There are plenty of multiplayer games I adore. However, it seems like every community has these "brain dead", patronizing, or out right toxic elements that are just nasty. I'd rather debate politics than make suggestions in some gaming communities because the responses are just so ... annoying.
As an example, I once dared to suggest that a game developer implement a mode to prevent crouched status from rendering on death cams so that players that are bothered by t-bagging could avoid it (after a match where a friend rage quit because someone just kept head shotting him -- possibly with cheats -- and then t-bagging). This post got tons of hate, and like -50 upvotes on reddit because of course someone should be forced to watch someone t-bag them.
Another example on a official game forum... I made a forum post suggesting Bungie use Mastodon (or really just something else being my intent)... The response I got was some positivity but mostly just "lol nobody uses that sweetie" and other patronizing comments.
Meanwhile studios themselves often seem to be filled with developers that understand this stuff is a problem, and the lack of sportsmanship (or generally civilized attitudes) does push away players. It just doesn't make sense to me that no studio is saying "get lost" to these elements or implementing anti-toxicity features. I just want to play games with nice normal people, is that really so much to ask?
I've only heard this take from cringe twitch streamers... and suffice to say I don't think it's a good one.
I don't want someone to lose because they're too mad to aim... it's a game. We should all just be playing to have fun, not treating it like some psyop.
Edit: Also plenty of what I'm talking about here is outside of an actual match as well/forum behavior.
if someone can't handle their emotions after getting Ferrari peeked, should they really be playing a competitive game?
the mind games are the fun, playing against your opponent is all about getting in their head and positing is ways that they don't expect
the forum thing tends to go along the same way, people like the games for the things they like and changes them is always gonna be controversial
It's not about what someone can "handle" it's a game. It should be about what someone "enjoys" or "likes."
A victory based on throwing your opponent off their game by being a jerk is no victory in my book. It just makes the person doing those things a jerk.
I guess we just have a fundamental difference in our understanding and opinions on what a multiplayer PVP game should be
... and to be clear, I think that's okay.
But, I don't think those that want a multiplayer shooter (or game in general) to be a mind game should be able to force that on everyone else. I just want my games to be games.
Like, even if it changed how match making worked, I'd personally prefer to just avoid that stuff entirely. I can "deal" with it, it's just not fun/annoying to me.
Ultimately, I think just being able to visually "disable t-bagging" and "disable emotes" while dead as options in major shooters would be fairly easy to implement options.
For the people who don't want "that experience" they can just ... turn it off.
For the people that do, they never need to know whether it's on or off... just like they don't know if I have a profanity filter on... or if I've got voice coms muted... etc
if you've got voice cons off you're just bming your teammates at that point tbh, I understand muting enemies and specific players
the emote things never gonna happen in things like fornite cuz that's where they make their money from.
tho I will say rather than this silly disable the games should just have a freeze cam option that just posts up a pic of your corpse, tho this will contradict the emote moneymaker strat mentioned before
It's pretty typical that my team is all friends on discord or similar 🙂
Definitely see the issue with monetization... but also depending on the game the emotes have value outside of this particular situation.
Freeze frame (or just a black screen) is a good idea
stacking and fucking around with friends is def a fun way to go,
everything involving money is always hell tbh