What’s pvp? An sti?

I'm not sure why they think this is a younger millennial thing.

Probably bias from irl experience. Maybe their work friends don’t play video games, so they assume that most people who play online are gen z.
- I’m a GenX/Millenial and I love my single player games. Just started showing my 6 year old OG Super Mario Bros 1-3.

Im a millenial that wants to team up with friends to beat on the computer cause the computer hurt us all at one point.

I'm an elder millennial that had the rad but - overall - kinda bummer experience, where I got to enjoy this kinda vibe just a few times. Looking back it feels almost like a fever dream - it was so cool, but so fleeting.
There is nothing like the old warcraft 3 battle.net scene.
Meeting a bunch of strangers in a random game and then playing all night with them.
Just good old fashioned PvE fun
- The creation of those Dota like games. Wc3 battle.net was amazing. So was starcraft and all the great turret defense games made in their.

The introduction of voice chat is when playing randos on the Internet stopped being fun

Maybe, but to me it's voice chat + matchmaking.
I used to play on a few Day of Defeat: Source servers, and I met a ton of great online friends there. That's because they were dedicated and moderated servers that kicked and banned people for being assholes, in or out of voice chat.
But... If you're confident that you're never going to see the people in your match again, it's way easier to be assholes to them.
- This is the answer.
  I made friends on dedicated servers. I got called the n word and told my mother was fat in matchmaking.
- I had a select few servers of DoD and CS1.6. I saw in the millennium with some friends from all around the world while playing survivor.
  Great memories.
  Match making made things too easy and impersonal. You can only rely on a friend list now.
  Heh it’s like the real world now I guess.
Yes but ..in a way it's when everyone went into their own private parties things changed as well. Removed some of the outreach you got with online gaming, especially team based one. Everyone's in their own chat bubble
Edit: someone below me said "impersonal" and that's the best word I can describe
rock and stone, to the bone

I much prefer co-op multiplayer to pvp and co-op in a game I’m interested in is rare.

So yeah mostly singleplayer.

I'm roughly on the same boat. A format I've come to enjoy is streaming a pausable strategy game with a group of friends and taking decisions collectively (so if the game is Frostpunk, we're basically the oligarchy that's deciding how much is the working class going to slave away and how many deaths are acceptable), but it's hard to find stable friend groups that like it.
I always enjoy co-op when I actually do it, but nowadays I just can't commit to the long gaming sessions like i used to.
Worse, I feel kind of beholden to help the other players have a good time. Which can be fun, but but when my introvert battery is low, that is the last thing I want out of my game.
It's not a great feeling when you want to leave, but you're sticking around because you don't want to quit mid chapter or whatever.
Probably not healthy to want to get out of innocuous little social situations all the time hahaha oh well

I relate to this so much.

Despite the massive amount of comments here, I still don't see anyone talking about my personal issue with PvP here.

It's ranked matchmaking. In order to keep things working at all, you have to pair players with players of a similar skill. And this means that fundamentally you don't get a sense of progression besides an MMR ranking. Your win rate will always be roughly 50%, unless you either smurf, or become the literal best in the world. Compare that to tough PvE games, like Doom Eternal, or a brutal platformer, where you can raise your difficulty, beat stuff you could've never beaten before, and generally see your progression. Heck, if you want to relax, just put the difficulty back or crush some earlier levels. I love to go back and learn to speedrun some of my favourite platformers, and that feels awesome. Games like Souls are also great at this, when you have to explore an earlier area and the enemies are just... so easy and satisfying to roll through. Or moments like in Sekiro, when you go into NG+ or just start a new playthrough and crush Genichiro on the first encounter.

And this whole thing is just.. so fundamentally necessary for PvP to work, you can't let new players get utterly crushed by veterans, so it's not something anyone is going to "fix". But I'm not hopping onto an endless treadmill that's never going to give me a sense of mastery. Especially not with so many other fantastic games out there I want to check out.

The only time I've had fun in PVP games is if they're in beta and for a few weeks after release. When everyone is new and no one has memorized everything about the mechanics. But after those few weeks you get matched against people who know every trick in the game by playing for hundreds of hours and it's no longer fun.
To play a bit of devil's advocate, the sense of progression for PvP comes from just getting better at the game and going from Silver to Gold, for instance. You can better learn the maps, new combos, where/when to engage the enemy, and improve muscle memory, all to fight for a better shiny badge (and probably loot drops).
- Fair, you definitely become more skilled (I put 500 or so hours into DotA 2 years ago), and you can somewhat measure that, but I find it's not nearly as potent.
  My additional issue, if you take a long break like I did, is that the MMR somewhat traps you. When I came back, not only was it extremely frustrating to have the head knowledge about what I needed to do (I.E. denying creeps and stealing last hits for optimal farming) while not having the skill to execute it anymore, but I was also trapped in matches with only players who had the skill to capitalize on those mistakes and destroy me. Add to that the pressure of letting down a whole team of 5 players, and my attempts to get back into the game later were miserable.
  By comparison, I'm returning to Celeste right now, and checking out the strawberry jam mod. It's been incredibly satisfying to see how quickly I pick up and relearn those mechanics, and I'm just crushing the base game levels that gave me so much trouble the first time, while giving me an enjoyable de-rust. It's been a pleasure to dive back in, and I'm excited to see what heights I can reach, eager to beat the Farewell DLC that I gave up on before and to push myself to even harder modded content.
  Maybe I could get a similar experience in DotA, by playing hours of bot matches to relearn fundamentals, and watching lots of YouTube content to learn how the meta is shifted in my absence, but that's a much different grind than I'm having in Celeste, just enjoying the nostalgia of the game and revelling in how much quicker relearning is than the initial learning. And I never have to cope with any social pressures of letting my team down, or watching my hard earned MMR crumble away as the game repeatedly reminds me how much worse I've gotten.
I dispute the premise that SBMM is a fundamental requirement for PVP to work, though obviously it's become intertwibed with the genre that a game choosing not to use it is going to have a more difficult go of it to onboard folks.
There was a time before SBMM after all. A time of server browsers, admins with chips on their shoulders, GameSpy, and "unofficial" map rotations and rules.
Now, for about a billion different reasons, this model is not going to make a comeback and become king again. But, I just wanted to mention that MM is not as "fundamental" as your comment indicated.
- Yeah, very fair. I do think it's essential for the modern scale, and to be constantly on boarding new players, so I don't think it's going anywhere, but there was certainly a time where we could live without it. I used to love playing unreal tournament with the same friends regularly, and that was much closer to what I enjoy, as I could see myself getting better, even if the skill gap between us was obvious and I never really had a "fair" game.
  The games I honestly think have the best chance of beating this are battle royales, where you could probably throw caution to the wind and matchmake fully randomly, or by throwing a set percentage of each MMR bracket into the same lobby, and still have players who can achieve a reasonable amount of success due to luck and who they find to fight and when.
This is why games with truly social matchmaking are great, like Halo 3, but in modern gaming having first time players get dicked on in their first ever by sweatiest with 10,000 hours played just means they will quit the game and go play something else.
- Yeah, personally I've always enjoyed playing IRL with people who are better than me. Having a real person gives me that constant measuring stick I'm looking for, and playing with someone better gives me someone to watch and learn from, which helps me improve way more quickly. But that's... not what gets you the big sales numbers and a smooth player onboarding.
  For PvP stuff, the experience I enjoyed the most was playing Smash with dorm mates in college. Getting my ass handed to me in 1v1 matches for months by the guy who owned the console, but learning, grinding, letting that guy I wanted to beat motivate me to use the training room, to watch YouTube videos, study techniques, and try to really master my character, learning how to be unpredictable and perform mix ups that needed to fool an experienced player who knew my weaknesses better than anyone, it was so satisfying. And by the end of the year we were on even footing, and I was maybe even a little better, which just felt incredible and so well earned.
  That experience is what ranked PvP just completely lacks. Every time you win they just swap in new players who are that little step better than you until you're perfectly even again. Which is great on a game-to-game scale, each battle is hard fought, but just offers nothing on that wider timescale that I need to really care.

I'm an older millennial and don't want to play online. I thought younger millennials liked playing online.

We do, I dunno what they're on about. Younger millennials loved shit like Halo 3, Gmod, TF2, UT2k4, Q3A, CS:S, HL:DM, DayZ, and so on.
- Yeah, loved. Past tense. Pvp games are cesspools now.
- But that was then, when there was time to get good. Millenials now don't have the time for that, and going online means getting ass-kicked.

same bro.

i tried league of legends in 2012 and it was ass. i left and never looked back. every time i hear about people having a miserable time in league, i laugh, because i dodged a massive bullet.

I have never heard someone who plays league a lot talk about it as an enjoyable experience, but the sunk cost fallacy keeps them there.

I feel bad when I lose, and I feel bad when I make someone else lose, so pvp is just constantly feeling bad. There's no feeling of being good, just feeling bad.

I don't feel bad about winning against the computer.

One thing that grinds my gears is this obsession with competitive MP. What happened with co-op? I have these great memories playing games with friends on the couch, cooperatively. Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc.
The moment online multiplayer appeared, these types of games disappeared. Its either competitive or mmporpgs. It's weird, I never understood why that happened. It's either fight ourselves or nothing. Just imagine what could be done. Playing a single player RPG with just a friend. Fight together or split side-quests. So many possibilities.
I guess it's easier to make people spend money on in-game crap when they're trying to one-up someone.
- Yeah! Beating up the computer with friends is great! Couch co-op seems to have gone away, at least somewhat. I know some exist, but my memory has been bad lately so I forget err...what they are making.
- My brother and I used to spend hours playing together in an old 2-player dungeon game.
- Thats exactly what it is, mobile gaming showed up with its microtransactions and proved its model was vastly more profitable, and so the downhill slide began.
Especially considering the cheap shortcuts and literal cheats the AI pulls off due to lazy/hasty programming... I'll happily teabag the computer.

As an elder Millennial, I was in college when Halo and Counterstrike became things, and they were massively popular.

But sure, growing up I was playing fucking DOS games my cousin handed me on floppy disks, and then later games like King's Quest and Myst. Otherwise I was hanging with friends playing SNES and Genesis.

Also, all those 12 year olds kicking my ass online in Halo 3 in 2007 blatantly prove this person wrong

PvP is when you put in the boxing cartridge and one of you is the white guy and the other is the black guy, but you do better because you know the controller you gave your friend doesn't like to go left.

(Yes, I'm old.)

The fuck? I'm an elder millennial, and I was PvPing my entire life. First over serial cables, Doom 2, Dune 2, Warcraft 1/2, C&C/Red Alert, Heretic/Hexen off the top of my head.

Then internet gaming came along in middle school. Ultima Online, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, CS (HL2 mod), etc.

And that's just PC. Shit ton of local pvp on consoles from the start. Spy vs Spy on NES is the first console heads up pvp that I can remember.

I just don't play much PvP now because I'm old and don't have the energy or free time.

Spy vs Spy on NES is the first console heads up pvp that I can remember.
And the glory days of console PVP was still ahead.
4 player deathmatches on Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Wave Race.
Ah, it was gloroous, 4 kids sat in front of a 26 inch CRT, the screen split 4-ways. And looking at someone else's screen is cheating.
Then HL1 mods, CS, dod, team fortress. Fire up the ol' All-Seeing Eye and Roger Wilco and jump to the server for some clan practice before the enemy team joins for the Clanbase official match.
Although I went to Tactical Ops when Steam came, like CS but on Unreal Engine. More action, less sneaking and shooting while crouching still.
Actually enjoyable computer opponents are far newer than enjoyable PVP, imo.
Who remembers heat.net
- I do, who remembers Descent? That was the first multiplayer online game I played. Turned out I was pretty good, even though I couldn't beat the game. No one could beat the game without cheats. They made the end boss impossible to defeat.

Hard agree. Online pvp is and had always been a latency contest. A person's ability to aim where something was 300ms ago is not impressive.

I remember the days of quake 2 rocket arena getting sub 10 ping and seeing ppl skip across the screen.
rocket jumps and rail gun combo ftw

The problem I have with pvp games is they are very shallow compared to single player games. Most pvp games also tend to be shooters which by definition are shallow in gameplay.

I usually get bored of the gameplay loops of pvp games long before I get tired of the pvp aspects themselves. Just take a look at counter strike, Valorant, Fortnite, etc. Not much variance in the gameplay loop. I get bored of that shit really quick.

On the other hand a single player game like rimworld, factorio, battle brothers…..Their gameplay loops are complex and still bring be varied interesting gameplay even 1000 hours later.

The variance is the PvP itself. No 2 players are exactly the same. I'm not a fan of PvP any more but as someone who's put hours into PvP focused games, calling them shallow and unvaried is the exact opposite of true. Most of them have crazy high skill ceilings, which is why they can be competitive in the first place
- The variance is the PvP itself.
  Exactly. To me that gets repetitive and it isn’t all that interesting if that is all there is to it. PvP for the sole purpose to pvp is only so fun for so long. For me anyway. That goes triple for shooters where there is no meaningful outcome to winning or losing. Grinding rank in a competitive game isn’t interesting at all when the game play loop is simple. I’m talking games like counter strike.
  I don’t have the time for it because the time investment is MASSIVE but the most interesting and fun pvp game for me was Eve online.
  Lots and lots of pvp with huge losses. But the purpose and outcome of the pvp had devastating effects to the economical and geopolitical atmosphere in the region you were fighting in.
  You weren’t fighting just to fight. Don’t get me wrong there was plenty of skirmishing. Lots of pointless and meaningless fights. Although they weren’t completely meaningless as every loss was a resource dump for the loser. Enough of those and an opponent might flee the region putting the war on hold to rebuild resources. War is real. There was something bigger in the game that was affected by your fighting.
  I wish there were more games like Eve online. I want the pvp I engage in to be meaningful and have lasting effect on the overall game. That’s what keeps me engaged and striving.
  The problem to me is that the vast majority of games have meaningless pvp. It’s an esports thing I guess. I don’t care for esports. I want engaging pvp. Esports isn’t it.
It’s because the developers rely on the players to make the content. You either end up with a shallow experience like looter shooters, or a dystopian hellscape like Eve Online where only the people playing the longest with the most sociopathic traits end up controlling the entire game board.
Either way, it’s not a fun experience. They act like you matter, that your choices mean something, but they don’t have any impact at all. It’s even less than a PvE game like BG3 where your choices dictate the playthrough.
- Eve online is a good example of a good pvp system. At least your fighting has meaningful outcomes. A 5v5 in an arena game like CS has zero meaningful outcome.
  If you pay attention the landscape is always changing in Eve. Big empires are constantly being challenged and the chess board is constantly changing.
  Say what you want about Eve online. I don’t play it anymore. I don’t have the time for it. But I wish more developers were interested in making games like this instead of going for the esports trend. Clearly the money is in esports. I guess that’s what people prefer. I don’t tho. I think it’s boring.
The problem I have with pvp games is they are very shallow compared to single player games. Most pvp games also tend to be shooters which by definition are shallow in gameplay.
That's another thing I dislike about most PVP games. I like games for the story, even if I have to build it myself. I play shooters on the lowest difficulty so that I can enjoy the story. But PVP doesn't have that.

i don't think I'm a younger millennial but I'm the same. always played videogames, just not mp.

I am a geriatric millennial (thanks to whoever coined that term btw) and I am also like this.
Generally millennials born after 1989 would fall into the "younger millennial" catagory.
The difference between old millennial and young millennial is how much of the 90s you actually remember because you were old enough to form memories, and not just the kind of made up memories you invent from looking back on old photos and trying to imagine the stories your parents told you about your childhood.
- so I'm definitely not a younger millennial. still works for me, though.
I'm firmly Gen X, but I feel the same. The only PvP system that I ever liked was EvE Online
- that makes more sense the younger you are the more likely you should be to enjoy multiplayer games.

I play video games to escape the world full of people I can't stand. Not to run back into them in a place where they no longer have any manners at all...

As I got older, I started to find online toxicity less bothersome and more funny. I was playing The Finals yesterday and some dude was just going AT IT in the text chat (voice chat is always off, this is a must) and I was actually shocked to find myself insulting him right back. It was...fun. Am I part of the problem now?

It's fun to just give them a little poke and see if they explode 🤷

I mean Pong was also a PVP game...

I don't think you played Pong online against strangers though
- BRB writing online Pong

Dude I’m 53 and this is exactly me (so mid gen-x?). I’ve been playing video games since I was 8 (of course back then it was pong and an Atari 2600). I hate the toxicity of any online play.

I'm also a younger millennial, but I think this is just somewhat attributed to having enough bad experiences with PVP games, and that's fine.

The fact you are playing against other sentient, strategizing, sometimes malicious, but sometimes naively innocent, unpredictable, biological machines is just something you can't really find in single player games.

There's all kinds of pitfalls where you either take things too seriously, too personally, or just meet a ton of assholes in too short a time. It's a bit like life itself. It's got the highest highs, and the lowest lows.

Single player games are simply a lot more consistent in avoiding the lows, but at the cost of never being able to reach those highest highs of knowing you did so well against actual human beings, opponents you can consider your peer or even smarter than you. No single player AI opponent can match that. They usually never play by the same rules as you do, or lack the same weaknesses you do.

But since we remember the lows much more vividly, everyone remembers PVP games as being miserable. Yet we keep playing, because deep down we're hoping to get that high again. I think it's fine to let people enjoy that. But it might not be for everyone.

Some people don't get highs from beating other people.
PVP sucks. There are always people willing to spend more money than I am on a game.
Campaign style playing with others isn't AS bad, though.
- Pay to win models are shit. Much prefer twitch/skill based models where you can't apply currency to anything mechanical.
- Some people don’t get highs from beating other people. ... Campaign style playing with others isn’t AS bad, though.
  That's fine, I can understand that. And it definitely helps to play with people you trust. I'm just saying you take a bigger risk with random people, and sometimes you find something unique you wouldn't otherwise find.
  PVP sucks. There are always people willing to spend more money than I am on a game.
  PVP games aren't inherently pay to win. I share your dislike if it comes to that. It must be an even playing field to be enjoyable.
I don't mind PVP games when I know the folks I'm playing against. I used to have a job where we'd play Unreal Tournament during lunch on the company LAN, and I loved it even though I wasn't that good. I'd bring my computer to LAN parties in high school, and played Descent over a modem with my friend before that.
But when it's some rando it's not nearly as fun.
- Totally agree. I loved playing LAN tournaments back in the day. Having good opponents definitely makes the experience a lot more likable since you can just avoid many of the frustrating situations with horrible people. Every good winner needs a good loser for things to remain friendly. But sadly as I'm sure you noticed as well, as you grow up less and less times will you have a full group of the people you like to play with ready to play at the same time.
  That's the problem that matchmaking in part solves. And sometimes randoms can do things that you would never see a friend of yours do. I still think you have a wider range of experiences with random people, but it does require taking a bigger risk. But I understand that's not for everyone.
Ironically I've mostly stopped playing PvP games because matchmaking, at least for me, has turned PvP into single player with very sophisticated bots and a random outcome. Really think about it, hypothetically if someone made an AI model where the input data is players playing the game and then used that model to direct bots in your match without your knowledge could you even tell the difference? I grew up with community servers and as someone coming from that era the matchmaking process feels like it is missing human connection. You're not going to make friends there and half the players will treat you inhumanely anyway because it's not like they're going to see you again.
Since matchmaking is me getting matched with X random people who I'm never going to see again I might as well be playing against the computer and if I'm already going to do that I might as well get a more curated experience.
- I hate matchmaking so much!!! Its such a garbage mechanic. Let me pick a server to play against/with the same dozen people over and over. Some of the best impromptu friendships I've ever had were from server based PvP, because I could encounter the same people over and over.
- It depends for me. Matchmaking is specifically employed to avoid the situation of one sided matches. That is, one player being completely unable to compete in any way because of difference i experience. Similarly, being the one doing the stomping can be more enjoyable, but not forever. Eventually it feels like playing against AI opponents, and you can't really develop high level strategies if you always have to keep in mind your opponent might be totally oblivious to anything you do. Typically you do want some grouping with at least similar skill level, so that you can go all without feeling bad or feeling held back. Perhaps some modern matchmaking is too strict, that's something to look at case to case.
  I think an AI could replace the gameplay aspect of human players to a certain degree. But you're hitting the nail on it's head. The human factor would be lost. Human players do things that don't make sense at times, or to achieve an overhanging purpose that no AI could be taught. Most AI implementations (even if we're not talking about machine learning) are very static. Once you figure out a trick to confuse the AI, like hiding behind a specific wall to ambush them, it's not going to learn you can do that until a developer updates it. A human player would notice, and eventually would start expecting you to do it and fight against it. Within the same match. I'd argue it's currently impossible for AI to match that level of ingenuity, at least currently.
  Personally, I've met some of the nicest people I know in PVP games. Has modern matchmaking made that harder? Probably. But not impossible. I also prefer community servers. But those games still exist out there. They're just much more niche, because it takes a specific kind of person to go for that. And it requires a level of discomfort of the player, as the steps to learn the ropes becomes much harder. Sadly, few people willingly take that route.
I must be good at compartmentalizing because the moments I vividly remember from PVP are the hard-fought wins, both 1v1 and as a group.
- It's why people are different right. I try to also hold on to the positive memories more than the negative. But some people get called slurs for too many games in a row or don't get any chance to participate, and get turned off forever. That's a normal reaction I feel. I like to think if you keep liking PVP games for long enough you have an easier time shrugging off stupid people you play against. It's what you need to keep going. Or just find that one game with only wholesome people in it, although those are dimes a dozen.

Interesting take. I’m Gen X, and when online play came about it was amazing after so many years of singleplayer games, or games that your opponent had to be physically present to play on another controller next to you. So to reject online play to me seems…odd.

That said, I think online and always-online have done a lot of damage to gaming, from DRM to loss of physical ownership to loss of good singleplayer storylines in triple-A games.

The main issue for me is that the amount of time I would have to put into a game to get good enough to not get shit on in pvp kills the enjoyment. I played a ton of destiny 2 and was still solidly mediocre at pvp. My first 2 games of Squad I don't think I got a single kill. Pubg was just miserable starting out. Never gonna touch warthunder.
- You’re absolutely right. If you don’t have time to invest in getting good at multiplayer, pvp can be frustrating at best. I’ve got thousands of hours invested in my preferred game and I’m pretty damn good, I’m very competitive, but even I quit a game occasionally because of other players.
  Despite the gaming community's constant rhetoric that “nobody cheats, git gud kid, learn how to aim”, cheating is rampant. From players that abuse aim assist with devices like the chronos max to just good old-fashioned aimbots, they can ruin anyone’s game, even mine. And even I quit games when players are so obviously using artificial aim assists that it’s just not fun, and popular FPS shooters are the prime targets for cheaters. Even if you are good, there’s more than enough people willing to wreck your game.
I love couch co op and single player. Online is great im sure but I despise that it has taken over gaming, ruined GTA
- Yep. The preference for online-only games like PUBG, Apex, or others where it has removed fun, deep, single player campaigns like GTAV that used to be the hallmark of a good game has definitely done serious damage to the gaming we used to know.
That, and your total lack of ownership of online-only games. The constant treadmill of, "Oh, did you have fond memories of playing Game X? Want to play it again? Too bad, Microsoft/Blizzard/EA/Activision/whoever turned off the servers so now your disc is tantamount to a coaster."
An old man yelling at clouds I may be, but you know what? I stick a cartridge into my Nintendo and the fucker just plays. Every time.

I like PvP games when they are among smaller circles. It's easy to get good when the people you're playing against all live locally.

But then you get into something like Destiny 2, and some korean kid who gets paid to main the game absolutely obliterates you the moment you spawn.

World-wide matchmaking is a mistake. If PvP were locally-matched, I think plenty of people would have a good time.

I'd advocate for player hosted / dedicated servers over "Locals Only". When you have community tools to regulate toxicity, you end up with a much better community. See also the TFC, TF2, Soldier of Fortune, Jedi Knight, Quake 3, CoD 4, etc.... servers I played and admin'ed on growing up.
- I actually ran CS 1.6 servers on a spare desktop at home and met some close friends because they were on the same local node, their ping was constantly <80ms and so they chose my server over and over again. When I was playing and told them where I lived, they lost it and said they lived in the same area. We kept giving a little bit more information to each other, making sure it wasn't just someone fishing for some kids address, and found out we lived in the same neighborhood. Met probably 6 guys this way that I'm still friends with. :)
Having a larger worldwide population to match with means matchmaking can do a better job of trying to find someone closer to your level. Playing any game with a high skill ceiling with IRL friends is what often just results in a skill gap too wide for either of us to have fun, and then who else can I even go play with?
And that's assuming anyone you know IRL even wants to play the niche games you love best.

For me, playing against the computer inevitably results in me finding a repeatable way to beat it. If there is a story and varied environments, that is acceptable. However, for a real challenge, I’ll always go for human opponents.

yup, without story pve is just boring af very quick
Ultimately, you know you can't be one of the best players of the game unless you're around 18 and play the same game 50 hours a week, and you also aren't paired up with completely random players, so you can't really even get real feedback on how much better or worse you are than the average player, since games group you in with players similar to you (but will sometimes change that if it wants to slip you that dopamine to keep playing and hand you an easy win).

My biggest problem with PVP in most games is the fact that my play style of being not super sweaty works against me since I felt like I was always getting paired against better players and felt like I was never getting any better no matter how much I played. Not a millennial, but I definitely feel this. CPU are also my beef as well in most games as well.

I don’t get this.

I was playing PVP games in 1993. On the Internet.

I played my first offline video game in 1983.

Most video games I play today are offline on my phone, with a few PVP games in the browser on my computer.

What does being a millennial have to do with any of that?

I also think he's wrong but he is talking about young millennials. I'm a young millennial. I was born in 1993. This post is not about you.
- That’s my point. The post could easily apply to me and I’m not a young millennial, or a millennial at all. There’s no correlation.
Earliest game I played over the net was probably Diablo followed by an addiction to Ultima Online. Still ended up on WoW for a year and then swore off MMOs ever since
I still play pvp games mixed in regularly with single player. Chivalry 2 is cathartic and some CoD from time to time.
For single player I like paradox stuff and open world survival crafts. Satisfactory and automatic are also like crack.
Thanks for listening to my Ted talk that no one asked for.
- I swore off after ultima online, summer 99 and thankfully never picked up WoW. Then only very very casual console gaming into the millennium and nothing else until 5 or so years back when I started playing multi-player Civ V with group of friends. Now I probably have played more hours of Civ V than any game since Diablo 1 but I'm also 40 and have 3 kids lol. Time is a circle apparently.
Don't act like a d-bag. Most kids before 1998 didn't even have internet at home, and most kids in the 90's were console gamers. Not PC.
Also, no, I'm not full of shit. US census data shows 18% of households had the internet in 1997, and if you don't remember that most kids and teens around were gaming on consoles then you either lived under a rock, or you're on here right now lying about your age.
Quake 2 and warcraft 2!
- Actually, the first PVP game I played was NetTrek in 1990 — forgot about that one. We generally didn’t start calling them PVP games until 1993-ish.
  I spent a lot of time on MUDs in the 90s too…. They generally had mobkill and PVP zones.
- Connected by serial cables and hoping you got the IRQs correct!
  We did Warcraft 2 and duke nukem with some Doom mixed in
Well younger kids do seem to be more obsessed with multi-player. I can't get any of my kids to play single player games.
- And that's how the publishers want it because there's a lot more money to be made in online
OP seems to imply they're unfamiliar with the idea of playing games with other people at all, as if multiplayer games weren't a thing before the internet.

Same as an older zoomer

90s kid, and I grew up playing Counterstrike and the Warcraft/Starcraft series online. Multiplayer games tend to be the most fun when you've got a community of people around you to game with, and that's something high school / college provides in spades but adult life really finds lacking.

I'm mostly sad I was a bit too old to get into the Collaborative/Competitive game scene - that sweet mix of RTS and FPS you got from Tribes or the more heavily modded versions of Team Fortress or EVE Online, where you would build up a base's tech tree before launching a climactic battle against your opponent's main base.

Interacting with other humans and following the strategic "meta" to execute increasingly elaborate plays and strategies adds depth to relatively simple games. Whether I'm playing tennis or battling it out in the technodrome, there's something fun about the PvP experience that PvE can't replicate.

Just FYI, there's a new Tribes game that came out a few months ago.
- No kidding. I'll give it a look.
- I forgot that was happening - is it any good?
battlefield 1942 - desert combat
anyone?
- It was BF2142 Titan battles for me

the only PVP i need is CHESS

I need to avoid competition for my mental health sake. It isn’t even fun I just can’t stand losing so any game that makes me lose will see me pouring countless hours to ‚win’ whatever that means.

It’s honestly like some kind of disability because once any small amount of competition is involved it ruins everything for me. Let’s say I enroll in drawing course. Someone there is better and now I can’t sleep because I need to win or something. It’s exhausting and like a prison of mind in a way.

It’s not that bad nowadays thankfully but like few years ago it was all such maddening race to who knows where instead of savouring the meaningful. Frankly it’s still the same but competition now is who is the wisest

Sounds like a very common trait of ADHD, namely perfectionism

Chat and PvE games are nice.

My interest is with the Hard mode AI and only the Hard mode AI. Outsider do not need to get involved.

Am a young millenial but me not playing online games has nothing to do with that. I am just antisocial.

Asocial and antisocial are really quite different, though we (societally) confuse the two words - even a quick Google gives pretty mixed answers. If you aren't playing games for the express purpose of ruining the fun of others, you sound more asocial than antisocial to me. Just throwing that out there in case it happens to be useful.
- You're right about the definition of asocial, but in every dictionary I've found, antisocial actually means both. Antisocial behaviour is generally more about harming others, while describing oneself as antisocial is generally just avoiding others.
  I'm curious if you're from the UK because when I was there, I noticed a lot more people use antisocial in the context of harming others or society, while in north America we use it more in the avoiding others context.

A real millennial would call it an STD

Yeah, when did this change?
- I think about 10-15 years ago, I first heard about it. I think it was changed because they realized some things that were STDs were not actually diseases but infections. More of a pedantic difference I guess. I could not tell you what the difference is between a disease and infection.

My joints hurt too much for competitive gameplay anyway.

Every competitive game today is a sweatfest (I'd be part of that if I was decent).
I don't have the natural skill to be good right off the bat, and I don't have the time to make up for that skill gap, and I have a tendency to get hooked on competition.
So there isn't anything good that can come of it for me.
These old knees just can't handle banging around in Rocket League like they used to.
You mean the wrist on your dominant hand?
- For me is the shoulder. No more counter strike for this old man :(

We need to bring back independent MMOs with shit graphics and low enough overhead to run in the browser.

Old school RuneScape is still going strong. Though you'll need to download a jar to play it.
- Yeah they launched on steam and mobile a few years ago, too.

As an old fart I have enjoyed beating a computer many times. However, beating your friends is always nicer.

The entire latency problems and whatnot come when you are trying to beat strangers online; that has always held very little appeal to me

It seems that the younger generation is actually learned something. Good lad.

Young millennial here ... did this guy forget about League of Legends? We definitely played competitive online games, in fact, we were the very worst and most toxic 😌🏆

Are you confusing something? OP is claiming OLD millennials (born in the early 80's, basically) prefer single player games.
You're saying you're a younger millennial that played LoL.
Well I have a few things to say to you. Older millennials were already adults before LoL existed. Like 25+ already.
LoL was just an offshoot of player created games made in a much older game called Warcraft 3.
Back in the WC3 days, some strategy pvp games existed and were popular, but they weren't very similar to how it is now. Particularly that there would only be like 3 other players and that there was no mics.
When I say popular, they were still far from the norm. The average kid/teen gamer didn't play them. Hell, in 1997 only 18% of US hoyseholds even had the internet.
- They are a younger millenial, and talking about how not playing online games is a signifier of that. Not sure how you get this so wrong you think you can correct me about what it straight up says.

I don't care for pvp versus total strangers. Local pvp or co-op is where it's at. Same with LAN parties. My brother used to bring his PS3 over to my apartment in college. He'd hook up to the TV, I'd grab a PC monitor and headphones, and my roommate would bring his own TV to the living room and we'd play Borderlands 2 together. We used to also play a lot of Melee in those days. I miss that a lot.

Gaming should be couch co-op as a priority.
Its like sports - they just aren't right if you're not being loud, eating junk food, getting a bit drunk if that's your thing, laughing and screaming in equal measure.
- 8 players crowded on four gamepads playing micro machines2 on sega megadrive
- Imagine getting down voted because someone didn't like your opinion. (Which I agree with)
  There's some tryhards down voting every comment here in support probably because they don't have any friends and play sweaty.
  Edit: thanks for providing my point random fucktard

I like human competition. I have my doubts about human team mates, because some of them are total noobs. I can barely tolerate class based teams, and I hate playing medic with a passion, because no one appreciates the medic.

Where I personally draw the line is effing building shit in FPS games..Who the hell ever thought that up? I'm running around shooting people, I don't want to erect a freaking shed with a staircase in the middle of nowhere so I can freak out and hide in it like a scared rat.

Oh and skins and outfits. Nothing gives me more pleasure than constantly killing off every player with the fanciest outfit using the oldest, most default skin in the game. I'm sure you think you look super fancy in your banana suit with sunglasses that were undoubtedly bought by your freaking mom, now eat my rocket and die.

Yeah I miss making custom maps for Halo with my free time after school but playing LoL and attempting Valorant finished my need for multiplayer.
Also being trapped in the bowels of a ship for years with Internet that cost like $5 a minute.
I enjoy Helldivers but playing almost completely on my own.

I just hate that you spend so much time looking at menus when you start a online match. They’ve added so much friction because you basically start in the store. And then you have to wait in the lobby. If you only have time to play one match you spend a third of your time not playing.

I'm the opposite, as I got out of my teens I really started to get less and less out of single-player games. They just felt like an empty theme park for the most part. I found myself more drawn to games like DayZ where it's not just PVP, but it's entirely open for you and others to choose how you play and approach eachother.

That anarchy of play styles has produced some of the greatest experiences I've had in a game because the "characters" you meet are real people and you have to use real reasoning and human social skills to navigate situations, whether it's determining how suspicious someone is, making a hard call when you are uncertain, or forming alliances and building trust. I actually am the main character of my own story and what I bring to the table determines what sort of story I have.

Single-player games simply can't offer that. In a single-player you're just inhabiting a fictional character as their story progresses along rails like a train ride. I'd rather just watch a film or series for that kind of story.

And a game like Elden Ring where you just rotely try over and over until you find the scripted limits of the AI just doesn't do much for me, I never feel fully engaged or accomplished. But when I engage with a human stranger and either negotiate or outwit them (or get outwitted) that is really mentally stimulating for me because there's this overlap with reality where the human interactions are unsimulated.

And it needs to be executed flawlessly. Lost a unit? Tap dat undo fast!

[Dry haves in OCD]

PVP is only fun when I'm good at it and that takes time. The last PVP game I was heavily into, it took me a year just to get decent. It wasn't until the third year when I felt like I was above average.

The reason I don't play pvp anymore isn't because my interest in pvp has changed. It's because what modern pvp with its mtx/fomo is. I don't want to play dress up or roleplay. I don't want to have fidget spinner style idle animations. I don't want to walk across huge maps only to get sniped and have to wait 10 minutes for a respawn. I don't want edgy/try hard "character" dialog for the classes.

Yep. I hate saying this, but 2004-2009 World of Warcraft was almost the perfect game. The PvP was imbalanced, but battlegrounds were usually pretty fun. Die? Just wait 30 seconds.
We also got to play WITH other people, not against them, and we all played in this really great world with a fantastic story.
It’s a shame WoW decided to go the way of tokens and a story written by a rich kid, edgy teenage theater club. Would have kept playing it to this day.
- Come to FFXIV! We have decent stories, a voluntary PvP arena with multiple modes, and cat girls!

After MW2 (the new one) I realized that I don't have fun anymore with online PvP with strangers. Back in the day on Black Ops 2 I did voice impressions and shenanigans. I remember on PSN I would cut up with strangers and they would just randomly add me. After the PS4 and Xbox One, everyone plays in their own parties and the only ones in voice chat are eating too loud, neglecting their children, playing shitty music, or are try hards about to blow a blood vessel.

most publishers PvP games are a live service now and want you to treat it like a second job and play nothing else or you get left behind. I'm not about that life anymore I guess.

What is the "younger millennial" part of the comment about? I'm one of the older millennials and feel this way. Heck I know some Gen X guys that grew up playing video games and feel this way.

I think it may have been a misstatement. I’ve never heard folks talk about being younger millennials, just elder millennials and regular ol run of the mill millennials.

This person watched Reboot and took great offense at the computer winning. Bet he cheered when Bob and Enzo got stuck in the games.

Meanwhile, I love PvP because people can learn and get better so there is always a challenge even after the single player game becomes boring because you know every single trick, trap, move and attack pattern.

If the Soulsborne games didn't have PvP, I probably would not have been as big of a fan of them as I currently am. Sekiro is one of my least favorite of them because it has no multiplayer at all and has just 1 build so there's not really a point to playing through it more than once to experience everything it has.

But I can understand how people who aren't that good at games would prefer the computer as their opponent.

Oops, you were doing great until the end hahahaha
- It's not even meant to be a jab; if the pre-set challenge is enough, why would you seek a greater one?

This is by far the worst take I've ever seen.

If this post is the worst take you've ever seen, I can only assume that this is your first day on the internet. Welcome! I hope you find something that you like. And try to be nice to people.
- After further review, I misread the post
Even in just this community, simply scroll down to any Biden meme and read the comments.