Twitch.tv and streaming ruined multiplayer games for me

[Wilfire]

• Streamers intentionally join casual multiplayer games to run around "pwning" noobs because their followers think that it constitutes skillful gameplay
• Every little glitch, bug, exploit and oversight is made public and abused to hell and back by everyone, rendering multiplayer matches a non-stop barrage of cheesy tactics and exploits
• All games are completely overrun with people spamming to promote their streaming accounts
• Streamers often intentionally "meme", that is harass other people and try to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for them
• Streamers become community figures and ultimately influence game design, despite their sole credentials being that they are "popular"
• Streaming promotes the most obnoxious type of community possible - people who thoughtlessly spam "POG", "4HEAD" and other twitch speak

In the old days you'd maybe run across one asshole abusing game design oversights to rack up kills every 10 matches or so, which was annoying but not unbearable. But now every game is overrun and infested with people playing the "meta" way and rendering the game unenjoyable for absolutely everyone. That's not to mention streamers "pwning" noobs for views. Nowadays I just instantly hit alt + f4 whenever I see someone with a name like "NoobzpwnerTTV" or "qt314YT". It's just not worth it.

[Onikaroshi]

[*]Streamers intentionally join casual multiplayer games to run around "pwning" noobs because their followers think that it constitutes skillful gameplay

Must have not played many competitive multiplayer games in the past, smurfing isn't a new thing. It hasn't even increased.

[*]Every little glitch, bug, exploit and oversight is made public and abused to hell and back by everyone, rendering multiplayer matches a non-stop barrage of cheesy tactics and exploits

If people are exposing them on stream they have a much higher chance of being banned then just a random doing it, streamers finding glitches is actually a GOOD thing as they are exposed publicly instead of on private pay-to-access forums, where they are kept hush hush so they don't get fixed.

[*]All games are completely overrun with people spamming to promote their streaming accounts

I've actually never seen this.

[*]Streamers often intentionally "meme", that is harass other people and try to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for them

no game in the world exists where this isn't a reportable offense.

[*]Streamers become community figures and ultimately influence game design, despite their sole credentials being that they are "popular"

MANY influencers are also long time players of the game, many of the ones asked for input have a great deal of knowledge of how the game works. If you're going to be creating a new FPS, why not ask someone like Shroud what they think?

[*]Streaming promotes the most obnoxious type of community possible - people who thoughtlessly spam "POG", "4HEAD" and other twitch speak

Online gaming has always been like that, and will always be like that, best to ignore it.


Don't get the hate for streamers, some of them are bad yea, but plenty of decent ones out there, maybe it's just jealousy because they either got lucky (Ninja) or put a lot of work in (Shroud) and are making bank.

[kail]

FeelsBadMan

[CrawlFromThePit]

• Streamers intentionally join casual multiplayer games to run around "pwning" noobs because their followers think that it constitutes skillful gameplay
• Every little glitch, bug, exploit and oversight is made public and abused to hell and back by everyone, rendering multiplayer matches a non-stop barrage of cheesy tactics and exploits
• All games are completely overrun with people spamming to promote their streaming accounts
• Streamers often intentionally "meme", that is harass other people and try to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for them
• Streamers become community figures and ultimately influence game design, despite their sole credentials being that they are "popular"
• Streaming promotes the most obnoxious type of community possible - people who thoughtlessly spam "POG", "4HEAD" and other twitch speak

In the old days you'd maybe run across one asshole abusing game design oversights to rack up kills every 10 matches or so, which was annoying but not unbearable. But now every game is overrun and infested with people playing the "meta" way and rendering the game unenjoyable for absolutely everyone. That's not to mention streamers "pwning" noobs for views. Nowadays I just instantly hit alt + f4 whenever I see someone with a name like "NoobzpwnerTTV" or "qt314YT". It's just not worth it.

That's a YOU problem.

I enjoy my games just fine as I always did since long before streaming was invented and I barely watch any streams.

[Edge-]

In the old days you'd maybe run across one asshole abusing game design oversights to rack up kills every 10 matches or so, which was annoying but not unbearable. But now every game is overrun and infested with people playing the "meta" way and rendering the game unenjoyable for absolutely everyone.

I dunno about you, but it was just as common for me now as it was then. Though I don't think I've really ever encountered "streamers" in the games I play, especially nobody big. Happens to help that I generally avoid BR games and whatever the "hot streaming game" at the moment is. Not intentionally, but just because they don't appeal to me.

[Tech614]

I stopped reading at your first bullet point because if you think twitch created smurfing I don't think you actually played games a decade ago or more. Smurfing is literally as old as online gaming itself.

[Wilfire]

I stopped reading at your first bullet point because if you think twitch created smurfing I don't think you actually played games a decade ago or more. Smurfing is literally as old as online gaming itself.

Old school smurfers did so because they wanted to pwn noobs but thankfully there weren't too many of them and you could avoid servers that were known to be haunted by them.

Twitch-era smurfers do so because they NEED to pwn noobs to get view on twitch. That creates an epidemic. Especially with modern matchmaking systems where you can't choose your own server and as such can't effectively avoid smurfers.

There is a huge difference between want vs. need. When someone is a want, relatively few people do it. When something is a need, fucking everyone does it.

I dunno about you, but it was just as common for me now as it was then. Though I don't think I've really ever encountered "streamers" in the games I play, especially nobody big. Happens to help that I generally avoid BR games and whatever the "hot streaming game" at the moment is. Not intentionally, but just because they don't appeal to me.

As an example, when I played Battlefield 2142 14 years ago, there were SOME known design oversights but there wasn't widespread abuse of them and plenty of servers had specific rules in place to prevent overly cheesy tactics. Many servers banned people from sniping from otherwise inaccessible roofs that you could access through clever use of game mechanics.

In Battlefront 2, which is another game by the same developer but much more recent, if you aren't abusing every know design oversight you're pretty much a loser. There's no way for players to moderate servers so only the most glaring oversights get fixed. As a result, the entire game is a 24/7 cheesefest.

Another example: Planetside 2. Before e-sports and twitch, the game had massive battles between bases and lots of back-and-forth action. After e-esports and twitch, people play "meta" tactics and just give up and attack some other base as soon as they face resistance. Balanced 50%/50% fights are avoided largely because it was optimal in e-sports tournaments to steamroll bases with little to no resistance. As a result, nowadays the entire game consists of roaming zergs of players who refuse to fight each other and instead just cap empty bases.

[crakerjack]

I remember playing dota in WC3 and people spamming their xfire streams. I honestly don't think you're being all that rational either. To say ALL streamers are a certain way and ALL streamer communities are a certain way isn't convincing anyone of anything, especially when we're talking about perceptions. Are there streamers like the ones you described? Absolutely, and yes they can have toxic followers, but to say streamers as a whole ruin an entire genre of video games is absurd.

[s_bushido]

Ok, Boomer.

that's what the kids these days are saying, right?

[Onikaroshi]

Old school smurfers did so because they wanted to pwn noobs but thankfully there weren't too many of them and you could avoid servers that were known to be haunted by them.

Twitch-era smurfers do so because they NEED to pwn noobs to get view on twitch. That creates an epidemic. Especially with modern matchmaking systems where you can't choose your own server and as such can't effectively avoid smurfers.

There is a huge difference between want vs. need. When someone is a want, relatively few people do it. When something is a need, fucking everyone does it.

So you're just showing you never played any competitive multiplayer game like CS then.

[Edge-]

So you're just showing you never played any competitive multiplayer game like CS then.

Ah, the glory days of pubstomping in CS 1.x and getting banned from clan servers repeatedly for ruining their days.

[Onikaroshi]

Ah, the glory days of pubstomping in CS 1.x and getting banned from clan servers repeatedly for ruining their days.

We used to do it from our comp repair class lol, we'd get a bunch of us together and go destroy servers with our in person coordination. Best class ever.

[dope_danny]

The 'streamers influence game design' i can get. I've seen plenty of games make questionable choices because it was straight up from the devs mouth 'designed to be fun to watch on a stream' which doesn't always equate to fun to actually play and designing your game as a advertisement for itself first and game second is shockingly kind of a dumb idea that doesn't actually have any success stories i can think of.

But aside from that let me tell you about the golden age of the late 90's/early 2000's when almost every game was full of hackers and griefers:



Truly online games were never better.

*SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP*

[Mirishka]

Happens to help that I generally avoid BR games and whatever the "hot streaming game" at the moment is. Not intentionally, but just because they don't appeal to me.

Same here. Couldn't care less about BR games and I don't go out of my way to play whatever the current FOTM for streamers is either.

[Jakexe]

Here you go, no more boo boos.

*snip*

Don't troll others. Infracted. -Edge

[Outofmana]

4Head PogU

[The Butt Witch]

So you got butthurt by a teeny tiny minority. Not only your chances of meeting streamers regularly are extremely low, but even of those streamers there is an even tinier minority that are actually very good at the game.

You have a much higher chance of encountering actual hackers and aimbotters in any game whatsoever, than you have of encountering streamers that are very good players as well.

[Snorri]

I hate it when Twitchers promote their channels in the group finder, especially when they say they'll help carrying people through dungeons and raids. It's just a cheap way to get more views and followers. Sometimes followers of the Twitcher creates more groups in the group finder to get in even more people.

[Ausr]

The 'streamers influence game design' i can get. I've seen plenty of games make questionable choices because it was straight up from the devs mouth 'designed to be fun to watch on a stream' which doesn't always equate to fun to actually play and designing your game as a advertisement for itself first and game second is shockingly kind of a dumb idea that doesn't actually have any success stories i can think of.

But aside from that let me tell you about the golden age of the late 90's/early 2000's when almost every game was full of hackers and griefers:



Truly online games were never better.

*SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP*

The Battleground-type games tend to be heavily influenced by streamers, for some reason, for game decisions. As well as the ability to ban people because they supposedly stream sniped the streamer.

I don't see it too much in other games, however.

[xenogear3]

PvP is never a recommend way to enjoy your leisure time, unless you cheat/hack yourself.

People will do anything to win.