NewZoo: What games are we playing? (Players are becoming more selective, players prefer PvE titles, console skews F2P/AAA and PC skews Indie/AA)
- Thread starter cormack12
- Start date
Zacfoldor
Member
Hey this sounds pretty great for Playstation.
PC market isn't as desirable because so many people that do play, play older, f2p games.(I call these lobby games)
"PC skews heavily towards older f2p titles while consoles are slate dependent."
That is actually hilarious. No wonder GTA releases on PC after console. It isn't worth the risk of pirating when so many people on the platform are only interested in games that cost zero real money and that are older. Console is slate dependant which sounds much healthier.
Why is Xbox declining in titles played per person when everyone on xbox has gamepass? More people PAY to play more games on Playstation than they play(included with gamepass) for free on Xbox. The whole "I use gamepass to try games I wouldn't normally buy" thing isn't working out as planned I guess. This is per user so Xbox's unpopularity can't really be blamed. Honestly I see nothing but great news for Playstation in these metrics. Sony has the market by the balls, and even moreso when the next GTA drops and PS5 Pro is the best place to play it. If GTA VI drops this year Sony will be on the money, for real.
PC market isn't as desirable because so many people that do play, play older, f2p games.(I call these lobby games)
"PC skews heavily towards older f2p titles while consoles are slate dependent."
That is actually hilarious. No wonder GTA releases on PC after console. It isn't worth the risk of pirating when so many people on the platform are only interested in games that cost zero real money and that are older. Console is slate dependant which sounds much healthier.
Why is Xbox declining in titles played per person when everyone on xbox has gamepass? More people PAY to play more games on Playstation than they play(included with gamepass) for free on Xbox. The whole "I use gamepass to try games I wouldn't normally buy" thing isn't working out as planned I guess. This is per user so Xbox's unpopularity can't really be blamed. Honestly I see nothing but great news for Playstation in these metrics. Sony has the market by the balls, and even moreso when the next GTA drops and PS5 Pro is the best place to play it. If GTA VI drops this year Sony will be on the money, for real.
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LavitzSlambert
Member
PC has the biggest library of all platforms, and the most competition in terms of storefronts. You can buy cheap keys everywhere, and when given a choice between many different entertaining games, why not go with the cheapest?
They didn't include games unless at least 10 different people played at least 2 hours of it. That may have skewed the numbers a bit when it comes to the kind of behavior that drives Game Pass users. Do most people actually give a game more than 2 hours to impress before they move on?
ReBurn
Gold Member
I think a larger share of gamepass play time is shifting to PC as the Xbox console stagnates and gamers move to PS5.
Durin
Member
Not too surprising, especially given how the platforms are built.
PC has more indie and AA success because the discoverability tools are better on Steam, the barrier to entry to release a small game is lower on lower on the platform, early access is available, and service based games started on the platform with less restrictions (down-side is exploitation too).
Console has always big tentpole release games because they'll market big titles for their own events, most of Sony's first-party efforts are AAA, and going on PSN (Xbox the same, Switch a bit better) the discoverability leans towards showing more AAA titles over anything small.
PC has more indie and AA success because the discoverability tools are better on Steam, the barrier to entry to release a small game is lower on lower on the platform, early access is available, and service based games started on the platform with less restrictions (down-side is exploitation too).
Console has always big tentpole release games because they'll market big titles for their own events, most of Sony's first-party efforts are AAA, and going on PSN (Xbox the same, Switch a bit better) the discoverability leans towards showing more AAA titles over anything small.
SweetTooth
Banned
Men_in_Boxes
Banned
Who's gonna tell him that SBMM has been widespread for 25 years? It shouldn't be me.
Puscifer
Member
I can do both
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Id rather play Slay the Spire than the newest 3rd person walk and chat quip fest starring a lesbian
ChorizoPicozo
Member
sounds about right
March Climber
Member
SBMM leads to people to a win-win-win-loss-loss-loss scenario as the game balances someone out in a rank until the player is 'hardstuck'. It is a bandaid on a very glaring problem with modern PvP games which can last up to 20-30 minutes or longer a session.
It's a problem that most PvE games don't have as they want you to always win even though they will challenge you in doing so.
I think we will see a very, very slow shift towards the majority choosing online co-op PvE experiences because people are having much more fun playing in groups accomplishing a difficult goal together without the added negative avalanche of shit being flung at them from the opposing side.
PvP will always be there, Fortnite, CoD, Marvel Rivals, etc. but the lesser known brands, the newer guys, will have a somewhat harder time with this change.
kevboard
Member
SBMM ruined MP... so don't tell him, it will break his heart
Men_in_Boxes
Banned
Men_in_Boxes
Banned
I like how people still believe this when developer after developer after developer comes out and says "We removed SBMM for a couple of hours and all our players quit."
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
They play that with "perfect" image quality.
March Climber
Member
I can't fully agree with you because I am a good example of his point. The same thing he brought up is the very thing that added onto the stack of things that drove me away from PvP experiences.This may be true, but it still meansEvolved1 made an illogical point.
In nearly every thread you make about a new live service game, I'm one of the first people asking you if that same game has PvE, because I have simply lost all patience for what comes with PvP.
Ritsumei2020
Banned
Playstation is an Xbox
Checkmate Sony
Checkmate Sony
Men_in_Boxes
Banned
He complained about "sweaty no life's who study metas on Wikipedia" and he can't do that because he has a life.
SBMM separates those two populations.
He (and you) aren't put into the lobbies with the Red Bull kids. SBMM puts the people with lives against other people with lives.
He could complain about the Red Bull kids if SBMM didn't exist, but it does.
March Climber
Member
That's... not fully true, and it's much more complicated than that. If you are playing PvP shooters and happen naturally gifted at shooters, you could end up at Platinum, as I have. The problem is that at Platinum, you have three types of people:
1) People who happened to come up from gold who are more casual at the game. These are the ones you are describing
2) People who are hardstuck in platinum but know the meta and strats.
3) People who are heading to the next rank or have temporarily dropped from the next rank and for sure know the meta and strats to go back up a rank.
I encounter 2 and 3 much more than 1, even though I didn't play often (maybe an hour or two every other day or few days). Whenever my team was stomped, it was a hard-stomp including the other team downright bullying my team due to my team not being good enough. Whenever I won, 8 times out of 10 I had to play my ass off and sometimes even carry 1 or 2 people who are severely underperforming.
I need to make this next part clear: I am not comparing myself to any superstar athlete. However, I fully understand Lebron James' frustration when he is in the finals and has to carry his team for up to 7 games straight. Playing at 100% back to back sucks and is extremely draining, physically or mentally. This includes the dexterity, command, and teamwork skills needed to carry a team in just one multiplayer game, which is why you would never see me at a gaming tournament for these things. It's also why a ton of people in tournaments take Adderall for the edge in focus.
On top of that, there is usually no sportsmanship in video games (due to it not being face to face and you're anonymous), so instead you're met with angry people who just want to vent at you because they had a shitty day and this one PvP game you're playing is their outlet to do so.
It's a mess from all angles and that's why after a long time of dealing with it, it forces people like myself to retire from it. In life I have been much happier fighting a raid boss in an MMO (even if the party might wipe) than I ever was playing a PvP game.
It is a level of aggression, anger, and sweatiness that literally has no equal outside of it in the world of gaming.
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kevboard
Member
yeah, the easily manipulated masses sadly get... well... easily manipulated.
imagine thinking its fun to play a game that is designed to give you a certain amount of wins/kills on a silver platter, manipulated through algorithms designed by literal psychologists, instead of playing and getting better over time, to eventually beat the enemy player that bested you before.
"you haven't won in 2 matches" says the algorithm, "let's put you in an OP team and pit you against casual losers that got their free win last round"
that is literally how these "Skill Based Matchmaking" algorithms work btw. they aren't designed to give you a fair match, they are designed to manipulate you through a predetermined win ratio that it will try to force onto you.
won too many matches today? now it will force you to lose. Lost too many? it will force a win. it will never try to actually match you perfectly unless your recent win stats just so happen to fall in line with an evenly matched round next.
due to these dogshit SBMM systems I mainly play ranked modes these days, because in most games the ranked mode will just match you with similar ranked players, which gives me way better and more balanced matches than in non-ranked modes.
This is true for Halo Infinite, Apex Legends, Fortnite... I don't know a game where this isn't true. ranked modes feel less manipulated, you just go up against stronger and stronger enemies as you increase your rank, until you hit exactly your limit, at which point most of the enemies will be exactly on your level, slightly below, or slightly above... but not a landslide skew towards one side or the other like in non-ranked modes that use SBMM.
if me and my friends win a game in Apex Legends in Diamond 4 for example, I know the game didn't gift me that win... and if we lose I know it's not because we won the last 2 games.
at worst we could have gotten unlucky and had some crazy Predator players in the lobby, but even then the chances are high that we make it in the top 5 if we play well.
SBMM of course being a total misnomer. this is EBMM, Engagement Based Matchmaking...
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Men_in_Boxes
Banned
This doesn't make any sense.
A few posts up you conplained about the game delivering a 50% win rate to you. This is logical.
What's illogical is you running into players who are as good as you, or better than you...and you rarely play against players worse than you.
That equation leads you to derank over time until you level out at a 50% win rate.
You're certainly playing against 33% of players worse than you, 33% as good as you, and 33% better than you.
That's the only way you get to a 50% leveling.
Additionally, if you have a life and rarely play...and thus are using non meta strategies to reach platinum, then you should simply start paying attention to what the inferior meta loving players are doing so that you can rank up.
Games do not have you playing as your teams LeBron James 100% of the time. In The Finals (3 player teams) the game makes you the best player on your team 33% of the time.
Engagment Based Matchmaking randomizes how often you're the best, the worst, and every skill level in between.
Turn off voice chat. Read a philosophy book and don't let immature people break your zone of serenity.
In The Finals, I will commonly be attacked for playing bad. The attacks are mostly valid as the game purposely makes me the worst player about 33% of the time.
I treat verbal attacks like a new game. Often times I will hit menu, find my attackers worst statistic and say "We would be winning if you could get a single rez off". Other times I say "My bad. I'll try to turn it around."
This way, The Finals morphs into 2 games. A political game of uneasy peace and a shooter game of clicking on heads. Both games are enjoyable.
This is valid too. I have difficulty deriving joy from PvE because it too often becomes a game of rote memorization. I like the uncertainty and higher degree of difficulty found in PvP.
The only voice that matters is your own. Do not seek the approval of others online, only revel in the joy of choosing your own response to their energy. You would be shocked at how many toxic trolls quickly change their tune if you simply say "You're right. My bad. I'm playing like ****." Very few people will continue verbally assaulting someone who is kind and is trying.
Then again, it's also fun to ping pong back their poor rezzing skills too.
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Men_in_Boxes
Banned
The Finals has EBMM.yeah, the easily manipulated masses sadly get... well... easily manipulated.
imagine thinking its fun to play a game that is designed to give you a certain amount of wins/kills on a silver platter, manipulated through algorithms designed by literal psychologists, instead of playing and getting better over time, to eventually beat the enemy player that bested you before.
"you haven't won in 2 matches" says the algorithm, "let's put you in an OP team and pit you against casual losers that got their free win last round"
that is literally how these "Skill Based Matchmaking" algorithms work btw. they aren't designed to give you a fair match, they are designed to manipulate you through a predetermined win ratio that it will try to force onto you.
won too many matches today? now it will force you to lose. Lost too many? it will force a win. it will never try to actually match you perfectly unless your recent win stats just so happen to fall in line with an evenly matched round next.
due to these dogshit SBMM systems I mainly play ranked modes these days, because in most games the ranked mode will just match you with similar ranked players, which gives me way better and more balanced matches than in non-ranked modes.
This is true for Halo Infinite, Apex Legends, Fortnite... I don't know a game where this isn't true. ranked modes feel less manipulated, you just go up against stronger and stronger enemies as you increase your rank, until you hit exactly your limit, at which point most of the enemies will be exactly on your level, slightly below, or slightly above... but not a landslide skew towards one side or the other like in non-ranked modes that use SBMM.
if me and my friends win a game in Apex Legends in Diamond 4 for example, I know the game didn't gift me that win... and if we lose I know it's not because we won the last 2 games.
at worst we could have gotten unlucky and had some crazy Predator players in the lobby, but even then the chances are high that we make it in the top 5 if we play well.
SBMM of course being a total misnomer. this is EBMM, Engagement Based Matchmaking...
It's a perfectly fine system. It creates a wider range of experiences for the player.
It allows players to practice, get better, and rank up just like SBMM.
kevboard
Member
I don't think you know what EBMM means... no one can defend that shit. it's literal match outcome manipulation. the The Finals devs don't openly state it's EBMM exactly because of that. it's a derogatory term. they also call it SBMM because that sounds like your matches are fair, which they aren't... although I haven't played The Finals all that long to be sure how bad their system is, as I found their aim assist system so fucking retarded that I basically uninstalled after 3 matches.
but anyway, how can you like that the game decides ahead of time for you how high your chances are that will win or not? how is this good matchmaking?
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Men_in_Boxes
Banned
No, The Finals has it.
Engagement Based Matchmaking doesn't guarantee a 50% win rate like you think it does.
The Finals ranks you based on your teams SSR. Sometimes you start the match as the lowest SSR team, sometimes the highest, and sometimes in-between. It works in The Finals because games are still winnable if your team has the lowest SSR. You might only win 20% of them but it never removes the desire to try to win.
I see CoD players complain about this but I fail to see how a game with 10x more players than The Finals would have worse EBMM.
kevboard
Member
again, no one officially calls it EBMM, EBMM is a derogatory term mainly used by players to avoid using the clearly untrue term "Skill Based" matchmaking.
EBMM is a derogatory term used for matchmaking systems that deliberately manipulate your win rate. any matchmaking system like that is bad, end of conversation.
if The Finals has EBMM it has a bad matchmaking system... it's funny how you call it EBMM and think that's a positive thing. EBMM is not an official term used by any dev, exactly because it is such a shit system, so they falsely call their systems SBMM.
all EBMM is designed to do is to keep easily manipulated players playing for as long as possible each session, as studies have shown that the longer a player is engaged with a game, the higher the probability that they buy microtransactions.
EBMM is not designed to give you balanced matches, not designed to give you fun matches. it's designed to exactly hit the sweet spot of lost rounds and won rounds... aka it manipulates your match outcome.
Halo Infinite's was so extreme that I had matches where I had 25 or 30 kills and like 3 deaths in a match, and we still lost, because the EBMM decided I have to lose and gave me teammates that barely knew how to use a controller, while the other team was 100 levels above my teammates, so they farmed kills on them while I tried to keep up.
guess what happened the next game? THE EXACT OPPOSITE... I barely had to do anything, and the enemy team had 1 ok guy and 3 absolute retards, while my team were all decent, because now it was that guy's turn to lose a match.
That is EBMM in action. and once you notice it, you will never unnotice it. in fact you can learn how to manipulate it due to how fucking obvious it is and how obvious it is how it works.
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Men_in_Boxes
Banned
I listen to numerous "industry professional" podcasts and game developers themselves use the term EBMM. They might have called it Engagment Oriented Matchmaking...same thing. I'll try to find the one I'm talking about...
EBMM is used because it's more effective, and more fun, than traditional SBMM.
Here it is...
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