What game are we talking? AFAIK some games' matchmaking is just that bad.

Play a game with a proper ELO Elo system. You shouldn’t be in a game where the sweaties play against the noobs. That’s not fun for either person.

Games with elo matchmaking are rife with smurfs.

Meanwhile we had consistent lobbies of varied skills on Counter Strike decades ago. It let us build communities, weed out cheaters ourselves, and provided a far healthier social environment.

Sure that one dude on the server could actually 360 noscope you (sometimes) but you also had people who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn still joining lobbies for years.

I played Enlisted for a few hours a day up until last year. It stopped being fun when I realised I was getting frustrated at topping the scoreboard in most games because my perception was that my teammates were bad or weren't trying hard enough. The problem was me playing too much and having end game gear which gave me a huge advantage.

I just stick to singleplayer games now.

Sometimes people stay low because they are inconsistent, often because they have an attitude problem. It's kind of ironic that people that rage against their teammates for being bad are actively causing their teammates to be bad.

The Finals is so fkn sweaty sometimes. But it is also so fun when my team is not getting deleted in 0.2 seconds.

This is why I don't play PVP games these days. Either I'm bad at it, so it's not fun, or I start to get good enough that it starts to feel like a chore to keep up with the meta.

Yeah, I try, but unevitably the ELO just gets wider and wider as the game sheds players becsuse the devs refuse to hardware ban smurf cheaters.

I have great memories of throwing together maps and even small mods for my buddy's cs 1.6 server, what do 9 year olds have to do the equivalent today? Roblox? Minecraft isn't exactly mod friendly, but I guess you can build stuff?

During Covid I played planetside after trying it in 2018 briefly, then putting it up in 2024/25, the game gasping for air begging for daybreak to pull the plug allowing the sweet embrace of death to take it.

Anyways my point is it was pretty fun when I was into PvP games as there were so many people my skill level, the salty vets leading squads of dumbasses, and getting that cheap lucky drop on the guy who’s been playing since 2012 felt so sweat. Basically I think mixed skill games are fun with the right conditions until you get sniped by the heavy 400m away or an air to ground mosquito cus some vets need arbitrary number that doesn’t matter to them to up, holy shit are vet shitters capitalists

I tried the Finals, for like 2 weeks... I just can't with it. It's too chaotic, weapon balance is non-existent, everyone is playing team deathmatch because maybe only 4 people in the whole lobby know what the objective is, and those 4 people are the sweatiest, nastiest, most toxic people in gaming. I have been in several matches and heard players yelling n-slurs like it was a 2006 CoD lobby.

I wanted to like it. The character customizer is super detailed with cool stuff... but the microtransaction economy of it sucks giant donkey balls. You'll never make enough playing for free to buy anything more than some finger nail colors.... and you'd have to take out a second mortgage to buy enough "points/coins/gold?" to buy all the things you want.

Basically, fuck everything about the Finals.... neat concept ruined by a greedy model, toxic playerbase, shitty balancing, and confusing gameplay. That's why the playercount is dogshit, and it'll be yet another games-as-a-service shutdown within the next year.

EDIT: and shit, I forgot to mention the invisible OHK stabby bullshit that no one, in any FPS game finds fun.

I decided to fire up Rocket League since years ago. Only playing casual, I'm not touching competition when it's a f2p fortnight bonus game.

It's still a lot of fun in casual. There are a few crybabies, but not as bad as i thought there'd be.

Super Mario Wonder
It's crazy out there

It's not for everyone.

It is a heavily chaotic game with an extremely high skill ceiling. Essentially a mix of overwatch and Battlefield. Overwatch, in that if you don't play with your team, it is highly likely you will lose. Battlefield, in that you will die a lot until you learn the game flow.

I have been playing this game since launch and I can say it is fairly rare for me to run into players slinging slurs. Maybe it is just the server I am on. It is fairly common to see racist or bigoted usernames though.

By way of the cosmetics, they are all cosmetic. There are plenty of free earnable cosmetics if you play the game consistently. When compared to other live service micro transactions, their prices are VERY affordable for what you are getting. The cosmetic bundles you can get are able to be used as multiple pieces, (I.e. pants, shirt, head gear, shoes) and can be put on every class as opposed to one character. It is a free to play live service game, so it makes sense they need money to continue improving the game.

Most live service games, aside from Warframe, don't really make improvements to the overall game as they get money from MTXs. The Finals has changed so much from what it launched as, and it has been less than 3 years.

It has it's cons (Like the ai voices for two in game characters), but this is the best live service PVP FPS I, personally, have ever played when it comes to character customization, gun play, and developer dedication to improving the game.

I also have a personal rule against playing team-based multiplayer games - losing because the other team was more skilled was tolerable, but losing because half of my team was goofing around and not even trying to win (or winning because the other team was doing that) was just a frustrating waste of my time.

I just can't enjoy Rust anymore. I used to love playing on low pop friendly servers buy to spend all arvo harvesting resources and building a neat house only for someone to raid and greif it while I'm at work made it a sisyphean hell.

All I wanted to do was build cool and interesting structures, maybe bag some unsuspecting players into a barred cell and force them to fight to the death, or pave the map with landmines, fun things like that.

This is why I won’t touch anything with PvP.

Single player all the way.

Or, if you MUST play something online, play against bots.

What do you mean Minecraft isn't mod friendly?

How is Minecraft not mod friendly, that's like where most people I know started with mods

Or play against friends!

Minecraft has a dedicated mod menu on the title screen. What are you talking about

I see you also play Rocket League.

Or play something cooperative!

Did I hear a rock and stone?

There were games I was practically godly at, I preferred being matched with similar skilled players. Though you can learn unique tricks from newer players too. Then I started to get older and had to work more, lived alone so all chores were mine to do, and hours varied. I eventually realized I can't perform at that level anymore and it was getting frustrating. There really isn't much division in skills with PvP elements so I avoid it. I've learned coop games are some great fun or if it's PvP it's something that's goofy fun.

It has support for adding mods, but you have to know java to make mods for it, last I knew.

I play mostly Space Station 14 where the culture is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about helping new players learn the ropes. Like, the nature of the game makes it genuinely enjoyable to welcome new folks into the fold and train them on various jobs and game mechanics. It's so awesome.

Many servers have actively enforced rules against powergaming, as well.

Good thing that my comfort game is an RTS game where I play 10v10, and you could easily see the level of players in the lobby. So, I usually join with other experienced players to ensure I win and possibly finish the game quickly, to get a dopamine hit for de-stressing.

Playing competitive games if you're trying to feel better after having a bad day at work sounds like a terrible idea.

I didn't know there was a... sequel? How does 14 compare to 13?

Lol had this happen to a discord buddy of mine recently. He's Master rank Guile on Street Fighter 6 and he loaded up a ranked match with no warmup after work one day and got a Guile mirror match as his first opponent. He got completely stomped and thought to check the opponent's name... it was Tyler1.

So he loaded up his stream, and since it's on a delay he got to see the end of his own match and have Tyler1 shit talk him after the fact.

Admittedly, cold loading into ranked is probably never a good idea, but when you have a real 9-5 and limited time to play video games in the evenings I understand the desire to just belt out a few ranked matches before bed or whatever.

I felt secondhand frustration after I heard about it.

14 is a remake of 13 in C#. I never played 13, tho I tried to get it working on linux a few months ago with no success.

14's active player count I believe has surpassed 13 and I regularly see folks on 14 who are playing 14 for their first time after playing 13 for years, and they seem quite happy with it.

Hell, there's collaboration between (I think) monke station (ss13) and Starlight (ss14) because monke is working on moving to 14, based on Starlight's fork, and Starlight had a big influx of players from that server who wanted to check out their potential future.

It's fucking amazing. I mostly play on Hardlight, an 18+ furry erotic roleplay allowed server, which is also pioneering saving ships with big stashes for items, and seamless round transitions (you evac back to CC after a round, but if you have your own ship it just FTLs to CC and you remain in the world instead of going back to the new round screen, and you just FTL again to the next station). But I also have a TON of time on Starlight Alpha which is also amazing (and not ERP if you're not into that :P)

The big differences are that ss14 runs a lot better but ss13 has a lot more content, but the content difference is rapidly shrinking. ss14 is definitely the way to go now.

Highly recommend you check it out! Can get the launcher on steam and it's like zero effort to install and launch even on linux

Competitive is fine, just don’t play ranked. Nothing but tryhards.

I see you have never played CS or rocket league before 😂

Either very clear smurfs or literally one team full of low silvers against the enemy team with 1 silver and the rest high gold or EMG full 5 man squad.

well, yes, that's sort of the point of ranked. to try hard.

You’d be surprised how often I play ranked with friends who complain about the other team for “trying hard”. It should be obvious but… somehow its not ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It can be. I’m generally very competitive. I like competitive fps games. I can do ok or well and I’m fine. But if I lose hard a few games in a row I am definitely not relaxed.

elo matchmaking

Is that like a speed dating event to the tune of Electric Light Orchestra?

Yeah, smurfs there would really kill the vibe...

I mean as a fighting game player with a real life, I can tell you that I play exactly zero matches of ranked online and am much happier for it

Also known as pwnin n00bs.

How do you expect the noobs to learn? From other noobs?

Haha. Noob.

Ranked gets you a balanced game though, unranked is usually a shit show and just as hard to win because your teammates might be trolling

It's Elo fyi, named after its inventor Dr. Arpad Elo

No it's a ratings system invented by Dr. Arpad Elo

I mean yeah but it should match you with similarly skilled players so it doesn't matter if you're good or bad?

It would be really easy to simply 'skill match' players by the amount of time they've spent actively playing a live match of the game.

But that would do 2 things:

Make Pay2Win players exceedingly obvious

Make people who've been playing a long time but do infact just suck... it would make them very mad.

Oh! A third thing!

It would make it too obvious which games actually reward and encourage things like teamwork and coordination via well designed gameplay, and which do not.

Don't yell 'but smurfs!' ... come on, every big online game has you log in first, you think they can't grab your MAC address and hardware ids with their anti-cheat?

This is the main reason why I don't pick up FPS games, even when they're on a crazy sale. Back in the day, when they had proper campaigns, rather than barebones tutorials for online matches, I could at least enjoy working through a campaign at my own pace. Now that everything seems to be just about multiplayer, by the time the games get down to a price that seems reasonable for something I'll only play on occasion, the only people left are the ones who seem bent on making a career out of playing that game. It's just no fun, but there's also no chance I'd be willing to drop the stupid amount of money those games cost at release to be able to play against others at my level.

Oh well, these days, I also haven't really got time to be playing a bunch of games at once, so my limited gaming time goes towards other genres, anyway.

Oh 100%, thanks for taking the time to explain that, I appreciate it. I was fascinated by ss13 years ago, but the setup and player count ultimately led me to other activities. At the price of free, I will certainly give 14 a try :)

Ugh THIS. SO MUCH THIS.