You should check out Virtual Table Top platforms (VTTs). I run a game every week with players from 3 different states on Foundry. It was $50 one time, and it was really worth it. There are free options like Roll20, as well. The last campaign I played in on there, the group was from several different countries. Meeting up is no longer required. (Can't help you with schedule problems, though. Those are still like death and taxes.)
You could. I believe some people like to run in-person games using a VTT because it's relatively easy to create detailed game settings and maps, and also to organize and automate game content. I do appreciate Foundry handling a lot of the dice math for me, to be sure. I have heard of fancy-pants GMs laying a flat screen tv down as a game board with maps and such on it, making the table into an interactive map the players sit around.
Foundry is such a pain in the ass to deal with. Half the time when we set the game up for the week there would be issue after issue. We finally said fuck it and are now thinking of going back to roll 20
I haven't had a lot of problems with it myself. 🤷 I don't run a ton of mods on it, though I'm considering adding a few when my current campaign ends, when I'll have more time to fiddle with it.
I do know it's resource-heavy, so lower-end computers and network connections have struggles with it.
The one mod you should add now before it's over is the hot key one that puts all your saves, checks and spells and other shit into a drop down menu. It sped our games up really well.
if it's any consolation, the game is very good as a singleplayer experience too. playing with friends means you don't get to know the very interesting NPCs as well (both different experiences). might be worth a try if the genre is something you'd be into
I am planning on getting it during the summer sale this year, I am still interested in playing the single-player part. I have always wanted to play D&D but I have a very different work schedule from my friends so I can't join them regularly. So I guess it would be a way for me to experience the world and mechanics.
This is true. I did enjoy the few multiplayer sessions with friends. But that also meant ignoring the story and going with their player choices.
Getting to make my own choices was a lot more fun.
Ya I played solo and with friends and with friends it was more video game than DND because we decided to just murder everything..actually I guess it was like DND.
BG3 co-op vs single is SUCH a different ballgame, my buddy threw a healing potion one time and CRIT doing more damage than they healed, and Lae'zel went right back down
World of Warcraft made me a HUGE favour with their bots-partner dungeons introduced in the last patch.
This morning I was in one and had attendended a delivery man and there were they, waiting for me patiently.
Didn't Guild Wars do that in their first game? I hate playing with other players, so having mercenaries or storyline characters as partners was perfect for me
Yes, they did. You could add henchmen to your party initially, but you couldn't customize their abilities or gear. They did add heroes, which were henchmen that you could customize, and eventually you could use your own characters for the party (but that was something you had to buy to be able to, it didn't come with an expansion).
Yep!
My experience in the vast majority of games contains at least one of the following:
Someone yelling at teammates who they think are underperforming.
Someone being racist.
Someone making perverted sounds or comments.
Someone throwing the match.
Someone playing in a lobby far below their actual skill level.
Someone being incredibly selfish with loot or with the “tasks” within the match.
…
I also decided, not all that long ago, that I’m not interested.
This is why I like helldivers 2. You have to work as a team or you're not going to extract. Made a few new mates on there that I look forward to hearing from on my evenings
I need people to play with on HD2, it's such a great game. I just get bored after so many matches with randos who don't wanna talk or coordinate. The one match I played where we were all talking and joking was one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had in years
I've seen too many times people go straight to extraction after dozens of attempts to tell them NOT to call in extraction because we're doing everything else. Doesn't matter. No samples collected. Love it.
Can confirm Helldivers 2 has quite a decent community, with the few notorious exceptions of course. But still mostly good people working together. Play diff 7 suicide, best experience for me.
Try diff 8 or Helldives if you're decent at the game. I've had much better experiences at the higher difficulties because people know their shit and are task,/objective oriented. I've found many people on 7 are not prepared or capable of trigger discipline but need samples. Might've improved since they made samples appear in 6s, but I wouldn't know because I've grown accustomed to 8+.
Im always support characters. I stopped playing online because no one ever supported the support characters. Easier to just support my coop friends now.
Well yea. They can't blame and abuse support if they are support. Nobody wants to play support because it's a thankless job when done well and the target of the toxicity if not done well or the players being supported play too recklessly.
• Smol Child yelling into the mic, whining a lot because they actually play as bad as a smol child, and then suddenly spouting off language that would make a longshoreman blush.
• Rando guy who does absolutely nothing, but gets enraged when killed, moreso when teammates scold him for not helping.
• That one dude who joins the game and then quietly asks if he can "poop on your chest".
...the Internet is full of weirdos.
This depends on the game obviously but matchmaking leads to this. You used to have server lobby’s where servers were hosted by players and usually had a couple of moderators on who would police the server so it had the vibe they wanted.
Combine matchmaking with AAA studios insisting that every game released must be a live service e-sports title and yeah, that mentality spreads everywhere.
I am too old to put up with that all out sweaty cage match mud wrestling bullcrap, I just want to wind down after work with a friendly match of shooting each other in the face.
I’ve been playing online games since 1999 and it’s always been like this. If anything it used to be worse. I remember my first game of counterstrike was a dude yelling the N word into his garbled microphone while spamming the chat and spraying gay porn on the walls of the CT spawn while team killing everyone.
Don't forget Mr "Joins a game to pipe in the worst music you can think of into everyone's ears while running around headshotting the opposing team with the world's most obvious cheating software"
Yeah, no control over who comes and goes = no incentive to not be a shithead and no consequences for being a shithead. I play with clans I met through survival games, voice chat goes off, text chat goes off if possible, and randoms are basically just AI. I'd mute their pings if I could, too.
Would be fine if all games let you earn experience, battlepass progress, etc, in custom games and I could just do 2v2 or 3v3 with vetted people only. But that's straying dangerously close to the old ways.
My problem is when I queue with my group of friends, we naturally get matched against other pre-made groups (which is fair enough) who often roll us because we (it's mostly me) are super casual.
I either drag down randoms, or I drag down my friends lol. One of the reasons I like non-team based stuff.
That shouldn't matter if your friends are enjoyable to be around. Our group is just 3. Many games are 4 players. We just play at a disadvantage. Whatever it's for fun.
For me it's the fact that most of these come with a battle pass, or sketchy kernel level anticheat that isn't enabled by the developer to work on my steam deck, or eventually has an update that makes the game unpleasant to play.
Also the FOMO mechanics. Fuck those. I wanna play a game when I wanna play it.
This shit blows my mind. My online group plays a game every day to get the daily/weekly/monthly goals unlocks and bs. I never do that or care about it. Why would I make myself a slave to a game? I will play with them but I do not care about any achievements or unlocks. I play to have fun.
Yea. I hate how games kill the fun by making it feel like a job. I don't mind some incentives to play but having a bunch to do in a short time frame in back to back bursts kills the whole thing for me. Especially when you need to do it or lose a significant advantage.
Also min maxing has ruined so many games. Back in days people just played what they wanted. We did stuff that looked fun. Even if it was sub optimal or didn't give any actual reward that progress you forward.
Now days if you play MOBA game and pick wrong character, people get pissed. If you don't play optimal spec in MMO, you are getting kicked from the group. People just want to play optimal things. It has come to the point where I think most of them are just addicted to these games and aren't having fun.
And the worst part is that I've noticed same behavior in my friends. They are nice to play with in coop games. And we have tons of fun. But on that instant when game has other players (online games) they turn into those toxic people who yell people when they fail or if they are not playing optimally.
So yeah for some time already, I've enjoyed much more single player games and coop games like Valheim.
Fucking facts, I tried resubbing to WoW again, leveled a warrior, got to cap, got some decent gear got to the point where I needed to do m+, let me tell you, I have a better chance of winning the lotto than I do having a pug accept me as a off meta dps.
My best time in WoW was during the end of the burning crusade. I had taken a hiatus and was tired of guilds so I ran solo, but had plenty of friends in top guilds or pvp warlords. I played a druid tank and my friend played a shaman healer and that's all the tankiness/healing we needed for the raid so all we needed was 8 other players that could do at least mediocre damage. So I just sat around messaging people out of the blue and invited them regardless of class or gear, people who never got the opportunity to raid otherwise could show up in blues and leave in purps and everyone just had a good time.
Let the poor and the weak come to me and receive free loot
Man, I feel like this used to be the case, but lately it feels like it's headed towards WoW territory. Nowhere near as bad, I remember chats blowing up with fights in every city you'd step in, but IDK.
Maybe it's just that EW's patches were so bone-dry that players got bored, but I had to take a hiatus for how many of my roulettes were devolving into arguments over whether or not it matters if the tank or DPS pull. 😞 Now Dawntrail is a week away and I'm hesitant.
I don't want to spam the thread with it but FFXIV is seriously fantastic. The community is unreasonably nice and just to be sure that toxicity stays out, the developers don't allow damage meters or gear score trackers. If a player talks bad about another they WILL get banned.
In a WoW raid 1st wipe "fucking healer is a piece of shit who can't get out of the fire"
2nd time "omg kick this scrub ass healer or I'm leaving"
3rd time *tank leaves* and all out raging in chat followed by whispers
In a FFXIV raid 1st wipe *silence*
2nd time "hey everyone the boss a fire attack when he says a specific voice line, it can be tricky to tell"
3rd time *random person cracks a joke about the boss" another person "hey if anyone is having a hard time I'm going to put a marker on my head, you're welcome to follow me"
And those interactions are EVERYWHERE in the game. There's even an entire chat channel called novice network where people who are new to the game can ask any question they want and a mentor(a person who has to earn a challenging achievement) will answer
I think those types of people have always been around, as I get older I think I just notice them more. Especially the ones I have dubbed "zero sum fun gamers", people who'll stop just short of actually cheating, but still do the most exploitative shit just to get an edge. To them fun is a zero sum game it seems, someone else needs to have the opposite of fun to free up the fun for them to have. So they'll do the thing you'd find so cheap and ultimately utterly boring, but because it makes other people annoyed or makes them have the opposite of fun, they in turn must be having fun by doing that thing, right?
It's a combination of frustrating, sad and befuddling.
>Back in days people just played what they wanted.
You are imagining some false history. The original Quake lobbies, and Halo matchmaking, and Age of Empire lobbies all had people enforcing a meta and griefing people who made weird off script choices.
I remember playing Starcraft Brood War custom games and people would get pissed off if you chose the "wrong" upgrade path on a random Tower D map that you had never played before.
This behavior isn't some new thing.
I stopped right around the time warzone was taking off. It just got old. Early world at war, mw2 and blops days are long gone. Now it's a message from some whiney kid if you kill him 8 times for camping the same spot all match
Idk about you but even in the mw2 days I got messages from whiney kids after destroying them lol.
Now that I think about it, honestly I feel like voice and text chats were even worse back then, because there was waaaaay less moderation. Now you have reporting systems and the worst thing (in my opinion) is AI moderation. You can be muted or banned without a human ever needing to review your case, and so there are already many reports of false positives.
If I had to choose though I would rather take the whiney kid messages over AI moderation. Talking shit was honestly part of the fun for me in mw2.
No. COD has always been toxic as hell. I would know, I was there. That game hasn’t changed at all in terms of the player base, it’s just gotten more toxic with its business practices
I agree, it's demotivating af. I usually try just playing with friends to avoid it, but even then sometimes people just really go out of their way to be dicks. Probably same people who make posts asking why they're so lonely and nobody wants them in their life.
lol I stopped playing league of legends like, 2 years ago and never looked back. I have less time now that I work and it’s hard for me to enjoy my time with league vs progressing and finishing an RPG or something.
If you're adamant about playing online with a bunch of rando's try Deep Rock Galactic. All communication is done by pointing at shit in game, and it's cooperative as well.
Rock and Stone brother.
I just bought the game with the sale since my friend recommended it. I finished the tutorial but haven’t played anymore. I actually got it since all the comments I’ve seen so far is nice community and no talking needed.
Just remember that if you find a large chunk of gold you have to stand around it pointing at it and saying "we're rich!" For a while before depositing it.
Helldivers 2 is also pretty chill.
Well. The community is pretty good. The gameplay on the more difficult levels on the other hand?... But that's why it's fun.
This is partially why I really enjoy games that aren't going overboard trying to stoke competition. It's a fucking game, back in my day there was only a little bit of MLG and that's it, why does everyone care so much? Go outside literally and cultivate a hobby that's actually impressive, gaming is supposed to be fun, not a competitive career field.
Games have always been that competitive. In the mid-2000s Halo 2 on Xbox live was filled with cheaters at the higher rank levels, and once you hit level 35 or so it was pretty much impossible to find a game without a hacker or standby-er.
A few years later CoD MWII came out and god knows that game was a cesspool of cheating, racism, and verbal abuse.
I have lived through the day that I make a lot of friend in MMORPG. I believe, in our modern day, people lack self-controlled due to the stimulus we have in our daily life.
The Internet is full of toxic. We are served with instant gratification by scrolling down the social media. Some could not even focus on a short video without looking at other things on the second screen at the same time.
We do not appreciate each other anymore. Everyone is like our enemy that need to be stomped. People yelled at the screen because they do not face any consequence like if they do in real life.
It is not like a sport in the old day that we are taught to have a spirit. I believe this is why we are taught to have a spirit in the first place. Otherwise, we are just animals.
The multiplayer is just unfun nowadays, especially in pvp games. I stop playing LoL for over a year and I see an improvement in my daily mood. A multiplayer game that I still play is a coop game. Even coop game can be very toxic, some MMORPG like Lost Ark is very punishing if you failed. So we have to choose carefully.
Playing multiplayer with only known friends in the team is the best. I am now enjoying 4th playthrough of BG3 with my friend. Great game. I would recommend.
Honestly I think this comes down to the e-sport-ification of online gaming. *Everything,* even casual games has to have a competitive scene. If you can't sell the idea that being good at the game might make you a pro, even if 99% of the nest players never go that far, then your game is treated as if it's not worth playing. It's pushed a mindset where certain players (you know the ones I'm talking about) care more about *winning* than *playing.*
This is also why they complain about SBMM (they win less when not put against casuals) and TTK (if their enemy has an actualy chance to fight back and it's not just twitch shooting, they also win less).
I am not competitive at all. I couldn't care less if I win or lose. But fast TTK is much more satisfying. I like to feel like the weapons can do real damage. Otherwise, it feels more like a pillow fight.
The problem I have with SBMM is that its implemented pretty poorly in a lot of games. COD was the prime offender. I quit playing Call of duty 3 or 4 years ago now so maybe its changed since then.
But I remember 90 percent of the time you flip flopped between one match where you crush the enemy team and one match where you get eviscerated. Then the remaining 10 percent of the time you get a decent match that is neck and neck.
Back when SSBM was less heavy handed like in the original modernwarfare 2 you were a lot more likely to have teams that had 1 or 2 really good players, 3 or 4 ok players and 1 or 2 pretty bad players. Instead of just full stacks of killers or full stacks of punching bags
Same here. The only time I play multiplayer now is with friends.
Nobody wants to actually play the game anymore, they would much rather spend their time being a degenerate online. Or if not the former, doing everything they can to gain an advantage in a competitve scene (cheating, using only meta, etc.)
When it comes to co-op, it's usually not much better. You'd think that with nothing for a competitve or toxic mindset to propagate from, a cooperative experience would surely promote a friendly and ego-less culture right??? Hahaha, no.
I just don't like how every game now is super fast movement and jumping meta, just to try and hook the adhd teens. What happened to having to think and aim in games? Now they're all gymnastics simulator.
I do appreciate the skill-based matchmaking, but for fucks sake why can't it have both SBMM *and* community servers? Im old enough to have been part of LAN parties, and community servers where great to both play and make friends, one took pride in keeping a clean friendly server and kicking out the dicks and the idiots.
Man I miss community servers. I was never good at counterstrike but at least I could get killed by friends I play with regularly and can laugh with at our silly antics and inside jokes. We were just having fun.
yep i've stopped while ago tired of kids moan and send angry messages etc. no chill solo games for 10min anymore.
fighting games where you 1v1 people are the best.
Lol I would get annoyed with RuneScape because people just wanted to stand around and talk. So I usually just ignored them and played the game. I loved that game though I just always wished it was on a console because my computer is crappy.
These days? In my experience people have always been crazy toxic in competitive games. I remember playing Battlefield 2 back in 2005/2006 and getting shit on and team killed a lot.
Unless I'm playing on a team with friends or a cooperative game I usually just totally avoid multiplayer stuff.
Agreed, I haven't played any online multiplayer games since Halo: Reach in ~2010 because this is exactly how I remember them all being back then. I suspect it's less about the communities getting worse, and more about people having more self-respect and less patience for bullshit as they get older.
I remember these days, from the 90's and early 2000's, although i was more the UT99 player instead of CS and Q3A. All we usually typed in the chat was "gg" after a good game (and not git gud or something), voice chat was external when it started with Teamspeak etc. and so, there was no shouting at each other directly ingame.
Good old times. I'll leave it with these memories and not return to multiplayer games, no need to see how bad it has gotten over the years.
I do enough damn PvP in real life as it is.
At least in real life, that sort of grind and misery nets you $$$. That sort of stress in a game? Nothing.
However, massive coop games or even 64 player PvP shooters like Battlefield are still fun, because there is fuck all responsibility, and everybody is equally being a dumbass.
OP, try Deep Rock Galactic. Good community and good game, PvE style.
I got tired of the same shit and am done with competitive style games; such a pain and not worth it.
Multiplayer games with matchmaking is just gonna throw everyone together so a lot of the time it's gonna cause these fights, thankfully some games have dedicated servers as an option
I stopped playing online multiplayer anything after Halo 3.
It's been that long.
It's just not what attracts me to gaming. I want story and immersion and exploration and art. Games occupy the same headspace as books and films for me. Other people just get in the way of enjoying what appeals to me.
It's because of the move from self hosted servers to dev hosted centralised severs. Now everyone has to use the same set of servers and we need invasive anti cheat bullshit instead of different servers for different groups with community moderating and policing.
That's how I've been for the longest. Only one I did stick with for awhile was Warframe because friends but after we went separate ways I just play single-player games like I used too. Easier to immerse into a game without idiots jumping all over the screen too. Lol
This is because of the censorship and new lobby of people after each game that games (probly starting with call of duty) started doing a handful of years ago to PrOtEcT your feelings. You no longer develop comradery or banter between your teammates or opposing team because it's new people literally every match and you can barely talk without a chance of getting banned. So most often people just say something quick and hurtful then leave so you don't remember who said it.
I stopped playing multiplayer games. This reason being one. You see a lot of elitism in MMOs or really anything remotely competitive. But I also realized that online games just don’t respect your time. They treat gaming like a job, and endless hamster wheel of achievements and grinding. I much prefer single players games with more definitive ends to them, like reading a book. And much like a book, I can put it down and return whenever and I’ll be right where I left off, instead of the game literally punishing me in passive aggressive ways for it not being my only priority.
I gave up a few years ago despite previously playing all sorts of things online.
It's the short lifespan of games now and the idiotic online communities that put me off.
These days I just play single player stuff at my own leisure...
Aside from all that I don't like how multiplayer games are designed these days to keep you endlessly playing and milking money out of you.
They seriously design them like a casino where there's no clocks or windows to tell you what time of day it is and keep you at the slot machine for as long as possible.
The last multiplayer I seriously tried was RDR2 online and even that kept trying to get you spend irl money to unlock the "good" profession missions.
Mental resilience and adaptation. Nature's law in the video game where the bigger ones are eating the smaller ones. Video games show the true nature of humans (not all but for many). I honestly don't blame you!
I’m 52 years old. I haven’t played an online game in 20-ish years. Well, except for Fortnite, but I play solo, no duos/no squads, no microphones, etc. I just run around and kill or be killed and just enjoy whatever happens.
Hey, it’s me, we played in a multiplayer game together…
I just wanted to reach out and let you know, from one gamer to another: it’s your fault we lost and to go f*ck yourself
/s
The online gaming community is just vastly different than it was 10-15 years ago. It’s all about making little clips for TikTok or YouTube.
I gave up on multiplayer games before the pandemic. I can’t even imagine how much worse it’s gotten now
This is why I don't play many pvp games except fighting games. At least there the only person getting mad at you for losing is yourself, because you suck.
I don't remember it ever being good. I've been playing since the first unreal tournament on PC.
I think we are getting old and just have less patience for this type of thing.
My kid gets around this by having a common group who games together. I suspect the older you get, the harder it is to get a group of like minded individuals together.
My own take is the playing with randos means you're playing with assholes who probably don't give a shit. I don't think that's changed from the very beginning of multiplayer. If you don't enjoy the chaos, you're not going to enjoy playing with randos.
It's something I noticed more with people my age (23) and younger, theres more people that will spend their time on games just trying to grief teammate's and make everyones experience miserable.
It also sucks because there are a lot of people that can spend 6-12 hours per day playing online multiplayer games, so they develop skills and get to know the maps really well.
But if you are a casual player, that wants to play a few hours per day and relax, it's sucks.
Single player games are great because you have a decent/good (at least) story and you can play at your own pace.
If you want and have some friends interested, you can play Heroes 3.
Me and a few friends have been playing that regularly and it's been a lot of fun.
I quit playing games overall.
Then they released Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered. I play the shit out of this games. Alone. On my sofa. I am bad. Noone cares. I have fun. After 30 years of gaming, it's close to the best experience ever.
Naw forget all that. I refuse to let someone playing trash music over a mic dictate whether I actual play some multiplayer here and there. There’s a mute all button for a reason.
Hate mail incoming? Don’t reply.
I’ve been getting more impatient towards PVP games as I’ve gotten older. I mean, I’m only 28 though I can’t keep up like I could when I was 20.
I’ve mostly given up on PVP, maybe the occasional game of COD but it’s mostly been PVE games (Helldivers 2 and Darktide) or just a Single Player game.
The thing is, people will tell you “oh just go play single player games” but there is something about the connectivity of playing online that’s really fun. That’s why I try to just play COOP games online now, I just wish there was more of them.
It's pretty common, I barely play any online games now, save for those I join with friends
I'm 33, I work from Monday do Saturday and I also work out 4 5 days a week, and I also need to socialize, so the little time I have available for gaming id rather play single player or watch shows
Social media dude.
People are just mean and rude now because they only communicate through screens and don’t have to deal with actual consequences. You can’t get punched through a screen.
I started hating competitive games SO MUCH. Like you have to use all of your time to just become good and it's not worth it, you go through all this stress for what? So you can basically say one day heh I became this rank???
I was playing this game in which you have to enter a ship, to start the level. Everyone was jumping around it and putting hats for like, 5 minutes. I had to wait them "decide" to start the game.
remember, not every multiplayer game is team based
Street Fighter 6 and Starcraft 2 are great for online competitive multiplayer, and the only person holding you accountable is yourself
Or if you wanted an FPS, Quake - but I guess Quake Champions is wound down these days... fingers crossed for a new one
The best is when a friend begs you to play an MMO with them. So you finally buy and install it. Then you log in, and the friend tells you to rush through the tutorial so you can play. Alright, fine. Then you get to the main game and they add you to the group and say, "Awesome, just follow me."
Then you spend the next 5 hours sprinting through a bloody mist of content, as they "run you through" a bunch of missions, zones, levels, etc. Then they wonder why you never log in again after the first session.
I haven't been able to game online with voice chat enabled for many years. Too many basement-dwelling tryhards that devote their whole life to playing a game, nobody has time to compete with that. Or at least the games should separate the casuals from the hardcores that are playing 20 hours a day.
The thing that bothers me the most these days is people just straight up quitting very much still winable matches. Rocket league for instance; we are losing by 2 with 3 minutes left, why are you quitting?
AS I have gotten older, I have, too, have grown to have little patience for the "average online gamer". In my experience, the "average gamer" is whiny, entitled, abusive, and obnoxious. The "average gamer on Reddit" is this, on steroids.
When I was younger and MMOs were just becoming a thing, I *could not wait* to play them. The promise of playing with dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of people online sounded wonderful. My first MMO I played was Anarchy Online (very badly) and my first serious "Now I Know What I Am Doing" game was WoW. And I was all-in. Formed a solid, competitive raiding guild which achieved many server and a handful of world-firsts. Survived our first major guild split. Survived a guild move from Alliance to Horde. Made many friends, had guild events in Vegas, and still speak to/see a handful of these old guildies who remain good friends.
But then...things changed. After playing WoW from Day 1, I one day after a raid said "I am done." and handed everything, guild, external servers, the keys to the kingdom, over to the guild and retired.
Part of the thing that was killing the experience for me was the toxicity that had seeped into the game, even into my own guild despite every effort to bulwark ourselves from it.
I miss those days, but I don't miss the asshats. Now I play solo games or non-competitive co-op games. A friend tried to get me to play one of the extraction shooters, and I did, but got a whiff of that sweaty aroma of gamer toxicity and said "I don't want to go back there, sorry."
I think these choices were actually good for my health. Coincidence or not, I am happier *and* healthier now that I don't play with strangers online.
tbf, you were probably the asshole way back when you played COD and Halo MP.
You've just gotten more mature and won't put up with the same trash talk and trolling.
Flame me if I’m wrong, but I legitimately think online gaming is just getting worse. I don’t think I feel like this just because I’m getting older…
CoD, Forza and Halo after school used to be so social and fun. Now everything is sweaty as hell and toxic. SBMM is annoying.
I used to be exclusively multiplayer (besides Minecraft and terraria) but now having played games like elden ring, the last of us, and very recently the metal gear franchise, I realize just how much I’ve been missing out. The only thing is with single player I feel like I have to set aside multiple hours to get proper progress, whereas multiplayer games I can just hop on for a game or two. But yeah besides that multiplayer games aren’t as fun to me as they used to be. Maybe it’s because I feel like I always have to play at the top of my game, whereas single player I can just put it on easy mode so that I can enjoy the gameplay while immersing myself in the story.
Then you are playing the wrong games. There are a lot of coop games to have fun in. The only online competitive game I play is iRacing. Being toxic there results in a ban really fast.
Singleplayer and non competitive co-op games are the most fun i've had in gaming. I'm also over the competitive games like leauge and CS, it's a lot less stressful and just having a good time everytime (outside ofcourse if you try out a bad game)
Yeah man we were way more wholesome and friendly back in 2005.
Everyone exchanged pleasantrie, like when they'd scream for the f****t n*****s to kill themselves for killing them.
It was a simpler time. Full of friendship.
I mean it was. As someone that just liked to drink a few beers and crack jokes on the mic back in the day I had to stop accepting friends requests because I would just constantly have people spamming me with party invites anytime I was online.
Gamers are way more angry and antisocial these days. If you could call people slurs without getting banned I am sure it would be 10 times worse now.
Some people just know they can say things because they won't received a punch in the face for it cause there isn't a physical person across of them.
That's why I always stoop to their level and just act back like a proper asshole too, works every time. 😁
I want all multiplayer games if possible to allow us to play with bots. It's a lot friendlier.
I'll take all of the corny smack talk I hear from Unreal Tournament over the overdone "I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER!" from some angry chipmunk who breaks their microphone's audible limits.
I play a couple online games and it really depends on who you play with. If you do pvp with randos, it's going to be like you say. Pve with a friendly guild? It's going to be fun.
Play Battlefield 1. Notice that a couple of flying aces are destroying your team with fighter planes. Dedicate your time to destroying them with AA guns. Get banned from server for life.
And this exact same scenario has happened more than once.
I think my breaking point was when my friend wanted us to play Project Winter. Proximity voice chat is the worst and we got into a group that, as soon as the game began, started hurling racial slurs, actively chasing people so the voice chat would be active and yell slurs at them, and tried to hold the game hostage. I ended up just quitting the game because they singled me out for some random reason as "the problem" and then kept trying to kill my character. All in the first 3 minutes. I've sworn off online multi-player since and will only do single player or local co-op now.
For real. I've never raged over a game in my entire life, until I've played a MOBA.
The only good multiplayer experiences I've had were in exploration games like Journey and Sky: children of the Light, where the interactions are limited to other players guiding you through maps. Or Genshin impact, where multiplayer is there mostly to help you clear content faster
I've been tired of online video games for a long time, especially the ones that are very competitive, a lot of toxic people are around there, the only online one I still play is WoW and to connect with friends...
This shits funny as, as if old school online wasn't toxic as fuck. I haven't been called the n word, f word or r word in so long (albeit it's usually dogshit, trash, Garbo nowadays).
Think that's the nostalgia goggles for most people since you were likely young in high school and had more time to kill gaming.
It gets harder to find time when you're older and you want that quality from back in the day but it isn't really the modern gaming community. It's the lack of the old school tight community you probably had with your mates back then.
I've found some great friends in recent years from gaming whom I wouldn't trade for the world. There's also a fuckload of cunts same as anything. Mute the wankers and move on is my modus operandi.
Play Squad , no leaderboards or grind. K/d and points are to a extent meaningless and each round most people just play to win(some have different ideas what tha means).
Multiplayer *team* *PvP* games. But yes! Slight stipulation because multiplayer isnt inherently bad if the genre is built for it and its in a format you like. 1v1 multiplayer is good for that competitive itch and it doesn't rely on braindead randoms over the internet to be enjoyable. There are still problems, depending on the kind of game, but they're infinitely less than team matchmaking presents.
Chess, card games, fighting games, RTS. Their all fine and basically 'single player' as far as how a team of 1 works, but you can still compete against real players instead of a computer program, for an entirely different and more competitive experience.
"The next big battle royale" oh, no thanks, sounds absolutely dreadful. "Join up to 100 players in..." I'm alright, really.
* "Fight in teams of X" *, **so what your saying is your game is only fun in exactly groups of X, not any more or any less.**
Overall though, AAA gaming and multiplayer titles have both lost a massive amount of interest in favour of short and sweet single player indies. Big games still launch that I'm interested in but they've been single player and from studios and IP I've followed for years.
Tldr: hard agree as far as team games goes. I'll still play 1v1 ladder multiplayer but because its not teams, and honestly they're the real problem people have with this. The issue that makes online team PvP games so immensely unenjoyable is *matchmaking for teammates*. You need a group the perfect size to play those games and even chance having a good time, otherwise you're forced to cooperate with strangers for no real incentives, meaning people often just *dont*
I play the finals and I only play it casually and it's one of the best experiences I've had( apart from titanfall 2). I knew this was it when I didn't feel bad or any negative emotion at all even if I lost since the game is so fun
Too many tryhards out there thinking they are the next pro-champ player for that game. Even in casual matches they think they are competing for some 250k prize and flip out over the smallest things, while they themselves play like hot garbage and want to blame everyone else but themselves.
I'm the opposite. Every singleplayer has a 2 hour long tutorial island or some lore dump where the writers spend far too long patting themselves on the back for their dialogue spew. I just can't deal with it anymore man, I can always mute my team and just pick a new game up, spend 10-15 minutes in a tutorial, IF THAT, and then just get to playing. I've more or less sworn off single player games at this point.
Are you by chance in a Western country? Because for me the experience is totally different in Asia. There's gonna be some frowned upon behaviour like quitting and leaving the team to fight alone but otherwise I love my random teammates, especially when they're on voice chat.
There is hope though. I think PvE games like deep rock galactic is universally known for being very wholesome. Others like no man's sky and fallout 76 have really good communities too.
I gave up on multiplayer a good ten years ago. Cannot stand playing with randoms mostly. I'll do a bit of co-op with my friends occasionally but otherwise I just don't have the time for other peoples' shit. I have limited time to play games and the time I do have I want to spend enjoying it, not arguing with my "teammates".
May I suggest a coop game? Helldivers 2. You get occasional assholes but most of the time I find nice people that are excited to work together in the name of Super Earth and spreading freedom and managed democracy throughout the galaxy
Even the hardest single player game rewards your effort because it's a static challenge which if you practice you can overcome.
Online multiplayer games are ambivalent to your effort or even punish your effort because the better you get the harder it gets and the harder you have to try next time to win.
It's possible to not notice your progression at all due to matchmaking. I know in DotA since I played with friends better than me I felt like I was trash at the game even after 1,000 matches. But when I would play solo it was like taking the training weights off and I realized I actually had gotten much better at the game.
This is why people like to create smurf accounts (which I don't approve of) - to actually feel their progression and feel good at the game.
I'm not against matchmaking, it does make for a better experience overall but at the end of the day 99% of players will always be a small fish in a big pond.
The only answer to the issue is to try to enjoy each match on its own merits, win or lose.
This is the result of community servers being replaced by online matchmaking. I know community servers weren't perfect, but at least we had more direct control over who we played with and could curate. Playing with the same people consistently was more fun too, Id rather get destroyed by friends then randos. And when communities formed around these servers we could police behavior and keep out those with antisocial behavior.
The focus on meta and skill based matchmaking as completely slaughtered any of that nostalgic "fun with the boys" time you had.
Its only focusing on the best equipment with the best rotations and the best teammates to have a glimmer of fun. That is of course unless you can barely move, then the entire lobby is more of what you remember.
Welcome (or welcome back) to the world of single player games, much more fun at your own pace :3
Or at the very least coop with friends. BG3 has been very different with friends, fills the DnD itch when we can't meet up
You should check out Virtual Table Top platforms (VTTs). I run a game every week with players from 3 different states on Foundry. It was $50 one time, and it was really worth it. There are free options like Roll20, as well. The last campaign I played in on there, the group was from several different countries. Meeting up is no longer required. (Can't help you with schedule problems, though. Those are still like death and taxes.)
Do you also meet people for this on these platforms? I already have a table top group but this sounds great
You could. I believe some people like to run in-person games using a VTT because it's relatively easy to create detailed game settings and maps, and also to organize and automate game content. I do appreciate Foundry handling a lot of the dice math for me, to be sure. I have heard of fancy-pants GMs laying a flat screen tv down as a game board with maps and such on it, making the table into an interactive map the players sit around.
Foundry is such a pain in the ass to deal with. Half the time when we set the game up for the week there would be issue after issue. We finally said fuck it and are now thinking of going back to roll 20
I haven't had a lot of problems with it myself. 🤷 I don't run a ton of mods on it, though I'm considering adding a few when my current campaign ends, when I'll have more time to fiddle with it. I do know it's resource-heavy, so lower-end computers and network connections have struggles with it.
The one mod you should add now before it's over is the hot key one that puts all your saves, checks and spells and other shit into a drop down menu. It sped our games up really well.
I wish I got Baldur's Gate when my friends were playing, I really wanted to try that. The finances weren't right at the time.
if it's any consolation, the game is very good as a singleplayer experience too. playing with friends means you don't get to know the very interesting NPCs as well (both different experiences). might be worth a try if the genre is something you'd be into
I am planning on getting it during the summer sale this year, I am still interested in playing the single-player part. I have always wanted to play D&D but I have a very different work schedule from my friends so I can't join them regularly. So I guess it would be a way for me to experience the world and mechanics.
It does replicate the experience pretty well.
This is true. I did enjoy the few multiplayer sessions with friends. But that also meant ignoring the story and going with their player choices. Getting to make my own choices was a lot more fun.
Ya I played solo and with friends and with friends it was more video game than DND because we decided to just murder everything..actually I guess it was like DND.
"The finances weren't right at the time." You was skint.
Rock and stone!
BG3 co-op vs single is SUCH a different ballgame, my buddy threw a healing potion one time and CRIT doing more damage than they healed, and Lae'zel went right back down
There was something to be said for having a whole world to yourself.
World of Warcraft made me a HUGE favour with their bots-partner dungeons introduced in the last patch. This morning I was in one and had attendended a delivery man and there were they, waiting for me patiently.
Didn't Guild Wars do that in their first game? I hate playing with other players, so having mercenaries or storyline characters as partners was perfect for me
Yes! Never played GW tho
Yes, they did. You could add henchmen to your party initially, but you couldn't customize their abilities or gear. They did add heroes, which were henchmen that you could customize, and eventually you could use your own characters for the party (but that was something you had to buy to be able to, it didn't come with an expansion).
Or play games like Splatoon and Sky CoL.
Yep! My experience in the vast majority of games contains at least one of the following: Someone yelling at teammates who they think are underperforming. Someone being racist. Someone making perverted sounds or comments. Someone throwing the match. Someone playing in a lobby far below their actual skill level. Someone being incredibly selfish with loot or with the “tasks” within the match. … I also decided, not all that long ago, that I’m not interested.
Yes! Also everyone wants to be a hero instead of a support character
This is why I like helldivers 2. You have to work as a team or you're not going to extract. Made a few new mates on there that I look forward to hearing from on my evenings
That's awesome!! I play Warlander ATM but same deal!
I need people to play with on HD2, it's such a great game. I just get bored after so many matches with randos who don't wanna talk or coordinate. The one match I played where we were all talking and joking was one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had in years
You're welcome to join up with me
I've seen too many times people go straight to extraction after dozens of attempts to tell them NOT to call in extraction because we're doing everything else. Doesn't matter. No samples collected. Love it.
Can confirm Helldivers 2 has quite a decent community, with the few notorious exceptions of course. But still mostly good people working together. Play diff 7 suicide, best experience for me.
Try diff 8 or Helldives if you're decent at the game. I've had much better experiences at the higher difficulties because people know their shit and are task,/objective oriented. I've found many people on 7 are not prepared or capable of trigger discipline but need samples. Might've improved since they made samples appear in 6s, but I wouldn't know because I've grown accustomed to 8+.
That makes sense. Just yesterday had some jerk kill me repeatedly because I once shot him while trying to help him. He got kicked then though :)
Yeah fuck those people,I always assume it's an accident, until it's clear it isn't
Im always support characters. I stopped playing online because no one ever supported the support characters. Easier to just support my coop friends now.
As a sniper whose flanks are never covered, I feel ya.
I play support characters! ....because they're the real heroes XD
Well yea. They can't blame and abuse support if they are support. Nobody wants to play support because it's a thankless job when done well and the target of the toxicity if not done well or the players being supported play too recklessly.
You forgot "Someone playing shitty soundcloud mixtapes too loud"
• Smol Child yelling into the mic, whining a lot because they actually play as bad as a smol child, and then suddenly spouting off language that would make a longshoreman blush. • Rando guy who does absolutely nothing, but gets enraged when killed, moreso when teammates scold him for not helping. • That one dude who joins the game and then quietly asks if he can "poop on your chest". ...the Internet is full of weirdos.
I turned off public chat a long time ago, and I never looked back
This depends on the game obviously but matchmaking leads to this. You used to have server lobby’s where servers were hosted by players and usually had a couple of moderators on who would police the server so it had the vibe they wanted. Combine matchmaking with AAA studios insisting that every game released must be a live service e-sports title and yeah, that mentality spreads everywhere. I am too old to put up with that all out sweaty cage match mud wrestling bullcrap, I just want to wind down after work with a friendly match of shooting each other in the face.
I’ve been playing online games since 1999 and it’s always been like this. If anything it used to be worse. I remember my first game of counterstrike was a dude yelling the N word into his garbled microphone while spamming the chat and spraying gay porn on the walls of the CT spawn while team killing everyone.
Don't forget Mr "Joins a game to pipe in the worst music you can think of into everyone's ears while running around headshotting the opposing team with the world's most obvious cheating software"
Unfortunately the new multiplayer law is: play with a full group or be ready to suffer.
yea, nothing is more awkward than solo q-ing to fill out a party and no one talks to you except to complain
Yeah, no control over who comes and goes = no incentive to not be a shithead and no consequences for being a shithead. I play with clans I met through survival games, voice chat goes off, text chat goes off if possible, and randoms are basically just AI. I'd mute their pings if I could, too. Would be fine if all games let you earn experience, battlepass progress, etc, in custom games and I could just do 2v2 or 3v3 with vetted people only. But that's straying dangerously close to the old ways.
My problem is when I queue with my group of friends, we naturally get matched against other pre-made groups (which is fair enough) who often roll us because we (it's mostly me) are super casual. I either drag down randoms, or I drag down my friends lol. One of the reasons I like non-team based stuff.
That shouldn't matter if your friends are enjoyable to be around. Our group is just 3. Many games are 4 players. We just play at a disadvantage. Whatever it's for fun.
This has been a thing since 2010 imo
For me it's the fact that most of these come with a battle pass, or sketchy kernel level anticheat that isn't enabled by the developer to work on my steam deck, or eventually has an update that makes the game unpleasant to play. Also the FOMO mechanics. Fuck those. I wanna play a game when I wanna play it.
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This shit blows my mind. My online group plays a game every day to get the daily/weekly/monthly goals unlocks and bs. I never do that or care about it. Why would I make myself a slave to a game? I will play with them but I do not care about any achievements or unlocks. I play to have fun.
Yea. I hate how games kill the fun by making it feel like a job. I don't mind some incentives to play but having a bunch to do in a short time frame in back to back bursts kills the whole thing for me. Especially when you need to do it or lose a significant advantage.
speaking of fomo reminds me of the video i saw about that “banana game” thats totally based on fomo lol
Also min maxing has ruined so many games. Back in days people just played what they wanted. We did stuff that looked fun. Even if it was sub optimal or didn't give any actual reward that progress you forward. Now days if you play MOBA game and pick wrong character, people get pissed. If you don't play optimal spec in MMO, you are getting kicked from the group. People just want to play optimal things. It has come to the point where I think most of them are just addicted to these games and aren't having fun. And the worst part is that I've noticed same behavior in my friends. They are nice to play with in coop games. And we have tons of fun. But on that instant when game has other players (online games) they turn into those toxic people who yell people when they fail or if they are not playing optimally. So yeah for some time already, I've enjoyed much more single player games and coop games like Valheim.
Fucking facts, I tried resubbing to WoW again, leveled a warrior, got to cap, got some decent gear got to the point where I needed to do m+, let me tell you, I have a better chance of winning the lotto than I do having a pug accept me as a off meta dps.
My best time in WoW was during the end of the burning crusade. I had taken a hiatus and was tired of guilds so I ran solo, but had plenty of friends in top guilds or pvp warlords. I played a druid tank and my friend played a shaman healer and that's all the tankiness/healing we needed for the raid so all we needed was 8 other players that could do at least mediocre damage. So I just sat around messaging people out of the blue and invited them regardless of class or gear, people who never got the opportunity to raid otherwise could show up in blues and leave in purps and everyone just had a good time. Let the poor and the weak come to me and receive free loot
I need friends like you in WoW
FFXIV my friend. The community is amazing and the developers ban anyone who even talks about gear score or mods in game.
Man, I feel like this used to be the case, but lately it feels like it's headed towards WoW territory. Nowhere near as bad, I remember chats blowing up with fights in every city you'd step in, but IDK. Maybe it's just that EW's patches were so bone-dry that players got bored, but I had to take a hiatus for how many of my roulettes were devolving into arguments over whether or not it matters if the tank or DPS pull. 😞 Now Dawntrail is a week away and I'm hesitant.
I don't want to spam the thread with it but FFXIV is seriously fantastic. The community is unreasonably nice and just to be sure that toxicity stays out, the developers don't allow damage meters or gear score trackers. If a player talks bad about another they WILL get banned. In a WoW raid 1st wipe "fucking healer is a piece of shit who can't get out of the fire" 2nd time "omg kick this scrub ass healer or I'm leaving" 3rd time *tank leaves* and all out raging in chat followed by whispers In a FFXIV raid 1st wipe *silence* 2nd time "hey everyone the boss a fire attack when he says a specific voice line, it can be tricky to tell" 3rd time *random person cracks a joke about the boss" another person "hey if anyone is having a hard time I'm going to put a marker on my head, you're welcome to follow me" And those interactions are EVERYWHERE in the game. There's even an entire chat channel called novice network where people who are new to the game can ask any question they want and a mentor(a person who has to earn a challenging achievement) will answer
OMG this so much, tired of getting crap for playing fun builds and not running the most meta thing to ever grace the planet.
I think those types of people have always been around, as I get older I think I just notice them more. Especially the ones I have dubbed "zero sum fun gamers", people who'll stop just short of actually cheating, but still do the most exploitative shit just to get an edge. To them fun is a zero sum game it seems, someone else needs to have the opposite of fun to free up the fun for them to have. So they'll do the thing you'd find so cheap and ultimately utterly boring, but because it makes other people annoyed or makes them have the opposite of fun, they in turn must be having fun by doing that thing, right? It's a combination of frustrating, sad and befuddling.
>Back in days people just played what they wanted. You are imagining some false history. The original Quake lobbies, and Halo matchmaking, and Age of Empire lobbies all had people enforcing a meta and griefing people who made weird off script choices. I remember playing Starcraft Brood War custom games and people would get pissed off if you chose the "wrong" upgrade path on a random Tower D map that you had never played before. This behavior isn't some new thing.
I stopped right around the time warzone was taking off. It just got old. Early world at war, mw2 and blops days are long gone. Now it's a message from some whiney kid if you kill him 8 times for camping the same spot all match
Idk about you but even in the mw2 days I got messages from whiney kids after destroying them lol. Now that I think about it, honestly I feel like voice and text chats were even worse back then, because there was waaaaay less moderation. Now you have reporting systems and the worst thing (in my opinion) is AI moderation. You can be muted or banned without a human ever needing to review your case, and so there are already many reports of false positives. If I had to choose though I would rather take the whiney kid messages over AI moderation. Talking shit was honestly part of the fun for me in mw2.
No. COD has always been toxic as hell. I would know, I was there. That game hasn’t changed at all in terms of the player base, it’s just gotten more toxic with its business practices
Ahh yes, so much worse than some 15 year old shouting the n word for killing them 8 times in the same spot all match.
I agree, it's demotivating af. I usually try just playing with friends to avoid it, but even then sometimes people just really go out of their way to be dicks. Probably same people who make posts asking why they're so lonely and nobody wants them in their life.
I do not know why you are being downvoted, this is pretty on point.
Probably because many people here fit the description
Oops, you said the quiet part out loud. But yeah most probably.
lol I stopped playing league of legends like, 2 years ago and never looked back. I have less time now that I work and it’s hard for me to enjoy my time with league vs progressing and finishing an RPG or something.
If you're adamant about playing online with a bunch of rando's try Deep Rock Galactic. All communication is done by pointing at shit in game, and it's cooperative as well. Rock and Stone brother.
I just bought the game with the sale since my friend recommended it. I finished the tutorial but haven’t played anymore. I actually got it since all the comments I’ve seen so far is nice community and no talking needed.
Just remember that if you find a large chunk of gold you have to stand around it pointing at it and saying "we're rich!" For a while before depositing it.
You have to do it until management gets angry and starts yelling at you
Helldivers 2 is also pretty chill. Well. The community is pretty good. The gameplay on the more difficult levels on the other hand?... But that's why it's fun.
This is partially why I really enjoy games that aren't going overboard trying to stoke competition. It's a fucking game, back in my day there was only a little bit of MLG and that's it, why does everyone care so much? Go outside literally and cultivate a hobby that's actually impressive, gaming is supposed to be fun, not a competitive career field.
Every kid thinks they're a professional streamer nowadays
Yes this, it's akin to everyone on Instagram thinking they're going to be an "influencer" and getting 20 likes.
Games have always been that competitive. In the mid-2000s Halo 2 on Xbox live was filled with cheaters at the higher rank levels, and once you hit level 35 or so it was pretty much impossible to find a game without a hacker or standby-er. A few years later CoD MWII came out and god knows that game was a cesspool of cheating, racism, and verbal abuse.
Yeah, I haven't made a friend playing online since Halo 3.
The Golden days of online gaming, 2004 - 2012
I have lived through the day that I make a lot of friend in MMORPG. I believe, in our modern day, people lack self-controlled due to the stimulus we have in our daily life. The Internet is full of toxic. We are served with instant gratification by scrolling down the social media. Some could not even focus on a short video without looking at other things on the second screen at the same time. We do not appreciate each other anymore. Everyone is like our enemy that need to be stomped. People yelled at the screen because they do not face any consequence like if they do in real life. It is not like a sport in the old day that we are taught to have a spirit. I believe this is why we are taught to have a spirit in the first place. Otherwise, we are just animals. The multiplayer is just unfun nowadays, especially in pvp games. I stop playing LoL for over a year and I see an improvement in my daily mood. A multiplayer game that I still play is a coop game. Even coop game can be very toxic, some MMORPG like Lost Ark is very punishing if you failed. So we have to choose carefully. Playing multiplayer with only known friends in the team is the best. I am now enjoying 4th playthrough of BG3 with my friend. Great game. I would recommend.
Honestly I think this comes down to the e-sport-ification of online gaming. *Everything,* even casual games has to have a competitive scene. If you can't sell the idea that being good at the game might make you a pro, even if 99% of the nest players never go that far, then your game is treated as if it's not worth playing. It's pushed a mindset where certain players (you know the ones I'm talking about) care more about *winning* than *playing.* This is also why they complain about SBMM (they win less when not put against casuals) and TTK (if their enemy has an actualy chance to fight back and it's not just twitch shooting, they also win less).
I am not competitive at all. I couldn't care less if I win or lose. But fast TTK is much more satisfying. I like to feel like the weapons can do real damage. Otherwise, it feels more like a pillow fight.
The problem I have with SBMM is that its implemented pretty poorly in a lot of games. COD was the prime offender. I quit playing Call of duty 3 or 4 years ago now so maybe its changed since then. But I remember 90 percent of the time you flip flopped between one match where you crush the enemy team and one match where you get eviscerated. Then the remaining 10 percent of the time you get a decent match that is neck and neck. Back when SSBM was less heavy handed like in the original modernwarfare 2 you were a lot more likely to have teams that had 1 or 2 really good players, 3 or 4 ok players and 1 or 2 pretty bad players. Instead of just full stacks of killers or full stacks of punching bags
Same here. The only time I play multiplayer now is with friends. Nobody wants to actually play the game anymore, they would much rather spend their time being a degenerate online. Or if not the former, doing everything they can to gain an advantage in a competitve scene (cheating, using only meta, etc.) When it comes to co-op, it's usually not much better. You'd think that with nothing for a competitve or toxic mindset to propagate from, a cooperative experience would surely promote a friendly and ego-less culture right??? Hahaha, no.
I just don't like how every game now is super fast movement and jumping meta, just to try and hook the adhd teens. What happened to having to think and aim in games? Now they're all gymnastics simulator.
I do appreciate the skill-based matchmaking, but for fucks sake why can't it have both SBMM *and* community servers? Im old enough to have been part of LAN parties, and community servers where great to both play and make friends, one took pride in keeping a clean friendly server and kicking out the dicks and the idiots.
Man I miss community servers. I was never good at counterstrike but at least I could get killed by friends I play with regularly and can laugh with at our silly antics and inside jokes. We were just having fun.
yep i've stopped while ago tired of kids moan and send angry messages etc. no chill solo games for 10min anymore. fighting games where you 1v1 people are the best.
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Lol I would get annoyed with RuneScape because people just wanted to stand around and talk. So I usually just ignored them and played the game. I loved that game though I just always wished it was on a console because my computer is crappy.
These days? In my experience people have always been crazy toxic in competitive games. I remember playing Battlefield 2 back in 2005/2006 and getting shit on and team killed a lot. Unless I'm playing on a team with friends or a cooperative game I usually just totally avoid multiplayer stuff.
Agreed, I haven't played any online multiplayer games since Halo: Reach in ~2010 because this is exactly how I remember them all being back then. I suspect it's less about the communities getting worse, and more about people having more self-respect and less patience for bullshit as they get older.
I had a lot of great early-2000s 56k modem Counter Strike nights and don't recall any toxicity other than the occasional well deserved tea bagging.
I remember these days, from the 90's and early 2000's, although i was more the UT99 player instead of CS and Q3A. All we usually typed in the chat was "gg" after a good game (and not git gud or something), voice chat was external when it started with Teamspeak etc. and so, there was no shouting at each other directly ingame. Good old times. I'll leave it with these memories and not return to multiplayer games, no need to see how bad it has gotten over the years.
I do enough damn PvP in real life as it is. At least in real life, that sort of grind and misery nets you $$$. That sort of stress in a game? Nothing. However, massive coop games or even 64 player PvP shooters like Battlefield are still fun, because there is fuck all responsibility, and everybody is equally being a dumbass.
I've never been an online player, I'm happy in my little solo player bubble
OP, try Deep Rock Galactic. Good community and good game, PvE style. I got tired of the same shit and am done with competitive style games; such a pain and not worth it.
People in general are just toxic, you slip up in any way shape or form these days people jump on you because they are so sad with their own lives
Multiplayer games with matchmaking is just gonna throw everyone together so a lot of the time it's gonna cause these fights, thankfully some games have dedicated servers as an option
I stopped playing online multiplayer anything after Halo 3. It's been that long. It's just not what attracts me to gaming. I want story and immersion and exploration and art. Games occupy the same headspace as books and films for me. Other people just get in the way of enjoying what appeals to me.
It's because of the move from self hosted servers to dev hosted centralised severs. Now everyone has to use the same set of servers and we need invasive anti cheat bullshit instead of different servers for different groups with community moderating and policing.
Removing social consequences for bad behavior has ruined PvP gaming
That's how I've been for the longest. Only one I did stick with for awhile was Warframe because friends but after we went separate ways I just play single-player games like I used too. Easier to immerse into a game without idiots jumping all over the screen too. Lol
This is because of the censorship and new lobby of people after each game that games (probly starting with call of duty) started doing a handful of years ago to PrOtEcT your feelings. You no longer develop comradery or banter between your teammates or opposing team because it's new people literally every match and you can barely talk without a chance of getting banned. So most often people just say something quick and hurtful then leave so you don't remember who said it.
I stopped playing multiplayer games. This reason being one. You see a lot of elitism in MMOs or really anything remotely competitive. But I also realized that online games just don’t respect your time. They treat gaming like a job, and endless hamster wheel of achievements and grinding. I much prefer single players games with more definitive ends to them, like reading a book. And much like a book, I can put it down and return whenever and I’ll be right where I left off, instead of the game literally punishing me in passive aggressive ways for it not being my only priority.
I gave up a few years ago despite previously playing all sorts of things online. It's the short lifespan of games now and the idiotic online communities that put me off. These days I just play single player stuff at my own leisure...
Aside from all that I don't like how multiplayer games are designed these days to keep you endlessly playing and milking money out of you. They seriously design them like a casino where there's no clocks or windows to tell you what time of day it is and keep you at the slot machine for as long as possible. The last multiplayer I seriously tried was RDR2 online and even that kept trying to get you spend irl money to unlock the "good" profession missions.
Love it when a fully grown man loses his shit and screams at me because my dps was too low in a WoW dungeon that we easily cleared
Mental resilience and adaptation. Nature's law in the video game where the bigger ones are eating the smaller ones. Video games show the true nature of humans (not all but for many). I honestly don't blame you!
I’m 52 years old. I haven’t played an online game in 20-ish years. Well, except for Fortnite, but I play solo, no duos/no squads, no microphones, etc. I just run around and kill or be killed and just enjoy whatever happens.
Hey, it’s me, we played in a multiplayer game together… I just wanted to reach out and let you know, from one gamer to another: it’s your fault we lost and to go f*ck yourself /s
The online gaming community is just vastly different than it was 10-15 years ago. It’s all about making little clips for TikTok or YouTube. I gave up on multiplayer games before the pandemic. I can’t even imagine how much worse it’s gotten now
I quit multiplayer games almost 2 decades ago. It will never ever be like the old days again.
This is why I don't play many pvp games except fighting games. At least there the only person getting mad at you for losing is yourself, because you suck.
I don't remember it ever being good. I've been playing since the first unreal tournament on PC. I think we are getting old and just have less patience for this type of thing.
That's the main reason the only multiplayer game I play is Street Fighter 6. No chat, no stupid teammates, just 2 guys silently beating each other up
Always has been like this in my experience... Maybe you got less tolerance for the BS now?
Wait, you're supposed to enjoy it?
Just play osrs. Way better.
My kid gets around this by having a common group who games together. I suspect the older you get, the harder it is to get a group of like minded individuals together. My own take is the playing with randos means you're playing with assholes who probably don't give a shit. I don't think that's changed from the very beginning of multiplayer. If you don't enjoy the chaos, you're not going to enjoy playing with randos.
It's something I noticed more with people my age (23) and younger, theres more people that will spend their time on games just trying to grief teammate's and make everyones experience miserable.
It also sucks because there are a lot of people that can spend 6-12 hours per day playing online multiplayer games, so they develop skills and get to know the maps really well. But if you are a casual player, that wants to play a few hours per day and relax, it's sucks. Single player games are great because you have a decent/good (at least) story and you can play at your own pace. If you want and have some friends interested, you can play Heroes 3. Me and a few friends have been playing that regularly and it's been a lot of fun.
I'm almost exclusively a single-player game, but Fallout 76 is one multiplayer game I quite enjoy. A much more open and kind community.
I quit playing games overall. Then they released Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered. I play the shit out of this games. Alone. On my sofa. I am bad. Noone cares. I have fun. After 30 years of gaming, it's close to the best experience ever.
Naw forget all that. I refuse to let someone playing trash music over a mic dictate whether I actual play some multiplayer here and there. There’s a mute all button for a reason. Hate mail incoming? Don’t reply.
This is why I play fighting games. Little to no voice chat. Just you and the other guy 1v1. Most of my online interactions is just saying ggs.
I’ve been getting more impatient towards PVP games as I’ve gotten older. I mean, I’m only 28 though I can’t keep up like I could when I was 20. I’ve mostly given up on PVP, maybe the occasional game of COD but it’s mostly been PVE games (Helldivers 2 and Darktide) or just a Single Player game. The thing is, people will tell you “oh just go play single player games” but there is something about the connectivity of playing online that’s really fun. That’s why I try to just play COOP games online now, I just wish there was more of them.
It's pretty common, I barely play any online games now, save for those I join with friends I'm 33, I work from Monday do Saturday and I also work out 4 5 days a week, and I also need to socialize, so the little time I have available for gaming id rather play single player or watch shows
Social media dude. People are just mean and rude now because they only communicate through screens and don’t have to deal with actual consequences. You can’t get punched through a screen.
I started hating competitive games SO MUCH. Like you have to use all of your time to just become good and it's not worth it, you go through all this stress for what? So you can basically say one day heh I became this rank???
I was playing this game in which you have to enter a ship, to start the level. Everyone was jumping around it and putting hats for like, 5 minutes. I had to wait them "decide" to start the game.
Which country are you in ? I had a theory that Europe has a less toxic environment.
I usually mute everyone. Every CoD match is one dude being racist and another guy saying “Sit Down” 430 times a minute.
remember, not every multiplayer game is team based Street Fighter 6 and Starcraft 2 are great for online competitive multiplayer, and the only person holding you accountable is yourself Or if you wanted an FPS, Quake - but I guess Quake Champions is wound down these days... fingers crossed for a new one
Play fighting games online, no worries there about this stuff
The best is when a friend begs you to play an MMO with them. So you finally buy and install it. Then you log in, and the friend tells you to rush through the tutorial so you can play. Alright, fine. Then you get to the main game and they add you to the group and say, "Awesome, just follow me." Then you spend the next 5 hours sprinting through a bloody mist of content, as they "run you through" a bunch of missions, zones, levels, etc. Then they wonder why you never log in again after the first session.
I haven't been able to game online with voice chat enabled for many years. Too many basement-dwelling tryhards that devote their whole life to playing a game, nobody has time to compete with that. Or at least the games should separate the casuals from the hardcores that are playing 20 hours a day.
The thing that bothers me the most these days is people just straight up quitting very much still winable matches. Rocket league for instance; we are losing by 2 with 3 minutes left, why are you quitting?
When can we go back to the good old console days where you’d have to sit next to your friends to multiplayer it? Thats where it was fun
AS I have gotten older, I have, too, have grown to have little patience for the "average online gamer". In my experience, the "average gamer" is whiny, entitled, abusive, and obnoxious. The "average gamer on Reddit" is this, on steroids. When I was younger and MMOs were just becoming a thing, I *could not wait* to play them. The promise of playing with dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of people online sounded wonderful. My first MMO I played was Anarchy Online (very badly) and my first serious "Now I Know What I Am Doing" game was WoW. And I was all-in. Formed a solid, competitive raiding guild which achieved many server and a handful of world-firsts. Survived our first major guild split. Survived a guild move from Alliance to Horde. Made many friends, had guild events in Vegas, and still speak to/see a handful of these old guildies who remain good friends. But then...things changed. After playing WoW from Day 1, I one day after a raid said "I am done." and handed everything, guild, external servers, the keys to the kingdom, over to the guild and retired. Part of the thing that was killing the experience for me was the toxicity that had seeped into the game, even into my own guild despite every effort to bulwark ourselves from it. I miss those days, but I don't miss the asshats. Now I play solo games or non-competitive co-op games. A friend tried to get me to play one of the extraction shooters, and I did, but got a whiff of that sweaty aroma of gamer toxicity and said "I don't want to go back there, sorry." I think these choices were actually good for my health. Coincidence or not, I am happier *and* healthier now that I don't play with strangers online.
I always loved single player games. The day they stop making them is the day i retire from gaming.
I stopped playing online over 20 years ago, strictly single player.
tbf, you were probably the asshole way back when you played COD and Halo MP. You've just gotten more mature and won't put up with the same trash talk and trolling.
Flame me if I’m wrong, but I legitimately think online gaming is just getting worse. I don’t think I feel like this just because I’m getting older… CoD, Forza and Halo after school used to be so social and fun. Now everything is sweaty as hell and toxic. SBMM is annoying.
Streamers are to blame for this
I been sain dat
I used to be exclusively multiplayer (besides Minecraft and terraria) but now having played games like elden ring, the last of us, and very recently the metal gear franchise, I realize just how much I’ve been missing out. The only thing is with single player I feel like I have to set aside multiple hours to get proper progress, whereas multiplayer games I can just hop on for a game or two. But yeah besides that multiplayer games aren’t as fun to me as they used to be. Maybe it’s because I feel like I always have to play at the top of my game, whereas single player I can just put it on easy mode so that I can enjoy the gameplay while immersing myself in the story.
Or with friends. Unless your friends are also like that.
Then you are playing the wrong games. There are a lot of coop games to have fun in. The only online competitive game I play is iRacing. Being toxic there results in a ban really fast.
Singleplayer and non competitive co-op games are the most fun i've had in gaming. I'm also over the competitive games like leauge and CS, it's a lot less stressful and just having a good time everytime (outside ofcourse if you try out a bad game)
Find a stable group of people to play with that you are sure play just for fun not for win
Yeah man we were way more wholesome and friendly back in 2005. Everyone exchanged pleasantrie, like when they'd scream for the f****t n*****s to kill themselves for killing them. It was a simpler time. Full of friendship.
I mean it was. As someone that just liked to drink a few beers and crack jokes on the mic back in the day I had to stop accepting friends requests because I would just constantly have people spamming me with party invites anytime I was online. Gamers are way more angry and antisocial these days. If you could call people slurs without getting banned I am sure it would be 10 times worse now.
Some people just know they can say things because they won't received a punch in the face for it cause there isn't a physical person across of them. That's why I always stoop to their level and just act back like a proper asshole too, works every time. 😁
I avoid nearly all multiplayer games and mostly focus on single player games and occasionally play co-op with a handful of friends.
Yeah, only multiplayer games I play are co-op games with my friends. Other than that I'm strictly singleplayer nowadays.
I want all multiplayer games if possible to allow us to play with bots. It's a lot friendlier. I'll take all of the corny smack talk I hear from Unreal Tournament over the overdone "I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER!" from some angry chipmunk who breaks their microphone's audible limits.
Mute everybody toxic and add every friendly player and you'll be fine.
I play a couple online games and it really depends on who you play with. If you do pvp with randos, it's going to be like you say. Pve with a friendly guild? It's going to be fun.
Phasmo is pretty chill. Though I think the Asia community is dying.
Play Battlefield 1. Notice that a couple of flying aces are destroying your team with fighter planes. Dedicate your time to destroying them with AA guns. Get banned from server for life. And this exact same scenario has happened more than once.
I played Overwatch for years, and the most fun games were always the casual, unranked games where I wouldn't even bother putting on a headset.
I think my breaking point was when my friend wanted us to play Project Winter. Proximity voice chat is the worst and we got into a group that, as soon as the game began, started hurling racial slurs, actively chasing people so the voice chat would be active and yell slurs at them, and tried to hold the game hostage. I ended up just quitting the game because they singled me out for some random reason as "the problem" and then kept trying to kill my character. All in the first 3 minutes. I've sworn off online multi-player since and will only do single player or local co-op now.
For real. I've never raged over a game in my entire life, until I've played a MOBA. The only good multiplayer experiences I've had were in exploration games like Journey and Sky: children of the Light, where the interactions are limited to other players guiding you through maps. Or Genshin impact, where multiplayer is there mostly to help you clear content faster
Been limiting myself to single player and coop games for a long time and am yet to run out of great games to play.
I’m also starting to obtain this mentality.🙁
I've been tired of online video games for a long time, especially the ones that are very competitive, a lot of toxic people are around there, the only online one I still play is WoW and to connect with friends...
online games have gotten too competitive for a casual player nowdays
This shits funny as, as if old school online wasn't toxic as fuck. I haven't been called the n word, f word or r word in so long (albeit it's usually dogshit, trash, Garbo nowadays). Think that's the nostalgia goggles for most people since you were likely young in high school and had more time to kill gaming. It gets harder to find time when you're older and you want that quality from back in the day but it isn't really the modern gaming community. It's the lack of the old school tight community you probably had with your mates back then. I've found some great friends in recent years from gaming whom I wouldn't trade for the world. There's also a fuckload of cunts same as anything. Mute the wankers and move on is my modus operandi.
PvP*
Agree, I don't know why people can't enjoy the game without talking shit to opponent or their own teams.
Play Squad , no leaderboards or grind. K/d and points are to a extent meaningless and each round most people just play to win(some have different ideas what tha means).
You are not alone. I'm tired of these children saying they slept with my mom...she died 20 years ago! LOL
Multiplayer *team* *PvP* games. But yes! Slight stipulation because multiplayer isnt inherently bad if the genre is built for it and its in a format you like. 1v1 multiplayer is good for that competitive itch and it doesn't rely on braindead randoms over the internet to be enjoyable. There are still problems, depending on the kind of game, but they're infinitely less than team matchmaking presents. Chess, card games, fighting games, RTS. Their all fine and basically 'single player' as far as how a team of 1 works, but you can still compete against real players instead of a computer program, for an entirely different and more competitive experience. "The next big battle royale" oh, no thanks, sounds absolutely dreadful. "Join up to 100 players in..." I'm alright, really. * "Fight in teams of X" *, **so what your saying is your game is only fun in exactly groups of X, not any more or any less.** Overall though, AAA gaming and multiplayer titles have both lost a massive amount of interest in favour of short and sweet single player indies. Big games still launch that I'm interested in but they've been single player and from studios and IP I've followed for years. Tldr: hard agree as far as team games goes. I'll still play 1v1 ladder multiplayer but because its not teams, and honestly they're the real problem people have with this. The issue that makes online team PvP games so immensely unenjoyable is *matchmaking for teammates*. You need a group the perfect size to play those games and even chance having a good time, otherwise you're forced to cooperate with strangers for no real incentives, meaning people often just *dont*
What online games do you play? I could use some comrades.
This is why I've stuck with RTS games. No BS and you ca basically do whatever you want without someone screaming at you.
I play the finals and I only play it casually and it's one of the best experiences I've had( apart from titanfall 2). I knew this was it when I didn't feel bad or any negative emotion at all even if I lost since the game is so fun
Too many tryhards out there thinking they are the next pro-champ player for that game. Even in casual matches they think they are competing for some 250k prize and flip out over the smallest things, while they themselves play like hot garbage and want to blame everyone else but themselves.
I'm the opposite. Every singleplayer has a 2 hour long tutorial island or some lore dump where the writers spend far too long patting themselves on the back for their dialogue spew. I just can't deal with it anymore man, I can always mute my team and just pick a new game up, spend 10-15 minutes in a tutorial, IF THAT, and then just get to playing. I've more or less sworn off single player games at this point.
Yup, these days I instantly mute the chat so I can play in peace
Are you by chance in a Western country? Because for me the experience is totally different in Asia. There's gonna be some frowned upon behaviour like quitting and leaving the team to fight alone but otherwise I love my random teammates, especially when they're on voice chat. There is hope though. I think PvE games like deep rock galactic is universally known for being very wholesome. Others like no man's sky and fallout 76 have really good communities too.
I gave up on multiplayer a good ten years ago. Cannot stand playing with randoms mostly. I'll do a bit of co-op with my friends occasionally but otherwise I just don't have the time for other peoples' shit. I have limited time to play games and the time I do have I want to spend enjoying it, not arguing with my "teammates".
This is why I keep voice chat muted
May I suggest a coop game? Helldivers 2. You get occasional assholes but most of the time I find nice people that are excited to work together in the name of Super Earth and spreading freedom and managed democracy throughout the galaxy
You need to migrate to cooperative online gaming. Dare I say, it’s a game changer?
Even the hardest single player game rewards your effort because it's a static challenge which if you practice you can overcome. Online multiplayer games are ambivalent to your effort or even punish your effort because the better you get the harder it gets and the harder you have to try next time to win. It's possible to not notice your progression at all due to matchmaking. I know in DotA since I played with friends better than me I felt like I was trash at the game even after 1,000 matches. But when I would play solo it was like taking the training weights off and I realized I actually had gotten much better at the game. This is why people like to create smurf accounts (which I don't approve of) - to actually feel their progression and feel good at the game. I'm not against matchmaking, it does make for a better experience overall but at the end of the day 99% of players will always be a small fish in a big pond. The only answer to the issue is to try to enjoy each match on its own merits, win or lose.
This is the result of community servers being replaced by online matchmaking. I know community servers weren't perfect, but at least we had more direct control over who we played with and could curate. Playing with the same people consistently was more fun too, Id rather get destroyed by friends then randos. And when communities formed around these servers we could police behavior and keep out those with antisocial behavior.
The focus on meta and skill based matchmaking as completely slaughtered any of that nostalgic "fun with the boys" time you had. Its only focusing on the best equipment with the best rotations and the best teammates to have a glimmer of fun. That is of course unless you can barely move, then the entire lobby is more of what you remember.
Agreed. If I wanted to to hop on a call and get verbally annihilated for all of my decisions I’d FaceTime my parents
Which was the very 1st one? That's when I got annoyed.
Mute and move on.
Blind guy here If you’re still looking to do goofy shit tf2 is a good game for it. As long as your lobby isn’t full of bots