Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let's dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don't want to see anyone say stuff like "we're all entitled to our own opinions." Let's pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.
My Unpopular Opinion:
I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it's optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I've never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don't have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I'm glad you don't play the games anymore, but I don't think it makes the game bad.
The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don't really have a point against this except that it's better to play with friends.
Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.
This is just my opinion
On the topic of MMOs, I want to point out that I generally avoid them. I think they can be done well, I just think they've been captured by the "do dailies to progress" perspective where you miss out if you don't dedicate your life to it.
I want to make an MMO that respects the player's time. The best way I can think of it working is for it to be cyclical. As in, you play until some in-game event happens (my preference is a large guild battle over some resource), then the world resets and the winners get some boon and everyone carries something forward to the next round (new players pick a starting perk). Cycles should be relatively short (days, maybe weeks, and definitely not years), and each cycle should bring something new to the game. I would play that, but I'm definitely not playing a longer game like Star Citizen.
Bit late, but your last point reminded me about Foxhole, a top down war game, which have these mmo like bits, and also has a cyclic wars, but these don't give any advantage in the next war.
I don't play it, but the biggest downsides I heard are 1) losing ground on the battlefield (progress) while logged out, as you can't help your faction while offline, and 2) the players working in logistics (collecting ores to craft supplies for the frontline) find that gameplay loop repetitive/boring, while its crucial for the faction victory.
I guess it makes sense this is one of the biggest hurdles in pvp mmo, since in pve mmo the enemies wait for you, and it isn't possible to lose major progress, especially offline. (random thought: is Rust a pvp mmo? That's kinda cursed.)
The other problem with cyclic games is the non existent progression, since things reset. Most mmo players do the 10+ hour grinds on quests for the shiny thing or the prestige titles, like getting lv99 in Runescape. Even in Escape from Tarkov at the end of wipe most players stop playing, since they feel it would be a waste of effort.
The idea of boons or things that carries over is interesting, but of they stack through multiple wipes there could be a super guild who gets an unfair advantage.
So yeah, surprisingly, game design is hard (also I dont have any gamedev experience, just like thinking about it)
I'm thinking of allowing players to configure an AI to work while they're out. So they can leave their character harvesting resources on loop, doing simple fetch quests, and perhaps a set of actions to run if attacked. That way you can't just wait until a lot of them are offline to storm their area, but being offline would have a penalty.
I also want to make a mobile app so you can update the AI controlling your character at any point, as well as engage in trades while "offline."
I'm planning on some kind of "perma-death" as well, so if you die, you lose your character, but you get an XP gain boost until you're back at your old level. The idea is you have a "soul" that inhabits other bodies, and that soul helps the body gain new skills, though it doesn't need to be the same skills you had last time. So you could go from a mage to a tank and get the same boost.
The boon would merely jumpstart that process in the next game, like maybe you get a one-time XP gain boost, it's easier to find resources, etc, but those effects would either only last until your first death, or not be useful in the late game. So you get a temporary benefit, but your faction also has a target on its back.
I'm still working out the details, and I don't have time to work on it anyway, but I think it would be an interesting experiment. Maybe I'll try out a smaller version of it in 2D or something to play with the mechanics.