“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…
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.
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 .
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
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.
How can you question if you are laughing out loud? What does it even mean?
I, too, read it as such.
Leagues of legends is a game.
Anecdotal, you still learn people and you can build a community reputation playing PvP in FFXIV. We don’t get to choose the map, and you’ll still see some people only once, but you get to know who’s who. The problem is, it’s not as fast as fortnite or other games. Which is a large turn off for many. But the slower (just barely slower) pace is more forgiving towards people that are middle aged and can’t compete with top tier fortnite/ League of Legends, etc types.
That’s more because few people seriously PvP in FFXIV, so you naturally end up randomly queued with the same people repeatedly.
I can’t say I share exactly this experience, but I did have some experiences of old that I miss.
The only non-MMO I ever played multiplayer prior to ~2013 was Age of Mythology. I never played ranked or competitive, but I did play a shit tonne of fun custom scenarios. Escape maps. Arenas. One really fun Helm’s Deep map that would always slow to a crawl once a larger number of units hit the field. I’d browse through the open lobbies and find something that struck my fancy, or create my own lobby and wait for people to join. Hours spent browsing the Age of Mythology Heaven forums for scenarios and reading people talk about them.
I do mind miss those custom scenarios. The new Age of Mythology: Retold feels much more focused on the ranked mode. Which I do also really enjoy. But there doesn’t seem the same culture of custom scenarios that there was back in the day.
Yup. Matchmaking is very lonely.
I’d say Minecraft’s multiplayer experience is close to what Anon describes as “good multiplayer”, probably because it hasn’t changed much in 15 years - there’s not even an in game server browser (at least on the Java edition), and playing Minecraft in and of itself is usually a big time commitment so you’re more encouraged to find a couple of servers you like and stick to them.
However, the last time that I feel like I integrated into a server’s community was 4 years ago - a blank server list doesn’t really encourage you to go looking for more, and it’s been harder to commit time as I get older and have more responsibilities (that I ignore anyways, but still).
I think Lethal Company also has a lobby system without matchmaking, but I haven’t played it so I don’t really know.
Joining a modded Minecraft server you’ll always make friends eventually because after like 20 hours of being onine with the same people they’ll eventually wonder what you are working on and ask to come see your base. Its a great social game.
My experience playing Call of Duty: United Offensive. The community was so much better than online games today. Some times if I wasn’t in to it we’d just chat via text chat. Felt like an extended lan party almost
Gamespy back in the day. Could make core friends and join the same servers across games.
Before that…QuakeSpy.
Quake kicked ass and defined my childhood and my adulthood. I was like 10 when that game came out.
I wanted to play that game so bad but my dad was hogging the phone line all the time!
So…I did some reading online. Found out how to build a simple network. Went to the computer fair and got some network cards that did 10BaseT or 10Base2. Went to RadioShack and got some coax, bnc ends, and terminators. Installed WinRoute on my dad’s computer. Set it up to share his internet so we could both be online. Set it up so his computer would automatically dial when I wanted internet if he wasn’t online yet.
Nearly 30 years later and now I’m a Network Architect.
You can still play old games! TF2 still exists (istg if I die to that one soldier nolife in the 2fort sewers 1 more time)
Also SCP:SL is gonna get a big update soon and it only has serversGreat, 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
I used to roleplay as a pirate, pickpocket, swindler, and ladies man; laughably incompetent at them all, under this username in a tiny, indie RPG called Rubies of Eventide. I was never a strong player, but I got a reputation for funny in-game banter. Playing a different kind of person enabled me to punch above my weight in social skills.
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.
Definitely describes my early Team Fortress Classic/TF2 time back in college. I’m actually still steam friends with folks from that time and I definitely still rock my “clan tag”! Sort of lame if kids don’t have a chance at the same thing…
kids are missing out on a lot simply because the number of PCs in private households has shrunk by ca. 90% - consoles just don’t give the same gaming experience / definitely not the sense of immersion.
That’s a huge bummer - didn’t realize the numbers were that high.
Having a PC in my house in the 90s with games led me to learn about computers… to play better games. Which has absolutely contributed to my having a successful career.
Glad I’m putting together a Linux box for my oldest to wreck/play with!
It’s a guess by me, but honestly I think it’s quite accurate - then again I just checked some statistics and those absolutely does not confirm my guess - however most unfortunately mix PCs and laptops (which are not the same in terms of how you learn with them, imo) and oftentimes even tablets (which are completely useless to learn anything about computers). The actual numbers as per the first statistic I found say that households with PCs are down from ca. 65% in the early 2000s to ca 43% in the 2022.
Thinking about it, that might actually be true, but I don’t think that anywhere close to 40% of children get exposure to computers & spend way too much time on mobile devices.
Glad I’m putting together a Linux box for my oldest to wreck/play with!
And that is absolutely the best you can offer them to find out if they have an interest in / a talent for anything IT. And playing games is a good motivator to try and start figuring out problems.
I’m playing a mobile game that’s pretty much exactly like that first part.
yup, sounds like my experience playing Unreal 2:XMP back in the day
MechAssault, all the way back on the OG Xbox. I wish I could remember all the names. So many fun times had trying the stupidest things and somehow winning, like two of us in Raptors going on Ýmir and Loki hunting missions.
Day of Defeat <3
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.
This is happening to me now in squad.
Yes, I find this too. Especially if you play on the same servers.
