I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games
The cynic in me just thinks that it saves the game developers from the need to develop good AIs.
Perhaps it's just my style of video gaming... I play games to relax, definitely not to compete. People sometimes get so wound up in these games, it's supposed to be fun!
So, yes, if a game is multiplayer only, it's a reason for me not to play.
Balancing a multiplayer game is generally much more difficult than doing a single player game with AIs.
It's focused around co op and invasions and is built into the story enough that it just feels like part of the game, while again not being forced in any way.
It's entirely optional to the point where being able to invade more than a limited number of times is locked behind an obscure, difficult route in the game that's missable and entirely unlikely to be discovered the first playthrough.
There's a few different invasion mechanics based around in game covenants that provide different game experiences, both in single and multiplayer that are a lot of fun. Coop's pretty fun too. It's a pretty awesome feeling helping out another player with a boss or area they've been struggling with and I'm not ashamed to say I needed to summon a bit of help for Ornstein and Smough the first time.
But, my favourite thing I think is the asynchronous multiplayer. The notes and specters. You can leave notes with predefined phrases for other players that can be helpful, or not as well as getting small glimpses of other players 'ghosts' as they play the game, or die horribly to something.
There's no other actual interaction between players though. You can't message people, there's no lobbies, it's all very ephemeral and unnoticeable and just feels like part of the game. The only thing it really reminds me of is the counter-op mode from perfect dark, which was a hell of a lot of fun, even if it seemed a bit lacking at times.
Personally I'd love to see this system recreated and improved in other games. It's the first time i've been interested in multiplayer gaming since I was a teenager playing StarCraft and diablo.
I know someone who regularly plays grand theft auto online. Whenever i've watched them play lately I can't help but think how much better it would be if they'd built a similar system. The game would be perfect for it. The online mode it has seems pointless and pretty lazy by comparison.
Single player gaming is better than ever, and even a lot of the "indie" titles probably have bigger teams and budgets than games from whatever "golden age" you're probably thinking of.
Terraria
Stardew Valley
Those three are great for relaxing after a long day
FTL: Faster Than Light
Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Exapunks)
FEZ
Portal / Portal 2
XCOM
Deus Ex (Super old but quite good, I started it recently. I had best results in Proton selecting the software renderer in the first launch dialog instead of DX9)
Grand Theft Auto
Assassins Creed IV (I had trouble running this under Proton though, had to use Windows)
Planetside 2 is MMO but you can play singleplayer. Windows only unfortunately, but there's nothing else like it.
I recommend Deus Exe [0] for playing Deus Ex. And yes, it's still an awesome game.
I occasionally play a bit of Cities Skylines every few months, but if there isn't another human involved, games just can't hold my interest.
Where's the satisfaction/fun come from if you're just beating some silly algorithm?
I do play alot of simulation games, like Cities Skylines or Stellearis.
When I play first person shooters, I just like to run around and blow things up, I rarely "finish" the campaigns, for example Borderlands, Just like to run around the world and see how much destruction and havoc I can cause before I die, then start over...
I am not a completionist, I have no strong urge to "win" or "finish" the games....
I is just a way for me to turn my brain off for a few hours and escape the real world
I honestly can't think of any. If there are no goals (and goals imply obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of them) then you've got a toy, not a game.
They may not be games, but they're still games? I think whether or not Gone Home can be considered a game is highly debatable. I haven't tried it, but it seems that the elements that make a game a game are missing.
That it's available on Steam is completely orthogonal to whether or not it's a game.
[1] https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA
[2] https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-...
However Gone Home would even satisfy a definition of a "game" that requires there to be challenges. Much of the information is hidden throughout the house, requiring the player to find it and reconstruct the whole story. There are even locked off areas that you need to find keys for.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game
Suppose it's a game: Cities Skylines is open-ended and has no formal win condition, but you can certainly lose. Your city can go bankrupt, etc.
You're playing against the simulator algorithms. If you succeed then you've beaten those algorithms.
I play city skylines (and sim airport) in sandbox mode, money is meaningless. The only way you lose is to define yourself as losing.
the definition of game is "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun." => it does not require win-conditions. i prefer games that allow me to be creative. having lose-conditions interferes with that.
That's probably due to Epic not having a launcher for Linux. A few months ago(?), I read it had become possible to run the launcher through Wine, but I don't think that's changed anything on the porting side.
I worry that games which are released as Epic exclusives may fall by the wayside when/if they eventually become nonexclusive.
What if the anticheat model was changed to one that detects statistically-improbable scoring (basically, a scientific model)? And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification, almost like a captcha, but for human FPS skill or whatever, generated dynamically?
Basically giving up knowing "with absolute certainty" whether there is cheat software installed or not
CounterStrike has, in times past, probably also today, used where you're aiming as a signal for whether you're using wallhacks. Like, if you're aiming and trailing directly on top of another player, but through a wall, for extended periods of time. This is statistical modeling.
> And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification
How do you remotely validate the skill of someone who is possibly cheating? Why wouldn't they just cheat at the validation? Do you, maybe, accept that they may cheat, but then raise videos of their skill checks to an enforcement team for validation? CounterStrike also already does this! They have the Overwatch system which enables specially trusted players to review gameplay footage of other players which VAC suspects of cheating.
Now, Runescape is the most explicit example of these "skill checks" I've encountered. Certain undocumented behavior which resembled botting could trigger an in-game "captcha" where you had to prove you were human. If you were, you'd often get a prize. Simple. Somewhat effective (often, people would just get around this by paying cheap labor in third world countries to oversee a hundred bots per person, and solve the captcha events when they happened. they did not save Runescape's economy from being destroyed by bots, and eventually, the game began enforcing strict value-for-value trading rules between players).
What are CounterStrike and Runescape infamous for? Cheaters and botters, moreso than most other games.
Statistical methods are a tool in the toolbox of anti-cheat systems, but they're not enough alone. They're far, far too easy to defeat; when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be an effective metric. If I keep a wallhack on for an entire game, it becomes very easy to detect; If I turn it on for just one kill, that one kill which puts us on the winning side of a tie, and I'm victorious, the outcome is similar, but I'm far harder for statistical modeling to catch.
If you allow everyone who cheats to play, even if they're only playing at the peak, it will break the balance of everything. The top tier games will suck because half the players are cheaters, and the lower tier games will be filled with aimbot smurfs on their way up.
Unfortunately pretty soon we are going to enter a world where the cheats can be deep learning based and entirely external to the game itself (only using video as input, transmitting raw mouse input, etc). It will be fundamentally impossible to tell the difference from human players. This will be a weird time for competitive games when it happens.
Of course with current cheating the issue is not deep learning based agents but seeing through walls or aim assisting. Those just ruin the enjoyment of the game. Similarly I loathe vs'ing an AI that uses the same methods.
Cheers
Friendly games honestly don't need it.
Most of the online multiplayer games aren't friendly, including my reference above (Super Smash Bros series).
With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sense) makes it logical to go with a single-player game, as I can simply pause the game and pick it right up when I can, on my own schedule.
I'm glad that Valve is doing that kind of work, it benefits everyone.