Great game, technically impressive, but the community can be quite mean and toxic. I played for around a year after having played other TA Spring RTS for a few years prior, and if you don’t follow the exact meta of the month (whatever that might be) in terms of build order and things, people can get really aggro and your team can vote to kick you and take your units.
Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
The drafting for picking map spots is done in order of seniority, and the good players take all the low stress spots which leaves the newer players to take the more difficult spots. This feeds into a loop where the senior players get aggro at the new players for letting the front break down, but simultaneously they won’t take it themselves even though it’s the more important position.
I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game. The front player blames the back player, the back player blames the front player, everyone flames the weakest player.
It's amazing the degree to which streaming/online communities around video games have destroyed the games themselves. Every update to every game launches a large scale effort to find the "meta" which is then instantly disseminated to the most try-hard assholes on the Internet. Anyone who dares to develop their own strategy/style/loadout is up against hordes of people (a growing proportion every day) who just copy whatever the Youtubers figured out.
I think M:tG was ruined by this too.
Back in the day, you could try out new things and play 10-20 turn games where both sides had winning chances. The odds that your opponent had anything approaching an optimal meta was zero.
Now, especially online (Arena), you’re just going to get curb stomped if you aren’t playing one of the few optimal metas. And since the games hinge upon either side getting an unstoppable engine going by turn 3 or 4, if you get a drought or flood (or mulligan), you’re basically completely dead in the water. Same for your opponent.
The net result is that it feels like something like only 15%–25% of games are actually competitive, because either you or your opponent gets fucked by too many, too few, or wrong color land draws, or for whatever reason you don’t draw the cards you need within the first few turns.
A game where 80% of matchups are effectively no contest is not fun.
I think that's why I like prerelease (and sealed, generally) the most of any format. For day 1 prerelease, a lot of the players are reading the cards for the first time. For sealed later on, even if you know the meta for that set, it's more about playing the best deck with the cards you've got. Knowing the meta doesn't change your pool. (As opposed to draft, where if you don't know the meta you might inadvertently pass excellent cards and miss signposts other players will catch)
This is why I primarily play Old School 93/94 and other non-rotating, niche formats.
The player bases are a lot more "chill" overall, despite still being attracted to playing their best.
I think more than meta chasing, the problem comes from laxk of actual community due to the crazy effectiveness of online matchmaking. When all you had where community servers and rooms, toxicity was more manageable. With other players all being nameless folks you will never play with again, the worst side of people can more easily come out.
I remember playing Malzahar support before it was meta, because that was the only character I could play well in League of Legends.
Sometimes people would even rage quit. But I could do really well as support, even if it was slightly worse than some other characters. It made for a very fun playthrough.
And I would totally get the people. Sometimes somebody in a bad mood joins your game and just messes everything up because they didn't get to play mid. And I might have looked like someone like that.
But dealing with toxic players is surprisingly easy.
I initially looked down at LoL, but later wanted to learn to play to spend time online with my younger brother that was having a hard time. So I had a friend show me something.
First time I played jungle, I died on the first monster. Before people could finish typing flaming messages, my friend typed into the chat /ignore all
Voila - silence and no flaming.
Later I stopped preemptively ignoring everyone. Just used no second chances tactic. If anybody cursed, was mean or even used the word noob, I instantly ignored them and then kept playing.
Sometimes told a teammate that had a bad steak to do that to the flaming person. Many games I've one because of being nice to my teammates, trying to keep their spirits up. Wasn't super hard - 25 year old at that time and reading some philosophy books and meditating vs regular 13 year olds.
It was still important to ignore people before they could push your buttons and anger you.
I wonder if it's the same in other games. Definitely not the case in Eve online when I played that. But over there you meet the same people again and by having no style and being a bad winner and a bad loser didn't give you any respect.
Overwatch has similar issues - common advice for playing Competitive is to just completely disable text chat and voice chat. Yeah, you'll miss genuine, helpful suggestions, but they're a tiny, tiny minority of messages at the lower ranks. Not that it necessarily improves a lot at the higher ranks, as I understand it, but is less awful.
I don't play a lot of competitive Overwatch, but it's definitely a much nicer experience with chat turned off, even if I'm not the one being flamed, even if we lose because people are typing instead of shooting.
> It's amazing the degree to which streaming/online communities around video games have destroyed the games themselves
I think they might destroy the streaming/online communities, but I wouldn't say it destroys the game itself. I play BAR, but never with random strangers, the game works fine, but I also don't participate in any "video game" communities or watch/play with streamers, so what you're saying sounds very foreign to me, and is more about the communities than the games themselves.
I don't see how your comment makes sense. You're not part of any "community" but you also never play with random strangers?
I only play public matches with random strangers and this is the feeling.
Obviously this wouldn't apply if I had a small community of not-strangers to play with consistently, which you do have but oddly describe as not having a community.
Well, while every group of people is definitionally "a community", you can absolutely have your friend group not be part of "the community" of the game. Just like you can have a LAN and not be "on the net", watch implies the internet.
Uhh if you are playing games consistently with your friends, then they are a community that you're playing with.
If what GP is saying is "play with people you know personally and then you won't have to play with people you don't know personally," well, sure. Great insight.
Most people don't and can't do that. That's why online matchmaking exists and constitutes 99.999999% of online gameplay.
I think by “community” he meant the whole community of a particular game, where you communicating with people, consuming same content, get influenced, etc
The vast majority of people don't fall into the category you're describing, but they nonetheless have to compete against the very few people who do, and so larger and larger proportions end up falling into the same "meta" bullshit.
He could be playing with his real friends.
"Real friends" is also known as "a community."
What? I don't... understand...
Doesn't match making and self-selection solve this problem?
Ideally, it should allow non-competitive players of similar performance level to play against each other.
Not really, because there are players at every level who watch Youtube. So at every level of skill, those players who are up to date on the latest "meta" will win. Not enough to beat the meta players at the next level up, but enough to beat the non-meta players at their own level.
The bigger issue is that these springengine games don't really have large communities. And they're usually team battles... So yeah, you're not getting 8-16 people with similar elo rating within reasonable timeframes
In the equilibrium those playing the meta poorly will be matched with players who use suboptimal strategies with good execution.
Yes, correct.
Which think about what that feels like: getting semi-consistently beaten by worse players who just all "happen to have" the exact same loadout and exact same strategies and exact same everything.
That's exactly what I'm describing. It's incredibly boring.
Yes and the worst part of that is that I really enjoy working out my own strategies. My best RTS memories are on StarCraft 1, playing with friends in the early 2000s, and we all just were figuring it out for ourselves.
I wish LLMs played games, I'd never need to see a human again.
They do, to a degree. See e.g. PUBG's latest AI teammate addition.
AI players in games go back all the way to the dawn of computers. But I still prefer them in Quake and Starcraft to humans. Humans are awful.
Yes, naturally. However the PUBG AI feature is based on generative AI, at least partly: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/pubg-ally-ai-teamm...
I think that's a normal evolution of these games? In the end they are cooperative so your teammates depend on you. Although you'll find plenty of people at the top of the ladder spamming werid strategies and being successful.
Normal evolution yet somehow wasn't really a visible force on video games until streaming and is now the predominant force on pretty much every single online competitive game.
(Unless you play with cloistered private communities)
I think Overwatch and League of Legends are the best examples of this effect. Both games are entirely unrecognizable today compared to 2016.
Somehow Starcraft 2 emerged from the other side of esports mostly unscathed, despite being arguably the most significant progenitor of the entire genre.
it's because sc2 is usually 1v1.
and also it's a lot harder
A lot harder than Beyond All Reason? How so?
A lot harder than overwatch or league of legends presumably
Meta-gaming is a natural progression in all human games. Chess players find "metas" like openings. It's just that video games are too simple and have very restricted meta set.
The point is not that games have meta, it's the attitude of players.
Id say it's only natural when importance or value are placed on the outcome of the game.
By it's very nature, games are supposed to be fun and bonding experience for a community of humans.
But the modern interpretation is one of direct conflict to show ones superiority for the sake of feeling superior. Which ultimately leads to the imbuing the games with a level of importance or value for the victor.
I think that is projecting a lot of expectation on what games are supposed to be like. Cometitive games have always existed, from knights jousting to sailors gambling.
Which is also why chess is profoundly boring unless you're playing a casual game against a casual opponent.
Wait, are you suggesting BAR or StarCraft are simpler than chess? I can't imagine that's true.
Simple is definitely the wrong term. Chess's simplicity is where its inherent difficulty comes from. It's paradoxically much more difficult to optimize than more complex games like SC.
Starcraft might be more complex in absolute terms (not sure about that - discrete combinatorial problems can be genuinely more complex can continuous ones, from an algorithm point of view, because solutions are harder to come by)
But chess theory, the human activity of analyzing chess, is hugely more complex than whatever human players have analyzed about the game of starcraft
What I mean is, perhaps the best neural networks that play starcraft are as complex as chess neural networks, and this complexity is irreducible, but starcraft players haven't developed as much theory in comparison
Chess presents a comparatively small and, importantly, discrete set of choices at any moment. So it feels like it's a solvable logic puzzle: like it should be possible, at any moment, to make an optimal move. You can predict if you lose 2 or if you lose 3 pieces because of your next move, and you're expected to use this knowledge. The strategy of chess is about perfection in every turn.
RTSes present continuous, large choice spaces. So it doesn't really feel like as much of a logic puzzle, and perfection does not appear to be within ones grasp at every moment. Whether you'll lose 4 or 6 of the T2 fighter-bombers is not relevant. The strategy of RTSes is strategy of big plans and high level abstraction.
The strategy of RTSes is strategy of big plans and high level abstraction
That's not true in all RTSes. Take StarCraft, for example, and there are plenty of games on record that were decided not just by 1 unit, but by 1 attack from 1 unit. There are Zerg players, for example, who have developed a reputation for creating havoc after getting a single zergling (the smallest and cheapest attacking unit) into their opponent's base. A single shot from a Protoss reaver can mean the difference between taking minimal damage and losing half of your workers (and subsequently the game).
Sure, StarCraft is kind of a hybrid when you think about it. The guaranteed-hit model, the extremely simplified low vs high ground approach to determine if a shot is possible, etc. are pretty deterministic. But in more complicated situations it's still a lot less predictable than chess. Even the examples you're giving can only happen probabilistically outside very early game.
But I'm thinking about TA-style games, the topic of this discussion, which pride themselves on large armies. Though, to your point, early game of Supreme Commander is also quite chess-like, because of how restricted the set of opportunities is.
Perhaps simpler in the relevant choices presented to the player? The fact that a specific meta can be found, and victory requires using the meta, means that many important choices have been removed from the player.
Chess surely has a meta, but it's been honed so the meta is a huge number of significantly different paths. It's a balancing issue. Give Starcraft another few centuries of play and maybe it'll be the same.
I don’t know but I can imagine many of the levers in games cancel each other out or don’t turn out to be useful while in chess every variable is orthogonal. It’s all important. Complicated versus complex, like how untangling Christmas lights is time-consuming and gnarly but it is not complex fundamentally.
That said, I don’t know if it is true in those cases.
Agreed on “finding meta” as just being part of any game. But thinking games are more restrictive than chess might just be a lack of exposure to competitive gaming.
Video games have a lot more entropy than chess, I think you have that backwards.
You and the parent comment just described academia in a nutshell
Seems people in general have started to project their lifes disappointments, stresses, and greater human needs onto a digital dimension like video games. Growing up they used to be about fun. I have endless memories as a child playing Mario N64 and it not needing to be about playing a particular way; only as a I got older and competition and disappointments being human as an adult added up did I notice this shift you mention in online game communities.
I like to ask now, "have you heard of playing for fun?" It's surprising how little people seem to remember that games are made for fun & learning ("play" as a human construct).
edit2: taking back this edit on political conjecture to say something shifted that I'm not sure what. edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well.
> edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well.
Tying this to politics is odd to me.
Online gaming has been toxic since day one. Anything that depersonalizes is going to be toxic and that is inherent in the online space. In the smaller communities you can actually get to know people and have some kind of reputation but as the community size grows, the consequences of bad behavior fade because nobody can remember.
ah yeah I could have just not said that, it was just a brash thought dump, not really thoughtfully considered and not something I'm too pressed on digging a moat into. i.e. its not a strong belief I hold, but an intuition. The goal really was to explore the idea that something shifted that has led people to lose the fun in games. If I were to repost that, I'd say that instead and not try to make conjecture about politics.
Sorry.
Games have also become more like work, bloated Hollywood blockbuster budgets lead to endless busywork content that pad out playtime.
kinda funny sentiment to express in a thread about a completely community built free game without adds. You should play it!
I’m talking about AAA games in general, it’s not commentary about this title, which my computer likely can’t run.
I don't know, I won a friendly Super Smash Bros tournament circa ~2011 with kirby spamming down b with what was it, the c-stick? Whatever it was where you could do the super move or whatever automatically instead of having to choose how much power you wanted and just generally clicking random buttons.
The friends who all played vastly more often than I did and had all their techniques and edge jumps and recoveries and stuff practiced were furious.
Lots of "you can't do that" "that's not fair" "that's not the way you're supposed to play" etc.
edit: oh, I see your edit. Yeah, it's definitely not new.
It's amazing the degree tencent shills have taken action to stop people in the west from enjoying games online. This is not natural and it didn't used to be this way.
Hey, PtaQ here, BAR’s Community Manager. I’m sorry this was your experience. There are definitely some very competitive lobbies, but harassment is not acceptable. Please report any players involved, as reports are the only way we can identify patterns and take action. We have an active moderation team and do review them.
For a more relaxed experience, I’d recommend trying less established meta maps. Lobbies marked “rotato” rotate maps after every game and are usually among the chillest. Players tend to be less rigid about roles and expected builds there, which generally leads to more positive interactions.
Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to comment here and for offering constructive support too.
Does BAR have chicken maps?
BAR offers some 'hold the fort' maps, where there is a strong/fortifiable area and then the 'outskirts'. These are catered to offer great gameplay for battles against Raptors (previously known as 'chickens') and Scavengers.
what do you mean you have no way? chats private and/or encrypted? lobbies are public. Use AI to identify harassing comments and take action.
These days, online public lobbies are almost always hostile. Doesn't matter the game, either. You can ban words, phrases, etc. The hostility is also through actions and not just insults.
The only way to have actual fun gaming is a private group of friends. Think lan party, and definitely not public.
We have support for a variety of ways to limit who can join you (passwording lobbies, locking lobbies etc). I get a lot of value playing with a regular group of friends on a Sunday night in part because of it.
I don't think that's true at all. I mainly play Rocket League, and while you do have bad games, I'd say at least 80% of them are fun.
It does benefit from:
1. Limited coms (nobody seems to use voice chat, perhaps partly because it was completely broken for years), and while you can type, it's too fast paced to write much so mostly people just use quick chats sarcastically (What a save!)
2. Games are really short (about 7 minutes). You're not losing hours of your life if you get stuck with an arsehole.
3. People play a lot of games because they're so short, so the matchmaking is very accurate usually.
Trackmania (in all of it's online incarnations) seems to have mostly avoided toxicity.
But I think that's because you can't really impact other players. Everyone's racing their own lines, just sharing a chat room while doing so.
Matchmaking is a real problem in most games because of smurfing.
BAR has very sophisticated anti-smurfing, so many bans to out to people who thought they could trick the system.
You occasionally get smurfs in Rocket League but it's like 1 in 10 games so not a big issue IMO.
What if hostility is a feature? They have a culture that works for them. Many organizations do not survive massive influx of new members - numbers inflate quickly, community adapts rules because you cannot manage a big community the way you'd manage small community, old members leave, new members get bored and also leave, the community tries to manage a small community the way you'd manage a large community, whole thing collapses. Meanwhile if you're hostile to new members you avoid unsustainably high expansion and complete collapse of the organization's management structure because there is no expansion. Expansion is not a measure of success if it sacrifices maintaining current culture. Asian societies famously function like that.
Hostility might be a feature for someone who is (or views themselves as) in an "in" clique. But it's poison for the long term health of the game, because it discourages most participation. The only ones attracted are those who view vitriol as a pleasant environment.
This is a common reaction and the response is common too: this is only the case if you follow the herd to 8v8 and the two club-like maps they fixate on. But if you study the community for 5 minutes first, you can walk past those two “pubs full of toxic jerks fighting” there are a dozen other options. Single player, PvE, 1v1 through 4v4 and FFA. These (smaller) game modes lack the level of drama you see in 8v8. You just have to go into the quiet restaurant with nerds playing chess and other board games instead of the obvious mess of a drunken bar across the street.
BAR is a deep and challenging game. It's also a team game. If your plan is to jump right into PvP you're going to be deadweight hanging around your team's neck and will rightly be criticized for it. You will never experience toxicity in 1v1 games, and only the normal amount of toxicity for online team games if you can pull your weight. Also, the community rarely surrenders early so OP clearly didn't play that many games and let 1 or 2 lobbies distort their perception of the game. Just remember, if you can't beat the AI, you don't belong in PvP games yet. Take your time, learn patience, walk before you run.
Wow, that sounds awful. That's beyond optimising the fun out of a game, it's straight up refusing to have fun. One wonders what they get from it?
My best friend is the great optimizer.
In magic the gathering I had dozens of decks trying different things. He had a single deck that he kept tweaking to within the millimetre of perfection.
In overwatch, I would play different characters to experience different parts of the game and try different strategies. He played single character for years, with 10 times the hours in that char than I had in all of them combined.
Heck even in real life, he was a Java developer for decades whereas I was a type of fleeting sysadmin specifically so I could play with different toys in the stack :).
Now, this is a bit side Venn diagram, he'd never be rude on an online game (he does have offline opinions on the meta :). But it let me understand people who have fun in a very different way than I do :). He doesn't see boredom in playing same way over and over (and over and over), I think he sees it as professional athlete being focused and honing their specific craft.
> That's beyond optimising the fun out of a game
I'd even dare to say it's beyond all reason.
Different people get different things out of video games (and everything, really). For some, the fun is learning, and the game stops being fun when you understand it (this is me). For others, the fun starts after they're learned, and starts being good at it, but still have competition with others. For yet others, mastering it and being the best is the fun.
All these groups of people sometimes play in the same lobbies, and what the players "gain" from the session can be very different depending on the person. There is no "right or wrong" way to play video games, or the right/wrong motivation for it, it's just different.
Imaginary superiority
Bullying is a way to have fun. Additionally, some people are desperate for approval, and will even chase being bullied as a way to get attention from others. It’s not exactly a mystery, it’s just sad.
Context: So I have 3 friends that I have been playing video games with for over 30 years weekly. So we would be playing half (as a team) of a 4v4. Now, we are never going to be competitive, we are basically playing to socialize.
Will we be able to play on the "leagues" or whatever they are or will our group just get banned eventually from play? I think we would probably enjoy playing against others, but realistically non of us are sweaty enough to care about being anything beyond good at this (or any) game.
Also, we are all (obviously) older adults. None of us really care if the other team is trash talking or being toxic. We are doing the best we can as a team, we are polite to others, if they have are having a breakdown that is a them problem.
Also, is there a "casual" league? Or do you all just play laddered and end up paired to people who are similar in ELO to you?
Aside: Some of my core memories are setting up "Big Bertha" canons over the entire map to keep my friends at bay. I don't care if it strategically makes sense, it was just fulfilling!
I've played beyond all reason for a little bit, although I'm not very good at it. I've managed to avoid toxic lobbies by searching for terms like co-op or noob.
Not my experience at all when I played around a year ago. There were plenty of noob-specific / noob-friendly lobbies with a mix of helpful players and fellow casuals.
Sounds awful - do you have to play as a team ?
This very much depends on the lobby. I don't think this is unique to BAR either - it's just that 8v8 is the most popular mode.
Lots of players mean more chances to get a toxic guy who doesn't recognise their own faults and blames others.
I actually just don't really agree about the assertion on player slots. If anything, the better players get the more likely they are to play a front slot, because they have an outside influence on the chances of their team winning.
My OS floated around 10-15 and I virtually always ended up having to go front in every lobby, which is the position I hate the most because I don’t like playing my strategy game like an RPG - that is, micro-ing just a dozen of units and optimising every rocket or bullet hit or whatever, which is kind of what front is like.
Front has zero opportunity or resources available to build any kind of economy, and once the T2 units start coming through from the other side they feel very expendable. As the front player you build the same 1 or 2 units every single game and never really get to strategise.
What also enraged me is that the back players would have the nerve to make the front player “pay” for their T2 constructor units after working so hard to keep everyone alive, despite everyone knowing the front player has zero resources at any given time because it’s all going into units that are being meat grinded.
> My OS floated around 10-15 and I virtually always ended up having to go front in every lobby, which is the position I hate the most because I don’t like playing my strategy game like an RPG
So the truth is, "Front" is the absolute standard. There are only two other "types" of positions which are tech and air. And a good tech player usually also plays that role more like a front player just with more time in the early game to scale his economy. (with the exception of a few maps like supreme and glitters)
What I'm saying, if you don't like playing front then you should not play the regular 8v8 PvP lobbies on most maps since playing front is the optimal play.
> What also enraged me is that the back players would have the nerve to make the front player “pay” for their T2 constructor units after working so hard to keep everyone alive
Again this is the somewhat optimal play. It is much more efficient to only pay for 1 T2 lab instead of 8. This being said, if you don't "pay" the player giving out t2 you MASSIVELY slow down the production of T2 constructors since the player can't get the economy to comfortably produce 8 of them by 6-7 minutes. Thus not paying leads to the whole team massively losing tempo and upgrading their mexes etc. more slowly which will lose you the game.
> the front player has zero resources at any given time because it’s all going into units that are being meat grinded.
You should be able to save up 400 metal during the 5-6 minutes of early game by building some defenses and playing more passively around that time. You will notice your opponent will too. All-In'ing in T1 is a very risky strategy and 400 metal are usually not the deciding factor if it succeeds or fails. Ofc there are cases were you ARE poor, in those the tech player should understand it and not require payment, but this is usually only the case if you got raided early on for example.
On last thing:
> and never really get to strategise.
Soooo there is a lot of strategy but it's essentially locked behind very high skilllevels. As a 10-15 OS player keeping your units alive and managing your eco is hard enough and what you should be focusing on. Only once that becomes second nature you will notice the more strategic part of BAR.
Source: 37 os with 58% wr playing only in the highest OS rotato lobby.
I'm not sure what are you trying to prove and refute in your post really.
The OP - which you're replying to - is saying that they're not having fun playing RTSes like that (which I understand - sounds awfully limited). You're just trying to prove them they're wrong for not having fun or something.
What was your goal with this post, really?
Understanding a bit about BAR but not really understanding those multilayer games, I found it a helpful counterpoint to the assertion that front is basically t1 spam then die. The idea that you should budget and save for your t2 con because your opponent also has to is useful, and the idea that greater strategies also open up after micro becomes second nature actually makes me want to play these multilayer lobbies more, whereas the initial post seemed quite negative and just intending to moan.
Mechanics of course depend on the map and meta. However, you cant really go into a 16 player game and expect to get the spot you want. Both backline and front line should be working non-stop and both have a lot to do. It is a sweaty game.
Paying for t2 that is usally a noob mistake. High OS play rarely asks, or has a meta for who pay to run specific plays.
One of My favorite 40 OS streamers leaves every losing game asking what they could have done better, which I think is a good mentality.
I used to enjoy TA back in the annihilated.com days. Does this not have stand alone offline story/skirmish modes? Does online with random people not work any more?
Does it have a solo mode?
As other mentioned it has singple player Scenarios and Skirmish mode, including two special tower defense/survival modes. We are also building a dedicated campaign now.
I might try it, then; I liked Total Annihilation, but have absolutely no interest in multiplayer online. I think that the passionate fans, that obviously are the ones that drove the creation of this game, may not realize the abundance of more casual players that just want a decent solo experience. It seems I've seen several recreations or homages of games that drop the single-player aspects.
Or, creating a decent AI opponent and engaging a story might be really hard.
I'm a casual gamer who also played TA in the olden days. I have enjoyed playing through the BAR scenarios / tutorials and have had fun playing maybe 100-ish hours against the built-in AIs.
It's a good solo game, especially with the focus on "quality of life" improvements that reduce the need for raw APM to play well.
BAR does have a series of scenarios for singleplayer / offline play.
Or in multiplayer you can arrange a co-operative game with humans against AI opponents, which often has substantially less flaming involved, especially when playing a "survive against an onslaught of enemies" scenario.
Also the account system of course allows for muting, avoiding-being-paired-with, or fully blocking players. For more egregious behavior a player can be reported to moderators and temporarily / permanently suspended if they break the community code-of-conduct.
No campain but there are stand alone scenerios you can play. There is also a fun swarm defense sort of thing(rapters) if you like tower defense style gameplay.
Me and my friends just play against the AI. We'd last 2 seconds against real players but we're slow and old RTS gamers and just have a good time stacking up a few AI opponents and smashing them.
Yes, it also has a lot of co-op mode and a non-trivial portion of the player base focuses on that instead of PvP/competitive modes.
Yes!
This sounds like an arbitrage opportunity.
This mirrors my experience. I still play occasionally, but quickly remember the community isn't it.
I feel like many team games would benefit from full mute by default. I played Valorant like that for a while and my experience was infinitely better.
Welcome to any competitive game ever... Your team isn't winning within within the first 3 minutes of the game? Better forfeit and go next.
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This is a classic take by a non-competitive player that would be better suited playing PvE or campaign games.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand that when people are trying to win, they have skin in the game, and are investing time and effort to win every game.
> Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
Yes, it is courtesy not to waste other people's time. Not sure where the controversy is, rather than your misunderstanding. Usually it's quite evident whether the game is lost (again, if you are a somewhat competitive player).
> I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game.
You need somewhat of a thick skin to play competitive team games. This goes just as well for more popular games like DoTA or CS2. It just seems you didn't, but it's not the game's fault or its community's.
It’s not the community’s fault for being toxic? Whose fault is it then? God’s? The fabric of reality made you do it?
You really don't understand that some people will interpret any comment in a competitive environment negatively?
It's just a bad culture fit.
> It’s not the community’s fault for being toxic.
What's toxic to A can be good advice to B. With the person saying it being person C.
It’s not a bad culture fit, how did the culture become toxic to begin with? We have toxic people who perpetuate and defend being toxic. They take over and push out anyone who doesn’t act like them. This is how communities become toxic, and it’s exactly what you are doing now.
> We have toxic people who perpetuate and defend being toxic. They take over and push out anyone who doesn’t act like them. This is how communities become toxic, and it’s exactly what you are doing now.
How so? You have provided 0 evidence of the BAR community doing it or me doing it.
All we have is the original GP post that is an accusation (without facts).
With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about and are trying to silence people by accusing them of being toxic (which is subjective).
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