvP, that requires someone else to do the losing. The less loser fodder there is, the less people are getting enough wins to enjoy themselves.
This is why I play a lot of turn-based games. Playing thousands of hours will not make you so mechanically godly that you crush everyone by default. Instead it's just about strategy/intellect. Not only that but taking a break from turn-based games/playing intermittently is way less punishing because you don't have to "get back into playing shape" again.
I honestly moved away from anything that puts me against humans. Only online games I partake are either rpgs or coop, I’m here to have fun not compete Also: always be trying new games, indie ones or double A cause big companies suck and just want money
Tbh I only play casual MK11 and multiplayer sandboxes like RDR2 Online (RDO). The only way I was able to have fun in MK11 was switching my mindset from "I'm here to win" to "I'm here to improve and have fun in doing so"
I mostly agree, but it's not so much a matter of having fun and definitely not competing, as that having fun is required first and foremost. Having fun AND competing at the same time would be fine too, if it worked out that way. But if human opponents are involved, then odds are the level of competing necessary will be too high for optimal fun, or maybe any fun at all, so yeah, it does tend to be one or the other in practice.
I find it hilarious that you don't mention the poor guys you annihilated when you were on a winning spree on your "casual gaming" time with The Finals. I'm sure they are glad to no longer feel like they have go try harder because you got placed in higher ranks. SBMM works. Take the compliment and play as you will. If you are playing casually you won't mind losing anyway. It's your obsession with victory that is poisoning your online gaming experience.
prime battlebit was one of the best games I've played honestly, and with the casual basically being ranked, rocket league is a prime example, cant queue a cas game without people playing like its RLCS quals ahahaha
bruh as a frequent rocket league guy, you are spot on. I see so many try hards and sweats in that game its ridiculous. I'm just trying to enjoy some soccar and we have dudes flying all over the place and playing like their lives depend on it
Im more annoyed with people that complain about tryhards in casual than i am with the people who are actually clipping on me. I wish rocketleague didnt add a temp ban on all modes for leaving casual games. That way i could leave if im in a game thats completely mismatched or whiny babies on the other team can leave if they want to just play training mode. Casual is just comp now. There is almost 0 reason to play casual outside of warmup for comp or carrying a lower skilled friend. I still mainly play casual though because idc about ranked, i just get gc rewards then stop. People in ranked are slightly more toxic than those in casual and it gives me a headache.
@@greekd00d69 Oh man, me and my buddy had to stop playing casual a few years ago because of people quitting when they get scored on once, usually spouting 'tryhard' in chat Like, my brother in cars, I'm sorry I scored a goal on a wide-open net after your failed a quadruple-flip-ceiling-airdribble, that is the point of the game
I had the "opposite" problem with The Finals. Me and my group "tryharded" the game, we wanted to win every game but never yelled at each other or anything, just found that combo team game was the most fun for us so we went with it...but there was one big problem that was pointed out to me and I immedietely begin to see it and quit on the spot and that was that even when we played competetive games (ranked) there was practially no SBMM. We were every other game with someone who was in top players, when we were supposed to be around "silver-gold", which made no sence and realized that most games we lost were against someone who we never had any chance to begin with it. Why even play the ranked and ultimetely why even play the game. To me The Finals never fully realized if it wanted to be competetive or casual game. It featured casual gameplay mechanics like "randomness" of enviroment, "stealing" the cashout in last seconds, nukes with Heavy class, but at the same time there was ranked mode, the guns had recoil paterns, there were too many niches mechanics, patches that nerfed some one of the "casual" gameplay mechanics etc. To be honest if there was never "ranked" mode in the game and you could play with "hidden MMR" in normal games, we would probably still play the game to this day.
My issue with the game is also that it caters too much to casuals. I knew that casual players were never going to stick with the finals all the way back in S1 but they kept balancing around what the majority of players (who are silver-gold) wanted and not what diamond players wanted. I still love the game but it baffles me that there wasn't a bigger push from the devs to make it esports friendly. Why don't we have better custom lobbies? why haven't they focused on effective SBMM? Why tf did it take them 3 seasons to make light viable against coordinated teams? Why were nukes EVER a thing????
What got me stop playing The Finals was learning about the recoiless strafe. So if you stand still, crouched behind cover, your gun recoils everywhere. But if you're strafing sideways, there's no recoil. So the meta is just to pick light classes and circle-strafe endlessly, because sprinting around REMOVES the recoil, somehow!
@@Valchrist1313 I see what you mean with the reduced recoil while moving, it is definitely prevalent. But light (competitively) has never been great, I would argue to an extent even in casual
the dedication to the accurate video source in the corner is really really nice, having the "You (15 min ago)" be pretty close and starcit with TBD really sent me
The most fun I had when playing Valorant was when I was new, I didn’t care about dying, I didn’t care about which agent is op, I didn’t care that I got flamed by my own team for not knowing that killjoys ult stunned you. Eventually I would understand the game pretty well actually and started getting mad and in rare cases break something and get toxic towards other players which i’m not proud of. I got plenty of aces and none of them are memorable. Playing games like these is like eating something unhealthy, you enjoyed eating it but man you feel like shit after. I stopped playing the game 2 years ago and i’m very happy that I did. I play single player games now and really enjoy them because they respect my time and I don’t have to adapt to new metas, i’m a university student that has to work with my dad during the weekends, currently enjoying me DMC5 playing as Dante or Vergil :)
Thanks for vocalizing these feelings. I'm a big fan of RTS games and they've all been swept up into this competitive fervor when about 65%+ of players actually just want a really cool campaign that the genre used to have, and as someone who's always wanted to write one of these campaigns I find it really frustrating that it's all about sweaty competition.
Most multiplayer games are on death row anyway. They make them reliant on central servers and then shut down the servers once game isn't as profitable.
Games shouldn't have to be "sustainable" to remain playable. There are 15, 20, 30 year old multiplayer games that I can still play with my friends. Whereas most multiplayer games released this year are gonna become unplayable in a couple years, 10 years max. Central server requirements are a death sentence. They don't have to be; companies could patch their games or release server software. But they don't.
@@awsomebot1 I agree older games tend last longer but the main argument is those newer games that attract casual usually tends to die early, and no most multiplayer games are not on death row, the numbers and statistics don't match up on what ur claiming is.
Older games don't last longer, they literally last indefinitely. I can still play Quake with my friends. Most modern MP games ARE on death row, and statistics prove it. One youtuber (Accursed Farms) looked at a ton of defunct live service games (100+ games, list available) and only 2-3% of them offered you a way to keep playing your game once the main servers got shut down. Pretty much all multiplayer games releasing these days require a central server, even some singleplayer games do. If you purchase 100 games like that today, you won't "own" most of these games in a few years.
Older games don't last longer, they literally last indefinitely. I can still play Quake with my friends. All games that rely on central servers will have their servers shut down, it's just a matter of when. Around 2-3% of such games release end-of-life plans to keep the games playable (source: Accursed Farms). So statistics definitely match up with with my claim; most multiplayer games you purchase today will be taken away from you in a few years. Travel 20 years back in time and this was not the case, those games are STILL playable.
so true dude, i play age of empires 4 and its like ideally neither of us would even have access to the internet so its just me vs him. but its more like me vs him and the brains of 5 other pros.
So you are longing for the days of little or slow information transfer? I’m struggling with this idea because I think it’s amazing that people can learn about something just by using a search bar.
@@laxdemon13You realize in the context of video games that ruins a lot of the thrill of the discovery, right? Thinking you've found some secret esoteric knowledge only to eventually find out someone found something even better would make you constantly hungry to keep looking. Nowadays you can just look up guides and optimized strategies instead of trying to use your brain to figure out things. Of course, you could say, "then just don't use a guide," and that is an option, but in multiplayer games it's oftentimes punishing and a pointless uphill battle to not use the most optimal loadouts when everyone else is.
Great video. Distilled the issues many people have about competitive gameplay modes have into an effective explanation. About ten years ago I was helping my buddy learn Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. He and a friend had started a stream and podcast project. He was always positive and apologetic when he didn't do well, but I didn't mind. Once after we ended the stream, I told him that the competitive landscape was what made me stop playing for so long and what makes me feel bad for new players. There's no way to really learn and enjoy in CSGO (now CS2). Valve refuses to give a "casual competitive" mode where all the same rules apply to casual without the consequence. Casual mode is still good for learning, but no one can pretend that they are the same. Back in Counter-Strike 1.6 and CS: Source, we had dedicated servers run by the community, no global ranks or any of that in the base game. You could play, lose, leave, win, enjoy, or sweat in most servers without pressure. Now it sucks and Valve has purposely killed community server health. I don't even know if they put community servers into CS2. In CSGO they put a "scary" warning when going to the server browser.
Halo 3 and Reach were the ultimate form of 'Compromise between Casual and Comp'. Rich, lively MLG scenes, which were only a small part of the actual game itself - just one or two matchmaking playlists out of a dozen or more, with specifically edited maps for comp play, while the forge tools allowed the community to make whatever silly mini games they wanted.
Does it really have to be purely comp and silly/social though, with nothing in between? Personally, neither feel right or satisfying to me; I don't want put thousands of hours in, but I also don't want to goof off either. I just want to put a low time investment in, but do play seriously when I actually am playing. Surely I'm not the only person like that, who wants to play their best against other people who... haven't ever put in extensive or dedicated effort to get very good either. Serious casual, if you will. The best comparison I can think of would be an impromptu arm wrestling match where neither opponent ever does dedicated strength training. They're absolutely giving it their all and want to win, but their all is whatever strength their standard routine just happened to give them. There's got to be a video game competition equivalent to that, where you bring it hard when it's go time but don't really train/practice outside of that or even have "go time" very often otherwise.
Halo 3 and Reach was awesome. Me and the boys would play the campaign on the highest difficulty and add skull modifiers to make it crazier. For pvp there was the regular gamemodes, competitive ones, party gamemodes, football and Forge allowed the community to make custom ones to play like: duck hunt, fat kid, jenga, dodgeball, cat& mouse, sumo/monster truck, trash compactor, ghost buster, jump rope, racing, parkour, the floor is lava.. All sorts of stuff or we could just make cool/fun looking maps.
@@LordTrousers actually the primary thing of importance was the existence of lobbies where you could play again with players you vibes with and avoid players you disliked.
I'd argue that skill ceiling is more or less fixed; it only moves when relevant balance or tech changes occur. It's the community's *understanding* of how high a skill ceiling really is that changes over time, as well as each player's skill which tends to approach the skill ceiling over time (which you explained beautifully) Love how you broke down personal ceiling and floor. I'd never thought in those terms before. However, I feel personal floor isn't your own tolerance for failure, but rather an actual measure of skill(s) which can absolutely influence your personal enjoyment of a game, but isn't the same thing. Great video! Awesome insights that are important to talk about!
I think your last bit about the finals kinda gets to the heart of the issue, you want to play casually but also win, those are opposed desires. If you want to use weaker loadouts and strategies, but still win, then you have to be mechanically better than your opponents -- even at lower ranks, the fact that you're winning consistently with "bad" abilities means you're better than the person you're beating, you're skill gapping them to such a degree that you can beat them while gimping yourself, so any sensible matchmaking is going to put you against tougher opponents.
How opposed those desires are depends on how you define "playing casually." It can mean a LOT of different things. For example, "playing casually" doesn't just mean intentionally gimping yourself. It could also refer to not wanting to practice very much, just jump in and play on occasion. And I really don't see any problem with wanting to have a shot at winning without taking a game on like it's a second job. I mean, there's a reason leagues exist in real life sports, CCGs, etc: So that people of different levels of interest can get matched up with those of similar levels of interest. A person can both put in a "casual" amount of practice and such, while still being very serious and intending to win while they are actively playing. That's what the one night a week bowling league is for. Playing casually is only opposed to winning if your goal is to win at the top levels and be the absolute best. If you just want to have a shot of winning against other casuals, that's totally compatible.
@@Alloveck I play fighting games, which I think are kinda of immune from this discussion and weren't brought up in the video because they're inherently competitive and mechanically dense, same as mobas -- losing is often miserable, winning is why you play. Using a weak loadout in The Finals and then being upset that I'm not winning is like picking Dan and being upset that I'm not winning. If I want to win with an objectively bad character, I have to not only be better than my opponent, I have to be so much better that I compensate for the mechanical disadvantage I've given myself. If I'm successfully doing this, is it reasonable for the matchmaking system to NOT put me against stronger opponents? Isn't is shitty for the people whose ass I'm beating with Dan in lower ranks if it doesn't? That's what I don't get. Everyone wants to win, even your opponents. If matchmaking doesn't put you into a bracket where you're losing 50% of the time, then your opponents are the ones eating shit and getting clowned on -- and they're probably not having fun, so this entire complaint comes off as solipsistic.
@@garr123 Oh, it's a conundrum alright. Everybody wants to usually win, but that's collectively impossible. If you're actually managing it, then someone else is miserable. SBMM sorta helps, but even if it did work perfectly and gave everybody a 50/50 shot, for some people (myself included,) winning half the time just isn't satisfying anyway. In the end, there's only two real solutions: Add more bots to "soak" extra losses so actual humans can mostly win, (which I'd be totally fine with, I'm in for the wins, not objective skill flexing,) or people who aren't good enough to mostly win, and aren't happy with SBMM's 50/50 ratio either, can just not play PvP games at all. Personally, until multiplayer games embrace more bots, this is exactly why I'm primarily a single player game guy. I'd rather win against AI punching bags designed to gradually increase in difficulty so I can win at all levels of the skill curve, than lose against real people until I reach levels of good I may not even be capable of. Or maybe are doable, but take so much constant sweaty intensity to win, that the stress of constantly having to run at 100% kills the fun anyway. Like I said, I'm in in for the wins, not to be the overall objective best. My ideal challenge is simply 10-20% below whatever arbitrary skill level I happen to currently be at. If SBMM would aim for that, PvP would be a totally different story for me.
@@Alloveck I dunno, Battlefront II had bots in their games and once I realized it instantly sucked all the enjoyment out. Street Fighter 6 has maybe the best AI I've ever seen in a fighting game, does things a human player does, now adding even a machine learning version that's even closer. Even the advanced machine learning is still not a person, it doesn't *feel* like fighting a human -- its like an uncanny valley where it superficially appears to be human, but there's something ineffably *wrong* about its behavior because for, say, Master rank, its training data encompasses everyone from the lowest rated trash tier Master players who don't belong there and stumbled in early... all the way to professionals and the best players in the world, so its schizophrenic and its decision making frequently feels alien.
The thing about Sbmm is that it's positive impact is inversely tied to your relative skill level. Players at or below the 50% median mark benefit greatly from it, while players who are in the upper 50% suffer increasingly from it. This is because the skill tiers are not equally distributed; any player population is heavily weighted around the 50% mark, which means that being even slightly better than average will, sans sbmm, result in you consistently playing against people worse than yourself, letting you play casually, fuck around and do goofy strategies, and still win more often than not. This effect increases dramatically as you climb the skill ladder. Conversely, for the less skilled part of the playerbase all SBMM does is shield them from the very worst stomps; they dont lose anything because their matchmaking pool is already so stacked against them that all their matches are hard; they never get the easy casual matches to begin with. I find a lot of the critique towards systems like this come from either people who dont understand these dynamics, dont understand what SBMM is in the first place or from people in the upper skill echelons who are annoyed because they feel entitled to those easy matches on account of their skill. These are the reasons SBMM has become industry standard despite a very vocal minority cursing them out endlessly online; companies have the data and understand these group dynamics. SBMM provenly is a great tool for ensuring player retention because it will always benefit the player experience of a majority of your players
I entirely agree, SBMM is great if you're below average and just want to be shielded from stomps. If you're bad enough, it's only makes things better. But the one thing SBMM won't do is give bad players (or anyone else for that matter,) the chance to win more often than lose, and for some people, if not most, 50/50 doesn't yield enough highs to offset the lows in the long term. Until games find a way to let EVERY player win more than lose, the gradual player drop off will always happen eventually, SBMM or not. It alleviates the problem of player frustration to some degree for most, but it doesn't cure it for anyone. And in all fairness to those upper skill players who want the easy matches: I can't blame them. I'm nowhere even remotely close to top tier myself, but easy wins against less skilled opponents are by far the absolute most fun I ever have too. They alone are the matches that keep me coming back. (Or not, if they stop happening.) So yeah, even though it should effectively work in my favor due to how much I suck, I totally understand why people hate SBMM. Good or garbage, we're all here to win first.
@@Alloveck im not sure its inevitable as games like league have been going strong with SBMM for over a decade now, actively growing rather than losing players. Though it is of course reductive to ascribe that entirely one way or the other to their matchmaking parameters. And yea i know what you mean. I played Tf2 in the hey-day of the server browsing era, and as a slightly above average player i went on endless winning winning streaks. I havent played in ages so my soldier KDR is probably still something absurd like 10. These days though i understand enough to find it difficult to justify that position purely for my own benefit
A very good point. However: > or from people in the upper skill echelons who are annoyed because they feel entitled to those easy matches on account of their skill. As a person who is usually in the top percentiles, I wouldn't call it entitlement. I've been playing games for 20+ years now, so even despite my experimental playstyle (basically, trying everything myself, almost never watching guides or following "meta", etc.) SBMM always puts me in horrendous lobbies. The top 1% in every game I played is always the same: 1) People follow meta religiously. 2) They will blame you for any deviation from it. 3) You get regularly matched against the best in the world despite the insane skill gap. They have to play with someone after all. 4) You get regularly matched against cheaters. 5) There will be those who devoted all their free time to playing a specific loadout/hero/build to perfection. A generalist is no match for a specialist. 6) People who are extremely good at something are generally more competitive and, therefore, more passionate. Having a full team of those is a pretty toxic environment. 7) If there is any way to abuse certain mechanics or the matchmaking system, people here are very likely to do it. These are just off the top of my head. I'd call myself a highly skilled casual player. I don't take games too seriously and I experiment a lot. Constantly being put in these soul and fun-draining lobbies is a terrible experience. So, for me, SBMM in a game is an instant deal-breaker.
All these videos (and reddit posts) misrepresenting SBMM conveniently ignore that companies have tried to remove SBMM at various points and it always results in catastrophic amounts of low skill players AND high skill players quitting.
@@Insomnia228_ theres not really anything to say except you represent a small minority the industry at large will gladly sacrifice in return for the benefits of SbMM
I agree. I'm of the opinion that the most reliable way for an online game to retain a playerbase is to make socializing a keystone of gameplay, because that's the stuff that never gets old, and which allows more experienced players to establish rapport with newcomers. If the game is designed to reward teamwork over individual skill, that works really well in keeping people of all skill levels invested. I've been playing Post Scriptum for years, and I'm certainly not the most skilled individual, but the thrill of effective teamwork is something that never gets old.
The perfect example of this would be Deep Rock Galactic, and generally plenty of group PvE games, but DRG in particular is known for having an incredibly accepting community because its mechanics and theme entice players into a friendly, accepting mindset.
@ultmateragnarok8376 best imo was actually halo reach. The existence of lobbies with recognizable players who you can stick with across a series of games (and who you can click on to demand that the game either avoid placing you with them or prefer them more often) was the single most important thing. Second would be the ability to vote on maps and playlists which keeps things fresh and prevents optimization while at the same time giving you a choice and avoiding splitting the player base between 100 playlists that each have a population of zero. Tying progression to challenges also means that the best players will often be handicapping themselves in interesting ways rather than always trying to do whatever is optimal for winning the match.
I personally "retired" from PvP games long ago and the reason for that was the realization that ultimately I will never find a satisfying experience there due to "fun" part being always achieved at other players expense. Rare PvP game is fun to loose at (the only fun I had loosing was in the game of chess believe it or not), and mathematically you can't have everyone having fun since someone is ALWAYS got to be the looser, every time one player gets a kill, other player need to be killed, for every point of damage healed someone else's damage need to be invalidated to a certain extent. There is never a WIN-WIN interaction in a PvP game. While it's sad to think that PvP games just fundamentally unfit to be fun for everyone, it spared me a lot of time and nerves ever since I "retired"
If your idea of fun is only winning and getting lots of kills then sure. In sports there is also always a loser or someone who comes in last, sports must be really unfun. The difference between someone who can take an L and you is that they didn't give up.
@@TonguelessDanny This is an extremely weird comment. Genuinely, it is insightful to read into your logic. You're passive aggressively criticizing this guy for, what, liking winning? The fact that he wants to win in competitive games is upsetting and some sort of personality flaw in your eyes? It's such a strange stance, but even STRANGER is the ending comment: "The difference between someone who can take an L and you is that they didn't give up." What are you supposed to interpret this as besides criticizing someone for not trying harder, but, trying harder for what? For having fun? People who can lose and have fun are better because they did not "give up"? Why would they give up if losing is fun? Are you implying that losing is, in fact, not fun and instead is something you just have to "suck it up" about? That only REAL gamers decide to ruin their afternoon trying to win a game where every match is quite literally determined by RNG matchmaking? The original poster was very normal, I have no idea what caused you to act like this. Nor do I even fully understand what your point is. I doubt you do either.
@boatmannyc5145 I get where you're coming from, a lot of games are not built to be fun to lose. Losing in Overwatch is not some ultimately fun struggle on both sides. For the losing team, usually, the loss is seen miles away as your dysfunctional team scrambles around trying to prevent the inevitable. You are not working together with cohesion in mind, you're being given countless reasons to be upset at strangers. The "fun" part of overwatch is when the entire team comes together and things just start flowing smoothly, but that smooth teamwork is often carried on the backs of the other team flowing like asphalt on sandpaper. I will say, though, there are some games which can be played competitively while still retaining a lot of their charm. Personally, I play a lot of TF2, and I tend to have fun regardless of the overall outcome of a match. The culture of the game is extremely casual, with matchmaking being practically non-existent. Because veteran players and fresh installs play in the same lobbies, a lot of veterans got bored of "farm kills" long ago and left the game. Those who stayed, like me, have a lot more fun with the sillier things the game lets you do. TF2 is a game with many weapons to choose from, and many of them are objectively worse than the default weapons everyone gets for free. Stomping on other players is one thing, but trying to stomp on other players with your only weapon being a shovel, that is something else. Newer players have a lot more agency in how they want to play, where they want to play, and if they want to win the match. Classes like medic or engineer do not require good aim to have a DRASTIC impact on a match, even against experienced players. This agency over winning that new players get is maintained by most players in TF2 simply not caring about winning. I don't play the game to win at the end of the match, I play the game to do the dumbest plays imaginable and have it work, or to throw myself into nigh-impossible situations and see what I can do. If I went tryhard I could consistently keep an absurd KDR, around 15, but playing "optimally" just is not fun so I never bother, and usually my KDR barely stays positive. Point is, there are ways to be competitive in a game with the potential for competition, while not making it a "competitive game". I wish more games explored that nuance.
@@smallangrycrab The poster thinks a person who loses is not having fun because he himself is the person not having fun when he is losing, simple as. The point of games is to win, but if your entire enjoyment of games and logic behind it is based on - "winners = having fun; losers = not having fun" then thats a sign of a mental skill issue.
Honestly, my solution to this problem is to make a difference between winning and having fun. I ask myself “how can i have fun regardless of the outcome?” I play rainbow 6 siege and honestly my ranked teammates are more chill than my casual teammates😂. Just try and start a casual/funny conversation and u might be surprised by how chill ur teammates and opponents are.
I'd argue that Elden Ring is super competitive the difference is it's internally competitive it's YOU vs GAME and if something goes wrong it's you not your teammate or something but you just messed up (still a frustrating experience but much more palatable), competitive MULTIPLAYER games are the issue, because given the chance 99% of people won't admit that THEY are the one who messed up when your teammates are nothing but names on a screen and will jump to offloading the blame. It's the reason why even in a super sweaty game you can have fun while losing with friends because if you are on a team, you work together. If a bunch of people are shoved in a room and told they are supposed to work together they will infight as soon as things go slightly wrong. But it's not a solvable issue because it isn't something going wrong it's natural tendencies.
the ending basically summarizes my life's journey through gaming, as a kid i played lots of single player stuff, as a teen i started playing more and more online competitive games with a sprinke of single player and co-op games over it. then, in my early adulthood shifted more towards online co-op games like warframe (god i put so many hours in that baby), until i got really tired of just grinding and solving the meta, understanding every mechanic of the game until i could do any build and take it to max level stuff (we're talking 9999 here) and overleveling my friends till they left or couldnt play anymore because life reasons. now im really loving elden ring, bg3, cyberpunk 2077, fear & hunger, and whatever i have at hand. i just really wish i had a squad to play with again :c
I haven't seen the video yet but wow the last 4 games you listed off I'm currently or have recently played through and enjoyed a lot. My last 30-ish years of gaming experience was similar: Late 1990's I focused a lot on strategy and single player games which carried over until mid 2000s. I still played the former game genres but I then focused more on multiplayer games like Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, command and conquer on the xbox 360, for playstation 2 and 3 other than killzone I only played singleplayer games. After the Ps2 and Xbox 360 era I haven't really enjoyed pvp games as much so I went back to focusing on coop and singleplayer games until the mid 2010s. Went through another strategy game phase and in the late 2010s and I ended up playing a lot more singleplayer games like Devil May Cry, Fromsoft games and plenty of indie games. For most of early 2020s I mainly played singleplayer and coop games with no desire to stick with pvp focused games. I still play Warframe but I never focused on level cap or want to grind excessively so I take regular months long breaks until the next update, then I play it actively for a week or two until I'm satisfied with the new content which leads to me playing indie games or popular/well received games from recent times or older games that were on sale or I feel like replaying. Warframe also doesn't have a set "meta" since a majority of the content is built for and balanced around star chart level (1-30). but you have the personal choice of going to higher levels. Personally I had the most fun with pvp games when it came to Halo 3, Halo Reach, Starwars battlefronts (20-ish years ago), Battlefield 3 and whenever a new pvp focused game is out since everyone is bad. For the first few games listed in this body they were designed for casual play which is why they lasted so long and Halo specifically also had forge mode so everyone was able to make cool maps or game modes of all types which prolonged their replay-ability and offered other casual gamemodes due to a focus on party games that aren't reliant on skill. People come and go though. I ended up making and losing a lot of friends along the way but I still cherish the fun memories we've made. A lot of game companies are also focusing on monetization rather than producing quality products which is why I don't try as much new titles as before.
you should make these more often I think you're good at them it was very interesting. I didn't even realize you only had 7k subs , thats a crime man, the quality of your videos is insane and I think if you continue to make videos like this alongside your other ones you will go places
To summarize: In a multiplayer game without bots. Human players can only win 50% of the time on average. That alone is enough to make casual gaming impossible, don't blame matchmaking. Without balancing, you would win more, but some people wouldn't ever win their games
You brought up The Finals and faced the same problem. Started as heavy and felt like a beast but played as light after a while but then got crushed at at level 18, switched off the game never looked back. Great video. Definitely deserves a like. 😎👍🏻
I don't really agree with the message of this video, since most of this can be solved using perspective. I play some games seriously (Fighting games) and some games casually (Shooters), and my expectations to perform are drastically different from game to game. The metaphorical 'personal skill floor' isn't set in stone, and should be dynamic based on what you're playing and what you want to get out of it. I've got a good friend who I play fighting games with all the time, and even if his winrate against me is poor, he has fun because instead of his goal being "winning" or "performing", he lowers his expectations and is impressed by even doing one or two things that he considers to be cool. (Even if, these 'cool' things to him are ordinary things to high-level players.) As a casual player with no intent of getting "good", your expectations should match your wants. A lot of people get the idea that if they just play casually, or play enough, they'll get 'good', even if sweaty players aren't JUST pressing buttons really fast; a lot of it is decisionmaking and strategy that comes from experience and objective thought. I've entered tournaments for fighting games before, and you can argue that at this level, the game is solved -- but your opponents are not. Every match is feeling one-another out, which keeps it endlessly engaging -- well-designed shooters (and almost any genre imo) have this dynamic as well that becomes 'unlocked' at the higher levels of play. Matchmaking isn't bad (how do you want a system to put you in perfectly fair games with a 0% failure rate, anyway?), your opponents shouldn't be seen as 'sweaty tryhards', and you should first focus on what you want to get out of a game before you commit time to it. If you know you want to keep it casual, you should feel proud for getting a couple of kills or doing something that seems cool to you, not what you are "supposed" to be doing, according to the tippy-top of the playerbase that you may not even interact with anyway, as a large majority of players are in the middle or casual level of play.
Agreed. But the problem is that by goofing off you're letting down your team. And hearing constant "lad you're trash" and "omg did you have a lobotomy?" doesn't help with the fun either. It's much easier to have casual fun in 1v1 games than in team ones
That viewpoint used to be the standard in gaming but I think what this video is attempting to do is point out how the general mentality has shifted among most players. Not everybody is gonna feel the pressure or need to sweat but since a lot of influential people or groups do promote such hard line thinking, it has changed the modern FPS genre playerbase too much. They previously wouldn't have had those "toxic" inclinations in the first place. Competitive gaming in 2005 was a lot more natural because it mainly stemmed from a love of the gameplay as opposed to now where the goal is to be the best in a rat race focused on ranks or betting pools since everyone famous is doing it It's like those sports movies where an old veteran or legend quits because the entire thing became too obsessed over winning than the actual general experience. It's ok to want to be better at something you love but too many people think it's the only reason to like something.
This pretty much sums up my experience with Overwatch. I played on release and it was insanely fun, but once I developed ranked ambitions it ruined the fun for me. Once a meta has formed and oneself and others started to have expectations how a game was meant to be played (especially in ranked) it became less and less fun. I also experience frustrations with games where I know I have a high variance in skill between certain skill sets. I cant aim to save my life but I'd say that I can actively use my brain. When I play games like Hunt or Valorant I struggle to keep up with the mechanical level of my peers but I cringe whenever I see my peers run into the woodchopper because they put themselves into disadvantageous situations for no apparent reason. It angers me when I successfully outplay my opponent on a macro level but then fail to hit and get headshot 1 second later.
Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition (and AoE2 as a whole) for 20 years has never had this problem. This game is casual and competitive at the same time. Especially if you play ranked, no matter what you do or what strategies you do or what you focus, literally everything eventually works. Once your "elo" gets adjusted you can play how ever you want and be able to have fun every single game. And the community is the best gaming community out there. Its relatively cheap, Everyone is super friendly and fun. Literally 0 flaws in this game and its a classic! Still getting updated with new dlc's on the way!
This is EXACTLY what I'm feeling/going through right now with gaming as a hobby and passion. It has been such a central part of my life and friendships, for over 20 years (I'm in my thirties) Games just don't feel "fun" anymore. I feel trapped in the middle of better than a true casual but can't hold on to the sweat and try hard above me. I truly enjoy FPS but it feels like every one of them I pick up now is just a sweaty frustrating mess to play, double so if they are ESPORTS READY, ext. I appreciate this video man. Hopefully, someone can figure out that magic sauce again and bring the magic back to FPS for me.
This is why bots are essential to multiplayer games. Not to populate the main servers or matchmaking, but to help new players skill up from the normal skill floor to somewhere closer to the PvP skill floor without a continuous influx of new players to play against or competitive players kneecapped by having a newb on the team or ruining the experience of new players thrown into a mature meta
It makes the experience a bit weird for players entering with a high skill level though, as playing something like 10 matches against bots might make the game seem not engaging to high level players wanting to try the game
The big issue with highly competitive games is that a lot of people have a horrible time so a few can have fun. To get that 50 person kill streak, 50 others had to die. Add in connection quality or speed, more hardware etc you get into it not being just a skill issue as well. Never mind pay to win games with elite equipment or other advantages you can buy.
That's how I feel as well. Playing PvP it feels like I have to "earn" my fun, since those who perform better get to have more fun. Whereas in co-op or singleplayer games I can just chill, since I'm not competing against a person for my fun, the game is made to be fun for me specifically, not just for the good players. Nowadays I almost never play PvP games unless it's casually with friends, since if we lose we can laugh it off together.
@@spooky4124 I like to think of old school multiplayer, aka split screen or lan connections. You played a small group of people, often your friends and family around the area you live. In general such a small group of people your enemies only got so good. When you go online the world is your opponent, and your often playing against people of all skill levels. Even Pro players in the case of games with them. As even they love to slum in lower ranks to show off for their twitch streams.
Yeah pretty much. Every recent release that has multiplayer has me constantly questioning "How long will it stay fun and casual" and "When will playing it become a job". Lately it doesn't seem to take a week or even a day or two (or even before the game fully releases, looking at you BO6) before playing the game becomes a _chore_ instead of a fun hobby. Balancing of those is especially a messy situation. It's basically a kill switch to any casual players that may have remained. Competetive balancing often boils down to "what's the most popular and 'loved' meta right now and how can we keep reinforcing it" all fun that could be had from variety be damned. The game could have some interesting mechanics that could be extremely fun to perform and play around with, but then the competetive scene's players find out it can counter a part of their main meta and it suddenly has to get thrown into the gutter and executed on the spot for _everyone._ If it throws a wrench into the well established plans, strategies and metas, it has to go in those games. Devs don't agree about the change to something being "required" for competetive? Welp. Now they got a bunch of angry sweats to deal with because what they got used to isn't a perfectly viable thing 24/7 each day, all week, whole month over the years (if the game even survives that long for those kind of players to give a flying damn about anymore). It's kinda why I like Team Fortress 2. Sure meet your match screwed things over for the casual players, but Valve being Valve and abandoning it for the most part, alongside playerbase refusing to let the game die in the current landscape of fps games made it go back to casual fun. There was nothing left to optimise and yelling at the brick wall that is Valve for "competetive changes" ain't working no more so you're left to your own devices with the game to do whatever the hell you want with it. Competetive? Your own servers. Casual vanilla game? Valve's servers and some community ones. Want to turn the game into a different genre entirely? Sure, fuck it, why not, go make your own servers for it.
if you cant even compete in call of duty you have a massive skill issue tbh. its one of the most casual shooters on the planet. tons of noob perks and op weapons and one shot kill grenades and killstreaks you can get free kills with.
@@simplysmiley4670 Aiming in those games is extremely easy, with the ADS and no need to aim for headshots. They dont have much movement tech besides spamming buttons and a little bit of strafe jumping that you can in extremely niche situations use to take shortcuts on some maps. I never had any problem with it even when I was extremely baked and playing lefthanded. If you dont have the reaction time or hand eye coordination to play cod, multiplayer fps games probably arent for you.
Yes. The perfect example is Hearthstone (card game). Card games are meant to be casual, try different combos explore new decks and see how your custom built deck could fare against others. It was a blast in the early days, and after a New expansion. As the game matured, people figured out what worked and what didn't faster and faster. 3rd party apps were developed that tracks stats and the meta. The first few expansion were fun for almost a month after release. After a while though the meta got solved almost a single day after an expansion dropped, and you saw the same cards being played over and over again just a single day after a new expansion. The meta had been figured out so fast. Thats when I quit the game forever, and when I realized pvp games are just a ticking bomb until they become infested with sweaty nerds that will do anything to win, even if it completely goes against the spirit of the game. The ticking bomb seem to go faster and faster since the Internet and rise of communication/analytics/stats and 3rd party apps as tools. This is not how games were meant to be enjoyed.
@@Skumtomten1 the problem with cardstone is that blizzard deliberately included op combos in new expansions to get people to spend money on buying cards to unlock them before they inevitably had to get nerfed. That's not the players fault, it's blizzard.
I might not like matchmaking algorithms, but the UA-cam algorithm is doing numbers with recommending me videos like these from smaller creators, usually with very relaxing and pleasing voices to listen to like yours. I don't play many multiplayer games, let alone in a competitive setting, but from my experiences in the past, this video did touch upon many things in that setting that I never really thought about. I really liked it, and I hope to see more of this kind of content!
Toxic competitiveness. It's the attitude that you should use the easiest possible way to get the most possible wins, at any cost. This is why exploits, meta-gaming, and outright cheating is rampant. The opposing view is being proud of mastering and managing to win with underpowered weapons or without cheesing, and the satisfaction of developing a new skill in order to be successful in honorable competition. Or even just hopping on occasionally to play casually and being "bad," which is totally fine especially once you have a lot of responsibilities.
Casual PvP? It’s a misnomer that doesn’t exist and cannot exist as long as players want to win. This is the reason I prefer PvE for entertainment. PvP becomes sweaty. Always. We all want to become better in what we do and once you do you either face increasingly sweaty opponents (skill-based MM) or you will feel “surrounded by idiots” (random MM).
if you play casually and lose, you'll eventually be put in a skill bracket where playing casually can still get you wins. The real thing that needs to change is peoples perception that a ranked ladder is made to be climbed and instead just accept that all it is, is a way of placing you in a game against people your own level
But that doesn't happen **before** people quit. This isn't about ranked ladders - every pvp mode breaks down into this, and not EVERY game even offers SBMM. Northstar is spot on when talking about knocking casuals off the ladder before they have the opportunity to get good, and having zero enjoyment *attempting* to get good when practice is spending the vast majority of the time staring at a respawn screen. So they go and try and get in on the ground floor of the next game, because there's always something new, rather than break their head on people with 500 hours in ranked pvp forced into casual lobbies because of CBMM or running out of players for SBMM.
@@whatastandupguy3050 Unfortunately, getting a big enough moderation team to handle most online games is financially improbable for most game companies, especially since all those hundreds of moderators themselves need oversight to make sure they don't abuse their power in one of many possible ways. Having good moderation is the fastest way to bankrupt your game. AI tools might help alleviate some of the burden, but I dunno man. It's a rough problem. What's especially rough is that the longer the mods play the game, the better they get, which means your mod team will always be weighted towards the upper skill ranges eventually, which again leaves the lower ranks unwatched.
Great video. I love how you dissected this topic. One thing I'd like to add is the disappearance of dedicated servers. It used to be standard for multiplayer games and has now almost completely disappeared. It has been completely replaced by skill based matchmaking in most games. To me this was the point in time when multiplayer games became unbearably sweaty and not fun. I think a game could generate a lot of hype if it came with dedicated servers these days. Like it could be a major selling point imo. Maybe a dual system where very casual players and very competitive players can use skill based match making and everyone else just plays on servers.
The core problem with competitive gaming is that, by the nature of the game, you have an equal number of winners and losers, and thus averaged across players as a whole, win rate is a fixed 50%. If you don't have SBMM, the lower skill players get farmed until they eventually quit, and as the skill floor rises (due to low skill players leaving the game), more and more players find themselves being farmed and leaving the game. If you do have SBMM, everyone but the top, bottom, and new (and thus not accurately assessed) players have a 50% win rate... and the casual players wind up leaving the game because a 50% win rate doesn't feel satisfying. To the degree a solution exists, it would be in making games where you can lose and still feel good about the experience; most attempts I've seen at this, to the degree they worked at all, involved adding a PvE component.
In team games the solution is to make the game so that even if your team loses rounds, you can still have high individual impact. Most fps games today are now designed very heavily around communication, teamwork and tactics to level the skill gap. Things like having extremely low accurate range on guns, low moving accuracy, tagging, where getting hit slows you down and shakes your crosshair all over the place, slow movement speeds, random spray patterns. This all just makes it harder for someone who is better to carry someone who is worse against 2 average enemies who play close together. This would sound like a good idea to some people, but what it really accomplishes is that having any players on your team that are worse than the lobby average means you are extremely likely to lose. This is frustrating for everyone. Games need to have options for people to express their skill through better mechanics without being punished for it. A better player should be able to take out multiple opponents. Then if someone on your team is slightly worse, you can carry them and they can try to learn and contribute to the game instead of getting flamed for being noob.
@@01pantagruel only if the algorithm can effectively assess individual skill levels of players on the team. For example, in counter strike, the only metric that determines your "skill" is the amount of rounds your team wins vs the enemy team. you can carry every game with 2 kills per round on average, as long as your team only wins 50% of the time, you wont rank up. if the algorithm is designed to take into account individual stats like damage per round, assists, bomb plants, flash assists, teammates traded, opening kills, etc. Then people will start baiting their teammates for stats to rank up instead of trying to play to win rounds with their team. there is no mathematical solution for this problem. it is NP.
@@TheSuperappelflap In a five player game, the average contribution of each player will be 20%. Sure, if there's no/bad SBMM, one player might have a contribution of 50% while another player has a contribution of 5%... but this still runs into the 5% contributors not having fun and quitting the game. The only advantage of team play is that it's easy to (falsely) blame your teammates... but that leads directly to toxic players flaming their teammates.
I was early on player of Rocket League and we took to tournaments with two of my friends. It got so toxic with my teammates that it started to effect my mental health and had to stop playing. I was just ultra sweaty training like 6-10 hours a day.
Thanks for watching! I'm kinda new to these essay-style videos so let me know how I did!
Come chat with me in the community discord! Bonus points if you like Rocket League: discord.gg/eB5Yp83
you did a good job, didn't realize that this was a smaller channel until i was 23 minutes in. first vid of yours i've seen and i'll be keeping an eye out for more.
Very professionally done. But if you allow me this "criticism" it's abit generic. I don't think people coming in will be able to understand the style of your channel from this video, they will enjoy it but it's no different than most gaming channels out there.
I'd say this is a very good baseline to develop a more unique and identifiable editing style. It is more risky but it'll result in more authentic and imo enjoyable videos
git gud skrubs
@@kommandokodiak6025
Become an hero.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines felted you and i dont even know who you are
Fortnite is actually a perfect example of what you were explaining in the BattleBit segment. When the Battle Royale mode came out it was hugely popular a lot of people really enjoyed it but a year on the player counter was dropping as there were more and more people mastering the building mechanics in the game which a large portion of people didn't like dealing with.
Then they had that fun little mode where building was disabled and suddenly a HUGE wave of people either picked it up for the first time or they came back because the building mechanics were unfun to them. It was so popular now they just have a zero-build mode permanently.
which. is. a. good. thing.
zero build fortnite to someone who doesn't want to grind a game for months to be able to eiffel tower in 3 seconds is infinitely more fun than getting one shot off on them, seeing them construct all the wonders of the world at mach speed, only for them to snipe u from a pixel gap at the very peak of said structure
@@TouruZen It’s super funny because when my friends ask “do you want to play Fortnite”, the question is really “do you want to play no build” and if building is enabled we all let the party leader know because we assume it’s a mistake
attempting to shoot someone that keeps building walls to cover themselves is the most unfun thing I have ever seen. No idea how anyone likes it.
Reminds me of double shield meta of overwatch that killed the game for me. Shooting rectangles was never my udea of entertainment.
Interestingly, I find zero build less exciting to watch as it removes something that makes the game unique.
I’ve reached the point where I just don’t want to spend my free time stressed and constantly trying to perform. It’s just simply not worth my time.
This sums it up for me perfectly. When winning becomes more of a relief than a thrill, it's not worth it, e.g. playing killer in Dead by Daylight
This comment sums it up for me. I have started actively avoiding most multiplier games (i.e. tarkov, rust, eve online) as they just became unfun.
@crnoo2779 But why would you be stressed? It's a video game. It doesn't matter. I have fun in games whether I'm winning or losing; because they're literally just a video game and I play to have fun, not win.
Okay, what's your point? Is someone forcing you to play EPL? There are millions of casual games and almost every competitive game has casual modes... Play the games that don't stress you out and enjoy yourself.
I agree. Used to play R6S religiously, and it was miserable. Now I hop on the odd multiplayer game when friends call me on, but mostly am just playing story games or Minecraft single player.
I feel that there's less incentive to have a causal playstyle in most pvp games. There's not much reward to messing around and finding your own enjoyment in the games mechanics, so everyone subconsciously defaults to a tryhardy playstyle. If the majority of players are improving and following the meta, you're left to either adapt or abandon the game
i feel like this is why "trolly" types of characters in a game is very important and shouldn't be overlooked, they provide a kit for people who likes experimenting, trying something new and be unpredictable. It gives these players incentives to find new ways of utilizing that unpredictable kit. I feel like this is why LOL became so successful, even though meta existed, so much champions, items and player skills and expression became a factor that many players instead focused on trying all of the things they could think of, now that RIOT is kind of leaning away from all of that, so many players aren't enjoying the game as much, as there is only a little bit of playstyle variety left and not a lot of room for experimentation. I also think fighting games utilize "trolly" characters much more better with characters like Yoshimitsu and the likes.
You mean to adapt or get a job
Or at least give the means for players to make their own casual place. Case in point the counter strike and team fortress franchises.
@@1x5x7that is the saddest and lame way to put it you should be able to play the game your own way and at your own pace it's why some single player games can be a good thing to do but if you want to play something multiplayer try coop or something that can be chilled like battlefield or tf2
@@ryuu42namizaki79 Trolldier
Some of my friends have basically been getting into video games for the first time lately and it's interesting to see how... utterly unfriendly to beginners many games are.
PUBG PC is a legitimate nightmare. Absolutely nothing in that game is beginner friendly.
@@DrSwazzbattle royals are an advanced game genre that I would never suggest a new gamer start with
@@BitTheByte True
Its the Meta mindset. Essentially before you used to learn to play while playing. Now people expect you to essentially take a course on the game before you actually play it. People have optimized the fun out of games and are also extremely against any methods that might stop Metas from forming. Example: V rising playing a new server now, the game is essentially on late game and hardy playable after 3 days cause people max out castles due to optimized farming routes and builds.
@@reason8439 Its certainly not my main genre but I've played games and some amount of shooters all my life. PUBG was absolutely brutal you have no tracers on bullets so you can't tell how your bullets are traveling over long distances on top of a heavy bullet drop compared to most shooters, Bullet impact is also very minimal I could only tell if i hit someone from afar when I actually hit them because of the blood splatter.
On top of that most people know to take cover so you'll realistically only be shooting the shoulders and up, that coupled with random weapons made the game absolutely brutal. It wasn't hard to get into the top 8 or so off of just picking up basic gear and camping but getting into a fight was either a close range bullet slug fest, getting gunned down running down the road because I couldn't find a car or being unable to figure out the bullet drop off against all the different guns. Its definitely a type of game you need to watch before you play it knowing adjacent games in the genre simply isn't enough. I'd consider it more friendly then the camper heavy COD warzone by a fair bit.
Personally I think one of the issues with modern pvp games is the insistence on 5v5 or 6v6 team size format. "Back in the day" when you'd have 16v16, or sometimes even 32v32 matches in games like CS 1.6, Quake or Unreal Tournament, it didn't matter nearly as much if your team won or lost, as your personal contribution was usually much more limited. So what truly mattered was the fun of the experience. But when you're supposed to contribute full 20% of your team's effectiveness, suddenly the outcome of a match matters much more.
true
@@Askorti when I ask friends why they don't like games with bigger team sizes, they say that they don't like having only a small impact on the outcome of a match. So it definitely goes both ways.
Having a 16v16 balanced lobby is a herculean task and the moment the game starts losing players by any reason it will be funneled into a death spiral as nobody could find game
You don’t need balance lobby, back days we just use auto select in CS - rotating players, was ok . Golden time of ftp servers
@@serhiizinkivskyi3464 it's not the early 2000s where a handful of game are effectively monopolies in their genre and people threw their future away to grind them anymore
Oh my goodness. You described perfectly how I feel about Deadlock. "Wow this is fun. There's no way i'm playing this for long"
same haha
exactly my recent thoughts, seeing al these sweat mechanics, sucking out all the fun.
when i first learnt about deadlocked i thought "this will die so fast"
you forgot to mention the awful performance it has
yeah same
The cod community doesn’t like cod. That’s the problem. They hold onto hope that the next will be better, praise it for a week, then say it’s the worst one ever a month in. I’m sure if you keep buying the game and it’s micro transactions it will improve. People never learn.
Every community doesnt like it's game. I am in chat with some of the skilled builders from Space Engineers and they quite often write how they dislike devs and state of game.
the cod community agrees that mw2019 is the latest best cod. But IW actively killed the game and doesn't update it anymore. They actively made the game worse when MW2 released (removed maps, removed playlists, etc...), to force players to the new mw, even tough it's objectively worse.
@@vivago727 Agreed. MW2019 was the last CoD we all had fun in. It had it's issues, but the gun sounds, gun feel, ttk, etc all just felt right and it felt fast when we discovered slide canceling. The gunsmith was actually one of my favorite additions.
MW2019 also had really clean aim with reasonable recoil. The newer games introduced this dumb aim sway, visual recoil, and visual particle clutter that makes playing on KBM a worse experience than playing on controller.
Cold war was a non-starter. Vanguard was an insult to god. MW2 was objectively the most hated cod in recent history, and MW3 is just MW2 with EOMM/SBMM tuned so hard you can't even scratch your balls without someone hearing you and pre-firing you around a corner. That on top of the rampant cheating in the higher skill brackets (3 K/D+).
@@Tobiasnelius Dont forget doors. Not sure who thought it was a good idea to make players stop and press X to open doors all the time, or sprint through them and put yourself at a disadvantage if there is an enemy watching said door.
@whyiwakeup6460 ironically, this last issue also goes towards gamers in general. "Damm, this 70$ game that I bought on release has a lot of bugs, and it sucks. I'm pretty sure the next one won't disappoint me."
A great example of this is Star Wars: Squadrons. That initial "casual" period was great - you get to fly Star Wars ships! - but difficult-to-learn exploits in the game engine quickly became the backbone of player-versus-player matches, which killed its prospects of longevity. No casual player was going to stick around after that.
Even though I don't fully agree with it, Blizzard solved this problem by banning people who used glitches to their advantage.
@@gmodrules123456789 then you're a hypocrite, It's either all glitching/exploiting is bad, or none of it is bad... You cant pick and choose what exploits are/aren't ok...
@@kasper7574
Glitches are bad. But you you need to fix them. Banning people is a half measure
Battle Bit early tester here. Your take is spot on. I've pretty much stopped playing because of the sweat. I don't have any problem with all the funky mechanics and jank, but the anti-teamplay sweat killed the game. No one uses proxy chat any more which was its most fun feature. No one really even team plays at all, they just sweat around working on their K/D.
@@bennyb.1742 I also played the early tests of battlebit and I strongly agree with this take, when I played the game on play test/launch it was full of people talking in the proxy vc and now it’s almost DEAD silent
What is best graphics settings for battlebit to destroy other players?
Battlebit disappoint me. I try when it's free and it feel like cod and not milsim. Where is proximity chat and teamplay that youtuber promotes as plus.
Used to play battlebit casually and yeah it sorta just really wasn’t fun from the sweats. Truthfully, I enjoy playing insurgency sandstorm. Basically realistic shooter that allows you to fuck around since everything and anything is viable.
At first the game was fun becuz of all the goofy stuff I did with random ppl on open mic, then it turned into a sweat or die game over time. Stopped playing before I knew it.
Ain't got no energy to sweat after work :/
The Finals got in a negative feedback loop where there weren't enough players to get a fair matchmaking so high level players got matched up with noobs and stomped them, which in turn made the noobs leave before they could get good, which made the problem worse and worse...
@@SiKELLI same happened with quake champions
@@SiKELLI same with titanfall 2, which sucks because I really liked both those games
Same with XDefiant. These games that try to recreate 2010 era where people no-life for a few handful of games are not working out so well
@@ZZWWYZ the thing that keeps me from comparing tf2 and the finals to games like xdefiant is that xdefiant was a grindfest for guns, equipment, and attachments. Tf2, other games from the early 2010’s, and the finals had quick progression which meant that the skill ceiling was less attributable to what your “class setup” was, and more with how you had mastered the mechanics. I wouldn’t put games like xdefiant that die due to a repetitive gameplay loop and lack of noticeable progression to older games with a more cult following, simply because newer games, especially AAA, are more subject to microtransactions and player retention gambits being present.
@@hess5216yeah yeah it's always some other reasons.
The fundamental issue with PvP is that if the only enjoyment comes from winning, at least half the players won't have fun.
Agreed. This is why Fighting Games, another PVP game, don't have as much playerbase since you lose more than you win.
Previous Battlefield games were the perfect solution for this. Playing a Medic or Support or Engineer or something allowed you to play a role and not have to constantly put yourself in direct firefights in order to contribute, make an impact and have fun. Even if your team loses, you'll likely have had some thrilling moments that make it feel rewarding. That whole dynamic really needs to come back for the next BF, cuz it caters to both hardcore players but also those without the reflexes of a 15 year old who plays competitive FPS games 10 hours a day.
Gears of war 3 there was no rank only personal level and nobody cared about that people just hopped to get better and to kill enemies you could lose or win but if you were top frag EVERYONE knew you were the best player in that lobby and it was fine, basically everyone was trying to win in their own way and everyone was fine with it, you could be annoying and use only rifles or be a god and use the gnasher and wallbounce or be a pro and use the sniper and headshot no-scope everyone all was fine, all were a challenge to deal with and all felt good to get a kill with
This is why i believes deep rock galactic is the best game
Everyone wins in it
And the loot is shared equally
@@abd-animation-22there are lot of tryhards in drg. Not everyone, of course, but a lot. And they are toxic, as always 😁
You're describing a phenomenon I've been studying for over a decade, which I have named "Competitive Gameplay Reduction". This is the trend in all PvP games where enjoyment decreases as player skills grow and Dominant Strategies become increasingly the norm, often completely overthrowing the designer's original intention for the users experience.
Best example here is: Most (if not all) so called "Strategy" games (RTS) usually devolve into speed-management rapid clicking contests. The original notion of making tactical decisions like a battlefield commander goes out the window, and the sheer number of orders given vastly outweighs the tactical merits of each of them.
Shooters tend to devolve into amphetamine-grade twitch reaction competitions. Few are the games out there where tactical movement and careful aiming of each shot counts much at all against the higher "skilled" speed-freak type players (or more commonly than ppl think, plain old cheaters)
I have yet to see a PvP game design that survives contact with all-out competitive players. There are a number of people out there who seem to derive their "fun" exclusively from winning, rather than enjoying the experience that leads there. These players will "reduce" the game, killing off any features or mechanics that don't offer the highest possible advantage. This usually introduces detrimental emergent dynamics (eg: How Squad44 logistics can overrun any opposition when employing in a speed-run tactic) and this can easily wear down on a playerbase, driving away players by anything from ragequitting frustration to long term attrition of the overall enjoyment.
There is little actual Science about this. So far, most developers seem to just throw stuff at the wall and hope something will stick, as far as ideas go to deal with this.
I'm more and more of the opinion that the Gaming Industry needs its own equivalent of NASA. An organization devoted to researching best game design practices, understanding their effects and how player behavior affects the results of each decision. Providing solid scientific advisory and establishing industry standards, so that a wrong step doesn't have to ruin the careers of hundreds of people and waste millions of dollars, as it usually does with today's all too frequent failed attempts at design by trial-and-error.
I mean you won't. I don't agree with your sentiment about shooters and RTS. I think you reduce their depth way too much to their mechanics but it doesn't even matter. PvP games are naturally going to attract competitive people which is going to make the games inherently competitive. I don't think it's really that complicated.
PvP games aren't any different than any other sport and I'm sure you know how competitive those are right? Highly skill dependant. If you play casually you're going to get destroyed by someone that's been playing 8 hours a day for years. This isn't unusual there. Why is it unusual in games? Because it's a video game?
Where games fail is matchmaking in my opinion. We still have no effective ways to put similarly matched people against each other in video games, especially in team based ones. So you absolutely should get crushed by someone who has min/maxed the hell out of the game...the issue is that you shouldn't ever be matched against this person in the first place. I'm certainly not going to try to go on to a D1 soccer pitch and try to keep up. The idea is laughable and I'm not going to have any fun doing it.
@@Setixir did you even read the comment before posting?
I'd be interested if you have published anything on this topic.
It's interesting how tf2 accidently provides a solution. The community has a spectrum of players who range from casual to competitive, but the game caters to all because casual players tend to stick to the maps (and gamemodes) that don't reward skill expression. From a competitive mindset, these maps are poorly designed, so optimizers avoid them. It's difficult to express just how miserable these maps are to those who want to play the objective, and so they're a hotbed of stalemates, meme strats, camping, friendlies, taunt kills, new player bullying, DMing, etc.
The big problem is that it can take a while for new players to identify the pattern and realise to which maps they are best suited.
@@OfMoachAndMayhem Glad to hear someone's on the science side of this. Good stuff
agree completely... especially your theory of reducing... the most common example I see is the demand for better and better graphics, but the competitive players immediately turn them off (most common IMO being grass in shooters) for maximum FPS..
As I get closer to my 30s, I turned away from pvp games to casual games that I can pick up and put down any time I want. I don't need more stress and frustration after work, I just need to relax and have fun.
I also turned to real life hobbies like guitar and fencing, becuz these hobbies never run into the End of Service problem
Amen. Games are supposed to be fun, not head bashing sessions. I've never regretted the day I stopped playing Dota 2.
Also hitting my 30s soon and now feels like its been years since I played a pvp game. Online games are still my favourite genre after open world single player ones but I only play PvE ones now like warframe. A big part is probably that Im a crappy gamer since i was a kid (my only achievement is being in the top 100 online ranking in 3 naurto ultimate ninja storm games but nothing else) but I believe that in a game i would need to grind more time than what I have or else I either have a terrible time by not winning a single game or even worse making others have a bad time by dragging the team down.
The best example is trying to play fortnite once with my cousin and absolutely not at all getting the speedbuilding meta right.
I'm a Gen X gamer and I will tell you that there was definitely a wall I hit where the games got so hyper speed that I felt I needed to be hopped up on Adderall to even make a good showing.
@@hotpenguin607 that’s where I’m at. I’m 40, I’ve got a family and career. On a good night I can get an hour of gaming in. I just wanna jump on run some rounds with my buddies and then go to bed. It’s why Helldivers 2 had so much potential before they messed it all up
Incredibly based and I do feel and act exactly the same way. Instead of trying to sweat in multiplayer, I now sweat throwing around my weights and I do feel I get better rewards by doing this - both physically and mentally.
I miss online gaming before ranked matchmaking systems existed. Just a server browser that gave you a huge selection of servers with gameplay of your choosing. If people wanted that experience, they played clan matches, modded stat tracking servers or third party tournaments. Majority of the playerbase is casual and plays for fun, they don't play to get abused by those who don't play for fun but for competition. Nothing kills a game faster than it's casual playerbase leaving.
pokemon showdown exists :troll:
I've been preaching this. I'm one of the people who enjoyed "Clan matches" back in the day. We had to go to websites to set up time & date. It definitely sorted out the trolls & non competitive types out & made people actually want to work together as a team.
Make. Losing. Fun.
The problem with these games is that losing feels bad.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 PlanetSide 2 wins at this very thing a lot. You're in a battle so huge that the losing a skirmish is likely met with GG in thoughts and a retreat to a nearby territory or moving to a better front to fight.
@@nightraven836 odd, but feels kind of rigth speaking from memory
why should i try to win then if losing will feel better and more fun
Had one game of Battlefront 2 that was very back and forth
it was SO MUCH FUN. I don't even remember if I won or lost, I just remember how we pushed them out of our ship TWICE before we made it onto theirs...
I wish for more games where the fights feel evenly matched and very back and forth.
makes the games so fun that you stop caring if you win or lose
one sided battles do not feel fun.
the unfortunate part?
devs can only do so much to ensure this happens
it's not really within their control
and it's also rarely within the players control
@@morgensheeeern it doesn't have to be *more* fun than winning. Look at something like Titanfall 2. If your team loses, respawns get turned off and all your surviving players try to make it to an escape ship for a little bonus. You at least get something to do and compensate for your loss somewhat instead of just sitting there and taking it.
The "solving the fun out of games" is why I gave up RTS MP games - they're at least 90% numbers games and once you're matched agaist pros who know the best build queues the fun just dropped off.
Thats the reason I could never get into MP RTS games, sucks.
Isn't that just knowing the basic mechanics of the game?
@@damil5721 Not at all.
The basics are just the base requirements to beat the campaign. In an RTS you need to MEMORIZE the most optimal build orders used online. Discarding a large part of the game in the process.
And it isn't something you can learn yourself either. Because those strats have been built over years of metas and is far too much for you to learn in a reasonable time by playing on your own.
Take Warcraft 3 for example. Siege units are vastly useless. Only existing to counter some cheese and being the only reason said cheese is risky. Some heroes simply don't work well and in the competitive scene the game is decided as soon as one of the heroes falls too low on HP, rarely getting a game that goes past T2.
In SC2, if you want to play zerg, you have to follow a build order and react to the other races with a specially tailored build order. Against other zerg there is only 1 viable build and the most positive opinion i've heard about it is "at least it ends quick".
If you play terran, you have to spam marines and medivacs. Thors are a T3 that only exists to counter the massing of specific units. Reaper is literally made ONCE per match at the beginning and NEVER again.
Protoss is a mess. The units are so expensive and powerful that you either count EVERY single one you make or die to the numbers tipping slightly off.
And these are issues that happen in all RTS.
@@damil5721 Not really. There is this assumption that if one is a fan of RTS games, they must also play them with a high-level competitive/e-sport style mindset. That the whole point of the genre is to optimize and adhere to whatever the "meta" happens to be in a given patch cycle. In reality. The RTS genre started as a much, much more "casual" affair where (believe it or not) players got (kinda) immersed in the "I am commanding a military force" fantasy and didn't view it as some kind of sporting event.
In what RTS game will you be matched against pros when you aren't one? Must have a population of like 10 people. Starcraft II, for example, while being pretty old at this point still has a ton of players that are complete shit at the game. Noob leagues there are pretty chill.
Battlebit legit got ruined for me, I played it believing it to be more like older Battlefields where teamplay mattered but you could still be goofy only for the game to become a twichy wiggleshooter where you sprint around all the time. If I wanted that I could've kept playing bf2042. Not even blaming the devs, the game blew up in their hands I also wouldn't know what to do with 3 people working on it.
I just started playing battle bit 2 months ago and at least as a new player coming from a lot of competitive FPS experience battlebit is heaven for me
Maybe not buff the self healing item everyone gets as a base would of been a decent place to start.
No, you can purely blame people like Oki on the game becoming like that, he's genuinely the reason why the game went down into the dumps, they're doing some "big update" but they're so braindead that they don't actually make any bugfix updates or balancing patches.
Main I feel ya, used to play with my buddies fucking around. And then SMGs became laser beams that kill instantly even in a head to head fire fight when you had a proper assault rifle.
@@styxriverr5237 Yeah. I just can't justify using an AR or even a Battle Rifle in BattleBit anymore since SMGs dome you with ease at the ranges where the ARs and BRs can hit targets decently.
Here's my hot take. PVP is inherently competitive and has always been, but games used to get around this roadblock to casual enjoyment by having a server browser where you could find a chill private server full of other casual players. In fact this still exists in games that still have server browsers, like Squad or Mordhau/Chiv 2 or TF2. Server browsers and private servers let casual players willingly separate themselves from the competitive crowd and enjoy/learn the game at their own pace. The simplest way to solve the problems of casual players in competitive games would be to reintroduce this feature instead of brainstorming how to make losing a competitive game not suck.
People keep talking about these chill, low time investment friendly TF2 servers, where people who aren't very good can play at their own pace against other people who aren't very good, and that sounds like EXACTLY what I'm looking for. I don't want to goof off and taunt all day or that sort of thing, but I also don't want to get stomped by people who are just way, way better than me in terms of raw twitch skill reaction speed and all that. I just want to play my not-very-good best against like minded, and skilled, players, with no particular focus on getting better. Just have fun as my sub-par self.
The problem is, I can never, ever find any actual names of these seemingly mythical casual friendly servers to look for. People talk about these servers in general, but nobody seems to know of any useful specifics. Or they're some sort of super closely guarded secret I'm not to be trusted with.
So whats to stop a good player from going there and stomping everyone? Just sounds like a perfect feeding ground.
@@AWanderingSwordsman Thats a result of all this competitive gameing, people becoming jaded and bitter. But, don´t worry, games that have such server systems have alot less players like that. As the game doesn´t generated such awfull people through being highly competitive.
Does not sound like it solves the issue. I tend to play off-meta strategies very well, so I would curbstomp casual players with the wierdest stuff, but the meta tryhards are too unplesant to play with or against so I have no place to play.
Where will I go? My answer is to stick to extremely rng heavy games because it forces the tryhards to use non-meta tools.
This is the wrong assumtion i hear alot. Just because a game has PvP, doesn´t mean its inherently competitive. Else, games like garrys mod and minecraft would not excist. Back in the 90s/early 2000s the default attitude for gaming was to immerse yourself and have fun. But around 2010 marketing took over and tryed its hardest to push competitive games, as they smelled alot of revenue potentional there. You know, E-Sport. The same counts for microtransactions, "Grafical Fidelity" and much much more.
The longer a MP game exists, the bigger the skill wall one has to climb to actually be able to enjoy it.
So true man. This is why single player games are superior. Don’t gotta worry about little Timmy or sweat lord 69 sniping my ass and then tea bagging after
This is why i just don't play PVP games. I have slow reflexes due to some brain issues and EVERYONE is just so damn fast and i get nothing but stomped and its no fun. I stopped playing PVP years ago because of the skill wall. And it only gets worse over tyime.
@@draglorr5578 Myself, I have strong enough ADHD and I cannot bring myself to stick with a competitive game long enough to actually get good enough to really, really enjoy myself. I reached a point where the average playerbase in League of Legends was *so* sweaty that I had to decide between stomping the hardest bots into paste or having the same happen to me against literally any players. I gave up and stopped playing competitive games pretty well at all since then. It's been half a decade or so since then.
@@draglorr5578 there need to be more pvp games that aren't just twitch reflex based.
@@Zectifin There's strategy games, turn-based and 4K. There's card games, but it's hard to find one that isn't a money pit. There's also team fighters, but most of them are gatcha games. There's racing games, only simulation games race competitively. And finally, fighting games, but you have to be prepared to make a commitment to learn or you will lose for eternity.
Esports and streamer culture really ruined casual gaming
I've had a beef with esports since their beginning. I had a strong hunch that nothing good will come out of pushing competitive/seriousness in gaming.., and I couldn't have been more right in the long run.
i rlly enjoy esports
This is one of the main reasons
With lobbies you could stay with people you vibe with and leave when you don't. Matchmaking throws everyone together, trolls, sweats, casuals etc.
Same with private servers back in the 90s/early 00s. Servers would develop their own "culture" and playstyle.
@@todesziege Yeah, I miss that. Gaming really hit its peak 10 years ago, that's at least what it feels like.
Here's something annoying: Timesplitters Future Perfect had lobbies, but wait for it, after a game it booted everyone back to the menu.......... no fun getting your custom map full of people having a great time then just emptiness before you can let them loose on the others.
Unless you play apex then no one has fun.
@@19CD91bro apex is sweaty as fuck wdym?
I finally understand the focus on the "Turf War" mode in Splatoon and the inclusion of the single player games. It's how you keep the casuals coming back and give people a more controllable experience without leaving the main game.
It is actually a really well designed mode, specifically because it's not that fun if you want to take it seriously, it's a gamemode where only the last 30 seconds count, which is interesting.
This is actually something some people have noted with RTS games, where a good single player campaign helps draw in that initial casual crowd, while additional tools like custom map builders and arcade games keep less pvp oriented players engaged.
Giant Grant Games (GGG) has a whole video on this concept and I think it’s something that can be applied (in some ways) to other PvP games.
@@PalgineerToo many modern games forget about the importance of a good campaign.
yea, CooP game mode or just a PvE version of the regular game with tunable difficulty is just nice when you don't feel like pushing to the limits of your ability.
As someone who hit burnout on Splatoon 1’s competitive mode. I couldn’t agree more.
The problem with every game trying to fit the "Games as a Service" model is that not every game should be a "Games as a Service" title. More and more these days, I just want a really solid single player experience. And there's still a huge market for it.
@@theKashConnoisseur this video is talking precisely about multiplayers why are you even mentioning single player? There's plenty of single players out there
@@laius6047 hot take: helldivers 2 "game as a service" works against the fun of the game the "narrative" element is cringe and as a matter of fact even is the player stop fighting the automaton they will misteriously do a U turn because the devs didn't plan for it
hell diver would already have
-more content
-No PSN login
-and i don' tknow if you heard about this TINY bit of the PC comunity: mods
helldivers 2 live service is dripfed content at best a "gee i wonder if alexius gonna nerf the game"/"this weapon is fun to play with it BEFORE THE DEVS TAKE THE FUN AWAY"
and even now as the recent update remade the game fun because it's a life service all me and my friends can think of is "quick let's have fun before weapon start turning to useless again"
live service game are a threat to fun because if you have too much right away you can't make enticing battle passes
@@laius6047 Most "multiplayer" games have a single player story mode, even those that do games as a service. I'm responding to a specific comment within the video, not the whole video as a monolith. I'm not sure why that's a problem to you, any comment helps the video through increased engagement.
There is a big market for single player games but game producers of big games don’t want big markets. They want the biggest market. That’s why they release a 70 dollar game with seasons passes and a skin marketplace. So regardless if a lot of players don’t like it. The ones treating it like a day job or massive streamers will keep it afloat with all the skin sales
@@sawyerbrown19111 Space Marines 2 would beg to differ.
No matchmaking for good players: "I can try all sorts of builds and still succeed"
No matchmaking for bad players: "No matter what build I try, I still lose"
It IS a zero sum game, if you focus on winning.
I'd love to see statistics on how likely good vs bad players are to play unranked modes in games with both.
I tried explaining that I want my EFT arena rank to go lower faster so I can play. People were very confused, 'what, so you can smurf?' 'Why do you want to play with the bad people'. I AM BAD AT THE GAME :D
Very telling how rare it is for bad players to stick with a game or actually talk about the mechanics involved. OP is too good at FPS games to natively understand low skill players.
one of the problems with competitive games having a casual mode without matchmaking is that it can easily devolve into a stomping ground of competitive players who are tired of the grind and want to wipe the floor with casuals to refill their ego, only having matchmaking very crudely at least solves this (except when people start smurfing)
Most high level players smurf so they can try new strategies and experiments without negatively impacting the ranking of their main account which makes competitive games less fun for new and casual players.
the easy solution is dedicated custom server options. In Tf2 if i want to sweat, i go to uncletopia. If I feel like messing around, i go to 64 player dustbowl
Professionals shouldn’t even play the same games as the rest of us. I wasn’t playing NBA regulation ball in highschool, that woulda been insane. Even if I’d tried really hard and warmed a bench for a college team we woulda been playing in a very different ruleset that the actual paid professionals.
I think the solution to that is to have a game type variety, the classic Halo games were the gold standard for non-ranked competitive multiplayer in their heyday mostly (imo) because they had a huge variety of social and competitive matchmaking playlists to choose from ranging from straightforward team deathmatches of multiple sizes and metas to silly oddball game types with loads of different unique objectives. And then of course a thriving custom games community with an endless amount of community designed maps and gametypes almost as synonymous with the game's multiplayer as the official matchmaking itself.
Too often now a competitive multiplayer scene relies solely on 1-3 game types, mostly different versions of each other.
This is a result of having a competitive mode AND a casual mode. Most players are going to be of average skill, so most of your matches over time in a non matchmaking system should be with and against average players. People who lose more often than not in a situation where there is no matchmaking would be below average players, and people who win more often than not would be above average. When you add a competitive mode to the mix, you split the player base, you get a situation where all the below average players who want to refill their egos as you put it basically play competitive exclusively. Sure they have to deal with more smurfs, more trolls, and more horrendously bad players, but if they were to play with no matchmaking at all they'd probably lose even more often, since the matchmaking system is trying to artificially inflate their win rates. This shifts the bell curve to the left so that most players are probably above average, and your average players are now the ones getting stomped.
The lack of incentive for team-play is something that plagues every modern multiplayer game.
The Battlefield franchise has been absolutely obliterated over the past decade due to this.
Tbf, arguably the most toxic and hated games are teamwork based ones. LoL, CS, Valorant, Dota, Siege, Rocket League. All games where you contribute 20% to the outcome of the game.
Teamwork is cool and all, but is it really that fun when you get killed in Battlefield, hold the button the game tells you to so you don't bleed out, see a medic right above your body, he looks at you, he's not being shot at, he's not shooting at anyone, and then proceed to run off instead of using a defib on you?
The mechanics can be in the game, but they won't do anything if your teammates are the equivalent of playing with 5yo special needs kid
@@TheFABIOCOOL Depends on the size of teams. If you have a 40v40 or 50v50 like in Squad 44, you REALLY have to screw up to make people mad.
Cooperative/Competitive games (aka Team Games) usually have the most toxic environments of all, because not only are you regularly getting beat-down by people who are just as good or better than you - you have a team of several other people you can *blame it on*, regardless of whether your own performance was up to par.
The least toxic games are generally Cooperative V Environment games, like Deep Rock Galactic, where the team is in fact purely cooperative, and you can have a fixed array of difficulties that allows everyone to play to their own preferences. If you like to get beat ~20% of the time, you can select a challenge level that'll do that for you. If you just want to casually crush bugs, you can keep coasting on low levels and just hang out with the team. HD2 is similar in that regard - as long as you ignore discussion forums, the IN game environment is generally very relaxed.
@@revanofkorriban1505 Yeah, it's true that if you're going to go with team competitive, a big team makes it less problematic. It doesn't allow for as many 'hero' moments or hard carries, but by the same token someone who isn't doing well isn't very noticeable and can easily be covered for.
00s was all about teamwork and social, now its just me me me and my mmr number
I think it mostly stems from one big, fundamental design flaw: That the only way to have fun is by winning. You get a game that boils down to a competition to see who can get the most kills, because more kills = more dopamine. This extends to games designed to be esports, because they care even less about being fun, only being 'balanced'. Look at the Finals, or Rainbow Six, or Overwatch, or League, all the worst offenders for being 'sweaty and toxic' games - they're all esports and made to be one.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason Team Fortress 2 has lasted so long is because it does everything it can to encourage players to make their own goals and make sure that the objective is something that just happens while you're doing whatever. Virtually nothing is completely reliant on a teammate to function, you don't need to have all players properly positioned to get to play the game, the longer TTK keeps the game from being as feast-or-famine as a game where whoever clicks first wins, blah blah blah. Virtually never does a player lose agency because of what a teammate is (or rather, isn't) doing.
Heavy leviathan god time, Baby. (Triple Vaccinator giving every resistance, maybe a stock too for lulz)
I often think this is why I could sink so much time on COD BO2. There were so many goals: difficult camos, diamond camo to encourage getting every one, tryharding for nukes, quickscoping , trick shooting, camping with friends.
I wonder if modern shooters don’t do as much to diversify, or maybe I was just a kid who was happier to not be the best.
@@manoflead643 oh, Rainbow Six... I spent so many evenings in this game. Played every day. And the reason i liked it so much is because you can just hold your ground as defence team and slowly approach to your goal and wipe enemy with good prepared attack with attack team. The game created so much tension without reliance on pure mechanical skill. At least that was in first year-two. After that i remember reading "Ubisoft is advancing eSports scene" and the feeling of the end covered me. And i was right, first they banned all "unbalanced" maps in rating mm, and every hero patch added new traps heroes, so defence players could just run all building to hunt you down (and you are attacking team!) and you can't use it to got the objective, because the objective room is more like puzzle rooms from SAW. And as defence you should run all building around, because siting in the toilet is not an effective style anymore. I don't know what changed in the past years, don't play the game anymore. Shame, I really liked it.
@@RakNeubienniy R6S was such a fun and engaging game. I loved to find creative ways to use the destruction system
While i "Mostly" agree some items in tf are not working in favor of that second statement
Mainly many snowball weapons can take your agency as a player away cause you got JohnGonzalles.2012 feeding the enemy kills buffing their weapons to a point you have no counterplay
(Weapons that come to mind but not exclusiveyl: Bazaar bargain, Eyelander, Diamondback)
When Call of Duty decided to replace their matchmaking with EOMM in 2019, 'every' single one of those guys that they were keeping like a quarantine zone infiltrated anything they possibly could to start optimizing the fun out again, exacerbating the mechanical arms race for PC games even harder. I know this because shooters on ROBLOX funnily enough never felt like unplayable stress simulators prior to this era. Not even infamously sweaty games like Bad Business. The likelihood of you joining a *unranked* public server on *Arsenal* just to run into a kill feed full of headshots for 15 seconds is WAY higher than it was 5-6 years ago before all those "Best perk & setup for BO4 BO3 blah blah blah" lunatics poured in. And that's saying a lot considering RNG is supposed to be against you in that game.
Meanwhile on console, the platform I'm especially not as proficient at, I don't even feel this arms race as much, *even with a lot of post-launch shooter titles.* America's Army Proving Grounds before the servers shut off, BF2042, CoD WW2--their console versions never felt like they were 'as' filled with tryhards trying to optimize the fun out of everything. I mean you had a higher chance of running into a 12 year old black child who has got no clue what planet he was on than on ANY of these games PC versions. Even in console GTA Online with the dedicated Rockstar Created Deathmatch Maps I 'still' find more clueless idiots than anyone else could probably hope to find on the PC version.
There is simply no reason to play any shooter on PC anymore other than to compete as a result of this. The mechanical arms race for PC has DEMOLISHED casual play in comparison to console. You either have to completely re-practice your playstyle to something you never liked, or you HAVE to go to console now where the bigger populations especially reduce your chances of running into these "optimizers" (unless it has forced SBMM lmao)
If it isn't a specific shooter I've familiarized myself with for years or offers dramatic playstyle changes to counteract sweats like in Battlefield, I literally *hesitate* to play *new* PvP shooters on PC. It's cancer what developers and playerbases both do to these games on this platform. I'm effectively using a $1,000 setup just to not have fun after the first month of a new game. That. Is. Crazy.
Quickly editing this comment to add that I'm very sure closet cheating is far more rampant on PC games than the usual stick-out few that people point at. For the longest time I've avoided saying this because it's not something I can easily prove and it's a broad enough assumption for people to come to me and go "nah bro nobody's out to get u skill issue," but honestly I sincerely doubt half the top fraggers I'm going against nowadays are legit. Not even on ROBLOX. I have to constantly question if I accidentally queued into a game's Ranked mode before inevitably finding a balanced match line-up that makes me realize the math just wasn't mathing. It's not the same as it was a decade ago, because I got over that hurdle. How do you go *back* to it like that? I am definitely 'not' that old or drowned in life's treacherous waters. I know it can't compute, and I know it has something to do with this arms race making PC's barrier of entry even higher. There's no other way.
It's by design, there are no casual pvp games to play these days. But it's been always by game design. Devs can make matches don't matter in terms of who wins or loses, but no, you get challenges for progression (skins or whatever), XP from matchmaking ranks, and so on. If you gain nothing from winning matches, then there's a lot less incentive to tryhard.
I was there for the dawn of online gaming. Back then, it was a novelty and almost everyone played casually for fun. What changed everything was Xbox Live, which introduced player profiles that displayed your stats, but it also introduced a younger playerbase to it. We're now in an age were most people playing won't remember online gaming not being a thing, and those people often ONLY play online games. UA-cam/streaming didn't help matters because the younger players wanted to be like / play like the creators they were watching. You won't believe how many players I've known who HATE playing online games but they do it anyway, and it's all they play.
Yeah, the entire approach has changed over time, thanks to the multi-faceted corporate push to turn gaming into a for profit sport.
When Left for Dead 1 came out, people were trying to get cool hunter kills by bouncing off off multiple walls or something, because that was an interesting and unique mechanic the game had.
Nowadays, L4D2 versus is the sweatiest experience you can find, which is ironic since it's so random, considering that it's 8 strangers loosely cooperating.
Remember when the word "toxic" was used ironically to make fun of tumblr drama queens?
Now it's just a fact of life, people raging more in games than for real life failure.
The player counts matter most.
That means there are way more mechanical skilled players than in the past.
The longer you play the better you get. With youtubers came tutorials or rather a how to play. People now search for the meta online to get better. Now you need to learn all the tricks to be better than the enemie with the same loadout but there are videos on that aswell.
Thats the reason why you feel different about the pust.
Everyone plays casually for fun even now. That never changed. But in the past everything you have done to improve yourself was learned by yourself.
Today everyone learns from the best because otherwise the learning curve is too slow so you fall behind.
Thats the difference.
More players and learning from the progamers is the difference from the past.
@@xloltimex38 You could find tutorials and entire websites dedicated to the meta for competitive games in the past too.
There's also another difference, these days people treat every game as a do or die experience, even games that are obviously balanced for casual fun.
People just don't know how to have fun.
More and more often you see situations where the community metaslaves so hard that the entire playebase misses a couple of just as viable approaches, it's insane and sad.
@@Snufflegrunt It's not just that. You also saw this happen in individual games. The skill ceiling rises and you get to the point where lame but effective becomes ever more important.
I just had a flashback when I was playing quake 3 and sometimes waiting at the mIRC channel on the server…thanks for taking me back!
One aspect you didn't mention about multiplayer games, is the team size. Generally the smaller your team is the more responsibility you have as a player. As such your skill level matters a lot more. This also goes hand in hand with toxicity. In a smaller group people its much easier to recognize your teammates mistakes or shift blame onto a single person who "inted" or "ran it down" . still an interesting vid.
lol i can tell from the examples given youve been gaslighted by a LoL teammate before
What about cheaters? Not a word about them, despite them being present in every multiplayer game.
@@korosoid matchmaking, team size, playstyle etc. are all tuned intentionally by the developers, cheaters, though impactful, aren't an intended part of the experience and are much harder to control.
This! Battleroyals being the biggest offender…
thats why i play 50 vs 50 in tf2. personal skill doesnt mean shit when you're fighting 20 wrangled level 3 sentries
kinda dose when you are a kunai spy
BASED. I love 100 player, or 60 player TF2. Been playing for 12 years now, but I am so glad with the updates happened, there's just that extra bit of life and performance (from 64bit update) that makes me keep on playing it. Deep Rock Galactic is the same when I'm too stressed from TF2 casual or other games just being unfun. I'm trying out deadlock right now, it's alright, but I try to ignore PVP nonsense (holy heck the STUNS, especially long-range stuns or grabs on a stacked enemy team god I DONT WANT TO PARRY AAAAAAAA)
@@itchylol742 not to mention gimmicks are way fun in this, like bison soldier for example in dustbowl
@@itchylol742 most of the time there’s an mge brother with a Kritz medic getting a godlike in 10 seconds
@@susanoo6962 Easily can be shut down with few coordination imo
Helldivers 2's evolution certainly has been an enlightening sight.
A sizable fraction of the dev team was pushing for difficulty-based balancing, making enemies stronger and players weaker, making victories feel "earned", and players kept leaving cause it was not fun.
Then the recent rebalance update happened where all player tools were made overpowered and incredibly satisfying to use, while also making enemies more threatening to turn players into g lass canons(and suddenly, the 20 respawns per mission no longer feel like "too much"), so the actual difficulty stayed roughly the same... but it became a lot more fun, both for the tryhards and the casuals.
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I'm also reminded that, at least early on, a huge appeal point of fortnite and the other battle royale games was that, in 1v99 matches with a single winner, losing wasn't really a big deal to the point everyone was a winner. Some people just hot dropped in highly contested areas, got into fights quick and fully expected to die quickly, and they got their fun out of that early rush without caring about not winning; some played smart and survival-y, but still had no expectation to win and had their satisfaction from seeing how much the player count could dwindle before they finally died.
The secret sauce is in making the struggle itself satisfying, rather than tryharding for a win as the ultimate condition to have had fun.
Even Splatoon 3 isn’t immune from this problem. While it’s gyro controls can be learned with enough practice, it’s literally a 4v4 for every single PvP mode, meaning that if you even remotely suck at movement or aim, you’ll drag your team down enough to lose to a team that outranged yours.
Oh man. Splatoon 3. Lemme just dump my experience here because that game actually fits this video pretty well. It's so ironic how a Nintendo-developed shooter ended up being the sweatiest game I've ever played. And all because of the atrocious matchmaking they implemented which I am pretty sure they still NEVER fixed, since I can check the Splatoon thread on 4chan and people still complain about Turf War. You'd hop into the Turf War (casual) mode and be treated to the sweatiest 4v4 of your life half the time, meanwhile the actual competitive modes were a lot more balanced out. I mostly played Turf War and got pretty good with motion controls, I mained Splattershot because of its "average at everything" nature and had a lot of fun when the matchmaking wasn't bending my team over.
The matchmaking sucked the fun out of the game so I stopped playing after 5 months, I bought it at launch. The way the matchmaking worked was the matches were always balanced to favor one side, and usually it would go off of your freshness level which went up with win streaks. Once it got high enough you would guaranteed start to get matchups where the other team absolutely steamrolls yours and you literally get spawncamped because the skill diff is so huge. Matches were either you stomp the other team or they stomp you. It would also put 1 or 2 players on a team who had a massive skill diff between them and the others, it was common to lose matches because the game put 1 or 2 people on your team who barely knew how to play while the other team would have 4 players of consistent skill level. That was one way the game would "force" you to lose. It was also common to lose 5+ matches in a row and then the next day you were winning matches left and right. Whenever I was on a losing streak it was always followed by a winning streak.
This is my objective experience. I played the game for over 200 hours in a few months, I had plenty of time to notice and observe the patterns and quirks of the game. I also was very active in the Saltoon (yes you read it right) subreddit and discussed it to death with the other players there who corroborated my experience. Ironically we ran into a LOT of toxicity and "get good" types of players, in a _Nintendo_ game community.
I had so much fun though when the teams were balanced, which was sadly pretty rare. Splatoon 3 is a game where your enjoyment in the casual mode is completely at the mercy of the flawed matchmaking system. Which is such a shame since the matches were the most hectic, fast-paced, and strategic gameplay I've ever enjoyed in a shooter.
This is exactly why I quit Splatoon 2 right after hoping it was better than 1. Everything you described about matchmaking is exactly what happens in those games and I caught on in the first game. You can have 30 kills or more every game and your team will wind up getting stomped. Sometimes I wondered if they put brain dead AI on your team masquerading as a player because sometimes they literally wouldn't even shoot.
@@BaronCreel It was unfortunately exacerbated in Splatoon 3 since it introduced allowing friends to invite and play with each other in turf war. So you'd then have coordinated teams communicating over discord which provided an absolutely massive advantage over the other team. I enjoyed the sweaty matches the matchmaking provided me, but I found playing the game stressful and frustrating since I felt like I had to give 110% in a lot of matches.
i took a very strong mental try at this game just recently i 100% the story mode and i mean 100% some of those missions were not fun and bonkers frustrating ( Bet you Mist us ) but the moment i played the main reason one would buy splatoon that being the multiplayer DEAR LORD IS IT HYPER SWEATY most matches all end up the same my side of the turf 20-25 % covered in ink where the opposing teams ABSOLOUTY DESIMATES and dominates the entire turf not exsactly a fun first impression i kept with it till reaching level 10 by then i decided i will be a roller main as im acturly doing some that most teams do from what i see is paint the home base floor so i usualy stay in the far back not really getting into fights you could say im a passive but im just fixated on the task at hand to defend the home base turf and maybe expand out to mid but now that my 7 days free trial for NSO had expired i lost all intrest and went back to my gaming PC
I’ve played Splatoon since it launched on Wii U and have been a massive fan of the series ever since. The world and really fun mechanics drew me in, but while it didn’t keep me playing 24/7 after the first few weeks, I had lots of fun with the matches and regularly was a top contributor in Turf War and performed decently in Splat Zones and Tower Control too. But one day when I came back to Splatoon 3 after a break, I found that I was struggling to keep up the sweatier and sweatier lobbies, to the point where I wasn’t having fun with the multiplayer anymore. Maybe I was just suddenly worse at the game now that my sweat had washed off, or the skill levels had just risen too high. Either way, I didn’t play much multiplayer aside from a few Splatfests after that.
The matchmaking definitely didn’t help my enjoyment after my metaphorical shower. I think that because of my sweaty performance in the launch season where I was chasing the funny dab emote (which was at the end of the battlepass) I was now relegated to these really hard lobbies with no end out. Not to mention that it’s really hard to rank down in the ranked modes because the punishment for losing is significantly less impactful than the reward for winning.
I still enjoy the world and characters of the game, so I would like to still engage with it, but there’s not much left to do since I don’t enjoy the multiplayer anymore, and I had basically 100%ed the singleplayer modes when they launched
Yeah this is exactly why I never touch pvp games anymore. It’s that mechanical arms race that differentiates the overwhelming stress I feel from counterstrike, and the motivating challenge I feel from Elden Ring.
I find myself constantly asking “how can I possibly feel any sense of improvement in this game when the goalposts are constantly being moved?”
if you can feel the goalpost being moved, that's the improvement. "sense of progression" and "sense of accomplishment" aren't necessarily the same thing.
@@Lee-fw5bdno, it was newest hotpatch making the play style you are comfortable with be less effective. Developers changing percentages every update to keep the facade of healthy gameplay alive.
@@hibbs1712 I mean if your preferred playstyle is doing incredibly well then surely it would warrant getting nerfed? I'd adapt regardless so I guess I'm the opposite to the commenter above. Pvp is just too exhilarating to me.
@@Lee-fw5bd the problem is you don't nececerally have this "sense of progression" because the goalposts are not sometimes moved, they are constantly moving. At any moment you have no idea if this loss was because of your poor play, or your goalpost was moved. Of corse on a larger scale it's obvious that you are improving, and two month ago you was way worse than you know. But because you being balanced with other players that progress at the same rate, you don't feel any improvement.
@@imfinishedgrinding638 no. And honestly, you should be weary if you comfortable with that. Maybe try sitting down and reflecting on your total play time and the reason you like video games.
Also you should have mentioned that, when you play the game like a tryhard, winning feels like... default: " I was sweating so now I have my reward" but losing feels absolutely horrible: "I have done everything I could, how am I still losing this???" And my second point is that in this type of games you can't just play with friends. E.g.: If you have a friend that plays Finals every day and you try to return to the game after like 3 months, you will be annihilated in first match if you play it with your friend because of SBMM. But that was your whole point of returning - to play with your friend! :(
So, I play multiplayer with friends only. Currently this is stellaris. With up to 20 hours for one game. And, since I invited some friends there, they struggle on normal difficulty, while I have 1200 hours in game since it was released.
So, what do we do? I take a challenge. My friends make the most insane and ugly starting build for me, which makes game fun on lower difficulty. And we don't kill each other, there's no fun in that. Unless we make a scenario of strong vs everyone.
As for the rest... Only sandboxed and strong narrative experience in singleplayer.
I think Counter-Strike is the perfect game, because no matter how many years this game has been around, it is still the most played game and you can always start playing because there are no shields, hero skills, weapon attachments in the game, there is only pure skill.
This was my exact issue with MW 2019 me and my friends couldn't play together because at least one person always got the short stick and had a bad time since we were all at different skill levels.
After about a month of trying to make it work we all just moved on. We wanted to play games together, but one of us always having a bad time didn't sit right with our playgroup, so we moved on.
It's strange. The biggest hits of recent years are single player games where the focus isn't competition; however the companies are making these games as a service nightmares that no one really wants.
It’s mostly corporate higher-ups making out-of-touch decisions like this because they want to be the next World of Warcraft. That game was such a huge phenomenon that every CEO wanted in on that kind of success, so they doggedly pursue the same business model of making a single game that will endlessly rake in money with little more than maintenance costs. What they don’t realize is that WOW was lightning in a bottle and that success like that is basically impossible to replicate.
Fortnite makes like a billion dollars every couple months lol, not sure what biggest hits you are talking about but even BG3 or something doesn't compare on any level.
its because the potential reward is infinite. they are fine with failing 1one, two, three or four projects, because they are gambling on giant success. This is also why you dont see this from indie companies. Much smaller companies cant gamble like this, they actually have to offer a good game,
Because you only need 1 hit with a multiplayer game. The replayability is always out of the charts, so 1 hit can last forever. Look at league for example. Released over a decade ago, yet still going strong with millions of players and breaking viewership records every year, with over a billion views every world championship (not even counting China, where league is huge)
@alex2005z I have yet to see a league player who seems to be actually enjoying the game. It feels like a bunch of people who have it as their addiction. And as such, like addicts, they end up being downright monstrous and abusive.
There's so many games I can't really play because I feel guilty taking up a slot in the team when I don't know how to play.....
just keep in mind that could be said for anybody. every player on every team is taking up a slot to be substituted in with one of the top players in the world that could be paid to play for you.
why? i started league of legens last year and the game been out like 14 years and i inted like 200h of games and now i have learned the game and i rose from iron to plat in one season , nothing to be ashamed about if you are bad you always learn
that's a personal issue brother. I've felt it myself, it will only hinder you when you do take the chance. be confident in your belonging and you'll quickly realize only the shitty human beings will be vile toward you, and you know they are pretty much worthless so their opinion is the same. you do you and ignore the dorks. - signed by a rocket league player that started 2 years ago and had to learn to be confident in my ability
The only way to get better is to keep playing and learning from your mistakes.
Then actually learn how to play.
I especially like when competitive games have non-shooting gameplay that allow you to be useful even if you are not better than everyone you're up against.
In combined arms games like Planetside 2 if you are up against someone who kills you easier and faster, that matters less if you have teammates to follow up on your death (medics reviving, suppressing fire from allies, just more fodder in general). Or if you are bad at one aspect of gameplay, there is strategic choice you can make to counteract someone who is kicking your butt (switching to dealing with aerial combatants mowing down your troops, coming with vehicles from a different base to provide support).
Or in games like Valve's Deadlock, you aren't forced to beat your opponent in lane to win, because gaining more currency to buy stronger items provides a much better power boost, so disengaging when you are losing to focus on getting stronger is encouraged.
If your game supports hyper-mechanical play, thats fine, but you need to find the balance between it contributing to the win and simply not letting other people play. I'd say the easiest way is to simply have systems that arent "mandatory", yet contribute to your objective but that pure mechanical play can't beat (like the opposite of what battlebit did when it nerfed the need for medics)
would be nice if stronger gear would not be locked thru paywall. Only way to get that gear is getting thousands of kills or creditcard,but good luck getting thousand of kills against people who have better gear and kill you lot faster ,not to mention playerbase is not that strong as it used to be.(planetside2)
Splatoon really cooked that up by 11 with its ink mechanic. Basically sets a skill floor so low even toddlers can contribute some value while still retaining high skill ceiling for skill expression.
@@einarsa7196 nature of moba. And you can still farm those ‘huh level mobs’. As long as you don’t die a lot to the enemy and keep them from destroying your stuff, you don’t necessarily need a lot of kills
@@einarsa7196 I have been playing again since this january and I concur with the old timers that the guns dont really perform much better than stock. What is inconvenient rather is the fact that if you want to have access to many playstyles that is when the grind holds you back, because the game never was designed for one person to have the solution for that many things. If you dont shoot first you often die with any type of combat, you can't swap into a loadout to stop being overwhelmed. Its grindy yes but the new team in charge have made a lot of improvements to reduce it a lot and promote your performance even if your kda is bad or you happen to be online when all the vets want to farm stats
PS2 has never in its lifetime been easier and accessible than it is now, and it's practically dead. "Sweats" didn't kill the game, players like you did. The farmers left years ago and all that remains are braindead zerglings who haven't improved since they started. They were the ones who were ceaselessly catered to.
Y'all got the game you wanted, and to no one's surprise nobody wants to play when there's no depth and skill no longer matters.
very well edited and well written video from a relatively smaller channel I hope the algorithm picks this video up and gives it the attention it deserves!
Thanks Ben!
@@ben9003 I absolutely agree, this was a well made, well edited and scripted video that highlights the correct things in gaming. Would love to see more
I love that during the little montage of your battle bit kills, you also added a clip of you attempting to kill two team mates. that made me giggle.
Back in the days of team fortress classic, and to some extent, team fortress 2 era, people didnt take games so seriously.
As such, they were just unanimously fun games where you could goof around in. Now every game is a competitive tryhard fiesta where no critique is allowed without ad hominem
Its also how the games are designed.
Back in cod4 or mw2 days, 2007-2010 lets say, I could spawn in a lobby, run around the map picking up random guns and shooting people and get a nuke.
Modern shooters are specifically designed to be more around teamplay and to stop better mechanical players from being able to hard carry their team.
Mechanics like extremely limited gun accuracy, random spray patters, tagging (you move slower if you get hit), nerfing bunnyhopping and strafe jumping into the ground, are all designed just to make sure you cant beat multiple enemies just by being better at the game.
This means that the higher the skill level gets, the more reliant you have to be on teamwork instead of mechanical skill, and that means if someone on your team plays badly, you will lose the game, and they will get flamed by the team. Because you cant win 4v5 or 5v6 by just playing better.
You should see what happened to TFC
yeah man thats why things like highlander and competitive 6v6 existed for tf2 the entire time lmao.
You missed the point. Wasn’t even a hard point to grasp
We always had competitive games. Tribes is one of the most high skill ceiling games out there. You had unreal too, they existed. But so did games where the fun came from having fun, team play and such. Not just winning.
You could play TF goofily and have a good time. Now EVERY room plays exactly like the competitive rooms. And every game plays the same too. Everyone knows this if you’re old enough to have experienced it.
You can till goof around, you'll just end up in a low mmr lobby. Lower than you otherwise would with your skill level if you optimized everything. If you truly enjoyed goofing around more than winning, you would be ok with that.
Player skill and toxicity killing online gaming?
Look no further than chivalry. The bayblading elite couldn't chill for a few minutes to let one person kill them to the point that the playerbase crashed. They were literally too powerful for the 98% who couldn't bayblade.
@@oceanbytez847 I used to love Chivalry man. When the crouch spamming great sword and messer nerds started taking over, that was it for me.
well they shouldn't have to let you kill them, that's not good game design. the correct game design is to make sure the skill ceiling is never too high. an amateur should be able to kill an expert on day 1. that's the golden rule.
@@007kingifrit Thats a shit rule, because then there would be no point in playing the game. A random noob can just connect on day 1 and kill you anyway, so why play it for thousands of hours to improve?
@@TheSuperappelflap definitely a balance. it should take a few dozen attempts for a new player of reasonable "noob" skill to put a huge dent or completely kill a highly experienced player in competitive games
@@007kingifrit No, the correct game design is whatever achieves the developers' goals.
The problem with Chivalry, and most other first-person melee games, is that they fail to design a combat system that delivers on the fantasy of being a melee warrior. Chivalry and its ilk are almost always just stupid moshpits, where people randomly flail at each other with no sense of individual or group tactics. Because these systems aren't well-suited to enabling anything else.
And for a while, the silly moshpit is acceptable, because it still feels loosely within the fantasy of being a pre-modern warrior. Until eventually someone finds some weird, arbitrary trick that abuses the game's hitboxes (or something like that), and doing that arbitrary trick becomes the meta. Which collapses the fantasy of being a warrior, and people stop playing.
I just feel like the best place to be as a casual/chill gamer is in PVE Coop games. Space Marine 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Helldivers 2, Deep Rock Galactic etc.
These games are always fun, they can be challenging and the community will never get toxic due to the nature of the game.
try running a realism expert lobby or expert lobby in general in L4D,
you'll get someone joining ur game on the final level of the campaign, playing normally, helping u get to the rescue
then emptying a mag in the three of u and escaping by himself
granted, i don't want to say trolls like this haven't existed back in the day,
but i think we've just become bigger and bigger assholes in general in games and the rise of competitive gaming could be contributing to that in some form, the state of mind u get put in playing those games spreading to other, casual games, like a cancer.
@@sapunjavimacor There are trolls in every game ever made. This is just super rare.
I played a couple hundred hours of L4D1 and L4D2 and I never met someone who did this. Was I trolled ? Sure but I just move on. The kick function works 99% of the time.
BUT these are rare occurrences. I play all my coop games on the hardest possible difficulty. I never got kicked in HD2 for my loadout or at the end.
@@almightybogzaI really don't believe you have played L4D2 in recent years if you want to call it casual. While it is casual, but only when you aren't playing with randoms.
I'm saying this with ~650 hours on L4D2 alone.
Verses mode is almost entirely made up of sweats. They'll either quit if they sense their team isn't sweaty, if part of the team is grouped up, or if you mess up 1 or a couple of plays, or if you go down. Or they will votekick you if possible.
It's not that rare tbh. Not always, but I expect it to happen at least once everytime I do play. TF2 is more casual than L4D2.
@@sapunjavimacor The amount of trolling back in the day compared to now was astronomically higher, despite the fact that gaming is now bigger than it ever was with every single home having a computer by necessity
The reason you'd think otherwise is because we now have a set expectation, meta, and social code/culture of how we interact online and how one plays with others. Everyone plays with the same goal in mind, with (roughly) the same knowledge, ideas, strategies, what to do etc etc, whereas there was no such precedent before. People did all kinds of crazy stuff that would be considered trolling today, especially in MMORPGs where you'd have guilds controlling entire areas and forcing people to pay entry fees and becoming so dominant they drove others away
Add to this hackers, catfishers, phishers, multibox macro for ganks and what else and as much as people deny it, that really was the true dark ages of the internet. The type of stuff i witnessed as a kid during that era is what no one would ever conceivably make a child go through today (or even then if parents knew lmao, or even in the past more so)
Just think about the infamous CoD lobbies from back in the day. We look at that today and reminisce on those times but looking at it from a modern lens, we're actually better than we ever have been and i say that as a League player
So, the fact that encountering trolls or toxic people today feels worse, says more about the environment we're in today
People were killing their teammates in Helldivers 2 public matches at extraction because they thought samples weren’t shared with everyone, or just to troll. I carried a whole team for 30 minutes just for that to happen. I never played in public after that. It’s not worth the toxicity that usually happens with randoms in a game that has friendly fire
Surprised you didn’t mention Fortnite and its building mechanic. That game is probably the single best example of a “mechanical arms race” that went too far.
5 years ago if you could edit while fighting, you’d be famous streamer. Now the average build player is as good as pros were just a few years ago.
How is that too far
@@prophetofwatersheep8100 because it effectively boxes out a huge chunk of potential new players to build mode. It’s demotivating to new players who just wanna play a normal shooter, and not spend hours cranking 90s in a practice lobby.
This is shown in the player numbers. Player numbers were declining, and when you read posts about why people quit “building being too hard” was a major reason. After the decline, Epic implemented Zero Build, and as of recently Zero Build has nearly overtaken build mode in terms of player count.
@@KumaIsKing123 Some people writing about not liking the mode is not representative of actual numbers lol. Fortnite literally shut down the servers and then reopened them in a surprise, the popularity of no build was literally just because epic forced you to play it after preventing any gameplay at all.
Another good example would be Rocket League. Way back when, in 2016, I sat comfortably around diamond rank with what I was able to do. Put the game down at some point, returned to check it out again years later, and the players in silver rank regularly pulled off moves I would have associated with pro play back in 2016 when I was active.
As the skill ceiling rose and the mechanical possibilities became better understood guides were written, training regiments were developed, and at some point if you weren't "practicing like a pro" you basically weren't fit to play any form of competitive at all.
@GamerKey91 Yeah it's really fucked up atm, I got like bronze mechanics by today's standards but I barely cling onto diamond 2 purely through positioning and rotation. It is a nightmare though, I don't have fun whilst playing at all.
so many people act like they want others to play as perfectly as a computer that can play perfectly, but would hate playing with a computer that could play perfectly.
No one wants to play against a cheating computer lol they just want to play challenging matches against competent players with teammates that are worth their weight
@@BrickPerpetrator how is a cheating computer for a teammate not worth their own weight?
@@theX24968Z the point of playing a game is to agree to a set of rules then compete on that basis. A cheater (or a bot playing in a way that a human cannot replicate/compete with) doesn’t add to your experience as a team mate or as an enemy because they are not competing in the same way. You can’t learn from a cheater and get better from advice or adversity in that scenario.
@@BrickPerpetrator I think that depends on the cheats.
I’d they can see through walls but are still shooting you, you can definitely learn from them. If they’re killing everyone with a knife from spawn then sure, I agree with you.
@@theX24968Z Almost like the entire purpose/enjoyment of competition is to play against people because people are living creatures with varying levels of understanding, decision making, and emotions and thus can make mistakes which you can capitalize on. That's the entire fun of competing for something. To strive to improve yourself because you enjoy that thing and you know how hard it is to get better at something especially the higher up in competition/skill level you are.
Playing vs a cheating computer isn't exciting because it's not a person. It's literally that simple.
Back then 10+ years ago, because there were no social media and limited internet video prevalence, game meta and skill creep develop much slower than today.
Also if you're mostly by yourself, intelligence is more important in improving skill.
Where as today there are so many tools and tutorials for anyone with the time and desire to improve their skills so intelligence is less important.
This is the comment i was looking for. Having to get good by experimenting is part of thr fun, and nowdays everything is done by using tutorials.
And if you dont use tutorials to learn stuff that others know, you are going to be left in the dust. Basicly an arms race of who can get the fun out of gaming faster.
I usually play cs2, but recently decided to try out valorant. And in comparison to cs fighting against people who know stuff about the game was way worse than doing the same in csgo many years ago, probably in no part thanks to valorant being so complicated compared to cs2 as without tutorials you get ass ducked by something you couldnt even imagine like somebody teleporting or thowing a pet in a cs styled game.
Yeah even idiots can be good at games now. They just watch online videos to get good and Google "best meta". Just need good reaction times.
@@inqizzoagree. I've picked up MK11 a month ago, saw Erron Black and picked him as my main. Got comfortable with the moveset, watched a couple of tutorials and all that was left was to improve at building them and punishing. It wasn't really fun.
So I decided to learn Jax on my own and even tho I'm still pretty bad at him, I like learning him a lot more
Perfect description. I feel a lot of people who complain about competitiveness in games and then reminisce on "the good old casual days" forget that key point, the landscape for how knowledge is obtained has majorly changed. If social media was in the state it is in now back then, there never would have been that "casual" period of games, the way metas and such were formed back then were people taking note of what was killing them the quickest and most frequently, which took more time than just Googling it and then sharing it with their friends, who then shared it with more people and so on and so forth.
On a more personal note, which feel completely free to hit me with a "I ain't reading all that" if you so desire, it's because of this that I rarely use any form of tutorial for games (with exceptions for things like achievements and such) because I find that experimenting with loadouts, playstyles and setups feels more rewarding than just using what everyone else does. Being a gremlin with a shotgun, making the definition of "suppressive fire" out of an LMG, turning a building into a discount Saw movie with traps and such, that's what makes games fun, not becoming one with the hivemind and using the best option and still wondering if the game is fun yet. Is what I do often cheesy? Yeah. Is it ineffective? Frequently. Do I have miserable times at points due to other people's competitiveness? Absolutely. But I've found that I don't need to top the scoreboard every single match to have fun, I need to solve the "puzzle" that is making my inherently ineffective strategies more efficient. I'm not interested in following THE meta, I'm interested in developing MY meta. Basically you CAN still have fun in games, but what your version of "fun" is, is obviously unlikely to be what mine is. It may feel restrictive and unfair, but if you are this far through my comment and not having fun I strongly encourage you to diversify, do something different to everyone else, be it your playstyle or maybe just a different game entirely.
Exactly this comment right here
I keep thinking about why TF2 is a game that has seemingly avoided this trap. I consistently go back to TF2, despite not being particularily good at it. And i find that it's because, in short, it wasn't made for streaming. I legitimately think that games being made for streaming and "highlight" moments are what ruins a casual experience. For there to be a highlight, a "screaming jump out of the chair reaction moment" that can be uploaded and monetized and marketed, there needs to be stakes. BR's are perfect for this. A constant tension, where each step is a potential death, and overcoming that obstacle and getting your "chicken dinner" is a rush that TF2 will never really have.
However when everyone is looking to get that chicken dinner, then by definition there is going to be a large lobby of players who get nothing and who will feel awful for missing out on that dopamine rush. Just a lot of tension, then slouched shoulders and slurs in the chat. TF2 instead is more along the lines of an arcade shooter. There are no real stakes, the only difference between winning and losing is whether the game plays the "boo" of the "cheer" sound at the end of the match. In addition to this, there are no "search and destroy" gamemodes. Every time you die you are at most 30 seconds from getting to the frontline and blowing up the opposition.
This is why, as absurd as it might sound to people who have never played the game, sometimes people just decide to not fight, and instead have an imprompty conga line in the middle of the map with players from both teams. When you lose nothing of importance, you are allowed to take the time and just do something silly when you feel like it. Something i do when feeling dumb, is to run up to people i've cornered. Their gun is empty, they have no way out. I hold all the leverage and i offer a lifeline; Rock paper scissors, whoever loses, dies. Then next respawn i might select sniper and throw pee jars at those passing by before going back to sweaty tryharding. The only way for the casual experience to be truly relaxing and without consequence, is if the game itself is generally without consequence. But that doesn't make for billion view highlight compilations that give free advertisement.
I dont disagree or anything i love running up to people and kill binding and watching them go spontaneously limp a second later as everyone joins in on some fun group suicide but.
Random crit rate increases proportional to your damage output, this was done specifically for players popping off to pop off even further in a large showy glowing electric explosion where they kill half the enemy team. Theres also mechanics such as domination which is a showy and Loud display publically to the server that youre pwning skrub. And, you were probably here for muselk where he would do tryhard teusdays and dress up in the most outlandish fit with an australium rocket launcher wnd try to get a godlike killstreak on casual upward. Which is another colorful announcement to the server that youre hittin the biggins’.
Anyways the point is that the playstyle of tf2 where every player on a server has their personal little goals and objectives where goofing off is strange to see absent is p r o b a b l y due to a Decade of player culture and injokes rather than some kind of unified design choice.
@@owostub5399 I mostly agree. TF2 wouldn't be a game to come back to time and time again if it wasn't also just really well designed. I'm not saying that any arcade style casual shooter could do what TF2 has done, but I am saying that it is a necessary component. The current most common game design of "streamer bait" is not just poorly done, it fundamentally lessens the casual experience rather than subtly elevating the sweaty one.
2fort and hightower are one of the reasons for this, honestly. Having two maps that are so badly, horribly, terribly designed that they're basically unwinnable no matter how competitively you play gives a safe haven for casual players who don't care about winning or losing. There are still good, balanced maps for the sweats out there, and the general mechanics and playstyle of the game are so solid as to be enjoyable.. But there's a subsection of the game where no matter how good you are, it doesn't really matter in the long run.. So you're encouraged to just chill and have fun with it.
There is a game mode with 1 life per round called Arena, but no one plays it lol
The problem with the "casual experience" you want, playing against lower skill players, essentially requires those real people to become props in your power fantasy. Fun for you maybe, but where are you gonna find a steady supply of lower-skill players to shit on?
yes, so well said. I always wonder about what these people mean when they even say "casual experience" in referecne to a pvp game. and invariably ts this: players who are somewhere above average want randomized matchmaking so that the majority of players they get matched against are below them.
I mean this is half right, Yes There are ppl thats "casual experiance" is just trashing anyone worse than them. I Think the best way to explain it is my personal situation with rainbow 6 siege.
All the way up until one of the most recent patches the operator Black beard was considered a throw pick, If you pick him you might as well throw the game if you are trying to win. The issue comes in with his weapon selection. He is the ONLY operator in the game that can use the scar H, Which has been my favorite gun to use in almost every FPS since battlefield bad company 2
From a competetive point of view (And how i play the game) Is just simply dont pick black beard, Why put myself at a disadvantage knowing everyone else (Because of SBMM) Is going for meta builds and will beat me in 9/10 engagements
From a casual point of view, Why should I be complained at, kicked from the game, Or teamkilled, For simply picking the operator I want to play and i think is cool?
(THIS IS LITERALLY JUST IN STANDARD, I AM NOT TRYING TO CASUALIZE RANKED ITS THERE FOR A REASON)
If the game had a standard game mode that didnt use SBMM I could justify to myself (And other ppl would be alot less upset about) using a weaker operator knowing the ppl on the other team, May not having the skill to capitalize on using a better operator, But knowing everyone in the match, Is around my skill level, And only playing meta builds and weapons, It would literally be ignorant, and idiodic for me to pick black beard.
That is the "casual experiance" Most ppl are refering to.
Not trashing everyone thats worse, But having the freedom to pick what I want to play weather its good or bad, Because not everyone in the game is playing like their familly is being held hostage.
@@keefed196 I get you. If the game doesn't have an unranked mode, I can see how people's "meta slave" mentality could totally ruin the game.
It feels like a chiller Ahoy video, nice mate
@@notsocoolguy38 Cheers. He's actually a huge inspiration of mine, guess it shows haha
@@notsocoolguy38 I was gonna say the same
this is some high praise
I miss community server based games. The remaining ones are often so concentrated with extremely skilled players who have been playing for decades that its impossible to break into. Perhaps that is just nostalgia talking though.
Community server based games have one distinct advantage: as a player you can see your skill improve in a measurable and concrete way. You play on a server with a dedicated community and see the same players again and again and again,you find yourself suddenly beating players who were dominating you before. This feeling of climbing, progress kept people going because they saw they were getting better with proof. Until they themselves reach their peak, but even still they are happy because of how far they had come and can now focus on having fun.
Competitive games or games with SBMM steal this from you. You are always on a knife edge just barely squeaking out a victory every game. You don’t really think you are improving. You feel inconsistent. It’s miserable.
In community servers even if the server has some sweaty tryhards who dominate, getting to the point where you can offer them a fight is one hell of a reward.
I recall playing a tf2 server for like a year. 24/7 2fort. This one guy always went sniper and would rack up like 500 kills in an hour or two and leave. I hated this dude.
I kept training and training and training and getting better and better until one day I had enough, went sniper…. And promptly lost. But not without providing openings for my team to push forward and start spamming projectiles in his sniper nest basically ending his tirade.
He sent me a message later and said: “That was one of the best duels I had in a while. Thanks.”
That feeling is forever unmatched. Reaching top rank means nothing to me, but recognition of being a threat by someone I once viewed as unstoppable feels great.
5:54 Paladins has suffered this to an extreme. The matchmaker can’t work properly with so little players so it ends up matching you against the highest skill players and you end up spawncamped the whole match. With no chance due to the skill gap.
I don't even play online games, I'm into single-player games, but I really enjoyed the video. I found it informative and very clear and well presented, and was surprised to find it's your first of this type. Well done, keep it up!
I don't think "optimize the fun out of your game" is about a deliberate process, or an overly-sweaty attitude. The game itself can accidentally encourage players to do this. If there's one option that's way more fun, but will obviously lose more, players may not give it enough of a chance to learn why it's fun.
exactly, and the civilization series is notorious for this, higher dificulties give the AI so many bonuses that you are forced to optimaze or lose.
@@Gonzalo_105 not really in civ 6 though. Only with mods. The game is so easy that you can play whatever playstyle you want, even in deity. Domination canada? Good to go. Simming macedonia? Also works
I have one major point of critique - you say that you are often above average in games. Probably because of your years of experience playing games in general.
Then you mention that you dislike The Finals because after you were generally winning a lot, you were matched against other above average people.
The point here is though that because you are above average, your "fun" games before matchmaking adjusted to you were entirely on the back of below average players suffering and losing. The only reason you were able to fool around with weird strategies and less optimal classes is because your enemies were worse than you.
But this is not sustainable! Casual gamers dont want to endlessly be mowed down by good players just because good players want to play "casually". That's not how you keep a player base. So in effect, SBMM is a garant for player base retention, because it allows the average player to have a good game with other average gamers, and not get destroyed by above average gamers like you.
In the end, your wish for "playing casually" can't possibly work in such a game, because of the fact that you are above average. You can't expect a game to continuously offer you worse players on a silver platter just because you don't want to put effort into playing - because that messes up the other players days.
And that's why sui- *cough* SBMM isn't the answer. If you get good enough it locks you out of the comfort zone and constantly pushes you up. You can't possibly both improve and stay casual in SBMM. You either purposely remain bad/restrain your growth or get locked in an environment you don't like. It's just not fun
@@BLET_55artem55 read my comment again. There's no alternative other than not playing PVP games. Because you are good, you don't get to play casual because allowing you to do so would pretty much always be at the expense of someone else.
@@alexpaww there is. It's called being cultured (playing worse against worse players, having fun with others, voice chatting, etc). But that is akin to communism - a fever utopian dream crushed by basic human nature.
Another solution would be... Uhh... Yeah, I kinda agree. Either be cultured and don't ruin games for others by flatlining them or play at your mmr level with other sweats (or play games with no SBMM, but that's a whole other topic).
@@BLET_55artem55 Playing intentionally worse/relaxed works for me, so when I do get better it's always at a sustainable level I didn't have to struggle to reach, so I'm still playing worse than my best but better than before and letting loose sometimes for short periods of time to unwind and test my real limits then back out again to a normal or bellow level, all that matters is determining how hard you should actually try given your current state so you don't crash, you can play slower, think less, intentionally ignore paying attention, it's probably harder to do in many shooters because they are very reflex based but it's easy in RTS, FG or mobas because you don't get instantly punished with downtime when playing worse, I also suspect that this is likely how some really good players already subconsciously self regulate the intensity with which they play since it would produce better long term results to avoid frustration like this.
@@yozshu yeah, that's my point. The only problem is in most popular games you'll be called "trash" or "a waste of team slot" if you do so. Even in casual gamemodes.
It either requires everyone to collectively agree to play relaxed (impossible) or playing non team based games like classic Fighting games (and keeping it good spirited and light-hearted)
SBMM is why I don't mind losing (easier said than done, I know), because I know my mmr is going down, so I'll be placed in easier games.
Hmm, this is an opinion I didn't quite think of. That's really cool and interesting so thanks for sharing that. For me as a competitive gamer I'm the opposite way. I'm not a super sweaty gamer but I do like to feel like I'm in a competitive match that I have to play better than my opponent to win. SBMM to me feels bad because it makes playing well feel like a punishment rather than a reward for learning the game better than other players. I understand both sides of it now with your comment though.
@@YuYuYuna_ Oh I totally get you. I'm not a monk, I'm fairly competitive and I still get mad when I play well and my team doesn't. But I'm trying to adopt this mindset where I see the silver lining in a loss.
@@fufu1405Another good mindset is, ironically, the monk's mindset. "Be here to improve and have fun doing so, to to win" aka enjoy the process and treat each loss as a hint on where you need to improve. Helped me to Stockholm syndrome myself into loving fighting games 😅
I can’t believe that this is an opener for anyone but eh, it is what it is. Playing someone that I’m destroying over and over again isn’t fun for either party. There is no other solution than SBMm.
When I played Fortnite with friends, I would get quite a few kills. Made me feel bad though, because then my friends had problems playing without me.
Then, it got to the point where I struggled to do anything. Get one or two, then get wrecked by some laser god or castle builder if I'm lucky.
Now, if I play, I just play creative game modes. Feels pointless to play the other stuff tbh. I love what people have been doing with the newer creative tools. I'd rather play some goofy clicker game than battle royale.
I appreciate you touching on how some of the issues with SBMM maybe exacerbated by the complexity of how games play now with their insane movement tech
I've seen many similar youtube videos on this topic. People trying to rationalize why they don't enjoy a certain game anymore and how it applies to the game industry as a whole. What it comes down to, usually, is that people just want to pwn noobs and that noobs are the most important players in a game. They are the most numerous which means they bring the most money. If the noobs start leaving then the mid skill level players will leave as well as they have no noobs to pwn. It's a domino effect from the bottom to the top.
I prefer matchmaking to be random with minor skill based added. I don’t want to stomp on noobs but I also don’t want every match to be a sweat fest that deincentivizes playing well because you know by doing so tells the algorithm your next match will be you against a much better team for their mandatory win. Modern sbmm is a mess, it’s not designed to be fair but to keep player retention and keep them spending in the shop. That means the game letting you win sometimes and being fodder for better teams for the rest of it
this is such a common and faulty argument. destroying noobs consistently isnt fun because theres no challenge. people literally simply just want a more varied gameloop. where you ocassionally do the stomping etc.
@damsen978 ive played alot of tf2 and this is just straight up false. most matches do not end up like that
@@birgir3399 That supports my argument. Without the noobs there is no gameloop.
You're entirely right, I do more or less just want to pwn noobs at the end of the day.
To be clear though, it's not that I want to pwn noobs specifically, so much as I want to win far more often than lose and do so without having to get amazingly top 10% of the entire world good first. (I honestly don't think I have that potential in me at all, for that matter.) Which yeah, effectively means that at my skill, pwning the noobest of noobs is the only practical way to actually have any fun. But still, and I know, this is a "is the glass half empty or half full" kind of thing, the point is about me winning, not noobs losing. The noob suffering is an unfortunate byproduct, not the goal.
But yeah, the problem ultimately being that the biggest reason people do or don't like a game is that they aren't winning enough? I'll admit, that's basically what it comes down to for me. And I'd bet that's the primary issue for at least like, 80% of the total potential players out there. Everybody vastly prefers winning, and in PvP, that requires someone else to do the losing. The less loser fodder there is, the less people are getting enough wins to enjoy themselves.
Same happened to Starcraft. I'd rather watch Starcraft instead of playing it.
Now i only play single player games, at my own pace
This is why I play a lot of turn-based games. Playing thousands of hours will not make you so mechanically godly that you crush everyone by default. Instead it's just about strategy/intellect. Not only that but taking a break from turn-based games/playing intermittently is way less punishing because you don't have to "get back into playing shape" again.
I honestly moved away from anything that puts me against humans. Only online games I partake are either rpgs or coop, I’m here to have fun not compete
Also: always be trying new games, indie ones or double A cause big companies suck and just want money
Tbh I only play casual MK11 and multiplayer sandboxes like RDR2 Online (RDO). The only way I was able to have fun in MK11 was switching my mindset from "I'm here to win" to "I'm here to improve and have fun in doing so"
Indeed this is why i love deep rock glactic
@@BLET_55artem55Yeah, I feel the same way about racing games and movement platformers now, I don’t just lose, I see how to win more later.
Why did you even play anything competitive in the first place?
I mostly agree, but it's not so much a matter of having fun and definitely not competing, as that having fun is required first and foremost. Having fun AND competing at the same time would be fine too, if it worked out that way. But if human opponents are involved, then odds are the level of competing necessary will be too high for optimal fun, or maybe any fun at all, so yeah, it does tend to be one or the other in practice.
I find it hilarious that you don't mention the poor guys you annihilated when you were on a winning spree on your "casual gaming" time with The Finals. I'm sure they are glad to no longer feel like they have go try harder because you got placed in higher ranks. SBMM works. Take the compliment and play as you will. If you are playing casually you won't mind losing anyway. It's your obsession with victory that is poisoning your online gaming experience.
prime battlebit was one of the best games I've played honestly, and with the casual basically being ranked, rocket league is a prime example, cant queue a cas game without people playing like its RLCS quals ahahaha
@@JoshMM1 Exactly, they've both definitely changed over time
bruh as a frequent rocket league guy, you are spot on. I see so many try hards and sweats in that game its ridiculous. I'm just trying to enjoy some soccar and we have dudes flying all over the place and playing like their lives depend on it
Im more annoyed with people that complain about tryhards in casual than i am with the people who are actually clipping on me. I wish rocketleague didnt add a temp ban on all modes for leaving casual games. That way i could leave if im in a game thats completely mismatched or whiny babies on the other team can leave if they want to just play training mode. Casual is just comp now. There is almost 0 reason to play casual outside of warmup for comp or carrying a lower skilled friend.
I still mainly play casual though because idc about ranked, i just get gc rewards then stop. People in ranked are slightly more toxic than those in casual and it gives me a headache.
@@greekd00d69 Oh man, me and my buddy had to stop playing casual a few years ago because of people quitting when they get scored on once, usually spouting 'tryhard' in chat
Like, my brother in cars, I'm sorry I scored a goal on a wide-open net after your failed a quadruple-flip-ceiling-airdribble, that is the point of the game
@@kylemulkey9659you're literally crying about having to face competent players,
I had the "opposite" problem with The Finals. Me and my group "tryharded" the game, we wanted to win every game but never yelled at each other or anything, just found that combo team game was the most fun for us so we went with it...but there was one big problem that was pointed out to me and I immedietely begin to see it and quit on the spot and that was that even when we played competetive games (ranked) there was practially no SBMM.
We were every other game with someone who was in top players, when we were supposed to be around "silver-gold", which made no sence and realized that most games we lost were against someone who we never had any chance to begin with it. Why even play the ranked and ultimetely why even play the game.
To me The Finals never fully realized if it wanted to be competetive or casual game. It featured casual gameplay mechanics like "randomness" of enviroment, "stealing" the cashout in last seconds, nukes with Heavy class, but at the same time there was ranked mode, the guns had recoil paterns, there were too many niches mechanics, patches that nerfed some one of the "casual" gameplay mechanics etc.
To be honest if there was never "ranked" mode in the game and you could play with "hidden MMR" in normal games, we would probably still play the game to this day.
My issue with the game is also that it caters too much to casuals. I knew that casual players were never going to stick with the finals all the way back in S1 but they kept balancing around what the majority of players (who are silver-gold) wanted and not what diamond players wanted. I still love the game but it baffles me that there wasn't a bigger push from the devs to make it esports friendly. Why don't we have better custom lobbies? why haven't they focused on effective SBMM? Why tf did it take them 3 seasons to make light viable against coordinated teams? Why were nukes EVER a thing????
What got me stop playing The Finals was learning about the recoiless strafe. So if you stand still, crouched behind cover, your gun recoils everywhere. But if you're strafing sideways, there's no recoil. So the meta is just to pick light classes and circle-strafe endlessly, because sprinting around REMOVES the recoil, somehow!
@@Valchrist1313 I see what you mean with the reduced recoil while moving, it is definitely prevalent. But light (competitively) has never been great, I would argue to an extent even in casual
the dedication to the accurate video source in the corner is really really nice, having the "You (15 min ago)" be pretty close and starcit with TBD really sent me
The most fun I had when playing Valorant was when I was new, I didn’t care about dying, I didn’t care about which agent is op, I didn’t care that I got flamed by my own team for not knowing that killjoys ult stunned you.
Eventually I would understand the game pretty well actually and started getting mad and in rare cases break something and get toxic towards other players which i’m not proud of. I got plenty of aces and none of them are memorable. Playing games like these is like eating something unhealthy, you enjoyed eating it but man you feel like shit after.
I stopped playing the game 2 years ago and i’m very happy that I did. I play single player games now and really enjoy them because they respect my time and I don’t have to adapt to new metas, i’m a university student that has to work with my dad during the weekends, currently enjoying me DMC5 playing as Dante or Vergil :)
Thanks for vocalizing these feelings. I'm a big fan of RTS games and they've all been swept up into this competitive fervor when about 65%+ of players actually just want a really cool campaign that the genre used to have, and as someone who's always wanted to write one of these campaigns I find it really frustrating that it's all about sweaty competition.
Most multiplayer games are on death row anyway. They make them reliant on central servers and then shut down the servers once game isn't as profitable.
@@awsomebot1 as if casual games is sustainable environment...
Games shouldn't have to be "sustainable" to remain playable.
There are 15, 20, 30 year old multiplayer games that I can still play with my friends. Whereas most multiplayer games released this year are gonna become unplayable in a couple years, 10 years max.
Central server requirements are a death sentence. They don't have to be; companies could patch their games or release server software. But they don't.
@@awsomebot1 I agree older games tend last longer but the main argument is those newer games that attract casual usually tends to die early, and no most multiplayer games are not on death row, the numbers and statistics don't match up on what ur claiming is.
Older games don't last longer, they literally last indefinitely. I can still play Quake with my friends.
Most modern MP games ARE on death row, and statistics prove it. One youtuber (Accursed Farms) looked at a ton of defunct live service games (100+ games, list available) and only 2-3% of them offered you a way to keep playing your game once the main servers got shut down.
Pretty much all multiplayer games releasing these days require a central server, even some singleplayer games do. If you purchase 100 games like that today, you won't "own" most of these games in a few years.
Older games don't last longer, they literally last indefinitely. I can still play Quake with my friends.
All games that rely on central servers will have their servers shut down, it's just a matter of when. Around 2-3% of such games release end-of-life plans to keep the games playable (source: Accursed Farms). So statistics definitely match up with with my claim; most multiplayer games you purchase today will be taken away from you in a few years. Travel 20 years back in time and this was not the case, those games are STILL playable.
i miss online games before youtube. nobody could easily figure out meta.
so true dude, i play age of empires 4 and its like ideally neither of us would even have access to the internet so its just me vs him. but its more like me vs him and the brains of 5 other pros.
So you are longing for the days of little or slow information transfer? I’m struggling with this idea because I think it’s amazing that people can learn about something just by using a search bar.
@@laxdemon13 yeah it was nice when it was ur brain vs theirs
@@laxdemon13 it really didn't do us any favors now did it
@@laxdemon13You realize in the context of video games that ruins a lot of the thrill of the discovery, right? Thinking you've found some secret esoteric knowledge only to eventually find out someone found something even better would make you constantly hungry to keep looking. Nowadays you can just look up guides and optimized strategies instead of trying to use your brain to figure out things. Of course, you could say, "then just don't use a guide," and that is an option, but in multiplayer games it's oftentimes punishing and a pointless uphill battle to not use the most optimal loadouts when everyone else is.
Great video. Distilled the issues many people have about competitive gameplay modes have into an effective explanation. About ten years ago I was helping my buddy learn Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. He and a friend had started a stream and podcast project. He was always positive and apologetic when he didn't do well, but I didn't mind. Once after we ended the stream, I told him that the competitive landscape was what made me stop playing for so long and what makes me feel bad for new players.
There's no way to really learn and enjoy in CSGO (now CS2). Valve refuses to give a "casual competitive" mode where all the same rules apply to casual without the consequence. Casual mode is still good for learning, but no one can pretend that they are the same. Back in Counter-Strike 1.6 and CS: Source, we had dedicated servers run by the community, no global ranks or any of that in the base game. You could play, lose, leave, win, enjoy, or sweat in most servers without pressure. Now it sucks and Valve has purposely killed community server health. I don't even know if they put community servers into CS2. In CSGO they put a "scary" warning when going to the server browser.
Halo 3 and Reach were the ultimate form of 'Compromise between Casual and Comp'.
Rich, lively MLG scenes, which were only a small part of the actual game itself - just one or two matchmaking playlists out of a dozen or more, with specifically edited maps for comp play, while the forge tools allowed the community to make whatever silly mini games they wanted.
Does it really have to be purely comp and silly/social though, with nothing in between? Personally, neither feel right or satisfying to me; I don't want put thousands of hours in, but I also don't want to goof off either. I just want to put a low time investment in, but do play seriously when I actually am playing. Surely I'm not the only person like that, who wants to play their best against other people who... haven't ever put in extensive or dedicated effort to get very good either. Serious casual, if you will.
The best comparison I can think of would be an impromptu arm wrestling match where neither opponent ever does dedicated strength training. They're absolutely giving it their all and want to win, but their all is whatever strength their standard routine just happened to give them. There's got to be a video game competition equivalent to that, where you bring it hard when it's go time but don't really train/practice outside of that or even have "go time" very often otherwise.
Halo 3 and Reach was awesome. Me and the boys would play the campaign on the highest difficulty and add skull modifiers to make it crazier. For pvp there was the regular gamemodes, competitive ones, party gamemodes, football and Forge allowed the community to make custom ones to play like: duck hunt, fat kid, jenga, dodgeball, cat& mouse, sumo/monster truck, trash compactor, ghost buster, jump rope, racing, parkour, the floor is lava.. All sorts of stuff or we could just make cool/fun looking maps.
@@LordTrousers actually the primary thing of importance was the existence of lobbies where you could play again with players you vibes with and avoid players you disliked.
I'd argue that skill ceiling is more or less fixed; it only moves when relevant balance or tech changes occur. It's the community's *understanding* of how high a skill ceiling really is that changes over time, as well as each player's skill which tends to approach the skill ceiling over time (which you explained beautifully)
Love how you broke down personal ceiling and floor. I'd never thought in those terms before. However, I feel personal floor isn't your own tolerance for failure, but rather an actual measure of skill(s) which can absolutely influence your personal enjoyment of a game, but isn't the same thing.
Great video! Awesome insights that are important to talk about!
I think your last bit about the finals kinda gets to the heart of the issue, you want to play casually but also win, those are opposed desires. If you want to use weaker loadouts and strategies, but still win, then you have to be mechanically better than your opponents -- even at lower ranks, the fact that you're winning consistently with "bad" abilities means you're better than the person you're beating, you're skill gapping them to such a degree that you can beat them while gimping yourself, so any sensible matchmaking is going to put you against tougher opponents.
How opposed those desires are depends on how you define "playing casually." It can mean a LOT of different things.
For example, "playing casually" doesn't just mean intentionally gimping yourself. It could also refer to not wanting to practice very much, just jump in and play on occasion. And I really don't see any problem with wanting to have a shot at winning without taking a game on like it's a second job. I mean, there's a reason leagues exist in real life sports, CCGs, etc: So that people of different levels of interest can get matched up with those of similar levels of interest. A person can both put in a "casual" amount of practice and such, while still being very serious and intending to win while they are actively playing. That's what the one night a week bowling league is for.
Playing casually is only opposed to winning if your goal is to win at the top levels and be the absolute best. If you just want to have a shot of winning against other casuals, that's totally compatible.
@@Alloveck I play fighting games, which I think are kinda of immune from this discussion and weren't brought up in the video because they're inherently competitive and mechanically dense, same as mobas -- losing is often miserable, winning is why you play.
Using a weak loadout in The Finals and then being upset that I'm not winning is like picking Dan and being upset that I'm not winning. If I want to win with an objectively bad character, I have to not only be better than my opponent, I have to be so much better that I compensate for the mechanical disadvantage I've given myself.
If I'm successfully doing this, is it reasonable for the matchmaking system to NOT put me against stronger opponents? Isn't is shitty for the people whose ass I'm beating with Dan in lower ranks if it doesn't?
That's what I don't get. Everyone wants to win, even your opponents. If matchmaking doesn't put you into a bracket where you're losing 50% of the time, then your opponents are the ones eating shit and getting clowned on -- and they're probably not having fun, so this entire complaint comes off as solipsistic.
@@garr123 Oh, it's a conundrum alright. Everybody wants to usually win, but that's collectively impossible. If you're actually managing it, then someone else is miserable. SBMM sorta helps, but even if it did work perfectly and gave everybody a 50/50 shot, for some people (myself included,) winning half the time just isn't satisfying anyway.
In the end, there's only two real solutions: Add more bots to "soak" extra losses so actual humans can mostly win, (which I'd be totally fine with, I'm in for the wins, not objective skill flexing,) or people who aren't good enough to mostly win, and aren't happy with SBMM's 50/50 ratio either, can just not play PvP games at all.
Personally, until multiplayer games embrace more bots, this is exactly why I'm primarily a single player game guy. I'd rather win against AI punching bags designed to gradually increase in difficulty so I can win at all levels of the skill curve, than lose against real people until I reach levels of good I may not even be capable of. Or maybe are doable, but take so much constant sweaty intensity to win, that the stress of constantly having to run at 100% kills the fun anyway. Like I said, I'm in in for the wins, not to be the overall objective best. My ideal challenge is simply 10-20% below whatever arbitrary skill level I happen to currently be at. If SBMM would aim for that, PvP would be a totally different story for me.
@@Alloveck I dunno, Battlefront II had bots in their games and once I realized it instantly sucked all the enjoyment out. Street Fighter 6 has maybe the best AI I've ever seen in a fighting game, does things a human player does, now adding even a machine learning version that's even closer.
Even the advanced machine learning is still not a person, it doesn't *feel* like fighting a human -- its like an uncanny valley where it superficially appears to be human, but there's something ineffably *wrong* about its behavior because for, say, Master rank, its training data encompasses everyone from the lowest rated trash tier Master players who don't belong there and stumbled in early... all the way to professionals and the best players in the world, so its schizophrenic and its decision making frequently feels alien.
You presented something quite nuanced in a quite clear manner. Well done! Little talked about aspect of "dying" games.
The thing about Sbmm is that it's positive impact is inversely tied to your relative skill level. Players at or below the 50% median mark benefit greatly from it, while players who are in the upper 50% suffer increasingly from it. This is because the skill tiers are not equally distributed; any player population is heavily weighted around the 50% mark, which means that being even slightly better than average will, sans sbmm, result in you consistently playing against people worse than yourself, letting you play casually, fuck around and do goofy strategies, and still win more often than not. This effect increases dramatically as you climb the skill ladder. Conversely, for the less skilled part of the playerbase all SBMM does is shield them from the very worst stomps; they dont lose anything because their matchmaking pool is already so stacked against them that all their matches are hard; they never get the easy casual matches to begin with.
I find a lot of the critique towards systems like this come from either people who dont understand these dynamics, dont understand what SBMM is in the first place or from people in the upper skill echelons who are annoyed because they feel entitled to those easy matches on account of their skill. These are the reasons SBMM has become industry standard despite a very vocal minority cursing them out endlessly online; companies have the data and understand these group dynamics. SBMM provenly is a great tool for ensuring player retention because it will always benefit the player experience of a majority of your players
I entirely agree, SBMM is great if you're below average and just want to be shielded from stomps. If you're bad enough, it's only makes things better. But the one thing SBMM won't do is give bad players (or anyone else for that matter,) the chance to win more often than lose, and for some people, if not most, 50/50 doesn't yield enough highs to offset the lows in the long term. Until games find a way to let EVERY player win more than lose, the gradual player drop off will always happen eventually, SBMM or not. It alleviates the problem of player frustration to some degree for most, but it doesn't cure it for anyone.
And in all fairness to those upper skill players who want the easy matches: I can't blame them. I'm nowhere even remotely close to top tier myself, but easy wins against less skilled opponents are by far the absolute most fun I ever have too. They alone are the matches that keep me coming back. (Or not, if they stop happening.) So yeah, even though it should effectively work in my favor due to how much I suck, I totally understand why people hate SBMM. Good or garbage, we're all here to win first.
@@Alloveck im not sure its inevitable as games like league have been going strong with SBMM for over a decade now, actively growing rather than losing players. Though it is of course reductive to ascribe that entirely one way or the other to their matchmaking parameters.
And yea i know what you mean. I played Tf2 in the hey-day of the server browsing era, and as a slightly above average player i went on endless winning winning streaks. I havent played in ages so my soldier KDR is probably still something absurd like 10. These days though i understand enough to find it difficult to justify that position purely for my own benefit
A very good point. However:
> or from people in the upper skill echelons who are annoyed because they feel entitled to those easy matches on account of their skill.
As a person who is usually in the top percentiles, I wouldn't call it entitlement. I've been playing games for 20+ years now, so even despite my experimental playstyle (basically, trying everything myself, almost never watching guides or following "meta", etc.) SBMM always puts me in horrendous lobbies. The top 1% in every game I played is always the same:
1) People follow meta religiously.
2) They will blame you for any deviation from it.
3) You get regularly matched against the best in the world despite the insane skill gap. They have to play with someone after all.
4) You get regularly matched against cheaters.
5) There will be those who devoted all their free time to playing a specific loadout/hero/build to perfection. A generalist is no match for a specialist.
6) People who are extremely good at something are generally more competitive and, therefore, more passionate. Having a full team of those is a pretty toxic environment.
7) If there is any way to abuse certain mechanics or the matchmaking system, people here are very likely to do it.
These are just off the top of my head. I'd call myself a highly skilled casual player. I don't take games too seriously and I experiment a lot. Constantly being put in these soul and fun-draining lobbies is a terrible experience. So, for me, SBMM in a game is an instant deal-breaker.
All these videos (and reddit posts) misrepresenting SBMM conveniently ignore that companies have tried to remove SBMM at various points and it always results in catastrophic amounts of low skill players AND high skill players quitting.
@@Insomnia228_ theres not really anything to say except you represent a small minority the industry at large will gladly sacrifice in return for the benefits of SbMM
I agree. I'm of the opinion that the most reliable way for an online game to retain a playerbase is to make socializing a keystone of gameplay, because that's the stuff that never gets old, and which allows more experienced players to establish rapport with newcomers. If the game is designed to reward teamwork over individual skill, that works really well in keeping people of all skill levels invested. I've been playing Post Scriptum for years, and I'm certainly not the most skilled individual, but the thrill of effective teamwork is something that never gets old.
The perfect example of this would be Deep Rock Galactic, and generally plenty of group PvE games, but DRG in particular is known for having an incredibly accepting community because its mechanics and theme entice players into a friendly, accepting mindset.
@ultmateragnarok8376 best imo was actually halo reach. The existence of lobbies with recognizable players who you can stick with across a series of games (and who you can click on to demand that the game either avoid placing you with them or prefer them more often) was the single most important thing.
Second would be the ability to vote on maps and playlists which keeps things fresh and prevents optimization while at the same time giving you a choice and avoiding splitting the player base between 100 playlists that each have a population of zero. Tying progression to challenges also means that the best players will often be handicapping themselves in interesting ways rather than always trying to do whatever is optimal for winning the match.
The worst part about competitive gaming, is eventually everybody leaves… and most leave bummed out.
I was today years old when I found out that you can cut bullets in half in superhot
You WHAT?
I gotta try that dude
Funny how he showed 20 seconds of scrolling through helldivers nerfs lol
Until the most recent patch, the devs genuinely hate the playerbase and have lost 90% players as a result.
I personally "retired" from PvP games long ago and the reason for that was the realization that ultimately I will never find a satisfying experience there due to "fun" part being always achieved at other players expense. Rare PvP game is fun to loose at (the only fun I had loosing was in the game of chess believe it or not), and mathematically you can't have everyone having fun since someone is ALWAYS got to be the looser, every time one player gets a kill, other player need to be killed, for every point of damage healed someone else's damage need to be invalidated to a certain extent. There is never a WIN-WIN interaction in a PvP game.
While it's sad to think that PvP games just fundamentally unfit to be fun for everyone, it spared me a lot of time and nerves ever since I "retired"
If your idea of fun is only winning and getting lots of kills then sure. In sports there is also always a loser or someone who comes in last, sports must be really unfun. The difference between someone who can take an L and you is that they didn't give up.
@@TonguelessDanny This is an extremely weird comment. Genuinely, it is insightful to read into your logic.
You're passive aggressively criticizing this guy for, what, liking winning? The fact that he wants to win in competitive games is upsetting and some sort of personality flaw in your eyes? It's such a strange stance, but even STRANGER is the ending comment:
"The difference between someone who can take an L and you is that they didn't give up."
What are you supposed to interpret this as besides criticizing someone for not trying harder, but, trying harder for what? For having fun? People who can lose and have fun are better because they did not "give up"? Why would they give up if losing is fun? Are you implying that losing is, in fact, not fun and instead is something you just have to "suck it up" about? That only REAL gamers decide to ruin their afternoon trying to win a game where every match is quite literally determined by RNG matchmaking?
The original poster was very normal, I have no idea what caused you to act like this. Nor do I even fully understand what your point is. I doubt you do either.
@boatmannyc5145 I get where you're coming from, a lot of games are not built to be fun to lose. Losing in Overwatch is not some ultimately fun struggle on both sides. For the losing team, usually, the loss is seen miles away as your dysfunctional team scrambles around trying to prevent the inevitable. You are not working together with cohesion in mind, you're being given countless reasons to be upset at strangers. The "fun" part of overwatch is when the entire team comes together and things just start flowing smoothly, but that smooth teamwork is often carried on the backs of the other team flowing like asphalt on sandpaper.
I will say, though, there are some games which can be played competitively while still retaining a lot of their charm. Personally, I play a lot of TF2, and I tend to have fun regardless of the overall outcome of a match. The culture of the game is extremely casual, with matchmaking being practically non-existent. Because veteran players and fresh installs play in the same lobbies, a lot of veterans got bored of "farm kills" long ago and left the game. Those who stayed, like me, have a lot more fun with the sillier things the game lets you do. TF2 is a game with many weapons to choose from, and many of them are objectively worse than the default weapons everyone gets for free. Stomping on other players is one thing, but trying to stomp on other players with your only weapon being a shovel, that is something else. Newer players have a lot more agency in how they want to play, where they want to play, and if they want to win the match. Classes like medic or engineer do not require good aim to have a DRASTIC impact on a match, even against experienced players. This agency over winning that new players get is maintained by most players in TF2 simply not caring about winning. I don't play the game to win at the end of the match, I play the game to do the dumbest plays imaginable and have it work, or to throw myself into nigh-impossible situations and see what I can do. If I went tryhard I could consistently keep an absurd KDR, around 15, but playing "optimally" just is not fun so I never bother, and usually my KDR barely stays positive.
Point is, there are ways to be competitive in a game with the potential for competition, while not making it a "competitive game". I wish more games explored that nuance.
@@TonguelessDannynever once did i hear anyone say losing is fun. If you keep losing then you gonna give up. Unless you're a masochist
@@smallangrycrab The poster thinks a person who loses is not having fun because he himself is the person not having fun when he is losing, simple as. The point of games is to win, but if your entire enjoyment of games and logic behind it is based on - "winners = having fun; losers = not having fun" then thats a sign of a mental skill issue.
Honestly, my solution to this problem is to make a difference between winning and having fun. I ask myself “how can i have fun regardless of the outcome?”
I play rainbow 6 siege and honestly my ranked teammates are more chill than my casual teammates😂. Just try and start a casual/funny conversation and u might be surprised by how chill ur teammates and opponents are.
I'd argue that Elden Ring is super competitive the difference is it's internally competitive it's YOU vs GAME and if something goes wrong it's you not your teammate or something but you just messed up (still a frustrating experience but much more palatable), competitive MULTIPLAYER games are the issue, because given the chance 99% of people won't admit that THEY are the one who messed up when your teammates are nothing but names on a screen and will jump to offloading the blame. It's the reason why even in a super sweaty game you can have fun while losing with friends because if you are on a team, you work together. If a bunch of people are shoved in a room and told they are supposed to work together they will infight as soon as things go slightly wrong. But it's not a solvable issue because it isn't something going wrong it's natural tendencies.
the ending basically summarizes my life's journey through gaming, as a kid i played lots of single player stuff, as a teen i started playing more and more online competitive games with a sprinke of single player and co-op games over it. then, in my early adulthood shifted more towards online co-op games like warframe (god i put so many hours in that baby), until i got really tired of just grinding and solving the meta, understanding every mechanic of the game until i could do any build and take it to max level stuff (we're talking 9999 here) and overleveling my friends till they left or couldnt play anymore because life reasons. now im really loving elden ring, bg3, cyberpunk 2077, fear & hunger, and whatever i have at hand.
i just really wish i had a squad to play with again :c
I haven't seen the video yet but wow the last 4 games you listed off I'm currently or have recently played through and enjoyed a lot. My last 30-ish years of gaming experience was similar: Late 1990's I focused a lot on strategy and single player games which carried over until mid 2000s. I still played the former game genres but I then focused more on multiplayer games like Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, command and conquer on the xbox 360, for playstation 2 and 3 other than killzone I only played singleplayer games. After the Ps2 and Xbox 360 era I haven't really enjoyed pvp games as much so I went back to focusing on coop and singleplayer games until the mid 2010s. Went through another strategy game phase and in the late 2010s and I ended up playing a lot more singleplayer games like Devil May Cry, Fromsoft games and plenty of indie games. For most of early 2020s I mainly played singleplayer and coop games with no desire to stick with pvp focused games.
I still play Warframe but I never focused on level cap or want to grind excessively so I take regular months long breaks until the next update, then I play it actively for a week or two until I'm satisfied with the new content which leads to me playing indie games or popular/well received games from recent times or older games that were on sale or I feel like replaying. Warframe also doesn't have a set "meta" since a majority of the content is built for and balanced around star chart level (1-30). but you have the personal choice of going to higher levels.
Personally I had the most fun with pvp games when it came to Halo 3, Halo Reach, Starwars battlefronts (20-ish years ago), Battlefield 3 and whenever a new pvp focused game is out since everyone is bad. For the first few games listed in this body they were designed for casual play which is why they lasted so long and Halo specifically also had forge mode so everyone was able to make cool maps or game modes of all types which prolonged their replay-ability and offered other casual gamemodes due to a focus on party games that aren't reliant on skill.
People come and go though. I ended up making and losing a lot of friends along the way but I still cherish the fun memories we've made. A lot of game companies are also focusing on monetization rather than producing quality products which is why I don't try as much new titles as before.
you should make these more often I think you're good at them it was very interesting. I didn't even realize you only had 7k subs , thats a crime man, the quality of your videos is insane and I think if you continue to make videos like this alongside your other ones you will go places
Thanks! I likely will!
To summarize: In a multiplayer game without bots. Human players can only win 50% of the time on average. That alone is enough to make casual gaming impossible, don't blame matchmaking. Without balancing, you would win more, but some people wouldn't ever win their games
You brought up The Finals and faced the same problem. Started as heavy and felt like a beast but played as light after a while but then got crushed at at level 18, switched off the game never looked back. Great video. Definitely deserves a like. 😎👍🏻
I don't really agree with the message of this video, since most of this can be solved using perspective. I play some games seriously (Fighting games) and some games casually (Shooters), and my expectations to perform are drastically different from game to game. The metaphorical 'personal skill floor' isn't set in stone, and should be dynamic based on what you're playing and what you want to get out of it. I've got a good friend who I play fighting games with all the time, and even if his winrate against me is poor, he has fun because instead of his goal being "winning" or "performing", he lowers his expectations and is impressed by even doing one or two things that he considers to be cool. (Even if, these 'cool' things to him are ordinary things to high-level players.)
As a casual player with no intent of getting "good", your expectations should match your wants. A lot of people get the idea that if they just play casually, or play enough, they'll get 'good', even if sweaty players aren't JUST pressing buttons really fast; a lot of it is decisionmaking and strategy that comes from experience and objective thought. I've entered tournaments for fighting games before, and you can argue that at this level, the game is solved -- but your opponents are not. Every match is feeling one-another out, which keeps it endlessly engaging -- well-designed shooters (and almost any genre imo) have this dynamic as well that becomes 'unlocked' at the higher levels of play.
Matchmaking isn't bad (how do you want a system to put you in perfectly fair games with a 0% failure rate, anyway?), your opponents shouldn't be seen as 'sweaty tryhards', and you should first focus on what you want to get out of a game before you commit time to it. If you know you want to keep it casual, you should feel proud for getting a couple of kills or doing something that seems cool to you, not what you are "supposed" to be doing, according to the tippy-top of the playerbase that you may not even interact with anyway, as a large majority of players are in the middle or casual level of play.
Agreed. But the problem is that by goofing off you're letting down your team. And hearing constant "lad you're trash" and "omg did you have a lobotomy?" doesn't help with the fun either. It's much easier to have casual fun in 1v1 games than in team ones
That viewpoint used to be the standard in gaming but I think what this video is attempting to do is point out how the general mentality has shifted among most players. Not everybody is gonna feel the pressure or need to sweat but since a lot of influential people or groups do promote such hard line thinking, it has changed the modern FPS genre playerbase too much. They previously wouldn't have had those "toxic" inclinations in the first place. Competitive gaming in 2005 was a lot more natural because it mainly stemmed from a love of the gameplay as opposed to now where the goal is to be the best in a rat race focused on ranks or betting pools since everyone famous is doing it
It's like those sports movies where an old veteran or legend quits because the entire thing became too obsessed over winning than the actual general experience. It's ok to want to be better at something you love but too many people think it's the only reason to like something.
This pretty much sums up my experience with Overwatch. I played on release and it was insanely fun, but once I developed ranked ambitions it ruined the fun for me. Once a meta has formed and oneself and others started to have expectations how a game was meant to be played (especially in ranked) it became less and less fun.
I also experience frustrations with games where I know I have a high variance in skill between certain skill sets. I cant aim to save my life but I'd say that I can actively use my brain. When I play games like Hunt or Valorant I struggle to keep up with the mechanical level of my peers but I cringe whenever I see my peers run into the woodchopper because they put themselves into disadvantageous situations for no apparent reason. It angers me when I successfully outplay my opponent on a macro level but then fail to hit and get headshot 1 second later.
Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition (and AoE2 as a whole) for 20 years has never had this problem. This game is casual and competitive at the same time. Especially if you play ranked, no matter what you do or what strategies you do or what you focus, literally everything eventually works. Once your "elo" gets adjusted you can play how ever you want and be able to have fun every single game. And the community is the best gaming community out there. Its relatively cheap, Everyone is super friendly and fun. Literally 0 flaws in this game and its a classic! Still getting updated with new dlc's on the way!
its a great game, some people queueing team games are a bit toxic tho for no reason
This is EXACTLY what I'm feeling/going through right now with gaming as a hobby and passion. It has been such a central part of my life and friendships, for over 20 years (I'm in my thirties) Games just don't feel "fun" anymore. I feel trapped in the middle of better than a true casual but can't hold on to the sweat and try hard above me. I truly enjoy FPS but it feels like every one of them I pick up now is just a sweaty frustrating mess to play, double so if they are ESPORTS READY, ext. I appreciate this video man. Hopefully, someone can figure out that magic sauce again and bring the magic back to FPS for me.
This is why bots are essential to multiplayer games. Not to populate the main servers or matchmaking, but to help new players skill up from the normal skill floor to somewhere closer to the PvP skill floor without a continuous influx of new players to play against or competitive players kneecapped by having a newb on the team or ruining the experience of new players thrown into a mature meta
It makes the experience a bit weird for players entering with a high skill level though, as playing something like 10 matches against bots might make the game seem not engaging to high level players wanting to try the game
The big issue with highly competitive games is that a lot of people have a horrible time so a few can have fun. To get that 50 person kill streak, 50 others had to die. Add in connection quality or speed, more hardware etc you get into it not being just a skill issue as well. Never mind pay to win games with elite equipment or other advantages you can buy.
That's how I feel as well. Playing PvP it feels like I have to "earn" my fun, since those who perform better get to have more fun. Whereas in co-op or singleplayer games I can just chill, since I'm not competing against a person for my fun, the game is made to be fun for me specifically, not just for the good players. Nowadays I almost never play PvP games unless it's casually with friends, since if we lose we can laugh it off together.
@@spooky4124 I like to think of old school multiplayer, aka split screen or lan connections. You played a small group of people, often your friends and family around the area you live. In general such a small group of people your enemies only got so good.
When you go online the world is your opponent, and your often playing against people of all skill levels. Even Pro players in the case of games with them. As even they love to slum in lower ranks to show off for their twitch streams.
Yeah pretty much.
Every recent release that has multiplayer has me constantly questioning "How long will it stay fun and casual" and "When will playing it become a job". Lately it doesn't seem to take a week or even a day or two (or even before the game fully releases, looking at you BO6) before playing the game becomes a _chore_ instead of a fun hobby.
Balancing of those is especially a messy situation.
It's basically a kill switch to any casual players that may have remained. Competetive balancing often boils down to "what's the most popular and 'loved' meta right now and how can we keep reinforcing it" all fun that could be had from variety be damned.
The game could have some interesting mechanics that could be extremely fun to perform and play around with, but then the competetive scene's players find out it can counter a part of their main meta and it suddenly has to get thrown into the gutter and executed on the spot for _everyone._ If it throws a wrench into the well established plans, strategies and metas, it has to go in those games. Devs don't agree about the change to something being "required" for competetive? Welp. Now they got a bunch of angry sweats to deal with because what they got used to isn't a perfectly viable thing 24/7 each day, all week, whole month over the years (if the game even survives that long for those kind of players to give a flying damn about anymore).
It's kinda why I like Team Fortress 2.
Sure meet your match screwed things over for the casual players, but Valve being Valve and abandoning it for the most part, alongside playerbase refusing to let the game die in the current landscape of fps games made it go back to casual fun. There was nothing left to optimise and yelling at the brick wall that is Valve for "competetive changes" ain't working no more so you're left to your own devices with the game to do whatever the hell you want with it.
Competetive? Your own servers.
Casual vanilla game? Valve's servers and some community ones.
Want to turn the game into a different genre entirely? Sure, fuck it, why not, go make your own servers for it.
if you cant even compete in call of duty you have a massive skill issue tbh. its one of the most casual shooters on the planet. tons of noob perks and op weapons and one shot kill grenades and killstreaks you can get free kills with.
@@TheSuperappelflap Call of Duty.
Casual.
When lately it's the prime "get high on lsd and spazz out like a squirrel on crack" simulator.
@@simplysmiley4670 Aiming in those games is extremely easy, with the ADS and no need to aim for headshots.
They dont have much movement tech besides spamming buttons and a little bit of strafe jumping that you can in extremely niche situations use to take shortcuts on some maps. I never had any problem with it even when I was extremely baked and playing lefthanded. If you dont have the reaction time or hand eye coordination to play cod, multiplayer fps games probably arent for you.
Yes. The perfect example is Hearthstone (card game). Card games are meant to be casual, try different combos explore new decks and see how your custom built deck could fare against others.
It was a blast in the early days, and after a New expansion. As the game matured, people figured out what worked and what didn't faster and faster. 3rd party apps were developed that tracks stats and the meta.
The first few expansion were fun for almost a month after release. After a while though the meta got solved almost a single day after an expansion dropped, and you saw the same cards being played over and over again just a single day after a new expansion. The meta had been figured out so fast.
Thats when I quit the game forever, and when I realized pvp games are just a ticking bomb until they become infested with sweaty nerds that will do anything to win, even if it completely goes against the spirit of the game. The ticking bomb seem to go faster and faster since the Internet and rise of communication/analytics/stats and 3rd party apps as tools.
This is not how games were meant to be enjoyed.
@@Skumtomten1 the problem with cardstone is that blizzard deliberately included op combos in new expansions to get people to spend money on buying cards to unlock them before they inevitably had to get nerfed. That's not the players fault, it's blizzard.
I might not like matchmaking algorithms, but the UA-cam algorithm is doing numbers with recommending me videos like these from smaller creators, usually with very relaxing and pleasing voices to listen to like yours.
I don't play many multiplayer games, let alone in a competitive setting, but from my experiences in the past, this video did touch upon many things in that setting that I never really thought about. I really liked it, and I hope to see more of this kind of content!
Toxic competitiveness. It's the attitude that you should use the easiest possible way to get the most possible wins, at any cost. This is why exploits, meta-gaming, and outright cheating is rampant. The opposing view is being proud of mastering and managing to win with underpowered weapons or without cheesing, and the satisfaction of developing a new skill in order to be successful in honorable competition. Or even just hopping on occasionally to play casually and being "bad," which is totally fine especially once you have a lot of responsibilities.
Casual PvP? It’s a misnomer that doesn’t exist and cannot exist as long as players want to win. This is the reason I prefer PvE for entertainment. PvP becomes sweaty. Always. We all want to become better in what we do and once you do you either face increasingly sweaty opponents (skill-based MM) or you will feel “surrounded by idiots” (random MM).
if you play casually and lose, you'll eventually be put in a skill bracket where playing casually can still get you wins. The real thing that needs to change is peoples perception that a ranked ladder is made to be climbed and instead just accept that all it is, is a way of placing you in a game against people your own level
@@mogullll That’s what should happen, but instead you get smurfs
Then there’s no point in playing if things will just stay the same
But that doesn't happen **before** people quit. This isn't about ranked ladders - every pvp mode breaks down into this, and not EVERY game even offers SBMM. Northstar is spot on when talking about knocking casuals off the ladder before they have the opportunity to get good, and having zero enjoyment *attempting* to get good when practice is spending the vast majority of the time staring at a respawn screen.
So they go and try and get in on the ground floor of the next game, because there's always something new, rather than break their head on people with 500 hours in ranked pvp forced into casual lobbies because of CBMM or running out of players for SBMM.
@@whatastandupguy3050 Unfortunately, getting a big enough moderation team to handle most online games is financially improbable for most game companies, especially since all those hundreds of moderators themselves need oversight to make sure they don't abuse their power in one of many possible ways. Having good moderation is the fastest way to bankrupt your game. AI tools might help alleviate some of the burden, but I dunno man. It's a rough problem.
What's especially rough is that the longer the mods play the game, the better they get, which means your mod team will always be weighted towards the upper skill ranges eventually, which again leaves the lower ranks unwatched.
One must imagine themselves to be Sisyphus
Great video. I love how you dissected this topic. One thing I'd like to add is the disappearance of dedicated servers. It used to be standard for multiplayer games and has now almost completely disappeared. It has been completely replaced by skill based matchmaking in most games. To me this was the point in time when multiplayer games became unbearably sweaty and not fun. I think a game could generate a lot of hype if it came with dedicated servers these days. Like it could be a major selling point imo. Maybe a dual system where very casual players and very competitive players can use skill based match making and everyone else just plays on servers.
The core problem with competitive gaming is that, by the nature of the game, you have an equal number of winners and losers, and thus averaged across players as a whole, win rate is a fixed 50%. If you don't have SBMM, the lower skill players get farmed until they eventually quit, and as the skill floor rises (due to low skill players leaving the game), more and more players find themselves being farmed and leaving the game. If you do have SBMM, everyone but the top, bottom, and new (and thus not accurately assessed) players have a 50% win rate... and the casual players wind up leaving the game because a 50% win rate doesn't feel satisfying.
To the degree a solution exists, it would be in making games where you can lose and still feel good about the experience; most attempts I've seen at this, to the degree they worked at all, involved adding a PvE component.
In team games the solution is to make the game so that even if your team loses rounds, you can still have high individual impact. Most fps games today are now designed very heavily around communication, teamwork and tactics to level the skill gap.
Things like having extremely low accurate range on guns, low moving accuracy, tagging, where getting hit slows you down and shakes your crosshair all over the place, slow movement speeds, random spray patterns. This all just makes it harder for someone who is better to carry someone who is worse against 2 average enemies who play close together.
This would sound like a good idea to some people, but what it really accomplishes is that having any players on your team that are worse than the lobby average means you are extremely likely to lose.
This is frustrating for everyone.
Games need to have options for people to express their skill through better mechanics without being punished for it. A better player should be able to take out multiple opponents.
Then if someone on your team is slightly worse, you can carry them and they can try to learn and contribute to the game instead of getting flamed for being noob.
@@TheSuperappelflap In team games, the average impact of each player is equal to 1/number of players, and again, this is mathematically required.
@@01pantagruel only if the algorithm can effectively assess individual skill levels of players on the team.
For example, in counter strike, the only metric that determines your "skill" is the amount of rounds your team wins vs the enemy team.
you can carry every game with 2 kills per round on average, as long as your team only wins 50% of the time, you wont rank up.
if the algorithm is designed to take into account individual stats like damage per round, assists, bomb plants, flash assists, teammates traded, opening kills, etc.
Then people will start baiting their teammates for stats to rank up instead of trying to play to win rounds with their team.
there is no mathematical solution for this problem. it is NP.
@@TheSuperappelflap In a five player game, the average contribution of each player will be 20%. Sure, if there's no/bad SBMM, one player might have a contribution of 50% while another player has a contribution of 5%... but this still runs into the 5% contributors not having fun and quitting the game. The only advantage of team play is that it's easy to (falsely) blame your teammates... but that leads directly to toxic players flaming their teammates.
@@01pantagruel if you don't have ranked matchmaking there is no reason to flame your teammates
i’ve been waiting months for a video and its here 😭🙏
@stormbutgarb Kept you waiting, huh? 😉
I was early on player of Rocket League and we took to tournaments with two of my friends. It got so toxic with my teammates that it started to effect my mental health and had to stop playing. I was just ultra sweaty training like 6-10 hours a day.