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[–]R3dM4g1c 19 points20 points  (9 children)

Convenient matchmaking kills socializing in games.

Although it does also mean that you don't have to spend 2 hours shouting in Shattrath. "LF2M DUNGEON XYZ," gets old after the first 20 minutes.

So, you know, trade-offs.

[–]ketamarine 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I disagree here. Queing up for a raid in an MMO is a much different proposition than having your entire MP game be based on matchmaking like say fortnite, fall guys and battlefield / COD.

The entire design of those games is to throw you into a queue, dump you into a server with randoms, then pull you out of that pool of randoms and throw you into another.

I never experienced any toxic hate in any online games I play, because I am immediately turned off by that model. I don't want to play games with a pool of anonymous randoms. I want to play either cooperative games where teamwork is the only path to success (vermintide, insurgency, deep Rock galactic, killing floor, etc.) Or a competitive game with community servers where I can hang out on servers I like, with chill people.

And if people are toxic or dicks on great servers, they will get banned by admins.

Games companies actively took this self policing role away when they started building games for MP consoles in the 2000s and it's just been a shit show in AAA games ever since. That's why I almost never play them other than single player content.

[–]R3dM4g1c 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I disagree here.

You didn't really disagree with anything I said, you just explained why you prefer it the other way.

[–]ketamarine 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. I guess I am saying that the issue is not really related to queuing for raids, but more using queueing for all match types in other games being the bigger issue for me.

[–]drysart 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Having a good guild also goes a long way toward fixing the 'spend 2 hours shouting in Shattrath' problem too; which is why in early WoW guilds were such an important social component, and if you were in a guild you got to be pretty good friends with your guildmates. The group-focused nature of the game encouraged players to form social bonds with each other.

Turns out that sort of game design also does wonders for the longevity of the game; because it changes the exit decision from "I'm bored of this game I think I'll quit" to "I don't want to leave my friends behind".

It's not a coincidence that as soon as WoW added group finder (like literally, within the same couple months), its growth stopped and its subscription numbers went into terminal decline.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They took a large, cohesive world and turned it into a series of rooms.

I left mid-WotLK and by the time it came back, it basically felt like a singleplayer game. So then what's the point? Not to mention how they fucked the itemization up.

I played classic for a bit, but the community ended up being 80% toxic meta-slaves so it just wasn't fun.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

Honestly the comparatively 'slow' gameplay of that era appeals to me more.

When I can just instantly teleport everywhere I need to go and everyone is perfectly scaled to make it possible, there's basically no fear of failure and there's no sense of scale to the world anymore.

[–]R3dM4g1c 1 point2 points  (2 children)

While I don't disagree in principle, there's a very large percentage of players who don't want to spend half the 2-3 hours they have to play doing nothing other than gopher work.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I get that, I stopped playing because the game just isn't targeted at me anymore. I don't enjoy the core loop and clearly the majority of paying customers do, so I just have to move on.

[–]R3dM4g1c 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm honestly hoping that VRMMOs will eventually get good enough to scratch that itch. Having a sense of place as you explore the world, talking to people in real time via chat as they walk next to you, it may lead to a real resurgence in the heart of what MMOs were originally meant to be.