> 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.