Agreed. Something like Dark Souls where an enemy is an enemy and it'll smash you if you're underleveled is so much more satisfying than something like Oblivion where enemy health inexplicably goes up based on your level. It also gives you the satisfaction of going back to earlier areas that were scary and laughing off the puny enemies.
Totally different when it comes to multiplayer matchmaking, though. There I wish games were even more aggressive and exact at matching you to players around your skill level. Nothing worse than casually sitting down after work for a quick multiplayer PVP game of any sort and getting totally annihilated by a streamer who plays 20 hours per day.
I used to really enjoy this aspect of older games like Warcraft 3 and TF2.
You'd get the one guy on your server who was just in another league compared to everyone else, and it was so satisfying to get the kill on him. And sometimes, it would be you pubstomping.
Then again, back then I don't think people cared as much about winning and losing.
There's a trade-off between how long you wait and the skill spread of the team. IIRC at the very top, for DOTA2, the pros complained enough for the devs to make a "wait longer" matchmaking mode.
SBMM also a double-edged sword. Some people like to play game relaxed. Random matchmaking gives them chance to win. But SBMM means having sweaty games all the time. I do prefer SBMM but I’ve seen people upset about it
People who complain about SBMM being "sweaty" are typically stronger players who want to dunk on casuals. For them, it's true that non-SBMM is sweaty, because if you're even a top 10% player, you're gonna dominate most other people.
But what if you're a bottom 10% player? How non-sweaty is non-SBMM then? Is it not-sweaty to get absolutely demolished all the time even at your best?
That depends on the game I think. Games like Battlefield have no problem with players of all skills playing the same match - some are trying hard, some are chiling out, some are doing something silly, either way the scene is so large you can usually choose what you like the best, it all organizes itself naturally. BR games like PUBG always have very different players in one high-ish level match (as it's not possible to pick that many players of a matching skill) and that's completely fine.
Games and leagues where you're expected to try hard are entirely different. I'd say custom tiered PUG queues are much better than common huge pools, this way top players can filter people they're training and playing with. In the end I think I rather agree with the grandparent than not, communities typically feel more lively and diverse than blind ladders.
> SBMM also a double-edged sword. Some people like to play game relaxed.
That's just a different way of saying some people like to play games where their opponent has no chance. So your "relaxation" comes entirely at the expense of others.
Single player campaigns are a better way to accomplish this because then you can do whatever you want as far as difficulty goes.