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Guy gives a negative review to Battlezone after playing 8k hours; He's right

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123 points isaacfrond | 3 comments | 01 Nov 24 09:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source
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CM30 ◴[07 Nov 24 00:20 UTC] No.42071706[source]▶
To be fair, it kinda makes sense. The person best equipped to criticise a game or work is probably often someone who's experienced it for the longest. That way, they get to know all the things that don't add up, get repetitive on repeat playthroughs, various UI and UX annoyances that get worse the more you experience them, etc.

There's a reason the biggest fans of a game or film or TV series tend to give some of the harshest criticism, and why the most active users of a tool or program tend to have the most to say about it.

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swatcoder ◴[07 Nov 24 00:29 UTC] No.42071794[source]▶
At 8000 hours, most players have lost any connection to the design intent of "game" they're "playing" -- they've lost any intentional sense of pacing, any intentional sense of discovery, and have almost by definition disregarded any intentional sense of conclusion or completeness.

They're engaging in their own idiosyncratic experience with software that doesn't work exactly the way they now dream, but is apparently closer to what they want than anyrhing else.

In the general case, their insights are going to be a curiosity and might sometimes happen to coincide with a more broadly experienced flaw in the design. And of course they may be right on target for whatever few other "8000 hour" players.

Playing a game or using software a lot can give you some deep insights into it. But there is a crossover point where you spend so much time with it that your relationship with it isn't very related to anyone else's anymore, and your insights likewise become less relatable.

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1. blargey ◴[07 Nov 24 01:10 UTC] No.42072153[source]▶
It's an online multiplayer PvP game. There is no pacing, conclusion or completeness like a single-player "estimated 40 hour playthrough" game, discovery is a metagame, and a review veering into historiography can add relevant and useful information for prospective players because of it, not in spite of it.
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2. plussed_reader ◴[07 Nov 24 01:14 UTC] No.42072175[source]▶
Uh, it can be multi-player. But the single player campaigns were the business, IMO.
3. squeaky-clean ◴[07 Nov 24 02:16 UTC] No.42072594[source]▶
Online PvP games absolutely have pacing. Back then it was just about the skill ceiling and learning curve. In today's gaming era it's also matchmaking ranks and rewards and battlepass content. I do miss the days when you could buy a big budget multiplayer game and always jump in with all the tools pro players had. But it sounds like he had several complaints with the game dumbing down the skill ceiling (e.g. sniper bunny hopping) and bugs that let a novice player wipe the enemy team. A well paced multiplayer game has techniques that seem feasible to master but require a good amount of practice. A bad one only lets the top 1% of players achieve those skills after thousands of hours, or doesn't have such techniques at all.