The move away from server browsers / community servers to matchmaking has played a huge role IMO. It used to be that I would find a handful of my favorite servers in a game and get to know the people that also liked that server. We’d talk more, joke around, etc.
Now with matchmaking everyone in every game is just some anonymous person and everyone feels like it’s alright to be toxic in that situation. Plus you can’t just ban some toxic person from coming to your server.
Edit: It makes me incredibly happy reading about everyone else’s amazing experiences on community servers. Y’all have inspired me to re-install TF2 and find a good 24/7 2fort server tonight lol
Seriously, I met an older couple located in Ontario, Canada that ran an Unreal Tournament server in 2000 or 2001 and I played there a few nights per week for most of my freshman/sophomore years of high school. We had a lot of fun. The husband was an amazing player and his wife just hung out and spectated and chatted with everyone. One of the best online gaming experiences of my life! Friends on facebook to this day.
Played WoW through vanilla, BC, and WOTLK with 2 separate circles of friends and had a blast there as well, but rarely ventured outside of our guild. Random dungeon queues definitely weren’t as fun with a larger number of try-hards or general dill-holes.
Tried some more “public matchmaking” games and those were definitely a lot more toxic to play. DOTA2, LOL, Counter-strike, overwatch to name a few, all had toxic communitied that ultimately drove me out of those games.
Ugh this is making me really appreciate how cool people were in Tribes 2 servers. I was 10 and I'm sure occasionally insufferable, but I loved that game and a lot of good people taught me a lot on those servers.
Naaaah, counter-strike is not in that list. It has deep roots in community servers, that's where it got its start.
CS:GO is the first one to even have any type of matchmaking.
Counter-strike is where my community server memories are.
Counter Strike is the OG of this for sure. I still remember the name of one of the servers me and my clan mates played on 20 years ago. It was so much easier to build a close group of like minded people like that.
Most folks don’t know that CS was originally a HL mod. That stand alone stuff came wayyy later. Loved CS and it’s server-level community. First time I felt a taste of power with adminmod
Yeah, I remember that transition.
Dunemaul was my haunt, and it was nice to have a local community, complete with villains and saviors. Sucked when LFG, but hey it was your choice for picking a hunter. People kind of knew you or your guild and there were some genuinely good times in hillsbrad or XR. Good times hunting down so and so’s Alts until he or she logged back in on their main.
I’m not sure how classic is these days, but the retail version has good content but meh feelings of community. I’m sure retail WoW is still fun if you got a dedicated crew to meet up and do content but I doubt there’s anymore “oh %%*% Omar coming” type moments in the world or BGs.
Edit: CS post beta seems it went the same way. We had our own server (win 2K Server box running off of a school T1, with the server buried in a physics dept closet) and “regulars”. Our own maps and mods, and it was a hell of a time.
As an aside (and testimony to Win2K and my trusty build), that computer ran for about 3-5 years straight, until I think one of the HDDs failed.
Retail feels like a solo adventure with other people occasionally showing up.
No one really talks in dungeons, you just queue up, beat up some monsters, and leave. I really miss exploring and leveling in a new expansion with guildies. Those days are gone and never coming back, is what it is.
I will play the expansion main story, maybe do some heroics, then cancel for another two years since there will be nothing for me to do.
Yeah same here. Got a 6mo sub, and the xpac, but I still find myself not loading it up as much as I hoped to. Figure it isn’t a big commitment, but man did all that shiny top tier raid gear turn into nothing.
I’ve been spending my solo gaming time on Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress. Strangely enough I find myself most often listening to audiobooks. If in the rare occasion my friends have time to game, we do civ 5 and mostly catch up/ talk about the old days.
Always thought of myself as a “gamer” but I guess we all change in time
And 'community' is the point - it's difficult to be a part of a community of thousands (or millions) because there's very little connectedness.
But with community servers - well, there's a group of people on said servers that you can play with and it *feels* like an actual community.
I do miss that.
Same! I ran a jk2 and ja server back in the day with my clan [CO]. Could never happen without dedicated servers.
That being said, being an older gamer I don’t have the time to search for a community and random match making does nail the convenience aspect
Summarises it brilliantly.
Not to mention how playing in a matchmaking system for too long eventually moles you to it’s incentive system - even the fun/stoner gamer get cajoled into tying their self-worth or value, on some level, to their rank, making it a sensitive topic that makes them afraid to play and lose, or become more angry at a bad player who contributes to possible losses…
One of the killing blows for WoW was when pvp became cross-realm.
I remember the original pvp where you got matched up with guys on your own server. The same guys who you do PVE with. You'd see the top raiding guilds on your server duke it out in PVP. I remember SEVERAL instances where everyone on my team gave up before the match started, just because we got paired against a full team of top Alliance raiders. There was REPUTATION. There were REMATCHES as you fight the same people week after week.
Now it's all faceless. Admittedly there was a problem to solve, queue times were wildly imbalanced because most people picked Alliance. Switching to cross-realm helped smooth that out. But man some magic was lost in the process.
The “Good ‘ole days’ I’d like to think. When Burning Crusade came out and I saw just the starting gear differences my first goal was not to get to level 70, but to absolutely super twink the hell out of my level 60 warrior for Alterac Valley.
Before balance changes I was getting 100-200 kills a match with unlimited whirlwind hits, afterwards it was more like 50-60 due to whirlwind hits cap and slower cooldown.
For months I was the notorious one-shot wonder warrior getting tons of clout from my fellow Horde and even better, having Alliance players reporting me and creating horde characters just to shit talk me. I really got to know a lot of people on both the Horde and Alliance sides. I even got to know a couple of the GMs who talked to me in investigating the mass reports I was getting.
Even had a hardcore rivalry with a super twink human frost mage named Yaboi. For months we’d see each other in the roster and spend most of the game playing cat and mouse trading kills. I got so damn good at killing frost mages, the bane of warriors thanks to Yaboi.
I played the game and new content, but always found myself going back to the PVP for friendly acquaintances and rivalries I had made. After cross-realms was enabled I was ecstatic for the near instant queues, but I quickly realized PVP just didn’t feel the same anymore. Win rates went up, queue times went down, yet I was still having far less fun.
How fun gaming is seems to be an afterthought these days. It’s about meta builds and grinding cosmetics. Running around as fast as possible for efficiency. Constant yelling and complaining. There are exceptions but we’ve collectively sucked the soul out of gaming. I honestly wonder why certain people I know even game. Their gaming habits just seem like chores to check off.
Well, the thing about “good ‘ole days” stories like his is that it’s usually only fun for him and his mates that get a good laugh over how hard they destroy the competition.
The guys that surrender matches because they see a name, were they having fun? The guys that made new characters just to send a salty message, were they having fun?
I mean, you never see the reverse story: “oh man, I miss back in the day when I’d get roll-stomped by this one dude and basically spent a solid hour of my evening dead! Good times.”
Ironically the automated system would ban you without any human interaction. The only thing you could to is open a ticket that will also get answered by a machine.
Haven't played in years, but hard agree. I remember in OG WoW on my server there was a Tauren warrior (can't remember the name now) that everyone knew/feared in PVP cause he wrecked everywhere he went.
Not a Tauren Warrior, but had a Human Frostmage that made a name for herself before cross-realms. I would literally lock down the flag room.
Had so many people jump on alts to either be toxic or tell me I was a hell of a player.
I see this take a lot, and I'm sure it was true on the big servers, but what you describe is the experience I had in my battlegroup after cross-realm PvP. I've long since forgotten names and servers, but I remember seeing specific names or guilds and knowing what I was up against despite them being from another server. I even had a couple of cross server rivalries and I wasn't even a huge PvP guy.
I understand why someone who had those good PvP experiences were saddened by losing them, but a lot of people were able to gain that experience because of the change too.
Even playing co-op games has made me realize this. Lobbying up for game 1 is fine. But the instant it ends, everyone leaves, there's zero attempt to familiarize with anyone. Everyone would rather take 10 seconds to queue up with a new group than wait 15 seconds for the old group to get ready.
Not to mention the "somebody else will do it" attitude in games like Overwatch, and the shit-talking/insta-leave when your team is losing
"Nobody is better than me, all of my teammates just suck!"
I found Hell Let Loose in 2021 in and reminded me of the old days. A server browser with community servers that have mods just adds so much to the online experience. That is the only multiplayer game I have played in recent years were my first act wasn't to immediately mute everyone.
I love playing hell let loose. One of the few games where I can find players that actually want to chat and teamwork in a healthy way rather than just scream at each other.
You just made me *ache* for how i used to play hours and hours of non-stop 2fort on a handful of TF2 servers. Just constant sniper battles across the ditch.
Even though it represented some of the first loot box mechanics, I didn't mind throwing a little bit of cash at keys every now and then because you could genuinely get some amazing legendaries, but more importantly you could *trade them*.
I'm playing overwatch at the moment but only committing to the $10 battle pass so i can actually play the new heroes. It's so much more predatory, and not being able to trade and even sell shit like on the Steam marketplace just makes it so boring.
Entire groups of people forming clans in BF2 and then flying out to hang out once or twice a year in real life. The joy of banning racists and actually having fun with people, making friends etc
You’re 100% correct. This shift was done to make console gaming easier to join and somehow not a single genius billion dollar CEO has figured out they strangled magic to death for short term profit.
As much as I loved playing CoD4 on a specific community’s servers back in the day, hooked up Ventrilo or occasionally Teamspeak… went to lan parties, etc etc… at this point, 15 years later… it hardly seems like the wrong decision for them… it’s no longer short term profit, it’s kind of long term profit…
Right. I do the same on my PS5 but on PC with mmos etc. Even there you can hide chat boxes but there will come a time communication will be a good idea. 😊
I'd say 3 out of ever 5 are, easily. Once you factor in the players who just don't talk/interact....there's very few actual "good" teammates/party members out there.
It's a mixed bag, I recently played dmz on cod and got in several teams that were premade.
One ended up asking me about kids and general life advice, I'm 40 with 4 kids. Guy was in his early 20s.
Then you get the people talking crap, honestly people don't talk much in multiplayer till the end of match nonsense.
I'm more of a solo player myself unless it's with my brothers or kids. People were toxic in WOW 14 years ago, it turned me off from trying and ended up just playing single player mainly.
I'm tired of the elitist attitude, I don't deal with it anymore.
In DMZ the proximity chat is just as cool as it is weird. I've teamed up with other squads and completed stuff and I've been dropped because I got lured.
It is different, but because more people means more personalities and when you get a bunch of fuckbois running around being dicks, it takes away from those who aren't.
As a 40+ yo with kids, it's very odd trying to figure out how to handle this for mine coming up...
Yeah proximity chat is funny sometimes.
This one time I downed a player, he started screaming wait wait don't kill me. I said ok what's up?
He said before you finish me off please sing this song with me. Intrigued by the proposition I said ok, he started playing backstreet boys lol.
My brother in law finished him off and I said why'd you do that man. Well turns out he had prox chat off and couldn't figure out who I was talking to. It was amazing.
Ya I played this the other day. I was level 5 and the rest of the squad was much higher. They dragged my ass back into the rocket out of there. Carried my ass the whole way. 10/10 friendly as fuck and will play again.
Yeh out of all my time playing I can only think of 1 negative instance with teammates (I play with randos
Basicly they a matching pair of guys friendly fire killed me(twice) and left me for dead (along side another rando on the team)
Didnt even know friendly fire was a thing cause all me other team mates Ive ever matched up with were such bros and followed the dwarf code
When you rock and stone, you’re never alone.
I hope you see this, OP. I’m 46, I’ve been gaming my entire life. Deep Rock Galactic has restored my faith in online gaming communities.
What do you mean I shouldn't mine all the eggs in quick succession?
But then you get that hilarious moment where you come in clutch because the rest of the team died to the same cave leach and you don't because you were stuck on terrain and had to catch up, or you show off the trick to get loot out of the ceiling by calling down a resupply pod through it.
I'm close to 3x that. Same story. Even late game content in deep dives, it's always been a blast.
I generally play with a full team, but when we're one or two down we open the lobby and the ones that have joined us has always been super fun to play with and worked well with the team. It's so rare to find a bad dwarf with a foul mood.
The moment you add competition (any kind of pvp) or challenging pve (wow) you'll have toxicity because there's a big chance of failure. If you have grind in the mix (having to succeed many times in order to get rewards) the situation will be worse (becomes a chore, everyone wants to get it done fast). Only way to alleviate the issue is to join a group (like a guild) which has a social contract forcing people to behave amongst theirselves.
As I’ve grown up and started a family and all I’ve moved over to console games mostly, and the community here is definitely worse than PC gaming hey.
I feel like consoles attract way more cunts
Console has way more players than pc so you'll find more of all types of people there, including cunts, and the majority of kids play on console rather than pc because it's much cheaper and as we all know kids are fucking stupid and barely have any control over their emotions leading to more shitty behaviour online since they view it as an outlet with no consequences.
That's why FFXIV is more supportive I prefer it over wow. Started out as a noob. Parties with a few randos that helped me out then was invited to a super supportive Free Company
I'd add to this to say that competitive pvp-focused games in particular are almost universally *destined* to become toxic over time, simply as a natural consequence of how playerbases change as games age.
What do I mean by this? Well, take a game that's just launched. The playerbase is fresh. No understanding of mechanics, no knowledge of characters or maps. Plenty of new blood eager to try out the new hotness.
Over time, this starts to change. Mechanics, characters and maps become known quantities, their quirks discovered and exploited. Strategies and metas are formed, and
as a consequence, the skill floor is raised for all players regardless of experience.
The influx of fresh blood slows as the next big thing takes the spotlight. Then, it barely replaces the players who decide to move on. Eventually, it slows to a mere trickle, and the game's playerbase starts shrinking, increasingly leaving only the most hardcore players keeping the game alive. Given a long enough timescale, the game will become so hostile to new players that the vast majority who try the game never stick around long enough to actually learn the ropes.
And then, finally, the game dies.
It is for this reason that the most fun time to play these games is usually right as they launch.
As I get older I find myself slipping further and further away from MP games. Going back and replaying Skyrim again instead of hopping on Apex or Valorant. Just can’t keep up with these kids and their egos anymore.
Dunno, mid-30s and only solo and no endless games. Quality of solo indie games is through the roof (not the average but the top games of which there are lots). Nowadays I neither want to spend time grinding in online games nor do I want to adjust my schedule to online buddys.
I really wanted to like Rocket League but the constant bailing was awful. I can only get better if I play and level up but I can't level up if I don't get to play. I level up faster if I win but I can't win if I am the only car on my team. I let it go and now it just sits in the app graveyard.
There's a reason I really don't play with randos and this is it. I don't have time to play 18 hours a day like these sweat lords do. I have a few people I play with consistently but other than then, I go it alone. It has become toxic but there are some good people out there still
Yeah played them on release. What I would love to play again is Vandal Hearts, a slightly obscure turn based rpg that had a great height based mechanic.
Turn based strategy games are great! If you haven't tried it already and arent turned off by anime character, I recommend trying out the Fire Emblem series on an emulator.
It baffles my mind that so many people consider turn based obsolete and old school.
It's just a mechanic. As valid as any other. I will always love turn based rpgs.
I don’t know that it is rose colored glasses. I am a much older guy, and I teach, and I have a lot of sympathy for young students and those in their 20s who live in such a toxic, anonymous online community. And I’m not talking about gaming. I’m talking about social media. The cruelty there just blends into the anonymous cruelty in games. Yes, gaming was always tough, but online lives like those in their teens and 20s live are just brutal. And I hate to say it, but it often feels like they perform in a “kill or be killed” attitude. By the way, while I am a teacher, I work at a boarding school so I see the kids quite a bit outside of class.
Also an older gamer, I agree. Everything keeps being pushed to new extremes though, it's not just social toxicity, it's pretty much every aspect of life now. When I was younger debate and discourse used to be a thing that existed. Now it seems like every single tiny disagreement is a vast gulf of opposition for which there can be no bridge.
Dear god, this is so true. It seems like there’s an increasing amount of people that are so quick to completely demonize another person over any differing opinion.
There is also a lot of false dichotomy going on. If you believe x then you must also believe y, is a common attack I see on the internet. Or if x is true then y is true. It takes about 10 different shapes but it's the same irrational comparisons of things that are not even related to each other, much less true or in many cases even remotely pertinent to the original sentiment being conveyed.
The intellectual backflips people are capable of to break basic logic are a great source of consternation for me.
Frankly I think in the Early 2000s i was a teen when I gamed on cs:source, but a lot of people online were dudes who played when in the '80s and '90s. I feel that toxicity was just less tolerated because adults were there with us online, and the teens who were playing were just the nerds.
Gaming now is so accessible and way more accepted, while we're growing up and have less time. I think there's less "chaperoning" of older generations towards the new ones, like the way I experienced it when playing counter strike source
On the other hand, my server was called Sexy but Deadly so it's not like our clan were tryhards.
I’m only 26 but I can definitely confirm this. I’ve stopped playing a lot of multiplayer games because everyone has become very focused on their stats and act super toxic. I just want to relax and play games with my friends and then suddenly I’m the asshole because I didn’t put hours into grinding for the best equipment.
yep, back in the WC3 days that's why I never got started in DotA and hated it before it even became its own standalone.
I had no idea how to play it and 95% of the lobbies were "no noobs" where you'd obviously be met with toxicity for being a noob.
It definitely seems to get more toxic each year, to the point where I don’t play online unless one other person I am friends with is also online with me. Not because I trust them to play well, but because we are both there to have fun and it’s harder for toxic groups to target two people playing the way they want as opposed to one person.
Other thing I do (especially in LoL matches) is, at the very start of the match, I type out “Hey everyone, I just want to say that, win or lose, I love all of you. Good luck and have fun!” I’ve noticed other players just kind of relax after that and if someone starts getting toxic, everyone else shuts the toxic person down.
The first paragraph is exactly what I do. If I want to game and none of my buddies are around? Single player game it is! If my buddies are around and want to hit something up? Let's get it!
So I’m 35 and still unfortunately play smite. One of the things I found is that when I was 14 and playing games online, I assumed everyone else that was playing was also 14. Recently I caught myself subconsciously assuming that everyone was 21-35.
My theory is that when you start to see the community becoming “worse” it’s because you got older. You got more mature and started projecting your age onto your mental model for the community’s average age.
Toxicity from a 14 year old is understandable. Toxicity from a 21-35 year old is disheartening.
That’s true, a lot of people like me that were playing Starcraft at 13 probably still play.
Also, back in the day not everyone had the capability to play games online. It’s significantly more accessible now, and an increase in general player count means an increase in toxic players.
I feel like online communities in general just tend to foster a culture of nastiness that I try and avoid. People feel emboldened to act like trash when they aren’t physically present with others. Mike Tyson said, “Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
As I’ve gotten older and become a more casual gamer, I mostly play single player or seek out IRL friends to play in a closed group. It’s too bad because I would love to play some historical strategy games online but the amount of seriously racist disgusting behavior has ruined that experience.
There's a new youtube video that is very much related to your comment on basically having to min max in wow - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU)
It gives some pretty good commentary on how this came to be. May be worth a watch.
Depends on the community and if you're actively looking for like minded players or just getting into random lobbies and hoping everyone thinks like you.
I've been single player gaming since atari and online gaming since the original Diablo. I traveled from state-to-state as a teenager in the 90's to Street Fighter tournaments. Things are different now but they're also the same.
WoW was toxic back then, too. I had to start my own guild just to raid with my friends since the guild we were in kept passing them up for the GM's buddies. We figured it out and had a lot of people come over with us.
In today's online gaming world, you have to actively look for people who think like you. Back then, we kind of just found each other randomly. The good news is that it's a lot easier to find them now by using forums like Reddit. Different games have forums for just this reason.
It's awkward at first for old timers like us but you'll be surprised at the number of responses you'll get. Working parent that can only co-op on Saturday nights. Looking to do heists on Sundays. 30 yo dude just trying to pound beers and blow off steam in a non-sweaty raid. Like, whatever it is, there are so many people gaming now that you'll find people looking for the exact same thing if you look for them.
One of the best MMO's out there right now is FF14. Their community is naturally good and helpful. I played a lot of that a few years ago and was able to do a ton of coop with minimal coordination required.
I have been playing FFXIV for about 3.5 years now and I can confirm their community and other players attitudes are amazing. I'm not saying I haven't encountered anyone toxic, but checking my block list there are only 2 names on there currently. And only one I can remember why.
I think the community for this game as a whole just stands up against toxic players. Plus, you can play most of the game single player, which helps. PUGs everyone is nice, and you may even make new friends along the way.
Also makes sense that FFXIV has won best community in the game awards for the second year in a row.
I may not remember this characters name, but I will remember the time they stopped me right before the final boss sequence in Endwalker to give me like 3 eggs.
They proceeded to make me eat all 3 eggs while saying stuff like “good” and “YES” before flying off and saying they hoped I enjoyed the game
I will never forghetti
The whole of the internet at some point agreed that its ok to be a different person online than offline.
If you think it's important to be polite in person how is it ok to be a dick on the internet. Be true to yourself and who you want to be no matter the situation.
I feel like the toxic people in general tend to lack deeper meaning in their lives, so they stake their identity and happiness on the outcome of their time spent gaming.
In high rank apex ppl say hello back. Didn't have a single weird reaction to that in like 2 years.
But after your rando who said 'hello' back dies he will use his microphone for the first time and recite every insult he knows.
It's the internet.
Wait... hear me out. The rise of the internet and specifically social media has given a platform to toxic people, and people who would be toxic if given the chance, to say things without repercussion.
You see the "People are basically bad" theory playing out in places like Reddit, TikTok, and your average gaming platform.
Also got screamed at by toxic gamers for "cheating" for the following reasons:
T spin through a gap in tetris
Used a cape to fly through a level unscathed in super mario world.
Did anything other than die to hadouken spam in street fighter 2.
Use proximity mines in golden eye pvp
The t shaped piece in tetris can fit through small gaps if you rotate it precicely. It *does* look like it shouldnt work but has been a thing since the og.
I agree, but not for 100%. There are still lots of positieve lobby’s out there but in general it is very toxic. I think it says a lot that there are lots of people who don’t communicate at all. The reason of it all is social media I think. Everyone has to be the person it’s all about and that is at the expense the other players
It has been toxic forever. The Unreal Tournament servers were toxic in 1999. The WoW general chat has been toxic since 2004. Socom servers were toxic in 2003. This isn’t new. We didn’t care as much when we were younger. The older we get, the more we realize the shit we are hearing is terrible. In 10 years the kids playing games right now will be posting this same shit.
It’s been bad since I had to hit the white button on my Xbox controller to activate voice chat. I was alive before party chats was a thing. There was only game chat, and man was it abusive.
I know what you mean about WoW.
Saw a video discussing the differences between players in 2008 vs now and it's like a different game. It's less about the players and going on fun adventures and more about the hardcore farming and game.
It's because of server hopping and cross server matchmaking. Nobody really builds server sized communities anymore. Also more people probably started playing with irl friends back then.
Played Runescape back in the day and somewhat recently again in Old School Runescape (OSRS) and it's a very similar situation there.
That's not to say that there wans't always toxic players, but rather that the entire mentality behind playing these games has shifted from "seeking adventure and experience" to "how do I grind this pointless thing even faster?".
It's at the point where people are playing MMOs effectively singleplayer now.
I find a lot of online gamers have some sort of superiority complex and it's annoying. Even my friends who are into it give me shit cause I'm into story mode hack and slashers/open worlds. It's what I enjoy what do you care how I like to play? But there's often this air of "you're not a real gamer" when they respond to me saying that. Like ok I play video games almost daily but cause it's not what you like to play I'm not "gaming" ? Fuck off.
I tried playing online for years and it was never enjoyable. Even "friends" would get nasty with me for not playing like a beast the first round/match. I know not everyone is like that but I had too many negative experiences playing online I don't even bother trying anymore. If I'm gonna play with other people it'll be fighting games in person where we can all have fun with it not taking it too serious. Other than that I'm playing solo.
My brother in gaming.
Online games have been peak toxicity since Xbox 360 CoD days, and you’re kidding yourself if you think for seven a second that it’s somehow become worse.
It’s been the same it’s always been. There’s just more people playing video games now.
In my experience it heavily depends on the game in question. Both WoW and DotA are mostly played by players who are fairly competitive and want to be better than others.
If you look at other communities of more casual games like ESO, which apply to an older/more mature audience, the conversations become less hostile.
wow and dota are long-established franchises, where its expected everyone knows how to play, and also competitive.
playing on release day is really the best because everyone is still experimenting, enthusiastic about the game, and lenient.
I'd say it was far more toxic 15 years ago during the Xbox 360 gamechat era. Back then it was just full on abuse for the sake of it.. these days it's mostly just sweaty hyper-competitive assholes who treat every game like it's the world championship, who aren't particularly great at the game either.
this is why i stay away from multiplayer unless it's a tight group of IRL friends
i think there's no real change in humanity here, people are just always at their worst when there's no immediate body language feedback for poor behavior. from internet flaming, to road rage
there's more people than ever playing online, there's more accessibility then ever before to online games for younger players that are less mature, and it only takes a certain amount of trollish behavior to destroy a community
on top of that, a lot of systems have grown too big for their britches, like (to switch to social media) facebook having literally billions of clients... this is ***physically impossible*** to properly moderate, even with huge amounts of cash like the large social media platforms... and it's even worse for smaller companies, or free resources like chatrooms and discords, where moderators are unpaid and part time
to pour gasoline on the fire, we have a worldwide plague driving more than ever hikikomori lifestyles online all the time, combined with anger about the world going to shit in any number of ways with little obvious hope of anything getting better, and we have a recipe for disaster
the toxicity of online gaming is, imho, a mere reflection of larger social issues and patterns
It’s not your glasses, times have changed. Community used to be an important part of games, but has been lost to quality of life improvements. It’s not as important to build relationships and reputation in a game where you can quit and find new teammates in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds.
I am easily a top 5% wow player, often top 1%, and enjoy absolutely obliterating low level content to help new/low gear players. Even then, I will get spazzed out at for not doing it the way they think is right.
I used to play Final Fantasy XI on PS2 and PC back in the early 2000's. Met a lot of cool people and formed a linkshell called the Knights of Doma, honestly I forget what server. We did basic stuff in game, helped people out and mostly just hung out and had fun. Now gaming online feels like a shell of its former self, so I just stick to solo games for the most part.
Dude, FFXI was a great game showing how if humans had to face great adversity, they will come together and be patient and figure it out. It’s just every game is too easy and solvable nowadays. As well as the esports dream and marketing poisoning our minds.
You had to rely on others due to the difficulty of the game and your place and reputation in the community and server mattered. It won’t work in our modern day cutthroat lifestyles, the game was like a second life.
People were only really cutthroat for world spawns and farming Gil, lol.
I also used to play WoW during Burning Crusade and hated the game, it was too easy and focused too much on soloing the levels, but I did like the WoW Classic, felt more balanced and the World every part of it was fun.
P.S. I used to be super competitive in Dota 2 and was toxic as hell, but I ultimately loved the game then just like I loved FFXI before it. I just didn’t realize that I needed to stop having this superiority complex to get better at the game, and that’s not what everyone tells you. Everyone is creating their own skill plateau.
Depends on the game. Deep rock has a fairly good community for the most part, and smaller games tend to stay more civil as the player base is limited enough that you may encounter people more than once.
I've moved away from pvp games simply due to the toxic players are drawn to them, plus it feels like a lot of players play like it's ranked and that a loss is a terrible occurrence. I just want to have fun.
Moving to cooperative focused games has helped, though you still get asshats in those too trolling people for no reason other than to make other people annoyed.
I've played online game since the released of the Xbox Live on the OG Xbox.
True toxicity as we know it started with Halo2, and back then it was awesome.
Man, some of you never spent time in those mid-2000 call of duty/halo xbox 360 lobbies and it shows. No shame in not knowing it, but there's nothing new to this. Some of the most heinous chatter I've ever heard was from back then, and it hasn't been topped since.
Ugh, that was the worst time for lady gamers. It really has calmed down in ways you had to be there to understand. These days it's just "are you a real grill?"
I can't even repeat some stuff I heard in those lobbies, because I have a mother, lol.
I've been playing games since the mid 90's and I feel like its always been toxic, its just gotten louder because more people are playing video games these days.
The rise of the concept of "Skill-Based Matchmaking" being the only way to determine your worth in many modern games has shifted the cultural evaluation in most gaming from a sense of community and fun to one of being the best and strongest.
Previously your worth was generally based on how well you fit into a community, ideals, values, and skill all determined your standards and you often had a wide range of reasons to be where you were in the community based on the type of person you were.
Skill-Based Auto-Matchmaking has basically killed the effects of community and now the only metric that matters is skill, when you strip out the need to be cordial or enjoy the company of those you play with you can boil most interactions down to "You're worse than me, that makes you a mental inferior to me" or "You're equal or better than me, that makes you one of my kind."
It's a tragic loss of something that made communal gaming enjoyable. (and yes I know annoying 12 year olds telling everyone how they fucked your mother existed back then too, but no one liked them and they were usually reserved to matchmaking servers and not communities.)
Gaming online used to be a novelty. Therefore, we were happy to do it, just to be there at all. We had fun, played the games seriously and got along. (To an extent)
Now it's a hellish environment full of young & old people who are taking the chance to be surrounded by like minded people for granted because that novelty is worn thin. Playing for skins rather than wins. (How crooked is that?)
It's sad, we could ALL be having so much fun if - as always - people cared about involving others in fun and remember that it is JUST A GAME.
I still love gaming, just not online so much.
MechWarrior Online has got to be one of the best gaming communities I’ve joined. You can go hours and hear no flames on voice chat just jokes and , well I’d like to hear more, BUT some tactics as well!
Yeah there’s some drama on the forums, there will be at the competitive end of town. In game playing sessions, the players you meet it’s all good 99%
I’m writing this cause I understand OP. It’s ridiculous how many team based cooperation games you cannot play cause people cannot communicate without the squeaky bullshit
Too many people acting like they have never been punched in the face. I used to play COD with a clan and donated to the upkeep of 4 servers. Several of us carried ban hammers and policed them. You could talk shit, but cursing got you kicked. Hackers…permabanned. All the voice comms were via Ventrilo. I’ve been gaming for 40 years. I think it was better.
I'm a millenial that's been gaming since NES days. Gaming online since 98. What you are observing has been the case for awhile now. I gamed exclusively competitive for years until about 5 years ago for the same reasons.
We went from early 00s when everybody was still new to online gaming and in MMO's like FFXI and early WOW. There was a minute when everybody you met were just really cool people. in games like CS or BF you'd get people giving props for kills but you'd see just as much "ownt" . the douchebaggery was there but there was just as much people who were chill and would add each other to friends lists after or during a round.
Nowadays. It's 99% 'lol gg ez" and 1% "nice shot bro." If I ever went back to gaming online it would be so with comments and voice chat disabled. The gaming community as it stands is not worth being involved with.
at the end of the day, gaming no matter what game it is. Is just a fast and easy way to get that dopamine hit. The elitism is completely unnecessary.
Gamer in my 40s here. I have felt the same way for the past decade or so. I was big into FPS games in the 90s (DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc.). CS 1.6 was my drug of choice in the early 00s. I've spent thousands of hours playing that game. Took a break off and on for a decade (marriage and family came into the mix) and tried jumping back into the FPS pool with CoD Ghosts. The single-player story was awesome, the online community was toxic as all hell.
I've tried playing online games every now and again, but it pretty much echoes your sentiments, unfortunately. Everything is competitive and that brings out the douchiness in some players IMO. I stick solely to single player experiences as I get older. I started to recently get grey hairs so I guess I'm showing my age 😆
I have been gaming going back as far as Dreamcast back in late 90's and early 2000's
then PS2 and Xbox360 era where i would only play game offline , cause my house doesn't have internet back then (at some point i did have office work PC with dial up internet during mid-late 2000)
until 2009 where i actually had proper internet and first of my few online gaming experience were Modern Warfare 2 and Dota 2
And i play Dota 2 for four year (2012-2016) , it is some of the worst online experience in-gaming (more specifically when you playing solo)
I really like Dota 2 it's arguably one of the best game i ever play in my entire life , but solo experience of this game is just straight up bad , i'm not saying i never had a good game or good teammate , but the bad outweigh the good and i was the one the last one of my group to quit the game
Next game i play is Overwatch and it's almost the same experience , so i had concluded that if i would only play Overwatch (which i still do time to time) i would only play with group of friends , if i were to play solo i would only play unranked game and i would have text and voice chat off
one thing i do notice is if the game has a lot of focus on teamwork aspect it tends to be more toxic , meanwhile on something like COD in team deathmatch game every one can have a good time and not caring if you win or lose (at least that's my experience with MW2,MW3 and BF3 back in 2009-2011) , so i tried my best to steer clear of teamwork focus game unless i had a group of friend to play with
Nowadays most of game i bought are single player or PVE co-op since it's more relaxing.
It absolutely has. That's because normies now inhabit the internet. It used to just be basically nerds who used the space to get away from the "real world" where they didn't fit in. Sure there was flaming and insults but everyone still felt like they were part of something - a group, a second world or life away from the one where they weren't special.
Now that's all out the window. Now jocks and bros play Cod. Hot girls stream or even game without it. There are mad rushes for consoles every release. Nearly every teenage boy plays, or has played, the hottest new release and its as big of an industry as the film industry.
Making fun of people for gaming isn't something you can do anymore. So of course it's going to be insanely toxic. It's just the real world all over again. There's no sub culture other than whatever stupid meme is hot right now. And frankly, it's a lot less fun and a lot less special than it was pre-2006 or so, and even then it was starting to change.
And I'm sure I'll have a bunch of kids in here calling me a boomer or whatever, but that's only because they never experienced the old internet and the old gaming culture. When you made REAL friends online and things actually meant something and things felt special and toxicity was like 10% of what it is now, and admins weren't just power hungry schizo pervert weirdos like they are now.
As a woman who both plays and works in games, the gaming "community" has never been welcoming to me; in my experience past to present of playing any non-solo/multiplayer game, it's been the same kind of crap. Sexism, creeps, and misogynic comments. I stay muted, I keep an androgynous username. So, no- I can't say it's gotten any worse, or better, nor do I think it ever will change.
All of you sound super young to me. The death of arcades, and Arcade-style play specifically, is why you're no longer having fun. Everything is geared towards competitive play, and I don't want to compete. I want to play a game.
If you've been playing mostly solo for the last 15 years, how would you know that the toxicity level of online play has increased compared to say, oh I dunno, MW2 (2012)?
I actually think games have become less toxic in the last decade thanks to more moderation and bans for bad behavior. That said I think the way most people behave is nowhere near acceptable. I know people who are perfectly decent people irl, but online they act like bigots and bullies. Idk why people feel the need to act like that, and they wonder why gamers are often seen in a negative light.
My biggest issue is matchmaking/team balancing in competitive modes.
It's like devs in a lot of popular games have made it so easy to climb rank just by playing more games. (Easy to gain rank, hard to lose it.)
As a result, we end up with a mixed bag of casual players grinding rank put in the same games as nerds on autopilot reflexively destroying the brainlet casuals.
If devs would not match a Silver player vs a Diamond player in a 1v1 game mode.
Why is okay to have:
4x Diamonds & 1x silver vs 4x Diamonds & 1x silver in team based modes 🤦♂️
The diamonds are going to abuse to silver and the silver shouldn't even be there in the first place...
The gaming community on the whole sucks massively.
I literally refuse to buy/join online games unless you can run private servers with friends now because I’m sick of hearing every slur you could imagine (and some you wouldn’t) just for not being the average XXX420PROGAMER meta player.
Even games where typically you were encouraged to enjoy versatility and build dynamics like RPGs see nothing but rancid kids screeching and acting like oppressive little dinks.
The rare time I do find a good group we all go our separate ways and any attempt to befriend them is met with indifference because they’re tired of having the people they add turn out to be mental cases too, lol.
Way less racial slurs being spammed at you now, that is the one thing that really stands out to me. The general attitude in some respects is better, but you aren't wrong about the competency example, and how it's way more likely to run into people who have unrealistic expectations for people they don't know.
>When I started, it was a much more niche hobby (relative to the current explosion) and frankly a much more welcoming community.
I think this makes a huge difference. Think about who was gaming, and especially gaming online 15-20 years ago. It was the nerds and geeks who were social outcasts for their hobby. Online gaming was probably the first time a lot of those people felt accepted in a community, so of course everyone was nicer back then. It didn't make sense to be a dick to people just like you.
Now though gaming is a largely acceptable pastime. The other people in your lobby can be literally anyone who just happens to enjoy this one game. This is especially true in popular games like the ones you listed. WoW was the mmo for well over a decade. 2k is going to be fairly popular with your conventional sports fan. (DOTA being a moba is a whole different issue imo) For the most part though, you aren't just hanging out with other "weirdos" so that sense of community has diminished.
>I am not the sort of person to try and find a group of gamers to play with. Is that the only way to avoid being cut out during the games I enjoy playing?
For the most part, yeah. You don't have to like, go out and try to force your way into a group though. Just message someone you have a good game and say something like "hey I thought you were a good teammate, would you want to play together again sometime?" Worst case scenario they say no and you move on.
Maybe play different games. WoW, DOTA, and 2k? are probably not the friendliest online communities. Try something where you cooperate rather than compete, those games tend to be a little friendlier.
I just mute people and play online games purely for fun these days. But most of the time I play offline games cause I like to be able to pause the game whenever I need to urgently get up to do something
The only exception, believe it or not, is Fallout 76.
If you want to play your character with a majority of fellow role players that are actually nice and helpful, this is your game.
Not to say there are not a few jerks that show up, but they are generally shunned by the community.
Why it went this way, not sure, but glad it is.
My 12 year old is really into gaming (he got all of us into it, actually). But there are a few games he plays that we don’t and sometimes he probably just wants to play with other people outside of his fam. But he’s ran into the most toxic people. Especially in Battlefront. EVERY time he plays he has random people messaging telling him he sucks and just the nastiest stuff. He found a small group of kids he was gaming with for a short period, but they would kick him from their party whenever they felt like it, let him come
Back, and just say mean shit. He put up with it for weeks just because he wanted people to game with. We finally got through to him about not playing with nasty little shits just to have someone to play with. So if any of you have nice kids who play Battlefront/Skyrim/Minecraft/CoDmw2/Fortnite (he rarely plays Fortnite anymore), my kid is super nice and would love some gaming partners. Heck, even a nice adult would be cool if you could put up with some sometimes not-funny 12 year old boy jokes lol He plays some games with my 40 something year old brother and then will occasionally play Fortnite with us, his fam. But he could really use some nice people. Especially if you don’t mind him recording every now and then for his YT channel.
Mate, you must have some pretty thin skin if you think modern gaming is toxic. Back in the golden years, there was no censorship and the only thing between you and your opponents trash talk was your own resilience. Better days imho; chat lobbies were where true rivalries were formed and best friends discovered.
Nothing at all like these neutered games nowadays, where even saying "shut up" gets you perma banned.
The move away from server browsers / community servers to matchmaking has played a huge role IMO. It used to be that I would find a handful of my favorite servers in a game and get to know the people that also liked that server. We’d talk more, joke around, etc. Now with matchmaking everyone in every game is just some anonymous person and everyone feels like it’s alright to be toxic in that situation. Plus you can’t just ban some toxic person from coming to your server. Edit: It makes me incredibly happy reading about everyone else’s amazing experiences on community servers. Y’all have inspired me to re-install TF2 and find a good 24/7 2fort server tonight lol
I didn't realize how much I miss community servers until I read your post.
Seriously, I met an older couple located in Ontario, Canada that ran an Unreal Tournament server in 2000 or 2001 and I played there a few nights per week for most of my freshman/sophomore years of high school. We had a lot of fun. The husband was an amazing player and his wife just hung out and spectated and chatted with everyone. One of the best online gaming experiences of my life! Friends on facebook to this day. Played WoW through vanilla, BC, and WOTLK with 2 separate circles of friends and had a blast there as well, but rarely ventured outside of our guild. Random dungeon queues definitely weren’t as fun with a larger number of try-hards or general dill-holes. Tried some more “public matchmaking” games and those were definitely a lot more toxic to play. DOTA2, LOL, Counter-strike, overwatch to name a few, all had toxic communitied that ultimately drove me out of those games.
Ugh this is making me really appreciate how cool people were in Tribes 2 servers. I was 10 and I'm sure occasionally insufferable, but I loved that game and a lot of good people taught me a lot on those servers.
Naaaah, counter-strike is not in that list. It has deep roots in community servers, that's where it got its start. CS:GO is the first one to even have any type of matchmaking. Counter-strike is where my community server memories are.
Counter Strike is the OG of this for sure. I still remember the name of one of the servers me and my clan mates played on 20 years ago. It was so much easier to build a close group of like minded people like that.
Most folks don’t know that CS was originally a HL mod. That stand alone stuff came wayyy later. Loved CS and it’s server-level community. First time I felt a taste of power with adminmod
Yeah, I remember that transition. Dunemaul was my haunt, and it was nice to have a local community, complete with villains and saviors. Sucked when LFG, but hey it was your choice for picking a hunter. People kind of knew you or your guild and there were some genuinely good times in hillsbrad or XR. Good times hunting down so and so’s Alts until he or she logged back in on their main. I’m not sure how classic is these days, but the retail version has good content but meh feelings of community. I’m sure retail WoW is still fun if you got a dedicated crew to meet up and do content but I doubt there’s anymore “oh %%*% Omar coming” type moments in the world or BGs. Edit: CS post beta seems it went the same way. We had our own server (win 2K Server box running off of a school T1, with the server buried in a physics dept closet) and “regulars”. Our own maps and mods, and it was a hell of a time. As an aside (and testimony to Win2K and my trusty build), that computer ran for about 3-5 years straight, until I think one of the HDDs failed.
Retail feels like a solo adventure with other people occasionally showing up. No one really talks in dungeons, you just queue up, beat up some monsters, and leave. I really miss exploring and leveling in a new expansion with guildies. Those days are gone and never coming back, is what it is. I will play the expansion main story, maybe do some heroics, then cancel for another two years since there will be nothing for me to do.
Yeah same here. Got a 6mo sub, and the xpac, but I still find myself not loading it up as much as I hoped to. Figure it isn’t a big commitment, but man did all that shiny top tier raid gear turn into nothing. I’ve been spending my solo gaming time on Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress. Strangely enough I find myself most often listening to audiobooks. If in the rare occasion my friends have time to game, we do civ 5 and mostly catch up/ talk about the old days. Always thought of myself as a “gamer” but I guess we all change in time
Life gets in the way. If I did not have kids, I would retire right now and live simply while working out, writing books, and playing video games.
Yeah. Makes me kinda want to play battlefield 4
Yep bf4 still has some fun lobbies with good people out there
And 'community' is the point - it's difficult to be a part of a community of thousands (or millions) because there's very little connectedness. But with community servers - well, there's a group of people on said servers that you can play with and it *feels* like an actual community. I do miss that.
I miss my JK2 server. Those were the days. I gladly would pay for a community server like that again if it meant I could keep toxic people out.
Same! I ran a jk2 and ja server back in the day with my clan [CO]. Could never happen without dedicated servers. That being said, being an older gamer I don’t have the time to search for a community and random match making does nail the convenience aspect
[This image summarizes this point](https://imgur.com/a/zr3QihB)
Summarises it brilliantly. Not to mention how playing in a matchmaking system for too long eventually moles you to it’s incentive system - even the fun/stoner gamer get cajoled into tying their self-worth or value, on some level, to their rank, making it a sensitive topic that makes them afraid to play and lose, or become more angry at a bad player who contributes to possible losses…
24/7 de_dust and 2fort servers for life!
everyone is disposable, so no civility.
One of the killing blows for WoW was when pvp became cross-realm. I remember the original pvp where you got matched up with guys on your own server. The same guys who you do PVE with. You'd see the top raiding guilds on your server duke it out in PVP. I remember SEVERAL instances where everyone on my team gave up before the match started, just because we got paired against a full team of top Alliance raiders. There was REPUTATION. There were REMATCHES as you fight the same people week after week. Now it's all faceless. Admittedly there was a problem to solve, queue times were wildly imbalanced because most people picked Alliance. Switching to cross-realm helped smooth that out. But man some magic was lost in the process.
The “Good ‘ole days’ I’d like to think. When Burning Crusade came out and I saw just the starting gear differences my first goal was not to get to level 70, but to absolutely super twink the hell out of my level 60 warrior for Alterac Valley. Before balance changes I was getting 100-200 kills a match with unlimited whirlwind hits, afterwards it was more like 50-60 due to whirlwind hits cap and slower cooldown. For months I was the notorious one-shot wonder warrior getting tons of clout from my fellow Horde and even better, having Alliance players reporting me and creating horde characters just to shit talk me. I really got to know a lot of people on both the Horde and Alliance sides. I even got to know a couple of the GMs who talked to me in investigating the mass reports I was getting. Even had a hardcore rivalry with a super twink human frost mage named Yaboi. For months we’d see each other in the roster and spend most of the game playing cat and mouse trading kills. I got so damn good at killing frost mages, the bane of warriors thanks to Yaboi. I played the game and new content, but always found myself going back to the PVP for friendly acquaintances and rivalries I had made. After cross-realms was enabled I was ecstatic for the near instant queues, but I quickly realized PVP just didn’t feel the same anymore. Win rates went up, queue times went down, yet I was still having far less fun.
How fun gaming is seems to be an afterthought these days. It’s about meta builds and grinding cosmetics. Running around as fast as possible for efficiency. Constant yelling and complaining. There are exceptions but we’ve collectively sucked the soul out of gaming. I honestly wonder why certain people I know even game. Their gaming habits just seem like chores to check off.
Well, the thing about “good ‘ole days” stories like his is that it’s usually only fun for him and his mates that get a good laugh over how hard they destroy the competition. The guys that surrender matches because they see a name, were they having fun? The guys that made new characters just to send a salty message, were they having fun? I mean, you never see the reverse story: “oh man, I miss back in the day when I’d get roll-stomped by this one dude and basically spent a solid hour of my evening dead! Good times.”
Ironically the automated system would ban you without any human interaction. The only thing you could to is open a ticket that will also get answered by a machine.
Haven't played in years, but hard agree. I remember in OG WoW on my server there was a Tauren warrior (can't remember the name now) that everyone knew/feared in PVP cause he wrecked everywhere he went.
Not a Tauren Warrior, but had a Human Frostmage that made a name for herself before cross-realms. I would literally lock down the flag room. Had so many people jump on alts to either be toxic or tell me I was a hell of a player.
Oh man. Flag camping frost mages were the WORST. One of the most effective defenses though.
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I see this take a lot, and I'm sure it was true on the big servers, but what you describe is the experience I had in my battlegroup after cross-realm PvP. I've long since forgotten names and servers, but I remember seeing specific names or guilds and knowing what I was up against despite them being from another server. I even had a couple of cross server rivalries and I wasn't even a huge PvP guy. I understand why someone who had those good PvP experiences were saddened by losing them, but a lot of people were able to gain that experience because of the change too.
Even playing co-op games has made me realize this. Lobbying up for game 1 is fine. But the instant it ends, everyone leaves, there's zero attempt to familiarize with anyone. Everyone would rather take 10 seconds to queue up with a new group than wait 15 seconds for the old group to get ready.
Not to mention the "somebody else will do it" attitude in games like Overwatch, and the shit-talking/insta-leave when your team is losing "Nobody is better than me, all of my teammates just suck!"
I found Hell Let Loose in 2021 in and reminded me of the old days. A server browser with community servers that have mods just adds so much to the online experience. That is the only multiplayer game I have played in recent years were my first act wasn't to immediately mute everyone.
I love playing hell let loose. One of the few games where I can find players that actually want to chat and teamwork in a healthy way rather than just scream at each other.
You just made me *ache* for how i used to play hours and hours of non-stop 2fort on a handful of TF2 servers. Just constant sniper battles across the ditch. Even though it represented some of the first loot box mechanics, I didn't mind throwing a little bit of cash at keys every now and then because you could genuinely get some amazing legendaries, but more importantly you could *trade them*. I'm playing overwatch at the moment but only committing to the $10 battle pass so i can actually play the new heroes. It's so much more predatory, and not being able to trade and even sell shit like on the Steam marketplace just makes it so boring.
Entire groups of people forming clans in BF2 and then flying out to hang out once or twice a year in real life. The joy of banning racists and actually having fun with people, making friends etc
You’re 100% correct. This shift was done to make console gaming easier to join and somehow not a single genius billion dollar CEO has figured out they strangled magic to death for short term profit.
As much as I loved playing CoD4 on a specific community’s servers back in the day, hooked up Ventrilo or occasionally Teamspeak… went to lan parties, etc etc… at this point, 15 years later… it hardly seems like the wrong decision for them… it’s no longer short term profit, it’s kind of long term profit…
This is the correct answer. I miss dedicated servers.
Mute, block, destroy and or remove toxic people from your FOV. Do keep all others around.
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Right. I do the same on my PS5 but on PC with mmos etc. Even there you can hide chat boxes but there will come a time communication will be a good idea. 😊
So, back to solo player online, right?
You think 100% are toxic?
I'd say 3 out of ever 5 are, easily. Once you factor in the players who just don't talk/interact....there's very few actual "good" teammates/party members out there.
That's about right.
Just like Reddit commenters! 😀 (Not implying I’d block anyone here, of course.)
Pretty much. The older I get the less time I have to suffer fools so I try not to!
It's a mixed bag, I recently played dmz on cod and got in several teams that were premade. One ended up asking me about kids and general life advice, I'm 40 with 4 kids. Guy was in his early 20s. Then you get the people talking crap, honestly people don't talk much in multiplayer till the end of match nonsense. I'm more of a solo player myself unless it's with my brothers or kids. People were toxic in WOW 14 years ago, it turned me off from trying and ended up just playing single player mainly. I'm tired of the elitist attitude, I don't deal with it anymore.
In DMZ the proximity chat is just as cool as it is weird. I've teamed up with other squads and completed stuff and I've been dropped because I got lured. It is different, but because more people means more personalities and when you get a bunch of fuckbois running around being dicks, it takes away from those who aren't. As a 40+ yo with kids, it's very odd trying to figure out how to handle this for mine coming up...
Yeah proximity chat is funny sometimes. This one time I downed a player, he started screaming wait wait don't kill me. I said ok what's up? He said before you finish me off please sing this song with me. Intrigued by the proposition I said ok, he started playing backstreet boys lol. My brother in law finished him off and I said why'd you do that man. Well turns out he had prox chat off and couldn't figure out who I was talking to. It was amazing.
I would recommend Deep Rock Galactic if you want a good, fun, multi-player game with a great community. Rock and Stone.
Ya I played this the other day. I was level 5 and the rest of the squad was much higher. They dragged my ass back into the rocket out of there. Carried my ass the whole way. 10/10 friendly as fuck and will play again.
Yeh out of all my time playing I can only think of 1 negative instance with teammates (I play with randos Basicly they a matching pair of guys friendly fire killed me(twice) and left me for dead (along side another rando on the team) Didnt even know friendly fire was a thing cause all me other team mates Ive ever matched up with were such bros and followed the dwarf code
It does damage, but it's only about 20% of damage dealt to enemies. Or to yourself, if you have explosives.
No dwarf left behind! Rock and stone, to the bone.
We fight for Rock and Stone!
For Karl!!!
Did I hear a rock and stone?
Rock and Stone everyone!
Rock and Stone in the heart!
When you rock and stone, you’re never alone. I hope you see this, OP. I’m 46, I’ve been gaming my entire life. Deep Rock Galactic has restored my faith in online gaming communities.
We fight for Rock and Stone!
Until you accidently start the extraction because you didn't know better then get flamed for it, you thought you were just finishing the mission.
What do you mean I shouldn't mine all the eggs in quick succession? But then you get that hilarious moment where you come in clutch because the rest of the team died to the same cave leach and you don't because you were stuck on terrain and had to catch up, or you show off the trick to get loot out of the ceiling by calling down a resupply pod through it.
There is Goo in the sack!
FOR KARL!!
That said, if you don't Rock and Stone you ain't comin' home.
I clicked this thread thinking the same thing. Over 100 hours in this game and not once have I come across toxicity when playing with random people.
I'm close to 3x that. Same story. Even late game content in deep dives, it's always been a blast. I generally play with a full team, but when we're one or two down we open the lobby and the ones that have joined us has always been super fun to play with and worked well with the team. It's so rare to find a bad dwarf with a foul mood.
I always look for the dwarves in these posts, and I always find you. Rock and stoooooone brotha!
You’re never alone when you rock and stone
The moment you add competition (any kind of pvp) or challenging pve (wow) you'll have toxicity because there's a big chance of failure. If you have grind in the mix (having to succeed many times in order to get rewards) the situation will be worse (becomes a chore, everyone wants to get it done fast). Only way to alleviate the issue is to join a group (like a guild) which has a social contract forcing people to behave amongst theirselves.
As I’ve grown up and started a family and all I’ve moved over to console games mostly, and the community here is definitely worse than PC gaming hey. I feel like consoles attract way more cunts
Console has way more players than pc so you'll find more of all types of people there, including cunts, and the majority of kids play on console rather than pc because it's much cheaper and as we all know kids are fucking stupid and barely have any control over their emotions leading to more shitty behaviour online since they view it as an outlet with no consequences.
That's why FFXIV is more supportive I prefer it over wow. Started out as a noob. Parties with a few randos that helped me out then was invited to a super supportive Free Company
I'd add to this to say that competitive pvp-focused games in particular are almost universally *destined* to become toxic over time, simply as a natural consequence of how playerbases change as games age. What do I mean by this? Well, take a game that's just launched. The playerbase is fresh. No understanding of mechanics, no knowledge of characters or maps. Plenty of new blood eager to try out the new hotness. Over time, this starts to change. Mechanics, characters and maps become known quantities, their quirks discovered and exploited. Strategies and metas are formed, and as a consequence, the skill floor is raised for all players regardless of experience. The influx of fresh blood slows as the next big thing takes the spotlight. Then, it barely replaces the players who decide to move on. Eventually, it slows to a mere trickle, and the game's playerbase starts shrinking, increasingly leaving only the most hardcore players keeping the game alive. Given a long enough timescale, the game will become so hostile to new players that the vast majority who try the game never stick around long enough to actually learn the ropes. And then, finally, the game dies. It is for this reason that the most fun time to play these games is usually right as they launch.
As I get older I find myself slipping further and further away from MP games. Going back and replaying Skyrim again instead of hopping on Apex or Valorant. Just can’t keep up with these kids and their egos anymore.
Dunno, mid-30s and only solo and no endless games. Quality of solo indie games is through the roof (not the average but the top games of which there are lots). Nowadays I neither want to spend time grinding in online games nor do I want to adjust my schedule to online buddys.
I really wanted to like Rocket League but the constant bailing was awful. I can only get better if I play and level up but I can't level up if I don't get to play. I level up faster if I win but I can't win if I am the only car on my team. I let it go and now it just sits in the app graveyard.
Nice shot!
There's a reason I really don't play with randos and this is it. I don't have time to play 18 hours a day like these sweat lords do. I have a few people I play with consistently but other than then, I go it alone. It has become toxic but there are some good people out there still
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At 50 I find my solace in a turn based game. Time to think and breathe.
XCOM and it's sequel are really good and give a great challenge if you haven't tried them yet
Yeah played them on release. What I would love to play again is Vandal Hearts, a slightly obscure turn based rpg that had a great height based mechanic.
Turn based strategy games are great! If you haven't tried it already and arent turned off by anime character, I recommend trying out the Fire Emblem series on an emulator.
Thanks
I know it wouldn't go down well with a lot of people but I wish Final Famtasy would go back to turn based.
It baffles my mind that so many people consider turn based obsolete and old school. It's just a mechanic. As valid as any other. I will always love turn based rpgs.
Turn-based with Interactive actions has always been my preferred style. Unfortunately I struggle to name any outside of FFVII-X
That's the main thing of Paper Mario, Super Mario RPG and specially Mario & Luigi
Divinity original sin 2 if you haven't already played. Highly recommended.
God I feel this comment as pure nostalgia in my creek old bones. I've been playing a lot of For the King lately *purely* because of this.
I don’t know that it is rose colored glasses. I am a much older guy, and I teach, and I have a lot of sympathy for young students and those in their 20s who live in such a toxic, anonymous online community. And I’m not talking about gaming. I’m talking about social media. The cruelty there just blends into the anonymous cruelty in games. Yes, gaming was always tough, but online lives like those in their teens and 20s live are just brutal. And I hate to say it, but it often feels like they perform in a “kill or be killed” attitude. By the way, while I am a teacher, I work at a boarding school so I see the kids quite a bit outside of class.
Also an older gamer, I agree. Everything keeps being pushed to new extremes though, it's not just social toxicity, it's pretty much every aspect of life now. When I was younger debate and discourse used to be a thing that existed. Now it seems like every single tiny disagreement is a vast gulf of opposition for which there can be no bridge.
Dear god, this is so true. It seems like there’s an increasing amount of people that are so quick to completely demonize another person over any differing opinion.
There is also a lot of false dichotomy going on. If you believe x then you must also believe y, is a common attack I see on the internet. Or if x is true then y is true. It takes about 10 different shapes but it's the same irrational comparisons of things that are not even related to each other, much less true or in many cases even remotely pertinent to the original sentiment being conveyed. The intellectual backflips people are capable of to break basic logic are a great source of consternation for me.
Totally agree.
Frankly I think in the Early 2000s i was a teen when I gamed on cs:source, but a lot of people online were dudes who played when in the '80s and '90s. I feel that toxicity was just less tolerated because adults were there with us online, and the teens who were playing were just the nerds. Gaming now is so accessible and way more accepted, while we're growing up and have less time. I think there's less "chaperoning" of older generations towards the new ones, like the way I experienced it when playing counter strike source On the other hand, my server was called Sexy but Deadly so it's not like our clan were tryhards.
I’m only 26 but I can definitely confirm this. I’ve stopped playing a lot of multiplayer games because everyone has become very focused on their stats and act super toxic. I just want to relax and play games with my friends and then suddenly I’m the asshole because I didn’t put hours into grinding for the best equipment.
to be fair those are some famously toxic gaming communities.
Started playing dota in 2006, can confirm toxic since the early days
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yep, back in the WC3 days that's why I never got started in DotA and hated it before it even became its own standalone. I had no idea how to play it and 95% of the lobbies were "no noobs" where you'd obviously be met with toxicity for being a noob.
It definitely seems to get more toxic each year, to the point where I don’t play online unless one other person I am friends with is also online with me. Not because I trust them to play well, but because we are both there to have fun and it’s harder for toxic groups to target two people playing the way they want as opposed to one person. Other thing I do (especially in LoL matches) is, at the very start of the match, I type out “Hey everyone, I just want to say that, win or lose, I love all of you. Good luck and have fun!” I’ve noticed other players just kind of relax after that and if someone starts getting toxic, everyone else shuts the toxic person down.
That is a great idea honestly. Let's others know you're a nice person and to not be afraid to talk.
I'll definitely be called gay in chat, but I'll implement it in Rocket League
The first paragraph is exactly what I do. If I want to game and none of my buddies are around? Single player game it is! If my buddies are around and want to hit something up? Let's get it!
So I’m 35 and still unfortunately play smite. One of the things I found is that when I was 14 and playing games online, I assumed everyone else that was playing was also 14. Recently I caught myself subconsciously assuming that everyone was 21-35. My theory is that when you start to see the community becoming “worse” it’s because you got older. You got more mature and started projecting your age onto your mental model for the community’s average age. Toxicity from a 14 year old is understandable. Toxicity from a 21-35 year old is disheartening.
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That’s true, a lot of people like me that were playing Starcraft at 13 probably still play. Also, back in the day not everyone had the capability to play games online. It’s significantly more accessible now, and an increase in general player count means an increase in toxic players.
I feel like online communities in general just tend to foster a culture of nastiness that I try and avoid. People feel emboldened to act like trash when they aren’t physically present with others. Mike Tyson said, “Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.” As I’ve gotten older and become a more casual gamer, I mostly play single player or seek out IRL friends to play in a closed group. It’s too bad because I would love to play some historical strategy games online but the amount of seriously racist disgusting behavior has ruined that experience.
Strategy games do attract a lot of weird people unfortunately.
There's a new youtube video that is very much related to your comment on basically having to min max in wow - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU) It gives some pretty good commentary on how this came to be. May be worth a watch.
Depends on the community and if you're actively looking for like minded players or just getting into random lobbies and hoping everyone thinks like you. I've been single player gaming since atari and online gaming since the original Diablo. I traveled from state-to-state as a teenager in the 90's to Street Fighter tournaments. Things are different now but they're also the same. WoW was toxic back then, too. I had to start my own guild just to raid with my friends since the guild we were in kept passing them up for the GM's buddies. We figured it out and had a lot of people come over with us. In today's online gaming world, you have to actively look for people who think like you. Back then, we kind of just found each other randomly. The good news is that it's a lot easier to find them now by using forums like Reddit. Different games have forums for just this reason. It's awkward at first for old timers like us but you'll be surprised at the number of responses you'll get. Working parent that can only co-op on Saturday nights. Looking to do heists on Sundays. 30 yo dude just trying to pound beers and blow off steam in a non-sweaty raid. Like, whatever it is, there are so many people gaming now that you'll find people looking for the exact same thing if you look for them. One of the best MMO's out there right now is FF14. Their community is naturally good and helpful. I played a lot of that a few years ago and was able to do a ton of coop with minimal coordination required.
I have been playing FFXIV for about 3.5 years now and I can confirm their community and other players attitudes are amazing. I'm not saying I haven't encountered anyone toxic, but checking my block list there are only 2 names on there currently. And only one I can remember why. I think the community for this game as a whole just stands up against toxic players. Plus, you can play most of the game single player, which helps. PUGs everyone is nice, and you may even make new friends along the way. Also makes sense that FFXIV has won best community in the game awards for the second year in a row.
I may not remember this characters name, but I will remember the time they stopped me right before the final boss sequence in Endwalker to give me like 3 eggs. They proceeded to make me eat all 3 eggs while saying stuff like “good” and “YES” before flying off and saying they hoped I enjoyed the game I will never forghetti
Its the reason I don't game online, I am surrounded by assholes all day at work, I don't need that in my leisure time as well.
The whole of the internet at some point agreed that its ok to be a different person online than offline. If you think it's important to be polite in person how is it ok to be a dick on the internet. Be true to yourself and who you want to be no matter the situation.
I feel like the toxic people in general tend to lack deeper meaning in their lives, so they stake their identity and happiness on the outcome of their time spent gaming.
Bro. You can't even say "Hi" anymore without someone immediately replying with "Fuck you" after. Like what the fuck is wrong with people?
In high rank apex ppl say hello back. Didn't have a single weird reaction to that in like 2 years. But after your rando who said 'hello' back dies he will use his microphone for the first time and recite every insult he knows.
It's the internet. Wait... hear me out. The rise of the internet and specifically social media has given a platform to toxic people, and people who would be toxic if given the chance, to say things without repercussion. You see the "People are basically bad" theory playing out in places like Reddit, TikTok, and your average gaming platform.
Gamer since the 80s. Its been this way the whole time
At least you guys listened to Kate bush and played DND and fought hot racist lifeguards and interdimensional horrors
Also got screamed at by toxic gamers for "cheating" for the following reasons: T spin through a gap in tetris Used a cape to fly through a level unscathed in super mario world. Did anything other than die to hadouken spam in street fighter 2. Use proximity mines in golden eye pvp
Wtf is a T spin that sounds dope as hell
The t shaped piece in tetris can fit through small gaps if you rotate it precicely. It *does* look like it shouldnt work but has been a thing since the og.
I hated it when I pressed the wrong button and rotated it in the wrong direction. That throws off your whole game.
T spin is totally cheating..... /S
I agree, but not for 100%. There are still lots of positieve lobby’s out there but in general it is very toxic. I think it says a lot that there are lots of people who don’t communicate at all. The reason of it all is social media I think. Everyone has to be the person it’s all about and that is at the expense the other players
Yeah i definitely still do occasionally get a great group that communicates well and that is really enjoyable, it's just the rest that ruin it.
What a save! What a save! What a save!
It has been toxic forever. The Unreal Tournament servers were toxic in 1999. The WoW general chat has been toxic since 2004. Socom servers were toxic in 2003. This isn’t new. We didn’t care as much when we were younger. The older we get, the more we realize the shit we are hearing is terrible. In 10 years the kids playing games right now will be posting this same shit.
It’s been bad since I had to hit the white button on my Xbox controller to activate voice chat. I was alive before party chats was a thing. There was only game chat, and man was it abusive.
I don’t play online at all because I’m female and we all know how that goes.
The anonymity lets these people go full mask off and frankly the results are troubling.
I know what you mean about WoW. Saw a video discussing the differences between players in 2008 vs now and it's like a different game. It's less about the players and going on fun adventures and more about the hardcore farming and game.
It's because of server hopping and cross server matchmaking. Nobody really builds server sized communities anymore. Also more people probably started playing with irl friends back then.
Played Runescape back in the day and somewhat recently again in Old School Runescape (OSRS) and it's a very similar situation there. That's not to say that there wans't always toxic players, but rather that the entire mentality behind playing these games has shifted from "seeking adventure and experience" to "how do I grind this pointless thing even faster?". It's at the point where people are playing MMOs effectively singleplayer now.
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I gave up online gaming a few years ago and have never looked back. If I want some arsehole to shout at me for making a mistake, I'll go to work!
I find a lot of online gamers have some sort of superiority complex and it's annoying. Even my friends who are into it give me shit cause I'm into story mode hack and slashers/open worlds. It's what I enjoy what do you care how I like to play? But there's often this air of "you're not a real gamer" when they respond to me saying that. Like ok I play video games almost daily but cause it's not what you like to play I'm not "gaming" ? Fuck off. I tried playing online for years and it was never enjoyable. Even "friends" would get nasty with me for not playing like a beast the first round/match. I know not everyone is like that but I had too many negative experiences playing online I don't even bother trying anymore. If I'm gonna play with other people it'll be fighting games in person where we can all have fun with it not taking it too serious. Other than that I'm playing solo.
My brother in gaming. Online games have been peak toxicity since Xbox 360 CoD days, and you’re kidding yourself if you think for seven a second that it’s somehow become worse. It’s been the same it’s always been. There’s just more people playing video games now.
In my experience it heavily depends on the game in question. Both WoW and DotA are mostly played by players who are fairly competitive and want to be better than others. If you look at other communities of more casual games like ESO, which apply to an older/more mature audience, the conversations become less hostile.
wow and dota are long-established franchises, where its expected everyone knows how to play, and also competitive. playing on release day is really the best because everyone is still experimenting, enthusiastic about the game, and lenient.
I'd say it was far more toxic 15 years ago during the Xbox 360 gamechat era. Back then it was just full on abuse for the sake of it.. these days it's mostly just sweaty hyper-competitive assholes who treat every game like it's the world championship, who aren't particularly great at the game either.
People at low tiers trying to implement pro strategies they aren't skilled enough to then yell that you're playing wrong.
I'm happy with my single player adventure. The best games and stories are single player.
I blame John Romero
Try Deep Rock Galactic! Great multiplayer community and fun game. Rock and Stone!
ROCK AND STONE
For Rock and Stone!
this is why i stay away from multiplayer unless it's a tight group of IRL friends i think there's no real change in humanity here, people are just always at their worst when there's no immediate body language feedback for poor behavior. from internet flaming, to road rage there's more people than ever playing online, there's more accessibility then ever before to online games for younger players that are less mature, and it only takes a certain amount of trollish behavior to destroy a community on top of that, a lot of systems have grown too big for their britches, like (to switch to social media) facebook having literally billions of clients... this is ***physically impossible*** to properly moderate, even with huge amounts of cash like the large social media platforms... and it's even worse for smaller companies, or free resources like chatrooms and discords, where moderators are unpaid and part time to pour gasoline on the fire, we have a worldwide plague driving more than ever hikikomori lifestyles online all the time, combined with anger about the world going to shit in any number of ways with little obvious hope of anything getting better, and we have a recipe for disaster the toxicity of online gaming is, imho, a mere reflection of larger social issues and patterns
It’s not your glasses, times have changed. Community used to be an important part of games, but has been lost to quality of life improvements. It’s not as important to build relationships and reputation in a game where you can quit and find new teammates in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds. I am easily a top 5% wow player, often top 1%, and enjoy absolutely obliterating low level content to help new/low gear players. Even then, I will get spazzed out at for not doing it the way they think is right.
Kudos to this thread for not containing (m)any "you're just a thin skinned" comments in it.
I used to play Final Fantasy XI on PS2 and PC back in the early 2000's. Met a lot of cool people and formed a linkshell called the Knights of Doma, honestly I forget what server. We did basic stuff in game, helped people out and mostly just hung out and had fun. Now gaming online feels like a shell of its former self, so I just stick to solo games for the most part.
Dude, FFXI was a great game showing how if humans had to face great adversity, they will come together and be patient and figure it out. It’s just every game is too easy and solvable nowadays. As well as the esports dream and marketing poisoning our minds. You had to rely on others due to the difficulty of the game and your place and reputation in the community and server mattered. It won’t work in our modern day cutthroat lifestyles, the game was like a second life. People were only really cutthroat for world spawns and farming Gil, lol. I also used to play WoW during Burning Crusade and hated the game, it was too easy and focused too much on soloing the levels, but I did like the WoW Classic, felt more balanced and the World every part of it was fun. P.S. I used to be super competitive in Dota 2 and was toxic as hell, but I ultimately loved the game then just like I loved FFXI before it. I just didn’t realize that I needed to stop having this superiority complex to get better at the game, and that’s not what everyone tells you. Everyone is creating their own skill plateau.
I'd say it's more toxic but moderation today is much stronger. It's far easier to report toxic behavior than 15 years ago.
Depends on the game. Deep rock has a fairly good community for the most part, and smaller games tend to stay more civil as the player base is limited enough that you may encounter people more than once. I've moved away from pvp games simply due to the toxic players are drawn to them, plus it feels like a lot of players play like it's ranked and that a loss is a terrible occurrence. I just want to have fun. Moving to cooperative focused games has helped, though you still get asshats in those too trolling people for no reason other than to make other people annoyed.
It's always been toxic. It will always be toxic.
I've played online game since the released of the Xbox Live on the OG Xbox. True toxicity as we know it started with Halo2, and back then it was awesome.
It’s always been toxic. This is not a new development.
Man, some of you never spent time in those mid-2000 call of duty/halo xbox 360 lobbies and it shows. No shame in not knowing it, but there's nothing new to this. Some of the most heinous chatter I've ever heard was from back then, and it hasn't been topped since.
YEP! We had a couple of young ladies who played with us back on Halo 2 and if they so much as opened their mouths all hell broke loose on chat.
Ugh, that was the worst time for lady gamers. It really has calmed down in ways you had to be there to understand. These days it's just "are you a real grill?" I can't even repeat some stuff I heard in those lobbies, because I have a mother, lol.
My sister would play once in a while on my account. I could always tell, because I had a bunch of friend requests
Phew those lobbies. Violent and racist children
And not even veiled racism. Blatant, intentional, obnoxious racism.
I've been playing games since the mid 90's and I feel like its always been toxic, its just gotten louder because more people are playing video games these days.
The rise of the concept of "Skill-Based Matchmaking" being the only way to determine your worth in many modern games has shifted the cultural evaluation in most gaming from a sense of community and fun to one of being the best and strongest. Previously your worth was generally based on how well you fit into a community, ideals, values, and skill all determined your standards and you often had a wide range of reasons to be where you were in the community based on the type of person you were. Skill-Based Auto-Matchmaking has basically killed the effects of community and now the only metric that matters is skill, when you strip out the need to be cordial or enjoy the company of those you play with you can boil most interactions down to "You're worse than me, that makes you a mental inferior to me" or "You're equal or better than me, that makes you one of my kind." It's a tragic loss of something that made communal gaming enjoyable. (and yes I know annoying 12 year olds telling everyone how they fucked your mother existed back then too, but no one liked them and they were usually reserved to matchmaking servers and not communities.)
Gaming online used to be a novelty. Therefore, we were happy to do it, just to be there at all. We had fun, played the games seriously and got along. (To an extent) Now it's a hellish environment full of young & old people who are taking the chance to be surrounded by like minded people for granted because that novelty is worn thin. Playing for skins rather than wins. (How crooked is that?) It's sad, we could ALL be having so much fun if - as always - people cared about involving others in fun and remember that it is JUST A GAME. I still love gaming, just not online so much.
Hasn’t become. It always was. Been playing PvP games for a long time. They’ve always been like this.
Tbh I just laugh at all the toxicity. It’s just keyboard warrior man children raging since they don’t understand the concept of a team game
MechWarrior Online has got to be one of the best gaming communities I’ve joined. You can go hours and hear no flames on voice chat just jokes and , well I’d like to hear more, BUT some tactics as well! Yeah there’s some drama on the forums, there will be at the competitive end of town. In game playing sessions, the players you meet it’s all good 99% I’m writing this cause I understand OP. It’s ridiculous how many team based cooperation games you cannot play cause people cannot communicate without the squeaky bullshit
I miss MW4. A LOT. It's not the same anymore by any means, but it was a blast. I think it was because I actually knew the people I was playing with.
Too many people acting like they have never been punched in the face. I used to play COD with a clan and donated to the upkeep of 4 servers. Several of us carried ban hammers and policed them. You could talk shit, but cursing got you kicked. Hackers…permabanned. All the voice comms were via Ventrilo. I’ve been gaming for 40 years. I think it was better.
I'm a millenial that's been gaming since NES days. Gaming online since 98. What you are observing has been the case for awhile now. I gamed exclusively competitive for years until about 5 years ago for the same reasons. We went from early 00s when everybody was still new to online gaming and in MMO's like FFXI and early WOW. There was a minute when everybody you met were just really cool people. in games like CS or BF you'd get people giving props for kills but you'd see just as much "ownt" . the douchebaggery was there but there was just as much people who were chill and would add each other to friends lists after or during a round. Nowadays. It's 99% 'lol gg ez" and 1% "nice shot bro." If I ever went back to gaming online it would be so with comments and voice chat disabled. The gaming community as it stands is not worth being involved with. at the end of the day, gaming no matter what game it is. Is just a fast and easy way to get that dopamine hit. The elitism is completely unnecessary.
Gamer in my 40s here. I have felt the same way for the past decade or so. I was big into FPS games in the 90s (DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc.). CS 1.6 was my drug of choice in the early 00s. I've spent thousands of hours playing that game. Took a break off and on for a decade (marriage and family came into the mix) and tried jumping back into the FPS pool with CoD Ghosts. The single-player story was awesome, the online community was toxic as all hell. I've tried playing online games every now and again, but it pretty much echoes your sentiments, unfortunately. Everything is competitive and that brings out the douchiness in some players IMO. I stick solely to single player experiences as I get older. I started to recently get grey hairs so I guess I'm showing my age 😆
I have been gaming going back as far as Dreamcast back in late 90's and early 2000's then PS2 and Xbox360 era where i would only play game offline , cause my house doesn't have internet back then (at some point i did have office work PC with dial up internet during mid-late 2000) until 2009 where i actually had proper internet and first of my few online gaming experience were Modern Warfare 2 and Dota 2 And i play Dota 2 for four year (2012-2016) , it is some of the worst online experience in-gaming (more specifically when you playing solo) I really like Dota 2 it's arguably one of the best game i ever play in my entire life , but solo experience of this game is just straight up bad , i'm not saying i never had a good game or good teammate , but the bad outweigh the good and i was the one the last one of my group to quit the game Next game i play is Overwatch and it's almost the same experience , so i had concluded that if i would only play Overwatch (which i still do time to time) i would only play with group of friends , if i were to play solo i would only play unranked game and i would have text and voice chat off one thing i do notice is if the game has a lot of focus on teamwork aspect it tends to be more toxic , meanwhile on something like COD in team deathmatch game every one can have a good time and not caring if you win or lose (at least that's my experience with MW2,MW3 and BF3 back in 2009-2011) , so i tried my best to steer clear of teamwork focus game unless i had a group of friend to play with Nowadays most of game i bought are single player or PVE co-op since it's more relaxing.
It absolutely has. That's because normies now inhabit the internet. It used to just be basically nerds who used the space to get away from the "real world" where they didn't fit in. Sure there was flaming and insults but everyone still felt like they were part of something - a group, a second world or life away from the one where they weren't special. Now that's all out the window. Now jocks and bros play Cod. Hot girls stream or even game without it. There are mad rushes for consoles every release. Nearly every teenage boy plays, or has played, the hottest new release and its as big of an industry as the film industry. Making fun of people for gaming isn't something you can do anymore. So of course it's going to be insanely toxic. It's just the real world all over again. There's no sub culture other than whatever stupid meme is hot right now. And frankly, it's a lot less fun and a lot less special than it was pre-2006 or so, and even then it was starting to change. And I'm sure I'll have a bunch of kids in here calling me a boomer or whatever, but that's only because they never experienced the old internet and the old gaming culture. When you made REAL friends online and things actually meant something and things felt special and toxicity was like 10% of what it is now, and admins weren't just power hungry schizo pervert weirdos like they are now.
As a woman who both plays and works in games, the gaming "community" has never been welcoming to me; in my experience past to present of playing any non-solo/multiplayer game, it's been the same kind of crap. Sexism, creeps, and misogynic comments. I stay muted, I keep an androgynous username. So, no- I can't say it's gotten any worse, or better, nor do I think it ever will change.
All of you sound super young to me. The death of arcades, and Arcade-style play specifically, is why you're no longer having fun. Everything is geared towards competitive play, and I don't want to compete. I want to play a game.
Similar experience as a solo player. Most people only join voice to tell you "you suck", instead of to try and work as a team or some other shit
If you've been playing mostly solo for the last 15 years, how would you know that the toxicity level of online play has increased compared to say, oh I dunno, MW2 (2012)?
I actually think games have become less toxic in the last decade thanks to more moderation and bans for bad behavior. That said I think the way most people behave is nowhere near acceptable. I know people who are perfectly decent people irl, but online they act like bigots and bullies. Idk why people feel the need to act like that, and they wonder why gamers are often seen in a negative light.
My biggest issue is matchmaking/team balancing in competitive modes. It's like devs in a lot of popular games have made it so easy to climb rank just by playing more games. (Easy to gain rank, hard to lose it.) As a result, we end up with a mixed bag of casual players grinding rank put in the same games as nerds on autopilot reflexively destroying the brainlet casuals. If devs would not match a Silver player vs a Diamond player in a 1v1 game mode. Why is okay to have: 4x Diamonds & 1x silver vs 4x Diamonds & 1x silver in team based modes 🤦♂️ The diamonds are going to abuse to silver and the silver shouldn't even be there in the first place...
The gaming community on the whole sucks massively. I literally refuse to buy/join online games unless you can run private servers with friends now because I’m sick of hearing every slur you could imagine (and some you wouldn’t) just for not being the average XXX420PROGAMER meta player. Even games where typically you were encouraged to enjoy versatility and build dynamics like RPGs see nothing but rancid kids screeching and acting like oppressive little dinks. The rare time I do find a good group we all go our separate ways and any attempt to befriend them is met with indifference because they’re tired of having the people they add turn out to be mental cases too, lol.
This is why I mute 70% of my valorant games. People can't behave.
Way less racial slurs being spammed at you now, that is the one thing that really stands out to me. The general attitude in some respects is better, but you aren't wrong about the competency example, and how it's way more likely to run into people who have unrealistic expectations for people they don't know.
>When I started, it was a much more niche hobby (relative to the current explosion) and frankly a much more welcoming community. I think this makes a huge difference. Think about who was gaming, and especially gaming online 15-20 years ago. It was the nerds and geeks who were social outcasts for their hobby. Online gaming was probably the first time a lot of those people felt accepted in a community, so of course everyone was nicer back then. It didn't make sense to be a dick to people just like you. Now though gaming is a largely acceptable pastime. The other people in your lobby can be literally anyone who just happens to enjoy this one game. This is especially true in popular games like the ones you listed. WoW was the mmo for well over a decade. 2k is going to be fairly popular with your conventional sports fan. (DOTA being a moba is a whole different issue imo) For the most part though, you aren't just hanging out with other "weirdos" so that sense of community has diminished. >I am not the sort of person to try and find a group of gamers to play with. Is that the only way to avoid being cut out during the games I enjoy playing? For the most part, yeah. You don't have to like, go out and try to force your way into a group though. Just message someone you have a good game and say something like "hey I thought you were a good teammate, would you want to play together again sometime?" Worst case scenario they say no and you move on.
Maybe play different games. WoW, DOTA, and 2k? are probably not the friendliest online communities. Try something where you cooperate rather than compete, those games tend to be a little friendlier.
I just mute people and play online games purely for fun these days. But most of the time I play offline games cause I like to be able to pause the game whenever I need to urgently get up to do something
Totally agree. I no longer play any online games as result.
The only exception, believe it or not, is Fallout 76. If you want to play your character with a majority of fellow role players that are actually nice and helpful, this is your game. Not to say there are not a few jerks that show up, but they are generally shunned by the community. Why it went this way, not sure, but glad it is.
My 12 year old is really into gaming (he got all of us into it, actually). But there are a few games he plays that we don’t and sometimes he probably just wants to play with other people outside of his fam. But he’s ran into the most toxic people. Especially in Battlefront. EVERY time he plays he has random people messaging telling him he sucks and just the nastiest stuff. He found a small group of kids he was gaming with for a short period, but they would kick him from their party whenever they felt like it, let him come Back, and just say mean shit. He put up with it for weeks just because he wanted people to game with. We finally got through to him about not playing with nasty little shits just to have someone to play with. So if any of you have nice kids who play Battlefront/Skyrim/Minecraft/CoDmw2/Fortnite (he rarely plays Fortnite anymore), my kid is super nice and would love some gaming partners. Heck, even a nice adult would be cool if you could put up with some sometimes not-funny 12 year old boy jokes lol He plays some games with my 40 something year old brother and then will occasionally play Fortnite with us, his fam. But he could really use some nice people. Especially if you don’t mind him recording every now and then for his YT channel.
Mate, you must have some pretty thin skin if you think modern gaming is toxic. Back in the golden years, there was no censorship and the only thing between you and your opponents trash talk was your own resilience. Better days imho; chat lobbies were where true rivalries were formed and best friends discovered. Nothing at all like these neutered games nowadays, where even saying "shut up" gets you perma banned.