Game companies have definitely done their best to try and make multiplayer gaming more and more lonely. I settled in quick to single player cause at least I could have fun and not simultaneously be lonely and dominated by some hyper competitive toxic game matched tryharding BS.
This basically describes my experience with counter strike pre-1.6… like 1.3 thru 1.5, circa 2002-2005. Lost thousands of hours of my youth negotiating knives-only rounds and doing stupid totem pole camping on de_dust while 1 guy on the other team tried to AWP everybody. Am I old?
Nothing wrong with getting older
Except for my knees
And my back!
So much scoutzknivez and iceworld
he_glass
I am a bit younger so chicken & waffels and a few other CS:S servers were that for me. Also Day of Defeat Source was underrated.
Also, the minigame servers… The mini games people came up with!
1 person shooting cubes at platforms whole others had to stay up, The prison, Piratewars, Multigames (the original fall guys), Prop wars, The one where there were like different power ups behind walls and then have different abilities.
But also battlefront 2 was like that for me. SMD clan with its almost mythical figurehead. Glitching servers, shooting the shit with other people trying to find new glitches. Those were the days.
While matchmaking is good for some games like Rocket League, it has really broken a ton of communities. I think that’s why there aren’t really "clans’ anymore, because people aren’t together enough to organize.
Great, the loss of community now extends to video games as well
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You ate being isolated so no one will miss you when the government/corporations/they/whoever get you
we have successfully urbanized online games. the days of a small town feeling in new online games are over
I don’t think urbanised is a good word to describe that alienation. The urbanism movement has as one of its key goals the creation of more vibrant local communities. It’s more like suburbanism.
what i meant by “urbanized” is that these days, playing online games feels like living in a big city where there are a ton of people but it’s hard to feel like you know everyone. you can still make a group of friends and find “local communities”, but i think that’s distinctly different from the feeling of a small town where you know a lot of the people there.
all that being said, there are advantages to living in a big city instead of a small town. in this context, that would look like faster matchmaking times, making it easier to find a full server, etc. but i still wish games gave you the option of picking a community server. i miss having the option of joining custom servers and getting to know the locals.
IMO games should support picking a community server if only for archival purposes once the official servers are taken offline.
The urbanism movement exists to help remedy some of the downsides of urban living. One of which is social alienation and isolation as a result of the scale and diversity of cities.
No, it exists to fix the problems caused by car-dependent suburbia. Inner cities can have problems too, but a lot of those are created by cities wanting to support suburban commuters rather than the local community.
Suburbia came into being as a result of urban dysfunction. Cities have existed and had problems since long before cars were invented. People nowadays really love to blame everything on cars lmao, if only it were that simple
Cities were literally demolished to run highways through them, cutting right through vibrant communities to do so. Auto companies lobbied governments and ran public relations campaigns to change the law and societal mores to make car-centric infrastructure and norms the only way things are done. Ripping up public transport, inventing the concept of “jaywalking” (itself just a form of car-centric victim blaming), and banning the building of more people-friendly communities through strict Euclidean zoning.
Did you forget to respond to my point? Are you suggesting that cities were happy, egalitarian communes prior to the invention of the automobile? Slums and tenement housing would seem to indicate otherwise.
Highways were constructed because it provided an economic advantage to do so. A city without car infrastructure is not economically viable. With more advanced transportation and communication technology, we will eventually supercede the automobile, but to delude yourself into thinking that it was an arbitrary development is silly. There are many negative externalities caused by automobiles, just as there are many negative externalities caused by electricity. That doesn’t negate the advantages.
But regardless, the social dynamics of cities predate such problems; even if we reverted to a pre-car culture cities would still be lonely, violent places for some. They would still be the engines of inequality and hierarchy, because they are the hubs of the economic system.
Did you forget to respond to my point?
You seem to be having your own entire argument completely divorced from what I said to start this off. Which is very simple: that city living is not at all at odds with strong communities, and that the biggest thing that hurts local community feeling is car-dependent infrastructure. Because people driving kilometres away to big megastores where they load their groceries into a car and drive home, and have their leisure time at home in large private yards, with few of the local stores, cafes, parks, and other community spaces where people might randomly meet others in their local community, is what causes the alienation the parent comment seemed to be alluding to.
Lmao started reading not loving yr usage of urbanized (still probs not the best term…), however you really are outlining much of what was so classist, and very much racist, about city development. I wouldnt justify the guy you’re replying to with a reply
For years I had thought I got old and don’t have friends who play games as much anymore but this meme made me realize it’s that I wasn’t making new gaming friends.
One of the last good public multiplayer experiences I had was DiRT 3. Simple lobbies, small player count, people randomly joining and leaving and everyone was chill. You’d occasionally get that guy who was stupidly good, perfect lines through every corner, and the entire lobby would try so hard to keep up. Loved it.
One time I stumbled into a lobby where the host was “hacking” but instead of cheating for an advantage, he was selecting weird car class and track combinations for the entire lobby. Stuff that the game wouldn’t normally allow. Shit like trailblazer cars on rallycross circuits. So much fucking fun, one of my favorite memories from that game.
That must’ve been what, 4, 5 years ago? DiRT 3 released in 2011, so…oh my god DiRT 3 came out 13 years ago…
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Nostalgia might be pushing a bit hard here. Even playing obsessively on relatively small games on a limited number of servers for hours every day, I never got to recognize people just by being there. Occasionally someone would friend you, but otherwise, you knew people for 4-5 rounds at a time, and then never saw them again. Internet, even back then, was a big place.
Idk that was pretty frequent for me on TF2 community servers
I had basically one TF2 server I would play on because that’s the one I knew the people. It was like the community basketball hoop. If people weren’t playing then sometimes I would text a friend and try to get a game going or more often than not just try again later. It felt natural and low-stakes. This meme hits hard.
Hell, it still is pretty frequent for me to see a couple regulars on the TF2 servers i play on
Well the post is 6 years old so it’s actually referencingthe internet 21 years ago. This kind of thing did happen back then. I’m remembering Halo 1 pc servers and recognizing names.
Online gaming in 2004 indeed had much less people available overall. On the FPS front, it was mostly Counter Strike and Battlefield 1942 I guess.
For me it was counter strike and day of defeat. Guess I was fully on the valve train.
It was pretty regular for me. You find a server and usually the people hosting were usually always in there. Especially if it was a clan. That’s how I got into ever clan I ever joined.
You join a server and get to know the usuals and become friends. Still play with people I met back with the OG call of duty came out. We still play games together today. Never met half of em in real life.
When is “back then” for you?
I played counter-strike during the beta days and team fortress when it was “classic” not “2”
I definitely had a handful of favourite servers (1-2 favourites, 2-3 backups) that I would play on and knew the regulars like an old country pub.
Now things are set up so that it’s almost impossible to develop relationships with random folks online. Not just matchmaking but also more closed-off (hard to discover) groups on Discord etc…
CS1.6 and TFC was the golden age of online gaming and it’s been downhill since then. Literally nothing has been improved upon and the community has become immeasurably more toxic.
We’ve lost IRC and dedicated servers and replaced it with matchmaking and Discord. Both objectively worse.
Mid-late 2000s. Roughly 2005-2012.
Yeah…that was the end times.
This absolutely happened to me in Battlefield 1942.
Yeah, the early BF games were where I found servers that were communities. We’d even host events like stunt flying or trick shot challenges where we’d throw a pssword on the server for a few hours so nobody could troll us.
Or for certain days of the week, we’d be running the Desert Combat mod. It was a different time in online gaming.
Another thing I miss from those days is friendly fire. I get why it had to be removed, but it allowed for big, overpowered thing like artillery strikes and naval bombardment that were as likely to wipe your own team as help without coordination.
Oh man. Desert Combat was incredible.
I love that they basically just hired the Desert Vombat team to make BF2.
Though the AC 130 in Desert Combat is still my favorite game vehicle of all time.
Mobile, pilot-able spawn point for the entire team with awesome air-to-ground weaponry that had to be defended by fighters.
It could fly over an emeny base and rain troops and death, but if it got shot down or the pilot wasn’t amazing, it was a huge liability.
I also actively remember seeing someone from the same “clan” as you in a random free for all or capture the flag game. Always a great feeling.
My dad (would be 71 if he were still alive) used to play an online flight simulator WW2 game back in the late 90s / 2000s until he passed in 2012. He made a bunch of online friends through that game who he’d have long phone convos with outside of the game. My mom had to call them up to let them know he passed. I think he might of met a couple in person over the years too.
I was never a gamer, although during covid I put an emulator on my Mac so I can play PS2 and N64 games. Last night for the first time in a long time I played THPS2 on my Mac. I’ve beat the game multiple times but it’s just fun to play. Never got into online gaming.
nice observation by anon.
i miss making friends in games and couldnt quite put my finger on why matchmaking was much worse and unfun than old multiplayer and this is it.
They’ve abstracted away the social element. It takes so much work now to make a friend. After a game ends there’s perhaps a summary screen or lobby, so you can add another player to your friends list, but you have no way of discussing that with them. Anytime I get a friend request, I think, who is this? Why are they friending me
Half the time a friend request comes just so someone can continue to flame you after the match is over
I see you play League of Legends
I wish this behavior was limited to a single playerbase. I haven’t played league in a million years and this still happens sometimes
Can’t we all just get along? We’re here to play games darn it
flame
Oh, is that still a thing people say? Been a long time since I remember seeing it.
Well sure, old people do
One of the cool things about lobbies in VR is fist bumping to make friends, it’s a beautiful mechanic
…what game is that
Population One, and a few others I think
i tried just adding random people and once some japanese guy accepted and would play with me for a few days and speak words i did not understand
That first bit is a pretty accurate description of a lot of early online gaming.
I knew most of the experienced bards on my EQ server in '03. Half the reason I bothered to develop my character was to try and keep up with them. Now pretty much the only thing that’ll keep me playing online multiplayer is casino gamification, so I don’t start.
long live (classic) EQ :)
That was a big pull of WoW. You type “lfg” once in all chat and that could send you on a 20 year relationship with a guild with people who end up becoming your best friends.
yup, sounds like my experience playing Unreal 2:XMP back in the day
I’m playing a mobile game that’s pretty much exactly like that first part.
“but my community used to be made out of 12 people!”
Well too bad. That’s why you’re here on Lemmy now. You dislike strangers and love familiarity. I on the other hand love strangers and chaos. That’s why I was on Reddit.
I mean, we can have both. Community servers and official matchmaking servers.
But for the sake of money, community servers are gone.
Enshittification is very real, but also, some games just aren’t feasible as community servers. Lol?
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That’s because humans are trash. Trolls will do anything to destroy an actual conversation.
As someone leveling in anniversary wow through Barrens right now. It earned its reputation and a self fulfilling one, people shit in chat there all day just to try and one up each other.
Edit: leaving “shit” it fits in this case…
How can you question if you are laughing out loud? What does it even mean?
Leagues of legends is a game.
Which aren’t? League could be fun of there weren’t a ladder and competition being the only thing people care about. You could do fun things like Aram but like, all sonas or shacos. Something wacky. Oops all fiddlesticks. Any shooter is going to work for community shooters, mods and CS proved that… Shit even MMOs have private servers with tweaked rules .
There are some. For example extraction shooters kinda lose a core aspect of its genre because the player interactions are built on the idea that you don’t know who the other groups in the server are. Are they hostile? Are they friendly? Will they stab me in the back or help me out? How many are in a group? Technically it would be possible to set up community servers (if you had access to the server software) but if your community plays on the same server you kinda lose that uncertainty of who you’re going to meet, because you know the people you’re playing with.
Another one IMO that benefit from matchmaking are 1v1 games. Chess or fighting games or anything of the sorts. Community servers would be moot because you can only have 2 people in a match. You could probably build a tournament style community server but it wouldn’t add much value. I think matchmaking makes much more sense there.
There might be more but I think that list will be relatively short and in general most games would probably benefit more from having community servers.
My point is mobas aren’t really that feasible with community servers, are they?
There’s still a bunch of customs. Most are private.
I really don’t understand what one sees bad with a central server, because the function those community servers served is now served by discord servers, basically, to which you can go to find gaming company at the drop of a hat. But there’s not the same limitation of “oh we’re not on the same server”, except for ofc zones which still exist, America, Europe, Asia, etc.
Oh “even mmos”? Those have existed since I can remember. And I started online in about 2003.
Why’d you’d want a private server for League for example?
This is everything I meant to convey with my “lol?” but I realised it wouldn’t be conveyed and still did it because I was too lazy to write this
Why wouldn’t it be? You can already make custom games with pretty much anyone.
Yeah, custom lobbies on a central server. Which is what I think is superior to community servers.
And I don’t think so, like many other people expressed in this thread.
The biggest advantage of self-hosting is that the game will be forever playable even if the company that makes the game goes belly up.
Yup. Matchmaking is very lonely.
Quake ]I[ was the last real multiplayer game.
Fite me.
Counterstrike Source was later and still had these tight knit communities on the gun game and surf community servers. There wasn’t any matchmaking in the client either. And we voice chatted in game for the non-competitive modes.
Surf servers were the best, especially with actual rounds and weapons. Pure surf got boring, bit cs mechanics in a surf world was pretty fun.
I think Rainbow Six 3 might also qualify.
Then again, nothing will ever compare to the Rocket Arena 3 scene where every kill was due to skill. You’re a complete noob who got a few lucky hits with the rocket launcher? Skill. The other guy jumps in front of you just as you happen to pull the trigger? Nice air rail, well played. I never saw anyone ever complain about losing.
That community was just so refreshingly positive and welcoming, probably because there were no stakes. A match was over in maybe thirty seconds and then you’d watch until your next turn. And that was it.
In modern competitive games people have a ranking and they feel stressed when a game goes badly because they might lose precious Elo. This goes to the point where you get yelled at by your own teammates for not knowing the meta because they can’t make it to the next rank if you pay like it’s a game.
Cpm mids for days
I’ve been playing it VR lately. Feels like old times. There’s only a handful of players, of course (unless you play with flatscreen people which is possible, but too scary for me).
I HIGHLY recommend Holdfast: Nations At War for the same experience nowadays. There’s usually 1-2 full 150 player servers running in the browser, and you start to recognize the slaughterers and shitters over time.
It’s a Napoleonic era musket shooting game with locational open VC that gives bonuses for teamwork and line-firing. Recently I’ve been talking mad shit in a ridiculous accent matching whatever faction I’m playing at the time, and people are now recognizing my name, which is kinda warming :)
honestly for the amount of people on those servers, i’ve had surprisingly few bad experiences, everyone is always either roleplaying or just being ridiculous and it’s always a great time. 10/10 would recommend holdfast
Honestly it’s fantastic, hearing other people’s Voice Chat by default (you can mute people) results in amazing moments of both heroism and clownery.
Even when there’s that occasional shitwit taking advantage of unmoderated VC, I’ve noticed just calling them out and mocking them has a great chunk of the server join in on dunking on them.
Great game, great community, VC makes it fantastic.
It’s the same sort of spirit with Chivalry.
“HAVE AT THE”
halberd spins intensify
“ARRRRRRGGG”
Cannot upvote this enough. That nostalgia OP is on about is alive and well in holdfast.
I had a very similar experience a few years ago with Tannenberg. An eastern front WW1 shooter that, at least at the time, I don’t know the current status, had just enough players in the evening to fill up one server, so I’d play with the same people night after night. It never felt empty because of that and it was great fun.
Isonzo is the newer one. I haven’t played it in a few months, but it’s similarly small but I never felt close to anyone there.
I play Squad fairly frequently, and it’s got a similar feel to what the OP is about. You choose your server with a server browser, and it’s frequently got a lot of the same people there all the time. There’s some servers that are more casual, and they end up cycling players more so you don’t recognize anyone. The more experienced focused servers draw from a much smaller group though, and they play more consistently.
What is the skill curve for Squad? Is it easy to get into and be useful? Or there is a period where you are just cannon fodder?
Very easy to get into I’d say. Just listen to your squad leader, and don’t start a squad until you know what you’re doing.
Use to play alot on a CS:Source minigame server, such good times. Was exactly like this, where you’d recognize players and make friends. I’m glad i was able to live this.
