Multiplayer. I think multiplayer has evolved lately for the worst. There are multiplayer games that I enjoyed and I enjoy, things like Project Zomboid (If it's RP oriented), Lethal Company, Project Reality and some racing sims or strategy games with friends. Big ass multiplayer games are not what I truly desire, apart from maybe World of Warships because I like that game overall. Many years ago multiplayer was all about playing with your friends, now you have to put up with a lot of random cringe ass gamers every time you want to play some shooter or whatever. This is why I absolutely enjoyed Lethal Company, because it reminded me when we used to play games for fun with friends. Maybe coop is my thing..
And that's my main issue with multiplayer games: people stress the fuck out of me. I mentioned World of Warships earlier, well I got a bit tired of it's community and the constant negativity and toxicity. I just want to enjoy big ships for fucks sake, stop trying to tell me this game sucks because the new french heavy cruiser is insanely overpowered and destroyed the meta or whatever. I do not care. That shit makes me feel completely alienated from the community.
On the other hand, multiplayer games (not all, of course) became horrible cashgrabs. Lots of monetization thrown around, from developers selling skins, buying overpowered shit or grindy games where you have to pay to speed up the process, games pretending you will take their product as a second job (or third, even) and T H E M E T A. Nah, I'm no longer up for grinding these days, not for a while at least.. cuz after all I have to do real life grinding to eat you know?
Multiplayer ruined some games as well, like Pro Evolution Soccer. Multiplayer back in the day was just plug another controller and play against (or with) your friend, and that was it, the games were heavily singleplayer oriented and had cool features. Then KONAMI (alongside EA for FIFA) added online play and since then, the game became shittier and shittier. The singleplayer features are worse and worse each release, the game is too oriented towards online play and the monetization is absurd. Instead of using today's tech to produce quality sim football games, with lots of licenses to play with full kits, stadiums, chants and so on, no, we get this lootbox infested shitfest that only serves to feed KONAMI with more money. EA doesn't do it any better.
My instant reaction to "multiplayer" these days is , for example, STALKER 2 having multiplayer is a bit sus, battle pass? Are you kidding me? On a STALKER game? I hope multiplayer doesn't "dumb down" the game and suck development time out of other more important things, like it did to GTA V.
I miss local multiplayer games, they're easily the most fun way to play with friends. Barely any games come with local multiplayer anymore. I remember doing the smash bros brawl campaign and playing goldeneye with my friends as a kid and it was just way better. Nowadays I barely play any multiplayer games.
Phasmophobia is really good, in the same vein as lethal company.
despite never being interested in marvel or games, I always get that ad where this dude says "WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF YOU COULDN’T PAY TO WIN REALLY FAST, LIKE YOU HAD TO SLOWLY PAY TO WIN" and I'm just like, I don't want to pay or win???