At that point they might as well let you plug in a mouse to the console and then you might as well just buy a Steam Deck anyway.

SBMM has existed yes, but it was essentially random because the priority was always low queue times over anything else. It wasn’t until the later cods like Advanced Warfare where they started prioritising it more and then MW2019 really killed the matchmaking experience by relying on skill as a factor way too much (this by the way, is the issue we are talking about now when we refer to SBMM, not ancient systems like TrueSkill that didn’t have much sway, except for stopping the best of the best matching with the worst of the worst, which I would agree with being fine).

Call of Duty until ~2014 always prioritised queue times, same with the emergence of Battle Royales when they took over the online space for a while in 2017-2020. Fortnite had the quick queues with little SBMM, if any, because queue times were the most important thing. Now you wait a bit longer get against half players similar skill to yourself and the rest of the lobby is filled with bots to speed up matchmaking times, it’s terrible and unfun.

That’s the issue we are talking about and it’s not an unpopular opinion. It’s nothing to do with my own skill, infact I have gotten worse at shooters in the last few years if anything as I have gotten older and I still don’t want SBMM. Back when I played Cod everyday on console I was pretty average, but slowly got better until I quit consoles in 2014. On PC I mainly played CS, which I became very good at yes. I was a bit better than average on Fortnite/PUBG and would win like 1 in 10 with a decent amount of kills. Now I can win like every game because it’s all bots. It’s boring. I can beat anyone now because I’m not matched with or against people who are better than me, I don’t learn anything.

I want to jump into a game and have fun, I want to lose some, I want to win some, I want to try in some, I want to goof around in others. The strictness of SBMM today prevents that from happening. I can’t join a lobby of people, lose to them and then try to beat them in the next game, because they reset the lobby after every match. Cod is also a lot less social because of this, you can’t make friends or enemies across matches anymore. These big multiplayer games have dropped fun, instead they want people to win win win so they keep playing and buy skins. That’s why people don’t improve anymore, there’s no challenge, every game is the same thing, same strategy required.

I played some mainstream games recently and they put you against bots and stuff for like 10 of your first games, I end up quitting because I just want to play versus players, every game wants this heavily curated experience and it sucks. Let players have fun again, if people want to play against bots, give them a mode to. If they want “fair” games against players, they can play ranked. Just give us our casual lobbies back.

Not true, unless you are in the absolute bottom 1%. We all enjoyed games before SBMM, it only became a real thing in like the last 6 years, don’t know why everyone is suddenly scared to have a challenge every few games.

Before SBMM you stomped some and got stomped in some, no matter your skill level, because you sometimes had worse players and sometimes some better players. It made the big wins more exciting and forced you to try new things to win vs better players. It’s incredibly bland playing against the same skill level, every game is predictable and you will never improve as a player.

They are low elo forever because they only play low elo games. There are way more low elo players than not, so without SBMM they wont get stomped all the time, it was never like that before so I dont get why we are pretending it will be now.

This is honestly why the average player is worse now than they used to be.

Play ranked for SBMM, casual mode lobbies should be random and diverse.

Because the modes are casual, I should be able to have a bit of fun, some games will be easy, some games will be harder. I can experiment with different styles, loadouts whatever. SBMM in casual modes ruins this, because every game turns into a sweaty slog.

You also dont improve at games past a certain point by killing bots and players just as bad as yourself. I got better by playing against and with the better players, the lobbies were more diverse which was more fun and better for learning.

Well yeah, naturally, how it always was. SBMM and the addition of bots completely killed many online shooters.

Console mindset, they don’t realise the only ones screwing them are the companies that create the consoles they buy.

Now remove skill-based matchmaking too.

There’s a few, like Openguessr too. But they are not really Geoguessr alternatives in the same way Geotastic is, with all the community features, I also like the transparency Geotastic has with running costs, I can donate to cover my own usage without overspending for profiteering like is the case with Geoguessr now.

Was good until they hiked the prices, removed free play and ruined the interface. Would highly recommend Geotastic instead.

The main writers have since left Rockstar. Dan Houser left in 2020. I feel GTA will lose it’s charm with this next entry, I hope I am wrong, but something just feels off. Either way, won’t be buying it until it’s on a good sale, reviews dependent too.

If it’s free to play, then some cosmetic mtx are fine, thats what I used to think, the problem is how egregious they have become. They are not designed as a way to support a game, they are designed to suck as much money as they can from you. Which is why I disagree with supporting them at all anymore.

Games should be a one-off purchase, with no extra added bullshit.

No, that’s just a raffle. They had mini games during the sales.

They kinda died along side the flash deals. I miss the crazy sales, but I understand why they removed them.

PC is the fastest growing market. Consoles are slumping and I think the return of Steam Machines done right would accelerate the market shift.

I was talking about the people buying the microtransactions. I should have made that clear, I thought it could be deduced, given Valve aren’t exactly ruining the game industry by stat tracking 1.7 million users, but I can see how it was confused.

Lmao… it’s not Steam hate, it’s the people buying the MTX. I wasn’t clear enough, my bad.

Thanks to them (the people buying microtransactions) for helping ruin the industry!

No, you dont understand, if a Chinese company owns 1 share, it is spyware!!1!1!!1!!!

Priced at MSRP + like 100-200 extra for the more premium cards in Europe. Just a clickbait article.

By that logic all games would need to be rated higher, as any game can be addictive for any one person.

Something about a mass grave.

Yeah, any game I deem worthy to play, is worthy of my money anyway, so I would rather buy them on Steam/GOG.

I have some free games on Epic, but havent even had the launcher installed for like 7 years.

The PC market is growing faster than the console market, the value of consoles has completely plateaued.

You can build a PC for just slightly more, an added cost you recoup anyway after a couple years. You can do a lot more with a PC than a console, you have upgrade flexibility, your library of games will always be playable, you can even emulate and play console games.

There’s no reason to buy a console if you put a bit of effort in, their only appeal is the initial plug and play, which you can do with a PC anyway if you buy prebuilt.

There’s probably loads of builds online with new components, I haven’t built a low end PC for a while, so I am not sure on the market. As I said though you have to consider the lifespan and the savings, even just 3 years later you have saved $360. And you can definitely build a PC that is better than a PS5 Pro for $1060, peripherals included even.

With discs falling out of fashion, games are absolutely cheaper on PC for patient gamers. As you say though, the savings do depend on what games you are interested in personally. Big publishers are much more stingy on giving discounts in sales.

The Arc cards are stronger than the PS5 and are like $200-250 new, you could get used RX 7600/6600XT for cheaper than that. There’s definitely paths to a PS5 equivalent PC for a similar price, and even if you spend $100, $200, $300 more, that pays off in 1, 2 or 3 years anyway.

Big games yeah, but I don’t buy those anyway myself. The 30% tax is what Xbox/Playstation take from each game sale. Steam on PC takes 30% too, but doesn’t require a subscription ontop of that to use their online services.

You can build a PC as powerful as a console for near enough the same price these days and you save massively in the long term from cheaper games and no subscription. If you have the know how. But yeah, the barrier of entry is lower for a console for sure, but that gap is only closing more and more each year with PCs becoming more accessible.

It’s still crazy to me that people will pay 30% tax on all their games and then fork over another $120/year just to be able to play them. Or in Playstation’s case, to not play them.

All they have to do is add a skin or some shit as a pre-order bonus and people will deposit money. It’s absolutely crazy, especially with the state almost every launch is in these days.

Big games are like 50% off after a few months anyway, no point buying those at all until then.

While you don’t technically own the DRM games you buy on Steam, it’s a whole world different than putting games behind subscriptions.

Ignoring graphical aspects. It might be good game, it’s just not a DOOM game other than in name and monsters. I played the shit out of the originals and I felt with D2016 they really captured the essence of it but with just a few new simple additions to keep it fresh, then when I started Eternal it felt like I was playing a different franchise, wall climbing and grappling hooks? The pacing was all off. Maybe the dev team moved on, I dont know, but I was left extremely disappointed.

Imo, they have downgraded each time.

2016 was a great reboot of the franchise, it felt like a modern version of the originals. It looked great and ran great.

Then Eternal added pointless wall climbing, loads of skills, put the whole game on rails. The start of the game is like a tutorial for 2 hours, good game design doesnt require you to tell me exactly what to do every 5 minutes. The graphics got downgraded with some shitty AA added, probably Temporal, I cant remember and the performance was down across the board. The game just didnt feel like DOOM anymore and was a poor continuation from 2016.

Now we have this forced ray tracing, probably going to require DLSS and shit. This has to be a case of Nvidia slipping cash right? No way they would be so stupid? It’ll probably be a case of updating to remove the requirement a few months down the line.

The last price hike was really the final straw, but I still have a grandfathered subscription. If any of this goes through, I will cancel and will probably never return.

What is even suggested in the survey is absolutely absurd.

Because people really like the core game, so they subconsciously (or consciously) look over the issues and refuse to admit issues even exist half the time (the amount of people who tell me it has no bugs… lmao).

Doing a playthrough at the moment and have come across a lot of the same bugs and issues from when I played at launch, along with new ones. The game definitely needed more time in development, but maybe the money was running out, I have no idea. It does seem like they rushed to finish a lot of questlines when you play and that list you posted is just concrete evidence of it.

Still I enjoy it overall, but won’t be buying their next game as quickly. Especially if they still don’t fix the fucking camera…

Hopefully this or DOS3 is a smaller more refined experience, there’s still so many bugs and narrative inconsistencies in Baldur’s Gate 3, I think they went a bit too big with it.

Yup, while keeping their mouth shut works for a lot things, it is awful for many others.

The point is, hardware is powerful enough for native 4K, but instead of that power being used properly, games are made quickly and then upscaling technology is slapped on at the end. DLSS has become a crutch and Nvidia are happy to keep pushing it and keeping a reason for you to buy their GPUs every generation, because otherwise we are at diminishing returns already.

It’s useful for use on older hardware, yes, I have no issue with that, I have issue with it being used on hardware that could otherwise easily run 4K 120FPS+ with standard rasterization and being marketed as a ‘must’.