this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week 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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Multiplayer is only enjoyable when I play with my homies.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

And since I have young kids, I don't play with my homies much anymore. So single player and couch coop (with kids) it is.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

What about the folks that like playing multiplayer games solo? I enjoy the busyness/fullness of people running around the world and having small interactions, while getting into groups only when really necessary for content or items.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

The bulk of wow players play that way myself included (back in the day, im clean now)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Makes sense as it aligns with their forever relationship status.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

I dislike people enough in my day to day life. Why would I want them in my video games?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Saw this article before and the title is very misleading. 53% is barely "most", and the biggest takeaway from it is that gamers age 16-24 greatly prefer multiplayer games while people aged 25-34 prefer multiplayer as much as singleplayer. Those age groups are probably most of the market.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (3 children)

53% is barely "most"

This is a really bizarre point to try to make, to me. The headline doesn't say "the vast, overwhelming percentage of gamers"... It says most. 53% is most.

The bigger problem I had was with the categories, really.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, multiplayer is preferred in their data until the 45+ age ranges. Weird article.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People with lots of time and friends prefer multiplayer games more than people with little time and friends. Go figure.

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