Am I the only one who doesn't enjoy multiplayer games anymore?

[sXeth]

...Actually on that note, I'm impressed that after almost 6 months, and 300 or so hours, that I've only ever run into a single toxic player in Warframe. Everyone else is either super friendly and helpful, silent-but-helpful, or at worst kinda annoying but still useful. It's so goddamn refreshing not to see two people bitching about "whose fault the imminent loss is" that just goes on for half a game.

Yeah, the only one instance I ran into Warframe was during a Plague Star event. None of us had the whatever it was you were supposed to craft and bring (since the event never mentions it, maybe the original quest that's no longer in the game did, I've seen some people mention this about the bosses being weirdly random). So the chap kind of ranted off and dumped not just one of the things in, but apparently a full party complement which pushed the quest from level 40 to level 90. Then eventually fired off some more crap at the three of us before quitting out in the final encounter. Which we almost beat ironically enough, and probably would've if the 4th squad member had still been there.

Though as I posted previously, games that don't make a pretense of being competitive or have a lot of time-crunch deadline esque limits in co-op tend to avoid a lot of the toxicity.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Yeah, the only one instance I ran into Warframe was during a Plague Star event. None of us had the whatever it was you were supposed to craft and bring (since the event never mentions it, maybe the original quest that's no longer in the game did, I've seen some people mention this about the bosses being weirdly random). So the chap kind of ranted off and dumped not just one of the things in, but apparently a full party complement which pushed the quest from level 40 to level 90. Then eventually fired off some more crap at the three of us before quitting out in the final encounter. Which we almost beat ironically enough, and probably would've if the 4th squad member had still been there.

Oh my god that is LEGENDARILY petty of the guy. XD Just plain wow.

 

[sXeth]

Yeah, the only one instance I ran into Warframe was during a Plague Star event. None of us had the whatever it was you were supposed to craft and bring (since the event never mentions it, maybe the original quest that's no longer in the game did, I've seen some people mention this about the bosses being weirdly random). So the chap kind of ranted off and dumped not just one of the things in, but apparently a full party complement which pushed the quest from level 40 to level 90. Then eventually fired off some more crap at the three of us before quitting out in the final encounter. Which we almost beat ironically enough, and probably would've if the 4th squad member had still been there.

Oh my god that is LEGENDARILY petty of the guy. XD Just plain wow.

Yeah when I got on the wiki afterwards trying to figure out why a level 40 listed quest did a 200% difficulty spike into multiple level 70-90 bosses and found out how it actually worked and was just baffled into near speechlessness. Cause it wasn't incommunciado either. He asked in the chat if we'd brought toxin stabilizers or whatever and I replied that me and my buddy didn't because wed never done it before and didn't realize what was needed.

I can understand that maybe he put his injector thing in already, and wants the top line rewards, but since he was clearly able to use chat, maybe he should've put up some warning about what we were headed into at the least.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, some random dude prettymuch carried us through the similarly obtuse wiki-required to even know what the hell is going on Orokin Principle rooms on the moon. Almost to a fault, because I literally have no idea what he did in one of them still.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I stopped quite awhile ago. My heyday of online gaming was Counter-Strike, Quake 3 arena. I dabbled again a little bit in co-op games with a few friends, Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, Payday 1. But as time becomes less dispensable, I just haven't been able to put in the hours. And I like diversity in my games, I play a few different genres and platforms and just couldn't deal with the learning curve of new games, especially all the maps, choke points, loadouts etc. Last online game I tried to get into was Rainbow 6, but at that time I didn't have any friends who played it. Now I do, but it's kinda too late, the learning curve in that game is vicious, and I just don't have the time to dedicate.

 

[wings012]

Due to everything being matchmaking and the entire community being plunked together with some regional servers at best separating them - multiplayer gaming has just gotten a lot less personal.

I'm not a social person by nature, I don't want to join discords and go out of my way to add friends and manage that.

Back in the day I could just regularly visit some dedicated servers. If I show up enough, I start to recognize people and they start to recognize me. If you didn't have fun there or found people toxic, you could just leave. And often these pocket communities would moderate themselves and were a lot more manageable than the likes of trying to moderate the entire playerbase. Just hang out in the spots you had fun in. Play at places within your skill level. Also no ladders or stats to worry about or place value in, which results a lot less salt.

I do have real life friends I play games with, but we're forced to play on the same team if we want to play together. For older games, it was always an option to swap to the other team if they pissed me off and have a go at them. Or sometimes just having a go at each other is a fun thing to do, and it's just a thing if the game mode is deathmatch.

Being forced to cooperate with some of my friends can be a tiring endeavour. Some of them can be really toxic. There's one that just doesn't care what others think and never listens or pays attention, despite going on about how he likes coop games and actively avoiding games where we would fight one another. And he has the gall to say I'm ruining his fun by telling him to not charge off by himself on a suicide run and ruin things for the entire team.

I preferred multiplayer games back in the day of server browsers with smaller pocket communities. When we played for fun's sake, not to climb some fucking ladder, or to make our stats look good or to unlock some trash. Yet it's hard to ignore when my friends want to play competitive Overwatch, I want to play with them and get a fucking number rubbed in my face with each match.

 

[MetalDooley]

I've pretty much stopped playing online multiplayer as well. Used to play a fair bit in the 360 gen, mostly CoD, Gears of War and a bit of Halo. Over the years though I've just lost interest. Titanfall 1 was probably the last game I played online for any significant length of time. Most games now I'll only fire up the multiplayer if there's a few easy/fun achievements. Like Titanfall 2 which I played recently. There's 3 online achievements so I played the multiplayer for maybe 30 mins until I unlocked them and haven't touched the online since.

Couldn't really pinpoint any specific reason why I lost interest but it's pretty much exclusively single player I play these days. The exception being a good split screen co-op campaign I can play with my brother.

 

[BrawlMan]

I never cared much for online multiplayer with few exceptions. I just know, by the time MW2 came out, I was already sick of it, and nearly every developer shoehorning multiplayer in to their shooters. The problem being the multiplayer wasn't that great for most of those games, and died off within a few months. Sometimes weeks. Thank goodness this trend started to die off during the beginning of gen 8, but its present can still be felt in a lot of Western companies. At this point, if it ain't couch co-op or certain fighting games, I usually don't bother. This topic reminds me of the video armake21 made, called The Decline of Gaming. Too bad he never went past making the first episode.


Note: the first 4 minutes of the video are black, and he never fixed it.

 

[sageoftruth]

While I am put off by the rumors of toxicity, the real reason I steer clear of multiplayer is because I'm an escapist when gaming.

My work environment is social enough, so I prefer a more isolated experience when I get home. Also, as Yahtzee and some others have said, it just kills the immersion to have other people engaging with you when you're trying to get lost in the virtual world.

 

[Mikejames]

I'm mainly just burnt out on the repetition of it. I enjoyed multiplayer when I was younger and had more time to kill, as well as a big group of friends to socialize over the same games with, but over time I just got tired of playing through the same style of matches over and over and over again. I still look back on the afternoons I spent binging Halo and Team Fortress 2 fondly, but even well made and distinctive multiplayer experiences all start to blend together for me after a while.

Maybe if there were more unique takes on multiplayer genres that caught my eye (like Left 4 Dead, Journey, or A Way Out) then I'd branch out a bit more, but in general I guess I've just had my fill of competitive shooters. These days I get more out of playing a singleplayer game with a friend while chatting on the couch than I do in playing endless multiplayer with a group of random strangers.