It’s time for a gripe. While this year in gaming might be one of the best in recent memory, it’s also one that has been plagued by baffling decisions on the industry side, and few types of games feel the weight of those decisions quite as badly as online games. Here, we’re going to look at some of the worst aspects currently popular in multiplayer games.
Micro-transactions and season passes
For as long as online games have been able to make money, publishers have been looking for ways to squeeze dollars out of them and, as always, one of the absolute worst examples is in one of the best and most widely played games: Fortnite. Their current incarnation of the microtransaction store, paired with a season pass that constantly taunts you with the cool stuff you could enjoy if you’re willing to pay every single season, feels downright manipulative. Who would have thought there would come a time when we miss lootboxes? But the current season pass model feels, in every way, less worth it, and less exciting.
Gated progression systems in competitive games
It’s okay for games to have an onboarding system that helps you get used to the basics of the game while steadily rolling out more weapons, features, and perks. However, when you can expect to play for dozens of hours before you fully get leveled up, like with recent CODs, that’s too close to giving veteran players an unfair advantage. Thankfully, modded accounts for sale allow you to skip the grind necessary to unlock everything and even come with cosmetics to help you look like a lot less of a newbie. Certainly a lot more convenient than having to plug through the same few match types so that you can quickly grind out the levels you need to unlock everything manually.
Skill-based matchmaking
Now, this isn’t to say that veteran professionals should have free reign to dominate brand-new players all day long (as if they don’t already do that through smurfing), but a lot of players will agree that skill-based matchmaking is going too far in shooters, to the point that it’s not just ranked modes that rely exclusively on it, but a lot of casual modes, too. Simply put, it has the effect of forcing players of all skill levels to constantly play at their sweatiest and most competitive, which is also why you’re seeing a lot of even professional players getting burnt out more quickly, the experience of hopping on for a quick match simply isn’t there in a lot of games.
Nowadays, if you want to get into multiplayer gaming, it’s often a lot more convenient just to find a ready-made account that helps you skip much of the nonsense a new player has to go through. However, the best way to change this is to, as gamers, make it very clear to the developers and publishers what we think. We’ve seen bad decisions get reversed through feedback before, so never forget that power.
