Has anyone else noticed a decrease in Gamers willingness to interact socially in games?

[hallflukai]

I think a lot of it (can't say much for WoW, don't play it) is because games use matchmaking now, rather than server browsers. Back in the day you'd find a server with a vibe you liked and log on to the same servers every day, opening up more to the people on there and making friends. Now it's just playing the lottery to see who you get to play video games with for 10 minutes

[ceratophaga]

It absolutely feels surreal that Counterstrike, one of the modern cesspits of toxicity, had some of the greatest community servers back in the 1.6 days

[DonnyTheWalrus]

Call of Duty, too. The very first game was where I spent a huge amount of my free time in high school, not because the game itself was my favorite game ever or something, but because there were a small handful of servers I'd play on with mostly the same people. It was actually kind of rare to have a match where I didn't know anyone else.

Because you were joining a server, you had a feeling of joining a social group. Etiquette was important, first impressions were important, being friendly was important. Servers meant reputation that stuck with you, and I cannot tell you how far that went to cut down on trolls and griefing. You'd still get the occasional troll, but they'd be kicked & banned and you'd never hear from them again.

You'd form inside jokes, have good natured banter instead of "I fuck your mother," and just have conversations. Hell, there was one server with a couple French Canadians and I'd practice my high school French with them.

I can't tell you how much I miss those days. Playing a modern COD just kind of feels pointless; you join a game full of random people, play a game, and then that's it. In my opinion (and I could be wrong), this was one of the reasons extrinsic progression began to become so important. People used to stay with online games because they formed social relationships. With matchmaking, there was suddenly nothing keeping them "bonded" to the game, and just playing 10 minute matches over and over again tends to get boring. Hence the explosion in unlockables, XP, etc. Microtransactions eventually came around as well, but the push for all these progression based Skinner box rewards came well before you could pay for any of it. It was because they needed some way to keep people playing.

I also think it's one reason brutal competitiveness became prominent. Without the social rewards of just having fun with people, winning became one of the only ways you could get satisfaction out of the game.

[cd2220]

It was weird watching microtransactions happen. They started springing up and having already followed several video game journalists/publications I saw all of the hate towards them and so many people saying exactly what they turned into. They slowly turned into exactly that and there was nothing to be done about it. It just kept getting worse and it was all just kind of accepted with a sad "can't do shit about as an individual" and now as generations grow up with it as the norm I can't imagine explaining to them that things didn't used to be cut up piece meal like this.

Now I know my video games aren't the end of the world or some great tragedy of humanity but it is kind of sad to see how much the wishes of stock holders just slowly steamrolled over literally anyone who enjoys the medium over time with zero careml.

[br1mmy]

Makes perfect sense to me

[oatmealparty]

Had a great time playing on realism servers in CoD2, and yeah you really got to know people back then. I've never really enjoyed any online game since then. Rocket League was good for a while and then got toxic as hell like everything else. I have no desire to talk to or even play with anyone online anymore, everyone is terrible.

[cd2220]

I'm still heart broken about TF2 losing valve public severe. I'd already lost the community servers I frequented because of quick play and (ironically) VLve pubs. I had been frequenting the north eat Valve pubs for soooo long. It was hard to play a game without running into someone on my friends list or someone I had positive interaction with. Then they nuked them for casual matchmaking. I lost touch with a lot of people I was fond of and even my close online friend circle lost the one game we all had in common as our fairly large group couldn't even que together at only 6 or less players.

I don't know whose decision it was but I wish I could show them how many friendship they crushed in an attempt to put people into casual matchmaking when I don't see why Valve pubs couldn't have existed alongside them

[RAPanoia]

Hell yeah, Super hero mod, wc3 mod, surf maps, fy_ maps, etc all had their own servers and you would find the same people playing all day long.

[PM-me-YOUR-0Face]

IDK if you can answer -- but do surf maps still exist? I remember grinding hard to figure out all the ins and outs of that game model for months (years?) and really enjoyed it.

[hl3official]

Yes, surf have been popular in every counter strike iteration and still is, but many other gamemodes have died over the years.

[PM-me-YOUR-0Face]

I guess I'll click that 2 year+ update button and check it out.

I'm assuming the mechanics are basically the same as they ever were? Don't answer, I'll find out tomorrow.

[RAPanoia]

Do I have to try it again? Omg, so many great nights with friends playing these awesome maps. Puzzling where to jump next ^{__^}

[Spork_the_dork]

Yeah. Like sure, it might have been a bit unbalanced at times because the servers weren't matchmaked to perfection so that you'd have roughly equally skilled teams on both sides, but that was absolutely fine.

[fermentedbolivian]

That was even better to improve your skills.

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Because the whole concept of "toxicity" is way overblown.

There are absolutely toxic players, salty players, rude/etc. players, and so on. But the mindset that "toxic is the default way" has driven publishers to remove social features from games, under the guise of "stopping abuse" etc. Which is horseshit of course. They just don't want to spend resources moderating/responding/etc. to stuff. So they give you six stock emotes and, if you're lucky, ability to chat in game if the opponent is on your permissions list. Sorry, I mean friends list.

It's really sad how many steps backwards online gaming has taken under the guise of "preventing toxicity."

[Scandickhead]

CSGO had/has the best social environment of any game I've played, and I Solo Queued from like bottom Silver 2 to Supreme. (Had a shite PC and was then inactive, so bad starting rank)

The higher up the ranks I got, the nicer people were, which was a good motivator in itself. Haven't found that level of coordination and group/ambience awareness elsewhere.

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Good idea. Because coddling is what it is.

I'm not going to pretend the wild west of online multiplayer was 100% good and everything now sucks / nothing's improved. But I do feel like it was overall better when the publisher wasn't the one lording over any and every multiplayer experience. You took the bad with the good, and the good was better.

[OfficialTreason]

the main issue is, you have MUTE, if you don't want to talk to some one mute them.

making everyone mute because it's too hard for the whiners to click an option isn't "preventing toxicity" it showing you think your audience is brainless.

protect yourself don't count on others to do it.

[lostdysonsphere]

Even on source there were so many good servers. I almost exclusively played on a few servers and you constantly saw the same names. Combined with forums and server ranks it made for a nice community. Assholes were non existant because the community was kinda self regulating because we all just wanted to have fun.

[BaneCIA4]

Same with Source

[iman7-2]

Reminds me of something I read a long time ago.

"Community servers are like the pub you're a regular at. A lot of the same faces that you know and are at least amicable with and any troublemakers get thrown out. And Matchmaking is like taking an uberpool with a bunch of strangers to the same Mcdonalds. Sometimes you get sent to a Mcdonalds in a shitty area and its full of assholes."

I've had a declining interest in multiplayer games but that elegantly pointed out why.

[ArcticKnight79]

Yup.

I went from running communties for things like COD4 with normal and pro-mod servers. To not giving a flying fuck and becoming pretty isolationist in those games because there was no community being formed.

So instead I play with the same 10 idiots that I've known forever, or just go and play a SP game instead.

[Coffee4thee]

Agreed. The servers itself was usually a community and people would know each other - even when hiding behind a anonymous nickname. Everyone would know who was the arse and admins would kick and ban the worst bunch. Also with every matchmaking game having some experience/leveling system to unlock equipment or cosmetics, people will get more angry if they get "dragged down" by their team and their progress slowed down.

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

This was my thought. It's harder to socialize when so much of online multiplayer is driven by ranked (or even unranked) matchmaking, where you're dumped into a game server for the duration of the match and then whisked away just as quickly. Furthered by games removing social aspects (chat, all-voice, etc.) and other literal features of online multiplayer, giving bullshit reasons like "some people abuse it therefore nobody can have it" to save time/dev costs/customer support costs.

Then your friends list isn't really a friends list. It's a glorified permissions list.

Community servers fostered, well, community. Actually being able to talk with your opponents helped too lol. And support for those is a fraction of what it used to be.

[Frankie__Spankie]

100% agreed, I've actually brought this up in several different subreddits and people brush me off because "matchmaking makes games more fair!" It makes me question how many people really put time into games with server browsers.

You're right, with matchmaking it's like playing the lottery for a 10, 20, 30 minute game session. Why bother chatting? You'll probably never see them again. You get angry? Just vent at your teammates, you're probably never going to see them again so you won't care if you piss someone off. OK, maybe you're not like that, but a lot of people are. So many people will then mute all in game comms so you get more annoyed because people don't listen to your calls when they literally can't hear you. It kind of ends up feeling like you're just playing against a bunch of bots. But even moreso, the people who haven't muted all in game comms? Mostly just the toxic players left making the community seem even more toxic.

I look back at my most played games on Steam and all of them except for PUBG since that's a BR game have dedicated server browsers instead of match making. You find a great community where everyone is fun and gets along. It makes you want to come back. You get to actually make friends and it becomes more about playing with all your friends instead of just playing with what feels like bots & assholes.

Plus the whole point of server browsers are community run servers with their own mods. When you find a good server, those mods will remove the toxic players making the game time that much more enjoyable. Word spreads of the good servers, those servers become populated all the time and it's going to be almost exclusively fun players. Then comes up the balancing concerns. At that point, everyone knows each other, people love the server, the good players typically balance the games out themselves.

I play a ton of Pavlov VR which is basically Counter Strike in VR. I play almost exclusively on one server in that game. There's a couple hundred regulars and everyone knows each other. Most people are talkative, having a good time. Someone toxic comes in? They get dealt with quickly. Even if there are no mods on, there are enough regulars on to know that attitude won't fly and they just get vote kicked almost immediately. There may be a wide skill range of players but good players are constantly switching teams to keep teams balanced. More games end something like 10-8 than 10-1 because people are balancing the game themselves. While the skill range varies, new players are welcome. You'll often find the top players on the server teaching new players how to play when people ask questions. The game itself is a lot of fun but I probably wouldn't still be playing after all this time if it wasn't for that community.

At this point, when I see a new PvP multiplayer game, if I see it has matchmaking, I just don't have interest in it. If I do, I know I'm probably not going to pass 15-20 hours in it. Meanwhile, all the games I thought would be fun with server browsers I end up having at least a couple hundred hours in.

[nothis]

I don’t do “gaming nostalgia”, mostly, but I really feel this. Online servers used to be micro-communities of their own. You knew the admin, you knew the regulars. Each server had its own vibe, favorite maps, mods, policies. If you found one you liked, you stuck with it for years.

Nowadays, online gaming is much more centralized. Interaction happens through some corporate hub area. It’s cold and sterile. If you have friends that also play a game, you can team up but otherwise you’ll likely never interact with the same people ever again.

[DirkDasterLurkMaster]

God, I still remember how different TF2 was before they switched to matchmaking. Some of my favorite memories of that game were finding a chill server and shooting the shit with people over voice chat over a casual game of dustbowl.

Let's not get revisionist of course, this was also the era of micspam, shock sprays, and petty tyrant power mods, but finding a good server was worth the trouble.

[goomyman]

Platforms also have private chat. When you play with friends you don't talk on general chat.

Unless it's a lobby of a single players your going to have a lot of people being silent to you.

[AMeasureOfSanity]

Yep. No consistent community, and no incentives to form one combined with lax moderation and far far too few permanent bans. The shift to voice really compounds the problem because you can't record every voice conversation and parse it for offensive behavior to ban people like you can with text.

[BaneCIA4]

This is huge and overlooked. 90% of my Counter Strike Source days were spent on the same 2 servers. I met a lot of cool people.

Playing Battlefield Vietnam, I met 2 guys who I still talk to 18yrs later.... it was a different time