Dear Developers, Stop Listening to Pros

[@Sonof_DRN2004]

The pros are supposed to be good at the game, not change the game so they can be good at it.

[@shreks_loins3963]

Very well said. I think all developers need to see this comment. Seriously

[@BoleDaPole]

True, but if you dotn listen to them then they'll just play a different game.

[@LamborghiniDiabloSVPursuit]

@@BoleDaPole Then fine. The pro scene is an absolute minority compared to the casual scene in any large-scale multiplayer game. You can host all the pro tournaments you want, but its the casuals who'll be watching and paying the revenue for all the sponsors of your pro teams.

[@Sonof_DRN2004]

@@BoleDaPole I don’t think that’s true, you need a lot of things to become a pro gamer, some of those being passion and commitment. Most importantly passion. A pro player who is very passionate about the game will want to play it regardless and won’t easily quit. Even if it had a over powered Spartan laser that makes driving any vehicle extremely risky. I don’t remember pros getting but hurt about the Spartan laser in Halo 3, Reach and 4. Edit: Dodging/evading the Spartan laser in a warthog or a falcon adds another layer of skill gap which separates the pros from the normies. However I will say the Spartan laser is even more of a problem now due to people being able to play the old games with a keyboard via MCC. It will definitely be harder to avoid the laser in vehicles against a mouse user.

[@badreedinedjellali1328]

yeah no wonder why the only liked elder ring and called other games trash

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

"You can't force a game to be an eSport." Blizzard: "I'mma pretend I didn't hear that."

[@Rune3D]

How does this NOT have a thousand likes??

[@digojez]

@@Rune3D 8 months late to post the comment of the month

[@disobey8828]

The guy of the video is lying, Overwatch is the perfect example of a casual Game Made for not offend the casuals, now is in a hole. Valorant was made for proplayers, that's the reason why have trash graphics, just for optimise fps and fast reactions like Counter Strike. Just ignorant youtubers talking about things that they don't understand.

[@user-wj6jh1cd5n]

Makes me think of Cliff Bleszinski and lawbreakers.

[@Minos_offical]

any call of duty game: ESPORT!!!!!!! SLIDE CANCEL 100% SPEED FMJ ACR HYBRIDSIGHTGODMODE!!!!!!!!!

[@LaperLarden]

Gotta remember that Halo's MP didn't start as this hyper-competitive sweat fest. It started on the couch with split-screen, which is about as casual as you can get. Even down to the screen cheating. Though I never use to do that... Never.

[@Joeru510]

Right that’s what I said. It was only competitive when your buddies were trying to shit on you and you got serious all of a sudden. But at its core it’s always been a fun sandbox shooter with multiple ways to manipulate the sandbox to your advantage. If you didn’t know how to manipulate the sandbox then it was just all out casual fun with cool ass space/human weapons with your buddies on the couch.

[@greedyclown851]

And still CE was the most skillful

[@runningoutofnames3CS]

Suuure buddy

[@fenexus404]

@@runningoutofnames3CS we believe you...

[@DanTessman88]

@@greedyclown851 I miss being able to stick my sticky grenades to each other to launch one across the map at the enemy team, or straight up in the air as a misdirection tactic

[@FROEZOEN]

"Calling yourself a good designer because you're good at games. Is like saying a porn addict is good at sex" I feel like a lot of this audience needed to hear that.

[@RockwellSocratese]

Holy shit your right. I can't argue with that.

[@ivoryas1696]

@FROEZOEN This audience? What'd they do? 💀

[@maximumeffort2381]

@@ivoryas1696bro why u feel attacked lmao

[@ivoryas1696]

@@maximumeffort2381 I'm not a member of this audience. I was just curious, tbh. 🤷🏾‍♂

[@ScilliRhexi6344]

Isnt this why every sports movie has a training arc? So they can train and get good? WTF am I missing here?

[@lonec1777]

The worst case of this is when a game was not designed to be competitive, then the developers try all the sudden to engineer it to be competitive.

[@lonec1777]

@@scrimbim6056 exactly what i was referring lmao, but many others

[@MrToddino]

@@lonec1777 melee but its the fans themselves juryrigging a competitive scene

[@lonec1777]

@@MrToddino lmao true

[@JadeHehehe]

@@scrimbim6056 Except it is still an amazing game

[@thesharinganknight]

Cod

[@deriznohappehquite]

It’s important to remember that a good chunk of FPS players don’t ever even touch competitive multiplayer. Many only dabble in it. Very few actually play competitively.

[@happyjohn354]

Been playing CS go for years and play so little competitive I am technically unranked.

[@bakuguardian]

Yeah, as much as I love Halo, I haven't touched Infinite's ranked play much at all. If SBM was to blame, half of my matches were against guys way above my weight class that turned a seemingly casual match of slayer into a one-sided stompfest. Competitive just ramped up that power creep to 11 and I felt completely outmatched. I'd rather play for fun with the boys since to me, that's what Halo was always about. Squading up with your friends to kick as much ass as possible and have a blast while doing it.

[@dillonc7955]

This is exactly how I feel. I touched ranked in Rainbow Six and Black Ops 2. Both modes didn't feel like my thing. I respect those who get the highest rank, but that doesn't mean I enjoy seeing my casual experiences getting treated like competitive. This has pretty much led me to stick to single player and coop games instead of having a headache with games I can only force myself to like.

[@KalElinabox]

I touched competitive overwatch and quick play is better. Competitive overwatch has smurfs and once you end up in a low rank it's near impossible to get out as it'll match you with worse players as your rank drops even if you get better at the game.

[@TheSpeep]

Only FPS I play are basically coop PvE exclusively. I played Overwatch for a while back in the day, and I had a good time with it, but as things got more competitive I just lost interest, and thats probably the only PvP shooter I've ever played, and I basically avoided ranked games like the plague. Other than that, admittedly the only shooters I think I've actually played are Borderlands 2 & 3, with friends, and most importantly, Deep Rock Galactic, solo or with friends or randos, and those have all been a blast.

[@ToxicCalamari]

This is my feeling back when TF2 still got updates. The competitive scene demanded nerfs for weapons that really didn't need them and were only a problem at the highest level of optimal play like the Base Jumper (parachute). The nerfs we got completely ruined them in pubs and made them more acceptable for the rather stale tf2 competitive meta. Many good weapons were destroyed because valve for a time was only listening to the top 1% of the playerbase.... We lost the caber's ability to oneshot light classes even though all anyone used it for in pubs was to harass clueless snipers. We lost the fun fast heavy loadout because "heavy shouldn't be allowed to get to mid fast" and that butchered two weapons. We lost the versatility of the cleaver because it made scout too effective in chokepoints. We lost the hijinxs one could do with the base jumper because "Scout can't hit soldier when he uses it" Basically anytime a class had a weapon that threatened the tf2 comp scene meta, it's weapons got nerfed into boring, useless options that no one touch anymore.

[@qwertyiuwg4uwtwthn]

this comment needs more likes

[@StalkerG88]

The same happened with R6 Siege

[@Billymaysx]

They did the same thing with the Axtinguisher too! It was too strong in competitive play so they gutted it. This caused it to become useless and encouraged the majority of players to play Pyro as a Mouse 1 Pyro.

[@isopod_gaming-real-]

At least the caber is still silly

[@questmaster01]

Its funny because despite these nerfs, the BASE Jumper is STILL banned in competitive 6s because the mere ability to hover over a point and spam out damage was way too strong. Like, what was the point of even trying to nerf this thing to get it to work in competitive if the core concept is too incompatible with the format? Just keep it banned and everyone would have been happy.

[@DejectedCat]

This will probably show my age. But I remember that there was a Half-Life 1 mod called "The Specialist". It's really just another Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch game, but the whole gimmick about it is that the game lets you do action movie-esq stunts, complete with the same 80-90's action movie esthetics in map designs and character models. It was super fun seeing everyone doing dives, somersaults, and the signature Matrix dodges during a match. Every update some new interesting features gets added in. Until one day then the top "Pro" players in the community started whining about how the mod has become "too slow paced" and that the mod is now all about looking cool while shooting, instead of "skill" in shooting. And the developer ended up listening to those guys exclusively for the next overhaul update. They massively sped up the TTK, and sped up the movement speed. To the point that doing any stunt just make you more likely to die with no upsides. The mod turned into a railgun arena, where the most optimal way of play is just circle strafing. Community basically died within months of the overhaul. Even after the developer tried to revert most of the changes in the overhaul, the community population never really recovered. And guess what, the "Pro" players also left soon after they stank up the mod with their inputs. I'm still bitter to this day how a bunch of elitists murdered one of the most unique mod that came out of the Half Life 1 era. That other mod Action Half-Life was nowhere near as polished as The Specialist.

[@Ethan-gw6mi]

Oh my god I remember this! It really was exactly like what this video described 😂

[@zs9652]

Fps pros are some of the worst pros there are when it comes to fun. All they want to do is point and click. I kinda want an fps that aims for you but forces you to strategize by handling your kit and positioning better than your opponent. That way all the fps pro aimbot players won't play it lol.

[@fantasticmrmonk]

@@zs9652umm, you already have to do all that stuff in fps (both competitive and casual). It isn’t point and click, that’s entirely reductive of the genre.

[@commentextary]

@@fantasticmrmonkSomeone's never played... TF2, CoD, Fortnite, etc.

[@Sepums]

@@commentextary I can't speak for the others because I wouldn't play them, but TF2 is absolutely not just "point and click".

[@reidwallace4258]

Anybody else remember that time when halo 3 launched with a bug that caused melele kills to randomly send people flying into orbit? There was a dev post on the forums replying to it that said, if I remember correctly word for word, "This is awsome, we are keeping it in". Within 3 months MLG had cried enough mountain dew tears to get them to fix it... making everybody's lives worse as a result. Remember kids, pro gamers don't want you to have fun, they want to beat your ass on stream for views.

[@quinkledinkle3760]

This is why it's 100 percent ethical to target anyone with "TTV" in a match.

[@chrismedina54]

I target anyone with YT or faze on their names.

[@Chicky_Lumps]

Did the glitch affect damage or was it just a ragdoll bug? Because pros demanding a funny visual bug be fixed is the pinnacle of pettiness.

[@reidwallace4258]

@@Chicky_Lumps In one match at least it flew up and intercepted an incoming rocket launcher shot. 1 in a million odds, but pros get mad when they lose.

[@r4k00n5]

@@reidwallace4258 I need footage?

[@Zenner5222]

Unpredictability is what creates nostalgic memories. People reminisce over crazy shit happening in games, which can only happen if there's some unpredictability. Nobody says "man remember that time that I held m1 and kept my crosshair on the enemy until he died just like every other fight in every other match in almost every other game?"

[@Stryfe52]

It makes me wish that more games has *actual* random encounters

[@Spazmonkey625]

I feel like you're really downplaying how fun it can be to play a game well though. As an example, pulling off a series of absurdly nasty Hanzo shots while evading enemy cc in Overwatch to clear a point, that's pretty cool and can be both really fun and pretty hard to do. While on the flipside, getting the squad and dicking around with a team that's nothing but Torbjorns, also pretty fun. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, the game can be balanced and built for competitive while still being fun to dick around in. Your "I just held m1" example is exactly something that people remember, because at the end of the day literally anything you do in a shooter can basically be boiled down to that. Oh you played league? Well regardless if you're making a nutty play in competitive or fucking around with friends all you really did was right click. This just feels like a dishonest argument.

[@greatkanohimask]

nice reductive analysis

[@flow185]

@Paul Martin fr fr I was 4th in Mario Kart, I threw a Bob omb, it hit the 1st and 2nd then u overtook everyone and got first just before the finish line

[@Sonichero151]

Or you're ninja and you reminisce about some shit you were doing in League and your braless wife brings you a sandwich unwarranted

[@doltBmB]

Griesemer identified them as "optimizers" in his taxonomy of player types, they are perfectly happy to use only one strategy if it's the most optimal. If they're having "too" much fun, something is probably wrong and needs nerfing or buffing.

[@221Prohunter]

This is the playstyle I can’t stand. For some people it’s all about what the literal best thing they can do to win absolutely every engagement with the fastest TTK. It’s such a boring way to play, these people will use the same thing for years if it doesn’t have anything that statistically beats it.

[@meurumtrain4747]

@@221Prohunter it’s not a boring way to play because most of you casuals/scrubs like to be weak in game and we like to be strong

[@Jontohil2]

I would actually like to see where you got this from, I tried searching for it and I can't find it

[@doltBmB]

@@Jontohil2 It's one of his design in depth talks from GDC.

[@Jontohil2]

@@doltBmB I think I found it, thanks!

[@alanevans6482]

Is no one old enough to remember quake or UT? Created the entire genre that we know it and had(still to this day) some of the most impressive pros in the world. Don't recall any of them changing the game. Instead, they embraced the game and found out how to work around perceived problems.

[@markfreeman4727]

Old pros: improve, adapt, overcome New Pros: WAHHHH Change the game to suit meeeeeee!!!

[@kolonarulez5222]

Quake was my very first PC game!

[@penguinjay]

@@markfreeman4727Truly, this is a problem with post launch updates and "seasons," games as live service etc. When the game was shipped, and there were not going to be updates, things were better. No amount of complaining could push change. Now, the games are shipped in beta, and the players actually have input on changes and that's a detriment to the final product, because the loudest person does not represent the playerbase, but moreso the opposite. Nobody wants the stuff that the skilled players demand. Nobody benefits from it except the self serving people trying to get games tailor-made to match their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

[@-joker2010]

@@markfreeman4727 if u cant adapt. then thats a big skill issue lol.

[@doubleseventhreefour]

it's way easier to change a game now than it was then, especially to actually have people play the new version. + most people who have sentiment towards quake have moved on from avid gaming

[@ryxceb9977]

I started hating pros' opinions with the Zofia incedent in Rainbow Six: Siege. Zofia had an ability to self revive if she was downed but not killed. She was the only operator with this ability, and was the only "healer" on the attacking side for a while. However, there was a pro championship match were the defenders forgot about that ability, and the Zofia got back up and won the tournament. The losing team complained about it so much that Ubisoft removed that ability from her

[@XWXS2]

Played rainbow since alpha 2015 and all my friends stopped playing the game since 2019 Rainbow six siege is so trash now they should call it "E sports Six Siege" all in favor for all those e sport Lamers who are not even good at the game they ruined the whole experience for all the others and especially rainbow six Fans who really liked siege at first. They are probably only in the e sport scene because they have connections to some higher up people or something or maybe a family member is involved with the game...but those "pros" are definitely not the best players! the best players are people you probably don't know.

[@XWXS2]

@eXium832 I was tired af hope you understand now

[@kasper7574]

Are you sure you're not talking about Finka? or is Finka what became of this bullshit?

[@ryxceb9977]

@@kasper7574 Finka was not able to get herself up at that time. They later added that ability sometime after removing it from Zofia

[@ThePalebloodDoll]

didn't they also add the ability to self res with ALL defenders as long as they have a rook plate equipped?@@ryxceb9977

[@frankaliberti]

The competitive eater analogy is perfect. A competitive eater might want a chef to make more slimy hot dogs so they can eat them faster when they visit the chef’s restaurant. While 99% of the costumers that go to the chef’s restaurant don’t wanna eat slimy hotdogs, they wanna eat good food and enjoy a pleasant ambience.

[@EvilSantaTheTrue]

Slimy hotdogs????

[@niegilsuck3072]

@@EvilSantaTheTrue slides down faster

[@dantefromdevilmaycry9857]

@@niegilsuck3072 Hmmm... I wonder what other kind of use can I implement further.

[@saltblood]

LOL

[@frankaliberti]

@@EvilSantaTheTrue have you never seen an eating competition?

[@citystargtx3]

Games should have the same motto... "Easy to get good at...but Hard to get great at"

[@caldog619]

Mahjong: a minute to play, a lifetime to master

[@manolgeorgiev9664]

Easy to play, hard to master

[@dominicballinger6536]

Yeah, easy to learn, hard to master

[@kraptastic333]

I'm the fourth comment repeating or rephrasing what you already said

[@SpottedHares]

“Easy to play… effort to get good… hard to master… impossible to perfect”

[@delinquenter]

"Developers shouldn't listen to pros" is just an elaborate way of saying: Developers should stop focusing on making games "competitive" and more fun instead. It's common sense but apparently, it took people 10 years to figure out, that having a game made for 10 no-lifes on a stage is not as good, as a fun game made for millions of casuals. But at least people finally come around to it, just like how companies are not your friend and that you should exploit them back just as much, as they do, by spending your money wisely.

[@shreeanshmahapatra2313]

The thing is those 10 no lifes are likely to attract the attention of similar players who are going to be always online in the game while casuals are never guaranteed to stay no matter how much you change the game to their liking.

[@timo4463]

​@@shreeanshmahapatra2313the Casual give the Game mass If a Game Has Mass there will BE pros nomatter how Bad the Game Is Therefore yes ITS better

[@dieghautdeforme5049]

The thing people like to dismiss is that many pro players don't want the game to be "competitive" but "fair". With fairness, both the more casual side and the more competitive side have a better experience. If a character or a weapon easily destroy newer player but not the dedicated ones, pros will still point it out, as it's badly balenced no matter who it affects.

[@giogio4222]

Finally someone who's speaking about this. I'm so tired of big pro players and/or streamers acting as if they're carrying an entire playerbase on their shoulders whenever they speak their minds about the games they play, as if everyone sent them as their ambassador. And devs acting like that's the case is not helping either.

[@SirBlckBerry]

This is what turned me off from Fortnite. The devs are catering to the big streamers/pro players, while leaving the casual gamers(who just want to play for fun) on the back burner. Matchmaking is screwed up now, cheaters running rampant, etc.

[@aquilschutte]

​@@SirBlckBerryAnd its not like the pro's only win, if they lose they call it a bad game and complain, its so annoying

[@camilasuemi6850]

Don't blame the devs, please. These AAA companies just want to make big bucks and just listen to content creators and pros. The devs just make what they're told to.I'm glad i'm a dev from a smaller company, so we try our best to make what is reasonable to our consumers, doesn't cost us much and is "friendly" to our software environment. But the bigger the company, lower the dev's power to say or do something.

[@giogio4222]

@@camilasuemi6850 When I say "the devs" I mean like the people responsible for a game's production such as CEOs and Managers. It definitely is not the actual developers' fault as far as big game companies are concerned of course.

[@iamLI3]

what pros are doing that?

[@darkAwesome100]

i am SO GLAD someone brought up the lack of campaigns in a lot of modern FPS games. If i'm gonna pay 60+ dollars for a new game, it better damn well have something i can do on my own, especially when all the major consoles require you to pay EXTRA just to use the online features of a game you already own.

[@NoahGooder]

I agree with this as well since not only do i have trouble affording those online features. But if i do play online im usually kicked out due to horrible ping. (300ms to 1sec regularly)

[@mobbs6426]

Yeah, but games are getting unavoidably more expensive dontcha know It's not like we have dedicated engines, a much wider supply of workers, decades of existing assets and code, a unified design language that didn't exist 15 years ago. How an we possibly keep costs down in today's age

[@imaginatics]

@@mobbs6426 this isn't the complete argument here. If the game is getting expensive, then there should be a complementary amount of content within. FPS games (especially on new generation consoles) shouldn't charge $70-60 only to have something either solely or essentially focused on online matchmaking, which will have an additional payment to do for online access on the console.

[@yeetus_reetus_deeleetus]

@@imaginatics i think his sarcasm was pretty well done

[@imaginatics]

@@yeetus_reetus_deeleetus Now that I read it again, you're right, I suppose I was too focused on the text haha, my bad

[@theuntouchableking6124]

Being a pro doesn’t make you smarter than an actual game developer

[@jayvhoncalma3458]

True it's like saying a skilled soldier is smarter than the tactician that makes sure the skilled soldier don't take any unnecessary risks

[@theuntouchableking6124]

@@jayvhoncalma3458 fax

[@ZeroKitsune]

I do think some pros have a good idea about what games need...maybe even more than the actual game developers sometimes. I mean don't forget that the devs are human and make mistakes too. But emphasis on "some" in that sentence. In general, most people are not game designers, that much has definitely been shown to me throughout my experiences on the internet.

[@One.Zero.One101]

It's so annoying when devs listen to the minority that wants to nerf everything. *"Please nerf Fireball. Please nerf Backstab. Please nerf the Archer. Please nerf the Assassin. Please nerf the Cleric."* Yes they are the most prominent posters on the forum, but they're just 20 people circle-jerking themselves, they don't represent the 500,000 customers that will buy this game. Most players are annoyed every time a nerf is announced..

[@theuntouchableking6124]

@@One.Zero.One101 facts

[@taczki2]

The casual scene is much more important than competetive

[@saltycomet]

💯

[@Waaaltz_]

Too bad we're getting shoved away. This is why I chosed to play Survival Games and Dungeon Crawler games.

[@PosterityIslesNews]

​@@Waaaltz_until games like rust start doing the same thing

[@Waaaltz_]

@@PosterityIslesNews I don't play Rust, by Survival Games I'm talking about Green Hell, Valheim and Sons of the Forests

[@MetallicSZN]

Literally just give the two fanbases two separate game modes lmfao. It's not that hard.

[@minmaxVD]

Most people don't actually know what they want so listening to the community doesn't works most of the time. Devs should focus on their original vision and only take the community opinion as suggestions.

[@gabethebabe3337]

The problem is 343's original vision was Halo 4 and that was a step in the wrong direction. If they wanted to make a Halo game they should make a HALO game.

[@ha-kh7ef]

@@gabethebabe3337 i mean it was a Halo game you just don't like it.

[@human_npc]

Maybe they should listen for infinite, they've gone their own route and it's flopped

[@proxywolfx]

@@human_npc yeah but for different reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with community suggestions

[@minmaxVD]

@@human_npc They had a great launch. Just nothing to follow it up and 0 experience on handling F2P game doesn't help either.

[@NovanByworks]

It's also worth noting that real-world sports are subject to randomness/unpredictability by virtue of, you know, physics and human imperfection: You could sprain your leg, the weather could suck, the field isn't as nicely maintained, etc. To me, skill is far less about rote memorization of systems than it is being the best at adapting to changing circumstances. That's the basis of survival, after all.

[@Alexs23743]

I think you just explained how a user named "TierZoo" exists on KZbin.

[@shard3606]

The rules for those sports were also made A very long time ago

[@J.Wolf90]

Real sports have real athletes that train for years. They deserve the money they get. Videogame sports are nothing but skinny and fat couch potatoes I would never pay a dime nor should youtube or any social media platform. Put down the games and get a real job play a real sport

[@ecogreen123]

agreed.

[@VRNocturne]

well in terms of real-world sports...skill is also the ability to even execute the mechanics of the sport well enough to be at that level. You can adapt all you want to what's happening, but if you don't have to ability to act on that information, you're not going to make it. The basis of survival is adaptability AND execution.

[@Spubbily01]

Checkmate pros: If you hate rng so much, why do you like battle royales a lot?

[@Shoegaze-]

They don’t want to lose an engagement to something dumb like bloom but they like how every match is different in battle Royales

[@happyjohn354]

@@Shoegaze- Ah so they prefer top lose by not being able to find a weapon at the start instead?

[@mrosskne]

They don't.

[@terrelldurocher3330]

@@mrosskne by logic of gamers and even the human mind not one likes fortnite, warzone, and apex. They like to think they like it.

[@stuglife5514]

Even then, BRs USED to be fun. Anyone remember when Pubg was an ArmA 3 mod and was actually fun? Yea....I do....

[@SCMSD]

You're right they should stop listening to pros. But I think we can go further than that. They should stop listening to streamers and youtubers too.

[@Burning_Marshmallow]

I think that’s a bit too far, most streamers/yourubers aren’t playing games competitively enough to hurt games with their game ideas. /sorry for the longer comment in advance: Plus not all content creators are tied to playing games, which means they are more likely to be casual players, and are thereby part of the larger playerbase. However, I can agree that some of them shouldn’t be listened to as they can cause more harm to games than good, but that can just be any person. So in my opinion it should just stick to ignoring most of the pro’s ideals for game balancing, and companies should listen to the player base they care about most (while sometimes the important player base is the professionals, the goal shouldn’t be about satisfying pro’s because their pro’s, but because it makes the game better which can then indirectly satisfy pro’s. If the pro’s aren’t happy because it doesn’t make them “play” better, then you should just ignore them).

[@Wyk_]

@@Burning_Marshmallow most of pros complains are about things that they cant deal just with their skill, (no real but are always dumb things like that) average pro complaint: "huh these shotguns are too op and require no skill to use, they kill snipers too easyly in shorter ranges"

[@sanicinapanic4264]

Far to black and white youtubers and streamers bring players they are the advertisement not listing to them is dangerous because if a viewer sees something they don't like and a youtube makes note of that the devs could analazy that what really needs to happen is Devs need to get better at deciding what changes are good and bad

[@dani.2479]

@@Burning_Marshmallow You my sir have to be the dumbest man i have ever seen in my 15 years of life. And i live in romania so that is saying something. It is not a bit far because most streamers or youtubers are going to be tryhards or pros. optimize your ads time and recoil instead of optimizing the amount of fun you get ingame for picking something else, tech this, tech that how about some of you go down the skill tree and get a few upgrades into something named "fun". I am not saying all youtubers are going to be people who play competitively and try to win at all costs. because that would be a lie, most of them will, but not all of them will. TL:DR: i think your opinion sucks ass.

[@会供価]

nah too far. the streamers/youtubers bring the players. so you need to listen to them. if they complain, they stop playing, fans stop playing

[@JARV9701]

I used to play Smite years ago, and I remember watching the patch notes constantly thinking: "Why are they changing this?" and a friend having to explain to me a random moment at the Pro League where someone used a weird tactic or build and the entire game had to be updated regarding it. I hated those moments.

[@МаксБурый-р2ю]

1 that's why arena is the only valid mode and conquest is a hellhole never to be touched 2 league also had a lot of these like lvl 1 bard invade they had to change the jungle spawns for

[@hfweuiofnweuio500]

This is fault of the developers who cant let go of the vision of their game and give control of the meta to players. There is a infamous website that is basically a massive rant about developers doing this stuff.

[@alphadeltaroflcopter]

​@@МаксБурый-р2юdon't even get me started being forced to play a losing hour and half game because duo is feeding and refuses to surrender the game. I'd rather just push siege minons all day.

[@МаксБурый-р2ю]

@@alphadeltaroflcopter arena superior Conquest inferior

[@AmeSame]

The death of Golden Blade was when I realized HiRez only listened to Conquest players

[@grokopf142]

I miss when games like cod were just fun and chill to play with friends or even apex at launch when everyone was just trying everything out and having a blast

[@dyingstar24]

Like stacking octanes jump pads?

[@door_productions4896]

Even as early as black ops 2 I vaguely recall pro players complaining about snipers and them getting changed to fit their demands

[@meurumtrain4747]

@@door_productions4896 and what change was that? Bruh most in cod hate snipers being op. The sniper community is small compared to the majority of AR & SMG players

[@cantflyforshit]

Maaan, I WISH I was able to play Apex way back in the day when it launched, despite me not vibing much with the original roster. I really dislike how sweaty it has gotten.

[@door_productions4896]

@@meurumtrain4747 I don't remember exactly, pretty sure they wanted the ballista to be able to ADS faster

[@trishrolt722]

4:32 the Scout's Scattergun from TF2 is a prime example of a shotgun that is both skillful and fun to use.

[@yentamoon1808]

Or slug shotguns in destiny 2

[@Saved-by-Grace]

DOOM super shotgun, the love of my life

[@Sockren]

i like how these people get mad at shotguns. i get that it may seem annoying to go a corner and get 1 tapped but dont these games have grenades lmao

[@JAIBADRIVISHAAL]

BASED

[@xanthousizalith5641]

Also the Widowmaker and the Family Business and the Panic attack and the Reserve shooter and-

[@KitKat-tj8ds]

8:15 - AMAZING take, because it's so right and people miss it completely. Some of the most popular competitive games of all time are either completely casual arcade/adventure games, party games, completely broken and unbalanced, unrefined, or all of the above (smash (ESPECIALLY MELEE), older fighting games like tekken, street fighter, etc, minecraft as you pointed out, FORTNITE became competitive with custom box matches players set up for 1v1s - yknow, the exact opposite of how the game works... The esport formula isn't set in stone, and the amount of companies producing the same fkn games just because another one got popular as an esport is annoying. Yes, these often work (like Apex, Valorant, counters to games like hearthstone, dota, starcraft, etc.) but at the end of the day, that's more because of having a huge dev backing, tons of advertisement and support, and a community and developer set on making the game competitive from before the first alpha drops. Nowadays, streamers and pro players will roam to whatever the new fps is, complain about balancing, play it until views go down, then return to react content. The games don't exist to be fun, they exist to be a seasonal competitive kick. You can tell based on the ACTUAL COMPETITIVE SCENE. While scenes like fighting games, minecraft tournaments, smash, league, etc. continue going strong, Overwatch league just died, and countless other "esports" titles lose their entire playerbase the second a new game comes out and takes the streamers attention. Some of the biggest comp games have come from devs that DIRECTLY DISLIKE THE COMPETITIVE SCENE (as annoying as it is on nintendo's part)

[@forwarduntodawn.]

Been playing a lot of Apex in the past 4 or so months and i absolutely despise how Respawn just agrees on whatever stupid idea the 0.1% of players have. I hate what game developers do to competetive or casual games today, creating changes that simply cater to the 'professionals' and completely forgetting/not caring about players that just play the game casually for fun. It's actually ruining certain games and removing the fun and enjoyment.

[@Spubbily01]

Day one apex player. I swapped to Fortnite because it's much more fun for me. The devs aren't simps for pro players, I know because they removed building, and that's what make it fun.

[@deriznohappehquite]

@@Spubbily01 I’m just playing Halo 3 custom games

[@unknownwill4th549]

@@Spubbily01 funny since comp players have been leaving fortnite this chapter lmao

[@kmsskillersxx3339]

Play war thunder it gets worse

[@Shoegaze-]

Some changes made for casual players ruin games too lol

[@NoirMorter]

I've felt abandoned by game devs for years as someone that cares about story first, game play second and finally multiplayer leading "art and graphics".

[@muhammadzulkarnaen4229]

I would think that's an unpopular perspective, people usually play games for the gameplay. Usually, if the gameplay is fun they will play it, story second graphics fidelity second. The reason games nowadays push for multiplayer is because they want to keep selling you something, there will be incentives if the thing they sell holds value and how they create value for that is to make it embedded in social interaction. You will be more eager to buy in-game items purchases if you can show off or gain an advantage with your purchased items.

[@NoirMorter]

@@muhammadzulkarnaen4229 I agree and disagree with you. Story is central to world building in a video game which is done by graphics and game play systems. Many don't think about it as they play I give you that, however a bad story does negatively effect a game. Games like Journey is telling a story. It's similar to the Souls franchise, including Elden Ring, but does it with a different approach. The primary reason I got into gaming is social interaction and you have great points with that! However the game and its community does not benefit from the current systems in place.

[@WheezyLex]

I’m just watching this about a year behind its release and I agree with this sentiment big time. I’m super bummed to hear that the Marathon reboot will be multiplayer only because I won’t play it. I barely played Destiny and refuse to again because it’s all online. That’s just not as much fun for me.

[@CatgirlExplise6039]

Personally, I care about the pvp first in games, but I still feel somewhat similar, I want a game with unique and fun mechanics, nothing more, but it seems like devs try to make their game toxic

[@JamesSchulte]

I heavily disagree with the idea of a good story being more important to a game than good gameplay Edit: Didn't realize it was mainly your opinion, sorry

[@ln5321]

Also, "pros" are usually insufferable and eager to optimize all of the fun out of a game. I've never seen a game that moved more in the direction the pros wanted become more fun as a result.

[@ThePressureKing]

especially otzdarva and dead by daylight lmfao and his audience just amplify his words

[@FormulePoeme807]

​​​@@ThePressureKingHonestly i think OTZ is the only pro i can say who doesn't do that As stated by him he does not like players needing to only use the meta, he doesn't like needing to know what perk someone took to be able to play the match, cause while competitively viable as a gamplay loop, getting fucked because you couldn't know someone had something is just not fun. He also was pushing for DS nerf so that it doesn't make every game a chore while still being good, he even let out the idea of DS to be base kit i believe In general i believe his stance on balancing is, even if something is fine in a pure balance standpoint, if it's not fun it should change

[@expl0sives4day58]

Can relate heavily with rainbow six siege, they even go as far as to remove unnecessary things entirely.

[@usarhabilidade2697]

​@@expl0sives4day58 Yup, recently I went back to Rainbow siege and...man... They took so many Little things out of the game, things that don't even matter at all. Like the little Effects that happen when your bullets hit someone, or the red X when you kill someone Really why take that off?...I'm pretty sure that was something a pro player woke angry about and made developers remove

[@qawsdsqq]

video games are meant to be competitive

[@keecko8169]

also a lot of the time that pros ask dev's to "make a weapon more balanced" they're essentially asking for it to become boring, unfun, and never used

[@Forty8-Forty5-Fifty8]

"No fair! You took away my free win button!" ok champ

[@harrykrause2879]

Why cant weapons be fun and balanced

[@butlazgazempropan-butan11k87]

Thats what happened to Base jumper and caber in TF2

[@RenyFox.]

balancing is not that easy

[@memerthedealer]

Well, it's cause most of the time, pros actually know what weapons are broken, which helps the developer to try and balance the weapon, which sure most of the time they nerf it too much but most of the time the weapon is too good so it has to be nerfed plus ain't nobody want to be killed by someone who can't win with skill so they resort to using broken weapons

[@tabnk2]

The thing with player feedback in general is that players are immediately able to tell that something is off, but are horrible at pinpointing exactly where the problems are

[@migueeeelet]

Which is why you listen to many players, and not to just a few pros. The more opinions the easier it should be to find where the issue is. You can always run a poll too.

[@Navajonkee]

@@migueeeelet The words of a million laymen are still the words of a layman. Most players don't know the first thing about game design, balancing, etc. They know if a game feels bad, but that's the extent of it. No matter how many you ask, they won't be able to provide an answer. They can only tell you the problem.

[@andrek6920]

@@Navajonkee I disagree, heavily. A million laymen will include a lot of different people, plenty of whom will have relevant professions or hobbies to the question at hand, not to mention that playing that very game is a relevant hobby. There are plenty of very insightful players whos ideas likely could make games better, perhaps only in one minor aspect, perhaps in a more major fashion, but better. The difficulty comes from finding the actually good ideas among the playerbase, something for which there doesnt tend to be anywhere near enough man hours for. But the ideas exist.

[@Navajonkee]

@@andrek6920 "A million laymen will include..." It doesn't matter what it *includes*. The majority vote will not be professionally relevant, and the stray educated criticism will be lost in among the mass opinion.

[@TidusleFlemard]

An example for +tabnk2 comment, from a game I don't remember the name of sadly: - In a ww2 fps game beta, one smg (the german one) was thought to better by the players than the other nation one (usa). They both had the same dps and devs initially were dumbfounded when the usa team players asked for the german one to be nerfed. Further studies found the issue: The sound of firing them made the german one seems to have more oumph. A bit of sound balancing and all players were happy, some player even though that the nerf occurred while it was just a matter of sound.

[@clowdyglasses]

As a wise man once said: "it's a good thing you guys aren't designing ultrakill or it would suck"

[@alexbaker1569]

Hakita my beloved

[@FitzIsBetterThanYou]

hakita

[@justsomepersonyoudontknow8401]

whats ultrakill?

[@alexbaker1569]

@@justsomepersonyoudontknow8401 its a movement shooter currently in early access, think quake but with a faster pace and some elements from the doom reboot and devil may cry, it's an amazing game and I thoroughly reccomend it, especially considering that there is a free demo on steam

[@Chr0matic777]

​@@justsomepersonyoudontknow8401 It's an extremely fun skill-based movement shooter think Get To The Orange Door/DOOM Eternal, and then take all limitations away I'm sure there's a review that talks about it better than I ever could, but I highly recommend taking a look at it.

[@AxTROUSRxMISSLE]

Im really happy that other people are annoyed that devs listen to pros and streamers more than the majority of the community. I stopped playing FPS games as much because everything is so sweaty

[@marcushoglund5893]

You should never listen to your average silver player who dosent understand the gamw

[@AxTROUSRxMISSLE]

@@marcushoglund5893 yeah don't listen to the 99% of players, listen to the 1% who do it for a job and what would personally benefit them

[@GregorianMG]

@@marcushoglund5893 Yeah like those casual player who is actually the majority of the player base useless for the game... Yeah the game died when that happen.

[@VonSnuggles1412]

@@marcushoglund5893 oh so if i have 500 hours in the game, been playing since day one, am active in that games community, and love the game my entire opinion is invalid because "durr hurr, stupid low rank silver player means bad, you don't know what you're talking about" That mentality is why games like overwatch died out so fast

[@marcushoglund5893]

@@VonSnuggles1412 yet league is going strong and balances with that mentality. And you dont sound like your average silver player tho. But your average player is dumb as fuck and you should never listen to them. They call out that shit is op or up because they cant use it properly

[@mikhilmuhuthan6903]

Rainbow Six Siege is a good example of why listening to the pros will just make the general player base loose interest and uninstall the game. It happened to me and many of my friends back in 2019.

[@2diefor]

The game is way too sweaty. Even in Cas.

[@squillzr6]

I disagree with this point a lot. I would challenge anybody to name one mechanic or balance change that was pushed for by professional or competitive players that was not well received by the community. Most changes that people don't like in Siege, pros also don't like, so complaining about Ubisoft balancing around pros doesn't make sense because even the pros don't like most of the really unpopular changes. I would argue that professional players are the best player base to listen to if you want your game to be balanced because they are so good at finding what is broken and exploiting it, so any imperfections will be magnified by them. It also tends to be the case that high level ranked players copy what pros do, and then lower ranks follow the high ranks eventually, so it all trickles down.

[@butlazgazempropan-butan11k87]

I left the game because of the toxicity and it was too competetive anyways.

[@squillzr6]

I will also add this: The reason siege sucks for newer players is the incredibly steep learning curve due to the number snd complexity of the maps and operators, which inherently makes the game sweatier as the only people who will stick around in the game will be the ones dedicated to grinding, learning, and getting better. This has nothing to do with balancing or pro players

[@BennyBoy025]

The change to R6 that symbolises most why the game died for me is the house rework. They decided during lockdown to rework the most iconic and beloved map in the game. They took it from a non competitive map that was small enough to play custom games with your friends, to a bigger, more competitive map that still wasn't good enough to be competitive. Half the map. Me and my friends spent the first half of lockdown playing house 2v2's, and eventually we had to play Presidential Plane instead, which was nowhere near as good. And then they decided to remove the good version of recruit and Tachanka. They literally decided to turn Tachanka into a more competitive character instead of a meme, and he's still terrible. They took a character who was bad and funny, and turned him into a character who is just bad.

[@karolclark791]

I remember when a COD zombies youtuber said the game should have a larger player count and he able to kill other players so it's competitive. Keep in mind this is a gamemode where you are working together against the hordes of zombies. Who the hell wants to fight other players? PS ik greif was a a thing but that was an extra gamemode and this guy was talking about the core experience

[@skebapplejefferiso308]

Bro at that point just play multiplayer smh

[@cityguard4847]

Who was it, gotta to clown on em

[@Bingbumble]

him when he finds out multiplayer: 😱😱😱

[@ericshun3926]

Smartest COD player

[@sinistertrucker]

Literally The Division. Spec ops agents killing each other for their loot just because they know they're the most lethal force. 😂

[@blackmanrunfree]

As a current dev, I’ve been saying this often. In recent years I’ve actually seen a lot of things cut from studios I’ve worked at and saw backlash WITHIN the studio about changing it only for nothing to change and for there to then be the same backlash from the player base calling us incompetent. To me this is less a dev issue and more a production/executive issue. These people are spending too much time getting online opinion instead of letting us take direct surveyed information from the player base and our own ideas as players. A lot of people I work with are not top players myself included I’m casual and I try to put as much of that into my games as possible with out getting punched down by production. But yeah we hear you I just wish they would too. Been trying to make that statement louder but it’s hard since usually you are just a worker vs making those calls.

[@J.Wolf90]

Since you're a dev. Can I ask why does gaming feel so cut and paste since ps3 360 days? Even brand new original games are just a rejumbled mix of shit we've already had for years

[@robob4465]

@@J.Wolf90 Not a dev,but large companies just don't want to take a risk by doing something unique,a game is a large investment and if you're too radical with your ideas it may end up being a flop. That's why small indie games tend to be very varied,they don't have much money at stake and can take a gamble with a never before seen mechanic (and have to,because without an unique quirk they won't stand out among the crowd)

[@famvirious]

King

[@dominiking69]

​@@J.Wolf90publishers are cowards and snakes who prioritize profit over culture or quality and so they are incentivised to take no risks by copy and pasting the shit they think works until the concept has been driven to the ground and stomped on. In other words, the over corporatization of the industry has taken priority over art

[@BrokensoulRider]

@@robob4465There are several indie games that don't have new and cool mechanics, but they do build their worlds around one mechanic and make it extravagant.

[@southrodney]

It’s one thing to understand that you’re probably a better chef than the people who eat your food. It’s another when everyone tells you the chef that your food is terrible and used to be better, and you just ignore them.

[@ZeroKitsune]

This really summarizes the point really well, honestly. It's the old advice of "players are great at identifying problems with your game...but they're not good at coming up with good solutions."

[@theolympiyn8670]

@@ZeroKitsuneand if they’re pro players. They notice problems that don’t matter to others. And only help them

[@DaisiesTC]

@@theolympiyn8670 Nah the majority of problems pro players point out affect everyone to varying degrees. They might not give good solutions to those problems, but its not hard to point them out.

[@dwarf9938]

​@@DaisiesTClaughs in CS:GO

[@DaisiesTC]

@@dwarf9938 not sure what your point is lol

[@omgitsfrosty4888]

The reason pro players are better than the developers is because the developers actually have a real job.

[@arikomart7209]

You mean worse

[@alibi4483]

Rn It's probably better to be an esport player then a game dev at a triple a company won't even lie

[@dnajlwosqkdasjczdbkahdwcs]

@@arikomart7209 They mean better at games.

[@arikomart7209]

@@dnajlwosqkdasjczdbkahdwcs oh ok

[@Forty8-Forty5-Fifty8]

@@alibi4483 you have more job security as a developer and you have an actual transferable skill that has real world value, whereas an esports player you have to beg for money and hope enough comes your way and in however many years from now when the game dies off, you will only be that many years further down your declining ability to play at a competitive level and will have nothing else to show for it other than some clips.

[@alemaniacreyon]

Its been documented how pro play killed overwatch, The devs always had a firm grasp on the meta of the game. Every single time a new trick was discovered that did not adhere to the meta they were trying to create it would be patched out. Being able to fling yourself from spawn to the objective as Genji was patched because they wanted to make support characters and Tanks the highlight up until people got sick of it and created segregated match matchmaking. The pros killed the game for the average player and its no surprise the massive playerbase dwindled out

[@darkcat6530]

tbh genji flinging himself to the objective does sound pretty op lol

[@jolenearnold6716]

The issue wasn't just 'listening to pros' it was how they went about it, they didn't change what was too strong, they added hero's that countered the entire meta. Along with the the existence of brig absolutely destroyed the game with how overpowered she was and still is in the game and is still game breaking after like 16 nerf. Listening to pros is usually a good idea due to the fact they often have a shared idea of what is wrong with the game and ways to fix it, Devs should most definitely look at this but they shouldn't stay glued to it

[@adeeshadeegala5900]

@@EggEnjoyer open q was pretty bad. Goats was just cancer. Brig made it worse. Lack of updates was what properly killed the game.

[@androidthebott]

Exactly. Part of the reason old games were so fun is because of that random factor. Finding unique uses for certain characters that weren't planned is an unmatched good feeling.

[@MidwayWuzzupman]

Overwatch wasn't killed so much because they just listened to the pros; the pros hated goat comp and casuals hated goat comp, but it was so strong that Blizzard had no idea how to nerf it without restrictions that weren't fun for the end user (such as role limits). Successful competitive games didn't stay around because they were balanced. Look at Marvel vs Capcom 2, Smash Bros Melee, Dragonball Fighterz, and (like mentioned in the video) Fortnite. They all feel good and fun to play at a casual level.

[@temba92]

Escape from Tarkov had a stream with the main developer and some streamers. The streamers wanted to be able to make more ingame money from selling enemy loot, then they where asked do you care about the ingame money and all of them said no. I was like what is wrong with these streamers?

[@nosidenoside2458]

It's showmanship idk the twitch drop streams seem neat

[@temba92]

@@jubbin4849 video called "Streamers & BSG Podcast w Nikita - Escape From Tarkov"

[@osterhai]

EFT has some real anti grass touching streamers guys like Lvndmark and Pestily and those are the type of streamers that will suggest something to the devs because it would be better for "newer players" which obviously isnt the case most of the time.

[@gamer-1100]

@@osterhai Pestily makes a series that helps new players every wipe. he cares more about fun then competition.

[@Axl4325]

@@osterhai Pestily is an amazing player but he isn't a sweat, if anything every once in a while he does things just for fun and normally only complains when they do something that affects everyone. If anything he's pushed for an easier experience for the new players and he always makes guides and videos for them. Lvndmark on the other hand...

[@yavvivvay]

Players are generally quite good at identifying problems and horrible at suggesting solutions. It is definitely important if your competitive dedicated tryhards have a problem - but it is up to you to either solve it or not in a way that fits the overall design.

[@EplusNis4ever]

r6 players have been great at suggesting solutions, devs just dont listen

[@Chicky_Lumps]

I generally agree, most players are decent at identifying large balance problems, but most aren't creative enough to propose a solution that's both balanced and fun.

[@ArmorFN]

Idk I think it's kind of fun to try and come up with ways to fix small problems in games. I've come up with a few possible solutions for problems in games that I'd like to at least see attempted. I remember back a couple of years ago I was complaining about how I wished there was an option to disable pre-edits in fortnite because as a high ping player it's easy to press the edit button faster then your builds place. To my surprise a few months later fortnite actually added the feature and it's so much better now. I think because I have had this line of thought before I can understand the players who are able to identify these issues. Sure a lot of the time the players can't exactly identify how to fix the problem, but it's the times when they do find a solution that makes it worth listening to their ideas at least.

[@ZeroKitsune]

@@ArmorFN Eh what people come up with is always hit or miss. Of course it's possible that fans deeply understand a game and its design philosophy and come up with something genuinely cool. That doesn't happen very often, though. At some point I realized that a lot of the people who scream the loudest don't even want the game to be good or fun for anyone who isn't them. They literally just want everyone to have to play exactly the way they do.

[@vidzrswow]

​@@ZeroKitsune TBH It's double sided. I think it's bad if a game dev accepts or worse prides themselves being bad at games. A dev needs passion and if they don't they need a team that does and willing to listen. It's the job of a dev to listen to feedback and filter it but if they lack game sense they need someone who does to filter feedback. The dev just needs to make a good solution.

[@DenSvartaStjarnan]

You touched on individual focus vs. team focus in Halo, and it reminds me of the Battlefield games. I used to play a lot of Bad Company 2. Healing and giving ammo were hugely important, and the objective based modes had placements that made it virtually impossible to be on your own, thanks to exposure and flanking. The vehicles were powerful, and you were incentivized to protect yours and destroy the hostile ones quickly or your team would suffer. Furthermore, the playerbase was aware of this. In Battlefield 1, healing and ammo is typically only thrown out by the player when HE needs it. They switched medics to assault and ammo to support, meaning that a support with LMG can now just give himself infinite ammo rather than seek out another player. The medics play medic because they want to rush with shotguns and heal themselves, not because they want to help their team. You can skip revive even though it doesn't hurry respawn, and everyone does it as a knee-jerk reaction out of dying. The maps are designed in a way that cater to pros and sniper campers. The result is that it sometimes plays more like COD than Battlefield. My friends and I always stuck together in BC2, nowadays you just sprint around.

[@famulanrevengeance3044]

I disagree honestly. It doesn't feel any different when it comes to classes in modern BF games. It's just that people want faster games, and the games are faster and smoother to facilitate that with more movement options. They had reduced ammo and no bandage in BF5, and everyone hated having to hope a teammate would resupply or having to run over to a resupply station buildable. So they changed it. There's no demand for 'attrition' gameplay. Independent play is always going to happen. Even ARMA and Squad has lone wolves because it's an incredibly powerful strategy. Just one guy in the middle of nowhere ambushing you, that's how you get crazy streaks. Just a natural evolution of shooter games. People do the same thing in every single game where you can attack enemies. People just want to rush forward.

[@themcfunnel]

​@famulanrevengeance3044 the thing is in BF1 medics don't have shotguns

[@famulanrevengeance3044]

@@themcfunnel Sure, but who really gives a damn about that? Why shouldn't they have shotties

[@qhu3878]

Ive played bf1 a lot and play medic most of the time, half out of enjoyment and half out of being sick of medics running over my body and not taking the second it takes to press 3, look down and click. theyre usually the kind of people to blame their team for not being there to support when theyre the one who didnt revive their teammates who couldve helped and forced them to respawn aswell

[@disneysrecessextra1634]

Go back to BC2 and notice just how slow the game overall was to modern battlefield titles and your mind will be blown, they sped up the overall pace of the game to make it more marketable and they’ve done so exponentially with 2042 and it’s basically a flop

[@bone3756]

It reminds me of how players, especially in cod, begged for maps to not have “safe spaces”. They wanted maps that were tight, pushed you directly into the action constantly. And with halo infinite, the maps are exactly that and everyone hates them bc you never even get the chance to breathe.

[@maxkore278]

section 8: prejudice & battlefield series these games offer the best of both worlds by letting you choose your spawn point allowing everyone to play at their own pace, in their own time

[@Sl1mch1ckens]

Clash royale is a mobile game but has an esports scene ect. They ruined the casual experience once by buffing a card that pros dont use but most casual players have that card in their deck so it become insanely OP and they had to revert it. Balancing a game solely round the top 1% is stupid.

[@work90]

@@Sl1mch1ckens who would have thought that pro gamers would become the equivalent of the greedy elites

[@Leotheleprachaun]

​​@@Sl1mch1ckens the ad I got before this was for Clash Royale😂

[@krieger8825]

It's a battlefield, you'll break bad

[@doltBmB]

The real problem with modern matchmaking is not that the skill grouping is too tight. The real problem is what's known as "forced 50", something developers completely do not and probably do not want to, understand. They say "ah but if you have 50% win rate then matchmaking is working". But there is a difference between having a 50% winrate because you had a variety of interesting matches that challenged you in different ways, and the actual reality, which is that you get alternated between carrying a team of babies against a stack of terminator like pros, and being carried by that same team of terminators against a team of babies. You get alternated between matches you cannot win and matches you cannot lose. This is why "SBMM" sucks now. It happens because the tuning of the skill estimator is wrong, like a spring that's too weak for the load it's supposed to dampen. One victory propels your skill to astronomic heights, and one loss sends it plummeting, so it always bounces wildly around your real skill level, but never settles. It's important to realize that the major modification Halo 3 made to TrueSkill was to relax exactly this phenomenon, it took longer to react to wins and losses, making it more stable, and more likely to have time to settle. You can read up on PID control to see a real world example of how badly tuned control algorithms can lead to these kinds of problems. Now why do developers not want to hear this? Probably it's because if you are able to categorize a match that a player is having into a clear "win" or "lose" match, rather than something more unpredictable and varied, then you can use that to drive Engagement Optimized Matchmaking. Where the system dripfeeds you wins on purpose to keep you playing and make you more likely to spend money on a cash shop or battle pass. Matchmaking for fun is not a priority anymore, and being able to control whether you win or lose with this kind of pendulum matchmaking means that you can be manipulated more easily by EOMM. So you get the wilful ignorance and canned responses about 50% winrate being "ideal".

[@Ashamedofmypast]

Interesting when you consider the progression actively discourages most elements of that design method. Nutty.

[@luisfuentes3846]

Yeah you need to check out how they programmed the SBMM with TrueSkill2 all of your points are pretty much spot on.

[@bannedmann4469]

Yeah, he got this totally wrong. SBMM is crap. This on top of some games not having dedicated servers like Destiny 2 he showed. Also they hide these stats from the players.

[@bannedmann4469]

@@luisfuentes3846 We need transparency on exactly what's happening under the hood in our games. Other industries aren't allowed to hide what they're selli g and changing this much.

[@omppusolttu5799]

@@EggEnjoyer This is kinda the nature of anything when it becomes massive and the motivation goes from just making really fucking good games to getting as much money as possible. Trust me, indie games have a lot of good shit *and* they are cheaper.

[@Vexonia_Music]

I think you meant to refer to Smash Bros Melee competitive players instead of Brawl. But yeah as a former Smash Tournament Organizer I'd agree with the comparison for the kind of sweat you'll encounter.

[@MALICEM12]

I thought this as well, Melee and H2 both are exploitable and broken when you know what to do. Both of their competitive scene are built around exploiting the game, not playing it how it was supposed to be played.

[@Sonichero151]

There's a reason it was a smash Melee tournament where the winner got a fucking dead crab thrown at him because he won........... and this was *BEFORE* the grooming was known

[@Twisted_Logic]

@@Sonichero151 There were only like one or two Melee platers involved with that, and they were pretty small-time. Ultimate was the community with the big grooming problem

[@ewaldgering6459]

@@Twisted_Logic exactly. The melee community, compared to the brawl/4/ult community is relatively nice. Youd meet toxicity much rarer

[@nok4799]

@@Twisted_Logic Okay but they still don't shower

[@rissyrissyy8725]

Reminds me of Due Process, not sure if you guys heard about that game. It was a really interesting PvP tactical shooter with randomly generated maps. It was pretty fun! Until they decided to make it so casual matches was only a waiting lobby for ranked matches. If you queued for a ranked match, you'd be put in a casual match while you waited, instead of being two separate lobbies. The average amount of players being 4.1 now speaks for itself.

[@Kirhean]

I can say it simply: Pro players aren't "THE" community, they are PART of the community. And when you build an experience to target a specific sub-group, you shouldn't be surprised when only that specific sub-group wants to experience it.

[@flamestoyershadowkill]

a part is not the whole.

[@amanawolf9166]

Agreed. It'd like taking, imho, a game meant for exploration and such like Skyrim and having it cater to speed runners, tailoring every aspect to them. This is just me, but I believe a game should focus on itself, first and foremost. What is the game? What does it convey to the player? What is the story? Above all else, games need to engage the player. Skyrim felt awesome because of the expansive world, a somewhat okay story, and the sense of adventure it conveyed to the player. After the cave scene and the encounter with the first dragon, the player is given control of their own destiny. Imagine how crappy the game would have felt if all other quests were locked off until you progressed 70% the way through a linear story. Doesn't sound great, right. The problem can also be compounded when a game tries to do too many things at once; at least, that's my sense and feelings towards FO4. The game's story didn't drag me in, nor did the world feel like an adventure. Base building had a niche charm to it, but many parts lacked that special unique sense of wonder. Heck, by the third, fourth, or fifth base... sorry, "settlement," I kinda gave up. If we had one settlement, maybe two at most with them being really, REALLY fleshed out, things could have been awesome.

[@migueeeelet]

And the worst part is that by targetting one sub-group you're not guaranteeing anything. They could still dislike it.

[@Sos_tenuto]

Not only "part," they are absolute minority

[@twelvevoltage]

@@Sos_tenuto I mean yeah but it also depends on the game for example fighting games almost always tend to be more competitive even if they are casual players but I agree still

[@radioactive5882]

Someone once said to me. Make a game to be fun. If you do that, people will enjoy it and it will grow. The more intricate parts of the game will bring out pro play later.

[@conndor2753]

They'll become a pro by adapting to the game.

[@radioactive5882]

@@conndor2753 exactly

[@bit_ronic]

@@conndor2753 that's literally how cs became as big as it is it was literally just meant to be this small little half life mod about special forces units and was novel for making everyone fragile, people found it fun, then guess what, those same people found out about the intricacies of it's movement, or of it's shooting mechanics, or the metagame that emerged from the simple concept of having an attacking and a defending team, then they said "hey, if i learned some tricks, this game could be even more fun!" now, it's the prime competitive fps game, and way too many devs are trying to replicate the competitive aspect of it, truth is that there's much more to it than that, you're talking about the very same game that also allows for gamemodes like bhop, surf, or even casual fun modes like minigames, jailbreak, etc, it's also the same game that lets you, in that very same competitive mode, to jump with a .338 lapua bolt rifle, and kill two people in mid air, that's an actual thing that happened, and turned into a legendary moment imbedded into it's community. and the funny thing is that you can easily wind up with the same problem while going in the opposite direction that halo went, R6S was a fun game that forced it's players to adapt to each other, and how their environment changed, it asked you "what would you do if you were behind cover, but all of the sudden the wall behind you blew up?" the spectacle factor stemming from those people that answered that question with "i'll just kill everyone who blew up the wall", and actually did, or those that went with an unorthodox genius approach that put them at an advantage. but now it's having an identitiy crisis cause the pros aren't fond of mechanics that show a little bit of variability, and now the game's all about just throwing garbage at each other until someone gets bored and decides to do something different, only to get shot down and end up with the same situation, sure, it's competitive? but it's fucking boring, and makes you miss games like cod, csgo, and even valorant, which despite focusing purely on comp, still has a fun factor since it's took most of it's design philosophy from counter strike. sure, esports is important, it gives you a feedback loop that could theoretically go on forever, but that loop isn't gonna work if you can't replicate the enjoyment from watching the game when you're playing the game.

[@jacobyakus8620]

That's smart

[@mrjohnnyk]

Games that appeal to everyone attracts pros. Games that appeal to pros only attracts pros.

[@kittyrules]

13:50 we all know the real reason there is less physics based stuff in Infinite is because of the shoddy networking and lack of time to test and develop things.

[@terrelldurocher3330]

Because people wanted it rushed bud.

[@Volcano22207]

@@terrelldurocher3330 they actually had more than enough time and just had internal issues

[@darthgamer9861]

@@Volcano22207this. if one more person tells me that 6 freaking years was a “rushed development” I’m taking a hostage

[@KRIMZONMEKANISM]

One of the things that people SHOULD listen to pros talk about is when certain gear/weapons/mechanics, what have you, are easily abuseable across any level of play. There's a TF2 video out there of Uncle Dane (I believe), who speaks about the importance of competitive players' feedback. Basically there was a parachute item for Soldier and Demoman which across most players was just a funny little thing, but a player who new how to use the item was virtually UNTOUCHABLE by non-hitscan weapons. In the video a single guy can be seen dodging rockets from 7 other soldiers like he's Ultra Instinct Goku, and while that sounds cool, the reality is that it was easy to exploit, so it got patched.

[@StephenYuan]

I think listening too much to competitive players probably ruined Gears 5 pvp.

[@requiemagent3014]

Gears only exist for Horde. PvP should strictly be ignored. It says a lot that Cliffy B wanted to remove the Gnasher for Gears 3. He hated Gears PvP with a passion and The Coalition just don't get it

[@cheesenibbla8339]

@@requiemagent3014 why does one persons opinion warrant removing an entire game mode from the product? Kind of stupid

[@requiemagent3014]

@@cheesenibbla8339 Do you even know who Cliffy B is? Apparently not or else you wouldn't talk shit like this

[@vaudou_]

@@requiemagent3014 Gears was a campaign game first and mp was thrown together in the first game and happened to be good. Horde only came in Gears 2. Basically your comment is a Reddit tier circle jerk of "only my way of playing matters".

[@shadow200343]

@@cheesenibbla8339 I don't agree with Agent's opinion of ignoring the PvP mode but removing the Gnasher shotgun would make the PvP a lot more enjoyable.

[@tacoboy2218]

One of my most treasured memories was a private match with my brothers in Halo CE where I bounced a frag off 3 walls to kill both of them at the same time

[@ghosty3494]

God damn that was a "calculated" throw

[@tacoboy2218]

@@ghosty3494 I was on cloud 9 for like a week after

[@hishamjalal9078]

damn would have love to see that

[@tinyywhiskk]

Datto made a good point when talking about Destiny. While he would love Devs to make the game he would enjoy, he realises that due to his skill level and the amount of time he can put into the game it would suck for 95% of the playerbase. Devs should make the game fun for the majority of people, not the content creators who can put 100's of hours a week into it

[@invrtedpwnda9456]

Datto being incredibly based as always.

[@nolives]

Datto is one of the reason we got sunsetting and the game bled players. Fuck him.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

Most people don't think about others, or systems, etc etc. Most just think how will this affect me. Most streamers and youtubers aren't gamers and don't want gaming to improve or thrive. They want to make money.

[@jormungandr4690]

The objective evidence shows that SBMM is killing crucible right now. Why design the game for players who only play 3 games a week ?

[@TheArchangelNexus]

I’m glad someone finally made a video like this. I’ve always felt that pros can’t have their hands in the cookie jar. Developers should be sticking to walking their line and making their games fun for everyone. Not just sweaty players.

[@One.Zero.One101]

It's so annoying when devs listen to the minority that wants to nerf everything. "Please nerf Fireball. Please nerf Backstab. Please nerf the Archer. Please nerf the Assassin. Please nerf the Cleric." Yes they are the most prominent posters on the forum, but they're just 30 people circle-jerking themselves, they don't represent the 500,000 customers that will buy this game. Majority of players are annoyed every time a nerf is announced.

[@pippapup7644]

Pro players have always felt like the 1% of our society. They always want changes that make it better and easier for them, even at the expense of the other 99%

[@thornwall6303]

4:32 "I cannot think of one game/one shotgun that was... fun to use" The entire Doom franchise is based around shotgun based combat

[@jeremychicken3339]

Team Fortress 2: "Adios"

[@notribadsvault]

It’s literally the hottest take of them all.

[@GraphUserInt]

"i cannot think of one game/one shotgun that was skillful but most importantly fun to use" Yeah say that to ultrakill players

[@infinitespace2520]

To me, Halo CE's shotgun was fun to use, and every single DOOM shotgun too.

[@therealevilmudbug]

Clearly he's never played a valve game

[@Ebb0Productions]

Great video. Reminds me of the saying: _"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game."_ Now we have the developer equivalent: _"Given the opportunity, developers will balance the fun out of the game."_

[@JellySword8]

What's weird is that even after having watched the video, I still can't quite understand why a perfectly balanced game can't be fun. Just look at something like chess and how enjoyable it is at all skill levels

[@Ie_Froggy]

@@JellySword8 The thing is ballance isnt allways a good thing, for example Doom and Doom eternal, theyre full out unbalanced. And than theres skill balancing, which... why??? Simply why??? Getting more skill allows you to learn stuff, one of the quotes ive seen and adapted to myself said quote being: "So what if he dies and shit on, every death is a learning experience"

[@thesilverblueman]

@@JellySword8 because chess has two players and the only true variable is who goes first however in video games you have many weapons and classes that if you want them to be perfectly balanced everything has to be similar to the point that no weapon or class has an advantage on another then you run into someone figuring out a quirk of a weapon that gives an advantage then that has to be nerfed but the nerf makes it weaker then everything else then either its reworked, left as is, or everything is made worse to compensate

[@JellySword8]

@@thesilverblueman To me, you just described csgo and what makes it so worthwhile. I'm willing to invest time practicing csgo because I know that it respects my skill at the game enough to consistently reward it. Honestly, I think it's what (competitive) games should strive to be. Despite the fact that almost everything is deterministic, there's so much variance in strategy that the game stays fun, even when you play the same map over and over again.

[@revimfadli4666]

@@Ie_Froggy unbalanced between teams, or between weapons? Because the latter seems much more bearable

[@tezwoacz]

I remember having a comment argument with "pro" youtuber that if you balance a game around mechanical skill only (reaction time, aiming, hearing, eyesight) then what will happen is there will be 1% of players absolutely dominating the other 99%, it will be even more unbalanced than before.

[@bruvaroni]

That's gonna happen regardless but I understand what you're saying lol

[@LegitSav]

This is such a bad point, you can put all the randomness in the world and the 1% will destroy the 99%. I agree there should be randomness because strictly skilled based games leads to boring gameplay/boring to watch but you aren't going to help bad players have a more fair chance by introducing randomness.

[@bj_cat103]

no, it will be balanced, but you will have to learn how to play it for this balance to work for you. It's still much better than it being unbalanced no matter how good you are

[@tezwoacz]

​@@bj_cat103 you cant "learn" faster reaction time, you cant learn "faster information processing in your brain" you cant learn "faster and more precise hand movements", any game that is balanced around mechanical skill only will be dominated by 12-18 year old kids who won genetic lottery.

[@bj_cat103]

@@tezwoacz you can "learn" reaction time. If you doing stuff that remands it regularly, it increases. Doing so also prevents you from losing it until you're 45-50 years old. The same goes with the other things you mentioned. Our brain degrades the sections we don't put to use and develops the ones we actively use

[@TreeForceGaming]

This is actually kind of a joke for us designers. When someone gives us bad balance feedback. A common joke is “check their mmr.” But I have met and worked with many designers who approach their job with this mindset. And that is a bad idea. I always try to figure out where the feedback is coming from. And to never take a suggested change at face value. When a pro suggests removing a feature with randomness. It is most likely coming from a place of desiring consistency. Removing the feature would be bad and invalidate the fun of another group of players. So maybe I can add a system for the pro to deny the feature. Temp disabling the feature or controlling the randomness through spending resources. Anyway, I love this vid. A great reminder to never hyper-fixate or overvalue one group. All players have a voice worth hearing.

[@FalconPLT333]

Fun fact, even before Halo, this was already an issue in the gaming industry. A big french company called Infogrammes were developing very well-crafted games, and they were reputed as being beautiful, but bat-shit insanely hard. This was due to the fact that all of their testers were internal, and way too used to platform games and were, therefore, way too skilled to judge the game from a regular player's perspective. Eventually, when they started opening their playtests to external players, they realized just how much their games were not balanced properly. This is why "pro players" aren't the best ones to give advice on a game, they lack the perspective of pretty much most of the people who play games. A game should be a challenge to play, but it shouldn't be a chore either: good balance has to be found, and this is something that's known since decades now.

[@nrishiee5231]

Infogrammes is a holding company. I think you're thinking of Atari.

[@FalconPLT333]

@@nrishiee5231 Nowadays, yes, but I'm talking about a time when Infogrammes was an independent company and had an in-house development studio. It used to be a french videogame development company, a long time ago

[@lex7228]

Blizzard had the perfect balance of casual and pro play in mind with the first few seasons of Overwatch. Then, hero design philosophies kicked in and now we have the shitfest that it is today.

[@nrishiee5231]

@@FalconPLT333 ohhh. i see.

[@nisnast]

Pros shouldn't be game designers, the same way professional chefs shouldn't teach people how to cook, they interect with their fields in completely different ways from regular people

[@nimrodery]

In the "early" days of CoD, matchmaking was weighted a bit more toward location and connection speed, it didn't seem like skill was much of a consideration. People look back on it fondly because there were no servers, you'd host the game on a players console and it was fairly random. So it was fully possible to pub-stomp a bunch of pros (if they didn't rage quit).

[@ckdunahee4478]

yeah i disagree with him on that point. Matchmaking is completely different and youre totally right it was random on cod and was so fun

[@Sqdlow]

@@ckdunahee4478cod had skill based matchmaking, even back in the day. It just wasn’t as obvious

[@ckdunahee4478]

@Sqdlow yeah I know, today though they alter your stats unfairly to keep you trapped. They never did that in old cod.

[@Yosh-doesnt-understand]

Advanced warfare and earlier was definitely based on connection. I used to love pulling host and running over 6 man teams in Dom 😂.

[@duckpotat9818]

​@@Sqdlowdepends on where you lived, more people = leaning skill based

[@samaritan_sys]

This is somewhat reminiscent of one of my biggest pet peeves in a game I used to play all the time, SWTOR. They would *constantly* nerf abilities that were critically useful in PvE in order to balance the ranked PvP arenas. As someone who hated PvP with a passion (and wasn't much good at it), it frustrated me to no end that the developers were focusing on balancing around a specific branch of their player-base that was out of touch with the rest of us.

[@GFMarine]

That shit was rampant in Elder Scrolls Online about four or five years ago, it ruined the PvE for my friends and I because they kept balancing the game around the giant PvP battles, so my group and I dropped the game because our builds and armor set synergies kept getting messed up, and even if we tried to adapt by farming new stuff, the items were getting changed on a bi-weekly basis so it just stopped being fun to put time into the game.

[@fisharepeopletoo9653]

Yeah games like that should heavily think about having different balance options for pvp and pve

[@OkamiAmaterasu.]

Just like bungie nerfing shit in destiny 2 because of pvp.

[@bruhmoment1982]

@@OkamiAmaterasu. Though admittedly that seems to be changing a lot now with the idea of the PvE and PvP sandbox.

[@VulpesChama]

I feel that, but from the other side. I played Sniper in SWTORs early days in PvP, and was occasionally looked at with this weird "A sniper, you can't even move around etc., you'd be useless." Only to one/two-hit enemy healers, with those ridiculous damage abilities of the Sniper. And then it got nerfed. Problem was, it was fun, and it was actually fun for both sides, because there was a danger everyone had to look out for. Game-devs, especially in MMOs way too often sacrifice fun for balance, to make the game more competitive. I hate it. Yes, PvP can totally be unbalanced and fun. ESO is the best example of bad balanced PvP that's still somehow weirdly fun. But ESO will never be an E-Sport because of that. And that's fine, isn't it? Why does everything have to be competitive or an E-Sport? I don't get it.

[@qbeck11]

I remember for the original halo games, Bungie would play their game for days and days before they released it. If they didn't want to play it, they knew it wasn't ready

[@requiemagent3014]

Money. Every company nowadays wants a massive eSports scene around it? Why? I don't know. eSports doesn't even make any money currently besides like two or three exceptions. Games are not made with passion anymore. They are solely made with profit in mind. So this will never happen what you propose. Which is a shame.

[@Maggot-Milk]

Esports, despite making no actual money, is like one of the biggest marketing campaigns they can do

[@beta4239]

Most games that are made solely to be fun nowadays are made by Indie devs, who sadly don't have the resources they need to succeed

[@AbyssalPlague]

@@beta4239 The ones who do tho are *_legendary._*

[@YukiColburn]

As the Sauce dude said, Esports are a massive marketing campaign. The keyword is "relevancy", if your game remains relevant, more people feel like going into it is a good move, casual players hop in because it's an interesting new game, competitive players hop in to climb the ladder and maybe partake in actual tournaments for prizes or whatever. Esports don't give immediate return for those companies, but in the longer term? Absolutely. tl;dr; esports keep game relevant, more people buy relevant game, big money ka-ching

[@kloa4219]

esports is big in countries like China

[@SCHMALLZZZ]

This would be like letting the athletes write their own rules for a sport. Or letting the insane run the asylum. Professional gamers are gamers.

[@Lin_Eileen]

Athletes do write the rules for their own sports what do you think athletes do when they are past their prime but not at retirement age yet? They become coaches, advisors, trainers, general managers, commissioners etc. of the sports leagues they played in, their experience combined informs how the meta of the game develops for the next generation of players and the cycle continues the players play then they get older and teach the younger players the rules and how to play. Athletes are not like insane people in an asylum nor are gamers like that. These statements you are making are so pretentious and nonsensical "professional gamers are gamers" yep they are and they tend to understand games better than the developers who made them 😂 It's funny because the games industry is so inundated with corporate meritocracy and just general greed that developers when they make a game more often than not their passion is squelched out for what's better for it as a product not as art. Pro gamers not just people who get paid lots of money but people who take gaming seriously as an art form that's has depth, meaning and expression to be found & explored devs should listen more to them and hardcore niche communities that have passion for games they have no prior investment in it's just something they genuinely love. What better way to improve the games we love than have the people who actually play them give feedback? Speedrunners, challenge runners, competitive players, campaign pros, expressive skillers, machinima makers, cosplayers, forge kids and screenshot bros, they all deserve to have their say feedback and influence on what they put so much time of their lives into. I love how all these casual Halo simps act like old MLG kids never liked playing customs with friends or having any fun on Halo. I understand people like you and Shredded are still really salty about not getting a 50 in H3 but there's no reason to take it out on people who was better than you. It's not them that ruined the games and the devs of Halo never listened to the competitive community they hired a few pros to legitimately work on the games knowing 343 probably abused them and made them hate working on Halo games they grew up loving.

[@christiantaylor1495]

Athletes are in the best position to write the rules since they have the most experience and deepest understanding of the sport. You made it sound like they'd be writing rules to get an advantage over the other team, but that's not possible, when you think about it, so it actually is a good idea.

[@nihilodiem9591]

@@christiantaylor1495 you would be surprised at how that's never the case

[@ArcanumOverseer]

@@Lin_Eileen The part where you say gamers tend to know the game better is flawed, it's like saying a developer should be a pro at their own game because he created it.

[@xCobraCommanderx]

Gonna be using this in so many arguments. Thank you

[@theduke9292]

As a Xcom dev said best: “give the chance gamers will optimize the fun out of the game.” He was talking about gamers in general but it can apply pretty easily to pro players

[@NandolfBlockbuster]

I'm fairly certain that is a Sid Meier's quote, which isn't exactly an Xcom dev (though he does work at Firaxis Games), he's the guy behind the Civ franchise though. And I do believe he was in fact mostly refering to hardcore Civ players.

[@nexenojustice552]

@@NandolfBlockbuster no this goes across all games; case and point, camping. No one really considers sitting in a corner until the opportune moment comes but people do it anyway because its more optimal to not engage and take risks.

[@Sentralkontrol]

I’m very guilty of doing this

[@kennethferland5579]

Pros are the optimum optimizers at taking the fun out of the game.

[@kennethferland5579]

@@NandolfBlockbuster Sid's first company MicroProse published the original X-Com game, though I belive it was developed by a British studio.

[@jeremyrichard2722]

This is a year old, but I'm one of those people who will say I don't think there is such a thing as a real competitive video game, or an "E-Sport" that can be taken seriously. Part of this is the corporate mentality and the need to produce new product, with each game that get's called an E-sport largely just using that for promotional material. To be a viable e-sport you need to create a game that is popular, long lasting (multi-generationally so, very hard with current GMs), and has a combination of depth and simplicity that anyone can play it to some extent, but only a few people are going to be really, really, good at it. This is important as part of getting interest from spectators is that it helps if they have some experience with and love of the game on a personal level. On top of this the matches need to be both visually appealing, and easily unpredictable enough where they can be exciting for the crowd. There have not yet been any video games that have really met all of these criteria to my knowledge. The problem I have with pro-gamers right now is that their input seems to be based mostly on self promotion and what I see as largely sociopathic behavior. The modifications they want for games typically tend to be things that will simply allow them to dominate easily and even more spectacularly, I don't think I've seen any who really had advice on how to make these things more exciting, have wider appeal, or more competitive. In fact most pro-gamers, as described, have a complete disdain for less skilled players, and really love to chase people out of the game, and see anyone beneath them as just an easy way to rank up. Hence the fascination with "time to kill" as the faster they can kill scrubs the more impressive their rankings.... also let's be honest, whether it's an FPS or MMORPG PVP, the reason why the "high end" players hate skill based match making or any attempt at balance is that most of them just want to look good and feel powerful, they do not want a challenge against equally skilled players because that could lower their rankings. You will notice in your average MMORPG for example, all of the hardcore PVPers resist the idea of pre-made groups and such being forced to fight only other pre-made groups made up of people with similar win/loss ratios because then they couldn't terrorize people or farm benefits, and would risk losing far more often. The same type of thinking seems to apply to everything from FPS games to League Of Legends. I do agree with highly skilled players that you don't want to make games too scrub-friendly because then you wind up with a game where luck, not skill, begins to matter more than anything, but I do agree they tend to be some of the last people that they need to listen to. As a general rule if we were to ever see E-sports come close to it's potential in the end it's not going to be sold by a bunch of "pros" steamrolling everyone and grandstanding, it's going to be based off of consistently producing very close matches and unpredictable results in a game anyone can see themselves playing. Perhaps with the next phase of technology we'll see someting like proper professional gaming, but right now, for the rest of web 2.0, I just don't think it will happen. That said I think this era might be ending sooner than most realize.

[@Miggggy]

I dont want to be good at a game that will last like 1-2 years, I want to play a good game that will give me memories that last for years

[@TacticsTechniquesandProcedures]

Modern games are built with planned obsolescence (as are many products). Many things are built this way to protect a business model. If the players keep playing the same game for too long, the company cannot sustain itself. I completely agree with you and that's what the player is up against. This underscores the need to go back to single player focused gaming. Multiplayer is constantly focused on the "next big thing." The problem many companies see as a blocker is competitive gaming has strong marketing/PR behind it and will attempt to shame a company for not focusing on their niche of the community. Scarcity is manipulated for profit. Its an ancient tactic to fool consumers into buying fools gold. In this case, every few years.

[@don_chanLIVE]

counter strike opens its arms

[@Miggggy]

@@don_chanLIVE i love counterstrike, csgo is bad tho

[@cristiadu]

@@Miggggy it isn’t though

[@kingstarscream320]

@@cristiadu It is filled with micro transactions now

[@richardbeard9391]

Even as a competitive player I agree with this, Halo 5 showed us that if theres no casual scene, competitive doesnt matter anyway. competitive play depends on a large casual playerbase staying engaged over a long period of time. it doesnt matter how high the skill ceiling is if no one wants to play the game in the first place

[@samwell3]

Reminds me of a game called Battallion 1944 which was meant to be like an modern version of the old CoDs... however they designed it around eSports later on in the development. Lets say this game literally launched, had an eSports/Pro scene but had literally no playerbase at the same time outside of them. Obviously it died eventually and never took off into popularity

[@Invictus_Mithra]

I think the lack of casual scene for halo 5 has more to do with 343's utter incompetence when it came to the halo 5 campaign. I'm a casual and campaign is important for me and I decided to skip halo 5 after I saw the horrendous reviews and how they mismarketed the campaign.

[@richardbeard9391]

@@Invictus_Mithra doubtless that was a significant contributing factor

[@nigeltheoutlaw]

Yep, and I think that's the biggest issue with competitive in general; companies don't understand that there needs to be natural mass appeal. Starcraft didn't become one of the bigger old school competitive scenes because Blizzard forced it, it became that because people loved it and it kept people coming back again and again.

[@richardbeard9391]

@@nigeltheoutlaw factual. look at smash bros too. Nintendo doesnt even support the competitive scene. they do everything they can to stomp out the competitive scene. shutting down events that didnt buy a license from the company. threatening to sue tournament organizers. yet the competitive scene is still thriving, because people love the game. and people love the game because its easy to pick up. theres no barrier to entry. simple to learn the basics, but with a high skill ceiling.

[@SolaireIntensifies]

"a good player is a good designer like a competitive eater is a good chef" That is the single best analogy I've heard about this topic in my LIFE. What a perfect 1:1 comparison. I'm gonna use that constantly from now on.

[@TOBYSHERIDANWHITEPOWER]

It's not though?? Holy shit yt comments are morons

[@RenonTTV]

A competitive eater might know a thing or two about good tasting food though no? I'm no competitive eater, but many fancy restaurants leave a lot to be desired in terms of flavor. In a way, sometimes high end chefs cator to high end customers like devs making a competitive game cater to pros

[@dbio305]

@@RenonTTV a competitive eater? you mean the guy who soaks four dozen hotdogs and buns in water so he can slide them down his throat faster? bro, you gotta be joking

[@bugjams]

It's easy to make arguments when you just make up analogies that suit your narrative. A better analogy would be good player > game designer/food critic > chef. Someone who no-lifes games is pretty pathetic, but they've put a lot more investment into understanding a game's mechanics than anyone else. Just like a food critic is going to know more about food than the average peon. Games aren't like food, because playing them more actually helps you understand how they're made.

[@Chad.Ziodynecock]

a player thinking he understands a game's mechanics better than the very people who designed and implemented those mechanics is the same brand of fart sniffing as fans thinking they know a book's lore better than its author

[@metalclawsteelheart]

Probably a good example of this is dead by daylight, it's meant to be a horror game, but everyone who plays it ends up pissing around because it's only occasionally scary. And, with this being my point, the way the developers make perks and killers and whatnot, is they think of a cool idea for a perk (parry perk that let's you take a hit, parkor perk that rewards you for taking lots of vaults, etc.), balances them out (requires high skill to use and has a cooldown, only works if you can vault once every 6 seconds.) And then release it (dead hard, which dominated the survivor meta for 6 years solid before being nerfed into the ground, and cut loose, which ended up being a niche and mostly useless perk.)

[@shreeanshmahapatra2313]

That patch was probably the single best patch in history of dbd in terms of balancing. Even know when I look at old dbd footage I wonder how killers ever had fun playing the game. The only answer probably is that good survivors back then were like current day beginners. If the devs truly cared about a balanced pro play we wouldn't have only 2-3 killers viable against the best swf's with unrestricted perks. Dbd has to be the only game where I would never want to try out an early version of the game.

[@GeorgeCowsert]

In Pokemon, there is a creature known as Zoroark. It has a simple ability: it can disguise as the last pokemon in your party. It does not change Type. It does not change stats. It does not change moves. It is just a normal pokemon that lies about what it is. Pokemon Showdown has a feature where players can look at their opponent's team. Zoroark still fools people. Even pros. That is the DEFINITION of skill issue. If you can't just look at a PNG and remember this one gimmick meant to throw off newbies, then that loss is your fault. The only time strategies and pokemon have been banned is when it turns the match into a coinflip, since whoever goes first can pull off their strategy fastest. Cough cough. Baton Pass. A move that lets you swap out and pass positive stat changes onto your other pokemon, essentially letting you skip most of the mindgames.

[@rosebelmahjoubi1932]

my favorite part of this is when both players have a zoroark (especially h-zoroark with its weird typing) and you get to play the fun game of "is this a zoroark or am i paranoid"

[@Pheonix686]

One of the best things about Pokémon is that it has inherent RNG included meaning that you can't always play the perfect game. Damage rolls and inaccurate moves plus other factors mean that there's randomness that makes no two games identical.

[@dsadsa-qt7wx]

arent the videos of pokemon tryhards falling for dumb strategies like zoroark fake

[@portobeIIa]

@@dsadsa-qt7wx form those ive seen, theyre either fake or obviously children. and idk where the fun is in winning agaisnt literal kids. kinda makes you look like a douche.

[@frank8917]

Hmmmm, how can i be sure youre not Zoroark?

[@darkranger116]

This is also part of the problem behind asymmetrical gameplay in video games. Everyone likes the idea of cat vs mouse, until you realize the entire game is ONLY built for that interaction. Lo and behold, 2 weeks into the games release, most of your playerbase has already experienced the entire gameplay loop because each "faction" each "class" each "hero" only does that one thing. Its asymmetrical gameplay, that one does the melee, that one does the ranged combat, that one does the artillery. Any deviation from that will create UNPREDICTABILITY, which the "professional gamer" doesnt like. In a team deathmatch shooter this is "slightly" less of a problem, but it still persists. The greatest example of a game with asymmetrical loops and classes that actively came up with an answer for the repetition, is TF2. How do you mix up classes that are expected to do the same thing, every single match? Crazy and wacky weapons that force you to think about YOUR SIDE OF THE ASYMMETRY, differently. Nosgoth (RIP), was an example of a game that had such high asymmetry that nearly every single match played out exactly the same. A lot of people say the really liked Evolve too, and i did think it was kinda fun.. but the fact that i was always playing the mouse the same way really got under me. Playing as the Monster had more choices because every Monster acted and played differently. They did have that going for them. So basically, i agree with you. "Pro gamers" are actively making the video game industry less fun and chaotic in exchange for clinical precision, which.. is never the reason 90% of gamers play a game. We play games BECAUSE of the chaos. Because WE DONT know whats going to happen.

[@boneman9751]

Big points^ The game will become over saturated as an all consuming meta takes over the game. When I work 8 hours, I just want to relax and have some fun, feel some new experiences. I don’t want to “hold button until they die”, I want excitement. I don’t have time to sit around for 8-10 hours a day and play video games. I don’t like random crits in tf2, I don’t like when the entire game flow or my experience can just get ripped away from me because why the fuck not, but, if every tf2 match played the same… it would have died years ago

[@darkranger116]

@@boneman9751 I dont like random crits either, and i think it stands as a testament to TF2 being a good example when, even if im playing on a server that has Zero Bullet Spread and No Random Crits, i can still feel like chaos is happening, and fun because of it. And so much of that comes down to visual deign and how it coincides with weapon variety and the wildly different damage/time to kill ratios in the game.

[@tix2260]

@@darkranger116 I feel like random crits both damage and bolster the experience. It damages it because it can kill the gameplay loop, but bolster it because of the dopamine rush of getting a crit rocket and getting multiple kills with it.

[@petergriscom3431]

I don't know much about FPS competitive multiplayer, as there's really only a couple I've played before they got completely depopulated, but I have the most fun with them when there's variety to them. I specifically play FPS's with fun gimmicky sci-fi weapons, and I like to try out every loadout and strategy I can, especially when I'm already doing well in a match, since grabbing something I've not yet mastered keeps the match from being too one-sided in my favor. By far the times I had the least fun was when I ran into players that exclusively used the "dominant strategy", the ones who gravitate to the meta loadouts and the one or two weapons with the fastest TTK. It wasn't even about whether I won or lost, my win/loss ratio stayed mostly the same, it was just the same damn match over and over. It's not fun if all you can do is counter pick the same strategy over and over.

[@MrMutluOne]

I remember in one pro match in rainbow 6 siege, Zofia was self-reviving herself (which one of her original ability) but enemy team couldn't kill her in time so Zofia clutched that round. After that pros cried about it and they removed Zofia's self reviving ability from the game lol

[@gamingseed2511]

that made me pissed off as a Zofia main. I don't play r6 much anymore but I was a decent player (high plat) who also loved to meme in casual mode. Literally nobody in rank/casual complained about her self revive being ''op'', pros have such huge egos

[@audiomac]

The devs ruined that game. So many updates were so negative to the health of it.

[@drool3616]

@@audiomac nail right on the head, THEY TOOK HOUSE AWAY!

[@audiomac]

@@drool3616 Imagine devs removing fan favorited maps. I just am so stumped...

[@bruskorken]

That was a good change tho. It was confusing to new players since it didn't make sense for her in her kit. It would fit better with finka or doc since their ability revolves around heal mechanics. If you want good examples; - removal of night time maps - removal of unbalanced maps in ranked - the first iteration of map ban (3 maps, 2 could be voted off leading to only playing the same two maps 90 % of the time) - yellow pinging for cameras making red pinging redundant Probably missing some others but I would say the *bad* changes to siege hasn't all been from pro players dictating the game. It's just ubisoft making poor design and balacing decisions.

[@FelisImpurrator]

Already a correct take from the title alone. Even in purely non-competitive games this is true. Warframe for instance - every time the devs bow to the ultra minmax sweatlords, the game gets worse and less fun, and every time they balance for the rest of the players they put out some decently balanced and entertaining content.

[@IllusionistsBane]

What are the examples you mentioned about in Warframe? I play it but never cared that much about the balance changes. I just take them as "Back to the planning table" moments. Someone's comment brought up a nice point: "You're just forced to have fun in different ways," and isn't that true for every change?

[@FelisImpurrator]

@@IllusionistsBane They haven't reworked eidolons since launch because it would disrupt an arcane economy dominated by obsessive, frame-perfection-chasing meta hunters who abuse animation skips to lock the eidolon in place and capture it fast enough to fit in six cycles in one night or something. They introduced the Warframe Refresh update that finally made enemies' EHP feel balanced relative to guns, then immediately undid it with the Steel Path basically restoring old tankiness, forcing them to reimplement new forms of powercreep in the form of weapon arcanes and galvanized mods, because people whined that their ultra super minmaxed Kuva Brammas trivialized the game. There are way more, going back years. Warframe's problems have historically been the result of two separate factors: 1) Too much grind for an item to be obtainable in a time frame that feels fun (see the new Aeolak rifle or the Ambassador before it), and 2) trying to appease the most obnoxious, loudest, sweatiest minority of the playerbase whose criticisms mainly just stem from their stratospheric egos being threatened by not being able to hold exclusivity or "skill" over others in some way, or being asked to play different game modes. On that note: Content islands are kind of on the players in a way. DE releases a new mode like Railjack... It's great and it's fun and has stellar QoL updates not featured anywhere else, but launches with bugs and makes players progress through a new thing for once. Players complain about not being able to skip to the very end where all their minmaxed warframe builds are, gravitate to a mindless lootcave to farm it out in a week, then say the mode is dead and lacks content. And also complain if the lootcave is patched. They then call the entire game mode bad and worthless and say DE should go back to the real game. DE does exactly that. Then they complain about DE leaving a bunch of abandoned content islands that aren't integrated into the game, after complaining about those things being integrated into the game more... Can't win if you try to please the entitled. Ever. The solution is to just make the game the best it can be and listen only to the level-headed, constructive, fact-based criticism.

[@IllusionistsBane]

@@FelisImpurrator Yeah, sometimes I feel Warframe players complain too much... and cacophonously.

[@FelisImpurrator]

@@IllusionistsBane It's always the same obnoxious minority who make being Better than You at Videogames their source of self-esteem. The Dark Souls and Monster Hunter franchises have these idiots too. They contribute nothing meaningful but elitism borne of insecurity. DE is just too damn Canadian to say no sometimes.

[@dankmemes8254]

@@FelisImpurrator ah yes the arcane traders of warframe they went through 2 great depression

[@mr.overlord6720]

There’s a interesting aspect I’ve thought about, and it’s that popular twitch players who play battle royals don’t play Doom. And it’s a bit mind boggling when you think of how playing a Doom would make it a interesting watch since it’s something new, you need to think on your feet fighting the demons, and you also have the multiplayer so they don’t have to stick to the campaign.

[@zappodude7591]

BRs are completely designed for streamers. The reason there's so much downtime with looting, gathering resources, or just walking across needlessly huge maps is to give time to talk to chat. There's no consideration given for regular players.

[@CloneLoli]

@@zappodude7591 There's also the design element of massive gratification which traditional FPS Multiplayer games tended to avoid. In most BRs if you win you are made to feel super special because you survived when 99 others didn't, but it's kind of false gratification, team play is not as important in most BRs and you didn't literally defeat all 99 other players. Streamers feel this gratification and viewers reward them for doing so well with a ludicrous amount of money and viewership.

[@optiTHOMAS]

@@CloneLoli yeah, a lot of times it's people 3rd partying some one and you just end up cleaning em up and end up with like 3 kills but win the game. 😅😆👍🏻

[@VonSnuggles1412]

@@optiTHOMAS i feel called out. That's pretty much the only way i ever get wins in BR's

[@thatguy8777]

@@optiTHOMAS literally every match in Apex

[@themightyjaboccon]

It's a difficult one I've been on both sides of this coin, never so much as "pro" but i've been into competitive games enough to know why its important to listen to people that know how to play the game, thing is there's alot of money in pro play, if its streaming or esports there is money to be made for both the players and the devs, they want their game to be taken seriously and because of this I don't think this issue is really ever going to go away, and when you're one of the sweats chances are you want them to listen to the pros who actually know what they're talking about, most devs don't even know how to play their own games for several reasons, its fine, they'll never be as good as the pros so listening to those players, from the perspective of a sweat, makes sense, people want to play a fair consistent experience at that level of play, they treat it like a literal sport and considering the money some of them are making, you don't have to look hard to see why that is. But nowa days I'm on the other side of the coin completely, I've burnt myself out playing competitive game and after taking a step back you realize just how sweaty it is, how toxic the experience can be and how focusing so much time and attention into a game which state is out of your control, its generally just not a nice experience, all the pvp games i used to love I now don't want to touch, because there's no room for casual players anymore, casual play in competitive environments just is not welcoming at all, it is literal "kill or be killed" mentality, either you get roasted by the sweats or you become a sweat, its not all down to the devs, its not all down to the players, frankly I think its an industry problem, a mix of everything that I don't see getting any better, infact it'll only really get worse, its the sort of hole that they're never going to get out of. Gaming is different than it used to be, especially PVP environments and I really think we're past the point of no return, the damage has been done and there is money in scammy live service competitive models, alot of money and because of this, frankly, I'm out. Since being into these games myself I've strayed my competitive nature to my solo experience, I've started doing speedruns, challenge runs and whatever else, and i've noticed in the speedrunning community its generally so much less toxic and everyone actually wants eachother to do well, your performance is just based on you and the game, it has nothing to do with someone else, your mistakes are much easier to spot and fix, there's no toxic angry arseholes screaming down their mics, its just a nicer experience and I've generally enjoyed it far more, and i've got more out of it. Until the industry manages to evolve further we're going to be stuck in this rut for a long time, the way it is I honestly don't see how you're going to please casual players and sweats at the same time, I don't know of a game that has managed it yet, "fun" and "fair" are rarely aligned.

[@xDEADLOCKEDx2468]

For the longest time the sweathard community has been responsible for killing off dual wielding and elites in Halo because it puts other players at a "significant disadvantage". They really out here putting so much effort against diversity.

[@TheDarkkilla12]

I still hate it when some popular people whined that Halo Infinite should have a BR mode because it would be a dead game on arrival if it didn’t. Except it still slowly died off….not because it didn’t have a BR, but because it was so barebones it wasn’t worth the effort to play it.

[@shadow200343]

I don't know if I agree with that. Dual Wielding was removed because it significantly harder to balance weapons and served no purpose other than to look cool. I can kinda understand Elites being removed because it would potentially put players and teams at a disadvantaged but If you really care about fair play, just play Ranked. I believe 343i is just being lazy and don't want to put in the effort in making models for Sanghelli players. Bungie took a different approach in Reach by making the models slightly bigger and bulkier but also gave them regenerating health to make it more balanced, Which made custom game modes still fun to play, Elite only games fair and Invasion fun.

[@charlesmartiniii1405]

@GoKllyoslf x they.... definately have a ranking system. Hey I hate the game too but at least I played it first

[@bakuguardian]

@@TheDarkkilla12 I left after a slew of performance issues and the lack of content. News of Forge and some incoming new content does have me interested, but I won't get my hopes up for it. The game should have launched with co-op campaign, Forge, and a slew of MP playlists.

[@daftmi9hty327]

I don't care I'm at a disadvantage. duel wielding as an elite is fucking awesome

[@Danjiano]

Reminds me of that time players complained about the thompson being way stronger than the MP40 in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. The guns had identical stats. Player feedback can be absolutely garbage at times.

[@bobydocky9641]

Except when the devs looked at how many kills each gun got the Thompson out performed the mp40 the players were right just for the wrong reason

[@erkitonuri]

It was later concluded that Thompson had different sound than MP40, what gave players the feeling Thompson felt more powerful.

[@somemexicangardener6933]

It’s not about the gun, it’s about the player wielding it.

[@SeithonJetter]

If you want to see how a competitive player can wreck a game, look at what happened with Relic and the Imperial guard. ONE player had a unique and godlike play style which allowed him to wreck everyone. So they not only balanced the entire faction around his personal ability, they hired him to help them do it!

[@kingjoe3rd]

and if you want to see this play out in real time just watch and see what happens to Doctor Disrespects NFT game.

[@sirprize8572]

Which game are we talking about here? In O.G. Dawn of War IG have always been relatively balanced as far as I am aware, though way back in Winter Assault they were considered one of the more powerful factions before Tau & Necrons showed up.

[@Alphoric]

Nah that guy did nothing wrong though

[@misterscienceguy]

@@sirprize8572 In Winter Assault they were pretty busted to be honest.

[@DrCranberry]

or just look at overwatch for a game ruined by pros "suggestions"

[@Volcano22207]

People really forget that games are supposed to be fun and not an “ego stroker” or “realistic”

[@imjust_a]

I've seen it happen quite frequently where the pro scene's demands end up causing problems for the casuals. I theorize that part of the impetus is that developers are trying to follow a "trickle-down" philosophy: If this is balanced for the 1%, then it's balanced for the 99%. I remember first witnessing this when I got into R6S around 2017. A lot of my favorite features, strategies, or weapon configurations would get removed because the pros complained. I also see it quite frequently in Final Fantasy 14, where the classes are balanced for the high-end, hard-core raiding community -- which has, in turn, homogenized a lot of the unique features about the classes in order to make them all equally viable for high-end raiding (Creating a much less enjoyable experience for the average player.)

[@borico62]

It's happening to Minecraft out of all games. Nothing is safe.

[@houndofculann1793]

@@borico62 .....how? o.O

[@WokioWolfy]

It feels like they trying to please everyone even tho doing so will appease no one because you just making the game worse for everyone else by catering to that 20% of people who play as a job.

[@The_one_the_only881]

I agree 100%, siege just became so bland and boring to me after they started catering toward the pro leagues

[@imjust_a]

@@The_one_the_only881 Yeah, I haven't played it in so long -- kinda fell off around when the Australian operators came out. I've popped in a few times here and there to relive the glory days but I definitely feel that blandness. I miss all the whacky strategies you could do to get an edge on your opponent. Maybe it was just a simpler time before the meta really sunk in, but the pro league definitely had their hand in removing things I found fun.

[@VashStarwind]

Actually with the OG Halo 3, you could change a setting to either, skill based matching, OR quickest server connection. So they let you choose, a fast connecting game, or a closer skill level matched game. So weve kinda gone backwards...

[@sniperyuni]

that and the monotony of current day: Play match, get kicked back to menu, start matchmaking for the same game againg compared to older games where you could stick with a lobby & as long as most people didnt leave & just have match after match with the only matchmaking to fill empty spots

[@VashStarwind]

@@sniperyuniYeah. Its literally the dmmbest idea to send people back to the main menu after every game. People would stick with the same lobby, and before they knew it, 4 or 5 hours would pass. Sticking with the same lobby, got people to play the game for longer. Its almost like they dont want people to make friends these days or something.. lol

[@g0atman88]

​@@VashStarwindnice samurai champloo profile pic :)

[@organicleaf]

@@VashStarwind that would mean servers and we all know how much devs nowadays love matchmaking so i doubt stuff like that will come back :/

[@VashStarwind]

I gotta mention. I recently looked on OG halo 3. And it wasnt Skill based match making and quickest connection. It was quickest connection or BEST (most stable) connection. I thought it was either quick connection or skill based connection, but i guess i was wrong. Sorry dudes.

[@SuicidalTurnip]

Dealing with inconsistency is a part of skill expression. Being able to think on the fly and deal with an outcome you weren't expecting is a skill in and of itself.

[@todesziege]

Yep, though it's a skill that is frequently overlooked in "competitive" online play.

[@gamezone2996]

I agree sm. One time I was playing csgo and 3 of my teammates ducking left the match. I just had 3 bots on my team so the odds were stacked against me heavily. But I still managed to give the enemy team a run for their money with essentially 3 extra lives.

[@jacobyakus8620]

Not if its RNG

[@Michael-mn4ef]

I'm not sure, you'd think if this is actually an important skill it would be prevalent among top tier competitors, but I don't really see it. maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I suspect you're saying something that you wish was true but isn't.

[@lightningkitten]

​@@Michael-mn4ef i'm not really sure what your metric for "importance" is here but play virtually any roguelike. you will find that principally, the challenge is adapting to unpredictable circumstances (and i'm sure you could also use random spawn locations or unpredictable loot locations in battle royal games as an fps analog to this, and i bet there's many more things in this vein). the unpredictability of individual opponents aside, the reason RNG (what i assume you're talking about) isn't generally seen in competitive is because having variables outside of your control... prevents you from controlling them. the video really already discusses this dilemma, but competitive players seek to min-max their performance as much as possible; they literally optimize the fun out of the game, to reduce the number of differences and technical abstractions between them and their opponent, such that nothing is ever "unfair," blah blah blah, i don't have to read you the video's script.

[@LordyT34]

You know this expands beyond video games too. I play Warhammer 40k, which is a tabletop miniature game. Recently the faction I play, World Eaters, took a really harsh nerf. But a high tier player managed to scrap a tournament win together and the design company said that "World Eaters are on the rise!" Despite the fact that if you look at the actual World win rates, uploaded by casual players, our win rate has plummeted from around 52 percent to 42 percent and falling. It's a massive drop rate but hey the very, very best players in the world won so the faction is perfectly balanced

[@leoncoben6983]

Oh thank God someone actually brought this up. I've always said unpredictability leads to players having to acquire a skill all competitive players should have: adaptability. There is nothing more boring in a game than a game that lacks a point that forces you to adapt and adjust your gameplay for each different game you play that isn't based on who's winning and who's losing on the current situation. Adaptability is the most skill expressive ability to have when unpredictability is a factor you need to account for, because it goes beyond just game knowledge and mechanical skill.

[@plugshirt1762]

I agree that there should be randomness that players can learn to adapt to but a large problem is many devs who make it random in a way that doesn't give you any way to adapt to it like killstreaks that insta kill you or various other things. Nearly every shooter has some level of random element that can be countered correctly but many also do it terribly incorrectly

[@aegisScale]

Seriously, like for me high time to kill means longer interactions and battles for both sides, which makes things more dynamic than "haha I click you first." I swear these competitive players just want a playground where they can steamroll the plebs and look cool doing it.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@aegisScale I think it goes both ways, higher times to kill generally makes aim much more important as who can get the most headshots matters a lot, but it de-emphasizes things like tactical awareness since if you get jumped you can still turn things around. Low time to kill makes aim less important and makes tactical awareness much more important. Both approaches are ultimately a choice that depend upon what kind of game you're making, a game focused on bigger team battles is probably better served by lower times to kill because things will move slowly if everyone takes seconds to kill, but games more focused on individual engagements are better served by longer times to kill because that puts more of a focus on duels.

[@saellanya]

@@aegisScale It's exactly what you said. Why do you think smurfing is so present? It's a sort of power trip for "pros" to sh*t on new players. It's like the dude on Diablo immortal, that was so OP he couldn't get any match. He paid so much, just to be able to steam roll on those who where not as rich and wasteful as him. The PvP was literally the only game mode he was playing and complained that the impossibility to find match was causing him distress.

[@speedrat6507]

I think that's why games like apex and overwatch are so popular, different playable characters with different mechanics to use while adapting to whatever character you're fighting is a lot to be aware of in one round

[@Shredow2]

You're absolutely right. Every game that designs around the top .1% of players is leaving 99.9% of them in a lurch. Tryhards will disagree, but 99.9% of them will never be pro and are just making the game worse for themselves.

[@MediHusky]

That sounds like loser talk.

[@Shredow2]

@@MediHusky Most people play games to have fun. Gaming isn't my entire life so I don't need to win all the time to feel like a winner. I get that feeling from other sources.

[@redvelvet5374]

Tryhards with full piss bottles and 90 degree spinal cords will disagree.

[@flow185]

@@MediHusky you mean normal people.

[@helloworld2899]

@@Shredow2 winning is fun. Improving at something and getting results is fun. You seem like the type of guy who gets salty when somebody is better than you in a video game and try to brush it off by saying you have a life outside of video games Why do normal people try hard in sports like basketball or chess? It's not like they're gonna end up going pro. They want to get good at it because getting good at something is FUN. Same thing applies to video games or anything else. You can have fun any way you like, but don't shit on other people for the way they like to enjoy things

[@WhiteHairSupremacy]

My best experience for multiplayer games is when I actually just play it with my friends (irl) casually and not strangers who might just talk smack at you for making a mistake by the ones who take it too seriously.

[@suntzu6122]

Which is what SBMM is for. TF is your point?

[@pxritus]

@@suntzu6122 just cap lil bro, what if you wanted to sweat sometimes and play casually some other times... what are you going to do when ur mm is just sweats you cant even have fun

[@suntzu6122]

@@pxritus play unranked obviously. If the only time u can have fun is destroying 8 year olds go be a preschool treacher lmaooooo

[@skorpion7132]

@@suntzu6122 Not every game has that. And SSBM does not guarantee having tryhards in your group.

[@suntzu6122]

@@skorpion7132 Damn near every single game with a matchmaking system uses glicko 2. And how tryhard people are is 100% irrelevant. It pairs like-skilled players together. Its more 'clean' in a 1v1 setting but still works in higher numbers. At 6v6 or higher its prob not the move. For 5v5 its still perfect for dota 2, for example.

[@hallowjupiter6305]

I feel this video was really important and really helped hammer home points me and my friends have been trying to say for *years*. The rest of this is going to be scathing now lol I absolutely despite "esports". One they're not even a goddamn sport, sure they're "professional gamers" (Even though child me loved that idea I kinda cringe at it now). And, as you described them, these MLG man children are the worst thing to ever happen to PvP in gaming. "eSports" ruined gaming since it's conception because now anything that can even be slightly competitive only listens to the whiny "pros" with main character complexes who want every game outside of tournaments to be them stopping others so they can get their twitch clips to post to youtube and tell everyone just how amazing they are. The drastic shift in most games since "eSports" started is the reason I have started steering clear of what was once my favorite genre as a teen, PvP First person shooters. The games were never the same, I could play with my friends in a full lobby with matchmade teams, and I never felt as if each game was some intense competitive struggle, I could just play the game casually and still have fun. Cut to modern day, where we still go back and play MCC from time time. Outside of the rare game where we get stomped or stomp the other team, I have a blast, games feel mostly even/fair, and I don't feel like I'm sweating my balls off. But going into Halo infinite now? I feel like even the most evenly matched games force me to play every game like I'm at a goddamn tournament to actually compete. This intense push to listen to the whiny, vocal minority of the MLG man children has been ruining a genre and style of matchmaking me and my friends used to always play. In the last 4-5 years, most of us don't enjoy those games anymore because they all care way more about being "eSports viable". (I know not all of them are like this, but my only exposure to "pro" teams across multiple games have made them look incredibly toxic and riddled with anger issues). I hate it so much, and hate even more than it's changed the PvP landscape of gaming so much from what I've known for nearly 2 decades now.

[@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778]

I think one of the best examples of this that its an issue with 343s halo games. 343 seems very focused on making the game catered to this none existent audience of pro players. Halo 5 barley had any social features at launch and most if not all 343 maps, game modes, weapons and vehicles are designed around competitive play. Not to mention anytime these pro players complain about anything they get there needs catered to instantly while normal players are left in the dust. Like how the mangler got nerfed when the good majority of people didn't want it nerfed, or any of the other weapons in infinite for that matter. It seems like a issue with companies nowadays in general is that despite being aware of what the majority of players want (as 343 even admitted there where aware that the majority of people wanted classic physics back) they choose to refuse to listen to the majority and appeal to a minority of people, then the game loses its audience and they are puzzled as to why. Also as you said in the video some of the pros aren't fully to blame here since 343 wasn't even listening to them, Which seems like a trend with 343 to just ignore all feedback and do whatever they want. What made the bungie halo games so special and also competitive at the same time was that bungie designed the games for everyone. Sure weapons like the needler or flamethrower are pretty useless competitively, but the rule of cool dictates that get a place in the sandbox as a fun weapon. They make be only useful for some situations, but they are fun to use, Everything from 343 feels corporate and manufactured while bungies sandboxes, despite having alot of reduant weapons, it felt like they where made by people who just wanted to have fun and not for any reason. Not every weapon has to be competitive. Some of them can just be and possibly this still useful. Nowadays its seems every company wants an e sports scene for whatever reason and because of that a lot of social features and creativity has been left in the dust. I will say this though, we can crap on fortnite all we want all day, But atleast it actually has alot of social focus to it too. Thats not something a lot of modern games have anymore, even more shocking that modern halo doesn't have that.

[@asdasdasd9320]

Fax

[@wearegogeta9974]

Masterfully said.

[@ha-kh7ef]

I disagree with nerf and buffing weapons. The mangler was too powerful in fact it was basically a power weapon while having its own counterpart that's actually a power weapon. I think you're being dramatic when saying every company wants an esports scene.

[@awayjam]

Kind of hate all these people shitting on competitive Halo players but it easy to see why you guys feel that way. They had esports teams get skins before some of the teams were even formed lol

[@awayjam]

I think it’s a lot of misguided hate. Comp players haven’t been appealed to since the Reach title update. It’s well documented in H5 that the pros hated the settings that were being made by 343 and with infinite if they were really appealing to them, we would have more than just one ranked playlist. Hardcore has always been the least popular playlist in ranked historically, I don’t know why they would make it the only ranked mode in infinite.

[@ShadowKusano]

I remember going to a comic book shop. Saw people playing street fighter and wanted to give it a try. Was just a noob, casual gamer. Was fighting a pro player and they got upset that they were losing so they told one of the employees to swap the tv out with a "gaming monitor" and they killed me with no effort. After losing eight times in a row, one of their friends walks up to me and says "Damn you lost ten times?! What the fuck man lol you suck". Since that day I never touched the series at all. Re edit: Apparently it's really hard to believe that people can be assholes lol Holy shit didn't expect 1K likes. Thanks

[@Gremlor]

yikes, what a great way to introduce new players to your game. I can't stand competitive gamers or tryhards.

[@boxingcock2341]

@@Gremlor Competitive or not , a lot of gamers are toxic pricks

[@gatowololo5629]

Fighting games are specially toxic and sweaty...

[@lilylopnco]

What the fuck is a "gaming monitor", I've never heard that and I love competitive games, that just sounds like they rigged some shit.

[@natayaway]

@@lilylopnco the old monitor had a slower response time which created lag. the monitor was switched out to a faster response time which removed that lag. if you've ever had to connect a pc to a tv for a presentation, or a projector to watch a movie, and you noticed that the mouse had lag on it and made it harder to move the mouse in general, it's that. it's one of the things you eventually learn about games -- lots of basic and affordable consumer electronics are terrible for gaming but deliver a very nice picture quality. gaming monitors and equipment flip that -- great for gaming but sacrifice picture quality as a result.

[@utubecomtw13]

i've been saying this for years, from overwatch to R6 DEVs shouldn't base the balance changes on these 1% consumer's performances. it ruins the entire game for the rest of us. its like raising the tax for the poor because the rich are too comfortable

[@bj_cat103]

how the top 1% plays the game is how the game is supposed to be played. Therefore, it has to be balanced around it. Balancing the game around people who play it wrong turns it into an unbalanced mess

[@Kakerate2]

@@bj_cat103 there is a level of compromise and approach you are neglecting here.

[@bj_cat103]

@@Kakerate2 those compromises would still turn high level play into mess

[@DePhoegonIsle]

@@Kakerate2 Have you thought about it really? what happens when the 'intended play style' is say just over the medium of the average, and the real skilled players start to pull speedrunner type absurdities and break the ceiling with impossible technical play. The issue boils down to nasty stuff.. 'cool' you can play the intended way.. which when you can say 'well, you can play as intended... which is sub optimal to the point it's obvious' or 'you can play not as intended, but optimal to the point it sparks others to claim unfair advantage, cheating, removal of items, breaking of stuff, nerfs & buffs... so people play as intended, but always ending poorly'

[@Kakerate2]

@@DePhoegonIsle word vomit, can you be a little more concise

[@jeice13]

In regards to matchmaking ranked is usually a seperate option in multiplayer games so unranked doesnt need the same systems

[@ThisChannel05]

A cool thing about skill is finding unintentional stuff and enhancing your performance. Doing something already in place is just doing something that’s already expected of you.

[@WOOTMAN24]

its why gunz the duel still has a following

[@CD-Gaming]

Or jus fun! I found a funny thing with a Grunt on Halo: Combat Evolved that hardly anyone seems to know about... (and no, it's not the one with the "big grunty thirst"! EVERYONE knows about that one!)

[@jpjfrey5673]

​@@WOOTMAN24it does? Where?

[@metalmaid6411]

This is one of the reasons I love Splatoon. Sure it has its small competitive "scene" but the game at its core is just plain fun and I love it for that.

[@tomsky4751]

Same here the splatoon series is fun At it’s core and said core is even enjoyable when you lose. And if ya ask me that’s a sign of a great gameplay formula.

[@rockfire1669]

Okay I’ll give it a try

[@idontbelieveinmagic]

I mean, splatoon is fun but at it's core it IS still competitive, everyone's still trying their best to win even if they are fucking around. I will agree it's fun as hell though. Though also tbf, early splatoon balancing was wonky

[@metalmaid6411]

@@idontbelieveinmagic Well yeah, you're right. Especially higher in the ranked modes, people can get pretty heated.

[@DGTsquid]

And the game is fun for comp and casual players. Almost every change gives something that benefits not parties

[@tedlogan4867]

It's very simple: stop listening to the vocal and annoying minority. They will never be satisfied. Instead, listen to what manifests as broad consensus from as broad a player base as possible.

[@TheDapperDragon]

Even that is a hit or miss. Look at games like 76. A majority of people bitched about Stash limits and needing to eat/drink in a survival game, so they took those out (or more accurately, nerfed them to worthlessness), and now *everybody* hates that decision, having made the game from a competent survival game into a boring grind loop, since there's no challenge.

[@kuro9410_ilust]

@@TheDapperDragon but least the result could have been worse

[@xxhowisuxx]

@@TheDapperDragon Too be fair to those in 76. It had massive issues from the beginning lol.

[@tedlogan4867]

@@TheDapperDragon I don't know much about 76, but even if what you're saying is accurate, that's but one example, and a rare exception to what I said and not relevant, representative, or typical in the broader reality.

[@f5673-t1h]

That's also horrible. Instead of there being different series for different kinds of players, each with its own identity, now you want every game to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Every game will start looking the same. Look at how they butchered God of War's identity. Instead of being a linear skill-based hack-and-slash, they threw in every possible thing to cast a wide of a net as possible. RPG elements? Check. (Semi) open world? Check. Luck-based EXP so no one is left behind? Check. """Mature""" and "emotional" story? Check. Platforming's hard for you? No problem, gone. The end result: God of War is gone. But everybody loved it, that's what matters, right? Your idea is like wanting to make every song a pop song; just appeal to everyone. Who needs different genres with different identities anyways?

[@RiderGiles-q1w]

As a casual player, I can confirm that I eat glue.

[@lukehs9586]

Feels like the skill term "low floor, high ceiling" sums this up quite well. You want an easy access point for people to be introduced to the game but you also want there to be a high ceiling so the actual skill level of the player can be improved allowing for some of those competitive moments.

[@ruukinen]

A multiplayer game doesn't necessary need a high skill ceiling since the difficulty comes from interaction with other players.< Edit: here I mean mechanical or knowledge based skill ceiling.

[@Gofex1337]

@@ruukinen Simultaneously, even if a lot of the difficulty comes from interaction with other players. When the mechanical aspect off the game comes down to "Who presses Kill Button first!" primarily, it does take away a lot from the excitement.

[@angrydragonslayer]

@@Gofex1337 i feel like CS recoil is the perfect example of this Spend the time and you'll reap the rewards but even at 0 hours, raw mechanical control and gamesense can still see you at the top of the scoreboard

[@Wylie288]

Low skill floor is hard access btw. The skill floor is the LEAST skilled a player can be. You want that high for accessible gains. You want the game to provide a bit for the player. Which is what infinite does and why its so shit.

[@angrydragonslayer]

@@Wylie288 ... What?