[HN Gopher] Most gamers prefer single-player games
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Most gamers prefer single-player games
Author : omnibrain
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-10-03 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| olliej wrote:
| My feeling is that there are basically three reasons for the
| focus on multiplayer:
|
| * cheap out on development: essentially just have a few low
| detail maps that people play constantly
|
| * people want to look "unique" so you can charge them for near-
| zero-cost assets
|
| * people don't complain when you say "must have an internet
| connection"
|
| All of which are garbage reasons to me and just mean fewer good
| games, and less reason to buy them (I'm uninterested in buying a
| game if it is just going to stop working in a year because
| they're no longer selling it).
|
| If I want to be subject to swearing and shitty behavior is just
| become a high school teacher.
| The_Stone wrote:
| Add to this the appeal of a live service model:
|
| * Committed playerbase that stays around for a long time
|
| * Dev time focused on making new assets and gamemodes etc.
| rather than needing to develop entire new games
|
| * Designed with an intentional grind (leveling systems, battle
| passes, random drop chances) which slows down player
| progression to acquire before-mentioned aesthetic items or even
| mechanically important upgrades, can provide shortcuts via
| payment
|
| Of course, new live services are sinking now because each one
| depends on attention economy. If potential players are already
| committed to a different live service, they don't have the time
| or interest to re-commit to some other new one.
|
| We've been watching for years now as major companies sink
| millions into games that are DOA because they never actually
| had an audience willing to commit to yet another major
| continuing time investment that these games represent.
| cdchn wrote:
| I think the real reason for focus on multiplayer is that it
| keeps the game fresh without things that are really half-baked
| like procedural world gen. That drives engagement- keeping
| people playing- which gives companies more opportunities to
| sell microtransactions, skins, etc.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I'm probably in the minority, as I've gotten older, I no longer
| enjoy single player games. I'd say most gamers have gotten pretty
| pissed off that we're paying for AAA titles and then still being
| bombarded on a game-by-game basis for battle passes (basically
| add-on subscriptions).
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Stop playing AAA.
|
| Subnautica, Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight, Hades, Tunic / Death's
| Door... Indie is where it's at man.
|
| The only AAA I've loved in years was Red Dead 2... my horse :(
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| You don't even have to go full indie. There are plenty of
| amazing games that are maybe best described as AA instead of
| AAA. Let me start by recommending most of Nintendo's catalog.
| Narhem wrote:
| Quicker games that can be easily put down and picked back
| up and don't break the bank. Nintendo catered to their
| audience as the company grew.
| vundercind wrote:
| As with similar complaints about film, I can only assume
| folks complaining that there's nothing good because lots of
| the big-budget ones are lazy and bad, either didn't look very
| hard, or has super-narrow taste (which is ok! Just... not a
| problem for me)
|
| I can't even come close to keeping up with the probably-good
| entries in either category, film or single-player(-friendly)
| games. They could stop making more and it would be _quite a
| while_ before that was any kind of problem for me. My backlog
| gets a ton larger every year.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Everyone keeps talking about the death of film by
| superhero, but what they really mean is the death of
| Hollywood. There are brilliant directors working today -
| Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Johnathan Glazer, Lee Chang-dong, Claire
| Denis, Park Chan-wook, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and so
| many more, they just aren't American.
| vundercind wrote:
| Hell, plenty of good American movies come out every year,
| too. There are a _shitload_ of movies released each year,
| even just the ones big enough to get noticed nationally
| or internationally, not just art projects that only play
| once at a local library or something. It doesn't take a
| large proportion of those being good before they're
| outpacing the rate at which most people watch movies,
| even if all that watching goes to movies released in the
| last year or so--me, I'm also still catching up on the
| _thousands_ of good-to-great movies released in the first
| century+ of cinema.
|
| Some of the good ones are even Hollywood movies. They
| just might not be action movies (sometimes they are!) or
| might not have a super-sized marketing budget, so I guess
| lots of folks only see the handful that get advertised
| heavily and figure those are the only movies, but even
| Wikipedia or IMDB's list of films released each year are
| looooong and they don't capture everything.
| kbolino wrote:
| Asian media has absolutely exploded. China, South Korea,
| Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan have all put out a lot of
| good TV and movies in the past few years. It's definitely
| given me a refuge from the increasing proportion of
| American and British media that's crap.
| lispisok wrote:
| As another child mentioned dont play AAA games. AAA games
| budgets have gotten so big the entire project becomes about how
| they are going to make a profit on their $100 million cost
| instead of making a good game. Even if they wanted to make a
| good game with projects that size you get corporate management
| and design by committee that will always result in crap.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I think a lot of players are also tired of games that are only
| fun with in-app purchases. I avoid any game now that has in-app
| purchases because it _might_ be a great game where you can buy
| fancy hats but why would I waste any time trying to find that
| rare gem amidst all the pay-2-win sewage out there.
| behringer wrote:
| "But it's only cosmetics!" Is the cry of the developer.
|
| Nope. I nope out of any of that.
|
| No DMing, no chats? No thanks. Why play a social game you can't
| socialize in?
|
| Hackers and trolls? There's zero tools for fighting them and
| you can't host yourself.
|
| It's no wonder most gamers prefer single player, there's hardly
| any fun multi-player games.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Real life is pay2win so I have no idea why I would want more of
| that as an escape.
|
| The worst part is with constant updates you can buy a game and
| then have it changed into pay2win later. At least with single
| player you might be able to keep playing the old version.
| swores wrote:
| > _Real life is pay2win so I have no idea why I would want
| more of that as an escape._
|
| I dislike pay2win, but the logic behind that sentence could
| be used to rule out lots, maybe even the majority, of
| games..,
|
| Not just things like Eurotruck Simulator or Farming Sim or
| whatever, but games in general tend to be "more of what yo
| get in real life, but altered". From sports games to car
| racing to battles fought with weapons... people do find
| simulated reality to be a good escape.
| asdff wrote:
| I think cosmetics and other in app purchases have a
| generational divide. I have no clue why people would throw real
| money on a skin, I just never got that perspective. Meanwhile
| if you go to some reddit thread on some new game you can see a
| bunch of gen z users talking about how they feel about the
| cosmetics, expecting there to be more or better cosmetics,
| wishing for more cosmetics as paid DLC, as if that is a
| compelling selling point of the game to have some good
| cosmetics to look at. It definitely seems like a bit more vain
| generation compared to the millennials in terms of the clothes
| and accessories so maybe that checks out with everything else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My kid has friends whose families are not all that well-off,
| but damn do they have a lot of paid Fortnite skins. I don't
| get it either.
| jderick wrote:
| It's a lot harder to make a single player game have depth and
| complexity than it is for a multi player game, since you don't
| have human opponents.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'd say it's the opposite. But you are probably talking about
| depth of combat skill, while I'm talking about depth of writing
| and story.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| I think it's highly dependent on the type of game. Games that
| involve planning and strategy like Slay the Spire or Factorio
| have enormous depth despite being single player. But I think
| that it's hard to make the actual execution of mechanics as fun
| or deep against computer opponents.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Single player is a different kind of experience, and no less
| valuable. You might as well say
|
| > It's a lot harder to make a book have depth and complexity
| than it is for going to a party, since you don't have human
| conversation partners.
|
| It depends on the book and the party. Similarly, maybe there is
| more depth and complexity to Dwarf Fortress than there is to
| Rocket League. (Not to pick on RL in particular, it is just the
| first thing that came to mind.)
| al_borland wrote:
| I'd say Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom had a lot
| of depth. There was a ton of stuff to do. I have 340 hours into
| Tears of the Kingdom and hit 100% on the map, but there are
| still things I haven't done and stuff to explore and try. I
| find they also have a high replay value, since they are so open
| and there are nearly infinite ways to solve the various
| puzzles, traverse the world, or engage in the various
| battles... or don't. I once started up a new BotW game to see
| how far I could get without actually fighting anything.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Almost all multi-player gaming is competitive and involves
| dealing with occasional (or frequent, depending on the game)
| jerks. If I want stress and occasional jerks, I can just do
| things in the real world. Single-player gaming is more comfy.
| huevosabio wrote:
| It also removes a lot of the immersion. For example, I love Civ
| but playing with people shatters a lot of the day-dreaming.
| acomjean wrote:
| There are some which are more casual. My partner plays fornite.
| She's got a group she games with, and half the talking is about
| the game the other half is basically a catch up session with a
| game in the background.
|
| there was a game called "Journey" where there where other
| players in the world, but you couldn't interact directly.
| They'd help you. I think elden ring did something similar.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_(2012_video_game)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| fall guys has no voice chat and you are basically a jellybean
| playing in a japanese-inspired game show
| fullstop wrote:
| Elden Ring has an interesting multiplayer mechanic, and it
| works quite well.
|
| 1. You can sometimes see what other players are doing, they
| show up as a translucent white phantom looking thing. This is
| useful because you can sometimes see entrances to hidden
| locations, etc.
|
| 2. There are blood stains on the ground which represent where
| another player died. If you interact with the blood stain,
| you see a translucent red phantom in their final moments.
| This is useful if you want to see if jumping of a particular
| ledge is fatal or to see potential traps.
|
| 3. You can leave messages for other players to see and can
| read messages that other players have left. This mechanic
| goes both ways, as some people troll and others try to help.
| Interacting with the message rewards the player who left the
| message by refilling their health bar. Many boss fights have
| been won because someone happened to rate their message at a
| critical moment. On the trolling side, people leave messages
| like "Try jumping" by ledges where jumping off would be
| fatal. Others leave amusing messages, and the community is
| amazingly creative with the messages they compose, given that
| the pre-set vocabulary is quite limited.
|
| 4. You put your summon sign down on the ground for others to
| see. When they interact with it, you can enter their game and
| help them fight bosses / progress through the level. Bosses
| are rewarded with more health for each player present.
| Obviously, the opposite works as well and you can summon
| others into your game.
|
| 5. You can put your dueling sign down / interact with the
| dueling sign. This is for people who wish to participate in
| player vs player.
|
| 6. You can invade other people's worlds / be invaded. This
| only happens if you have summoned a helper or are using an
| item which allows this mechanic to be used solo. When you are
| invaded, other players can automatically be brought in as
| hunters to help vanquish the invader.
|
| I'm not a fan of twitchy competitive games, but I get a great
| deal of enjoyment and satisfaction with cooperative ones.
| Elden Ring and the rest of the "Souls" series very much
| scratch that itch.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Super Mario Wonder has a subset of these for co-op play.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's not just jerks. Seems like most multiplyer games have some
| sort of "pay to win" (or pay for an advantage) scheme in them.
| Then you have lag, solo team pitted against organized teams,
| ranking systems that arent accurate, etc.
|
| Competition in gaming is fine, but only if the participants
| think it's fair. It feels to me like it's increasingly unfair.
|
| But in relation it jerks, there seem to be many more same-team
| jerks than in the past. Teammate blame seems to be at an all
| time high. It's always someone else fault that we lost, never
| my own. Oftentimes you read the stats afterwards and the
| performance was basically equal. I can't help but feel that
| this same perspective is spilling into real life too.
| alex_lav wrote:
| > Seems like most multiplyer games have some sort of "pay to
| win" (or pay for an advantage) scheme in them
|
| Can you share an example of this outside of mobile games?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Plenty on here. Also it's not as egregious as straight pay
| to win, but often it's stuff like buying a season pass to
| level up or unlock items faster.
|
| https://fictionhorizon.com/best-pay-to-win-games/
| alex_lav wrote:
| 1. noncompetitive game
|
| 2. mobile game
|
| 3. mobile game
|
| 4. not actually pay to win.
|
| 5. noncompetitive game
|
| 6. mobile game
|
| You see where I'm going. You can't relate "has
| microtransactions" with "is pay to win". They're
| different.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's only 1/3rd of that list. Any multiplayer game is
| competitive to some degree. If you see my previous
| comment, it specifies "pay for advantage". Some games you
| have to pay to unlock gear or xp boosters to make it
| really playable.
| alex_lav wrote:
| > Some games you have to pay to unlock gear or xp
| boosters to make it really playable.
|
| Again, can you provide an example? Also
|
| > Any multiplayer game is competitive to some degree
|
| Is just blatantly incorrect, unless you just mean "One
| player is further in the game than the other", in which
| case literally all games are "competitive", including
| single player.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Again, can you provide an example?"
|
| I can but I won't, because I'm done with this
| conversation based on the inauthentic responses.
| BalinKing wrote:
| This shows up in fighting games, where DLC (i.e. paid)
| characters often have increasingly overpowered properties
| or even entirely new mechanics that the rest of the cast
| struggles to deal with.
| xnorswap wrote:
| You can buy gold in World of Warcraft.
|
| So you can essentially skip half your character's
| progression arc by entering a credit card number.
|
| Now, you can argue that the best gear is BOP (Bind on
| Pickup) so this isn't a huge factor, but there's still
| definitely an aspect of "pay to win", since there are
| plenty of other things you need gold for that payment
| skips.
|
| You can also argue that WoW isn't competitive, but all
| multiplayer games have a light competition of being ahead
| of others in progression, even if it's not direct
| competition. (I'm ignoring PvP because actual PvP is a tiny
| minority interest. )
| safety1st wrote:
| This description of the pay to win properties of WoW is
| slightly dated. Gold buys you very little in the way of
| gear these days. They have de-emphasized the role of gold
| over time because players kept buying it.
|
| That didn't stop players from figuring out how to pay to
| win though. They now pay "boosting" and "carry" services
| - other people who group up with you and then clear
| dungeons while you just follow along behind them and
| collect the loot as it drops.
|
| There are advertisers spamming ads for these carry
| services all over the place inside the game even though
| they're against ToS. It does still have its charms but on
| balance WoW really has become a train wreck.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > WoW really has become a train wreck
|
| Do you have a recommendation for something better that's
| subscription based?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| imo pay to win is a lot more rare than people imply for
| actual competitive multiplayer content.
| jsheard wrote:
| Depends on the market, pay2win is rare in western-developed
| PC and console games but extremely common in eastern-
| developed games, and mobile games developed anywhere.
| Korean MMOs are infamous for being pay2win pretty much
| without exception. Not that I think western publishers
| would be above doing P2W if they thought they could get
| away with it, but their main target markets aren't primed
| to accept it, though that tide is shifting with the rising
| global popularity of gacha games.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I played _League of Legends_ and didn't have any problem with
| the monetization scheme because you could get a great
| selection of characters to play paying no money (could have
| played the starter Sona forever) or a modest amount of money.
|
| What did bother me was (1) games taking too long (I don't
| want to tell my family I can't help with anything for 45
| minutes) and (2) jerks. In ranked there were the people who
| thought they could not get ahead because the players they
| played with (me) sucked, in unranked there were too many
| people who couldn't queue successfully (learned how to play
| all positions, even jungle, so I wouldn't be part of the
| problem of having three people who want to play top)
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Anecdotally (n.b. i have like 20x the time in dota vs
| league) I find the matchmaker in dota does a much better
| job of taking your behavior metrics into account. If you're
| nice you'll get nice people in your games. I think it's not
| uncommon for the 9 other people in the game to be willing
| to hold a pause for a few minutes if you need to deal with
| an emergency.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Competition in gaming is fine, but only if the participants
| think it's _fun_.
|
| There, changed it to the proper format.
|
| I've seen plenty of glitches in LAN games with friends that
| were completely unfair, but never were a problem.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| My god, this. In ut99 we found, in the assault mazon
| fortress map, how attackers could shoot friends on top of
| the fortress roof from the starting point. It broke the map
| completely, but nobody cared. In fact, it was so cool, the
| defenders joined the attackers, landing on top of their own
| base.
| smolder wrote:
| Pay-to-win mechanics used to always mean a game was not taken
| seriously competitively. Now with several genres of game it's
| expected you will pay money to unlock "DLC" characters (e.g.
| Street Fighter) that you can't otherwise play, but need to
| play against. It's not _exactly_ pay-to-win since the locked
| characters are supposed to be fairly balanced, but it 's
| arguable since balance is never perfect and developers seem
| reluctant to err on the weak side for characters they're
| trying to sell for a profit.
| claytongulick wrote:
| This.
|
| I prefer MMOs, but playing solo.
|
| I still (very) occasionally play WoW, and that's pretty much
| the only game I ever play.
|
| I'd love to try a new MMO, but they're all "free-to-play"
| meaning "pay to win". I just want to pay a normal monthly
| subscription price and explore cool worlds. Maybe interact
| occasionally with some other people in a guild or pickup
| group or something.
|
| It's what keeps my WoW subscription active, even though I
| rarely play it.
|
| Sadly, it's gotten so bad that I spend most of my brain-dead
| time reading Lit RPG stuff, because at least with that I can
| recapture some of the sense of wonder and excitement that we
| had during the golden age of MMOs (UO, EQ, DAOC, AC, SWG,
| etc...).
| danaris wrote:
| You could try Final Fantasy XIV--it's a traditional
| regular-subscription MMO that's actually picked up a _lot_
| of users in recent years. It 's much more story-focused
| than WoW, which is a turn-off to a lot of people coming
| from that tradition, but it's got a free trial.
| jsheard wrote:
| Multiplayer has also been taken over by free2play skinner box
| design, so if you want games that aren't designed to waste your
| time with unfun but addictive gameplay loops and/or nickel-and-
| dime you to death then singleplayer is the last bastion.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Agreed. Casual (non-competitive, non-p2w) multiplayer is a
| dying breed.
| cdchn wrote:
| I wouldn't say its a dying breed. I think you see more non-
| competitive co-op games now than competitive multiplayer,
| especially with the huge success of games like Space Marines
| 2 and Helldivers 2 and the massive flops of Concord and
| XDefiant.
|
| EDIT: typo meant non-competitive co-op
| falcolas wrote:
| Heh. If we're using competitiveness as a measuring stick,
| Helldivers 2 is absolutely competitive. If you're not
| geared up with the current meta, you're frequently flamed
| and kicked. There's a lot of "win or die" mentality there.
|
| If winning is on the line, it doesn't matter who the
| opponent is.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Competitiveness and zero sum thinking is so bad in the
| world of video games, that Helldivers 2's entire run has
| been marred by over-balancing loadouts _in an explicitly
| coop, PvE game_ , where balance shouldn't even be a
| priority.
|
| They spent months and months and months nerfing equipment
| (that was being used because basic game mechanics like
| armor penetration and damage models were explicitly broken)
| and making changes that intentionally or otherwise made the
| game _much_ harder, all while literal employees of the
| company bullied players asking for an enjoyable game in
| their public discord, telling players that the BUGS they
| were suffering from, including weapons not working the way
| they were supposed to, and including _the spawning behavior
| being utterly broken and spawning many times more enemies
| than it should_ was A SKILL ISSUE
|
| ArrowHead's culture itself was so "sweaty" and "tryhard"
| and destructive that it resulted in a change of the CEO and
| a restructuring of the department that interacted with
| players including banning at least one employee from the
| public discord for his hostile behavior. They had to
| completely change their development strategy and release
| cadence to address these issues, with significant public
| "mea culpa"s promising to make the game more fun for normal
| people. It even worked, with the game seeing an influx of
| new and returning players after a year of constant
| reduction in player count.
|
| This is a game where playing on higher difficulty levels is
| REQUIRED to unlock most of the content you cannot buy with
| the "real money" in game currency.
|
| So helldivers 2 is actually a great example of how god
| awful and toxic the "tryhards" in online gaming are. It was
| literally corroding one of the best and most refreshing new
| games to come out in a long time, from a company who has
| historically done a wonderful job making games that are all
| about chaotic fun and lighthearted cooperation, like
| Magika.
|
| They are god awful at programming though. Also don't seem
| to have reliable and well managed change control, since
| they seem to have no clue what releases any time they
| update.
|
| Another great example was the Dark Souls debacle about
| adding an easy mode. These games are known for being hard
| (imo often with fake and bullshit difficulty like a
| dragon's fire breath literally going through a wall to kill
| you), but the devs wanted the game to be more accesible and
| there was LOUD outcry about allowing people to play the
| game easier would "ruin!!!!" the game.... somehow. This was
| a single player game that was perfectly playable with near
| zero online interaction. They explicitly were upset that
| other people may have fun.
| skyyler wrote:
| Couch co-op games are the kind I'm most interested in. I want
| to play games with my family and friends.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Do aRPGs count?
|
| They can be as competitive or as casual as you like, are
| "soft-multiplayer", essentially single player inside a
| multiplayer economy, and the better ones are non-p2w.
| smolder wrote:
| Part of this goes back to skill-based matchmaking (SBMM)
| systems becoming the standard. It used to be I would just
| play Counter-Strike on a local server because it had the best
| ping, by far. The same people were playing there all the
| time, so there was a sense of community, and I could really
| see myself improve over time in the stats and match results.
| With SBMM I get punished for playing better by getting
| matched against harder and harder opponents so that it feels
| like treading water, even in "unranked" game modes. SBMM is
| also an abusable system, as dedicated players will often make
| several accounts to play on and take advantage of their
| assumed lack of skill as their matchmaking rank is
| calibrated, throwing the whole thing out of whack.
| vundercind wrote:
| Multiplayer comes with social obligation. I'm messing up other
| people's good time if I drop the controller and vanish for five
| minutes.
|
| I don't feel comfortable doing that unless the chance of an
| interruption is extremely close to zero. Stresses me out.
| slothtrop wrote:
| This is the big one to me, time commitment. People spend
| hours on these, and if you want to "hang" with an in-group,
| they expect you to put in the time. No thanks. I don't want a
| lifestyle revolving around maximizing time on a multiplayer
| game.
|
| If I'm going to commit time every week it might as well be a
| physical sport. I do like couch co-op or occasional online
| play with friends but that is off-the-cuff stuff. I'd be
| willing to do it more frequently if the time were capped.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yeah. FFA pvp is less stressful because you only have your
| own fate to worry about. If you need to go AFK it's you just
| sacrifice a match.
|
| ...team pvp or even coop games need much more commitment.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Not my experience. You are right that it's _less_ of an
| issue. But I very definitely stressed about individual
| matches and how it affects the ranking and stats. You hold
| it in until the match finishes and just don 't join the
| next one right away but you still change your behavior. Or
| in something like WoW PvP servers you go somewhere safe
| before logging out etc.
|
| SP? Hit the pause button and go.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| You can always solo queue fortnight/apex or whatever. The
| worst case is you die cause you had to deal with the
| kid/cat/work call, if you focus on the fun of the individual
| engagements and don't worry about actually winning the match
| you'll have fun. I do understand what you're saying,
| multiplayer gaming does require much more intentionality. You
| have to make distraction free time to get the most out of it,
| especially if you're playing a team game there's a social
| contract to have the time to play the match out.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Multiplayer comes with social obligation.
|
| My wife uses video games to relax and de-stress after having
| dealt with customers all day. Having to deal with more people
| in the evening is the last thing she needs.
| asdff wrote:
| I feel like multiplayer gaming was more fun/popular when there
| were more jerks, especially on the mics. It seemed like half
| the fun was the shit talking back in the halo 3/cod 4 era, and
| it really only stopped when they screwed up how lobbies worked
| in newer titles where you can't go on all talk between games
| let alone actually party up, or have proxy chat in game. At
| least on some PC games you can still get on the mics and PC
| gamers do actually still use their mics. I'm not sure if the
| new consoles even ship with mics anymore.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Every PS5 controller has a built in mic/speaker. It's
| passable but it's no Xbox headset.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Shit talking or hearing others shit talk was half the fun.
| IMO, this should be resolved through the creation of
| moderated vs unmoderated channels. Different strokes for
| different folks. Instead, all channels are moderated.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| So I think there are two things here. First I agree somewhat
| though I think that there's a difference between good natured
| shit talking and being a jerk. I feel like as a kid people
| still could be mean but tonally it was more jovial, now I
| feel like I run into more miserable assholes (which I think
| is much worse). Secondly it still wasn't fun for everyone
| back in the day, especially if you were different people
| would try to bully you. I never had an issue but I know a lot
| of people who have never used public voice chat because they
| don't want to be harassed.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| One factor not talked about enough is that multiplayer games
| are kind of limited in the "experience" you can create. Single
| player experiences are unbound. The fact that you can narrate
| "stories" is what allows gamers to "experience" new things.
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| Yeah, almost every multiplayer-focused game nowadays seems to
| be trying to be the next big e-sport. There's always somebody
| who's fully focused on the meta and being competitive, and
| lashing out at people who don't. I have too much work , too
| much social life and too many hobbies, I'm not going to spend
| even more time gittin gud for internet strangers.
|
| I've mostly stopped playing online games besides more
| chill/sandboxy ones, like Lethal Company, and those I play
| exclusively with friends.
| lispisok wrote:
| Maybe I'm just old and washed but it seems like kids these days
| take multiplayer games way more seriously. Instead of hopping on
| and playing a few games after school/work people act more like
| they are trying to make the college sports team. The amount of
| time and effort required to hold you own has gone up
| dramatically.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because they are, at least some of them. E-sports has
| opportunity for making money in ways that some people are never
| going to have. There's also the entire ability of streaming and
| earning by doing that stuff. Game promoters paying out to have
| IAPs pushed as well.
|
| All of this never existed in mine or your days when our parents
| just knew that video games would ruin us with no way of making
| money in them. Even the dream of becoming a game developer
| wasn't even a thing.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| You know those after-school math tutoring academies that pop
| up in American strip malls? One of those opened up near me,
| but instead of grilling your kids in calc or trig to improve
| their SAT scores, it's an "esports academy" for young
| hopefuls.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I think there's more going on culturally than just that.
| Regular sports got more competitive at a younger age, too,
| and there has always been the possibility of going pro and
| earning money from it, plus college scholarships.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's just progression of the world. The first video game
| was a simple thing like Pong. Now, we have entire immersive
| 3D worlds. Someone/something is always the first, but those
| that come after will/can be bigger, better, faster. The
| first mass produced car was a Model-T, now we have
| Mustangs, GTXs, Porsches, blah blah.
| diggan wrote:
| Not sure how old you are, but I'm around 30, started playing
| against others back when CS1.5 was launched, and we
| participated in our LAN party. It was before I had 24/7
| internet connection at home, so after and before school was
| spent practicing with bots, then once a quarter or something we
| could play against each other, seeing who had "trained" the
| best since last time.
|
| Already at that point many of my friends were pretty
| competitive, even though neither of us really had the means to
| become HeatoN even if we tried. I think this must have been
| early 2000s something I think?
| arp242 wrote:
| There was a competitiveness to it, but it was a fun friendly
| competitiveness. The kind of competitiveness you have when
| you go bowling with friends, or play poker. You're trying
| your hardest to win, sure, but also: it's just fun with
| friends.
|
| These days "play online" so often means "play with complete
| strangers you've never talked to before and most likely never
| will again".
|
| Even for large popular games like Unreal Tournament you
| typically joined a set of favourite servers, and had the same
| set of "regulars" hanging around.
|
| It's like old-school relatively small-scale forums vs. reddit
| or Twitter.
|
| You can still kind-of get this experience if you try hard
| enough, but it's not really the default and typically nothing
| is geared towards it.
| 4gateftw wrote:
| The thing is that most people who want a more casual
| multiplayer experience now just have their own servers or
| play in some other setting where it's easy to just play
| with your friends and nobody else. They'll play on a
| private Valheim/Minecraft server, or party up in Warzone or
| Fortnite, or play a private Civ game hosted p2p, or just
| visit each other in Animal Crossing. I think in general
| this is where Gen-Z is moving: less engagement with open
| platforms, more with private ones. That is why Discord is
| such a big deal as well. The problem with the current state
| of the internet is that if you let just anyone in you have
| to deal with trolls, or bots, or scammers, or incels, or
| whatever, and nobody wants to deal with that. Even on
| public chess servers you'll get like five messages a month
| saying "your opponent was cheating, sorry about that," who
| actually wants to talk to randos these days?
| swores wrote:
| 1.5 came out in 2002, then 1.6 in 2003.
|
| (And Heaton is a dick, just saying.)
| harry_ord wrote:
| A lot more games are structured that way.
|
| I got into online gaming with Cs 1.6 and cs:cz normal online
| was kinda competitive but you had a lot of joke maps or non
| competive ones(climbing maps). I don't think they're as popular
| now since a lot of games have matchmaking and ranked unlocks as
| the default multilayer. I'm way out of the loop mind you, I
| learn a lot more to PvE multilayer now(left4dead and deep rock)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem is that every modern online game does not allow
| custom hosted servers. In the good old days of online
| multiplayer, I would load into a Halo 1 map with 30 other
| people set to capture the flag (a multiplayer mode that seems
| to almost not exist anymore!) where the server runs 24/7, and
| if either side wins, the same players get mixed into two new
| teams in a "balancing" way, and the game just starts back up.
| Most people were playing because "I just want to shoot someone"
| was fun on it's own.
|
| This made online games essentially a public place, where people
| might even get to know each other and "hang out", and you could
| join the same people day after day, get to know habits, make
| friends and rivals, etc. It was extremely low competitiveness,
| and nothing that happened really mattered. It didn't matter if
| you sucked or were amazing, because you would likely end up on
| the team with everyone in the server at some point, so people
| got wildly different gameplay experiences. This even meant that
| different servers could target different styles of play. You
| could go to the really tryhard team deathmatch servers with
| carefully balanced maps and active admin management for
| cheaters and balance purposes, or you could join the match on
| cramped Beaver Creek with zero shields and infinite shotguns
| and rockets, where average lifespan was measured in tenths of
| seconds, but that chaos was a great breather if you didn't feel
| competitive that day.
|
| No matter how shitty you were, you could find a community that
| felt right to you, and you were likely to even dominate
| occasionally when you had good days and got lucky, so that even
| people who suck at the game felt the high of victory.
|
| Nowadays, game devs insist not being utterly steamrolled by
| minute thirty is "not fun", and enforce near perfect a perfect
| 1:1 win/loss ratio through matchmaking systems, where you never
| see the same player twice, so they don't exist as fellow humans
| in your mind but as hostile "agents" that you must struggle
| against, and everyone feels average because your instantaneous
| success is basically driven by who got the advantage in the
| random matchmaking process. Everyone is forced to feel average
| about their performance, because everyone is forcibly given an
| average experience.
|
| A lot of that existed long before now, but it was always opt-
| in. If you wanted custom servers, you could go have that fun
| and chaos, but if you were feeling competitive, you could jump
| into matchmaking and have the enforced global balance of that
| system give you specific matches you were emotionally prepared
| for and explicitly seeking out.
|
| BUT..... companies had to get rid of custom servers, because
| it's way harder to sell digital items for a game if players can
| just go on private and custom servers that turn off or disable
| the checks for if you have "purchased" whatever skin you want
| to wear. All the bullshit A/B testing and metrics companies
| have made up to assure us that "people like this better" is
| just to defend their business strategy.
| mattw2121 wrote:
| I love playing multi-player games when there is a well built
| economy. Frankly, that economy doesn't even need to be built into
| the game. I've played multi-player games where the marketplace
| was outside the game (but still all done with in-game items).
|
| What I hate about multi-player is when you have to play the game
| with others to be successful (exceptions made for those very few
| big bosses). I'm mostly a MMORPG player. I don't want to be in a
| clan or guild. I don't want to find other people to play with. I
| just want to log on whenever I want and play for as long or as
| little as I want. But, I want to be able to buy stuff in an
| economy.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I played MP when I was younger (even MMOs, played WoW in the
| first year), but nowadays, it's all single player. Stellaris, Civ
| V, and the two Owlcat Pathfinder Games (Wrath of the Righteous,
| which I was playing when I saw the link, and Kingmaker) are my
| main games where I have over 1k hours each, but I also play many
| other single player games. I don't like always having to push
| myself to the max, or interacting with random internet people
| when I want to enjoy myself.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Multi player co op or single player in that order... there is no
| 3
| mway wrote:
| As a lifelong and avid gamer, multiplayer games - in my
| experience, at least - typically trend toward highly toxic,
| abusive, sometimes degenerate behavior. Communities in which this
| does not happen seem to be quite rare (I can't recall one
| offhand). Trolling is rampant, cheating/exploitation is normal,
| and elitism is pervasive. It really takes the fun out of games.
|
| These days, I generally avoid games that are multiplayer-only,
| and for games with multiplayer elements, I try to avoid those and
| focus on single-player elements instead.
|
| It could be selection bias based on my gaming preferences, of
| course, but based on feedback I've heard from others who play
| games that I do not, it seems to be largely the same everywhere
| multiplayer is involved.
| Borg3 wrote:
| You can also add DDoS to the list too. Ive been long DooM
| player but I stepped back due to above crap and DDoSes on my
| servers. Now I play mostly offline, ocassioanlly spawning
| server for friends only.
| 3np wrote:
| > It could be selection bias based on my gaming preferences
|
| Major factor IME. If you're playing any AAA or one of the
| top-10-or so FPSes or MOBAs, sure. Hanging out with friends
| when they're playing online multiplayer less in-fashion older
| and indie games: Very little of that if any, there.
|
| I'm with you, but to make a (competely arbitrary) parallel:
| It's possible to love R&B music but still have a miserable time
| when you go to a concert with The Weeknd because you don't vibe
| with the crowd and you think the party sucks. That doesn't mean
| you can't have a good time going out to live shows in general
| and find parties you enjoy with people you vibe with.
|
| Similarly, I love clubbing but have absolutely 0 interest going
| to any of the major couple of venues that catch the bigger
| crowds in town.
|
| Doesn't mean the party scene is dead.
| maltyr wrote:
| In my experience, ONE thing will cause a game to trend towards
| toxicity - higher stakes. The more "important" the win or loss
| feels to the player, the more toxicity shows up.
|
| It's pretty easy to filter out "toxic" games if you filter out
| anything which has a ranked mode and is not designed to be
| played infinitely.
|
| Unfortunately, games in the online era have trended in that
| direction, because they are the most profitable.
|
| For example, some variables that affect toxicity: -
| competitiveness, often implemented by sort of ranked system,
| but also just any sort of head-to-head competition. Tournaments
| and betting will do this as well. - longer investment (via
| playtimes, either of a single "run" or in total) - people won't
| get mad at a 5-10 minute game as much as a 1 hour game. Games
| as a service like MMOs where people have 1000s of hours of
| playtime are the extreme end of this. - punishing gameplay,
| where a mistake can cause you to lose a lot of progress
| (Hardcore modes where dying means you have to restart your
| character, for example) - tone (casual vs serious tone, e.g.
| Fall Guys vs Call of Duty) - More serious generally results in
| more toxicity.
|
| Adjusting these variables can even turn a single player game
| into a toxic one (e.g. self-imposed challenges/achievements,
| Dark Souls, Jump King or Getting Over It).
|
| Similarly, you can lower the stakes so that the gameplay
| doesn't devolve into toxicity, even with multiplayer (e.g.
| Animal Crossing)
| MisterKent wrote:
| Deep Rock Galactic is supposed to have one of the most
| wholesome and helpful communities out there.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I wish I enjoyed that game, but it just felt like a grind to
| me. :-(
| bikenaga wrote:
| From "Uncovering the Viral Nature of Toxicity in Competitive
| Online Video Games" - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.00978
|
| "Abstract: Toxicity is a widespread phenomenon in competitive
| online video games. In addition to its direct undesirable
| effects, there is a concern that toxicity can spread to others,
| amplifying the harm caused by a single player's misbehavior. In
| this study, we estimate whether and to what extent a player's
| toxic speech spreads, causing their teammates to behave
| similarly. To this end, we analyze proprietary data from the
| free-to-play first- person action game Call of Duty(r):
| Warzone(tm). We formulate and implement an instrumental
| variable identification strategy that leverages the network of
| interactions among players across matches. Our analysis reveals
| that all else equal, all of a player's teammates engaging in
| toxic speech increases their probability of engaging in similar
| behavior by 26.1 to 30.3 times the average player's likelihood
| of engaging in toxic speech. These findings confirm the viral
| nature of toxicity, especially toxic speech, in competitive
| online video games."
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Small squad coop is a pretty excellent option. Helldivers 2 was
| super popular for a good reason; all the upsides of hanging out
| with a couple others folks and having a ridiculous time, facing
| absurd monsters. Warhammer Vermintide & Darktide lack the open
| level design but have similar upsides.
|
| I do think multiplayer is super hard to make broadly rewarding.
| High skill players quickly come to dominate, often in brutal
| ways. I enjoyed some Star Wars: Battlefront 2 but man, a couple
| players who knows what they are doing rack up kills quick to earn
| a hero character respawn, & can often just own the heck out of
| most players quite well. Figuring out how you can drop good
| experiences for medium & low skill players is super hard.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I used to like multi-player shooters, when I was young and had
| infinite time to devote to "git gud." I also played games for the
| challenge back then. Now that I'm old, I don't have infinite time
| to upskill, and I mostly play games to relax and unwind after
| work. I specifically don't want a challenge. Unfortunately, every
| multi-player first person shooter seems to be geared towards (and
| infested with) sweaty professional gamers who do nothing but
| practice, and of course they wipe the floor with me.
|
| Game companies try to solve this with so-called "skill based
| matchmaking[1]" which purports to match you with other players of
| similar skill, but I've never seen it actually work. Every game
| is full of sweats who somehow have cracked SBMM so that they get
| into games with less-skilled players like me and punch way below
| their weight.
|
| I wish games would just go back to letting the user choose their
| own difficulty level. Sad that that's kind of gone out of
| fashion.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill-based_matchmaking
| solardev wrote:
| Are you only interested in PVP? The PVE shooters can be a lot
| more chill (Destiny, Division, Borderlands, Remnant, etc.)
|
| If you get a friend or two together who don't mind oldies, the
| old Tom Clancy games (Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell) are a blast
| to play through in coop too.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Will have to try them. I like shooters, but I prefer to play
| against push-over AI bots instead of 13 year old pro humans.
| I guess that's what PVE means.
| solardev wrote:
| > I guess that's what PVE means.
|
| Well, sort of. PvE just means "player vs environment", a
| holdover/loan word from MMOs where that was the default, vs
| being able to attack other players in PvP areas.
|
| When applied to shooters, though, typically it means that
| the game was designed around _asymmetric_ battles between
| players and AI enemies. Asymmetric means that the enemies
| aren 't just bots taking the place of humans, with the same
| rules, weapons, health, etc. Instead, they are usually a
| mix of different enemy types... easy to kill grunts, the
| occasional sniper, the melee berserker, and of course the
| "bullet sponge" bosses that take forever to kill and feel
| more like old MMO raids than a normal opponent in a
| shooter. They're not meant to simulate real players (even
| shitty ones), but to give more of a feel of a traditional
| video game campaign. For like the super-boiled-down version
| of this, Serious Sam is just endless hordes of enemy types
| running at you. A more modern take would be the roguelite
| shooter genre, like Risk of Rain 2 or Gunfire Reborn, which
| offers only endless combat and not much else. The other
| titles I mentioned usually have some sort of story and some
| form of permanent progression in the form of new weapons,
| abilities, etc.
|
| If that _isn 't_ what you want, then yeah, it's bots in
| regular PvP shooters that you'll have to look for :( I
| think they are relatively rare these days, but you can
| still play the old Unreal Tournaments, Quakes, Doom, etc.
| danaris wrote:
| Worth noting that even in the FPS genre, that sort of PvE
| gameplay is actually the _original_ gameplay style, that
| got subsumed by the massive popularity of PvP shooters
| later on.
|
| Early FPSes like Wolfenstein, Doom, and the Marathon
| trilogy were primarily about killing asymmetric AI
| enemies--and even sometimes (moreso in the Marathon
| games) progressing through a story.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| While I don't doubt that this is true, it also seems like the
| very biggest games at a given time tend to be multi-player. DOTA,
| Fortnite, WoW were all so genre-definingly huge that there are
| lists of copycats a mile long. Maybe the only comparable single-
| player-only game I can think of, in the last 20 or so years at
| least, is Dead Souls / Dark Souls.
| barnabee wrote:
| Multiplayer games are fun with people you already know. (In
| person LAN party optional but recommended.)
|
| Though so are plenty of single player games.
| fourfour3 wrote:
| I really enjoyed PvP and PvE shooters with my friend group in
| secondary school (that's 11 to 18 or so), but I don't get the
| same feeling with people I don't know. I do some occasionally
| with other friends but it's just not the same as it was then.
|
| My taste in games has changed too as I've gotten older - I find
| myself mostly playing a mix of older games, story rich RPGs and
| indie titles - eg things like Tyranny, Baldur's Gate 3, Disco
| Elysium, OpenTTD, Rimworld, Slay the Spire... twitchy FPS games
| just don't do it for me any more.
|
| So this article's main findings (the splits by age) definitely
| fits with me - I'm out of the <25 age group and have been for a
| while ;)
| markx2 wrote:
| This sums it up for me.
|
| "I Don't Want To Be A Product Of My Environment. I Want My
| Environment To Be A Product Of Me."
|
| Frank Costello - The Departed.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Don't we all, here? Don't we (most of us) engineer? Is this
| still "Hacker" news?
|
| (Although I do not quite grasp the intended relation of the
| idea to gaming. I would say it's a matter of one's own private
| time with oneself, one's own rhythm...)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| My gaming time is split between online PVP fighting games (Street
| Fighter 6, Guilty Gear Strive) and single-player games (Elden
| Ring, Yakuza). If I had to pick one, I'd go with single player.
|
| The online experience is great compared to even a few years ago
| (when it wasn't acceptable), but not perfect in terms of loading
| times and lag.
| Novosell wrote:
| A few years ago? People have been playing Counter Strike
| professionally for like 20 years.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I said I play Street Fighter, not Counter Strike. Netcode
| (needs and implementation) is actually not the same between
| all games.
| Novosell wrote:
| Seems the first Street Fighter game with rollback netcode
| was in 2008, another in 2011.[1] But perhaps the
| implementation was poor? I'm not a fighting game expert.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GGPO
| dfxm12 wrote:
| These were rereleases of fairly old games (i.e. niche
| titles, where most of the people were just playing on
| emulators). It's also not enough to have rollback
| netcode, it still needs to be implemented properly, the
| game needs to have good matchmaking, etc. These weren't
| new, mainstream releases.
| Novosell wrote:
| Yeah that's fair. I've been playing some GG Strive
| recently and compared to how it used to be playing
| fighting games online, 50/50 you're either against a pleb
| or Leffen, it's been nice to have somewhat consistent
| matchmaking in terms of skill. It does fuck it up from
| time to time though.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Can an apparent preference for Online PvP amongst 16-19 age
| cohort be explained by a lack of disposable income? Online PvP
| games are often free (with different monetization schemes), so
| that removes one large barrier to entry?
| thebeardisred wrote:
| IMHO because of toxic online interactions and a lack of couch co-
| op titles.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I wonder to what degree the business and bureaucratic dynamics of
| big-budget failed live-service games are similar to big-budget
| Hollywood flops. The people working on it day to day know that
| it's crap and will not succeed, but someone in the background[0]
| keeps pushing the project forward anyway.
|
| What's the disconnect? If dozens or hundreds of people intimately
| familiar with the project say it's no good, why don't you listen
| to them?
|
| [0] in my mind's eye, mustachioed, smoking a cigar, and fanning
| himself with hundred-dollar bills
| jayd16 wrote:
| Does what the article is arguing make any sense? AAA studios
| cancelled some live service games and that means fewer single
| player games made.
|
| But it doesn't follow that the live service aspect is what killed
| the games. Games are cancelled all the time.
|
| And then saying there's an industry trend but what's brought up
| is how those games were cancelled, not brought down by the user
| sentiment of live services.
|
| And their data point is a 53% preference? It just seems poorly
| argued to me.
| calf wrote:
| It's consultant bullshit research, not even doing proper
| science. For example it talks about the popularity of PvP--the
| actual argument it wants to say is, companies should develop
| single-player games because existing PvP games are locked in to
| an audience already. Which makes the title completely
| misleading and a clever/unscrupulous consultant might say such
| a sweeping statement to get access to companies' interest.
| Triphibian wrote:
| The headline is a bit of a dogwhistle, capitalizing on deep
| held sentiment among gamers, that unfortunately doesn't bear
| out in the market. I think many have pointed out that there are
| excellent smaller single player indies, but the risk to create
| an expensive single-player only game has become too great for
| most developers. It is very similar to the current state of
| cinema -- where people say they prefer different kinds of or
| better movies, but they only reliably turn out for sequels and
| superhero movies.
|
| I think the mistake being made is instead of opting to build a
| cheaper, higher quality single player games they opt to created
| an expensive, AAA live service (for a minute they were calling
| them Destiny killers) -- which is a tough landing to stick.
| You'll notice that the success stories took long investments
| Fortnite's pivot from a grindy co-op game to a genre defining
| battle royale or maybe even Apex's stealth development and
| launch.
|
| Not long ago the consultancy GameDiscoverCo released a study
| that most people were playing OLD games. So the toughest
| competition for new single player games are classics like
| Skyrim. So the question these studios have to ask is "can I
| make a game that will get people to put down Skyrim or Civ V."
| That's a big ask.
| jerf wrote:
| "Not long ago the consultancy GameDiscoverCo released a study
| that most people were playing OLD games."
|
| I've long tried not to buy every console, because it gets
| expensive for no good reason. So as our Switch is aging, I
| metaphorically poked my head up and put my finger to the
| wind... and decided our "next console" is the Steam Deck I
| already owned. And a big part of that decision is new games
| are frankly not any better than old games. They look better,
| and that's it, and that often comes at the cost of the real
| interactivity of the game anyhow.
|
| I wouldn't put a specific date on it, but game tech basically
| plateaued 10-15 years ago, even if the numbers keep going up.
| The graphics were good enough, especially if strong art
| direction knew how to use them. The tech for creating great
| games was basically all in place, and we got to where having
| 10 times the polygons just wasn't important anymore. Games
| are a lot more like movies to me now... I don't sit there
| looking at "was this movie 2021 or 2023?" as if that's going
| to indicate an important difference in quality, and games are
| getting to be that way for me.
| oramit wrote:
| "Hitting a few singles and doubles beats trying to hit a home run
| and striking out."
|
| As game developers and publishers have consolidated into mega
| corps this line just isn't true anymore. You need a billion
| dollar game to move the corporate needle these days. It's a very
| similar dynamic to what has happened in Hollywood. All the mid-
| budget projects are being squeezed out and you either go very low
| budget/indie or you go huge budget and swing for the fences.
| There is no career reward in the current corporate marketplace
| for modest wins.
| Terretta wrote:
| We prefer same/shared screen co-op (Diablo 3 and 4, A Way Out,
| etc.), and story campaign PvE co-op (e.g. Wildlands, BG3).
|
| Shared screen co-op is annoyingly difficult to find since "couch
| co-op" doesn't differentiate split screen versus shared screen
| and we strongly dislike split screen.
|
| Story co-op is increasingly difficult to find. When you do find
| them, they tend to be less campaign or story and more "repeated
| encounter" scenarios (e.g., Insurgent). There is nothing like the
| strategically deliberate plan and work together pace of Wildlands
| since Wildlands.
|
| Worse, recent co-op campaign games tend to be add-on modes to
| PvP, meaning you have to contend with ridiculous "balance" boosts
| and nerfs so nothing works like it should if it was a single
| player game. PvE should not be "balanced" this way.
| solardev wrote:
| If you liked BG3, have you tried the Divinity Original Sin
| series by the same studio? They're even better in co-op IMO and
| not being limited to the D&D rules makes combat more fun and
| dynamic.
| xnorswap wrote:
| If you didn't already try "It Takes Two" then you owe it to
| yourselves to try, although I don't know off the top of my head
| if it's playable as shared-screen.
|
| It definitely ticks the "co-op story" game box though, and is
| overall a great game.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Some co-ops are very confusing to me.
|
| Like for Pikmin where in the later editions there were multiple
| main characters on the field that you could switch between. How
| was there not a local co-op where each player could use a main
| character?
| tombert wrote:
| Most of my gaming now is honestly FreeCell on my phone, but if we
| want to talk about what "gamers" would consider games, the only
| time I really enjoy multiplayer is if I'm playing with actual
| friends.
|
| I never really had much enjoyment with playing with strangers on
| the internet. Most of them are much better at these games than I
| am, and it's just way too stressful. I also have some hesitation
| trash-talking total strangers, but I'm perfectly fine doing that
| with close friends.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think the push for multiplayer games made me quit gaming about
| 10-15 years ago. It was only in the last couple years that the
| new Zelda games got me back into it, which are single player.
|
| I will sometimes play multiplayer games with my nephews, but
| would always prefer to play by myself. If I'm playing a game I
| want it to be fun and not stressful. When everything is a
| competition, it's stressful. There's not letting up, no lazy
| laps... you have to try to win.
|
| They often want me to play Minecraft with them. I "forget" to
| bring my laptop a lot. When I played Minecraft in the past it was
| always on peaceful and I'd just build stuff. It was a giant
| sandbox of digital legos for me, or I'd try and make weird stuff
| with redstone. They have all these monsters turned on, want to go
| into these boss battles, and they never give me any weapons (and
| disable my ability to get my own) so I just die over and over
| again trying to run from things with no defenses. It's awful.
| Half the time I just stop playing and stare the the screen, like
| wtf do you want me to do here...
|
| I'm sure the industry hates the idea that most people prefer
| single players games, because then they can't justify their
| online services, so they are incentivized to push multiplayer
| games and make people think that's what they like.
| spacecadet wrote:
| LOL your nephews are trolls.
| al_borland wrote:
| For sure... The one was being a jerk, so I was just threw it
| right back at him and started destroying the whole settlement
| he built. Emptying his chests into lava breaking down
| walls... to see how he likes playing with a griefer.
|
| It was somewhat effective.
| jerf wrote:
| Minecraft has the distinction of being the only game I've
| played with my kids where I still felt like a parent even
| in the game. It wasn't even just policing "bad behavior",
| sometimes I had to run around covering over the ravines so
| they wouldn't fall in, because then I had to go rescue
| them. Now they're older and I still had to sometimes go
| rescue them after they made an ill-considered journey
| without supplying well enough in advance.
|
| I'm not complaining per se. It's just interesting that the
| game is able to have that dynamic in it.
|
| They're older now, it's much less of an issue, but I still
| mandate that PvP stays off at all times. Though it is a
| useful lesson in the mechanics of escalation, I suppose.
|
| (Specifically, you always value harm to yourself more than
| you value harm to others, even your family, so when someone
| does "1" damage to you, you perceive it as "2", then you
| try to retaliate with "2" damage but _they_ perceive it as
| "4" damage for the same reason, and now you're stuck in an
| escalating loop. There are ways out of this loop, of
| course, but it takes time. This rather simple model
| explains a rather distressing amount of international
| politics and history....)
| screaminghawk wrote:
| I also gave up on multiplayer and casually playing on Nintendo
| Switch has got me back into it. For me, it's a skill issue. I'm
| just not as good as I used to be. I play games on easy now so
| that I can blast through it quickly. Otherwise I'll (have to)
| set the game down for a couple weeks and completely forget what
| was going on in the game.
|
| I have the complete opposite experience with Minecraft. My kids
| play peaceful flat land creative and it's the most boring thing
| to me. I'll take boss fights without weapons any day.
| al_borland wrote:
| > I have the complete opposite experience with Minecraft. My
| kids play peaceful flat land creative and it's the most
| boring thing to me. I'll take boss fights without weapons any
| day.
|
| Flat land creative is boring. I agree with you there. I would
| use a normal world and explore it a bit, find a good spot to
| make my home, mine for materials, create a store room for all
| of stuff getting mined, make secret entrances that would
| trigger with pistons and stuff, things like that. I guess
| some people might find that boring too, but I found it pretty
| relaxing. Of course this was usually just something to do on
| the side, while something else was going on. As a singular
| focus I won't do it.
|
| I used to work a job with a lot of downtime, so it was
| perfect for that. Something to fill the time, but easy to
| pick up and put down as needed, and I could still keep an eye
| on what was going on at work to know if I needed to do
| something.
| bitfilped wrote:
| Something else I haven't seen mentioned in the comments yet is
| the rapid pace of AAA title acquisitions by players. I never
| played as many games as my "gamer" friends, but over the last
| several years the pace that people pick up and put down games is
| staggering. Most of my friends will have acquired, played and
| stopped playing 4-6 games in the time it takes me to get to the
| oldest one in the current cycle (at which point there are no
| friends left who are willing to play with.)
| asdff wrote:
| Single player games are always how they were, you are running
| local software after all. If anything they get better with time
| with bug fixes and community mod ecosystems that continue to
| improve and overhaul the experience.
|
| Multiplayer games are of course not strictly local software, but
| their experience extends beyond software itself into forming an
| abstract community of people. You might come on to a multiplayer
| game and enjoy it for a time, but its in its nature that this
| community will shift. The casuals move on to newer titles that
| have all the other casuals on it now. The greybeards left playing
| halo 3 today are total sweats now who stomp you every time you
| have a happy memory of getting a killstreak 15 years ago and
| foolishly open master chief collection.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Single player games are always how they were, you are running
| local software after all.
|
| Balance fixes (yes, in single player games) show that this is
| not always the case. Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring have both
| had several gameplay tactics nerfed.
| emilfihlman wrote:
| I mean yeah, when you make multiplayer too clean it becomes less
| fun.
| koshergweilo wrote:
| An obvious explanation for why publishers overwhelming focus on
| multiplayer titles despite consumer demand is that multiplayer
| games are much harder to pirate
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Maybe? Seems like more and more publishers are trying to sneak
| in a required internet connection for single player.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Everyone is trying to build AAAA "live service" games because
| fortnite and friends made a gazillion dollars. They did that by
| essentially being a very new experience (no, shitty arma mods
| do not count, they were so clunky you have to be a special kind
| of patient and weird to enjoy them), so everyone tried it, and
| that meant they could capture almost any whale, and Epic
| eventually figured out you could milk literal children and
| whales for all of their money, because kids will bully each
| other into buying freaking character skins that used to be just
| an unlockable or option in multiplayer gaming
|
| The problem is that, to properly milk the whales, you have to
| follow specific strategies that encourage their "I'm better
| than you because I paid $100 instead of wasting 100 hours"
| mentality, which means you have to make it suck to not be a
| whale so that the whales can feel so superior, and to help
| drive potential whales into entering their payment info and
| becoming milkable whales.
|
| That means that non-whale players, the majority, have to treat
| the game as a part time job just to keep up with released
| content (which is partially enforced by the game or community)
| or else just not get to experience the majority of the game.
| The game requires more effort per unit of "fun" you want to
| experience because it has to in order to trigger the whale
| catching effects.
|
| However, most people only have time in their life for one of
| these part time jobs, including the whales, which means the
| market is fixed. There's only enough player time and whale
| money to support a small, fixed number of these games. That's
| why they keep failing, there are strong network effects, and
| nobody wants to "invest" in a new game.
| haunter wrote:
| Interestingly they don't mention singleplayer online games which
| are my favorites. MTG, Hearthstone, Street Fighter, Tekken etc
| recursive wrote:
| All the games in your list are multiplayer games though.
| charlie0 wrote:
| I just really miss split screen.
| jkubicek wrote:
| I want to start, pause and stop my game at any point and this
| isn't compatible with a real-time multiplayer game.
| drdaeman wrote:
| That's not even compatible with a lot of single-player games
| that only allow to stop at checkpoints (because developers are
| lazy).
| rasse wrote:
| The problem with most perpetual multiplayer games is that they
| are potentially limitless time sinks. They are often inherently
| addictive with no natural end or resolution to them. Of course
| there are single player games that do this too, so it's not the
| only differentiator.
|
| In contrast, single player campaigns (or co-op campaigns for that
| matter) are often story driven. They have a beginning and an end.
| They offer catharsis. If it's good, you may play through it
| again, but it will end eventually.
| skizm wrote:
| My brain has a switch. I either want to try-hard or I want to
| relax. Try hard mode means I'm playing competitive multiplayer
| (cs2 is my current poison). Relax mode means I'm playing
| something single-player and easy. Unfortunately, this makes it so
| I pretty much can't play dark souls, souls-likes, or any other
| single player games that advertise as "hard". When I'm in relax
| mode, I have zero desire to run my head against a wall over and
| over just to continue a story or world exploration. I wish more
| games had a mode like "Another Crab's Treasure" where you can
| simply press a button to kill the boss (there's an option to
| "give Kril a gun" in the settings).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > When I'm in relax mode, I have zero desire to run my head
| against a wall over and over just to continue a story or world
| exploration.
|
| Exactly. Real life has enough "repeated failure despite best
| effort." Why would I want more of it in a video game I play for
| enjoyment?
| throw7 wrote:
| When I got Batman Arkham Asylum it had Games for Windows Live
| required. I didn't want an account online or "live" scoreboard,
| at the time you could choose local only as an option.
|
| Imagine my surpise when GfWL lost all my save games halfway
| through. Why? Who knows. Maybe an GfWL update? Maybe a game
| update? I severely reduced my gaming after that and have been
| adamant for true standalone games only (thank you GOG games).
|
| Note: I do not mind multiplayer online games. I have been known
| to play DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online) off and on.
| cpersona wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time lately playing a game called Ravenfield.
| It has replaced CS2 as my main game. The graphics are bad, it's
| purely single player, the AI is not great, but it allows for
| large scale battles with none of the pain of playing against
| other people. Mods are free and there are tons, with new ones
| created weekly. No need to pay for upgrades or game packs or
| seasons or crates.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ravenfield is silly fun. The slowmo is so great for power
| fantasies.
|
| An extremely old build (that still demonstrates the core
| gameplay) is available on itch.io if anyone is unsure that they
| might like it.
|
| The dev is doing some weird anime campaign that they seem to be
| heavily invested in, but I don't really care. I paid for the
| game I wanted long ago.
| tonymet wrote:
| multi-player is more competitive. single-player is more about the
| story & mechanics. they are complimentary and distinct genres of
| games.
|
| I'm in my 40s and don't put in the effort to be competitive in
| multiplayer games. I have great admiration for the developers and
| the players who participate.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Maybe because I'm old (and have a job and a family), but I don't
| like online games because of availability issues.
|
| If I'm playing online, I prefer to play with my friends (not
| strangers). Arranging time so everyone is available is very
| difficult.
|
| I do miss LAN parties.
| atum47 wrote:
| Hey, if I wanted to socialize I'd go outside, am I right?!
| lencastre wrote:
| I find turn based board games on BGA to be the best compromise.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Indeed, at max I would go for a split screen in some games, but
| that is about it.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Most gamers are casual and are over the age of 20 and can't
| dedicate hours of their lives to maintaining a decent standard in
| online play
| misiek08 wrote:
| Funny, because 70-80% of my friends prefer multiplayer, because
| you just can spend time together, talking and playing.
| flashgordon wrote:
| Please just give me back my OG mass effect, og warcraft,
| StarCraft, monkey islands, kings quests that I can play on my own
| and has a good story. I don't want of the crappy mmo nonsense.
| One can dream!
| medvezhenok wrote:
| I'm an early-internet player, but I used to really enjoy games
| like KingsOfChaos, Outwar, Neopets and Runescape (OG version, or
| 2007 reboot).
|
| It sounds weird, and not what most people would consider as
| "gaming" but all of those were a mix of solo & coop since they
| had a social aspect but totally playable alone (well,
| KingsOfChaos would be kind of silly to play alone).
|
| It seems like only the OG runescape still has some sort of
| following, the other ones died out (there was a different one
| with space ships and planets and power levels, but I forget the
| name - same principle as Outwar and KingsOfChaos).
|
| There was also a Russian one based on the Dozory universe (Night
| Watch) by Sergey Lukianenko (one of my favorite authors), but
| that mostly turned into a cash grab which is a bummer because
| it's one of the coolest game concepts out there - it has been my
| dream that someone actually makes that game.
| BigParm wrote:
| The competitive shooters have been destroyed by cheaters. In the
| long term, and even the short term, cheats beat anticheat. That's
| why co-ops like Helldivers 2 are popular now.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Many reasons for this:
|
| Online gaming used to be about having fun. And while those
| communities definitely still exist, the landscape is dominated by
| "competitive" gaming that brings out the worst in people.
|
| The relentless pushing of "battle passes," in-gaming loot crate
| gambling, and in-game upgrades using real-life money from game
| publishers.
|
| There's also the whole "you can't pause real life" thing. Much
| easier to play online when you're young and don't have real
| responsibilities - but that's not a luxury most adults have.
| lucasfdacunha wrote:
| Since this became a big topic here about gaming which is rare,
| I'll plug side project of mine.
|
| I publish a weekly gaming newsletter called The Gaming Pub
| (https://www.thegamingpub.com/) similar to the Hacker Newsletter.
| I curated an assortment of links with the most important news and
| other topics from the gaming world (I'll include this link in
| tomorrow's issue).
|
| If you are interested and don't have the time to catch up with a
| bunch of gaming-related content (news, reviews, articles, etc)
| take a look at my newsletter, it might be something that is a
| good fit for you.
|
| https://www.thegamingpub.com/
|
| Thanks!
| valbaca wrote:
| No, we prefer single-player games that also have couch-coop but
| couch-coop games died.
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