Those games that just have good communities

[Hagi]

So, I recently started playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes again.

And there's one odd thing I've noticed. I've never made it through the starting zone without adding several people I didn't know before to my friends list.

It's not like I'm going around inviting everyone and chattering away, adding them to my list regardless of if they talked back or not. It just kinda happens as you go around doing quests and you yourself encounter difficulties or you see someone else having them, you get invited or invite them and before you know it you're in a party of 4-5.

So I'm curious about similar experiences, games that simply seem to have good communities. What games do you play or have you played where you simply engaged in jolly cooperation without much hassle, newbie flaming, trolling or any of the other stuff the stereotypical gamer's supposed to do when encountering another gamer online.

 

[Zhukov]

Uhh...

Umm...

Uhhhh...

The closest I can think of it Journey. However, that doesn't really have a "community". It just pairs you up with random people and let's you go through the game together. The game isn't competitive and there's no real way to grief other players.

Thing is, I've had people - complete strangers - message me after the game and say nice stuff, which hasn't happened in any other game I can think of.

In every other game the community is chock full of arseholes and angry children (hi there MOBAs) or, at best, just people willing to get on with things.

 

[Zeckt]

I put about 300 hours in lord of the rings online and the community there is pretty great.

 

[piinyouri]

I had a relative good experience playing Red Dead Redemption online.
Just started off taking out some forts and hideouts on my own while all the other players around me did what they were doing.

Eventually I got a couple people following me, so I took them with me and began raiding together. They never shot me, wandered off, or seemed like they had better things to do. I even friended one of them, and received several invites from the others.

Also had fairly decent experiences in the few MMO's I've played.

Met plenty of cool nice people in Champions Online and Neverwinter.

 

[hazabaza1]

EDIT: WRONG THREAD WHOOPS

I'm sure there's some out there, but I haven't come across any really. Maybe LittleBigPlanet?

 

[Nouw]

Natural Selection 2 has a pretty good community from what I've experienced in the short time I played the game. It has a steep difficulty curve and experienced players were always willing to help out.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

It's been a long time since I touched Assassin's Creed's multiplayer but from what I remember, it was pretty well-mannered. The multiplayer is pretty slow-paced so the usual, gun-toting, needs-action-every-second players get filtered away pretty easily.
In fact, I have a story, and before I go into it, let it be known that I was playing as this character.

Trust me, it's important.
Anyway.
I was in a regular Wanted match (classic cat and mouse, you hunt someone while someone hunts you) I had to go get the Doctor and I follow my radar to a group of Doctors. He could be any one of them, so I just take a random guess and manage to get the guy, and over the microphone I hear
"How did you-?! ForceTorno, you need to..."
And I'm ready to hear something along the lines of "Go f**k yourself" but instead I hear:
"ForceTorno, you need to... SHAVE."
And I just laugh and say
"Yeah, I guess it is getting a little out of hand."
I don't know if the community is still so mild-mannered (or if it even ever was, maybe I just played with some nice people) but I thought it was nice.

 

[Eduku]

The Skyrim modding community is pretty great. They're generally very nice and constructive in their criticism of mods, and a lot of them will go out of your way to help you if you have problems with a particular mod or something. I think it's because a lot of them are modders themselves, and as such are less likely to be complete dicks and rip on someone else's work because they know how hard it is to create something like that.

 

[Caiphus]

The Skyrim modding community is pretty great. They generally very nice and constructive in their criticism of mods, and a lot of them will go out of your way to help you if you have problems with a particular mod or something. I think it's because a lot of them are modders themselves, and as such are less likely to be complete dicks and rip on someone else's work because they know how hard it is to create something like that.

I've also had pretty decent experiences with modding communities in general, so I second this.

There are also really good times to be found in MMOs, if you can get into a friendly guild. Rift and WoW have given me some of the best gaming memories of my life, and it certainly wasn't because the games themselves were all that good. I still keep in touch with old guildies from WoW, despite not having played in years.

That said, the overall MMO community is less than stellar.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm sure there's some out there, but I haven't come across any really. Maybe LittleBigPlanet?

I actually did come in contact with a lot of nice people in LBP back when I played it. Except for that one asshole who stole my fucking level!

 

[sanquin]

Ragnarok online used to be like that. Sure there were bad apples here and there, but overall everyone was helpful, friendly and social. Sadly, that no longer applies. *sigh* Those were the good old mmorpg days.

 

[Bobic]

Natural Selection 2 has a pretty good community from what I've experienced in the short time I played the game. It has a steep difficulty curve and experienced players were always willing to help out.

Funnily enough, I came here to say Natural Selection 1, back when it had a community, and was going to end my post with a query as to whether this general good sportsmanship and niceness has continued into NS2 (which I'm unable to play because my computer is quite puny). It's good to know that it has.

 

[Foolery]

Hmm. I've always had a good time playing with people on Killing Floor, even if they are a little strange. Not a lot of mic users though, and the voice commands get spammed a lot.

 

[AngloDoom]

Guild Wars 2, in my experience, has a rather lovely community. I cannot count the amount of times I've been downed and seen someone blitz across the map to my aid and desperately battle - sometimes getting killed themselves - just for the sake of trying to rescue a complete stranger.

 

[Legion]

The Minecraft server I used to be a regular/moderator/admin on had a great community for the most part. It wasn't perfect and it occasionally had it's drama but there were players from all over the world and we had a pretty good time overall. We all got to know each others quirks and had a lot of laughs. We had gaming events (Minecraft based games), competitions and such as well as having a very active IRC.

GTA4 had a pretty good community from my experience with it. I used to play with a couple of friends and we'd be with randoms for the rest of it and we had some really good times. Especially in free-mode hunting for Easter Eggs.

Although there were a lot of attempts by players to break the rules, so I guess it was only the regulars who were the "good" part as opposed to minecraft users in general. The ban count was pretty ridiculous, especially considering how we tried to be very lenient (the server rules were basically don't grief peoples stuff, don't spam chat and don't use certain mods, so they were pretty damn hard to break accidentally).

Natural Selection 2 has a pretty good community from what I've experienced in the short time I played the game. It has a steep difficulty curve and experienced players were always willing to help out.

Tell me which server you play on please... because my experience has been quite the opposite.

Granted they aren't usually yelling at me because I am normally quite quick to at least grasp the basics but pretty much ever server I have been on has been full of people expecting everybody to be pros. I have only ever played on "rookie friendly" servers as well. I frequently remind players on those servers that if they want people to be excellent at the game they could always try playing on a server that isn't meant for beginners.

 

[Shinsei-J]

My recent time with Scrolls has been pretty stellar thanks to the community around it. Thanks to it being such a niche title and still being in beta Scrolls is filled with dedicated players and people who enjoy a lot of the same things. So I've had some really nice people as my opponents ether giving tips or just generally talking about the game in contrast with others like MTG. While most of the time I'm the instigator of the conversation Scrolls players will be really happy to share in their thoughts on current meta and such. Over the last few week I have stopped playing due to being quite burnt out but while I was out they finally put in a friend system so it will only get better from here.

Also I now miss my old WoW guild. T-T
They were all so nice.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

Most modders are complete jerks. Asking for help is asking to get your arse kicked by the worst aspects of a community.

Not quite so with Hive Workshop [http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/news.php].

In general, Hive Workshop are very open minded when it comes to modding. They WILL share the Code required to import your assets into your map. They WILL answer and help out new people with their Maps and Mods. Heck, I've seen threads where some members actually coded features for the other person as a case study.

 

[V8 Ninja]

While I have no personal experience myself, I've heard that the Payday 2 community is very welcoming and helpful, at least currently in its pre-release stage.