281
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
281 points (98.6% liked)
Games
16745 readers
719 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Sounds like you just hate the idea of competitive games
I've seen "competitive" games turn level-headed friends into seething piles of swears. They aren't having fun, they admit to not having fun, they acknowledge that they hate it... But they keep going because ranks, clout, commitment....
Games should have stakes, but modern ranking systems are designed to addict the exact same way that loot-boxes and other similar mechanics do. They hook and pull in deeper and the only way I've seen friends quit is when it gets so bad they go cold turkey. And only then do they look back at months or even years of playing a game, and see nothing but a waste of time and money.
But it works! These systems pull players into the grind like they're getting paid to play, even when they are hating every second.
I love some of these games, but I only learned to maximise my enjoyment of them once I began playing them casually. And it's such a pity that my friends who haven't learned the trick of not taking it so seriously, burn out on them, while I just keep going and having fun. I run out of people to play with on a regular basis because of this.
Just one factor of the design of these systems is that they have you feeling like you have to consistently win, in order to be worth something. And as that is obviously an impossibility, it leads to every loss taking three times more than what a win is able to give.
I mean yeah, there are always going to be people with problems. But the guy I was responding to was leveling complaints like "playing badly shouldn't impact the outcome", "it's bad that a team loses", and "people should be free to afk whenever". Like at that point, just play different games, these aren't your cup of tea.
And for what it's worth, I personally quite like the stricter competitive nature of many games. I like playing ranked games where everyone is solidly playing to win and competing on skill. Just because some people have a ego problem because of ranks, it doesn't mean the system should be scrapped.
There's a pretty wide gap between playing casually, and grinding to the point of burnout. It's plenty possible to take the game seriously, such that you care about doing your best and continually improving, without just dedicating your entire life to the grind.
I don't think the majority of people find that balance. And I think ranking systems are designed to exploit that. Who doesn't want to boast that people play their game the most? And wouldn't more playtime also lead to players to spending more?
I'm not agreeing with everything the original comment said, but the idea that we should be designing games to at least not make it worse, is something I resonate with.
I don't think they hate competitive games, nor do I. The opposite, people who think about how to make things better, even if their ideas are bad, are the ones who have gotten into things deep enough to start seeing the cracks.
We live in an age of vices, it's not just games, everything around us is demanding we spend our time on things, and all of it is trying its best to keep us from noticing we're acting on impulse, and taking back control.
That you and me are able to do it, is not a reason to refrain from helping those who can't.
The fact is, games exploit people in a myriad of ways, and that only a small minority is able to resists is not proof that nothing needs to be done, it's reason to do more.
Especially when the biggest demographic, by far, is children.
I disagree. Complaints like those in the initial comment I responded to are the most surface level "I saw people complaining about something once" type suggestions possible that entirely miss the whole reason people play one game as opposed to others. Games like league and Dota are, first and foremost, competitive experiences. To suggest that these games would be improved by rubber banding harder than Mario kart demonstrates a significant lack of either understanding or interest in the genre.
If anything, it's just a prime example of the dunning kreuger effect. He's not in deep enough to know how much he doesn't know about the games. It's like the bronze players complaining that yi has no counterplay. It says more about their lack of understanding than it does about the game.
Not everything needs to be shaved at the edges to cater to the lowest common denominator. Shave off the ranked system and general competitive nature, and a lot of players (such as myself) are going to start going to different games that do offer it. Hell, I know at least a dozen people who already moved from league to Dota entirely because of the increasing casualization and focus on making it simpler and easier for bad players.
I can't imagine anything less fun than playing way better than someone and losing because of trash rubberbanding nonsense to make games more "fun". Or anything more hollow than getting murdered and "winning" anyways for the same reason.
I agree. In that sense that first comment is completely off the rails.
I'd personally like to see changes like not having the ranking system torpedo your evaluation because of a single underperforming team-mate.
A lot of current systems go hard on negative reinforcement, and spread it around like candy on halloween along with gleefully engaging in collective punishment.
I don't really care about ranking (or play the kind of leaderboard stuff that uses it) so I can't comment on implementation. I think it's genuinely hard to do in team competition environments, though.
I know with certainty it's extremely hard to do in heavily team based sports like football and basketball, because that I do pay attention to. Maybe MoBAs are closer to baseball where even though it's a "team" sport, you actually can isolate out parts reliably enough to measure effectively, but I don't play them to know for sure.
I just find any and all rubber banding (an opt in "skill handicap" casual mode is fine; dynamically changing it mid game just makes everything feel like horseshit) a truly nauseating excuse for terrible design.
At least for league, I'd say it's definitely the former. Team play and strategy is a huge component and is extremely difficult to measure. There's no hard tracking for things like "knew when to run the opposite way so the enemy couldn't get multiple kills" or "blocked an important spell so the carry didn't die". Individual skill is so closely intertwined with team results that separating out the two is only possible in the extreme cases.
At least in terms of league, that isn't the case. Yeah, everyone complains about losing due to bad teams, but like, yeah? In a match of 10 people, any given person inherently has a minority of the impact on any given match. But statistically, that balances out over time. Better players will have greater positive impacts, and thus win more game and climb. There's an argument to be made that the old promotion system leaned towards bad games having an outsized impact, but that was kinda the point. They prevented lucky streaks from impacting rank as much and favored consistency. And trust me, I've mained adc since season 5. I know the impact of shitty teams first hand.
The mmr system also more or less completely prevents a bad game or two from tanking your rank. As long as your mmr is higher than your rank, you can climb even with like 40% wins since a win will grant more than a loss takes away.
Likewise in Dota, outside of very niche scenarios, and in the first place, people are chosing to play for MMR. I don't play much league, so I don't know how it works there, but at least in Dota, you can get a pretty complete experience in the unranked modes complete with (hidden) SBMM.
Yeah, league has separate mmr for ranked and normals, so you always get sbmm no matter what. Main difference is that in ranked, you're locked in regards to who you can queue with so there isn't too wide a gap in mmr, whereas norms let's anyone queue together.
League also doesn't do ranks directly based on mmr, but rather indirectly through an elo system, where your mmr decides who you play against do it's always a close to even team, and then the mmr decides how much a win/loss effects your elo. If you're a high rank player skill wise, your mmr will put you against similarly skilled players, even if you're still a lower rank, and it will just give you more upwards ranking.
You lead a rich inner life.
Bub, I'm not the one throwing a fit like a toddler because online games can be competitive
No, you're just making things up and calling names. Like a rational adult having a sensible conversation?
Toxic and competitive are separate things. I'll gladly help you understand how, if you can stop having the argument you'd rather be having, and interact with the words I actually wrote.
Thanks for demonstrating the problem.
This design creates toxicity instead of competition, and your hot take is 'so you hate competition?' Yeah sure dude, LeBron dominating a junior-high ballgame is what sportsmanship is all about. His team is winning by a lot so they must be super competitive. What a shame we can't judge individual players. Apparently. Stop measuring assists, all that matters is the almighty W.
If we're talking about people playing badly... on purpose... walk me through how that's exemplifying competitive games. Is opposition to that behavior some kind of betrayal? Because if so, you should be furious at Valve, since they're attacking that behavior in the most blunt-force ways possible.
After all - why should games be enjoyable? Losing should feel bad. It can't just be less fun, it has to be miserable. That's motivation! Shaking hands after a game is for cowards! In fact, if you lose a platinum match? Banned for life. Hardcore permadeath rules.
That system will surely encourage healthy competition without making any player scream their lungs out.
It would be competition, just not fun competition. And the solution we came to for problems like that isn't lower the nets and remove the need for dribbling, its preventing matchups like that. Thats why SBMM exists and why those who try and smurf around it get banned.
Or, you could just shake hands, say GG and move on? Nothing prevents that. Even if you do chose to play ranked over unranked/arcade (a choice the player themselves makes) a lowered MMR is just a different number.
Again: 'prevent those matchups' is a naive solution. It's staring straight at a systemic problem and saying, well, let's just punish anyone who does it wrong.
It is the difference between warning people about a guy who exploits a bug, and fixing the damn bug.
I agree, players should feel that way, after a loss.
But they don't.
I wonder why.
I mean, your solution seems to be to lower the skill ceiling to the level of the lowest player. That doesn't fix it either. In the example you gave, we don't change basketball to account for LeBroun James playing against toddlers. Are you saying we should? Anything like that completely changes the game into something different.
... in low-tier matches.
My off-the-cuff proposal was to make low-tier matches play like low-tier matches. A non-event for anyone who belongs there. But for some reason everyone just ignores the part where we're talking about smurfs entering games with noobs, and insists I must 'hate competition.'
Any system like that implemented would inherantly either A) change the game fundamentally, B) Still cause smurfs to ruin games, or C) prevent the (relatively) good players from being rewarded for playing well.
Fundamentally, either you change the game very substantially in which case smurfs don't know how to play, but then you alienate the low tier players who do want to play the same game and encourage people to smurf to try this new gamemode, you make less significant changes but still add a pretty hard skill ceiling, but that prevent good low-tier players from snowballing or being rewarded for playing well, or you make only minor changes in which case the smurf will still take over the game. Theres no in-between. If skill dictates the game, then the person with most skill (the smurf) will win. If skill does not dictate the game, then you lose the fair, balanced competitve aspect that is the draw of these games. That is the case no matter how good the players are. Low tier or not, you don't just want to be handed a win. You can't have a game that both is dictated by skill, but also make sure that those with skill are pulled in line with everyone else.
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of "less?"
Like, there's not a whole separate game being proposed here. Some numbers, for some people, in some matches, will just be... less. How to play works exactly the same. It is the same game. And this only needs to affect the people who are already kicking ass.
Their contribution will still be critical to their team's victory. It just won't be enough to single-handedly decide the outcome for all nine other players. It will be... less. They can still be the greatest contributor. They can get in-game recognition for every clever decision and make their brain squirt the happy chemicals. They just don't get as much per-action as the guy who's figuring out what DoT stands for.
This isn't high witchcraft, or some kind of paradox. It's grading on a curve. It's "handicapping." A boring and typical adjustment in actual sports, even at higher levels.
And again, it only has to work in the dirt leagues, because the goal is keeping assholes bored. If you play super duper good, and get bumped to a higher rank, and play with other people of that rank... none of this applies. Nothing is different. High-level play between high-ranked players would remain as sweaty as you can imagine. If someone pops enough adderall to see through time, and completely ruins a ranked lobby full of gold players, who gives a shit?
Yeah, figures you're just incapable of having a decent discussion
Three counts of no argument. Just empty bait. No evidence you even read what you're responding to.
Troll harder.