>> In my estimation, esports ultimately resulted in barbaric desecration of formerly-enjoyable multiplayer experiences
> All of that just because my Dota skills are hobbyist level. And apparently, that's not acceptable to the online community anymore.
In my view, the problem here is that somehow the expectation has come to be that you play your multiplayer games with strangers. (This also causes other problems such as invasive anti-cheating software.)
I see very little benefit and quite a lot of damage resulting from this idea. Who cares about playing with strangers?
I play CS:go with strangers. As i am only playing casually once in awhile and being 40 with family and my friends being in the same situation it's often my friends are not able to be online (and wise versa) when i am ready to play.
Who cares? Anybody after about the 1h mark of playing with/against the same players. If there's a major skill gap, someone isn't going to be having fun.
It's not a job. If I want to play, I want to fire up my gaming PC, start the game, press a "Match" / "Play" button, wait 1-2 minutes and start playing.
If I have to do organized events then I might as well not have sat on the gaming PC at all.
But I'll concede that there's a class of games in which this mindset means you're basically pissing against the wind and you'll have a very bad time. Hence I am avoiding them entirely but still wanted to give you my perspective.
> All of that just because my Dota skills are hobbyist level. And apparently, that's not acceptable to the online community anymore.
In my view, the problem here is that somehow the expectation has come to be that you play your multiplayer games with strangers. (This also causes other problems such as invasive anti-cheating software.)
I see very little benefit and quite a lot of damage resulting from this idea. Who cares about playing with strangers?