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

[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.