I have a serious topic I want to discuss amongst the gaming community. Some of you may not care, and many may even disagree with some of what I have to say. But I think it’s time that we, as a group, have this conversation posted somewhere. So this will be on a few forums. What is the real reason that games over the last few years have been so disappointing to gamers? Is it really the lack of content that we keep hearing about? Glitches? Bugs? Lack of feedback from developers or publishers? Not really. At least in my opinion anyway, but we’ll get to what I think soon.
To understand a bit about me and my time as a gamer I will tell you that I’ve been gaming my entire life, I was raised on video games. I remember when Halo: Combat Evolved came out, I played the SOCOM series all the way through many times and of course, I also played the Spyro and Bandicoot series. Since then, like most gamers, I went through the Halo franchise, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Star Wars, etc. In more recent years many of us went into things like the Division and Destiny, whilst continuing to commit to games like Battlefield, Fallout, and Call of Duty.
Some of these games we like, and some we don’t. We all know how intense game title feuds can be within the gaming community, not to mention the conflicts between PvP and PvE groups. As gamers we play and play, each with our own game that we love more than any other, yet we still sit on forums and complain about them, mainly about content (or the lack of). But is content truly the core issue here? As I said before, I don’t think that’s the case. Now that you know a bit about my gaming experience, I feel that it is fair for me to voice my opinion. What I think, specifically from what I’ve seen and heard from others; is that we as gamers are the core problem. Maybe it’s because of the modern gimme, gimme attitude that society has developed, or maybe it’s due to our inability to focus on a task for longer than 5 minutes. The world has sped up around us, yet gaming has felt like its slowing down. But again, is that really the case?
No. From what I’ve noticed (which is a big part of why games feel so short or simple) is that more gamers spend time looking up walkthroughs and how to guides on google than actually playing through the game and experiencing the challenges. A big part of gaming now is solving riddles and puzzles while in a combat scenario; which is sometimes too much for some people I know, but personally, I love it. I will use Destiny as a reference for this part (as it was my go-to game since its launch).
My clan was dedicated to helping less experienced players go through the raids and end game puzzles of the first Destiny. We started as a close group of real-life friends, over time expanding into an international clan involving gamers from the USA, Canada, and the UK. But looking back to D1, I really start to see how things have changed. We would go into the raids blind, spending hours attempting to learn how they all worked, this is something that we still do today (we don’t look anything up unless we literally can’t solve it after many attempts). Back then as I said though, we would have gamers ask us if we knew the raids and if we could teach it to them. So we would walk them through it, explaining each encounter as we went; letting the new guys and gals learn the mechanics. But then on Destiny 2 when someone would ask us to take them through the raids for the first time, they’d tell us that they’ve seen all the videos and guides on youtube, showing all the easy ways through each encounter, they just needed to get a team to help them through. Same goes for things like finding collectibles or discovering locations and lore. More people use guides to get everything in the first couple of days after a game comes out rather than actually spending an hour each day and searching through a region. Most people would send me links to pages for that kind of stuff, which I still never used. You see the difference though?
Immediately I was able to find why gamers are so desperate for new content, and that is only two examples of a thousand that I could write up. We have become so lazy with wanting to put in the effort for a challenge that we just look up the easiest strategy. This attitude towards gaming is causing an implosion on itself. We as gamers are taking the worst approach to games and then complaining about them later. It really is a sad reality. Is it possible that it’s the streamers and YouTubers that are a big problem here? I wanted to be one of them, I play so many hours in a month that I could do it easily. But then thinking about it, do I really want to feed that source of problems? Racing to post secret areas and new walkthroughs first? Do I want to support the cause of many of our issues in gaming? As it turns out, no. Why would I?
Another reason I feel gamers are the issue is the skipping checkpoints strategy in missions. (Again a Destiny example) In strikes, which are essentially side missions involving a few defend mechanics as you work through a linear route to a boss encounter; players often run passed many of the base level enemies that were supposed to be fought, rushing straight to whichever mechanic held them up for a duration of time. This is a frustrating group of players to get stuck with because of course, they’re usually the ones that run ahead and kill nothing, but then end up dying in a respawn restricted zone alone (which auto restarts the checkpoint even if the rest of the team is still alive). These players are, from what I’ve seen, the ones that complain about the lack of content…which I find absurd. And even if they aren’t always complaining, they are still ruining the fun for those that want to actually enjoy the game. I mean sure, maybe some games do need to buckle down with some new ideas, but it’s unrealistic to complain about content if you’re not playing the content that IS there. Games are meant to be played through, fighting the enemies, using your abilities to have fun and work together. What makes a game good should not be its abundance of content, but rather the amount of time you can spend playing it without losing the fun. I have logged thousands of hours on Destiny, Fallout, Battlefield, etc. Each game I play I commit to, and I have fun even after completing everything. It wasn’t until recently that I, as well as my friends, started to fall into this “more content” trap that gamers have set. I literally even found myself wanting more even though I was happy with what I had. It took a conversation with the clan for us to really realize the spiral of BS that gamers and streamers have been feeding the forums.
Moving on, I will use an example from a new game. Anthem. For most gamers, this was a let-down, which I fully understand. When it was first released in February, it was buggy as all Hell and basically unplayable. Loading times were too long, audio cut out, the servers would crash, etc. All of this is just the core game alone, not even to mention the drama going on within the studio (if anyone read the article about it). Essentially Anthem has been seen and rated as a failed game. Its lack of content is driving players away. But realistically, (as an owner of the game) I don’t get why. Personally, I feel that the story of the game was interesting, maybe lacking a concrete direction they wanted to go for sure, but I loved it. The mechanics feel amazing, the events are fun and new, and the flying is, simply put, next level. No game that I’ve ever played has felt quite as smooth as the combat and flying of Anthem. You feel like a genuine badass ripping around in an Iron man type suit (called a Javelin). The graphics are absolutely stunning and the potential for the games evolution and expansion is infinite. Bioware can literally do a million things with the game they have created, and now that they seem to have some sort of idea on a direction, they can do it successfully. What’s a big part of why I enjoy it over most games right now though? Customization, pure and simple. Changing your armor to look however you want with NO penalty to level or power is something I think all games should have. Being able to colour each part of your armor how you want, making each part metal, cloth, leather or whatever you choose. Even the ability to create your own colours for a truly unique look. This is something that matters a lot to me, as it in itself creates a lot of content. You can spend hours in the forge creating custom suits or grinding to purchase new armor.
We are also way too fast with jumping to conclusions about games. Anthem’s launch was a colossal fail yes, but immediately everyone said the game was the worst they’d ever played, yet it has been thoroughly patched and fixed, making it a truly wonderful experience. Destiny 2 had the same issue with things like the Black armory. Within 1 day of the content release, people were furious that they couldn’t beat the 1st forge challenge. They were actually mad that the first challenge required a bit of levelling up (Which should only take a few days). On that day, people were in the forums saying it was the worst content ever and Destiny was dead. With 3 more forges, an endgame puzzle, exotic quests and a raid still to come, they had decided that the first day dictated the entirety of the future of the game. How silly is that, honestly? Unfortunately by this point Destiny actually was dying out, but not simply because of the content, I truly believe the community was eating itself alive. The constant feuds between players and the toxicity in the forums was utterly ridiculous, putting me off of the game. That’s when I got into Fallout 76, another game everyone was upset about simply because of issues around launch. The Division 2 had a smooth launch which is why everyone raves about it, yet it is basically the same as the first game. Putting mag after mag of ammo into a single rifleman, bullet sponge the game really, but who am I to judge? It’s simply not my thing. And yes I know most games are like that now, but in sci fi or fantasy, it fits better than a modernish styled game.
Anyways, now I have to ask you as a gamer; what is it that makes games less fun or playable than back in the day? I want to know. Is it really content? Or is it the lack of focus you can have on a single game nowadays? Or maybe the constant potential that keeps getting missed and lack of customization? Please inform me of what it really is that’s dragging the gaming world down because I really want to solve this problem, or at least shed some light on what many gamers might be overlooking.
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