Sorry for the rant. I'm genuinely curious about this issue so I'd love some input to mature/change my understanding of it.
Ban#1 blows my mind. Do people actually find playing against A.I stimulating? I don't really intend to tread on anyone's toes and I recognize that this might be down to taste to some degree. But game-AI is still retarded (the singularity hasn't happened yet, guys). You'd think coop would almost entirely consist of laid-back people who recognize that winning against AI is dependent on just figuring out their habits and exploiting that (following formulas instead of adapting on the fly).
Playing perfectly against an unthinking opponent is no achievement in my book. Granted my book might be different than the next guy, but have people who primarily play against A.I (while dissing PvP) scrutinized their reason for doing so?
I've seen various reasons thrown around, the primary one being "I just think people do silly unrealistic stuff" (as if bots walking in the open like headless chickens are realistic?). I often hear them make snide remarks against people who prefer live opponents along the lines of "I don't need to dominate other people to feel good about myself". This reeks of hypocrisy, or at the very least another brand of the very attitude they disdain. Where, instead of seeking to feel better about winning over people in a game, they prefer "winning" over people by having a "more mature outlook" on gaming in general.
My impression of people like this are that they often get extremely defensive or anxious when playing against (or arguing with) other people. They generally handle conflict poorly (as evidenced in Ban#1), and their thinking is extremely rigid ("things should be done this way"). They feel empowered when they are in complete control and everything is happening predictably/by the book.
So from my perspective it seems these people have autism (to some degree). I'm officially diagnosed with asperger's, so this might be a case of the pot calling the kettle black (I might be too rigid in my preference for PvP over PvE/PvAI). But I find figuring out the patterns and behaviors of AI too unchallenging (not tooting my own horn), so this preference dichotomy is probably hard to pin on autistic traits alone. Perhaps it's more related to anxiety and OCD?
Why do some people take playing against AI seriously?