play stupid games win stupid prizes
Quite literally in this case
Makes sense why the game feels soo easy, And i like it this way.
I prefer this over SBMM but at what point does it just become dead gaming theory?
Hell I’m okay with that. I don’t play with any of you people anyway
Cool. Then stick to the vs AI matches. Don’t join a PvP gamemode to expect to play against bots.
What people are missing in the comments is that you can choose to play a bot match if that’s what you want. But you CAN’T sign up to play against people and guarantee that that’s what you’ll be doing. And they are not transparent about it.
That and also penalizing you for disconnecting from Bot matches is wild
If you queue competitve you’re guaranteed human players. And no Crossplay. Not the best solution, but yea…
Except when you have players that conciously don’t want to play competetive. Playing a single match that doesn’t have any impact on any stats / doesn’t judge you is different than playing a competetive match that is twice as long, and has tryhards that will flame you for playing your favourite character, when it’s not 100% optimal. Also, some people get into the competetive side of games way too deep, up to a detriment. Notebooks with pages of ranking points gained or lost, getting frustrated on losses, even resenting the friends you play with for their skill in a game. Shotcallers that get too deep into it, etc. When you have 3hrs to game a week, you don’t want it to be filled with any of that, you want to play like 15 games / rounds and be done with it.
But why? What’s the motive behind not just queuing low ranking players with each other?
Well its obviously player retention, but it could be that if they did put them with other low ranks, they mostly would have a bad time and most would quit. Another thought is that the exceptionally low ranked group is very small, and there isn’t actually enough of them to allow quick enough queue times without filling out games with bots.
So, that’s how ranked play works and only has humans. Problem is, ranked is awful right now. Even in the lowest ranks matches tend to be hopelessly lopsided. I’m not clear on why but it may be streamers and whatnot creating new accounts to stomp on low ranked people.
It’s in quick match where they are inserting bots, and there aren’t ranks to use.
Would making a rule that new players must play an AI for the first few randomized number of games? That way they could have a chance to gauge the players ability before matching.
Most games do this, you can’t play ranked matches until you’ve played non-competitive ones for a while first, and then you play placement matches where your ELO is allowed to move much farther per game so you dont stay buried in low ranks if you dont belong.
Ranked games tend to be thrown off by high skill players in low ranks, and it tends to even out once you get to the top ranks as the skill gap thins.
Maybe placement matches would help, but if they are intentionally ranking low to stomp on people, I guess they’d throw those matches.
But they wouldn’t know how many of them they would need to throw.
I wasn’t going to play a hero shooter anyway, but fuck this. I just want to go back to arena shooters, server browsers and no stat tracking.
Arena Shooters have tried and tried to recapture the magic but it’s just long gone. As soon as Overwatch showed up, the game had changed. Then Quake itself just had to do the same thing with Champions and look where that got them. Then Unreal Tournament turned into Fortnite and that was the last nail in the coffin.
Arena Shooters have tried and tried to recapture the magic but it’s just long gone
Xonotic would like a word, it never left and it has an ever growing number of fans.
High level gameplay in Xonotic can be seen as nothing other than an a slow and steady evolution of arena shooter design and Xonotic is nothing less than pure flow state when you play.
People paying for Marvel licenses aren’t really interested in a couple of thousand players though.
If they’re not going gangbusters then it will be shuttered within a month like Concord.
I used play the odd arena shooter (think I’ve still got an Unreal Tournament CD sat around somewhere) and while I’m old enough to remember them, I don’t have the reactions to enjoy them and if I’m honest I never did.
yeah I wasn’t meaning to suggest a marvel arena shooter, agreed it would obviously be way too niche
A friend of mine linked me to one called Straftat that seems fun. It’s built around small maps and 1v1 fights.
I feel like if any genre changes shooters forever, it was Battle Royales. They exploded in popularity after Fortnite and then when the market was oversaturated, AAA devs switched to “the next big thing” which happened to be hero shooters. But I really can’t blame a game or genre for that.
I think the boardrooms at AAA studios changed the game forever by forcing devs to chase that “next big thing” over originality.
Shame on you for saying Fortnite popularized Battle Royals. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds is the one that did it. Hell, before that, Fortnite was a zombie survival game and only added Battle Royal as an alternative mode after the fact
I have over a hundred hours in PUBG so I’m not claiming Fortnite invented the genre but you can’t deny that Fortnite isn’t the game that made it blow up.
PUBG had no marketability. Gritty gameplay, toxic community, aimed at adults, and an awful name. It was also $30 and PC-only until after Fortnite blew up.
Fortnite was bright and silly and on every platform and F R E E.
Name a game that doesn’t have a toxic multiplayer community. It’s pretty pointless to characterize a game this way since it’s universally the same every where. It’s the internet.
DRG
I mean it also has some toxic players, but they are really rare.
Pretty sure we’re talking about competitive pvp games here and not co-op games. I assumed that would go without saying.
Now playing
Yup. The first of its kind was the mod for arma 2 and 3. The popularity of that mod led to H1Z1 which also involved player unknown in its BR development.
Only after that did Fortnite come out and capitalize on the existing BR hype that player unknown manifested.
I played PUBG when it was only an Arma mod.
PUBG is still kicking! More so in Asia, but I still play semi regularly w my friends
I was seeing people leave arena shooters for the military shooters long before BR games were a thing. My lan group was more interested in RPing as army dudes then any thing that required fast reflexes. I played way too many hours of Battlefield 2 just because I was trying to be social with that group. Terrible game. The fan made maps were pretty good, but because fan made maps were never ranked, no one would play them outside of lan parties.
I played way too many hours of Battlefield 2 just because I was trying to be social with that group. Terrible game
You didn’t like JDAM’s fired by the world’s sweatiest jet pilots all the way up your asshole 24/7?
One guy was like that, but I really hated how samey the maps and weapons all were. Very little important difference between the vehicles within their class. Most engagements came down to who say the other person first. If it was more realistic and I could disable a tank’s movement by targeting the treads first or if driving a buggy from too high a drop would blow out the suspension, I would probably liked it more, but you really couldn’t play it very creatively.
Team fortress 2 is still going good even if the only updates are from the community in terms of maps.
But Team Fortress 2 is not an arena shooter. It’s just simply a first person shooter with multiplayer capabilities. The differences are narrow but different enough between Team Fortress 2 and something like Quake III Arena. It’s the pace and you’re usually on your own.
I agree that most gamemodes do not play that way, and the classes are more restrictive to be a pure arena shooter.
But playing soldier or scout in gamemodes like Koth and PlayerDestruction scratch that itch enough for me to count.
Fast respawn and itemspawn management, combined with good map knowledge feels like good old quake 3 or UT sometimes.
Then you have dozens of rocketjumping maps in the server browser, which no game i know of has these days.
I’ll just stick to my single player, retro revival titles.
I certainly never went to lan parties for the company anyway.
I mained Q3Arena and UT for a few years, then lost the thread as other amazing fps solo games came along.
Now I’ve been mainly playing Destiny2 for a few years, and as the game dies I have discovered that the PvP gameplay has that old magic of a fast fluid arena shooter still going on under all the class complexity and gacha-grind system.
Cool thing is, while D2 is expensive and microtransaction-filled, you can instead just play pvp utterly freely and the grind for gear is unnecessary if you like casual arena shooters. Also D2 has really great gunfeel and graphics, it’s Bungie, that’s about the only thing they do perfectly.
They haven’t gone away. Plenty of Quake 3 Arena servers still up and running. If not Quake 3 Arena, then Xonotic is still pretty active with more modern visuals and pretty good graphics.
I was always more a ut2k4 guy. I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game. But even then the most active servers just play the same few maps. I could play some FaceClassic, but not for hours on end.
I’m also working on fixing an old gamepad I use to use for these games. Unlike ones that use cherry based switches, this one just uses those small, tactile switches with crazy small travel distance.
I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game.
It came on disc. As for patches, there were Linux-specific patches. When I tried some years ago, the game worked after deleting / remaining some shipped libraries and replacing them with system ones. Though today, Wine might be a better choice. I think the Windows version supports OpenGL as well so there’s no need for DXVK.
They also seem to be following CCP censorship rules. Yay.
Edit: What are the downvotes for, its objectively correct.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/marvel-rivals-chinese-censorship-controversy
What? No zombies or lgbtq relationships?
More like no “Free Taiwan” etc. Fuck Asmongold but this gets the point across quickly… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1r16vMbQlk
You cant even type the number “1989” or “Dalai Lama” or “Winnie the Pooh”. It would be funny if it wasnt so sad.
ah
I too yearn for the Quake 3 days.
There’s a super tiny but somewhat active Quake 3 VR community. It’s awesome.
Quake 3 in VR?! That’s interesting.
Yeah, it works really well. Here’s some gameplay footage.
This looks like a blast! Makes me want a VR headset just for this lol.
Quest 3 is amazing, and 3S is super affordable. Both are well worth it. The only drawback is that you have to suck Zuck’s dick to get them. But eh, it’s tiny.
You can still rocket jump in Destiny2 arena pvp, well grenade, but same feel. Fun way to be Death from Above if you are a more punchy character than the floaty kind.
There are launchers with the danger zone perk too
Yes, right! But ammo is precious in PvP so most use Mountaintop for the lulz
Try splitgate its basically just old school halo local multiplayer. The portals addition is great
Edit: had the name wrong
has the second one come out?
I think you mean Splitgate https://store.steampowered.com/app/677620/Splitgate/
Thats it! Super fun, fast game for sure.
Being punished for leaving bot matches is the only issue I’d have with this.
The article says that you do indeed get punished for leaving.
You don’t know if it’s a bot match as far as I understood
there are ways to tell.
namely steam rolling the opponents. or the enemy team not showing up in your recently played with list.
The only other game I know of that penalizes you simlarly is Rocket League, they penalize you for leaving casual matches.
I just don’t understand the logic. They take Win-Loss records way too seriously.
If there are other human players in the match, leaving sucks for them, so in that regards I get it.
If all the other players are bots… who cares? Penalizing for hurting bot-feelings is silly.
It’s nothing to do with W/L it’s because it fucks your team mates (and essentially everyone else, who now are devoid of a proper match) in RL. One of the many reasons I never stuck by RL was other players. People would so frequently just trash talk you when you’re learning and then fuck off out of the match, leaving you to get rolled by two players. These players would frequently be worse too. At least if you get rolled with a full team, you’ll probably learn something.
RL and games with low team player counts I 100% understand it for. It’s a punishment for selfish players. In a match with bots less so but I guess if you’re doing bad enough to be matched with bots they probably want to to stay and learn to play.
The Rocket League community united around the idea that forcing everyone to watch every single replay makes them more tilted, so that’s what they’re going to do. The toxicity of that community is off the charts, up there with the worst like League of Legends. The part that drives me nuts is that League of Legends has bad game design that is partially responsible for the toxicity; what is Rocket League’s excuse?
I never saw toxicity at the community scale before Rocket League. Before that it was always individual, even in games like Rust, EVE Online, World of Tanks… Rocket League is special somehow.
Damn, I only ever played Rocket League with IRL friends. Sucks to hear.
Agreed. I was surprised at how bad it was, which was a bummer for two reasons. Firstly, it was a pretty enjoyable game at times especially with mates. Secondly, there were plenty of players that went out of their way to counter it and be decent but sadly they were the minority.
Clearly having the word “league” in the name generates toxicity.
Nah, but the game got so much worse after it went free to play. I’ll never forgive Epic.
Ive only been punished for leaving ranked matches lately, I dont think they do anything if you leave casual matches. Ive done it multiple times lately, I use them as practice sometimes or if I night need to leave suddenly.
Marvel Snap serves up poorly hidden bot matches and penalizes you for leaving as well. For example, they “reset” the ranked ladder every month, but retain their hidden mmr, and people with a really high mmr are MORE likely to face bots, because the system is designed to align your rank with their MMR, but if you leave the match, you forfeit what is essentially an ante used to determine your rank. But everyone gets some bots, and the amount varies based on several things, basically all of them manipulative to the player and their rank system.
Is this problem? Think it make sense and way to learn more mechanics of game.
I’m conflicted with this. But it’s a problem because the game is not clear about it and you can’t choose, the game just put 4 people + 2 bots against 6 bots.
I “tried” to get a bot match yesterday after getting 2 loses in a row, playing with things that I normally don’t play and not caring too much with the objective. Took 5 loses in a row to get 1 bot match.
For a person to get a lot of bot matches they need a lot of loses, at that point the person is probably better playing against bot to improve a little bit. But I think the game should suggest to the player to do that instead of forcing and hiding that they are playing against bots.
Obfuscation. Corporate figures telling or giving people the option will hurt their feelings so they’ll stop playing. A player who quits is no longer a tier two type with the potential to spend money, so they’ll only do this if it becomes a PR nightmare that affects their bottom line.
Yep, they don’t care if the player is improving, they just want people to not tilt and quit the game.
And I don’t think this will be a PR nightmare, played a lot of the game, mostly quick matches and got 1 bot match, not only some people will not get a bot match easily but some people will not even notice.
I don’t feel it’ll go anywhere either. Flip side is always whether people are having fun. People having fun rarely complain meaningfully. Meaaaning money still flows.
Exactly, with Ch5 Fortnite vastly increased bots. Until that was confirmed I was confused as to how I got so much better within a week of the chapter starting. I averaged 2-4 kills in ch4 and in ch5s01 I averaged 10+. I stopped playing BR because of this. Bot heavy lobbies aren’t fun.
It feels like assuming a lot of positive intent to guess that the match against bots is so that people can learn rather than trying to feed them a dopamine hit so they don’t get discouraged and fuck off, but maybe I’m a cynic.
That is 100% what it is, if it were about learning they wouldn’t be obfuscating bot matches. Pretending the bots are players is just a stealthy player retention trick.
If I sign up for a match expecting to play against players and get matched with bots I would be upset.
Like most games have options like vs bots or vs players. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to not have even that basic control over your game experience. Regardless if you just get crushed.
Statistically, people are more upset when they get crushed by other humans.
Agreed, however I don’t get the point? Are we at a point where we accept the devs know better than us on how we enjoy the game?
If I keep getting absolutely crushed I will go play bots to learn the game before returning to PvP. I would rather not have the devs decideling what they think I want or should be playing.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, all sorts of things in game design are done just because of weird quirks of our psychology, and this is one of them. I’m definitely not the only person who’s heard of people quitting a competitive game because the player base is “too sweaty”. Handing people a win like this from time to time reminds them of what the game can be like at its best. And to be clear, I’m not explicitly in favor of this technique of putting people against bots when you queue to face humans, but I get how we arrived here.
Could be a option. Like a pop up that says “would you like to play a bot match with the same team comps? Yes/No”
Has a game ever asked you if you wanted to drop down to easy mode when you died too many times? How many times have you said yes? Because given that prompt, basically no one takes up the offer, and they’re more likely to just stop playing because the game is too hard.
That’s great for stats but I don’t like when companies hide these details from me or other players, I guess I’m not their impressionable demographic anymore though since overwatch 1 was replaced by overwatch 2: currency management simulator and I checked out from games with a store+game model.
I’m not in their demographic either, but the reason they do this is because it’s measurably more likely to get players to stick around. People would rather win against bots than lose to other people.
It’s the Skinner box casino model of gaming, get em hooked young to the dopamine reward instead of building a skill based competition.
It gives people a false sense of being good even if that day was simply not their day. Bot match alone is fine, and it’s relaxing in a way, but hiding the fact that they’re not fighting against real players is manipulative.
It’s a problem if you think you’re learning techniques for killing humans but in reality you’re learning tricks to kill AI. There is already a bot match option if people want to learn with no pressure.
I think I would actually try the game out if you could purposefully select to play against bots.
Then try it, because you can do exactly that.
That’s unsurprising, I don’t bother with multiplayer games at all because always getting stomped so bad you don’t even learn how to fucking play isn’t worth the time. One assumes they have to come up with some sort of strategy to keep players like me on a pvp only game.
This has been me for a while now.
Rocket league is the only online competitive game worth it anymore for me at least. I stopped for a few years and saw people complain on forums about bots and toxicity but when I came back it was exactly how I left it, and that was before epic bought it.
I do miss the abusive loot chests since I was an adult and like gambling on them but I understand why they needed to go.
One assumes they have to come up with some sort of strategy to keep players like me on a pvp only game.
And that strategy was to allow you to play against bots on purpose and with your knowledge. It has been around for as long as bots have been.
One assumes part of the goal there was to give players the dopamine boost of thinking they’re beating someone. Not saying it’s not an underhanded tactic but I can see and understand the motive and, as far as shitty things in the online gaming world go, this one’s probably the most benign.
i swear pokémon duel would do the opposite of this. you’d get on a win streak and then suddenly a player with a very generic name and the EXACT counters to your deck fucken SWEEPS your ass with seemingly psychic precision. you could even trick it by switching to a deck with no synergy and just playing like a psycho whenever you got ~5 wins in a row.
i miss that game so much. taken before it’s time o7
Pokemon TCGP feels the same honestly, I get two wins then suddenly it’s a Mewtwo Gardevoir combo. I also can’t tell if people who pay for premium are more likely to get better cards because they get more chances or if the server sees that they pay for premium and reward them, but I run into so many people that have multiple Mewtwo Ex cards and I can’t even manage to find one in all the packs I’ve opened.
It’s rather common Knowledge that NetEase does this exact thing in Narala: Bladepoint, so yeah, not surprising, at all.
I also vaguely remember this being a thing in Pokemon: Unite, not sure if that’s also a NetEase game.
Pokémon Unite does it sometimes after lose streaks. But not always! It’s common in casual modes but much less common in ranked.
I’m having way more bot games in unite than I ever did (picked up the game again this week after a year off).
It never happens in ranked in Rivals.
Last time I played Fortnite it was also like this. It was bots + other weak players like you. It felt quite okay, early in the match you got some easy bot kills and later you had some challenge dealing with actual players of your skill level.
With ch05 bots have increased a lot.
Last time I really played a lot of Fortnite, I played with someone who was really good, and we’d get #1 in roughly half our matches. Even after 20+ games, it felt like we still got lobbies half full of bots
With ch5 I went in the space of days from averaging 2-4 kills per match in ch4 to 10+ in ch5. So many bots
Standard mobile practice from a mobile publisher
It’s really fucked up when you think about it since qp matches are any skill against any skill. So if you get a diamond ranked dps on the opposite team and your team is mostly bronze you’re screwed. Then you only have to lose one more match to get put into the bot matches. That seems super unfair.
QP still puts you with similar skill level players. It just doesn’t show you the algorithm like competitive. You won’t be put with a diamond if you are bronze and vice-versa.
This isn’t true. I’ve been put against Diamonds and GMs and I’m gold 3. You can look at people’s rank in the history tab even for enemy teams.
I’m fine with this. There are some braindead or brand new players out there who should 100% be confined to the kiddie pool until they learn the basic mechanics.
Fun fact, that braindead player has just as much right to play the game and have fun as you do. Your gameplay superiority in fact does not entitle you to more of the game.
Yeah except it doesn’t work like that. If you get 2 losses in a row or even 2 losses separated by a win, it’ll dump you in the kiddie pool, doesn’t matter how much playtime you have. If I get SVP and it still puts me into a bot match, that’s bad design.
It seems to be a way to grant the player an easy win so you don’t tilt and quit. But the ruse was way too easy to see through.
PCGamer running FUD ads for ActiBlizz, nothing new. Move along.
