If you are afraid of being limited by flatpak for bazzite, (or any other distro but arch), you can use this :

an Arch container using distrobox that can run in every distro.

This way, you’ll have access to the AUR and arch repos in general.

If it’s only for the games, maybe using steam flatpak can help. So the packages needed for gaming on steam will be up to date (if you have an NVIDIA card it will still be a problem I guess). And install maybe protonup-qt (don’t know if it is still used or replaced, sorry) to manage your proton versions and download the versions needed.

In addition, check protondb website to see if the problem you encounter are known and if it can be solved whether with a different version of proton or a command line in steam launcher exe of the game.

7 months distro hopping sober here ! All thanks to CachyOS.

The installation is seamless thanks to calamares, there are some graphic tools that can help for beginners on arch. Their kernel might be one of the most optimised one to have a smooth experience while gaming. I do not play ressources hungry games, so I can not really tell.

After setting snapshots, I decided to experience it totally blind folded, just to see how long I can last on it. I update the system around 2 times a week, never read any changelog, just like any of the other distro I used… And for now, I’ve never had any trouble.

My system seems to be way smoother and more responsive than with fedora or tumbleweed.

I use my computer mostly for steam, heroic, librewolf and LibreOffice.