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The problem with multiplayer

cybernettr
Superstar
 I was an echo arena last night and I noticed an interesting phenomenon going on: major segregation according to age.  There were a lot of kids in the game, which was obvious from their voices, and they were giggling and laughing and playing around and obviously having a lot of fun, but they were mainly staying in the reception area (or whatever it's called).  

They were huddling around, forming trains by grabbing each other's legs, and generally goofing off, but they weren't playing any of the actual competitive games, as far as I could tell.  I heard one of the older players even say "Wow, kids!" as he scurried off to another area.  I even heard one of the kids saying that he enjoys waiting for newbies to coming to the game so he could pester and confuse them. 

 I thought this was just the general frivolous nature of being a young kid, but after thinking about it, it occurred to me that a possible reason for this is quite different: a young kid simply cannot compete with the greater hand-eye coordination of an older player.  I can understand why. I'm far from a kid, and yet I went into the gaming arena and simply could not begin to keep up with some of the more skilled players there.  

I enjoy the ambience and atmosphere of VR, but I'm not a natural born gamer and I never will be, no matter how much I practice.  I actually prefer playing against an AI, which can be tuned to your specific skill level, rather than a random player whose skill level probably does not come close your own.  

And this, I think, is the problem with multiplayer.  Unless you arrange a meet up with people you know, you are not likely to get much satisfaction from playing against a random stranger. 
53 REPLIES 53

falken76
Expert Consultant
This "Multiplayer" problem reared it's ugly head around 1991 when Street Fighter 2 hit the scene.  In the beginning it was all good and fun because it was new to everyone, including the casual gamer that was used to the one button arcade games of yesteryear at that point.  As time went on, people started getting better and better at this game, competition with peers became the draw of the game.  Then the people that got great at it were the same people you'd see at 7-11, Circle-K, Golf 'n Stuff, the local arcade playing the game no matter what time of day you strolled into the establishment.  They put hundreds of hours into the game and that segment of players caused the casual gamer to lose interest, who wants to put a quarter into a game and compete against the nerd with no life that spent the last 23 hours playing the game?

This process has increased 100 fold today, now I can't even enjoy a game of Street Fighter V if it has any online opponent because the people that like it enough to pay for the game spend so much time playing it they're just so good that it makes me never want to play the game.  I have no desire to practice for hours on end like they all do so I am unable to enjoy the game unless there actually is a single player portion to the game.  In the late 90s, games seemed to gravitate towards multiplayer until at some point single player was not a main focus.  I gave up on games at that point, VR brought me back to them, but when this VR stuff goes mainstream and it's adopted by the average consumer I suspect I'll run into the same problem yet again and the rift will then be boxed up and hardly used because it is no longer "fun" to me.

Expediter
Expert Protege
Every competitive game/ sport in the world is like this.  People are better than other people and when the game has no devisions or ranking system used to match players you will be destroyed by people who are just naturally good at competitive games. 

onward has the same problem?? I don't call it a problem because I enjoy an insane challenge, something AI can never give. When VR becomes huge , perhaps they can start making ranking systems used to match like skilled players. 

SnackyAU
Expert Protege
People will always be better - There is always someone who is more skilled so no matter what just focus on what you can do better.

I remember i was playing a very competitive game.. i used to get so damn frustrated .. WHY can't i beat these people? Is it luck? are they just older more experienced players at the game.. what is it? Turns out that i was so focused on what the skill gap was and not on my own mistakes. Once you do that no skill gap is too big

cybernettr
Superstar

Expediter said:

I don't call it a problem because I enjoy an insane challenge, something AI can never give


Ironically, some AI systems are teaching themselves to play many video games better than the best human players. It's just a matter of time before AIs can beat humans at ALL non-physical games. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgndlFybEho


Expediter
Expert Protege



Expediter said:

I don't call it a problem because I enjoy an insane challenge, something AI can never give


Ironically, some AI systems are teaching themselves to play many video games better than the best human players. It's just a matter of time before AIs can beat humans at ALL non-physical games. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgndlFybEho




Game designers could make impossible AI right now. And have been able to for years. When programming pathfinding the ai knows where you are at all times and can have perfect aim to kill you in one hit. The problem with programming ai is making it seem like it doesn't know where you are and also making it appear as if it has tactics as aposed to just perfect aim. Playing humans is a lot more satisfying at the moment because unless they are cheating they have only skill as an advantage not complete knowledge of the battle field like ai. 

cybernettr
Superstar

SnackyAU said:

I remember i was playing a very competitive game.. i used to get so damn frustrated .. WHY can't i beat these people? Is it luck? are they just older more experienced players at the game.. what is it? Turns out that i was so focused on what the skill gap was and not on my own mistakes. Once you do that no skill gap is too big


 I disagree. There's no way to discount the matter of inborn talent. Some people are just more talented at certain games than others, just as some are more talented the cooking, or drawing or needlework.  

This is one of the most destructive things you can say to a kid possible, and sadly, it is sometimes heard in schools, that "you can be anything you want to be if you just put your mind to it."

Absolute rubbish!

99% of the kids who want to be professional basketball players never will be.  It's far better to tell kids to discover their talents than to tell them "they can be anything they want to be."

cybernettr
Superstar


Expediter said:

When programming pathfinding the ai knows where you are at all times and can have perfect aim to kill you in one hit. The problem with programming ai is making it seem like it doesn't know where you are and also making it appear as if it has tactics as aposed to just perfect aim. Playing humans is a lot more satisfying at the moment because unless they are cheating they have only skill as an advantage not complete knowledge of the battle field like ai. 


 Creating an AI that doesn't know where the player is and what is going on in the battlefield at all times is a challenge but it is definitely possible.  For example, in Robo Recall, if you hide, teleport or duck out of view for a moment, the robots will look around for you in a confused way and say "Where is the recaller?" before they finally spot you.  It is actually possible to hide and ambush the bots if you want to – one of the things that makes the game so great.

This is not to say that the AI is perfect. For example, if you go into the tunnel while battling Odin, he will keep shooting his rockets at the top of the tunnel without realizing that the rockets can't go through the solid pavement.  So the AI in the game is not perfect, but it definitely shows that game AI does not have to be omniscient. 

 In the AI that learns how to play video games, they do not have inside knowledge of what is going on in the game. Some are tied in directly to the video display, but they do not have access to the game code.  They have to learn how to play through trial and error.  Some do not even have access to the XY coordinates of all pixels on the screen but are basically just cameras pointed at the game screen, so they see the game exactly as a human would see it. 

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Developers therefore need to tailor their multiplayer better to suit age demographics and player skill. It's no good just having Ranked and Unranked areas because this does not address those players who simply are better but still want to beat on the less skilled players.  

I think more complex systems need to be designed into these games where a player profile is stored behind the scenes which then puts players into segregated lobbies with like-minded players ( something matchmaking attempts to do - usually quite unsuccessfully). A wider range of lobby types is needed (including a general place for all and sundry) and if your skill doesn't fit a particular lobby you're locked out. So the software doesn't just rely on the perception the player has of themselves.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

cybernettr
Superstar
Right, if one player beats another player or scores "x" number of times, the game could then match that player in the next round with a player of a similar score, and so on. So that the game doesn't reset each time it is relaunched, it could remember the player's ranking from one time to the next.  Only problem with this is that it limits the number of possible opponents a player can play against, and some games can already be pretty lonely in nonpeak hours.