Because it doesnāt seem to matter currently if you play ranked games or casual games, the general experience tends to be the same. But one has numbers and things to go with it. You still get people playing to win in casual games and you get people dicking around having fun in ranked games, and the ranks donāt necessarily indicate how they play as a team and a whole bunch of other things that make it less than ideal.
Honestly for competitive games if youāre not playing to win, just donāt play. Whatās even the point?
Thereās different levels of playing to win though. I play a lot of R6 Siege. In the evenings I mostly play casual with my friends. Iām either using the random button to pick my operator for variety, or Iām playing all shotguns for a battle pass challenge or Iām trying to find ridiculous places to put a frost mat.
Within that structure Iām trying to win the rounds, but it doesnāt matter if we lose. Iām just having fun in a game with my friends.
What counts as a ācompetitive gameā - is it anything where there are winners and losers or something more specific?
Can you think of a game that exists in a gray area? Most games I would consider competitive multiplayer games are pretty obviously so. Maybe something like a BR game where youāre expected to not win. Or Elden Ring where the competitive multiplayer aspect is de-emphasized. Do those games even have casual and ranked modes?
I said something similar in another reply, but I canāt think of any games where winning/losing is possible but doesnāt change my enjoyment. Even elden ring invasions feel better if you win the encounter.
The only thing that could come close is an encounter like that or in something like DMZ where you can talk it out and join forces, but maybe thatās just another form of winning.
MTG Arena - thereās a regular play queue and a ranked queue, and people definitely play to mess around and try new decks for fun. This of course doesnāt cease to induce salt from sweaty gamers in the play queue.
Even ignoring games that you consider āin the gray area,ā who are you to say someone canāt find a way to have fun in a game that doesnāt align with your way of having fun? Not everyone is playing the game hoping to land on an esports team.
Edit: Iām mostly referring to casual queues - ranked queues being hyper competitive does make sense. Iāve just seen the same argument made that casual queues should be the same level of competitive.
Co-op games that let you troll your buddy?
Things like L4Dās primary mode and Portal 2ās co-op mode.
Smash Bros? Plenty of people play it as a competitive fighting game while others just like to goof around with their friends.
i think a competitive game would be like CSGO where itās often pretty intense and thereās a lot of mechanics to learn and often times your pretty frustrated when you lose as opposed to like call of duty where it doesnāt really matter if you win or lose (or didnt in older titles)
Another name for them would be adversarial multiplayer. But, basically yes. Anything where there would be winners and losers is what I would call a competitive game.
Though others narrow it down further to more high skill adversarial games like Quake and Counter-Strike and League of Legends/DOTA for their professional competitive leagues.
i think a competitive game would be like CSGO where itās often pretty intense and thereās a lot of mechanics to learn and often times your pretty frustrated when you lose as opposed to like call of duty where it doesnāt really matter if you win or lose (or didnt in older titles)
There was a brief time in the late 90s to early 2000s where youād just hop into an open server. The lobby would keep the same players as it went round to round and people would just filter in and out as they felt like it. It didnāt track scores or stats between games, and there wasnāt a leveling or progression system that followed you. You just played through the round as it came. People seemed to care a whole lot less about their record or teamāit just seemed like everyone was happy to be able to play online. Maybe itās just because Iām older now and Iām looking back at it with rose tinted glasses, but I wish we could go back to casual modes like that. I donāt have the energy or will to deal with people the way itās set up now.
I remember those times. They were awful. I had no fun if the people I started the match with werenāt the same I ended it with. What was the point? Itās not fun if I canāt even tell if Iām getting better at the game. I didnāt need to be the best Counter-Strike player, but I wanted to play actual Counter-Strike.
However, while this isnāt necessarily mutually exclusive, those games that let you run your own servers will actually survive to be seen by future generations, unlike just about every game with matchmaking these days that wonāt let you run the game in LAN or on a private server. Itās possible to have both, but devs donāt want to.
I was there. I would prefer to go back to that. At least youād be able to find communities that have the same idea of what makes the game fun. Random matchmaking sucks donkey dick for making friends.
I was also there but itās not a really good system when scale up. If you are from the same era, and if you did not own a clan server, they can kick you out for whatever reason. (Like killing a mod one too many times.) And for competitive games that really doesnāt work well, thatās why old server has that after round auto balancing mod, it shuffles player around base on how they performed. A fake way to try balance the team. Ie. I was kinda decent capper for 3wave ctf, grenade rocket jump and all that. So if opponent doesnāt have a good sniper or also decent enough capper, I can usually win the game even when our team is a bit short on players. Then when auto balancing come around to balance players, it actually make it less balance.(you also canāt dial it too much that you got spawn camped and thus one side of player just quit to find another server.)
And it also not helping if you go to a clan server and the clan all want to stay on the same team. Which often leads to players go in/out frequently.(thatās why later on GameSpy can even show match status so you can choose to join or not.)
A well managed server pool and MMR system helps resolve all those issues, and scale up really well.
The problem with non balanced lobbies is that they can be completely wrecked by someone who is more skilled.
This is still an issue with matchmaking systems intended to keep the game balanced in developer controlled servers though, so I donāt know what the relevance is.
It actually sounds better yeah.
Donāt I know you from somewhere? š¤
Smash Bros uses/used āFor Funā and āFor Gloryā, which I thought was pretty cute.
I think there is an issue with saying that ranked is āplaying to winā though, since people in non-ranked games are still trying to win. They probably donāt want the pressure of ranked, or maybe just donāt want to play the meta.
I play LeagueOfLegends and play exclusively Normal Draft only. The pressure and toxicity is just to much.
Aside from that, donāt care much about the rank. Itās just more that people expect and force you to play āat your bestā and if you donāt. Well expect to be spam pinged, insulted and even trolled because āyou died once because you played badā.
Ranked can simply be for fun for lots of people.
I enjoy playing against people with about the same skill level.
On casual/for fun I either get owned or Iām owning.
