Engagement Era gameplay
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When I tried BO6s MP for a while after launch (main zombies usually but the MP historically was worth some time investment) and while it absolutely felt the worst in terms of EOMM on a personal level I noticed the game was almost always close for whatever that game mode counted, so I started paying attention
Very VERY quickly noticed what was happening: EOMM pulling it's bullshit so people on whatever team was getting stomped would dip (no notif people leave and who looks at the scoreboard that regularly unless you notice something like I did) and then after maybe 25% of the match of one side being seriously down suddenly they'd get filled with a team either way over-skilled or blatantly cheating, managing to pull the score back in time to make it look "close' even though it was a stomp one direction for 25-50% of the match followed by a stomp the other fucking direction
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Yes. I caught on to this waaaaaaaayyyy back when League just starting getting traction, esports weren't really a thing, and I also played some Yu Gi Oh.
Both has the same sort of design, as ilæustrated nicely by this meme; the match is nearly always decided early, and for the rest of the game you're either just styling on the opponents, or you are getting styles on.
Victories didn't feel good, losses felt even worse, and I began to understand why people rage and break their keyboard. Games like these fuel such behaviour.
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There are steam forum posts about this.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2767030/discussions/0/591757960657544586/ this is a great example. Not sure if it's still the same tho
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I play OpenRA.
Late in the evening, I sometimes get a training session with a "pro".
We know who they are. No ranking, no skins, just the registered name. It's enough to inflict terror...
Good stuff.
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Not really sure how one sided battles is related to microtransactions tbh. All the WW1 game series games (Verdun, Tannenberg, Isonzo) and Enlisted are games I have played lately. Both to some extent have this issue at times and yet have very different pricing models. Verdun and Tannenberg is a single game to buy and that is it, Isonzo added a few premium cosmetic packs. While Enlisted is apparently really bad for grind premium stuff although tbh I haven't really noticed because you start with a rifle and a rifle kills people. Not really noticed a difference with any of the other rifles, they all kill people.
Some teams are just useless.
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I don't mind losing if it was a fun battle and that is generally the bit you remember. I have gone 15+ kills to no deaths in war thunder and lost before but its still one of the more memorable games. The enemy just keep on coming as they stomp over your entire team and you stand alone (likely due to a little bit of skill and huge amount of luck) and hold back the tide but in the end they still manage to capture the objective and you lose.
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This is why I've never really gotten into either League, Dota, or, lately, Deadlock. The matches are just too long and most of the length is padding.
Overwatch has its issues, but at least even the worst match is over after 15-20 minutes. And the stomps are even faster, reducing the amount of time you spend not having fun on either side.
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As you say, it goes back even further that SBMM, to the large scale abandonment of the dedi server paradigm in favor of auto match making.
Nearly no online games even have actual server browsers now.
Back in the late 90s through the 2000s to early to mid 2010s...
Nearly every online game was a dedicated server, or at least you throwing open a temporary server with your own custom control over maps and gamemodes.
Many dedicated servers were run by a person or community... and this enabled communities to form around them, enabled lasting relationships to be made, hell, probably most mods or clans for most of those kinds of games arose from that, and a lot of those went on to later become massively more expansive, start their own game studio and put out their own games.
Now thats almost all gone.
You... used to be able to get onto a Battlefield server and know the regulars, like a bar.
That promotes at least a baseline of basic manners and etiquette.
Now all you can do is look at a general conception of an entire game's community, because the player has no agency to actually choose to associate or not associate with certain people or groups.
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I've never once had to wait more than 5 seconds to start loading in to a match no matter what time of day or night it is. Literally no other game has ever done this. They're prioritizing their time-to-game over having actual players in your match, and this definitely means filling slots with bots. How egregious it is will depend on the time and day and current online player count. But when I'm instantly loading a full game of 10 people at 3am on a Tuesday I know something's fucky.
Other people have done actual research into the matter but I had my suspicions, just from playing the game, by the third day or so after release.
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Seems to be more complaining about the lack of it. The better the skill based matchmaking is the larger those yellow slices would be. But a lot of gaming companies know about the gambling mindset of players who want to roll the dice and hope they get in the lobby where they stomp the other team so they'll make the matchmaking not as good and make it a coin flip on whether your on the stomping team, so the yellow slice becomes smaller.
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Yeah after reading that I used tracker.gg to look at my match history and it seems like around 1 in 10 quick play matches were bot matches, I watched the replay of one and it was pretty obvious. No competitive matches at least
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I play a lot of MR, got matched with bots twice and both times I had to lose 3-4 times in a row. I can not see how bots is a issue with the game.
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Playing online in most of the mainstream games nowadays is just a shit show.
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Comp matches do have bots quite literally after a losing streak
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For now! I don't care if you want to keep a ~50% win rate but don't give people bots so they feel "better"
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I've got 1000+hours in League, and 330 in DOTA, and I've got to say, it feels much easier to uno reverse a DOTA match due to everyone being op in their own way
One time I killed Nature's Prophet that was 10 levels ahead of me just because I used blade mail (80% damage reflection) when he tried to nuke my Abaddon (damage heals you) and used the gold to carry the rest of the match
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I believe the biggest issue is more to do with matchmaking trying to provide engagement rather than good assessment of players' skills. This is obvious when you see systems where winning gives you a good amount of points/tank regardless of the opponents skill level, which just foments even more the want for easy stomps rather than good games.
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Do you have a source for this? I've only seen and heard of bots in quick play matches
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I dive for super earth and space marines when I want other people around because while teammates are nice and all, I know we won't lose (as often) due to player agency if someone has to get kicked (or drops, or dies)
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Yeah, that might be more accurate. Most of what I was thinking was in terms of MMORPG PvP arenas, or something like Sea of Thieves when you have two ships that get locked in a prolonged battle. Having one really good player going against a group of semi-coordinated average players can be a lot of fun, too! Like everyone ganging up on the really good Smash player (and still losing against them).
When there is no challenge at all, that's when it gets dull.
