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Top 10 Reasons Playing Online Can Suck

Top 10 Reasons Playing Online Can Suck

Playing games online is the thing to do, and it has been for years now. Even when games launch with buggy, busted servers and other logistical problems, the demand is still as high as ever. But that doesn’t mean online gaming doesn’t come with a laundry list of inherent problems nobody has really been able to solve yet. So while I look back on the halcyon days of couch co-op on almost everything, here’s a list of the ten biggest problems with online gaming. I’m probably just getting old, but please humor me in this trying time, thanks.

Cheating

Cheating

Cheating is a real problem with online games, and it only gets worse as gaming gets more global and spreads to countries where, for varoius reasons, that stuff is more widespread. That’s not to say we don’t have our own population of local cheaters either. Sure, it’s fun to dork around with your games when you’re playing on your own, but if you’re out there with other people, all you’re doing is ruining someone else’s day. Any competitive game will struggle to combat cheaters its whole life, but as esports become more and more of a thing, perhaps safeguards will become more of a priority for publishers as well.

Playing with Actual Friends Is Complicated

Playing with Actual Friends Is Complicated

Look, I understand why it is impossible for every game to have splitscreen. Rendering two of a contemporary AAA game is no small task. And sure, some devs who implement co-op on top of online are saints. But sometimes, it’s just so complicated! Or frustratingly limited! Or some other issue makes playing with your actual friends instead of your online buddies way more complicated than it should be. Luckily, smaller games have found ways to embrace local co-op in recent years, and some AAA games have put more priority on it after some renewed interest. But perhaps more could be done to make the situation a bit better.

Balance

Balance

Matchmaking is difficult. There’s just no accounting for skill versus amount of time played versus multiple accounts. But man, it sure does suck when you lose a one-sided match and see as much reflected on the final scoreboard. When you jump online, you just never know if you’re going to be in a match with your peers or if you’re going to accidentally fall into a barrel with a bunch of hungry esports hopefuls. Complicating matters are initiatives by some publishers to manipulate matchmaking in ways meant to entice players to make in-game purchases or manipulate them into more salty runbacks by intentionally making the game mismatch.

Harassment

Harassment

The picture says it all. You can’t jump online in a game that supports voice chat without at least one person taking the opportunity to vomit mouth-diarrhea all over the place. All the fancy reporting algorithms in the world won’t curb gaming’s toxicity problem. As a result, many games, even popular ones, are launching without voice chat options at all. Messaging is a whole other part of the equation as well. All it takes is a win to get someone misspelling slurs at you and spamming your inbox.

Lag

Lag

Sure, getting yelled at by morons is frustrating, but you can technically mute them in most cases. But when the game starts lagging, there’s nothing you can do but helpless watch as your game is ruined by forces beyond your control. It doesn’t matter what fancy frame rate your game has if it starts jumping you around like you’re watching the world’s worst combat anime.

Shut Downs

Shut Downs

Imagine that you’ve played through a list of online games, enjoying the idea of them, but never finding something that clicks. Then you finally land on that one game that really hits the spot. It’s fair, the content is frequent, the mechanics are cool, and the developers seem responsive. But one day, likely right after you’ve finally opened your wallet to the microtransactions, you go to log on only to find out the game was shut down and everyone responsible for making it was fired by some faceless corporate bean-counter. Now you can never play it again. Online gaming at its finest.

Microtransactions

Microtransactions

If a game has an online component in 2018, chances are there’s some sort of in-game purchasing mechanic baked in targeting the online community. Maybe it’s just cosmetics. Maybe the game you already paid $60 for is now trying to get you to buy crappy booster packs, like in EA Sports’ Ultimate Team modes. Maybe you’re playing something like Star Wars: Battlefront II or PUBG and the game badgers you to pay for loot boxes constantly. It’s a mess, and it’s only going to get messier from here.

Patches and Updates

Patches and Updates

Patches and updates are both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is that if an online game has problems, those problems can and will sometimes will be addressed. The curse is that starting a new game means sitting for hours while dozens of GB have to download on top of the original download, and that sometimes fixing problems introduces new ones. Games are in a constant state of flux now, and hopefully you have the time and bandwidth to handle it.

No Pausing!

No Pausing!

If you’re playing a game online, you’re committed. There are no safeties in place if you have to suddenly get up from your seat. You can’t pause, obviously, so you either just forfeit what you’re doing or neglect what’s happening outside of your game. And chances are the second choice is a poor one. Even games that don’t have a consistent multiplayer, like The Division or Monster Hunter: World, won’t let you pause if you’re playing by yourself and will boot you out for inactivity.

Ragequitters

Ragequitters

We all had that one friend who couldn’t handle losing, would get angry and then threaten the sanctity of your hardware. Or uh, maybe you were that friend. Anyway, there’s nothing like getting close to that precious “w,” only to have it ripped from your hands at the last second as the other person had a temper tantrum and ripped their ethernet cord out of the wall. Games do what they can to discourage the practice, but it still happens all the time and it’s never fun to experience.

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