I for one think we should continue with the way things are. Obviously the people who own companies like Tesla and Amazon are better than us. We should be happy to have a job tbh. Seriously, why would I want to be burdened with decisions like whether or not I get healthcare, or whether or not food and education is accessible. We are better off letting the market decide. If education was so important, wouldn’t the market find a way to make money off of it?
I miss multiplayer in PC games being done by joining a server and playing. No match making bullshit, it was fun to be in a server with a mixture of skill levels. As compared with a lot of game snow, when ever your skills improve, you just get thrown into a harder tier of match making until you reach your limit and burn out.
This is because tech bros only read pop-psy without any regard for context or nuance. So they read a bit about Flow state and ranking for gamification, and as usual they just botched it. Most ranking is typically calibrated for engagement, not fun. Mind you, they are two different characteristics. If you graphed difficulty and skill, flow is a band, not a point, of difficulty, in the middle. The idea is that when you are challenged slightly over your skill, there is something in you brain that stimulates you to keep going under the promise that overcoming the challenge will be rewarding. Too high and people rage quit, too low and people get bored. The problem is that they want maximum engagement and for that the difficulty has to be on the higher end of the band. A frustrated person will return, a bored one most likely won’t.
They also want to keep people engaged with random and variable reinforcement. The other psychological theory that drives game design, much how behavioral scientist cheat pigeons to keep them engaged pulling a lever or pushing a button. Mix both theories poorly together and you get the awful implementation we see on multiplayer. People are tricked into believing that just because their brain chemicals are screaming at them to keep doing something, it means they are having fun. But that is obviously not true, just nobody ever occurred that those pigeons might be having a awful time. Ask most people on ranked MP or grinding for builds on MMOs if they are having fun and they have no idea why you’re asking them. It has nothing to do with fun, they just want the carrot being dangled in front of their nose.
I just don’t do online MP anymore because of this. 99% of the time, I’m not having fun. Now if I want to play with my friends or other people, we play tabletop board games. Infinitely more fun and far more satisfying than any online game ever.
It has nothing to do with fun, they just want the carrot being dangled in front of their nose.
This might explain the marketing that seemed to start with mobile games and now infects AAA MP titles:
“PLAY NOW AND GET 34 GAZILLION WORTHLESS EMERALDRUBYGEMCOINS and a RARE DROP POPSICLE MAGIC DOMINO”
Like…a newcomer would have zero idea what the heck they’re even talking about but somehow it seems to work, to entice players with worthless free…server database adjustments?
Hardly any focus is on the games being unique or exciting (Surprise, they aren’t!) It’s all about a reward-based impulse, like training a bunch of rodents to use a casino.
That’s not my experience, and I’m an elder millennial. The only time tiering up has encouraged me to quit a game was when the higher ranked players were just more toxic. Being challenged can be part of the fun.
That’s not to say I think matchmaking is simply better than persistent servers. Having a group of regulars and developing a bit of a server culture is good fun. I guess I like both options depending on the mood.
But then newbies would get killed a lot and cry, and stop playing. For some reason, this didn’t happen 20 years ago but now, it’s appearently a big fucking problem if a player doesn’t feel powerful in the first five minutes of the game…
I think gamers are just really entitled now. They expect awards for turning on the game. And God forbid if someone else kicks their butt because they have more experience.
I was playing quake and unreal tournament growing up and I got absolutely wasted in the beginning. Made me laugh so hard. Then I got good, very good, because I had to be to not die.
My match making in Quakeworld late nineties / early two thousands went from LAN with dad and brother at home, to LAN at compsci lab at HS after school, to local PC cafe, to regional LAN tournament to international scene once ISDN & ADSL became ubiquitous.
We were always welcoming newbies to the scene. But then starting 2003 the Nordic players became increasingly cliquey and started refusing to play anywhere further south than servers located near the Stockholm datacentre.
Well, I’ve read a lot of theory, and I’m pretty sure our best bet is posting memes online, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best. We definitely shouldn’t go outside and talk to people, that’ll never work
Did this in ffxiv once. I don’t usually skip cutscenes but it was mid-msq boring stuff and it was DRAGGING. Before skip, everyone happy at campfire. After skip, everything is completely fucked and I’m lost and injured.
Wild. I was just complaining that I used to follow Lockheed Martin on social because planes are cool, but it’s recently become filled with missile and other direct weaponry posts. I’m well aware of what the purpose of a fighter plane is. They used to at least have fun posts about the scientific work performed by the U2 and SR71.
Name one time in history where the capitalist class accepted a vote to dismantle themselves. It has never happened and very likely never will. They’ll unleash fascism upon the working class if need be to maintain their position.
Ok, racist. You can blame governments for certain actions, but blaming ethnicities, especially when the form of government has changed 180° two times in the past century, just shows you’re a racist nationalist.
Funnily enough, Lenin’s ethnicity is contested, but his patronymic “Ilich” doesn’t necessarily suggest that he’s ethnically Russian. Sorry that your country has been brainwashed for the past 3 decades to hate an entire nationality. You can blame the current Russian government for any oppression they’re carrying out in your country if it’s the case, and that’s very legitimate, but don’t be a racist prick and don’t blame a nationality.
I was trying to figure out why I was belting out this song while doing the dishes yesterday. Seemed like the song entered my consciousness out of nowhere.
Now I remember it was because of this cute comic, so thanks for sharing it
Being able to touch type an on-screen keyboard with your eyes would be amazing, but we all know the real reason for this invention would be to make sure you’re watching the ads.
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