mrkgnao: You mean apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health?

Timboli: Indeed.

Progress in all it's varied forms usually means negatives as well as positives. But to focus on just the negatives and be blind to the positives is not very healthy or realistic.

Life is often about two steps forward and one step back. There are pitfalls and losses for sure, but also benefits.

kai2: But then there was RDR 1 (online) where I was being hassled by some young teen-age miscreants, got one to think about his actions, and talked back-and-forth (via RDR) for years -- helping him sort out life goals and prepare for university.

Braggadar: Perhaps the question should be "What did humanity do for online gaming"? The idea was sound, but it was the human element which ruined it.

Much like online forums and social media as well.

Devyatovskiy: This is definitely some weird bait, but fine. It's a slow morning so may as well entertain it.

I think what you're describing is competitive gaming, not cooperative one. Not to mention that even co-op can turn sideways when certain types of people are there. Look no further than games like Darktide where you'd think everyone would have fun. Lo and behold, some asshats ruin it for everyone. The upward difficulty doesn't help and the bots' general stupidity.

As for making it accessible to "normies and idiots", well that's highly subjective. From another perspective, you are a maladjusted loser. Is that who the gaming should always be catering to? If you don't recall, gaming a couple of decades ago was nearly unbearable with complete garbage coming out more often than not. Standardizing certain gaming staples made it accessible sure, but overall, it made it way better. Even less accessible games like those in Soulslike genre, are infinitely better today than they would have been back when developers catered to hardcore only.

Anyway, I think I fed a troll, but sure why not be charitable once in a while.

XeonicDevil: riot games and their amazing combined talent of over 200iq... dont you see the issue here.. to a bunch of kids games are like magic. to a large portion of us that lived thru hell, wars and chaos.. you need to pump the gas else were gona fade faster than the meme was posted.

SultanOfSuave: I hate to be "that guy", but sod it. For all your endless whining about Riot's mishandling and slow deterioration of their own product, you still can't bring yourself to stop playing League of Legends.

XeonicDevil: 15 years and 250 euro into the trash.

Lifthrasil: It kept some individuals tied to their computers, keeping them out of the gene pool.

SultanOfSuave: That's not a bad fee you know, 16€ per year as a subscription fee for unlimited access to a service.

XeonicDevil: i didn't enjoy 12 of those years at all.
how vindictive do you need to be to ban the user for having a higher upvote score than your entire team and it happened twice. so you can imagine how they felt as a "forward facing" developer...