In your opinion, what demographic is the common gamer now? Reason I ask is because I feel as if the games I enjoy, are almost not sought after as much as you'd expect. I know some genres are more niche or hard to get into but what makes some players enjoy a certain game and others not? Prime example, I love extraction shooters for the most part. I enjoyed Tarkov but didn't like the Mil Sim aspects of it which is more a me thing. I generally don't like mil sim esque games anyway. Anyway, I also heavily enjoy Marathon. However, some people would say "Playing those games are like putting your balls into a blender. Why do it?" Same with games like Dark Souls or Elden Ring etc. People perceive these games as incredibly hard when at most I'd consider them challenging. I have never really liked things just being handed to me and I think that is what attracts me to these games. Many would argue though that the common gamer isn't playing games like this. So what games are the common gamers really playing? It can't all be gacha stuff right? Who or what is the "COMMON GAMER"?
maratroon slopped and flopped
>>741891261It's a diverse market, the problem with diversity is a lack of shared experience and dilution of cultural signals. If games were created for a monoethnic, culturally contiguous market there would be such a thing as "the common gamer demographic," and it was indeed kino when things were that way, but that's not how it is now.
>>741891261Investor were betting on doing MCU numbers by going for mass appeal instead of playing it safe with the gamer audience. It would pay off if it ever worked
>>741891261Marathon is an intersection of 'die often' like Souls, 'constant pvp' of a battle royale, and harsh losses/economy of an ARPG on hardcore, at least perception wise. It's less a question of, "what does the common gamer like?" and closer to, "what makes the common gamer avoid a game?"There needs to be friction and challenge for rewards to feel meaningful, but progress actively being reversed for loss is generally too far for most people. It's much easier to swallow losing in a battle royale where you just leave the match and queue again and are right back in less than a minute later, CoD where you just respawn in 8 seconds, or Counterstrike where you get back in next round and all currency is match independent.
ai generated ahh shill thread
>>741891261people don't want to lose their hard earned loot from a random faggot sliding out from the corner with a shotgun. hope this helps
>>741891637I kind of can see this. Especially from the points of Soulslike that utilize difficulty sliders. I never like to be a gate keeper but I think the shared struggle / experience of a Souls like game is important when discussing with others who played it. Like if one guy said "Yeah man, X boss in this game was fucking hard right!?" and the other person says "Not really, I was playing on easy." It sort of ruins the discussion in my opinion. I think thats why I have been so heavily against difficulty sliders in most games. However, I also realize that some players really don't have the determination to beat a game that they find difficult. Which I believe is unfortunate because it does feel great to finally beat a boss who you thought you couldn't beat.
>>741891261overwatch, marvel rivals, resident evil games, call of faggotry. games where your progression is not constantly raped away from you.
I think in general players have become less competitive. Or rather, the perception of anyone competitive in games has come to mean "sweaty" by default. I think it is hard to sum up what a sweat even is anymore. People think someone playing for 2-3 hours after working is a sweaty player in addition to the people who play 12+ hours a day. Whereas the people with "real lives" who play maybe 2-3 hours a week are considered the real audience of a game somehow. Who knows the truth?
>steam next fest>see demo for a medieval fantasy extraction game>"let's give it a try">go a few matches the game is pretty fun>almost all of my gear is blue now with a few green pieces>get killed>teleport back to hub area>open inventory>nothing.jpegThat was the moment i truly understood how retarded extractards are. You genuinely need to hate life to enjoy game design like this.
>>741891261>what demographic is the common gamer now?Nigga, there is no 'common gamer'. That's the entire point. There are those who have their loves/likes/tolerables/dislikes/hates, and within those parameters, there are those who only like those of a certain generation of games. For example, I used to love old RTS games: Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, hell even Star Trek Armada. These days though, most modern RTS games are fucking dogshit. Why? Because they saw e-sports as 'the next big thing' and catered ONLY to that tiny little niche. And thats what it is, a tiny niche. Those who play competitively are such a small subset of the actual RTS market that catering only to them is untenable and unprofitable. Hence its slow death. They forgot about the average joe RTS player who bought them in droves and made the franchise a smash hit. There IS NO 'common gamer'. There are only suckers who double down that there are, and people who sell the idea that a 'common gamer' exists at all. You can make the argument that "W-well roblox! Fornite! Gacha! They all make billions!"Sure, because they are the most common denominator. But that doesn't mean they play anything else. And a 'gamer' who plays nothing but their one game they've dumped thousands into aren't 'gamers', they're addicts.A 'gamer' more than likely have a wide and varied taste in games, and those vary from person to person. A 'gamer' will buy different games, from different devs, from different genres, all to satiate their itch they're having then and there.I can't even remember which company stated this, but it was right on the money: "A game for everyone is a game for no one".
>>741893870Lmao git gud
>>741894053you love gay anal sex. the same way you yearn to be raped and robbed of your loot daily because it gives you a dopamine high is the exact same reason why having anal gay sex with shit pieces on your dick is so alluring to you since you have a constant chance of worm infections and aids and death and the "thrill of losing everything for 5 minutes of fun" is engraved in your gay ass soul.
>>741893870>its goonslophonestly might be meta for an extraction shooter. make minimum viable product and add big boobs
>>741893140So you admit the only reason people play those games is to be a parasocial fag online? If you weren't a fag, there would be no appeal?
>>741893870GYATT BIRD
>>741893943I think the RTS issue is a result of not even esports. Just general information dissemination at light speed. Everyone will quickly learn the best meta strategies instantly from youtube videos like "PERFECT BUILD ORDER GOATED FOR ALL MAPS!" and shit like that. Information just gets passed too quickly and there is no time to digest anything in any game involving strategy because someone, somewhere will boil it down quickly and upload a video about it.
>>741891261most common gamer is the tourist that just buys every next hyped piece of shit. also difficulty of games is giga exaggerated by fucks that have nothing else going for them. marathon is giga casual, only problem is devs are clueless boomers that cant balance for shit. also they ditched entire vision to cater to dads that actually want pve and now it lacks any direction or vision. its a failed project, enjoy while it lasts.
>>741891261The problem with Extraction shooters for me as someone who tried Arc Raiders is the looting is really boring and the loot craft items are also boring. When 70% of the game is spent looking at your inventory screen its just not a fun game to play for me.
>>741900532I think that might be more of a arc raider thing. I am not sure. I have never really played it. I think most extraction shooters have inventory management but most of it takes place before the actual load into the lobby. Space management is important but only when there is a bunch of loot to sift through which has its own ups and downs.
>>741891261I think almost everyone can enjoy the same things. For example, I think Souls is too difficult to be enjoyed by as many people as play Fortnite or Minecraft. But I think these games could be massively improved (persistent worlds; better combat). People are genetically 99.9% the same. We just have different Pavlovian responses to what we've experienced and trained. But stuff like Call of Duty map design is objective if devs can figure out how to make good maps.
>>741902575I can see that. I think what really bums me out though is how easily some people give up though. Like I have met people who died maybe 10 times on one of the earlier bosses in Elden Ring(Margitt) and then proceed to never EVER pick the game up again. Like some people truly get mind broken by losing relentlessly and I find it strange. But is it them thats strange or is it me thats strange because my mind can tolerate relentless losing and many defeats? Dying in an extraction shooter makes me feel next to nothing. I enjoy dying, especially if the fight was intense or fun. If I lost, its oh well to me. Go again. I don't know if many people function like that.
>>741891261Me, I like capcom, FROM and atlus, even the "niche" shit im into like Ace combat, racing sims, fighting games and armored core are doing well now. I haven't played a multiplayer fps since halo 3, I just don't buy American games anymore, all the studios and games I think are shit are dying and all the ones I like are doing well or OK.
>>741902838I think people have pretty limited standards on what they find playable. It's all about what's reasonable. Dark Souls may try to build up a boss over pretty hard travels that they might find really challenging, while Fortnite is pretty reasonable difficulty for every single battle because it's just shooting.
>>741893140Modern audiences just play games because it's trendy, they want to beat them so they can talk about the game with their trendy friends. They'd honestly be happier if the game played itself and you just watched.
>>741891261As a Marathon lover I feel the same as you do OP. Did you grow up playing 8 and 16 bit games?
>tease PVE modecool>it's cryo archive but you have to use a special sponsored kit and you can't exfil anything but some dumb new currencyjesus christ, it's a fucking nothing burger. bungie getting what it deserves with these layoffs, just refusing to give people the only thing they want out of this game
>>741909024you really just want the exact same game but no players on the maps? That's a total snoozefest. Have you not heard of a roguelite?
>>741891261I also enjoy marathon but it was never going to succeed due to all the shit going around it pre launch and the fact it's made by bungie, which the bungie audience just wants more destinyTo answer your question though, the "common gamer" probably plays exclusively triple A games found on consoles and f2p mobile games like clash royale. Think of someone who comes home, boots up CoD, Fifa, Fortnite, then maybe on the crapper they play a match of Clash Royale. That's most likely your average gamer, once you enter onto PC stuff that's where you start getting different tastes and IMO there's not real "common PC gamer" due to how varied and experimental the PC market is, be it indie games, niche games, or mass market appealing games.
>>741891261Extraction shooters were never going to catch ondespite the Souls comparison, you don't actually lose much by dying in Souls gamesjust currencywith extraction shooters, you lose a significant amount of progress that you can't even guarantee you'll get back because of loot rng
>>741910373not long term, but as a short term easy thing i expected something like "exact same game but players on the map can't damage each other", probably with a separate vault for this mode to prevent the economy from getting fucked up. long term i'd want more interesting enemies and other shit for this mode, but just as a proof of concept that there's an appetite for PVE, yeah that's about what i wanted.instead we got marathon but the loot doesn't matter, no progression, and no loadout. it's worse than "the exact same game but no players on the map", instead its that but with everything remotely interesting stripped out and gated behind a sponsored kit that you probably have to buy/earn to limit how often you can even play the game mode. they said they'd never add a PVE mode, but the game failed so they're giving in. but even in this concession, it's like they're giving the people who wanted PVE a big fat middle fingeri'm not even mad, it's kind of based to have such contempt for people who don't like the current state of the game, but i haven't played since the second week of release and i'm definitely not redownloading for this shit
>>741906865Damn. I played all those games when younger. I think people don't give games enough credit for being able to develop potentially positive traits in people.
>>741911537I don't think your take is wrong but you really have to consider that people will always take the road less traveled. A true PvE option in marathon wouldn't flesh well because then the game just becomes "grind pve for loot instead of doing pvp". I personally believe that the best loot should always come from game modes that involve other players because there is nothing. NOTHING. more dangerous than other players in most games. I sometimes wonder if people would be more okay with an AI dunking on them in the same manner that a player would. Like imagine a AI controlled "player" bunny hopped onto some high ground and flick sniped you or something, then ran up, finished you off and looted you. Is that somehow more palpable than a human player doing it to you?
>>741891261closest thing to a "common gamer" are people who own a console and play nothing but stuff like madden, fifa, fortnite, and cod. if you even consider playing another game, you're no longer a common gamer, but that still leaves a ton of people who form loose groups. like the next tier of "common" are people who play most major tentpole releases for whatever system they own (Zelda/Mario for tendies, GTA/TLOU for sony) but not much else. this is pretty much the peak of prestige a studio can actually hope to achievethen you've got people who play the above along with games that are popular among "gamers" but a random person on the street might not know, like Dark Souls, Persona, Undertale, etc.beyond that it doesn't really matter, people play whatever games meet their personal taste and they hear about them from either forums like this or streamers or whatever, no point in categorizing further because the individuals who play this stuff diverge a lot in what they like/play
>>741891261a 20 year old chinese man
>>741913138i don't necessarily think it would be a smashing success, but i think half the reason people left the game is that right now, if your suck at the game, you're pretty much just acting as an npc so good players can have a fun time. that's not necessarily marathon's fault, it's kind of a fundamental problem with extraction shooters being so punishing, but it definitely feels worse for marathon because they've basically ignored any mechanism for dying to leave you with some progress. other games have shit like safety wallets, but for marathon it's just EXP (which barely matters since you need to exfil with items to unlock stuff gated by EXP) and contracts (but only somtimes, a majority of the "story" contracts need you to actually exfil or at least do several steps in one run without dying).but something marathon does have that a lot of extraction shooters don't is a kinda cool lore and setting, a higher effort PVE mode could try to take advantage of that more since you're not as pressured to like play the meta and immediately rush an area upon spawn to contest it from other people. they definitely would not jump to something high effort like that now with the game on its last legs and a half assed PVE probably isn't gonna save the game enough to get there, so yeah, whole thing is kinda pointless. i guess they're just hoping in vain that a million people are just on the edge of trying the game, and a PVE mode might push them to buying it and maybe those people will love the PVP mode that is now dead. delusional, sure, but it's either that or just cut their losses at this point. a new map and a new runner shell every few months isn't gonna save the game, that's for sure
>>741893402Its really hard to give a shit because everyones hacking. Yeah people hacked in the past but its wasnt the default. Now its yeah literally everyone high ranked is hacking why bother? It doesnt help when the game blatantly does nothing to stop hackers. Yeah every game has weak anti cheatbut theres a difference between an attempt was made and we do nothing. Its hard to take it seriously when all of it is rigged.
>>741891261The market is insanely overpopulated with gamesThere generally is a FOTM game that gets cycled out and the FOTM is generally based on what social media algorithm + streamer pushes
DING DONG. CONCORD 3. DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG.
>>741892151it's exactly like you say but also for the highs.they're more drastic in extraction shooters and the majority of players (by design) never get to experience them because they live in shitter hell.realizing you cleared the map after a drawn out fight is literal ecstasy in a game with stakes, winning a game of CSGO is cool but it's gone in 30 seconds and you might not even rank for it.sounds weird to say but I dont think it's about losing all the time, I think it's never "winning", which is different
>>741893870>You genuinely need to hate lifeanon it's the difference between playing cash poker and kiddy token poker with your nephews.if there's no stakes it's not exciting, this isn't some crazy new concept, humans have been gambling for millions of years.
>>741914145This is what always gets me okay?So you need a single person to make 100 map quests, randomly selected, there can be more than one at once, this shit is enough for the start of both PVE and to funnel more people into set places for PvP too. It makes it so that each run has a different objective, oh this run zone C2 on a square tile blocked map can spawn one of 8 objectives on the day version and 1/5 on the night version but also there are 1/10 events that spawn too.A person needs to place 100 item location spawns spots, or dunno make it 25 at first who cares. You can also make some of them require a key to unlock a door or whatever. You make the doors rng, then the objectives that are rng, where you need to go rng, make side objectives too.The game does not really require high end over produced content it just needs objectives to fuel the gameplay.This shit should not take forever to make and would be miles better than a new shell and a single map rogue like mode with no loot.
>>741914145>a higher effort PVE mode could try to take advantage of that morewhen people say they want PVE what they're really saying is they want easy mode.those players will never ever play PVP because players are infinitely more challenging than dumb robots.I dont think PVE will save marathon, it's an entirely different game and the two player bases wont interact.they might as well cut their losses and just make Marathon: Resurrections or whatever which is just destiny 3.
