this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Patient Gamers

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A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.

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Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let's dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don't want to see anyone say stuff like "we're all entitled to our own opinions." Let's pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.

My Unpopular Opinion:

I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities

Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it's optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I've never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.

Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don't have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I'm glad you don't play the games anymore, but I don't think it makes the game bad.

The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don't really have a point against this except that it's better to play with friends.

Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.

This is just my opinion

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago (10 children)

I couldn't care less about owning games physically. I'm way more likely to lose/damage them then lose access to their download.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago

I held on to physical media for a long time, and the legal ownership implications are scary for digital media, BUT the argument of avoiding creating plastic waste at one point outweighed this for me, and I've been all digital ever since, but to each their own. Definitely pros and cons either way.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Most people that complain about digital media aren't fanatics for physical items. The problems usually come down to who actually owns the media in question.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

I get people wanting to own games physically, but that becomes entirely irelivant with the recently more common practice of having the disk be basically just a glorified download key

That and I play on PC mostly anyway, and physical games died out over a decade ago there

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[–] some_guy 54 points 8 months ago (17 children)

Battle royale gameplay sucks though. I like competitive games but spending 15 minutes in empty buildings looting, then 4 minutes running from shots that I can’t tell where they’re from, then 30 seconds in a firefight only to die and have to wait for the rest of my teammates to die before I can play again… that’s objectively boring af.

When I get time to spend playing video games, I want to actually play, not spend the whole time just picking up items and guns I never get to use.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I don't like 3D platforming. I haven't liked it since it really kicked off in 1996. Even all these years later with Super Mario Odyssey, I feel like I'm constantly fiddling with the camera, and something in my brain struggles with judging distances in 3D space at times. I used to love platforming. Yoshi's Island is one of my all-time favorite games.

If I were in a bubble, I'd say the camera and the floaty controls that are in a lot of these games need an overhaul, but Mario's as popular as ever. Between that and Mario games still being at the top of metascores, it's probably only me and five other people grumpy about it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I completely agree. It's even worse when the platforming is forced in a game that's not about platforming.

2D platforming is way better. Far less frustration, and there's a lot games can do with it.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Some of them felt like they were set up to force weird camera angles and be luck of the draw. That's not adding challenge. That's just being a dick.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (16 children)

I have no issue with battle royales.

I have a huge issue with literally all microtransactions in every context. Cosmetics are not a justification. The only valid way to unlock cosmetics is to earn them with gameplay.

If you have microtransactions in any format in your game, you are a bad human being. There is no scenario where it is forgivable. If you have lootboxes, you should go to prison for the blatant unregulated gambling operation you are running.

[–] thantik 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

On TOP of this, the companies know that their market demographic is the under 18 segment, who isn't mature and lacks the self-control of a fully fledged adult. They bank on this immaturity and use it to further entrench gambling addiction in young adults. The people who excuse this as "oh if you don't like it then just don't buy it!" have the absolute most trash opinions of all.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (16 children)

I've stopped advocating for PC gaming after about 15 years of being a PC enthusiast. It's just too expensive these days. I think the Steam Deck is a good entry point, but not everyone wants a handheld console. I can 100% respect anyone who looks at the price of a gaming PC and just picks up a Playstation/Xbox for $500 instead.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

What do you mean too expensive? While the higher-end GPUs are still ridiculous, you can find something like the 6650XT for ~$200 and that is more than enough for 1080p gaming. Meanwhile SSDs and RAM are at an all-time low price because of how cheap NAND flash is. Throw in a previous gen Ryzen 5 or i5 for ~$100 and you could easily build a competent gaming PC for $500. Plus you don't have to pay the $60/year tax for online and get access to Steam sales and mods. And torrents if you're into that.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It really depends on your expectations. Once you clarified that you meant parity with current consoles, I understood why you wrote what you did.

I'm almost the exact opposite of the PC princesses who can say with a straight face that running a new AAA release at anything less than high settings at 4K/120fps is "unplayable". I stopped watching/reading a lot of PC gaming content online because it kept making me feel bad about my system even though I'm very happy with its performance.

Like a lot of patient gamers, I'm also an older gamer, and I grew up with NES, C64, and ancient DOS games. I'm satisfied with medium settings at 1080/60fps, and anything more is gravy to me. I don't even own a 4K display. I'm happy to play on low settings at 720/30fps if the actual game is good. The parts in my system range from 13 to 5 years old, much of it bought secondhand.

The advantage of this compared to a console is that I can still try to run any PC game on my system, and I might be satisfied with the result; no-one can play a PS5 game on a PS3.

Starfield is the first game to be released that (looking at online performance videos) I consider probably not being worth trying to play on my setup. It'll run, but the performance will be miserable. If I was really keen to play it I might try to put up with it, but fortunately I'm not.

You could build a similar system to mine from secondhand parts for dirt cheap (under US$300, possibly even under US$200) although these days the price/performance sweet spot would be a few years newer.

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[–] B0NK3RS 9 points 8 months ago

Initially I agreed with your statement but patient gamer and PC gaming go well together. I do think the idea of spending 1k or 2k plus is ridiculous and the high end stuff offers zero value for money though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Lol your unpopular opinion was so unpopular you got into a nice little chin wag with someone over if consoles can provide better graphical fidelity than a pc you can build for the same price.

I'm on your side though. I think the console has better specs to cost for just hardware. Steam sales (and humble bundles) will get my dollar significantly further than it ever will on a console. I bet dollars to donuts Dave The Diver will never be cheaper on Switch than Steam.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (4 children)

The price of modern games is often justified. I don't buy many at release, but the ones I do buy have been more than worth the money.

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[–] caut_R 23 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Have three unpopular opinions:

  1. Bethesda games are insanely overrated and absolutely carried by the modding community. Do I enjoy Skyrim? Hell yeah! …With 500 mods.

  2. Everything below 50-60 FPS is stuttery, unsmoooth, and unenjoyable no matter the genre.

  3. There‘s a place and time for „Ubisoft formula“ games (aka. tick off 500 icons on a map), cause sometimes I don‘t wanna think, I just wanna mindlessly walk around with semi-purpose and do stuff.

I love unpopular opinions.

[–] Penta 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Disagree with 2. You get used to it, especially when playing more older games. After a few hours of Ocarina of Time even the 20fps works eventually lol

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You get used to 2 as long as the framerate is consistent. If you've got a smooth 30 then you can get used to it. If it's constantly jumping around from 30-50 or something you won't be able to stop noticing it

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (5 children)

No game project should be AAA. It's anti-creative, as developers must turn their game into something that appeals to the broadest audience, and it's unstable, as companies bet their entire next 3 years of revenue on a single title. I'd much rather everything become B or C-tier developments. The great games that come from this development style simply are not worth it for the damage they do to the medium.

[–] graymess 13 points 8 months ago

I kind of wish all forms of popular media could just, like, agree to defund a bit. Just step things down a few notches. There's just too much money involved for anything truly unexpected to happen in these industries.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (3 children)

People overestimate what a healthy population for a game should be.

You don't need that 19 million people are playing the same mmo as you are when you are.

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[–] B0NK3RS 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I don't like open world games. Give me levels to explore or the illusion of an open world and I'm perfectly happy.

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[–] GARlactic 17 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time about a year ago and it was a miserable experience. I legitimately cannot understand what people enjoy about it. It was slow, clunky, and frustrating. The game was designed to be irritating. The only enjoyable boss in the main game was Ornstein and Smough (although the DLC bosses were all fantastic, with a special shout out to Artorias). The rest were either garbage or Crapra Demon, which deserves it's own special level in hell.

Prior to that, I had beaten every other Souls game other than DS 2 (and platinumed Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and Sekiro), so I know it's not cause I don't like Souls games.

I think if I had played DS 1 as my first, it would have turned me off of the entire genre. I don't even think it's because I had played more recent games first, because I love Demon's Souls.

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[–] LaunchesKayaks 15 points 8 months ago (6 children)

A lot of people I talk to think that PC is the best platform. I agree that it is versatile and has the most options. I can't stand playing games on my PC at this point, though. I spend all day fixing computers at work. I don't even want to look at a computer after clocking out. To be able to play games for PC, but not use a computer, I've decided to get a Steamdeck.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Huh, I'm a software engineer, and when I get home, I'm excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.

I'm not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that's what you don't like? I find the Steam Deck's defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.

Lots of people complain when some product they like is no longer available in favor of a 'new and improved' product. Remember 'New Coke'? Patches and updates to games are the same thing, especially ones that significantly change the gameplay.

I, for example, liked Overwatch during certain time periods. That game is no longer available. There's certainly people who play League of Legends or DOTA that feel the same way, though I wouldn't know - the game they liked was at a certain point in its development, and since then changes have made it no longer the game they like. Same applies to a lot of MMOs - I liked Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and others, but the games I like no longer exist even though the games technically exist.

The problem isn't easily solved either - no updates may make some people happy but others will not be happy. The resources probably don't exist to continue splitting the game and maintaining a stable version of an online game at each iteration, and even if they did, the player base would become too diffuse to be able to actually keep the game enjoyable with sufficient players. But it might be a fair criticism to say that updates come too fast for some of these games, and we need more time between them, or various other things. And there's nothing wrong with people just griping, even if it's something that can't reasonably be stopped.

[–] MajorHavoc 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

As a book and video game enthusiast, my unpopular opinion is that the average video game is a much better entertainment value than the average book.

I've played a lot of games and read a lot of books. When measuring dollars for hours, I think video games win.

On the one hand, I've put massive numbers of hours into titles like Zelda, Metroid, Harvest Moon, and Pokemon.

On the other hand, I've only gotten two or three read-throughs out of even some of my very favorite books.

And then the video game classics really put up some big numbers: after decades, I'm still enjoying PacMan, Frogger, and Galaga and their kin.

And then there's the elephant in the room: Tetris.

If I had to pick - on a desert island - between an e-reader with every book ever printed, or one copy of Tetris on a Gameboy...it would be an agonizing choice.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Consoles are for the rich and my mind can't be changed about that.

After all these years I found a ps3 getting thrown away so I picked it up and asked my cousin for a controller and it's really fun and convenient for gaming but damn back then I could never afford it. Now it's worse. You have to pay for online, games are more expensive, controllers are more expensive, and it's way more locked down. I remember my cousin and I were trying to watching a YouTube video and we couldn't because sony servers were down and you had to be logged in to watch a YouTube video.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

You don't need to be rich in a western nation to get a console, but if you mean the value proposition of having the newest console sucks then yes, absolutely.

[–] sheogorath 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Most of my gaming friends who play on consoles are well off. There's an abundance of games that you can play for free/cheap on PC that don't need a lot of horsepower to play. Most people play on cheapo laptops or cheap PCs with less than 500 USD budget to build. My brother in law still plays on a Ryzen 1600 and RX 480 PC built in 2017 right when it was released and the only upgrade made to the system is getting 1660 Super or 1660 Ti 3 years ago. He mostly play Brawlhalla and Forza Horizon.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'd rather play Paper Mario than any of the newer 3D ones.

[–] plantedworld 10 points 8 months ago

I mostly agree, but odyssey was a bit of a breath of fresh air for me

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Probably very hot take for this community. The $1 for every hour of enjoyment is a stupid metric. People will spend upwards of $10 for a 2 hour movie or $5 for an hour-long album. Games have components of many pieces of media and many treat it's worth lower. I'm all for saving money but it's a different discussion regarding the value of the medium, especially when we just discuss it as the consumer-mindset of "hours of my life" vs. experience of enjoyment

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I don't know if this counts but Assassin's Creed Origins sucked and its story was cringe. It could be fun at times but generally wasn't great, I'd prefer the original two games.

Also, Final Fantasy 7 Remake should have not deviated from the story of the original FF7 and it's taken way too long to be developed/released. I bought Part 1 during presale and picked it up Day 1 and even bought my PS4 to play it but I don't know if I'll bother getting the others much less playing them. But I haven't even played Part 1 because I was waiting for all Parts to be released and play all at once, then I heard about the changes to the story and was disgusted. I don't even care to play it anymore. I think the original FF7 is the greatest game of all time.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

I enjoy battle royales and have hundreds of hours in Apex, but what I really don't like about them is that they change all the time. Maybe it's just me, but it's kind of annoying to put a game down for a year and come back to a completely different experience. You don't even get the choice, in Apex especially I know they rotate through the maps that are available, so the one I prefer might be impossible to play on for 6 months straight. For this reason, Apex can never be as good of a game to me as Titanfall 2 still is to this day.

Plus, when the official servers are taken down a decade from now, there will be literally no way to revisit the experience. The only things left of the game will be recordings and memories. This is yet another thing that is better with more traditional games, where players can make their own custom servers (like Northstar for Titanfall 2).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I played fallout 3 a lot, was my favorite game for a long minute.

I could never get into fallout new vegas. I tried many times but it just never grabbed me. It just didnt feel right.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

I wouldn't mind the issues of live service games as much, the ones you describe anyway, if it didn't replace old content or have most of its content timed. Huge sense of FOMO that I just don't need to have, so I go nowhere near those games.

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