PVP is only fun when I'm good at it and that takes time. The last PVP game I was heavily into, it took me a year just to get decent. It wasn't until the third year when I felt like I was above average.

I'm the opposite, as I got out of my teens I really started to get less and less out of single-player games. They just felt like an empty theme park for the most part. I found myself more drawn to games like DayZ where it's not just PVP, but it's entirely open for you and others to choose how you play and approach eachother.

That anarchy of play styles has produced some of the greatest experiences I've had in a game because the "characters" you meet are real people and you have to use real reasoning and human social skills to navigate situations, whether it's determining how suspicious someone is, making a hard call when you are uncertain, or forming alliances and building trust. I actually am the main character of my own story and what I bring to the table determines what sort of story I have.

Single-player games simply can't offer that. In a single-player you're just inhabiting a fictional character as their story progresses along rails like a train ride. I'd rather just watch a film or series for that kind of story.

And a game like Elden Ring where you just rotely try over and over until you find the scripted limits of the AI just doesn't do much for me, I never feel fully engaged or accomplished. But when I engage with a human stranger and either negotiate or outwit them (or get outwitted) that is really mentally stimulating for me because there's this overlap with reality where the human interactions are unsimulated.

And it needs to be executed flawlessly. Lost a unit? Tap dat undo fast!

[Dry haves in OCD]

I just hate that you spend so much time looking at menus when you start a online match. They’ve added so much friction because you basically start in the store. And then you have to wait in the lobby. If you only have time to play one match you spend a third of your time not playing.

After MW2 (the new one) I realized that I don't have fun anymore with online PvP with strangers. Back in the day on Black Ops 2 I did voice impressions and shenanigans. I remember on PSN I would cut up with strangers and they would just randomly add me. After the PS4 and Xbox One, everyone plays in their own parties and the only ones in voice chat are eating too loud, neglecting their children, playing shitty music, or are try hards about to blow a blood vessel.

most publishers PvP games are a live service now and want you to treat it like a second job and play nothing else or you get left behind. I'm not about that life anymore I guess.