So this is something I thought of the other day. Almost all major game communities now are exceedingly vocal about the game balancing or design in some way or another. I guess it's almost the given now, where if you play an MP game enough you'll end up complaining about it at some point.
So my question to you is, what current communities at large seem happy with the game they're currently playing in it current form? Because in the past it seemed like more people were happier with what they got and the devs meddled much less. I get that the advent of broadband internet means that deploying update and patches was much more feasible, but it's not like it was unheard of in the 90s and early 2000s.
Three big examples I can think of from the past are:
Quake 3 Arena: According to everyone who played it in its heyday it's "the perfect arena FPS". There really isn't much I can even say here, the game as is is basically FPS game gospel, and seemingly has always been. But it's entirely possible I just didn't interact with the community enough to learn about the flaws people complained about.
Halo 2 multiplayer: I don't remember a single person who played halo 2 wishing something was different about the game in a very vocal way, I think the only recurring complaint I saw was that the way the lock on rockets worked basically made you a dead man in vehicles no matter what, but other than that it seems like almost everyone was extremely happy with the game throughout its entire life time.
Starcraft Broodwar: This game is on a hell of a pedestal, to suggest changes be made to it at any point is essentially heresy. The community is no longer that massive around this game, even with the remaster having released recently but everyone holds the game in such high regard you might think it's perfect. Even if there are glaring play-ability flaws like being only able to select a handful of the units you can have on screen at a time, but people will just say the game is balanced around it and you just have to "git gud".
It really seems like we don't really get games like that anymore, even dark souls has so many people talking about how the game should be instead of how it is, especially with regards to pvp.
What causes popular games to attract so many arm chair developers now more than they used to? Is it that the internet has grown to such a degree that people can get on a soapbox much easier and attract like minded individuals they would never have interacted with otherwise?
So my question to you is, what current communities at large seem happy with the game they're currently playing in it current form? Because in the past it seemed like more people were happier with what they got and the devs meddled much less. I get that the advent of broadband internet means that deploying update and patches was much more feasible, but it's not like it was unheard of in the 90s and early 2000s.
Three big examples I can think of from the past are:
Quake 3 Arena: According to everyone who played it in its heyday it's "the perfect arena FPS". There really isn't much I can even say here, the game as is is basically FPS game gospel, and seemingly has always been. But it's entirely possible I just didn't interact with the community enough to learn about the flaws people complained about.
Halo 2 multiplayer: I don't remember a single person who played halo 2 wishing something was different about the game in a very vocal way, I think the only recurring complaint I saw was that the way the lock on rockets worked basically made you a dead man in vehicles no matter what, but other than that it seems like almost everyone was extremely happy with the game throughout its entire life time.
Starcraft Broodwar: This game is on a hell of a pedestal, to suggest changes be made to it at any point is essentially heresy. The community is no longer that massive around this game, even with the remaster having released recently but everyone holds the game in such high regard you might think it's perfect. Even if there are glaring play-ability flaws like being only able to select a handful of the units you can have on screen at a time, but people will just say the game is balanced around it and you just have to "git gud".
It really seems like we don't really get games like that anymore, even dark souls has so many people talking about how the game should be instead of how it is, especially with regards to pvp.
What causes popular games to attract so many arm chair developers now more than they used to? Is it that the internet has grown to such a degree that people can get on a soapbox much easier and attract like minded individuals they would never have interacted with otherwise?
