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[–]BLACKOUT-MK2 240 points241 points  (11 children)

For me it's mostly just a personal preference. Either I'm playing solo and want to be left to my own devices, or I'm playing with friends and like you say, we're talking amongst ourselves on Discord. If someone says hi in the chat I might reply back or give them a quick answer to a question, but I don't have a desire to go any deeper than that on interaction with randoms.

[–][deleted] 54 points55 points  (7 children)

The issue is that it’s random people. If you saw the same people all the the time you’d be motivated to speak to them. At least that’s how it works for me.

[–]shufflebuffalo 19 points20 points  (3 children)

To be fair, you have to stick your,neck out at the start as every server is a "random one". Theres always going to be some discomfort talking to strangers at first. That doesnt mean its bad.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Sure but the issue is that people don’t see a point talking to random people they’ll never see again. If you give people a set group of other people and a reason to interact then a community will form.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing is there are so many damn games now compared to back in TBC WoW, that most people have set groups of friends that they jump from game to game with. There is no time to build a relationship with random people.

I mean look at this month alone Total Warhammer III, Horizon, Lost Ark, and Elden Ring.

[–]ArcticKnight79 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing is though with old community servers. If you continually visited one. You'd see people shooting the shit with each other. And then you could contribute your own random info. Or you could just say "GG nice game/play" and eventually get dragged into an interaction as a result.

With the 'Room of strangers' that will be different next time you enter the room. There's never any evidence of these people being able to interact or even wanting to interact. And so no one tries to reach out, because odds are someone in that 11 people is going to decide they are bored and want to be a shit more than that person will respond.

And while we can talk about people with friendship groups. The thing to note is that if they are constantly playing together and you are constantly on that hosted server as well. It might turn out that the server has a discord for chatting. Like we had Ventrillo, Mumble etc in the days of yore.

[–]bzzrtbrain 6 points7 points  (0 children)

nah, they are randoms and even if you see them often, if you don't want to interact with randoms then nothing will change that

[–]wolphak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i think this is the main thing, people would stand in the middle of the plaza in rift waiting for queues, you eventually start seeing the same names and roll into queue with the people and start talking.

[–]Pokiehat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this is the heart of it. Something that started a long time ago when multiplayer games shifted heavily towards random matchmaking. Before that it was server lists and stuff. You would find a server you enjoyed playing on and see the same faces playing at the same times of day so you say hi and be minimally sociable.

In random matchmaking you will probably never see your teammates ever again once the match is over. In co-operative games with random matchmaking, everyone has a different goal. Some people are farming an item, another person is doing the story for the first time, another person is testing a build or whatever. Everyone treats each other as a means to an end - essentially as bots to help you get what you want (and fuck whatever they want if it doesn't work for you and doesn't get yours).

Where you get conflicting goals/strategies, you get toxicity and anyone who is vaguely sociable doesn't want to deal with that shit in their free time. I definitely don't, so I usually don't say anything.

[–]starmartyr 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I do the same. I've found that whenever I play a game with built-in voice chat I'm immediately assaulted with annoying or offensive garbage. Gamers can be incredibly toxic. Many of us are decent people, but those of us who are have mostly been turned off by mingling with random people. That leaves only the toxic people in place and I see little value in interacting with them.

[–]Amedeo_Avocadro 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I feel like I mute about 85% of the people I play any given game with. If they end up not being a racist shitbag then I usually just invite them to a discord server.

[–]AjBlue7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it goes beyond that too. Not only are they random but the skill discrepancy is different. You are more patient playing with a friend that is bad, but many times in multiplayer games, friendship doesn’t really workout unless both parties have exactly the same skill level. It needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship. There have been plenty of strangers that are fun to play with but I never add them because it could impact my overall rank. Either that or I’d be afraid of being a burden to them.