It’s no secret that the bulk of AAA games market revenues come from in-game purchases , mostlyfrom live-service games. It’s also impossible to ignore that the live-service market is fiercely competitive....
Multiplayer games offer a neverending challenge. There’s always a better opponent.
But that is exactly the problem with it. The vast majority of people don’t have the free time to spend on a given game to compete with those who do spend most of their time on it.
I’m not expecting to beat Daigo Umehara any time soon. I’m just aiming to beat the next guy in front of me. And the next. And the next. No matter what my skill level, there’s always a challenge. That doesn’t mean I have to be the very best, quite the opposite.
That’s fair. I love the gunplay of Apex (and can ignore all the battlepass monetization) but I could never just goof around in that game like I could in Halo 3 multiplayer, Planetside2, or TF2. I often ended up back in the queue after matching with people with thousands more hours of expierience. The alternative gamemodes were the most fun because I got to have fun while losing, which is less of the focus in today’s shooters due to the super high skill ceilings. Competative games are mostly made with professional teams in mind now. That’s what I want a return to and why I like Helldivers 2 so much.
Sure… but that is what skillbased matchmaking is for, to set you up with a game with people precisely on your level.
99% of people playing a multiplayer game with good matchmaking are always going to have a winrate trending towards 50%, that is by definition the function of skillbased matchmaking!
But that is exactly the problem with it. The vast majority of people don’t have the free time to spend on a given game to compete with those who do spend most of their time on it.
I’m not expecting to beat Daigo Umehara any time soon. I’m just aiming to beat the next guy in front of me. And the next. And the next. No matter what my skill level, there’s always a challenge. That doesn’t mean I have to be the very best, quite the opposite.
That’s fair. I love the gunplay of Apex (and can ignore all the battlepass monetization) but I could never just goof around in that game like I could in Halo 3 multiplayer, Planetside2, or TF2. I often ended up back in the queue after matching with people with thousands more hours of expierience. The alternative gamemodes were the most fun because I got to have fun while losing, which is less of the focus in today’s shooters due to the super high skill ceilings. Competative games are mostly made with professional teams in mind now. That’s what I want a return to and why I like Helldivers 2 so much.
Sure… but that is what skillbased matchmaking is for, to set you up with a game with people precisely on your level.
99% of people playing a multiplayer game with good matchmaking are always going to have a winrate trending towards 50%, that is by definition the function of skillbased matchmaking!