Because it doesn’t seem to matter currently if you play ranked games or casual games, the general experience tends to be the same. But one has numbers and things to go with it. You still get people playing to win in casual games and you get people dicking around having fun in ranked games, and the ranks don’t necessarily indicate how they play as a team and a whole bunch of other things that make it less than ideal.
Completely agreed with this! I actually avoid competitive elements in games, such as PVP in MMOs, because they almost exclusively have a hugely toxic community.
The one and only time I’ve enjoyed PVP is when an MMO was testing it on the public test server, and offered a reward for players who did at least one match. Because it didn’t matter if you won or lost, you got the reward for playing either way, it was just a bunch of people having a really chill time. If it was like that all the time, I’d do it more often.
It makes me wonder if the easiest way to get rid of the toxicity in online gaming is to get rid of all the points, scores, and prizes, so the only reason to play is because you enjoy it.
I feel like competitive gameplay could be fun for everyone but the space would have to be well-moderated but not sanitized which, IMO, is hard to do with an online platform.
We used to have hella fun playing Mario Kart on N64 with the neighbors when we were kids but it isn’t like problems didn’t occur, they just got resolved quicker and we learned that it’s best to be(e) nice if we want to have fun.
In an online game, you’re probably talking shit for weeks before you get forcibly removed from the game for any length of time.
Edit: to add onto this, it isn’t like you’re seeing most of the people you play with the next day at work or school so there really isn’t much incentive to involve yourself in the game’s community.