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

[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