The original post: /r/pcmasterrace by /u/FewConsideration4075 on 2024-10-12 14:56:20.

I feel like we’re in a dark age when it comes to competitive FPS games. Remember back in the day when we could spend hours, grinding out matches, genuinely enjoying the experience? Now it’s like all these new FPS games miss the mark in one way or another. As someone who grew up playing CoD4 Promod, the state of modern shooters just frustrates me.

  1. Movement Feels Clunky: One of the things I loved about CoD4 Promod was the movement. It was fast, fluid, and rewarded skill. You could master strafing, bounces, tricks, nades, smokes and position yourself cleverly to outplay your opponents. Nowadays, movement mechanics in games feel stiff, uninspired, or overly complicated for the sake of “realism.” Where’s the flow?
  2. Gameplay Lacks Depth: Competitive FPS games today seem obsessed with adding bells and whistles (battle passes, endless skins, convoluted ranking systems), but forget what truly matters: core gameplay. Games like Promod stripped everything down to the essentials, and it worked because the skill ceiling was high. The game didn’t hold your hand. You had to master the mechanics to be good. Modern shooters often make gameplay more accessible but end up watering down the experience for serious players.
  3. Performance Issues Everywhere: Maybe I’m nostalgic, but CoD4 Promod ran smoothly on most systems, letting you focus on gameplay rather than performance problems. These days, new FPS titles seem to ship with poor optimization, lag, stuttering, and constant updates that break the game more than they fix it. No matter how good a game could be, I’m not sticking around if I have to deal with 90 FPS on a rig that should be pushing 300.
  4. Where’s the Longevity?: CoD4 Promod was a game that you could grind for hours—every day, every week—and it never got old. Why? Because every match felt like a test of skill, every play was satisfying, and every victory was earned. Newer games? They’re often designed to hook you with dopamine bursts (rewards, unlocks, etc.) rather than to keep you invested because of the competitive challenge. It feels like I’m being manipulated to play rather than genuinely wanting to.
  5. Fantasy Abilities and Gimmicky Utility: Another thing that frustrates me with a lot of modern FPS games is this obsession with fantasy abilities and gimmicky utilities. These days, every other game feels like it’s trying to be a mix of an FPS and an RPG. You have characters with magical barriers, teleportation abilities, or drone swarms, and while that might be fun for casual play, it takes away from the pure gun skill that competitive FPS games used to be about. In Promod, you won fights because of your aim, positioning, and timing, not because you had some overpowered ability or gadget that gave you a cheap advantage. Nowadays, games seem more interested in giving every character some flashy ability than letting the core mechanics shine.

I don’t know if anyone else feels the same, but it seems like developers are missing what made games like CoD4 Promod special. We need tight mechanics, fluid & fast movement, and games that focus on the actual competitive experience rather than gimmicks and monetization schemes. I want a game that I can actually sit down and grind for hours—not because I’m chasing some shiny cosmetic, but because the gameplay itself is rewarding.

Does anyone else feel the same way, or am I just stuck in the past?