I game a lot, and I have many ear piercings (the troublesome ones are industrial and cartilage and for ear buds, both tragus, but I'm looking for just normal headsets). Most headsets make my ears ache after 20-45 minutes. I can almost pick out how much they're going to hurt when I try them on, and nothing at my local Best Buy has anything available that feels right. Additionally, many are heavy and sit on the top of my head like a brick - before I completed my ear decorations, that was usually my peeve.

Currently, the only headset I adore is SteelSeries Siberia (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SN9RN8). I can wear them for hours. Sadly, I cannot get a replacement. I tried their Arctis 5 and immediately sent it back. The Siberia does not have a mic, so that's basically the only reason I am wanting to get another set.

If anyone can recommend something with the following characteristics, I'd be willing to drop a pretty penny on them... not that I can afford to, but it'll be an investment if it lasts as long as these Siberia have!

• Preferably cloth ear surface texture;
• Preferably something that doesn't sit heavily on the head - though the ones I've tried that clamped for staying on my ears would give me headaches as well;
• Must be wired. No bluetooth. Caveat: if it has a usb dongle, could be doable. (My computer does not have BT capabilities.) I hate things running out of battery though, so it will have to be good;
• Must have extendable head band up top, if its method is not gripping on your ears without head support;

I'm sure I've missed something, but if there's a fellow ear-pierced gamer whose had issues with many headsets but found the perfect one, please recommend! Thanks!

I have a huge problem with playing games until I finish them and I don't know how to change that. It's a rare ocurrence for me to finish the game because I usually get distracted with other games, so I make break and after the break I don't remember plot or how to play properly which discourages me to pick it up back again especially if I was already like 20 hours in the game. I want to enjoy games like I did 20 years ago where getting a new game was special but now the amount of cool games and their availability makes me feel that I am missing out therefore I usually switch from game to game just to try it.

Sorry if all of the above looks like a some kind of babble but I am not a native speaker :D

I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a time.

Now that I’m a working adult, it’s a bit more difficult to convince myself that spending all day playing a video game is worth it as opposed to doing chores, practicing some more “productive” hobbies (art, exercise, cooking) or socializing. Part of it also seems to do with the fact that when I do get fully immersed into another video game and spend hours and hours playing at a time (thank you elden ring), my standard for dopamine seems to increase, and I’m not as interested in reading or playing music when I could get that instant dopamine hit from playing a video game, if that makes sense. The games I tend to play now lean towards relaxing/cozy games, generally offline games I can play at my own leisure, where I used to be very into the Overwatch/CSGO/Call of Duty scene.

I’d really love to hear how other people have experienced this, if at all, or what your experiences have been. Have you noticed a shift in the types of games you play? Do you specifically try not to play games to keep a healthier balance with your other obligations and hobbies too?

I've only experienced VR at an escape room and a few hours on PS4VR, both in 2019.

The escape room was an amazing experience with a dedicated facility but held back by some cumbersome hardware. On the other hand, PSVR was interesting but lacking in flexibility and a little pointless with new hardware on the horizon.

Nearly bought a setup in lockdown but ran into decision paralysis. PSVR issues above; Index/HTC are a lot more expensive and would need a PC upgrade while Oculus is that sweetspot with price and portability but demands you interact with the Zuckerverse ecosystem.

And in the years since, from the outside it seems like a lot of the hype is just gone. There was a brief time where the Metaverse monopolized the discussion, soured everyone's appitite and promptly died. I've seen VRChat community have a tough time with some anti-player decisions. PS5 VR was hit with a big delay and considerable price tag on top of the console price. And lately with the summer games showcases, I only really recall Assassins Creed and Powerwash Sim VR as notable big budget experiences.

So I'm curious what the space is like for people who are committed to the experience. How often do you play? How locked in are you to an ecosystem? What are you playing and looking forward to? How is the hardware holding up? But most importantly, would you recommend people buying in now?

I, like many gamers, grew up playing Pokémon Red and Nintendo 64 and was obsessed with Nintendo products. I graduated to a PS2 and PS3 and became super into Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty and Fallout. Also spent a ton of time with the Guitar Hero series. I loved the escape gaming brought me and it genuinely helped me relax.

Fast forward a few years and I hadn’t really played a video game between the years of like 2011-2017. College, moving cross country and busyness of life kept me from gaming. Finally in 2017, I bought a Switch and Breath of the Wild and felt the same magical feeling I remember when I first started playing Ocarina of Time, or the first time I booted up Metroid Prime, or Metal Gear Solid 4. I started to get into online gaming and made a lot of friends. I played my Switch frequently for a few years.

During the beginning of COVID lockdowns, I turned more to reading than gaming and my Switch gathered lots of dust. I ultimately ended up buying an Xbox Series S when it was announced because I’d never owned an Xbox system and Game Pass really intrigued me. I went through a phase of being very into Destiny 2, Halo, Gears of War, Forza Horizon…a bunch of games I had never played before.

Then, a divorce, a new job change, another cross country move brought new levels of stress to my life. I lacked an attention span strong enough to focus on a video game. FPS’s seemed boring, online games couldn’t keep my attention long enough to get through a match, and eventually I’d just leave a game on the pause menu while I messed around mindlessly on my phone. Gaming wasn’t even a way for me to decompress anymore, it seemed more like a chore I was procrastinating—which sucks.

I’ve fallen deeper into this lately, as more life changes have come along. I work a stressful job with long hours. I’m now a stepparent to two young boys. The little free time I have I spend walking the dog, reading, and trying to just let my mind settle and decompress. Let alone, if I try to turn the Xbox on or have the Switch on my lap, it turns into a whole event where the kids want to sit and watch and participate and ask tons of questions (which is fine, but sometimes I just want to do something by myself for me!)

I miss the time of my youth where gaming was a relief and a release for me. I miss how I felt when I first got a Switch and felt so excited and so nostalgic and reinvigorated and looked forward to playing a game! Now…I feel like I can’t even consider myself a gamer.

So. That’s a long winded way to ask if anyone else has gone through similar ruts, or fallen away from gaming, and if so, what games helped you get that spark back? What games brought you back to that nostalgic feeling you had when you first got into gaming? What games help you decompress after a long day? What games have you recently become obsessed with in such a way that you look forward to playing them and are always thinking about them?

I want to get back into gaming. I want to feel the magic again.

With all the new people running around, thought it be a good time to ask what everyone uses for gaming...

Are you a console convert?
A portable gaming pro?
Desktop diehard?
Lifelong laptop leaderboard-er?
Teak-tabletop-till-you-die?
Archive level retro-gaming repository?
Custom collectible card game covers?
Tired of my poor attempts at alliteration?

Title
Anyone that has been playing multiplayer games for a while must have noticed the recent shift when it comes to multiplayer games matchmaking trends.
Multiplayer games were no joke, they were hardcore, with high entry barriers where the more experienced players would dominate the field, and newer players were nothing but fodder for them. If you were new to a game you could expect to lose most of your matches for a while, but if you were to put in the effort, improved, learned the game and persevered trough, then you'd be rewarded by becoming the one to dominate the field instead.
Nowadays it's different, anyone can pick up a game, no matter how experienced they are, and expect to win roughly half the games they play. From newcomers to pro players, everyone seems to be relegated to a strictly forced 50% winrate policy. But how is that possible?

The focus in game design seems to have shifted from rewarding individual oriented play, to rewarding more teamwork oriented skills instead. The focus on teamwork has been pushed so far to the point where, if your team isn't putting in the effort, no matter how good of a player you are, you won't be able to compensate for your team lack of skills and they'll be the reason why you lose the match. There wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with this, especially in a team game, if it weren't for the fact that it really feels as if the better you get at the game, the worse your teammates get.
This is how they're able to make everyone's winrates hover around 50%. Sure if you lose too much the algorithm will start giving you better teammates, but if you win too much then the quality of your matches will be abysmal, leading to a point where all the good players get effectively punished and can never fully see the fruits of the effort they put for actually learning the game.
Players have expressed for years their frustrations against this balancing method, as many felt cheated due to losing too many matches due to factors completely out of their control, but so far nothing has changed.

This sort of matchmaking algorithm can also be used to impose certain "patterns" in the wins and losses that a player experiences while playing, in order to increase their engagement. A study from 2017 published for EA , goes to show how players are more likely to quit a game if they incur in specific win/loss patterns. For example, of the entire playerbase, 5% of them will quit the game if they were to incur in three losses in a row.
Here's an excerpt from the paper's abstract
"Current matchmaking systems depend on a single core strategy: create fair games at all times. These systems pair similarly skilled players on the assumption that a fair game is best player experience. We will demonstrate, however, that this intuitive assumption sometimes fails and that matchmaking based on fairness is not optimal for engagement"

This is just a window into what goes trough the developing process of a multiplayer videogame these days. The paper is from 2017 but troughout these years this approach to multiplayer games has been adopted and developed to the point where every single multiplayer experience, from PC to mobile to consoles, feels artificially crafted and finely tuned to keep you as hooked for as much time as possible to the screen.
This doesn't stop to win/loss patterns, another example would be gears of war, where the devs have admitted to make your bullets do more damage on your first match of the day, because their studies showed that people were more likely to play troughout the day if they were to win the first match they played. These same devs would later go to make Fortnite, which would go on to generate billions in revenue for years.

What are your thoughts? Do you prefer the modern take to make multiplayer games more accessible to everyone, or would you rather go back to the days where communities would develope more organically?

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Hey all, I recently got back into gaming. Loving it so far but none of my friends play these days. I figured since Tildes has a great community it could be fun gaming with others here!

I'm thinking we could have a game as a top level comment and then sub-comments could be game IDs or people interested in connecting? I'll start off with this format but I'm open to suggestions.

(Also, this is my first post on Tildes. Hopefully it aligns with the rules/community.)

I recently earned the platinum for Riders Republic, its a fun game, takes around 40-45 hours to get the plat and outside of tricks battle mode its not too difficult, but I enjoy playing tricks battles.
I haven't moved on from the game after getting the plat though cause im levelling up to get elite level gear to win 64 player mass races, I got first place for the first time yesterday and consistently get podium finish

I had a vasectomy this week and needed something to do for a few days while I was down. A co-worker recommended star citizen (explaining the caveats). I love it so far, and if anyone here plays I'd love to add you to my friends list.

My username is Grendel_84

I’ve always enjoyed rally games but only recently decided to buy a wheel (just a used Logitech G29) and also decided to give F1 22 a shot. I feel like I’m okay-ish at DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10 but atrocious at F1 22. How do I actually learn to be better instead of constantly making mistakes?

To me, they feel kind of OP to discover if you're not a very motivated person, but I suppose that's who they're for. I did one of those trophies for Sonic Generations when I stumbled upon it online and it was to no-hit the final boss on hard mode with no add-ons (in game stuff) and I can't help but feel that there's no way I would have known that's the trophy.

So I just upgraded to an M1 Mac Mini. I was a little iffy on it, part of me wanted to build a PC just to play games but I really like MacOS and I mostly play on PS5 and the Switch with the PC only being for indie titles and stuff that only works with a keyboard and mouse like RTS, 4x, or city builders. I just don't play PC games enough to prioritize gaming as a use case in buying a computer, but I also really like RTS and city builder games.

I figured WINE and Parallels would meet most of my gaming needs but my forays into WINE have been frustrating and buggy, and this reddit thread about what works on Parallels is, frankly, just kind of sad to look at. What's worse, apparently the new Age of Empires has some kind of pathfinding instruction set that ONLY works with x86 architecture. So it won't work under any kind of virtualization or emulation.

Enter Cloud gaming. It seems the big contenders right now are ShadowPC, GeForce Now, and Paperspace. Has anyone tried these? When I last costed these out Shadow was only around $15-$20 a month which was almost a no-brainer. But it seems to have gone up to $30 a month now, which gets costly enough to where it almost seems like I'd rather get a Steam Deck. Paperspace is like $10 per month plus another ~$1 per hour of play, which would probably end up cheapest for how little I play. But how it is in terms of configuration and latency I have no idea.

I wanted to get a general discussion going on the opinions of game streaming services. This is a potentially huge market and the big companies out there are really trying to break into this market. I personally use google stadia and love it, there is a slight amount of latency in movements but it feels no different than a larger dead zone to me.

I love the idea of game streaming as it brings more games to more platforms like Linux, macOS and mobile devices. I know the big argument against them is that you don’t own the games, but from my perspective, you don’t own the games on steam either, you own the right to play someone else’s game just like with Google stadia or Luna or xcloud. If you want to own an actual copy then you have to buy the game from a vendor like gog or itch.io.

So let me know your opinions on this market, do you think it’s good, bad, or somewhere in between and why? If you play on any of these services what are your thoughts and experiences? Has it worked well for you and do you see yourself using services like this in the future? I genuinely am curious as it’s a completely different mindset than what we’re used too and it can really disrupt a market that hasn’t seen proper innovation in years.

Do you like them? Hate them? Don’t care about them? Take pride in them?

What do you consider good/bad achievements?

Do they affect how you play games?

Do you feel you have to get most/all of them?

What games have used them to novel effect?

Anything else you want to say about the topic is fair game as well. This is an open door for any discussion related to achievements.