Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let’s dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don’t want to see anyone say stuff like “we’re all entitled to our own opinions.” Let’s pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.
My Unpopular Opinion:
I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don’t have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I’m glad you don’t play the games anymore, but I don’t think it makes the game bad.
The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don’t really have a point against this except that it’s better to play with friends.
Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.
Very specific but Assassins Creed: Revelations is the best game of the series (I’ve only played through Unity). It came just before the games’ mythos got too convoluted and took itself too seriously. The combat and parkour is smooth and Constantinople is a beautiful world to explore.
Also, Homefront: The Revolution is a fun lite-stealth FPS that has held up very well for the amount of hate it got on release.
I got that game cheap and enjoyed it for what it was. I think if I had paid full price my experience would have been quite different. It seemed well put together though, a tighter experience than some of the Farcry games and Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Home front The Revolution luckily does have a good level of cult respect on YouTube nowadays, so I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion these days, it’s just a cult one. I really enjoyed that game as well! Good to hear some more respect for it.
It does? First I’ve heard of it but I’m glad to see it. That game got torn apart on release but I played it a few months ago and it was actually a good time
From what I’ve seen, yes. I watch a long form analyst named Noah Caldwell-Gervais who did a video on both homefront games and shared a lot of the love I had for the second one. Check it out if you’d like! He’s an excellent writer
Idk how much it’s changed since 2016ish when i stopped following gaming news/discussion but at the time it was definitely the most hated of the mainline games
Depends on the kind of MMO. In vanilla WoW having an underpopulated server while trying to level means you’d really struggle trying to quest solo in areas around your level, depending on your class
Well you’ll need many more than 4 to guarantee that at least that many would be on at any given time in any given zone on any given server ready to assist you, but yeah, you’re probably right that the necessary amount is exaggerated.
Office workers played Solitaire on their work PCs before smartphones even existed, would they have called themselves gamers? I think a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant, and Candy Crush doesn’t cut it imo.
a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant
The particular games you choose isn’t really relevant to this though. If you have 600 hours in Spider Solitaire, and you think it’s important enough to you that you’ll self identify as a “gamer”, who am I to be a keeper of the gates?
I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time about a year ago and it was a miserable experience. I legitimately cannot understand what people enjoy about it. It was slow, clunky, and frustrating. The game was designed to be irritating. The only enjoyable boss in the main game was Ornstein and Smough (although the DLC bosses were all fantastic, with a special shout out to Artorias). The rest were either garbage or Crapra Demon, which deserves it’s own special level in hell.
Prior to that, I had beaten every other Souls game other than DS 2 (and platinumed Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and Sekiro), so I know it’s not cause I don’t like Souls games.
I think if I had played DS 1 as my first, it would have turned me off of the entire genre. I don’t even think it’s because I had played more recent games first, because I love Demon’s Souls.
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Lots of people complain when some product they like is no longer available in favor of a ‘new and improved’ product. Remember ‘New Coke’? Patches and updates to games are the same thing, especially ones that significantly change the gameplay.
I, for example, liked Overwatch during certain time periods. That game is no longer available. There’s certainly people who play League of Legends or DOTA that feel the same way, though I wouldn’t know - the game they liked was at a certain point in its development, and since then changes have made it no longer the game they like. Same applies to a lot of MMOs - I liked Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and others, but the games I like no longer exist even though the games technically exist.
The problem isn’t easily solved either - no updates may make some people happy but others will not be happy. The resources probably don’t exist to continue splitting the game and maintaining a stable version of an online game at each iteration, and even if they did, the player base would become too diffuse to be able to actually keep the game enjoyable with sufficient players. But it might be a fair criticism to say that updates come too fast for some of these games, and we need more time between them, or various other things. And there’s nothing wrong with people just griping, even if it’s something that can’t reasonably be stopped.
NFT games and using cryptocurrency in games could - hypothetically - have their place, but “investing” in crypto as a way of making money (instead of as a way to take control of money back from central banks) is never going to let that happen. They are a dead end feature solely due to human greed, not due to a flaw in integrating games with a wider decentralized network.
Star Citizen is not and never was a scam. It took 10 years, but that video of the seamless transitions from space to atmosphere to landing zone to city and back is about an already available feature, only the better graphics and a couple map updates shown in the video are unimplemented.
The people who hate on Star Citizen should hate on games like Decentraland and Star Atlas, which take the early access model and abuse it. You should especially hate Star Atlas, which actually is everything bad you’ve heard about Star Citizen but with worthlessly unimplemented NFTs for the “pixel starships”. Also note that Star Atlas ships appear to be weird amalgamations of Star Citizen ship designs, but the (stated) Star Atlas ship role counterparts cost 3x the original price of backing Star Citizen the moment the site for Star Atlas was up.
Regardless of all the above, its my money that I spent on Star Citizen. I’m getting really f-ing tired of being judged for that, especially because I am in a position where I can live in relative comfort but do NOT have the money, neurophysical ability, or social influence to actually improve reality. Building an escapist space fantasy and supporting a community that just wants to have fun is a far better reason to make a video game than taking preorders for games that are tied to draconian DRM software like EA and Ubisoft, or building a pyramid scheme based on a cabal of cryptobros like the “creators” of Star Atlas.
Being patient is fine once. I enjoyed watching Star Citizen grow. I think we need to admit that ALL triple-A now have a 10-year development schedule, and that we need to re-evaluate whether every game needs the player to make a commitment to enjoy the game without buying in-game content. I dedicate myself to LEGO Brawls, Crossout and OpenTTD, I have the time to play Star Citizen too but that’s my limit. I can’t dedicate all my time off to a game after that. Maybe games need to be shorter again?
I whole heartedly agree. NFT/cryptocurrencies have their place, but I haven’t seen that place in practice. The tech is good, greed isn’t. Maybe I’ll build a game someday to prove it.
I hate the term “scam” because most people use it to mean “not a good deal” when it actually means “getting something other than what was advertised.” In this case, Star Citizen had a huge case of scope creep to the point where it could be considered a scam because it shouldn’t take 10 years to deliver what they originally promised.
Haven’t heard of either, I’m guessing I wouldn’t like them. I avoid Early Access games as a general rule.
Agreed. I didn’t back Star Citizen nor have I played it. So I don’t talk about it. In fact, this might be the first time I’ve engaged in a discussion about it on lemmy, and I’m only doing it to discuss the topic of “scams,” not the game itself. However, you draw a false equivalency, you can just play indie or older games instead, that’s what I do.
Yes, games should be shorter, and I’m happy with less tech as well. I play a lot of indie games, and only get AAA games when they provide a tight experience.
On the topic of MMOs, I want to point out that I generally avoid them. I think they can be done well, I just think they’ve been captured by the “do dailies to progress” perspective where you miss out if you don’t dedicate your life to it.
I want to make an MMO that respects the player’s time. The best way I can think of it working is for it to be cyclical. As in, you play until some in-game event happens (my preference is a large guild battle over some resource), then the world resets and the winners get some boon and everyone carries something forward to the next round (new players pick a starting perk). Cycles should be relatively short (days, maybe weeks, and definitely not years), and each cycle should bring something new to the game. I would play that, but I’m definitely not playing a longer game like Star Citizen.
Bit late, but your last point reminded me about Foxhole, a top down war game, which have these mmo like bits, and also has a cyclic wars, but these don’t give any advantage in the next war.
I don’t play it, but the biggest downsides I heard are 1) losing ground on the battlefield (progress) while logged out, as you can’t help your faction while offline, and 2) the players working in logistics (collecting ores to craft supplies for the frontline) find that gameplay loop repetitive/boring, while its crucial for the faction victory.
I guess it makes sense this is one of the biggest hurdles in pvp mmo, since in pve mmo the enemies wait for you, and it isn’t possible to lose major progress, especially offline. (random thought: is Rust a pvp mmo? That’s kinda cursed.)
The other problem with cyclic games is the non existent progression, since things reset. Most mmo players do the 10+ hour grinds on quests for the shiny thing or the prestige titles, like getting lv99 in Runescape. Even in Escape from Tarkov at the end of wipe most players stop playing, since they feel it would be a waste of effort.
The idea of boons or things that carries over is interesting, but of they stack through multiple wipes there could be a super guild who gets an unfair advantage.
So yeah, surprisingly, game design is hard
(also I dont have any gamedev experience, just like thinking about it)
losing ground on the battlefield (progress) while logged out
I’m thinking of allowing players to configure an AI to work while they’re out. So they can leave their character harvesting resources on loop, doing simple fetch quests, and perhaps a set of actions to run if attacked. That way you can’t just wait until a lot of them are offline to storm their area, but being offline would have a penalty.
I also want to make a mobile app so you can update the AI controlling your character at any point, as well as engage in trades while “offline.”
The idea of boons or things that carries over is interesting, but of they stack through multiple wipes there could be a super guild who gets an unfair advantage.
I’m planning on some kind of “perma-death” as well, so if you die, you lose your character, but you get an XP gain boost until you’re back at your old level. The idea is you have a “soul” that inhabits other bodies, and that soul helps the body gain new skills, though it doesn’t need to be the same skills you had last time. So you could go from a mage to a tank and get the same boost.
The boon would merely jumpstart that process in the next game, like maybe you get a one-time XP gain boost, it’s easier to find resources, etc, but those effects would either only last until your first death, or not be useful in the late game. So you get a temporary benefit, but your faction also has a target on its back.
I’m still working out the details, and I don’t have time to work on it anyway, but I think it would be an interesting experiment. Maybe I’ll try out a smaller version of it in 2D or something to play with the mechanics.
If you’re not designing the NFT game around the profit and trading aspect - then the NFT is pointless and you could just make a game with tradeable assets registered to a conventional relational database.
Aka: What MMO’s, browser social platforms and Steam itself has been doing successfully for more than a decade before NFT’s showed up.
It’s a technological dead end (in gaming) even without the greed, because the use cas is already done cheaper, simpler and better.
Oh yeah I’m totally aware it is an unpopular opinion. I feel the need to bite my tongue every time there is a thread recommending it because I know I’m in the minority, and the person receiving the recommendations will probably enjoy it :)
A lot of people I talk to think that PC is the best platform. I agree that it is versatile and has the most options. I can’t stand playing games on my PC at this point, though. I spend all day fixing computers at work. I don’t even want to look at a computer after clocking out. To be able to play games for PC, but not use a computer, I’ve decided to get a Steamdeck.
Yup, this is it. One of the major benefits of the Steam Deck is how they’ve consolized the experience. I can’t wait until they fully support a regular gaming PC deployment of SteamOS. I’d drop Windows in a heartbeat. The reduction in flexibility is worth it to just be able to turn on the PC after a month and just play a goddamn game instead of troubleshooting & updating for 45 minutes first.
Ask around the Linux gaming communities, some of the distros are in a really good place for gaming. I’m thinking of making the leap myself now that I’ve been enjoying my steam deck for a while.
Huh, I’m a software engineer, and when I get home, I’m excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.
I’m not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that’s what you don’t like? I find the Steam Deck’s defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.
10-15 years. I’m now in a lead position, so I have management and planning responsibilities, but I still get 50-75% of my time to do dev work.
I have never experienced burnout, at least from SW dev, though I’ve certainly burned out on projects/companies. In fact, when I get burned out at work, I often relax by building SW at home (basically angry coding). For example, we had an overcomplicated bit of code at work, so over the weekend I built a POC that’s a lot more elegant.
My main limitation here is that I have kids, so I don’t get a ton of time after work (like 1-2hrs/day, on a good day). I also alternate with reading and playing video games because I also really enjoy those.
I guess I just really love my field. I’m hoping to retire early-ish so I can have more time to work on my projects.
That’s fair. I just don’t have the same experience.
My hobbies are very similar to my day job (software engineer), but in a different tech stack (Python @ work, Rust @ home) and building different things (business logic @ work, distributed systems and games @ home).
Maybe it helps that I’m forced to use macOS at work (which I dislike), and I get to use Linux at home, so it really feels like separate things.
But then again, many of my coworkers don’t have personal projects at home, so I’m probably just weird.
The OS differences probably help. I use Windows both at work and at home, so there’s no difference. And it seems like every time I fire up my PC, something is wrong with it. I avoided fixing a problem for 6 months because I couldn’t handle it emotionally after work lol. My hobbies are not tech-related other than gaming. I went into IT because the thing I have always been the least bad at is working with computers. I don’t have any other skills I thought would help me make money when I was exploring options at college
I use my pc on my TV with a controller for this reason. It limits the games I can play since so many aren’t optimized for controller but I generally like the games on PC better. I also use my pc for movies and TV as well so it serves as an overall entertainment center.
I have a ps5 for all of my media needs and PlayStation exclusives and all that. My gaming computer is also getting pretty old and doesn’t run stuff as well as it should. A Steamdeck is straight up an upgrade at this point. I’ll keep my PC around for older games I can’t play on other platforms, but I am pretty much fully embracing consoles lol. I also don’t have the funding to constantly upgrade a computer, and consoles seem to last a long time and have just the initial costs.
Probably very hot take for this community. The $1 for every hour of enjoyment is a stupid metric. People will spend upwards of $10 for a 2 hour movie or $5 for an hour-long album. Games have components of many pieces of media and many treat it’s worth lower. I’m all for saving money but it’s a different discussion regarding the value of the medium, especially when we just discuss it as the consumer-mindset of “hours of my life” vs. experience of enjoyment
I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that’s expensive is still a good value. For example, I’ve spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I’ve gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I’ve gotten incredibly good value from it.
I’m patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I’ll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I’d buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don’t have a lot of friends who play games, so there’s no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.
I don’t really mind bad PC ports as I play them with an xbox controller anyway and they’re usually cheaper and better than if you bought them on console
I play almost exclusively on PC, but I really don’t like playing most games on keyboard and mouse. Analog sticks are better for movement, triggers are better than mouse buttons, and wheel select is more fun than hotkeys. My main complaint is a lack of modifier keys (probably solved with buttons on the back), but overall the ergonomics is much better.
I paired my mouse with an Azeron. 99% of the time it’s way better than the keyboard. The other 1% is split between keyboard and controller.
Between the two though I much prefer keyboard/mouse over controller, but there are some games I would rather use a controller for. But as far as ergonomics go, I agree with you.
I’d agree that they’re better in every way except for precision and control complexity. Add in gyro and you get pretty damn close, but even then, I think it’s easier to be a better shot on a mouse in shooters.
That and it’s very very difficult to play something with complex controls on a controller like Arma, or trying to play competitive StarCraft or something, the controller would just always, invariably be worse
Yes, certain games just don’t make sense on controller, I still don’t understand how people play Cities: Skylines on console, for example. So I absolutely use keyboard+mouse when it makes sense.
However, most games work well on controller, so most of my gaming time is with a controller. In fact, ever since I got my Steam Deck, I’ve played less on my desktop because the built-in controller is so nice, and it’s more convenient since I keep it next to my bed.
I think it does boil down to different games work better or worse on different control types, so I don’t think either one can truly be better or worse than the other, just better or worse in certain situations.
I think I would agree that a controller with rear buttons and gyro is better at a wider variety of games than M&KB
Sure, but among PC gaming enthusiasts, preferring controllers is an unpopular take. I want to see more innovative schemes like gyros so I don’t need a kb+m nearly as often.
I agree, I was just disputing the absolute, unconditional wording of your original comment where you say they’re better than M&KB, not that you prefer them, or that they’re better for most or certain types of games.
I’m actually a huge lover of the Steam Controller, it’s my daily driver, and unless I’m playing a shooter I use it for nearly everything. Definitely right there with you on innovative control schemes and the flexible power of a controller with custom mapping.
I quit all other controllers cold turkey to force myself to get used to it, and it worked. That being said there are probably games where a second stick would work better, but I haven’t found any where I had to change to my pro controller or something else because it was uncomfortable. The pro controller is around for the Switch or if somebody else wants to play on my PC.
However, the Steam Controller is essentially the “PC gaming of controllers”, where getting it to work just how you want sometimes requires setup of the config depending on what works best for the game. For example, you may have disliked the touch pads because they were set to mouse joystick mode, where you must drag across them to create input, which can work better for aiming weapons. I usually set the pads to “joystick move” which means the entire pad is the full range of motion of the simulated joystick, and simply touching anywhere on the pad will pull the joystick to that point in its range, instead of touching, establishing a center point, and then dragging to dictate how far you’re pulling the virtual joystick, like you might find in simulated joysticks on some mobile games. I find joystick move much more natural and comfortable for general camera control and things like radial menus.
Similarly, I despise gyro that’s always on, but love gyro that can be activated at will by holding down a button, I’m a big fan of gyro only on ADS in shooters, for example. It’s hard to explain that sort of stuff over text, hopefully my joystick description made enough sense. Essentially, the Steam Controller can work amazingly, but sometimes how well it feels depends on how much you tweak the controls to your preference, and of course, most of that setup only needs to be done once or twice, then you can just make a few templates and slap them on games where you know how you’d prefer it to work, and then make minor tweaks from there. Unless you do something stupid like map controls to play an MMO, like I did. That requires a ridiculous complex layout. I do adore that the rear buttons are not just mapped to another controller button, but are unique inputs on their own, it opens up a lot of options for control schemes.
If they could find a way to make another joystick fit on the controller then I’d be all for the options, the Steam Controller is already a chunky boy, though, but I find a bigger controller more comfortable anyway. I hope the success of the Steam Deck sparks a new Steam Controller revision, but time will tell.
I play on PC and for me if it’s first person it’s gotta be KBM to get immersed into it but if it’s 3rd person I use controller as it helps to feel like I’m controlling the person. I dunno how to explain it, it makes sense to me
I wonder if it’s camera control? Twin stick movement isn’t really similar to how people move, whereas a mouse (head) and keyboard (legs) is a bit closer.
For me though, I think I just like having my hands close together, and a controller gives me that, whereas kb+m just feels like an unnatural position to be in.
Different strokes I guess, but controller feels a lot more natural to me and I only use kb+m if the controller gets in the way (e.g. Total War, Cities: Skylines, etc).
My game time is probably a 50/50 split with console and pc but I prefer using a controller whenever I can. It’s just more comfortable to me as I can lean back and relax.
Yup. The main reason I play on PC is cost. I already have a PC, so buying a mid tier GPU every few years is much cheaper than buying a new console and paying console prices for games.
I have sticks, motion controllers, a wheel, and various regular controllers, as well as the classic kb+m, and I just find myself coming back to the kb+m for nearly everything. Virtually every time I preferred using something else was because of poor control design (GTA V flying vehicles), driving and simulation experiences (racing, truck/farm/flight sims, Elite Dangerous), and VR (you can’t read the keyboard when it matters).
The extreme accuracy of a mouse and versatility of a keyboard make them extremely hard to beat. I even play Monster Hunter games with both because believe it or not, there are advantages on each side.
Yeah, I’ll probably never give up my kb+m for everything, but when a controller makes sense, I’ll absolutely prefer it. I’ll even use it for most FPS games, with a gyro, it just feels good.
Gyro for fine tune aiming is a million times better than mouse in my opinion.
Also I would say even if it wasn’t, the left stick makes up so much more for what you would get out of using a keyboard and the inneficiencies of having to swap fingers around the keyboard to both move and interact etc, than what a mouse gains over the right stick.
I enjoy battle royales and have hundreds of hours in Apex, but what I really don’t like about them is that they change all the time. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of annoying to put a game down for a year and come back to a completely different experience. You don’t even get the choice, in Apex especially I know they rotate through the maps that are available, so the one I prefer might be impossible to play on for 6 months straight. For this reason, Apex can never be as good of a game to me as Titanfall 2 still is to this day.
Plus, when the official servers are taken down a decade from now, there will be literally no way to revisit the experience. The only things left of the game will be recordings and memories. This is yet another thing that is better with more traditional games, where players can make their own custom servers (like Northstar for Titanfall 2).
Where fallout 3 feels like a desolated wasteland, new vegas feels like a generic western with added monsters, it’s got none of the charm of 3 despite every other aspects being better
I tried so hard to enjoy New Vegas but honestly I think it just had too many choices that all fucking sucked. Tons of factions, and I pretty much hated them all.
In hindsight I think I’ll try to replay it and go full Mr. House.
Just wondering, did you play them on consoles? Because I played FO3 on PS3 back in 2011(?) And it worked fine but when I tried picking up NV a few years later, I had to drop it because of all the bugs.
Bethesda games are insanely overrated and absolutely carried by the modding community. Do I enjoy Skyrim? Hell yeah! …With 500 mods.
Everything below 50-60 FPS is stuttery, unsmoooth, and unenjoyable no matter the genre.
There‘s a place and time for „Ubisoft formula“ games (aka. tick off 500 icons on a map), cause sometimes I don‘t wanna think, I just wanna mindlessly walk around with semi-purpose and do stuff.
On 1 though, I agree IF every other game embraced the modding community as much as Bathesda games do.
GTA is the only other game I heavily mod, and in comparison it’s such a pain in the ass, the game engine is not designed to support it so you get weird bugs, just overall a worst experience.
So I think it’s fair to rate the base game highly for its support of mods. They’ve decided that providing a great experience for mods is a high priority for them. Maybe they can make the base game better if they don’t have to make it compatible with whatever modders want to throw at it.
I was about to post this. Morrowind is genuinely great, but that’s an outlier.
I think 40 is fine, but only if your monitor supports adaptive sync or can be locked to 40 (e.g. Steam Deck)
Disagree. If I want something mindless, I’ll farm something useful so my next play session is more “productive.” That could be grinding levels, money, crafting materials, or fetch quests. Just ticking icons isn’t fun.
Disagree with 2. You get used to it, especially when playing more older games. After a few hours of Ocarina of Time even the 20fps works eventually lol
You get used to 2 as long as the framerate is consistent. If you’ve got a smooth 30 then you can get used to it. If it’s constantly jumping around from 30-50 or something you won’t be able to stop noticing it
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A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it’s price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don’t meet the system requirements, or just haven’t had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
Very specific but Assassins Creed: Revelations is the best game of the series (I’ve only played through Unity). It came just before the games’ mythos got too convoluted and took itself too seriously. The combat and parkour is smooth and Constantinople is a beautiful world to explore.
Also, Homefront: The Revolution is a fun lite-stealth FPS that has held up very well for the amount of hate it got on release.
I got that game cheap and enjoyed it for what it was. I think if I had paid full price my experience would have been quite different. It seemed well put together though, a tighter experience than some of the Farcry games and Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Home front The Revolution luckily does have a good level of cult respect on YouTube nowadays, so I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion these days, it’s just a cult one. I really enjoyed that game as well! Good to hear some more respect for it.
It does? First I’ve heard of it but I’m glad to see it. That game got torn apart on release but I played it a few months ago and it was actually a good time
From what I’ve seen, yes. I watch a long form analyst named Noah Caldwell-Gervais who did a video on both homefront games and shared a lot of the love I had for the second one. Check it out if you’d like! He’s an excellent writer
I’ve never had as much fun online gaming with my buddy than with AC: Revelations.
Wait wait is “Revelations is the best AC game” an unpopular opinion? I didn’t realize that at all.
I’ve played all of them except Rogue and finished everything except the newest three that I really do not enjoy nearly as much.
Idk how much it’s changed since 2016ish when i stopped following gaming news/discussion but at the time it was definitely the most hated of the mainline games
People overestimate what a healthy population for a game should be.
You don’t need that 19 million people are playing the same mmo as you are when you are.
Depends on the kind of MMO. In vanilla WoW having an underpopulated server while trying to level means you’d really struggle trying to quest solo in areas around your level, depending on your class
Yes, that still doesn’t mean a game with less than 10 million subscribers is dying. You need other 4 people your level, not a million.
Well you’ll need many more than 4 to guarantee that at least that many would be on at any given time in any given zone on any given server ready to assist you, but yeah, you’re probably right that the necessary amount is exaggerated.
Unpopular opinion: I play Candy Crush and that makes me a gamer.
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I think it absolutely counts. Play what you enjoy!
Office workers played Solitaire on their work PCs before smartphones even existed, would they have called themselves gamers? I think a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant, and Candy Crush doesn’t cut it imo.
I would
The particular games you choose isn’t really relevant to this though. If you have 600 hours in Spider Solitaire, and you think it’s important enough to you that you’ll self identify as a “gamer”, who am I to be a keeper of the gates?
Exactly my point
I don’t have a high opinion on the “game” but who’s to say they don’t have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush?
If you have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush and nothing else, is gaming your hobby or is Candy Crush your hobby?
That’s 2.3 hours a day, every day, since release in 2012, at minimum
Both options are true.
People can exclusively play what they like. iRacing, WoW or Candy Crush are all valid.
I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time about a year ago and it was a miserable experience. I legitimately cannot understand what people enjoy about it. It was slow, clunky, and frustrating. The game was designed to be irritating. The only enjoyable boss in the main game was Ornstein and Smough (although the DLC bosses were all fantastic, with a special shout out to Artorias). The rest were either garbage or Crapra Demon, which deserves it’s own special level in hell.
Prior to that, I had beaten every other Souls game other than DS 2 (and platinumed Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and Sekiro), so I know it’s not cause I don’t like Souls games.
I think if I had played DS 1 as my first, it would have turned me off of the entire genre. I don’t even think it’s because I had played more recent games first, because I love Demon’s Souls.
Lots of people complain when some product they like is no longer available in favor of a ‘new and improved’ product. Remember ‘New Coke’? Patches and updates to games are the same thing, especially ones that significantly change the gameplay.
I, for example, liked Overwatch during certain time periods. That game is no longer available. There’s certainly people who play League of Legends or DOTA that feel the same way, though I wouldn’t know - the game they liked was at a certain point in its development, and since then changes have made it no longer the game they like. Same applies to a lot of MMOs - I liked Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and others, but the games I like no longer exist even though the games technically exist.
The problem isn’t easily solved either - no updates may make some people happy but others will not be happy. The resources probably don’t exist to continue splitting the game and maintaining a stable version of an online game at each iteration, and even if they did, the player base would become too diffuse to be able to actually keep the game enjoyable with sufficient players. But it might be a fair criticism to say that updates come too fast for some of these games, and we need more time between them, or various other things. And there’s nothing wrong with people just griping, even if it’s something that can’t reasonably be stopped.
NFT games and using cryptocurrency in games could - hypothetically - have their place, but “investing” in crypto as a way of making money (instead of as a way to take control of money back from central banks) is never going to let that happen. They are a dead end feature solely due to human greed, not due to a flaw in integrating games with a wider decentralized network.
Star Citizen is not and never was a scam. It took 10 years, but that video of the seamless transitions from space to atmosphere to landing zone to city and back is about an already available feature, only the better graphics and a couple map updates shown in the video are unimplemented.
The people who hate on Star Citizen should hate on games like Decentraland and Star Atlas, which take the early access model and abuse it. You should especially hate Star Atlas, which actually is everything bad you’ve heard about Star Citizen but with worthlessly unimplemented NFTs for the “pixel starships”. Also note that Star Atlas ships appear to be weird amalgamations of Star Citizen ship designs, but the (stated) Star Atlas ship role counterparts cost 3x the original price of backing Star Citizen the moment the site for Star Atlas was up.
Regardless of all the above, its my money that I spent on Star Citizen. I’m getting really f-ing tired of being judged for that, especially because I am in a position where I can live in relative comfort but do NOT have the money, neurophysical ability, or social influence to actually improve reality. Building an escapist space fantasy and supporting a community that just wants to have fun is a far better reason to make a video game than taking preorders for games that are tied to draconian DRM software like EA and Ubisoft, or building a pyramid scheme based on a cabal of cryptobros like the “creators” of Star Atlas.
Being patient is fine once. I enjoyed watching Star Citizen grow. I think we need to admit that ALL triple-A now have a 10-year development schedule, and that we need to re-evaluate whether every game needs the player to make a commitment to enjoy the game without buying in-game content. I dedicate myself to LEGO Brawls, Crossout and OpenTTD, I have the time to play Star Citizen too but that’s my limit. I can’t dedicate all my time off to a game after that. Maybe games need to be shorter again?
The only thing I agree with you in any of these is that they are probably indeed unpopular opinions, so gj I guess.
On the topic of MMOs, I want to point out that I generally avoid them. I think they can be done well, I just think they’ve been captured by the “do dailies to progress” perspective where you miss out if you don’t dedicate your life to it.
I want to make an MMO that respects the player’s time. The best way I can think of it working is for it to be cyclical. As in, you play until some in-game event happens (my preference is a large guild battle over some resource), then the world resets and the winners get some boon and everyone carries something forward to the next round (new players pick a starting perk). Cycles should be relatively short (days, maybe weeks, and definitely not years), and each cycle should bring something new to the game. I would play that, but I’m definitely not playing a longer game like Star Citizen.
Bit late, but your last point reminded me about Foxhole, a top down war game, which have these mmo like bits, and also has a cyclic wars, but these don’t give any advantage in the next war.
I don’t play it, but the biggest downsides I heard are 1) losing ground on the battlefield (progress) while logged out, as you can’t help your faction while offline, and 2) the players working in logistics (collecting ores to craft supplies for the frontline) find that gameplay loop repetitive/boring, while its crucial for the faction victory.
I guess it makes sense this is one of the biggest hurdles in pvp mmo, since in pve mmo the enemies wait for you, and it isn’t possible to lose major progress, especially offline. (random thought: is Rust a pvp mmo? That’s kinda cursed.)
The other problem with cyclic games is the non existent progression, since things reset. Most mmo players do the 10+ hour grinds on quests for the shiny thing or the prestige titles, like getting lv99 in Runescape. Even in Escape from Tarkov at the end of wipe most players stop playing, since they feel it would be a waste of effort.
The idea of boons or things that carries over is interesting, but of they stack through multiple wipes there could be a super guild who gets an unfair advantage.
So yeah, surprisingly, game design is hard (also I dont have any gamedev experience, just like thinking about it)
I’m thinking of allowing players to configure an AI to work while they’re out. So they can leave their character harvesting resources on loop, doing simple fetch quests, and perhaps a set of actions to run if attacked. That way you can’t just wait until a lot of them are offline to storm their area, but being offline would have a penalty.
I also want to make a mobile app so you can update the AI controlling your character at any point, as well as engage in trades while “offline.”
I’m planning on some kind of “perma-death” as well, so if you die, you lose your character, but you get an XP gain boost until you’re back at your old level. The idea is you have a “soul” that inhabits other bodies, and that soul helps the body gain new skills, though it doesn’t need to be the same skills you had last time. So you could go from a mage to a tank and get the same boost.
The boon would merely jumpstart that process in the next game, like maybe you get a one-time XP gain boost, it’s easier to find resources, etc, but those effects would either only last until your first death, or not be useful in the late game. So you get a temporary benefit, but your faction also has a target on its back.
I’m still working out the details, and I don’t have time to work on it anyway, but I think it would be an interesting experiment. Maybe I’ll try out a smaller version of it in 2D or something to play with the mechanics.
If you’re not designing the NFT game around the profit and trading aspect - then the NFT is pointless and you could just make a game with tradeable assets registered to a conventional relational database.
Aka: What MMO’s, browser social platforms and Steam itself has been doing successfully for more than a decade before NFT’s showed up.
It’s a technological dead end (in gaming) even without the greed, because the use cas is already done cheaper, simpler and better.
I don’t like Outer Wilds. I played it. I beat it. It was irritating almost all the way through.
That’s certainly the unpopular opinion, I loved that game!
Oh yeah I’m totally aware it is an unpopular opinion. I feel the need to bite my tongue every time there is a thread recommending it because I know I’m in the minority, and the person receiving the recommendations will probably enjoy it :)
Lmao I was just thinking about buying it during this steam sale
You’ll probably love it lol
A lot of people I talk to think that PC is the best platform. I agree that it is versatile and has the most options. I can’t stand playing games on my PC at this point, though. I spend all day fixing computers at work. I don’t even want to look at a computer after clocking out. To be able to play games for PC, but not use a computer, I’ve decided to get a Steamdeck.
Yup, this is it. One of the major benefits of the Steam Deck is how they’ve consolized the experience. I can’t wait until they fully support a regular gaming PC deployment of SteamOS. I’d drop Windows in a heartbeat. The reduction in flexibility is worth it to just be able to turn on the PC after a month and just play a goddamn game instead of troubleshooting & updating for 45 minutes first.
Ask around the Linux gaming communities, some of the distros are in a really good place for gaming. I’m thinking of making the leap myself now that I’ve been enjoying my steam deck for a while.
Huh, I’m a software engineer, and when I get home, I’m excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.
I’m not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that’s what you don’t like? I find the Steam Deck’s defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.
Just curious how long you’ve been in your field?
I used to feel the same way but burnout slowly set in. I’m back to enjoying it again, but it did take a long break at home from the computer.
10-15 years. I’m now in a lead position, so I have management and planning responsibilities, but I still get 50-75% of my time to do dev work.
I have never experienced burnout, at least from SW dev, though I’ve certainly burned out on projects/companies. In fact, when I get burned out at work, I often relax by building SW at home (basically angry coding). For example, we had an overcomplicated bit of code at work, so over the weekend I built a POC that’s a lot more elegant.
My main limitation here is that I have kids, so I don’t get a ton of time after work (like 1-2hrs/day, on a good day). I also alternate with reading and playing video games because I also really enjoy those.
I guess I just really love my field. I’m hoping to retire early-ish so I can have more time to work on my projects.
I don’t like using computers after work because it feels like work just turning it on. Idk why.
That’s fair. I just don’t have the same experience.
My hobbies are very similar to my day job (software engineer), but in a different tech stack (Python @ work, Rust @ home) and building different things (business logic @ work, distributed systems and games @ home).
Maybe it helps that I’m forced to use macOS at work (which I dislike), and I get to use Linux at home, so it really feels like separate things.
But then again, many of my coworkers don’t have personal projects at home, so I’m probably just weird.
The OS differences probably help. I use Windows both at work and at home, so there’s no difference. And it seems like every time I fire up my PC, something is wrong with it. I avoided fixing a problem for 6 months because I couldn’t handle it emotionally after work lol. My hobbies are not tech-related other than gaming. I went into IT because the thing I have always been the least bad at is working with computers. I don’t have any other skills I thought would help me make money when I was exploring options at college
I use my pc on my TV with a controller for this reason. It limits the games I can play since so many aren’t optimized for controller but I generally like the games on PC better. I also use my pc for movies and TV as well so it serves as an overall entertainment center.
I have a ps5 for all of my media needs and PlayStation exclusives and all that. My gaming computer is also getting pretty old and doesn’t run stuff as well as it should. A Steamdeck is straight up an upgrade at this point. I’ll keep my PC around for older games I can’t play on other platforms, but I am pretty much fully embracing consoles lol. I also don’t have the funding to constantly upgrade a computer, and consoles seem to last a long time and have just the initial costs.
You can use a controller
Probably very hot take for this community. The $1 for every hour of enjoyment is a stupid metric. People will spend upwards of $10 for a 2 hour movie or $5 for an hour-long album. Games have components of many pieces of media and many treat it’s worth lower. I’m all for saving money but it’s a different discussion regarding the value of the medium, especially when we just discuss it as the consumer-mindset of “hours of my life” vs. experience of enjoyment
I absolutely agree.
I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that’s expensive is still a good value. For example, I’ve spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I’ve gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I’ve gotten incredibly good value from it.
I’m patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I’ll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I’d buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don’t have a lot of friends who play games, so there’s no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.
I don’t really mind bad PC ports as I play them with an xbox controller anyway and they’re usually cheaper and better than if you bought them on console
I mean “bad port” can mean a multitude of things. From bad controls, bad performance, DRM issues and crashes to the game refusing to work at all.
Sometimes all of them.
Yes, you’re right. I was thinking of ports with very few changes from the original, bad kbm controls, no new graphics settings type of thing
Controllers are better than keyboard and mouse.
I play almost exclusively on PC, but I really don’t like playing most games on keyboard and mouse. Analog sticks are better for movement, triggers are better than mouse buttons, and wheel select is more fun than hotkeys. My main complaint is a lack of modifier keys (probably solved with buttons on the back), but overall the ergonomics is much better.
I paired my mouse with an Azeron. 99% of the time it’s way better than the keyboard. The other 1% is split between keyboard and controller.
Between the two though I much prefer keyboard/mouse over controller, but there are some games I would rather use a controller for. But as far as ergonomics go, I agree with you.
Its ok to be wrong buddy, you do you. 🙂
I’d agree that they’re better in every way except for precision and control complexity. Add in gyro and you get pretty damn close, but even then, I think it’s easier to be a better shot on a mouse in shooters.
That and it’s very very difficult to play something with complex controls on a controller like Arma, or trying to play competitive StarCraft or something, the controller would just always, invariably be worse
Yes, certain games just don’t make sense on controller, I still don’t understand how people play Cities: Skylines on console, for example. So I absolutely use keyboard+mouse when it makes sense.
However, most games work well on controller, so most of my gaming time is with a controller. In fact, ever since I got my Steam Deck, I’ve played less on my desktop because the built-in controller is so nice, and it’s more convenient since I keep it next to my bed.
I think it does boil down to different games work better or worse on different control types, so I don’t think either one can truly be better or worse than the other, just better or worse in certain situations.
I think I would agree that a controller with rear buttons and gyro is better at a wider variety of games than M&KB
Sure, but among PC gaming enthusiasts, preferring controllers is an unpopular take. I want to see more innovative schemes like gyros so I don’t need a kb+m nearly as often.
I agree, I was just disputing the absolute, unconditional wording of your original comment where you say they’re better than M&KB, not that you prefer them, or that they’re better for most or certain types of games.
I’m actually a huge lover of the Steam Controller, it’s my daily driver, and unless I’m playing a shooter I use it for nearly everything. Definitely right there with you on innovative control schemes and the flexible power of a controller with custom mapping.
Fair. And I need to try the Steam Controller again. I like the triggers, but I had trouble with the touch pads, but maybe they’ll grow on me.
I’d really like a Steam Controller 2 with two sticks. But maybe that’s just me not “getting” the trackpads on the original.
I quit all other controllers cold turkey to force myself to get used to it, and it worked. That being said there are probably games where a second stick would work better, but I haven’t found any where I had to change to my pro controller or something else because it was uncomfortable. The pro controller is around for the Switch or if somebody else wants to play on my PC.
However, the Steam Controller is essentially the “PC gaming of controllers”, where getting it to work just how you want sometimes requires setup of the config depending on what works best for the game. For example, you may have disliked the touch pads because they were set to mouse joystick mode, where you must drag across them to create input, which can work better for aiming weapons. I usually set the pads to “joystick move” which means the entire pad is the full range of motion of the simulated joystick, and simply touching anywhere on the pad will pull the joystick to that point in its range, instead of touching, establishing a center point, and then dragging to dictate how far you’re pulling the virtual joystick, like you might find in simulated joysticks on some mobile games. I find joystick move much more natural and comfortable for general camera control and things like radial menus.
Similarly, I despise gyro that’s always on, but love gyro that can be activated at will by holding down a button, I’m a big fan of gyro only on ADS in shooters, for example. It’s hard to explain that sort of stuff over text, hopefully my joystick description made enough sense. Essentially, the Steam Controller can work amazingly, but sometimes how well it feels depends on how much you tweak the controls to your preference, and of course, most of that setup only needs to be done once or twice, then you can just make a few templates and slap them on games where you know how you’d prefer it to work, and then make minor tweaks from there. Unless you do something stupid like map controls to play an MMO, like I did. That requires a ridiculous complex layout. I do adore that the rear buttons are not just mapped to another controller button, but are unique inputs on their own, it opens up a lot of options for control schemes.
If they could find a way to make another joystick fit on the controller then I’d be all for the options, the Steam Controller is already a chunky boy, though, but I find a bigger controller more comfortable anyway. I hope the success of the Steam Deck sparks a new Steam Controller revision, but time will tell.
I play on PC and for me if it’s first person it’s gotta be KBM to get immersed into it but if it’s 3rd person I use controller as it helps to feel like I’m controlling the person. I dunno how to explain it, it makes sense to me
I wonder if it’s camera control? Twin stick movement isn’t really similar to how people move, whereas a mouse (head) and keyboard (legs) is a bit closer.
For me though, I think I just like having my hands close together, and a controller gives me that, whereas kb+m just feels like an unnatural position to be in.
Different strokes I guess, but controller feels a lot more natural to me and I only use kb+m if the controller gets in the way (e.g. Total War, Cities: Skylines, etc).
My game time is probably a 50/50 split with console and pc but I prefer using a controller whenever I can. It’s just more comfortable to me as I can lean back and relax.
Yup. The main reason I play on PC is cost. I already have a PC, so buying a mid tier GPU every few years is much cheaper than buying a new console and paying console prices for games.
I have sticks, motion controllers, a wheel, and various regular controllers, as well as the classic kb+m, and I just find myself coming back to the kb+m for nearly everything. Virtually every time I preferred using something else was because of poor control design (GTA V flying vehicles), driving and simulation experiences (racing, truck/farm/flight sims, Elite Dangerous), and VR (you can’t read the keyboard when it matters).
The extreme accuracy of a mouse and versatility of a keyboard make them extremely hard to beat. I even play Monster Hunter games with both because believe it or not, there are advantages on each side.
Yeah, I’ll probably never give up my kb+m for everything, but when a controller makes sense, I’ll absolutely prefer it. I’ll even use it for most FPS games, with a gyro, it just feels good.
Gyro for fine tune aiming is a million times better than mouse in my opinion.
Also I would say even if it wasn’t, the left stick makes up so much more for what you would get out of using a keyboard and the inneficiencies of having to swap fingers around the keyboard to both move and interact etc, than what a mouse gains over the right stick.
Also bumper jumper is always the best for fps
I enjoy battle royales and have hundreds of hours in Apex, but what I really don’t like about them is that they change all the time. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of annoying to put a game down for a year and come back to a completely different experience. You don’t even get the choice, in Apex especially I know they rotate through the maps that are available, so the one I prefer might be impossible to play on for 6 months straight. For this reason, Apex can never be as good of a game to me as Titanfall 2 still is to this day.
Plus, when the official servers are taken down a decade from now, there will be literally no way to revisit the experience. The only things left of the game will be recordings and memories. This is yet another thing that is better with more traditional games, where players can make their own custom servers (like Northstar for Titanfall 2).
I played fallout 3 a lot, was my favorite game for a long minute.
I could never get into fallout new vegas. I tried many times but it just never grabbed me. It just didnt feel right.
Where fallout 3 feels like a desolated wasteland, new vegas feels like a generic western with added monsters, it’s got none of the charm of 3 despite every other aspects being better
I tried so hard to enjoy New Vegas but honestly I think it just had too many choices that all fucking sucked. Tons of factions, and I pretty much hated them all.
In hindsight I think I’ll try to replay it and go full Mr. House.
Just wondering, did you play them on consoles? Because I played FO3 on PS3 back in 2011(?) And it worked fine but when I tried picking up NV a few years later, I had to drop it because of all the bugs.
Pc. I never even encountered any bugs. I just couldn’t get into it
Have three unpopular opinions:
Bethesda games are insanely overrated and absolutely carried by the modding community. Do I enjoy Skyrim? Hell yeah! …With 500 mods.
Everything below 50-60 FPS is stuttery, unsmoooth, and unenjoyable no matter the genre.
There‘s a place and time for „Ubisoft formula“ games (aka. tick off 500 icons on a map), cause sometimes I don‘t wanna think, I just wanna mindlessly walk around with semi-purpose and do stuff.
I love unpopular opinions.
2&3 completely agree
On 1 though, I agree IF every other game embraced the modding community as much as Bathesda games do. GTA is the only other game I heavily mod, and in comparison it’s such a pain in the ass, the game engine is not designed to support it so you get weird bugs, just overall a worst experience.
So I think it’s fair to rate the base game highly for its support of mods. They’ve decided that providing a great experience for mods is a high priority for them. Maybe they can make the base game better if they don’t have to make it compatible with whatever modders want to throw at it.
Disagree with 2. You get used to it, especially when playing more older games. After a few hours of Ocarina of Time even the 20fps works eventually lol
You get used to 2 as long as the framerate is consistent. If you’ve got a smooth 30 then you can get used to it. If it’s constantly jumping around from 30-50 or something you won’t be able to stop noticing it
That’s true. Lower but consitent fps is better than higher but unconsistent.
I’d rather play Paper Mario than any of the newer 3D ones.
I mostly agree, but odyssey was a bit of a breath of fresh air for me