Why do you not play PVP games?

[Yankee Zulu]

I do play me some PVP games from time to time. Can I call myself a PVP lover? Not really. There are things about these games I do not like.

- they call it 'matchmaking' but in PVP games Id call it 'match creating' because it simply creates two teams of random players, their skill and experience not taken into accout
- cheating as rare as it may be does exist and you may or may not be killed by a cheating player
- the more popular the game the dumber the players who usually play it. You can encounter absolute dumbfucks in PVP. Hence any sort of teamplay is.nonexistant more often than not.
- the ususal lack of balance. If you like a certain class and/or weapon but that class/weapon is not the overperforming one, you are having a disadvantage

[maidenhaver]

It isn't fun. Part of the fun of LANs at your friend's house was being there for the meltdowns and your friend's mom screaming at us from her upstairs bedroom at 2am.

[Oyster Sauce]

New games are bad + they have forced matchmaking instead of dedicated servers

[Vergil]

I can't use console commands when I get mad/bored.

[rusty_shackleford]

I played WoW arena at tournament level and almost qualified for blizzcon during season 7/8, our team finished rank 11(top 8 qualify.)

So, what is it like playing at high level in a team-based competitive game? Exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Your body wasn't designed to be in a state of high alertness for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day 5-6 days a week. I realized it wasn't fun and I just stopped doing it, and I'm too competitive to play PvP games casually. My blood pressure was also sky rocketing, was temporarily put on medication for it.

[Vergil]

I played WoW arena at tournament level and almost qualified for blizzcon during season 7/8, our team finished rank 11(top 8 qualify.)

So, what is it like playing at high level in a team-based competitive game? Exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Your body wasn't designed to be in a state of high alertness for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day 5-6 days a week. I realized it wasn't fun and I just stopped doing it, and I'm too competitive to play PvP games casually. My blood pressure was also sky rocketing, was temporarily put on medication for it.

You are remarkable.

[ArcaneLurker]

Lost interest in PvP over time. I played FPS games like Counter Strike & MAG, when I was young, then Chivalry & Mordhau later on, and it stopped being fun at some point-- the issue is the level of investment you have to put into it in order to not suck and get something out of it. And I never really enjoyed MMOs enough to play PvP in them.

[Acrux]

I don't have time for it.

[CSM-101]

Used to do some competitive PVP in a few games and like Rusty said, it's not fun. It turns into a full time job and really defeats the point of playing games.

I don't mind casual PVP though, I just won't get super invested.

[Rand]

Online, they're always dominated by cheaters now.
Up to 30% of the players in every FPS match cheat.

[A Chinese opium den]

But I do though?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I had fun casually playing Hawken, Tribes Ascend, Heroes of the Storm, playing WoW RBGs with pugs, etc. Most fun PvP I've had was playing ACE Online participating in my faction's huge weekend invasions of the enemy faction to destroy their mothership, and in WoW playing with my RP guild and the other RP guilds I knew as we pushed back an Alliance invasion in Arathi highlands.

[Rand]

Oh, and also the maniacs that treat it as their obsession and the scumbag seal-clubbing streamers make it less fun if they aren't isolated by SBMM (Skill Based Match Making).

I chuckle every time one of these cretins whines about SBMM making the game "bad".
In this context, they mean bad for them, as they want unfair matches where they can feel all cool and special making the other players' experiences bad.
I am moderately good, but when I play PVP games I usually get wiped by cheaters and these asswipes.

I used to play Battlebit and it was good at first, but it got really un-fun.
Then I once joined a match at 3am and it was fun again.
It's the time all the assholes weren't playing and many people commented that they were having fun in the matches.
I was talking to one guy and he said that he was thinking that he was bad at the game, but he was doing really well too and that the difference seemed to be that the cheaters weren't on with ridiculous insta-kill 200m autofire headshots in 0.25 seconds all the time.
I stared playing only in the early morning and it was good for a while until the player count dropped so low that matches were dead.

[Jordy]

Online PVP with randoms is generally just people cheesing the latest meta/camping spot/exploit. I mostly only play PVP with RL friends now. Having said that, PVPs I've enjoyed in the past (off the top of my head) were:
MAG (with a team you know)
SWTOR
Bad Company (with friends)
BF3 (with friends)
CS:GO
Eve Online
Team Fortress Classic
Edit: DayZ

[Yankee Zulu]

No one asks you to play pvp like your life depends on it. Play itfor fun.
I played Dark and Darker solo the other day. Some ranger appeared out of nowhere like it often happens in that game. I **** my pants and ran into a closed cell. He started to shoot me through the bars. I had likec1 hp and then a barbarian lizzard appeared and chopped that ****** into pieces. We talked, I thanked him and he wished me luck and ran away.

[Nooneatall]

I hate people and stay away from them. Also no pause button

[asf]

it is boring

when you are a kid and can play 24x7 you can actually have fun inventing the latest meta and watching the ******* blindly following the previous one falling like idiots to simple traps. then few weeks later everybody starts copying it so you just create the next one and see the same people blindly walking into silly traps again

but who got time for this after 20

[J-12]

Ditched Tarkov months ago, wish i didn't even got scammed into buying it few years back, because that's what the game turned out to be - a scam.
The optimization is ****, the anti-cheat might as well not exist at all, the bots are cracked and one-shot you from another server with a broken pistol no matter what armor you put on, the devs forever busy doing some stupid dogshit events instead of fixing stuff, and the list goes on.
Some streamers might make it look fun, but it isn't, the gameplay is just depressing.

[Nemesis]

I played WoW arena at tournament level and almost qualified for blizzcon during season 7/8, our team finished rank 11(top 8 qualify.)

So, what is it like playing at high level in a team-based competitive game? Exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Your body wasn't designed to be in a state of high alertness for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day 5-6 days a week. I realized it wasn't fun and I just stopped doing it, and I'm too competitive to play PvP games casually. My blood pressure was also sky rocketing, was temporarily put on medication for it.

What was your main?

[rusty_shackleford]

I played WoW arena at tournament level and almost qualified for blizzcon during season 7/8, our team finished rank 11(top 8 qualify.)

So, what is it like playing at high level in a team-based competitive game? Exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Your body wasn't designed to be in a state of high alertness for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day 5-6 days a week. I realized it wasn't fun and I just stopped doing it, and I'm too competitive to play PvP games casually. My blood pressure was also sky rocketing, was temporarily put on medication for it.

What was your main?

I was playing a restoration shaman at the time, RPS

[Tweed]

I did all my pvping back in UO

[WhiteShark]

PvP is fun. I only stopped playing real time PvP games because I moved out into the boonies a long time ago and my new internet connection wasn't fast enough. I still play GG with people here, but my ping is 150ms+ at best―not sufficient for being super serious.

I've heard solid arguments for and against skill-based matchmaking. @Norfleet hypothesized to me that mixed skill levels is better overall for improvement. On the other hand, professional esports players train against other professionals for a reason. Either way, I think the disappearance of user-hosted servers is a tremendous loss for online gaming.

Either cheating wasn't common in the games I played or I never noticed it, but having seen its proliferation in current games, I would be admittedly leary to touch them. It seems even the most invasive anti-cheat software isn't enough to prevent it.

Regarding 'meta' complaints, that's never bothered me in the slightest. All games have a meta. It's unavoidable. The fastest path to improvement is to learn how the best players play, adopt it, and then build on it. Meta complaints always remind me of this comic:

[Vaako]

edit nvm

[Darkestfantasy]

I'm just not very competitive and I prefer working with other people to reach whatever goal needs to be reached. I didn't have many friends as a kid, certainly never stayed at anyone's house, so the only games I played were single player. I don't have the drive to win at any cost like so many other people do. I prefer to do things at my own pace

[Yankee Zulu]

The thing about pvp is that mamy games try to have 2 modes - pve and pvp attempting to balance between them. This approach is kinda hard to implement in several ways.

[Valter]

No pause! So sad!

But yeah often times someone wants to hang out and as much as I like Da Vidiya James, they take a backseat when IRL comes in. I'm fine with getting penalty'd in PVP games, so I still play them, but it definitely sours my mood on them.

[Kowe]

Used to play a few games (semi-)competitively. Either they are live service games which is ****, they get frequent balance updates compared to older titles, or just don't have truly engaging mechanics. Or in case of MMOs, lackluster PvP in most cases, compared to other genres. Not to mention the grind or farming as prerequisite to be able to compete.
What WhiteShark mentioned also holds true. User-hosted or Dedicated servers aren't really used in gaming nowadays. Could help a lot to increase the enjoyment of games on both the professional and casual sides. A competitive scene also has to be grassroots first to have a healthy longevity. And hardly any games have these components.

Also:

► Show Spoiler

Waiting for a Quake 3 Remaster due to something like this in a similar title of the series:

[Tweed]

STOP GETTING MAD AT VIDEO GAMES!

[Magick]

I played WoW arena at tournament level and almost qualified for blizzcon during season 7/8, our team finished rank 11(top 8 qualify.)

So, what is it like playing at high level in a team-based competitive game? Exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Your body wasn't designed to be in a state of high alertness for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day 5-6 days a week. I realized it wasn't fun and I just stopped doing it, and I'm too competitive to play PvP games casually. My blood pressure was also sky rocketing, was temporarily put on medication for it.

Getting old!
But I think ^ this is going to be the #1 for why not. PVP based games generally take a lot of time investment to git good at them, they also require a constant amount of investment to stay good. Especially in games that frequently change such as LoL and WoW. I used to love playing many bouts of Counter-Strike (1.6) back in the day, but that was generally just to derp around with friends.
Doing it competitively, or in matchmade matches against randoms and tryharding it on another level entirely. Highly stressful, and usually just a load of anger.

It's great if you have the time to invest to git and stay good, but that was do-able when I was 17 and procrastinating from college assignments, less so now I'm an adult with little time to constantly invest.

There's also the irritance that many matchmade games (like LoL) you have to REALLY get good and stay ahead of the curve, as if you win a few games it will then intentionally try to **** you, teaming you up with ******* and against people way ahead of your skill level. Of course this is to then filter out the stronger players to the top, but for the average non-tryhard? It's just too stressful.

[Xenich]

Did in various games over the years, went through the early FPS/RTS phase when they came out (mostly LAN games with friends and at local shops), but lost interest when it became mainstream.

RPG's PvP was ok, MUDs were fine, but I hated full loot in games where gear acquisition was long and difficult (EQ, UO, etc...). UO's DOS hacks made me avoid that style of play early on.
If I went into the game not giving a crap about gear focus and the like, it was ok for a while, got tiring after a while though.

WoW was ok at release, but I didn't care for the gimmick match crap later on (preferred open world and things like early release Alterac Valley).

These days, I don't even group in a PvE game, much less PvP, people are ********.