So, I know this is a politics blog, but sometimes I do discuss other topics related to gaming, or rammstein and stuff like that, if it intersects with politics. And I guess to me, the state of modern gaming is "political". It's certainly economic, and has some political implications internal to the hobby.
I've made some posts before about the nature of modern gaming, and the differences between zoomers and millennials, and I even did discuss battlebit the other day and how refreshing it is.
Well, this week has been a big week for gaming for me. Both COD and BF have released their new seasonal updates, and I'm still sticking to battlebit.
BF I didnt even log in on. Part of it is not wanting to log in, and have the game not load, so I gotta restart it, and eventually after a few tries it loads, and then I end up just seeing a few minor updates that dont add much other than give me more grinding. And I remember everything i hate about the game these days and how they butchered the balance, so I go back to battlebit.
COD I did play. And it sucked. I stopped caring last season about the weapon grind figuring it would be easier to wait for the new season to unlock the guns. But then I get weird arbitrary challenges like killing people with an SMG without taking damage (which almost never happens, modern COD is generally you both run into each other at the same time, shoot at each other, take damage and whoever survives recovers and moves on to the next engagement). Or using ARs in a certain way that you almost never do because the concept is stuupid and doesnt work in this game to unlock that gun. It's dumb. And the new maps suck and are giant mazes with poor battle flow. And SBMM sucks. And the battlepass sucks. And man, this game feels like a job. Gaming shouldnt feel like a job, should it? No, it shouldnt. And then i went back on battlebit and had fun.
In a sense, battlebit ruined modern gaming for me. Because it lacks so many elements of modern games and feels like a blast from the past. While the grind is massive, it feels a lot more engaging and rewarding than COD, which feels like a chore, and even more so, the devs plan on fixing that recognizing its excessive. But honestly? That's the LIFETIME grind of the entire game. And it feels like a battlefield game from 10 years ago (like BF4).
They dont make games like this any more. AAA studios really got us stuck on a treadmill of endless grinding, and monetization, and battle passes, and honestly, a lot of modern titles dont feel as good as titles from years past. Sure they LOOK better. And superficially the gaming is still somewhat satisfying, but some design choices that are standard are just never a thing any more.
I really do feel like gaming is more hardcore than it used to be. Battlebit is the first game in a while that actually feels like a casual experience. And theres no battlepasses, no monetization, no SBMM, and it lacks so many elements of modern games. But you know what? Those elements make newer games WORSE. They make games LESS FUN. Modern gaming is a chore. It really feels like a chore, or a job.
And to some extent, modern gamers like gaming that way. If you demand games change to be more like they were 10-15 years ago, people will scream they're boring and there's nothing to do. Again, it's fricking zoomers. Millennials played games for gaming's own sake. We liked content, but we liked a quality experince. And gaming was never as hyper competitive as it is now outside of a handful of franchises like counter strike. And even counter strike has a simplicity to it that modern games just lack, as there's no real unlock system or progression there outside of skins.
Modern zoomers? They seem to like competitiveness. They like climbing ladders. They like grinding and having to put in tons of time to unlock system. They like battlepasses. They get bored when they run out of things to unlock or do and get bored. I admit, I do too, to some degree, but only because once i unlock stuff, nothing really incentivizes me to keep playing other than that. Not because i enjoy unlocking things, quite the opposite, it's that once i unlock stuff, im so burned out on the game i cant stand to look at it any more and put it down for a month until the next patch.
This isn't a healthy mindset. It's a matter of quantity over quality. Rather than gaming for its own sake, Im gaming just to unlock stuff, thinking it will make the game better, and then in reality i get bored and lack any desire to play at all.
And then once i get off the treadmill its hard to go back on. I go back on 2 years later and i lost all muscle memory with the mechanics, and im up against sweats who have been playing since launch and never quit, and i get wrecked, and yeah. Often times once i put an older game down unless its truly classic i never return, because the game is too difficult to relearn, the community too sweaty, and the amount of time it would take me to unlock content to catch up to the meta is just too difficult. THis didn't happen in the past. I often revisited games and adjusting to them was easier. But again, these were 2016 games and earlier. Later games became a nightmare to get back into. I tried apex legends again a couple months ago, i totally forgot how to use automatics properly and they feel like they handle much differently than they did years ago (games also often rebalance games radically where you revisit the game several years later and the gunplay is so radically different from launch it might as well be an entirely different game).
But battlebit once again feels like I'm back in like 2013-2014 again, playing BF4. It truly is one of the best MP games I've played since the planetside 2/BF4 days. And it's because it has that simple design, no excessive grinding via battlepasses, no SBMM, etc. It feels more like a game from that era, than a game from the modern era. And that's why i feel like people love it, including all of the people who are fleeing from battlefield, including the idiots who basically ruined the franchise. One thing I have in common with the weirdo class system virtue signallers in the BF community? We all like battlebit. It brings us back to an era where the franchise didnt suck and wasnt a divisive as it is today, and gives us something we all can be happy with.
So yeah, that's that. I'm not getting old and growing out of gaming. My mind is just rejecting the problems with modern gaming, and playing a new game designed like an old game makes me realize that yes, older games actually were better, and newer games have several design issues that mostly relate to monetization that make them suck.
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