"Dead Competitive Games"

I tend to agree with points 1 and 2 with battle passes and content creation contributing to this mentality. I will say I have lamented the unlockable cosmetics in games. Back in the early Call of Duty games I loved using dumb loadouts and playstyles to unlock cosmetics that I could then wear and show off that I put in the time and effort to earn this ridiculous thing. Nowadays these unlocks seem much less common in games and for me detracts from the experience. More cosmetics seem to be locked behind additional purchases in the game rather than unlocked through various means.

However, for 3 I can provide my reasons from straying away from PVP. For me it is all the hidden ranking systems in PVP games that frustrate me to no end. It seems like every major PVP game nowadays has a hidden ranking system that "balances" the lobby. 90% of the time this seems to result in a couple of PVP gods paired with a couple of blueberries (slang for low-skill, random, typically portrayed by blue dots on your radar). This is not balanced and just results in the blueberries being cannon fodder for the better players. I'm not talking about ranked modes either, this happens in the normal,m casual modes and it makes it an awful experience because it is always sweaty. This isn't my fever dream either devs admit to this. For example, here is a quote from the Halo devs regarding Halo Infinite's matchmaking


Does my performance in social impact my MMR in Ranked?

In some instances we will leverage your performance in social to build a baseline/starting point when starting your ranked journey. We use data from all over the game, both at a playlist level and game mode level, to approximate your skill rating in other playlists if you’re playing them for the first time. The reasoning for this is to get you closer to an accurate skill rating faster and thus reduce the number of unfair matches we make for you and the people in your games.

Personally, this would result in a completely inaccurate measurement of my skill. When I play casual matches I'm not trying to slay the lobby. I'm using goofy setups or trying different things out because it is CASUAL. It is not supposed to reflect my actual skill at the game. But devs seem to have lost the forest through the trees with this and want to make the game "fair" no matter the mode.

Also my own personal gripe with modern ranking systems is the "personal" skill evaluation in team based games. When Overwatch released my brother and I wanted to play because we had fond memories of old days playing Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2 and wanted to enjoy a team based shooter again. We load up and go into ranked to get placed. My brother typically plays a DPS or tank and I typically play a healer and I pocket heal him as we cause chaos. Well at the end of our placements my brother got place TWO whole ranks above me even though we play all of our games together. The only reason we could think of as to why this happened is because he did "better" because he had way more kills (obviously) and while I was contributing to the team through healing, the game didn't value it as much. The worse part of it all is that Overwatch had (maybe things have changed, idk) a system where you couldn't play with people more than a rank ahead of you, so I couldn't even play with my brother unless he ranked down or I ranked up. Needless to say I never played that game again.

I miss the days when you would go into lobbies and sometimes you would stomp people and sometimes you would get stomped. To me this had more of a fun factor because you could at least feel like a god occasionally. Now you are just another meat shield in the trenches, day in and day out.

I don't have much experience of current online gaming but I def agree that people seem to jump onto "hot" games and then off them when the next "hot" game comes out. There is probably a fast "death spiral" after that as less-players online makes the game less attractive. People calling them "dead" probably adds to this too!

I've only ever played 2 games online *properly* Quake 3 on Dreamcast and Street Fighter 4 series on 360 - though I've played a few others more casually. I've always preferred playing online against random people rather than friends - I have some heart issues and I like to relax in-between games. You can't really do that when a friend is waiting on you. But even so, I think I would still prefer fighting different people each time. Partly because I use the online mode to get good in these games - it's a fun way to learn and it doesn't matter if you are bad to start with. BUT most people seemed to take it ultra serious. I've known people who wouldn't even go online, until they could be sure they would win most of their games!

Around that time, I bought MOTW for my 360 and there was never anyone in the lobby - I used to keep myself there for 30 mins waiting on a number of occasions. That was my first experience of a real "dead" game - I was sure out of the thousands of people who owned this game, that someone must appear at some point! but no one *ever* did

To a lesser extent, this happened with the original SF4 when Super SF4 came out. I jumped back to vanilla SF4 at one point and there were just the same few people there creating matches. If that can happen to a super popular game - it must happen even more to the less popular games

I don't think most of these people know what a dead game is haha. I played the damn Shadowrun FPS game on the Xbox 360 down to the point when there was only like 10 players left worldwide, so I know what a dead game is.

On the other hand, I have been playing Helldivers 2 since launch and they call it a dead game.... but there is consistently 60k to 80k players, which boggles my mind because, CLEARLY that isn't a dead game.

I think point #2 is the main culprit here though. Some random commenter on YouTube says the gamebis dead so everyone copies them.

I also think that people compare every game to the player numbers in COD and Fortnite, which is just ridiculous.

The same people will also call a game a FLOP if it only sells 2 or 3 million copies, which is insane.

Man, when they introduced Terry to SF6, you could tell who the real fans were 😆. So many dudes got schooled if they anything bad about Terry lol.

Hopefully CotW does decent though. I'm sure it'll be "dead" after two weeks when the next outfit drops in Fortnite.

Hey man, better than, "Terry... that guy from Smash Bros"

Ah yes, 3rd strike Online edition. Take me back to when you had a handful of decent players and everyone else didnt know how to parry.