A time ago, I used to get a lot of joy from playing Multiplayer PVP games. Like, to the point that I loved to play Battlefield. Minecraft PvP was the worst thing that racked my nerves, Battlefield was playable when overlooking some gamer rage, and Call of Duty on the PlayStation 3 was a pretty fun time. Aside from the occasional hacker.

But since then, I've become easily affected by the 'addrenaline rush' of PvP multiplayer gaming, people have become increasingly toxic and unforgiving, and people still as much as ever do not understand what a Multiplayer Bot Player is for, and how a "bot multiplayer" mode literally preserves millions of old games.

So, by logic, an AI is better than a human at making Multiplayer fun. Now what?

The fun has been sucked out of the competition

This will be a pretty biased blog (and a pretty small sizer while I prepare more bigger, welcoming projects), but just hear me out for a minute.

In my personal experience with online multiplayer gaming, people can be really toxic. Some of my worst memories of gaming came from chat rooms in Online Multiplayer, mostly horrifying and surprisingly uncensored things coming from the freakiest and toxic of places. Of course, I've also made valuable friends from offshoots of online gaming, but that's not the point of today.

The point is that I stopped playing competitive games (and combat games) over the internet in public lobbies. As much as I'd love to blame bad moderation and bad seeds for that, you can't just point at ants and say "You caused global warming!", there's no correlation. This isn't a moderation problem, but a shifting needs problem. The truth is that my needs shifted too much to be even satisfied with this space.

The bigger issue is in plain sight

There is only so much you can blame staff for, before you have to shift the blame elsewhere. Yes, it's insane what people get away with on the internet nowadays. But it has no relevance to the fact that the space is not very friendly to people who cannot dedicate a lot of time to gaming. A literal minority (a majority?) of the market is being gatekept out of online gaming, because of one simple thing.

Imagine you are an overworked white collar worker. Today was stressful, your boss was breathing down your neck all day, and you want to destress. You want to play your favorite comfort game, Battlefield 1 and just have a nice fun game. So you queue up to the first server you see, and surely, this can't be that bad, right?

And then it turns out you are total dogshit, and getting owned by a sniper across the map that is arguing with several people in the chat over if using a sniper makes you unintelligent.

For somebody who is pretty optimistic and doesn't sweat a lot, this is no big deal. Yeah, they can happily accept they're out of league and try to find fun in the small things. Happiness in the small victories. But for a lot of the workers, casual gamers and anxiets out there, we just want to have some of our victories, too. We're not really asking to win a whole game, we just want to have fun on our own terms.

And when people flex their every domination in chat and pubstomps lobbies all the time, it's really hard to do that.

The problem isn't the chat, it's the gameplay

So what's the problem, if it's not chat moderation? Well, a mix of many things. Matchmaking is a flawed system for one, but there's also flaws with the Server Browser design, and a lot of other things that need to be read from the room.

We can point at people and say "you people recording trickshots ruin the game!", but do they really? Sometimes, the trickshots are entertaining and that might mitigate the frustration. Yeah, the trickshot lobbies suck, but sometimes it's pretty funny to get hit from across the map, so badly that you laugh the pain off. That's easy, it's funny, and it's some respect to the man who fired the shot.

But everybody is going to be different. Joe might find some fun in it and it might make his whole day from how mesmerizing it is to watch, but Jimmy might take serious offense to it and have his entire day ruined over it, because it's his fifth trickshotter in a row.

So the problem isn't really the people, in a way. It's the skill disparity. Who wants to play a game where their team is full of casuals, and the enemy is full of e-sports profesionals?

Where is the fun in winning, when you never win?

People suck at things. That's natural. A common piece of advice for people who want to improve at hobbies outside of gaming, is a simple and blunt "You're going to be bad at it at first! Just keep doing it for the fun of it!", and that's what works. I sucked when I first picked up Music Production, and I naturally improved in a flat, natural curve the longer I did it.

But that didn't stress me out. It's not as adrenaline pumping and stressful to produce some music, than it is to play a game where you shoot people. So why are we looking at the problem as people needing to get better at playing, when their job and real life might hold them back from such? Grinding Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 doesn't pay the bills or put food on the table, who has time for that?

The problem is more in the fact that not every game is going to be fit for somebody's skill level. Yes, that's going to be okay for a majority of games, people can play what they desire. If you decide that Don't Starve is too much to learn, but don't mind sinking all your time into The Forest, there's nothing wrong with that! But you can't really do the same thing with lobbies when you're queuing up for Search & Destroy for the 5th poor lobby in a row.

So the ideal compromise would be skill based matchmaking, right? People who have a lower skill ceiling can get into a shooter stress free, and avoid the people who are competitively toxic, and experience arousing joy when they kill beginner players. Right?

There is a flaw with every design path

Okay, cool, then here's a potential solution: just pair people together who suck ass! The game is equal for everyone, and people will love the game again!

Well... Not really. In theory, this seems like a wonderful idea, and I would agree that it is as great as it sounds! However, it is still subject to many problems. One being especially important for serious gamers: MATCHES TAKE LONGER TO FIND.

Sure, for a casual gamer that is more than willing to make coffee in between matches, it's not a big deal. It won't affect the office worker, or somebody like me who has lived with slow loading times half their life. But it does affect the professional, who spends his time professionally sniping and trolling. It also affects people who play obscure games, such as the fellas trying to brush the dust off their PlayStation 3, and the people playing games with less than a thousand players on at one time.

Among this, there is also the other breed of players: the smurfers. The horrible people who ruin the fun in gaming, who have gotten incredibly bored of pubstomping, by ruining the fun for the casuals and making Skill Based Matchmaking more nerve racking than it should be.

"Getting good" is not a fix, either

Okay, well the matchmaking idea is a bust. Smurfers? Absolutely not! People ruin the fun out of everything, and it's the reason stuff isn't free anymore! Surely, there's a solution that can be proposed, right?

No, "getting good" is not a part of the ideas...

And neither should "getting good" be the defacto solution proposed. There are many good reasons why that would not be on the table for somebody; disabled people who are limited in capability (including people with broken/screwy hands), disabled people who literally cannot try any harder, neurodivergent people who find it hard or stressing to play games that push on them.

There are MANY reasons why a person might not be capable of getting better at a game, or may not have time to sink all their time into improving over several months at a game. You can't rush things. Do you tell your plants to "get better" at growing so you can have flowers faster?

No, of course not, nature works at its pace, not yours. So why are we forcing people to work at our pace, rather than their own? Why can't we create multiplayer games that work at "their" pace rather than the ones of big players?

Friends can make it better, but it's only a band aid

There is a little bit of silver lining to this, at least. Just hear me out for a tiny bit longer, and then you have all right to leave.

If you play competitive games, and you absolutely struggle to play them alone, try dragging a long a few friends! Of course, it doesn't permanently fix the underlying problem of skill disparities, temper control issues or crippling anxiety making online gaming the worst thing on earth, but it might be enough for some.

Just bringing a few friends along can reduce the stress. I find personally, that being floor wiped with a friend is much less impactful than by a complete stranger, because I know that person and generally will be less biased. They're having fun and I have an idea of their skill level now. Maybe they're really good and I'll have to have my next match with them on my side instead, to make it more fair. You never know.

It's not perfect for everybody, some will still struggle, and people will definitely probably still invoke some gamer rage if they feel like it. But for some people, genuinely just try bringing a friend into your hellish matches and see how it affects playability for you, it might just tear some of the salt out of the wound.

Maybe also be gentle and honest when your friend asks why you rage quit. Not everything will be meant to work, and that's okay.