Probably bias from irl experience. Maybe their work friends don’t play video games, so they assume that most people who play online are gen z.
I’m a GenX/Millenial and I love my single player games. Just started showing my 6 year old OG Super Mario Bros 1-3.
Im a millenial that wants to team up with friends to beat on the computer cause the computer hurt us all at one point.
I'm an elder millennial that had the rad but - overall - kinda bummer experience, where I got to enjoy this kinda vibe just a few times. Looking back it feels almost like a fever dream - it was so cool, but so fleeting.
There is nothing like the old warcraft 3 battle.net scene.
Meeting a bunch of strangers in a random game and then playing all night with them.
Just good old fashioned PvE fun
The creation of those Dota like games. Wc3 battle.net was amazing. So was starcraft and all the great turret defense games made in their.
The introduction of voice chat is when playing randos on the Internet stopped being fun
Maybe, but to me it's voice chat + matchmaking.
I used to play on a few Day of Defeat: Source servers, and I met a ton of great online friends there. That's because they were dedicated and moderated servers that kicked and banned people for being assholes, in or out of voice chat.
But... If you're confident that you're never going to see the people in your match again, it's way easier to be assholes to them.
This is the answer.
I made friends on dedicated servers. I got called the n word and told my mother was fat in matchmaking.
I had a select few servers of DoD and CS1.6. I saw in the millennium with some friends from all around the world while playing survivor.
Great memories.
Match making made things too easy and impersonal. You can only rely on a friend list now.
Heh it’s like the real world now I guess.
Yes but ..in a way it's when everyone went into their own private parties things changed as well. Removed some of the outreach you got with online gaming, especially team based one. Everyone's in their own chat bubble
Edit: someone below me said "impersonal" and that's the best word I can describe
I much prefer co-op multiplayer to pvp and co-op in a game I’m interested in is rare.
So yeah mostly singleplayer.
I'm roughly on the same boat. A format I've come to enjoy is streaming a pausable strategy game with a group of friends and taking decisions collectively (so if the game is Frostpunk, we're basically the oligarchy that's deciding how much is the working class going to slave away and how many deaths are acceptable), but it's hard to find stable friend groups that like it.
I always enjoy co-op when I actually do it, but nowadays I just can't commit to the long gaming sessions like i used to.
Worse, I feel kind of beholden to help the other players have a good time. Which can be fun, but but when my introvert battery is low, that is the last thing I want out of my game.
It's not a great feeling when you want to leave, but you're sticking around because you don't want to quit mid chapter or whatever.
Probably not healthy to want to get out of innocuous little social situations all the time hahaha oh well
Despite the massive amount of comments here, I still don't see anyone talking about my personal issue with PvP here.
It's ranked matchmaking. In order to keep things working at all, you have to pair players with players of a similar skill. And this means that fundamentally you don't get a sense of progression besides an MMR ranking. Your win rate will always be roughly 50%, unless you either smurf, or become the literal best in the world. Compare that to tough PvE games, like Doom Eternal, or a brutal platformer, where you can raise your difficulty, beat stuff you could've never beaten before, and generally see your progression. Heck, if you want to relax, just put the difficulty back or crush some earlier levels. I love to go back and learn to speedrun some of my favourite platformers, and that feels awesome. Games like Souls are also great at this, when you have to explore an earlier area and the enemies are just... so easy and satisfying to roll through. Or moments like in Sekiro, when you go into NG+ or just start a new playthrough and crush Genichiro on the first encounter.
And this whole thing is just.. so fundamentally necessary for PvP to work, you can't let new players get utterly crushed by veterans, so it's not something anyone is going to "fix". But I'm not hopping onto an endless treadmill that's never going to give me a sense of mastery. Especially not with so many other fantastic games out there I want to check out.
The only time I've had fun in PVP games is if they're in beta and for a few weeks after release. When everyone is new and no one has memorized everything about the mechanics. But after those few weeks you get matched against people who know every trick in the game by playing for hundreds of hours and it's no longer fun.
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To play a bit of devil's advocate, the sense of progression for PvP comes from just getting better at the game and going from Silver to Gold, for instance. You can better learn the maps, new combos, where/when to engage the enemy, and improve muscle memory, all to fight for a better shiny badge (and probably loot drops).
Fair, you definitely become more skilled (I put 500 or so hours into DotA 2 years ago), and you can somewhat measure that, but I find it's not nearly as potent.
My additional issue, if you take a long break like I did, is that the MMR somewhat traps you. When I came back, not only was it extremely frustrating to have the head knowledge about what I needed to do (I.E. denying creeps and stealing last hits for optimal farming) while not having the skill to execute it anymore, but I was also trapped in matches with only players who had the skill to capitalize on those mistakes and destroy me. Add to that the pressure of letting down a whole team of 5 players, and my attempts to get back into the game later were miserable.
By comparison, I'm returning to Celeste right now, and checking out the strawberry jam mod. It's been incredibly satisfying to see how quickly I pick up and relearn those mechanics, and I'm just crushing the base game levels that gave me so much trouble the first time, while giving me an enjoyable de-rust. It's been a pleasure to dive back in, and I'm excited to see what heights I can reach, eager to beat the Farewell DLC that I gave up on before and to push myself to even harder modded content.
Maybe I could get a similar experience in DotA, by playing hours of bot matches to relearn fundamentals, and watching lots of YouTube content to learn how the meta is shifted in my absence, but that's a much different grind than I'm having in Celeste, just enjoying the nostalgia of the game and revelling in how much quicker relearning is than the initial learning. And I never have to cope with any social pressures of letting my team down, or watching my hard earned MMR crumble away as the game repeatedly reminds me how much worse I've gotten.
100%, I hate matchmaking. Give me old school server selections. Some of the best times I had in PvP was in Gears of War 1, where I'd get my teeth repeatedly kicked in by the same group of people and LEARN from what they did.
"If I dodge this way instead of this way its more effective." "They never use this specific weapon I like, maybe it actually sucks."
You don't get that in matchmaking because you never see the same people again, you can't learn from those more skilled at the game because of this. Unless I go watch youtube videos of people playing it that are better than me, I don't get that sense of immersion. I hate watching videos of other people playing, I'd rather jump in, and study my enemy in a live environment.
That seems like an easily solvable feature that could be added. "Match me with a better team of possible." "Match me with a worse team if possible."
This is why games with truly social matchmaking are great, like Halo 3, but in modern gaming having first time players get dicked on in their first ever by sweatiest with 10,000 hours played just means they will quit the game and go play something else.
Yeah, personally I've always enjoyed playing IRL with people who are better than me. Having a real person gives me that constant measuring stick I'm looking for, and playing with someone better gives me someone to watch and learn from, which helps me improve way more quickly. But that's... not what gets you the big sales numbers and a smooth player onboarding.
For PvP stuff, the experience I enjoyed the most was playing Smash with dorm mates in college. Getting my ass handed to me in 1v1 matches for months by the guy who owned the console, but learning, grinding, letting that guy I wanted to beat motivate me to use the training room, to watch YouTube videos, study techniques, and try to really master my character, learning how to be unpredictable and perform mix ups that needed to fool an experienced player who knew my weaknesses better than anyone, it was so satisfying. And by the end of the year we were on even footing, and I was maybe even a little better, which just felt incredible and so well earned.
That experience is what ranked PvP just completely lacks. Every time you win they just swap in new players who are that little step better than you until you're perfectly even again. Which is great on a game-to-game scale, each battle is hard fought, but just offers nothing on that wider timescale that I need to really care.
I dispute the premise that SBMM is a fundamental requirement for PVP to work, though obviously it's become intertwibed with the genre that a game choosing not to use it is going to have a more difficult go of it to onboard folks.
There was a time before SBMM after all. A time of server browsers, admins with chips on their shoulders, GameSpy, and "unofficial" map rotations and rules.
Now, for about a billion different reasons, this model is not going to make a comeback and become king again. But, I just wanted to mention that MM is not as "fundamental" as your comment indicated.
Yeah, very fair. I do think it's essential for the modern scale, and to be constantly on boarding new players, so I don't think it's going anywhere, but there was certainly a time where we could live without it. I used to love playing unreal tournament with the same friends regularly, and that was much closer to what I enjoy, as I could see myself getting better, even if the skill gap between us was obvious and I never really had a "fair" game.
The games I honestly think have the best chance of beating this are battle royales, where you could probably throw caution to the wind and matchmake fully randomly, or by throwing a set percentage of each MMR bracket into the same lobby, and still have players who can achieve a reasonable amount of success due to luck and who they find to fight and when.
I'm an older millennial and don't want to play online. I thought younger millennials liked playing online.
We do, I dunno what they're on about. Younger millennials loved shit like Halo 3, Gmod, TF2, UT2k4, Q3A, CS:S, HL:DM, DayZ, and so on.
I tried playing PVP games back when they started getting really popular. After talking to the fifth 10 year old who banged my mom I stopped playing video games for more than a decade.
I had no idea that my mom was such a whore.
But that was then, when there was time to get good. Millenials now don't have the time for that, and going online means getting ass-kicked.
same bro.
i tried league of legends in 2012 and it was ass. i left and never looked back. every time i hear about people having a miserable time in league, i laugh, because i dodged a massive bullet.
I have never heard someone who plays league a lot talk about it as an enjoyable experience, but the sunk cost fallacy keeps them there.
As an elder Millennial, I was in college when Halo and Counterstrike became things, and they were massively popular.
But sure, growing up I was playing fucking DOS games my cousin handed me on floppy disks, and then later games like King's Quest and Myst. Otherwise I was hanging with friends playing SNES and Genesis.
Also, all those 12 year olds kicking my ass online in Halo 3 in 2007 blatantly prove this person wrong
I feel bad when I lose, and I feel bad when I make someone else lose, so pvp is just constantly feeling bad. There's no feeling of being good, just feeling bad.
I don't feel bad about winning against the computer.
One thing that grinds my gears is this obsession with competitive MP. What happened with co-op? I have these great memories playing games with friends on the couch, cooperatively. Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc.
The moment online multiplayer appeared, these types of games disappeared. Its either competitive or mmporpgs. It's weird, I never understood why that happened. It's either fight ourselves or nothing. Just imagine what could be done. Playing a single player RPG with just a friend. Fight together or split side-quests. So many possibilities.
I guess it's easier to make people spend money on in-game crap when they're trying to one-up someone.
Yeah! Beating up the computer with friends is great! Couch co-op seems to have gone away, at least somewhat. I know some exist, but my memory has been bad lately so I forget err...what they are making.
We've a weekly game night with a few friends. We mostly play survival crafters, because that's about the only co-op experience we can find anymore..
That said, we're doing a private server run-through of Barotrauma that promises to be fun.
My brother and I used to spend hours playing together in an old 2-player dungeon game.
Thats exactly what it is, mobile gaming showed up with its microtransactions and proved its model was vastly more profitable, and so the downhill slide began.
To be honest I noticed this then new trend a while before micro-transactions were a thing.
Especially considering the cheap shortcuts and literal cheats the AI pulls off due to lazy/hasty programming... I'll happily teabag the computer.
PvP is when you put in the boxing cartridge and one of you is the white guy and the other is the black guy, but you do better because you know the controller you gave your friend doesn't like to go left.
(Yes, I'm old.)
The fuck? I'm an elder millennial, and I was PvPing my entire life. First over serial cables, Doom 2, Dune 2, Warcraft 1/2, C&C/Red Alert, Heretic/Hexen off the top of my head.
Then internet gaming came along in middle school. Ultima Online, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, CS (HL2 mod), etc.
And that's just PC. Shit ton of local pvp on consoles from the start. Spy vs Spy on NES is the first console heads up pvp that I can remember.
I just don't play much PvP now because I'm old and don't have the energy or free time.
Spy vs Spy on NES is the first console heads up pvp that I can remember.
And the glory days of console PVP was still ahead.
4 player deathmatches on Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Wave Race.
Ah, it was glorious , 4 kids sat in front of a 26 inch CRT, the screen split 4-ways. And looking at someone else's bit of the screen is cheating.
Then HL1 mods, CS, dod, team fortress. Fire up the ol' All-Seeing Eye and Roger Wilco and jump to the server for some clan practice before the enemy team joins for the Clanbase official match.
Although I went to Tactical Ops when Steam came, like CS but on Unreal Engine. More action, less sneaking and shooting while crouching still.
Actually enjoyable computer opponents are far newer than enjoyable PVP, imo.
I do, who remembers Descent? That was the first multiplayer online game I played. Turned out I was pretty good, even though I couldn't beat the game. No one could beat the game without cheats. They made the end boss impossible to defeat.
The problem I have with pvp games is they are very shallow compared to single player games. Most pvp games also tend to be shooters which by definition are shallow in gameplay.
I usually get bored of the gameplay loops of pvp games long before I get tired of the pvp aspects themselves. Just take a look at counter strike, Valorant, Fortnite, etc. Not much variance in the gameplay loop. I get bored of that shit really quick.
On the other hand a single player game like rimworld, factorio, battle brothers…..Their gameplay loops are complex and still bring be varied interesting gameplay even 1000 hours later.
The variance is the PvP itself. No 2 players are exactly the same. I'm not a fan of PvP any more but as someone who's put hours into PvP focused games, calling them shallow and unvaried is the exact opposite of true. Most of them have crazy high skill ceilings, which is why they can be competitive in the first place
The variance is the PvP itself.
Exactly. To me that gets repetitive and it isn’t all that interesting if that is all there is to it. PvP for the sole purpose to pvp is only so fun for so long. For me anyway. That goes triple for shooters where there is no meaningful outcome to winning or losing. Grinding rank in a competitive game isn’t interesting at all when the game play loop is simple. I’m talking games like counter strike.
I don’t have the time for it because the time investment is MASSIVE but the most interesting and fun pvp game for me was Eve online.
Lots and lots of pvp with huge losses. But the purpose and outcome of the pvp had devastating effects to the economical and geopolitical atmosphere in the region you were fighting in.
You weren’t fighting just to fight. Don’t get me wrong there was plenty of skirmishing. Lots of pointless and meaningless fights. Although they weren’t completely meaningless as every loss was a resource dump for the loser. Enough of those and an opponent might flee the region putting the war on hold to rebuild resources. War is real. There was something bigger in the game that was affected by your fighting.
I wish there were more games like Eve online. I want the pvp I engage in to be meaningful and have lasting effect on the overall game. That’s what keeps me engaged and striving.
The problem to me is that the vast majority of games have meaningless pvp. It’s an esports thing I guess. I don’t care for esports. I want engaging pvp. Esports isn’t it.
It’s because the developers rely on the players to make the content. You either end up with a shallow experience like looter shooters, or a dystopian hellscape like Eve Online where only the people playing the longest with the most sociopathic traits end up controlling the entire game board.
Either way, it’s not a fun experience. They act like you matter, that your choices mean something, but they don’t have any impact at all. It’s even less than a PvE game like BG3 where your choices dictate the playthrough.
Eve online is a good example of a good pvp system. At least your fighting has meaningful outcomes. A 5v5 in an arena game like CS has zero meaningful outcome.
If you pay attention the landscape is always changing in Eve. Big empires are constantly being challenged and the chess board is constantly changing.
Say what you want about Eve online. I don’t play it anymore. I don’t have the time for it. But I wish more developers were interested in making games like this instead of going for the esports trend. Clearly the money is in esports. I guess that’s what people prefer. I don’t tho. I think it’s boring.
Can confirm. I spent over 15 years in EvE, and only had PvP forced on me 7 or 8 times in that entire period. No rollercoaster or race track has given me an adrenaline rush like having my Rorquals dropped on by some stealth bombers and interceptors.
I still get twitchy if I hear the words, "Check check."
Oh yeah, the other thing that I just don't understand is that people say that EvE players are toxic. Yes they want to kill you, but they are the friendliest bunch of murderous assholes ever. In my experience, if they kill a newbee, and the newbee doesn't become horribly toxic about it, they'll normally end up reimbursing you for your loss, sometimes several times over.
RIP Vile Rat o7
The last big thing that happened was that WWB2 and then CCP changing the rules through the whole war to make sure Goons survived. Eve Online is a fucking joke.
I get what you are saying, it would be neat if more devs went this way with a player driven landscape portion of the game along with a PvE area. There just isn’t money in it like CS skins.
The problem I have with pvp games is they are very shallow compared to single player games. Most pvp games also tend to be shooters which by definition are shallow in gameplay.
That's another thing I dislike about most PVP games. I like games for the story, even if I have to build it myself. I play shooters on the lowest difficulty so that I can enjoy the story. But PVP doesn't have that.
Hard agree. Online pvp is and had always been a latency contest. A person's ability to aim where something was 300ms ago is not impressive.
I remember the days of quake 2 rocket arena getting sub 10 ping and seeing ppl skip across the screen.
rocket jumps and rail gun combo ftw
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i don't think I'm a younger millennial but I'm the same. always played videogames, just not mp.
I am a geriatric millennial (thanks to whoever coined that term btw) and I am also like this.
Generally millennials born after 1989 would fall into the "younger millennial" catagory.
The difference between old millennial and young millennial is how much of the 90s you actually remember because you were old enough to form memories, and not just the kind of made up memories you invent from looking back on old photos and trying to imagine the stories your parents told you about your childhood.
I'm firmly Gen X, but I feel the same. The only PvP system that I ever liked was EvE Online
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that makes more sense the younger you are the more likely you should be to enjoy multiplayer games.
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no. i meant you're older than me so it makes sense that you don't really like mp games. the younger you are the more likely you'll grow up with mp games. i didn't grow up with them so most of them are pointless to me. i have enjoyed overwatch a lot though in the last 8 years.
I mean the first online MP game I played was Descent when I was 14. Then Neverwinter Nights when I was 14 or 15? I had been playing multiplayer games against my brothers and friends since I could form memories.
I don't think it's just because of my age, I fundamentally find a lot of the online MP game loops unrewarding, and always have. Co-op MP has always been more my jam. There's something extremely satisfying about seeing someone try to attack me, and being able to call my friends in as a hammer to just fuck their day entirely, while I just keep mining like nothing is happening.
I play video games to escape the world full of people I can't stand. Not to run back into them in a place where they no longer have any manners at all...
As I got older, I started to find online toxicity less bothersome and more funny. I was playing The Finals yesterday and some dude was just going AT IT in the text chat (voice chat is always off, this is a must) and I was actually shocked to find myself insulting him right back. It was...fun. Am I part of the problem now?
I'm also a younger millennial, but I think this is just somewhat attributed to having enough bad experiences with PVP games, and that's fine.
The fact you are playing against other sentient, strategizing, sometimes malicious, but sometimes naively innocent, unpredictable, biological machines is just something you can't really find in single player games.
There's all kinds of pitfalls where you either take things too seriously, too personally, or just meet a ton of assholes in too short a time. It's a bit like life itself. It's got the highest highs, and the lowest lows.
Single player games are simply a lot more consistent in avoiding the lows, but at the cost of never being able to reach those highest highs of knowing you did so well against actual human beings, opponents you can consider your peer or even smarter than you. No single player AI opponent can match that. They usually never play by the same rules as you do, or lack the same weaknesses you do.
But since we remember the lows much more vividly, everyone remembers PVP games as being miserable. Yet we keep playing, because deep down we're hoping to get that high again. I think it's fine to let people enjoy that. But it might not be for everyone.
Some people don't get highs from beating other people.
PVP sucks. There are always people willing to spend more money than I am on a game.
Campaign style playing with others isn't AS bad, though.
Pay to win models are shit. Much prefer twitch/skill based models where you can't apply currency to anything mechanical.
Some people don’t get highs from beating other people. ... Campaign style playing with others isn’t AS bad, though.
That's fine, I can understand that. And it definitely helps to play with people you trust. I'm just saying you take a bigger risk with random people, and sometimes you find something unique you wouldn't otherwise find.
PVP sucks. There are always people willing to spend more money than I am on a game.
PVP games aren't inherently pay to win. I share your dislike if it comes to that. It must be an even playing field to be enjoyable.
Ironically I've mostly stopped playing PvP games because matchmaking, at least for me, has turned PvP into single player with very sophisticated bots and a random outcome. Really think about it, hypothetically if someone made an AI model where the input data is players playing the game and then used that model to direct bots in your match without your knowledge could you even tell the difference? I grew up with community servers and as someone coming from that era the matchmaking process feels like it is missing human connection. You're not going to make friends there and half the players will treat you inhumanely anyway because it's not like they're going to see you again.
Since matchmaking is me getting matched with X random people who I'm never going to see again I might as well be playing against the computer and if I'm already going to do that I might as well get a more curated experience.
It depends for me. Matchmaking is specifically employed to avoid the situation of one sided matches. That is, one player being completely unable to compete in any way because of difference i experience. Similarly, being the one doing the stomping can be more enjoyable, but not forever. Eventually it feels like playing against AI opponents, and you can't really develop high level strategies if you always have to keep in mind your opponent might be totally oblivious to anything you do. Typically you do want some grouping with at least similar skill level, so that you can go all without feeling bad or feeling held back. Perhaps some modern matchmaking is too strict, that's something to look at case to case.
I think an AI could replace the gameplay aspect of human players to a certain degree. But you're hitting the nail on it's head. The human factor would be lost. Human players do things that don't make sense at times, or to achieve an overhanging purpose that no AI could be taught. Most AI implementations (even if we're not talking about machine learning) are very static. Once you figure out a trick to confuse the AI, like hiding behind a specific wall to ambush them, it's not going to learn you can do that until a developer updates it. A human player would notice, and eventually would start expecting you to do it and fight against it. Within the same match. I'd argue it's currently impossible for AI to match that level of ingenuity, at least currently.
Personally, I've met some of the nicest people I know in PVP games. Has modern matchmaking made that harder? Probably. But not impossible. I also prefer community servers. But those games still exist out there. They're just much more niche, because it takes a specific kind of person to go for that. And it requires a level of discomfort of the player, as the steps to learn the ropes becomes much harder. Sadly, few people willingly take that route.
I hate matchmaking so much!!! Its such a garbage mechanic. Let me pick a server to play against/with the same dozen people over and over. Some of the best impromptu friendships I've ever had were from server based PvP, because I could encounter the same people over and over.
I don't mind PVP games when I know the folks I'm playing against. I used to have a job where we'd play Unreal Tournament during lunch on the company LAN, and I loved it even though I wasn't that good. I'd bring my computer to LAN parties in high school, and played Descent over a modem with my friend before that.
But when it's some rando it's not nearly as fun.
Totally agree. I loved playing LAN tournaments back in the day. Having good opponents definitely makes the experience a lot more likable since you can just avoid many of the frustrating situations with horrible people. Every good winner needs a good loser for things to remain friendly. But sadly as I'm sure you noticed as well, as you grow up less and less times will you have a full group of the people you like to play with ready to play at the same time.
That's the problem that matchmaking in part solves. And sometimes randoms can do things that you would never see a friend of yours do. I still think you have a wider range of experiences with random people, but it does require taking a bigger risk. But I understand that's not for everyone.
I must be good at compartmentalizing because the moments I vividly remember from PVP are the hard-fought wins, both 1v1 and as a group.
It's why people are different right. I try to also hold on to the positive memories more than the negative. But some people get called slurs for too many games in a row or don't get any chance to participate, and get turned off forever. That's a normal reaction I feel. I like to think if you keep liking PVP games for long enough you have an easier time shrugging off stupid people you play against. It's what you need to keep going. Or just find that one game with only wholesome people in it, although those are dimes a dozen.
Why not a mobile game?
"It looks like youre trying to hit the ball with your paddle. Your 3 free hits have already been used. Please wait an hour for the cool down period before you can hit more balls. Watch an ad to shorten the cooldown by half, or skip it for only 20 gems!"
Oh, that's why....
Dude I’m 53 and this is exactly me (so mid gen-x?). I’ve been playing video games since I was 8 (of course back then it was pong and an Atari 2600). I hate the toxicity of any online play.