• SupraMario@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’m betting the majority of us older gamers enjoy coop games with friends more than anything.

    • ghost_towels@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Omg yes!!! My husband and I just want to play a long form rpg game together. No shooting, just wandering around together. Man I wish Skyrim had a console coop mode. Sigh.

      The best times were hanging out with your friends playing games together. Now if I want to do that I’ve got to have a whole nother setup. Wtf.

    • rustyricotta@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Agreed. Single player games have to be exceptionally good for me to want to play them. Besides that, it’s coop only for me.

  • Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    2 months ago

    Its just not sustainable for my adult life to log in to whatever live service trash daily and compete agains faceless humans, who have more free time and advantage against a casual player.

    Also the state of live service games is pure trash for decades now. Everything needs to be a copy of the 3 most popular titles with some kind of rpg progression and cosmetic items for real world money.

    • Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      2 months ago

      Not only that, but the competative multiplayer scene is dominated by games appealing to professional game teams with high skill ceilings. Excuse me game devs; I have 1hr and 12min to play and I’d rather goof around than try to learn map layouts.

      • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        I’ve been wondering recently if a daily time cap per player could improve QoL for everyone. Maybe segregate servers based on set caps.

        Maybe even have it so you can save up daily allotments so, say you’re a weekend gamer, you can play on an hour cap server and get like 7 hours in every weekend.

  • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’d like multiplayer a lot more if they still made games with user-driven match making, instead of opaque algorithms hellbent on ensuring that everyone maintains a perfect 50/50 win rate. That and the death of custom game modes/lobbies have really killed all the fun of online multiplayer.

    • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      As much as that may be true for you, on average people enjoy MP games with SBMM more than without by a decent margin. Studies have shown that people play more matches and play longer sessions when SBMM creates more balanced matches.

        • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 months ago

          It’s based on overall usage metrics - number of active users, number of matches played per user, length of a session per user, etc.

          It does account for people quitting.

      • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        You absolutely certain about that reasoning? Because from what I’ve seen, when automated matchmaking is used, you NEED to play the game like a job just to reach your “correct” ranking and actually enjoy the game. People who don’t play it like that are driven away because of it.

        • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          2 months ago

          If you’re curious about the mechanics behind ELO and ELO confidence distributions after X matches, chess ELO is actually a well studied way to learn about the algorithm used by almost all SBMM. After a shockingly small number of matches, your ELO is going to end up being in the right neighborhood for you have +/- 50% WR.

        • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yes, I am.

          This is just one study I could find quickly but the results are consistent.

          https://www.pcgamer.com/games/activision-secretly-experimented-on-50-of-call-of-duty-players-by-decreasing-skill-based-matchmaking-and-determined-players-like-sbmm-even-if-they-don-t-know-it/

          Because from what I’ve seen, when automated matchmaking is used, you NEED to play the game like a job just to reach your “correct” ranking and actually enjoy the game.

          This is not accurate. Most people’s ELOs don’t shift much after settling into your “natural” rank, which should happen after about 50 matches or so. Probably what you’re referring to is the publicly available “rank” which is per “season”, wherein every few months your rank gets reset. This is FAR less opaque than SBMM but results in lower playtime and lower retention for casual players who don’t want to be grinding the 50 matches to settle at their ELO every 3 months.

          Actual opaque SBMM (the algorithm you mentioned originally) that never resets creates, on average, much more fun MP experiences for most people.

  • Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    2 months ago

    Never enjoyed multiplayer or coop stuff. Subjective but I don’t get it. I’m not competitive and don’t care about ‘git gud’ just for the sake of it, or bragging rights, or something.

    A good campaign is what I want. Major bonus points for a campaign that is so good its got multiple run replay value.

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    This whole article sucks. Here were the choices for player preference:

    • PVE
    • Couch co-op
    • Online PVP
    • Single player

    Is it true that most players prefer single player games? Maybe. Last year’s unanimous game of the year was largely considered a “single player game”, but while it’s definitely not live service, it also won the award for best multiplayer. What does Halo count as? Halo 2 and 3 are single player, couch co-op, online co-op, couch PVP (not an option in this survey), and online PVP. If Halo 2 is your favorite game, it could be for any of those reasons, but they also all play off of one another to form a richer game as a whole. I wouldn’t want to exclude one of those things in favor of another.

    Single-player games are a safer bet for new games…Make no mistake: the costs to make AAA single-player, non-live service games have inflated to astronomic levels. Leaks from Insomniac showed that PlayStation’s AAA flagship games, like Spider-Man 2, have budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But there is a growing opportunity for AAA studios to make leaner single-player games.

    Look, especially when you factor in costs, like the paragraph after this does, it’s correct to say that a safer bet is the one that can be made more cheaply, but even these examples of successes are cherry-picked. I could just as easily bring up Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Immortals of Aveum, or Alone in the Dark to show why offline single player games are risky.

  • teft@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    2 months ago

    If randoms were less toxic and if a guild could stay together I’d prefer multiplayer but alas people are generally toxic asshats and most guilds don’t last very long any more.

    Thankfully there have been a bunch of good single player games lately.

  • TheMightyCanuck@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’m an adult who doesn’t have time or friends anymore…

    It’s not because they aren’t fun, I just can’t dedicate time or play them the way they were designed to be played

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Player preference only factors into the development decision in so much as it affects profitability. Meaning that even if more people prefer single player, they will still make a multiplayer game if they feel they can charge more, and earn more money from it.

  • TriflingToad@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    I disagree. I like GOOD games. It just so happens that 90% of the good games are singleplayer. Deep Rock Galactic and Minecraft are pretty much the only 2 multiplayer games I think are better with other people (strangers, not like playing with family).

    Also I MUST bring this up every chance I get. Lemmy.world has a Minecraft server that isn’t pay to win and I need people to play with. Am lonely, please join. :)

  • heavy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    This is just like that Epic dude saying Fortnite is the future (lol). People are trying to make definitive statements about what a successful game looks like but there are so many variables to consider. The problem just isn’t as simple as “is it multi-player or not”. Cost matters too, but it’s also clear that more development money doesn’t mean better game. Spider man 2 is a good game, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of Balatro, which was way cheaper to make and to buy.