Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Day of the Cope]

I don't understand what this even means. Any game necessarily trains the player to find an optimal strategy to achieve an objective. If the game is poorly designed, the optimal strategy for winning will be really, really un-fun to play. That's the crux of "optimizing the fun out of the game".

It has nothing to do with "skill issues". In fact, it's often the very best players who are the biggest critics of how un-fun it becomes to play a game at a high level.

I must have deleted a line when I was editing, but the entire point of the article talking about how "players optimise fun out of games" is within the context of exploits. Think something like the micro corkscrew coaster in Roller Coaster Tycoon; it's a ride that you can spam out, doesn't take up a lot of space, have great stats, and make beating challenges a breeze. But putting down a dozen of the same tiny half-built coaster isn't as fun as building a single, large and winding coaster. That is the point of "players will optimise the fun out of games", which is that players will basically sacrifice their enjoyment if it means minimising failure. However, I constantly see the phrase being used to refer, not to exploits, but to largely competitive games where enough time has passed that the playerbase has developed enough of a game sense and mechanical understanding that they know what is good and what is bad.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I constantly see the phrase being used to refer, not to exploits, but to largely competitive games where enough time has passed they players that the playerbase has developed enough of a game sense and mechanical understanding that they know what is good and what is bad.

If "what is good" in a competitive game is really boring and not fun, then that's exactly the phenomenon being described by Johnson.

The delineation between single-player and competitive multiplayer games you're describing doesn't really make sense - the issue of the game incentivizing un-fun play is just as applicable in both cases.

 

[Day of the Cope]

If "what is good" in a competitive game is really boring and not fun, then that's exactly the phenomenon being described by Johnson.

Unless "'what is good' in a competitive game" counts as an exploit that drags down the core gameplay experience in favor of micromanagement, it not.

The delineation between single-player and competitive multiplayer games you're describing doesn't really make sense - the issue of the game incentivizing un-fun play is just as applicable in both cases.

It's not about "un-fun play", it's about the players finding something that wasn't intended by the game and abusing it to the point that they forget the entire reason they're started playing to begin with, like with infinite city sleaze. Even if you know what the "optimal" gun is in R6S is, you're still playing R6S. Even if you know what the "optimal" creatures are in Pokemon, you're still playing Pokemon. Meanwhile, if you know what the optimal strategy is in Civ 2, you're not playing Civ 2 as all your time is going to managing the dozens of cities you have.

 

[The Last Stand]

This shows that COD pretty much has the monopoly on slop shooters, with no serious competition. Honestly, it's for the best, at this point it's a containment game more than anything.

I think it's practically impossible to enjoy CoD multiplayer as you did ten or so years ago. You can't play old CoDs as lobbies are empty, full of sweats or hackers, and the netcode is ancient. You can't play newer CoDs without being a victim of SBMM, sweats and missing DLC.

I think it's worse on PC because the security of the games are non-existent with kernel based exploits that could compromise your machine. At least there's Zombies.

 

[Day of the Cope]

I think it's practically impossible to enjoy CoD multiplayer as you did ten or so years ago. You can't play old CoDs as lobbies are empty, full of sweats or hackers, and the netcode is ancient. You can't play newer CoDs without being a victim of SBMM, sweats and missing DLC.

Multiplayer games were better when they felt like they were basically chatroom with a game over top of it. Nowadays, because of Discord, multiplayer games feel more and more like bot matches.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Multiplayer games were better when they felt like they were basically chatroom with a game over top of it. Nowadays, because of Discord, multiplayer games feel more and more like bot matches.

Games also including bad behavior detection systems, and some of them (namely with Riot Games and Ubisoft's games) even can auto-ban people for "bad behavior" without the need of reports, doesn't help either.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Even if you know what the "optimal" gun is in R6S is, you're still playing R6S.

If you think looking up optimal gear is as far as people go to win in multiplayer games, I really wonder if you've ever played any multiplayer game ever. Multiplayer games becoming a nightmarish hellscape of unintended optimal tactics that nobody enjoys but everyone has to use or get steamrolled is the rule, not the exception.

There's a reason virtually every competitive online game with any longevity gets regular patches and fixes. Because water finds a crack.

 

[The Ugly One]

Even if you know what the "optimal" gun is in R6S is, you're still playing R6S. Even if you know what the "optimal" creatures are in Pokemon, you're still playing Pokemon. Meanwhile, if you know what the optimal strategy is in Civ 2, you're not playing Civ 2 as all your time is going to managing the dozens of cities you have.

It's a distinction without a difference.

For example, in Black Ops 4, for a while, the optimal gun to choose was the Maddox. Do you enjoy the playstyle associated with different guns? Well, too bad, you'll get smoked by someone using a Maddox, so you need to use a Maddox, too. It wasn't very fun, because part of the fun of COD is having different loadouts tailored to different situations and play styles. They patched it in a few months, because the intent wasn't for one assault rifle to outclass every other gun at close and medium range.

Multiplayer games were better when they felt like they were basically chatroom with a game over top of it. Nowadays, because of Discord, multiplayer games feel more and more like bot matches.

They took persistent lobbies out because the fat, pink-haired cunts who are in charge of everything now decided that it's more important to stop trash-talking than to enable fun.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

I must have deleted a line when I was editing, but the entire point of the article talking about how "players optimise fun out of games" is within the context of exploits. Think something like the micro corkscrew coaster in Roller Coaster Tycoon; it's a ride that you can spam out, doesn't take up a lot of space, have great stats, and make beating challenges a breeze. But putting down a dozen of the same tiny half-built coaster isn't as fun as building a single, large and winding coaster. That is the point of "players will optimise the fun out of games", which is that players will basically sacrifice their enjoyment if it means minimising failure. However, I constantly see the phrase being used to refer, not to exploits, but to largely competitive games where enough time has passed that the playerbase has developed enough of a game sense and mechanical understanding that they know what is good and what is bad.

Optimizing the fun out of the game means just that, optimizing a game to the point it stops being fun. The article may be referring to choices made by gamedevs but that doesn't mean it can't be applied outside that context. It doesn't matter if all players are forced to use just one strategy thanks to an exploit or because the multiplayer has become so sweaty that you can't be taken seriously otherwise, in the end neither of these are fun and they both result from trying to get the best results possible.

It has nothing to do with "skill issues". In fact, it's often the very best players who are the biggest critics of how un-fun it becomes to play a game at a high level.

This as well. Those who complain the most about how a game isn't fun to play are the tryhards who have optimized the game, not the casuals (unless multiplayer achievements are involved), like that famous clip of a speedrunner speaking shit about speedrunning, or that competitive Pokemon faggot im a blisy making countless videos about how competitive is too hard and not fun to play.

You see it time and again. Competitive players push the game to its limits to the point it becomes a chore or a second job, then they complain about it not being fun anymore. They do this to themselves then get upset when they're asked "why keep playing it if it isn't fun?"

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

BOTW is a top five game on the Nintendo switch along with TOTK.

 

[Judge Dredd]

(Very late I know.)

Way too much color saturation and HDR.

Do they not realize that even on the 360, desaturation was a stylistic choice?

Well yea Night City is supposed to look like a Neon Nightmare full of ads. Fallout 4 having the same color palate as cotton candy on the other hand makes absolutely zero fucking sense.

I'm convinced it's to appease the autistic gamers who game with their main screen while listening to podcasts and checking instagram on their phones.
The visual business is the gaming equivalent of jangling keys to a toddler.

Gears being desaturated was a stylistic choice, but it was the style of the time. Washed out and with piss filters on everything. Even racing games of the era like Grid and Need for Speed had the desaturation and piss filter, that these days can often be removed by mods.

Fallout 4 and later Gears games stepped away from that as a breath of fresh air. At very least, it was a creative choice, which can't be said for the current andronigous rainbow haired girlboss with sideshave aesthetic.

The Suffering [the first one, the second one 'Ties That Bind' was kinda meh] and Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy are under-appreciated as fuck and you basically never see anyone talking about them,

I hear them talked about all the time. Second Sight, or Urban Chaos Riot Responce I'd agree with you.

Played Blue Prince after all the great press it got and it's dogshit. Not really sure what I was supposed to bring away from the game except being mildly annoyed and incredibly bored.

That game feels astroturfed to me. The Gone Home of current year.

Some predications I want to share. We are about to head to a crash.

Microsoft is going to go third party.

I'd also like to make a prediction. Trump with win the 2024 presidential election. Concord will be a failure.

Enlightened Centrists are the most pathetic people in the gaming community.

Everytime the based gamers finally start fighting back against woke nonsense they immediately go "wow you fighting back against the Troons makes you just as bad or even worse than they are Chud ! "

I've never seen that. I've seen seen the left and the right call me various insults for pointing out that it's okay for games to have attractive women. It doesn't matter if a censor sits under a cross or a pride flag, it's retarded.

I've been done blaming the industry for shitty practices for years; I've been blaming customers for a while now. Most people invested in any hobby that only requires money to get into and very little practice do not care about the hobby as much as you do and will continue to make everything worse for everyone else in that hobby by failing to have any standard for how they spend their money. 80$ games, much like battle passes, much like loot boxes, much like paid online on consoles, etc are shit tests given to consumers that they fail 99% of the time. The standards will continue to lower and you will find people with the audacity and stupidity to try to explain away why when the answer is very simple: the frog was boiled successfully and will continue to boil successfully.

No. The customer doesn't really have a say. I haven't played AAA games for years, but I get labelled as part of the problem. If a single whale spends $80,000 on micro transactions, that's 1000 normal gamers who's opinion AAA doesn't care about.

i played black desert so i'm immune to gookery safe horny shit.

I don't know Black Desert. Explain?

I don't even disagree but loli = bad! Is slowly becoming some fucking reddit bullshit where every other Kiwifarms post is someone updoot farming by posting the same fucking thing over and over and over and over again.

We get it man, you're a good person and you like all the correct things and hate all the bad things, here's your reddit gold.

Same with "anime" or "furries".

 

[A-Stump]

That game feels astroturfed to me. The Gone Home of current year.

Apt considering that's what it kept getting compared to

 

[The Ugly One]

Those who complain the most about how a game isn't fun to play are the tryhards who have optimized the game, not the casuals (unless multiplayer achievements are involved), like that famous clip of a speedrunner speaking shit about speedrunning, or that competitive Pokemon faggot im a blisy making countless videos about how competitive is too hard and not fun to play.

It also happens in single-player games. In Oblivion, sneaking and fighting are fun. But at some point, you will probably figure out that the quickest way to close an Oblivion portal is to just run past all the enemies to the top and grab the rune. It's not "fun," but it's optimal. Once you realize you can close an Oblivion portal in about 15 seconds, it's hard to go back.

 

[The Last Stand]

You know how in some open worlds, GTA for instance, have some areas that aren't explored or accessed during the story? I like those. It makes the world feel real.

 

[BradeRunna]

Prebuilt gaming PC's are just consoles with extra steps.

 

[The Last Stand]

Prebuilt gaming PC's are just consoles with extra steps.

Wouldn’t it be less steps since you bought a machine already built and configured?

I miss rail gun shooters. The absurdity of them made me appreciate gaming as a pure fantasy.

 

[The Ugly One]

The difference between a PC and a console is the ability to install and run any software you want, not who held the screwdriver that affixed the motherboard to the case.

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

Wouldn’t it be less steps since you bought a machine already built and configured?

I miss rail gun shooters. The absurdity of them made me appreciate gaming as a pure fantasy.

I got good news for you!

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/controllers-gamepads/light-gun-support-comes-to-lcd-monitors-new-gaime-gun-controller-comes-with-bundled-namco-titles-via-kickstarter

 

[BradeRunna]

Wouldn’t it be less steps since you bought a machine already built and configured?

I miss rail gun shooters. The absurdity of them made me appreciate gaming as a pure fantasy.

Operating a PC is a bit more involved than just turning on a peasant box.

The difference between a PC and a console is the ability to install and run any software you want, not who held the screwdriver that affixed the motherboard to the case.

Nice cope. Keep telling yourself that.

 

[The Last Stand]

Operating a PC is a bit more involved than just turning on a peasant box.

Okay. I'm sure who PC game are aware of that trade-off. And that's not even correct anymore, since now, you'd need an online account to access the most out of your Xbox/PS/Switch. Back then, all you'd need to do is plug and play your console of choice and boom.