I just don’t like hyper competitive games. I don’t have time to get frustrated.
I like single player games where I have the option to change things I don’t like via mods or console commands.
Like competitive games, but I don’t like overly competitive people. At the end of the day, win or lose, it’s still a video game and it should be fun. Competitive games with friends who understand that and don’t get tilted can be great fun, even when you’re on a losing streak.
Like competitive games, but I don’t like overly competitive people.
I wish competitive games did a better job not only matching people of similar skill, but similar personalities. I know it’s just a bunch of pixels and numbers in a screen, why do you keep pairing me with these chuds that have no emotional maturity?
Some games have an option to search for a like-minded party type and it really should be a standard option.
I find that to be the main issue with SBMM. The lobby system, in my experience, creates a better sense of progression against your enemies. If you don’t like who you’re playing with, you join a new session. If you do like them, you can stay as long as you want.
I don’t mind competitive games, just not the crazy competitive ones. TF2 is a great example - fun, casual, PvP. Tarkov is probably my least favorite - hyper competitive, huge losses if you die, big incentive to cheat.
It’s a shame that Tarkov is what it is, because I love shooters and it’s probably the best of them, mechanics wise.
Just dropping in, in case you haven’t heard about it: Single player Tarkov exists, and is very fun! It obviously won’t have the same reactions and interactions as humans, but they’re emulated pretty damn well with some additional mods.
Yup, I’ve played it plenty! I even tried setting up a server with Project Fika but for some reason I couldn’t get it going.
There is PVE Tarkov now. You have the option to play with other people in your team. But only if you want to. Don’t know what they ask for it atm.
PvE Tarkov doesn’t allow you to modify server side things, like insurance return times and whatnot.
insurance return time
I’m sorry what kind of game is this?
Haha it’s a game called Escape from Tarkov.
It’s a hardcore extraction shooter. Whatever you bring in to a raid will be lost when you die. If you manage to extract, you can keep whatever loot you found - whether it spawned in the world or you took it from a dead player.
The gear you bring in can be “insured” by vendors. Usually it’s a 24 hour real-world timer if you die with that gear. Even then, the gear that you insure has another filter before it gets returned: Other players and scavengers can take it.
The “lore” of the game explains the insurance return as a deal between the vendors and the scavengers in the area.
Even if I lose a round in Xonotic I still have fun cause i still played
Will definitely check this out, love me a good arena boomer shooter
The best games of Counter-Strike (the old one, before CSGO) I ever played were with friends in pub matches. Competitive is fun, but 32 player poolday? That’s the best experience you can have.
Now I’m all about co-op games or single player. I’ve been top scorer in FPS’, I know it’s a thrill, but it’s not as fun as losing with your friends.
I remember playing Overwatch and getting super angry about every single match, and then that Reggie quote “If it’s not fun, why bother?” popped up in my head and I just stopped playing. Probably one of the last times I ever touched “competitive” games.
I love being able to pause when my son needs something too
I used to like multiplayer back when there was a larger community element. Now no one uses their mic and the lobby changes every match so I’m basically just playing against bots anyway.
Reject modernity, embrace tradition - we’ll still be there for you in the arena and boomer shooter crowd, and of course, various Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 lobbies.
Come prepared.
I’ve been playing a lot of Red Alert 2 lately which has similar vibes as well
There is something beautiful in TF2 kicking off the whole cosmetic microtransactions/lootbox industry, then sitting back and continuing to be a fun community game for the next decade.
This hits hard. I still remember joining the same 3 cs servers and befriending the people there. Good times.
Back when servers were hosted and you had a little community of maybe 200 people who would cycle in and out.
I met some lifelong friends in those servers.
A few friends and I are planning a 90s lan. Simple rules like no games published after 2001-08-23, no internet, only self-hosted servers, and all shit talking must be out loud. Also shit talking must be kid safe since we’re all old and have kids old enough to be competent but young enough we don’t want to teach them the true art of shit talking.
My kids are teenagers now. Teaching them the true art of shit-talking has been a pleasure.
My youngest kicking my ass at every fucking game we play has not been.
“but daaad, we just want to chill, can’t we play and not be toxic to others?”
raises hand
“YOU WILL TEABAG YOUR SCHOOLFRIEND SO HELP ME GOD”
This sounds like an insane amount of fun. The only thing more fun than a LAN as a kid, is a LAN when you’re 40 and can afford top tier snacks. And you have kids to be waiters
And you might actually be playing against bots, depending on the game.
This is their personal preference and has nothing to do with their generation
As an “elder Millennial,” who do you think drove traffic on WoW, Half Life, Halo, COD, etc?
As a mid-50’s genXer I wholeheartedly agree.
When I read this, I definitely pictured Gen X or elder millennial first.
There’s a reason xennials sometimes get call the Oregon trail gen
Also mid 50 gen-x’er. Completely agree.
That’s definitely elder millennial more than younger millennial
Yup, born in 1982 and I feel this way. I’m too old for competitive twitch-shooters (bloody shame that, I used to love them). Most other games are shit for online gaming.
Only thing I ever play online is survival games with my brother, who lives 500 km away from me. It’s more of a reason to talk for longer sessions though.
Same. I just watch StarCraft now. I was never that good to begin with, but playing now is likely to make my withered heart explode.
I’m young x and I feel this way as well.
Sometimes I don’t even fight the computer. I just need to expand the factory. And coal is running low so Ill just quickly spin up a nuclear reactor or eight
The factory must grow.
and when time is running low, I’d bring out the ole
scanmemand set my resources to 99999 just to get past the grind
that sounds like older millennials to me, tbh
younger millennials grew up on multiplayer and online games, which were widespread and extremely normalized by the time we were old enough
remember, the youngest millenials were 4 to 6 years old in 2000 and the mid 2000s was the big multiplayer boom for the industry
Halo, COD, Gears of War, Counter Strike: Source, Garrysmod, Minecraft, Trackmania, Everquest, World of Warcraft, Left4Dead, Diablo 2, all of these games came out while we were 6 to 14 years old
Older millennials and Gen X were the ones that organized a lot of the multiplayer groups on old MMOs and other multiplayer games. In a lot of communities they’re the ones that seem to reel the most whenever games make changes that break up content to make it cooperation less encouraged.
As a younger millennial who hit 30 recently, I understand the feeling of wanting to step away from multiplayer games due to toxicity. I have played games where having someone cuss at you on voice was the least of your worries due to doxxing and irl harrassment including people having their families and work places called.
Younger Gen X here, sounds more like older Millennials to me, too. Multiplayer was fun when it was usually LAN parties of people you knew personally (or split screen), but once it became standard to play with strangers and/or people you’ve never met in real life I wasn’t interested.
younger millennials grew up on multiplayer and online games, which were widespread and extremely normalized by the time we were old enough
I think that one part of that shift was VoIP. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, if you were playing, say, Quake or similar online, you communicated via text chat. Subsequent to that, a lot of games acquired VoIP support, which I think helped make communication in online games more accessible to a broader audience.
But another factor that I think affects playing multiplayer games for a number of people is having kids. Like, you’re 18, you don’t have that many immediate responsibilities, maybe. But if your kid’s diaper needs to be changed or they produce some other emergency, getting an period where you can play realtime games with other people is maybe harder to get an uninterrupted time block for. Maybe slow turn-based games, like play-by-email type strategy games or something, stuff that doesn’t have the same time constraints, would be more-viable.
Younger millennial (wish me happy 30th in a few months) coming in. I had my niche group of PC nerds who played CS:S, WoW and L4D basically on release. We all knew we were dumb ass kids coming into a scene. We got verbally destroyed in Vent and TS servers when doing ESEL CSS and dunked on while learning boss mechanics in MMOs.
I was always one to just want to have fun (shout out to surf_, aim_ag, and mg_ CSS maps). But I was in the trench as a plus one in a bunch of junk. I always felt like my other group of friends were out of the loop of gaming when they would just Autoaim headshot everything in sight on console COD4 and WAW, but I never got that group to try PC
After I graduated high school I just played dota 2 for two years until I was drained from comp play, then I just started queueing/playing games without caring about my rank. I’ll check meta of what I’m playing and know a tad beforehand, but I can’t be arsed to care about a winding down activity.
Tldr: Squeakers that played Source and/or 1.6 are adults now and are tired of comp play imo. One of my core group is still a Wow head and coaches raid clears, but we are just a bunch of tired adult stoners who dick around with FGs or rogue likes now.
also lemme know if you need another handful of tired adult stoners who dick around with roguelikes
(idk what an FG is…fighting game? like mortal Kombat and street fighter?)
We are stuck on Forza right now but 3 of us have adhd so it wont be l9ng before we get bored and move to another game
that’s actually a really good point too
im pretty close to your age and even i will admit that a good single player game hits better than any multiplayer arena shooter out there
But there’s a few “silent co-op” games i really enjoy. Games where i can join a stranger, help them with a quest or boss and then leave. Im the oldest of 3 and i miss beating levels for my little brothers. Elden Ring, Dark Souls , Nioh, Monster Hunter, these all scratch the itch pretty well
When many people hear “multiplayer videogame” they think mmos or cod/quake/Unreal tournament clones
i would never start playing multiplayer halo if it came out today. But theres still LOTS of multiplayer games out there that i find very appealing.
Monster Hunter World was really the last game I really got into for that reason. If soulborne games are like that I might pick up the next one.
id happily play with you. my favorite franchise.
The co-op is silent. no chat, no text. You communicate via animations and gestures
you use an item to let people know youre interested in playing together, and if another player walks by the spot, they can see and interact with your “sign” and summon you to their game
Need to get my PC running again, or get a steam deck. Seems like the latter is more realistic at this point. I’ll keep it in mind!
open invitation if you ever want to :)
The disrespect to SOCOM
listen bro i cant just sit here and name every multiplayer game from 2005
i played socom on psp and i was convinced this was the future, peak gaming
Honestly never understood the appeal of multiplayer as an older Gen-Z. I guess it’s like sports, some people just like the spirit of competition.
Sports are an example of where I need multiplayer. The only way they can make Madden against the computer hard is by making opponents just arbitrarily blow through tackles, making (bad) opposing QBs have magic awareness of the field and silly accuracy, etc.
Playing other humans online allows a level playing field (well, if I didn’t use the Patriots this year) and makes the chess match of play calling actually meaningful. I can disguise my looks and mix up play calls and have it actually cause confusion, instead of having the computer complete unaware of context.
Also humans are much more interesting due to the variability of styles. Like bots tend to become predictable, as would be the case if you played the same humans every time…but having different humans makes the competition much more entertaining.
I’d love to get my variety from a franchise mode. Unfortunately, while the actual football sim is clearly and consistently progressing, all their game mode investment is into Ultimate Team trash.
But there’s just no middle ground on difficulty. All Pro is a cakewalk and All Madden has to cheat hard. Until they manage to get the AI to an advanced enough level, people are the only way I can play.
Most other stuff the AI works better. Stuff like Sniper Elite (on a completely unrelated note, the way they use the PS5 triggers is insanely satisfying), you can make extremely interesting with simpler, rule based decision trees because of the freedom you have to set up maps and encounters to use them effectively. Sports are just so constrained and high precision that “accurate” AI would involve 22 players on the field considering the play call, the history of play calls, the game situation, the traits (or at least archetypes) of every other player on the field, etc. It’s a lot more challenging than most people recognize.
Exactly. I like and play sports a lot, I get my competition there. I didn’t need it in my games.
Yeah if you don’t like team sports you’ll never get it
I am 36 and my wife is 35. I do not enjoy online multi-player games, and my wife pretty much exclusively plays them. I think this is about people’s specific anxieties rather than age.
Wow, are you me? My SO and I are about the same age and also have similar tastes as you and yours. It’s almost like people have different tastes in video games…
That’s fine and all but I’m technically an elder Millenial, and we definitely played online pvp games when I was in high school. I was there for the first counterstrike alpha/beta. My brother and I spent an entire week playing CS one time while my parents were in a trip, 10 hours a day with breaks for pizza. We had a system for sharing play because we only had the one desktop… lol.
We had quake lan parties and even did a quake tourney in our school computer lab because this was before they really sorted out locking the computers down. I feel like tribes and unreal tournament were out pretty quick as well. Quake arena. Half life multiplayer and then CS, day of defeat, etc.
Super toxic online was sorta a thing, but I feel like that didnt mainstream until COD lobbies on consoles, and the advent of voice chat. Or rather most of the servers I played on were specific servers, hosted by people with admins, and while people would misbehave, you generally wanted to not get banned and keep coming back—you knew the other names and such, so that had an ok moderating effect.
I had some pet birds when I was younger and played in those cesspool cod xbox lobbies. I would end up derailing the vitriol because everyone would be like, “the fuck, is that a bird? Why is there a bird?”
Hahah brilliant, love it. Definitely the best way to end that stuff—surprise them or confuse them.
Oh thanks for the nostalgic trip! Tribes was so fun. CS was so fun. Day of Defeat was my jam! Did you ever play Pirates Vikings Knights? 😆
I think I missed pirates viiings knights, sad now!
It was a half-life mod just like CS and DoD. PVK wasn’t very popular but it was damn good fun. Three teams against each other, and each ‘race’ had three separate classes in each. Playing as a pirate captain and sending your parrot to go attack another was the highlight of my playing time lmao.
Edit here’s a game play video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpKxkIxnNsg
Even in Classic WoW I prefer to run solo. I enjoy the presence of other people in the world and in cities, but I have no interested in becoming involved with them unless we need each other to complete a dungeon.
I also like to imagine joining guilds, but my idea of a guild died twenty years ago with the classic era of MMOs. Now being in a guild just means your immersion is forever ruined because you’re not allowed to play anymore without participating in the giant fuckfest that is the guild Discord server. Fuck Discord.
If I ever go back I should create a guild of casual loners with kids. We all respect each other’s space, provide support as often as we’re able, and stay the fuck off of Discord. You get kicked out of the guild if you even mention it. You have to use code if you want to communicate during a dungeon. “My, how the swallows doth fly…”, and then quietly log on with four companions and never speak a word of it again. Instant officer status if you have a private Ventrilo server.
This was basically why I switched to Guild Wars back in the day.
Then GW2 and still playing today. Still no guild.
Pugs were the best innovation. Rather just being near other people in the events. No group required.
I love online games that allow for this. - the “It’s a open world that you play solo”.
Fallout 76 and New World come to mind. You do your own thing in this giant shared world. You literally can walk over to help another human, then wave goodbye. If they try to start pvp with you, you can throw a lol emoji and walk away and fade off into the distance.
It’s basically like playing in a game world filled with super advanced NPCs. The other players are just there to make the world feel alive.
It’s how I play Minecraft. I play on the servers solo.
Sometimes just seeing others chat with each other makes me feel way less lonely.
My number one Gen X trait is having to wear reading glasses to play video games on my PC
I dont like competitive games anymore because Markov broke me long before that infamous video came out. People cheat. If the computer cheats at least its doing it to make the game better. People just cheat to be assholes.
Markov… dayz… cod… just people cheating because they are not playing to have fun. They are ruining peoples games to have fun because they are broken.
No, people cheat to feel better about themselves,
If there’s no tangible gain, like prize money or something, then I would agree with that. I can’t really wrap my head around the mindset. I can’t imagine playing without the satisfaction of besting or proper teamwork.
Cheaters have like 3 self justifications from what Ive seen (outside of money)
-
The enemy is “cheating” but they think they are better than them, therefore they should also cheat to even the playing field. Seen that a lot with the cs2 fiasco
-
They have fun by making others not have fun. Very common among the blatant cheaters/bot hosters. They purely live off on putting people down.
-
They want to reach a certain rank. Once they reach a plateau, they resort to cheating to continue towards their goal
-
If there’s no tangible gain, like prize money or something, then I would agree with that.
Ranking up is a big part of it, particularly in the modern “Gotta do my X Dailys to hit the Y milestone or the game will be unplayable” style of engagement.
Dayz… Holy shit brings back memories of spending hours and hours collecting new gear. Only for a random dude to randomly teleport shooting me in the face and disappearing. And people wonder why online pvp isn’t fun for some of us.
I want to do more than win a match, I want to beat the game. You can’t beat multiplayer.
Also, singleplayer exists to entertain me personally. I can pause, quit, restart, mod, cheat, and engage in completely counterproductive nonsense whenever I like. I don’t have to worry about game balance, fairness and making sure the computer has fun.
Also, while I’m sure a majority of people in multiplayer aren’t assholes, it can seem that way when the assholes are the only ones who do anything but silently play the game.
Lol I’m currently playing GTA v online solo. I liked it when it was fresh for PS3 and everyone had low grade weapons and cars and was having drive bys. Now people are flying around in flying cars and clown costumes with jetpacks. It’s Saints row at that point.
So I decided to give gtao another chance but I’m all by myself just doing taxi missions, pizza deliveries and being a vigilante who attacks drug houses and gangsters but doesn’t go after regular folk.
I love the role play It honestly improves the over all experience of most games
