It's a real shame that many younger people will simply never have the opportunity to experience the joy of online play in an actually fun environment that isn't geared toward squeezing every possible penny from them.
there are still games where you can have that sort of fun without caveats out there, but a lot of them are lower-population I had a great time with Rising Storm 2 even playing through the times when there were a few hundred players online in total, you'd recognise a lot of players by name and they were just there to have fun I can't imagine there's so much of that attitude to be found in the MMO space these days without going to custom servers with far smaller communities
I'm mainly a single player guy, but this video made me realize I'd be ok with playing with friends, but the idea of multiplayer with strangers... nope, just nope.
The reasons I don't play MMOs anymore: 1) There is no end point. You end up being a slave to the game. 2) Video game accomplishments are completely hollow. 3) You need to spend a lot of time to make any progress. 4) This repetition leaves me feeling hopeless and empty the more I do it. 5) Despite you telling yourself your online friendships are real, they just aren't. I am a shut in agoraphobic and MMOs are too much of a waste of life even for me.
MMO's had their place for me in phases of my life. I was unemployed and depressed, MMO's and the timesink helped me get through the day and have some fun. The reward grind/gamble aspects kept me interested in a time where nothing interested me. Online friends are what you are willing to put into them. I've had a couple last decades and we've met up, hung out, its been great. Its hard to keep that up long term though. When I got a job and a career started it just took less priority. Now I play games where I can jump in and get immediate action and it respects my time. Fighting games are great for that.
Exactly. There's no lasting sense of accomplishment in a game until I see the credits roll. MMOs never get to the end. There may be many victories along the way, but you can never win.
Exactly! MMOs and mobile games and similar have created this “things” that you don’t play, they actually play you. They are using you as a watch-ads-piece-of-meat essentially. And in order to maximise the possibility of you watching the ads or spending money they have reached a point where skill as been completely removed from the “gameplay”. The outcomes are extremely limited and highly programmed under algorithms developed only to maximise addiction. That is not a videogame. It’s a casino machine made to play you, not the other way around.
I'm still playing FFXIV these days, but to be fair, I treat it more and more like an episodic TV show. I buy the newest expansion and get an excellent single-player story for about 50 hours every two years, then I put it back on the shelves until next time. I don't engage too much with the online aspects of it anymore, even though I take some news from old friends here and there. It's just more relaxed, better for my mental health and more respectful of my time and other stuff going on in my life. I've come to appreciate story-centered MMOs, whereas I saw them as pointless when I was younger.
This is a two edge sword, FOMO may keep some engaged but it can also become a barrier to reentry. When I was playing RDO2 I had played enough consecutive days to earn max gold per day. For a long time it kept me logging in even when I had more important things to do. One day life happened and I didn't get to log in and keep the streak alive and I was reset to the bottom. I didn't have enough time or energy to grind myself back to max and just gave up the game.
@@ItalianoYMexicanotrue, FOMO was always there- but the infrastructure for micro-transactions wasn’t. And OP is right, it has been completely weaponized against gamers not only to squeeze every penny out of them, but also every minute of their game time with daily grind systems and log-in streaks. It’s tiring that I can’t enjoy a game for what it is anymore. The game is actively trying to manipulate me to swipe my card, or play longer than I intended in a single session. That’s something we never had to put up with that with our SNESes and Genesis’. Or NES’ and Master Systems if you’re old like me. 😂
I would say the entire game genre is ruined. They simply make more, and more bad games. The game industry is a cash cow now more than ever! Not to mention everything needs to be pay2win.
True that, Im in point where if I see any FOMO i dont want to play the game instantly, and some devs are trying to push this BS to single player games, omFg.
I really enjoy coop online games with no pvp systems. Played many Deep Rock Galactic games with randoms and never got griefed. Everyone is usually friendly, helping and cheering each other. For Rock and Stone fellow miners!
Day One DLC shouldn't be a thing. Even if we were to give the company the benefit of the doubt, the message it sounds very loudly is "We carved out this content from the game that we were developing specifically to charge you extra for what should have been in the main release already."
@@JReed7560it happened, both battlefield and CoD used to have dlc maps and guns. The problem was that the playerbase got fractured between those who bought dlc and those who didn’t, basically creating two separate playerbases and quickening the games death.
Paying for three day early access is the latest wheeze. It's just terrible gouging of those that are looking forward to the game. In multiplayer it gives some players a massive competitive advantage from learning maps, weapons and progression is a form of pay to win for me.
I'm 31 and all of my friends play nothing but MP games, and they get mad that I'm just not into it anymore. I especially do not like competitive facing games anymore, as I just don't feel like trying that hard. I simply just have a better time playing single player games, getting immersed, and having my time feel more respected, but nobody around me seems to understand it.
I can fully relate to a sentiment of "don't feel like trying that hard". I get that everyone plays games for different reasons, but man, the life stuff takes most of my energy and will to succeed. And usually it's worth it in a long run, both emotionally and financially. On the other hand competitive MP often feels like a mindless and pointless grind that at best gives you a fleeting feeling of being powerful, and at worst gobbles up your sanity like candies. I guess self-improvement in any field can be fun given a genuine interest in it, though looking at most people playing competitive MP doesn't give me a feeling that it's their honest motivation.
@@Terenfear Well said and energy is definitely a big part of it. I played FPS games competitively for probably 10 or 12 years and even made a bit of money doing it, but towards the end there I really questioned whether I was even having fun anymore. I argue to my friends that I’m “liberated” bc they are all angry 90% of the time when playing games and I’m not at all lol. It’s definitely a part of self improvement and standing my ground against the peer pressure to get into those games again feels like it only reinforces that improvement 😂
Yeah I'm 39 and stopped playing with my "squad" because I was tired of grown ass men in their 40s screaming into the mic every game just because they got rekt by random 12 year olds in any number of brainless online shooters. I'm just too old for it.
I am 50 years old, and I've had a TH-cam gaming channel since 2018 (after 11 years on TH-cam making other kinds of content). I find it very, very hard to make friends, but I do have 3, who I consider to be my closest friends (even though they are all younger than me). We play together often, and we sometimes play together on the channel. But, even though I introduced them to each other, I often feel like the outsider, mainly because they are all fans of a lot of different games that I just don't care for: PvP Shooters... D&D style Multiplayers like Baldur's Gate 3 and Solasta... "Bullet Sponge" Games like Monster Hunter (which bore the hell out me)... and they're now starting to play Space Marine 2. I wish I enjoyed these sorts of games, but I'm too old to pretend I'm someone I'm not. On top of which, when we DO find a game we all love to play, they often have more time to play than I do, which means we start the game together, and it's fun, but by the next time I get chance to play I'm at level 4, and they're all level 58 or something, at which point it becomes less like a game for me, and more like a constant tutorial, where they're always having to explain how things work, and how to get a certain weapon, or reach a certain place. I used to enjoy multiplayers, but it's becoming less and less fun, and harder and harder to find people who play my kinds of games, at my pace. Maybe I'm just too old. 😆
As much as I loved playing WoW -- it was the community that killed it for me. They just were entirely toxic and unfun a lot of time. I entirely agree with your perspective here and it's why I have spent so much more time in gaming in single player immersive experiences.
WoW did grow increasingly toxic and sweaty. The fact that logs exist is just... back in 07 when i began with TBC if you told me people would suck every once of fun and adventure from the game to crunch a fking calclulator to min max everything to shreds i wouldn't believe you. I would simply say "Why tf would anyone want to do that!?"
Vanilla wow had a great community experience you could not duplicate because even outside your guild players were known and had reputation for running instances and doing pvp . It was like being part of say a small town where everyone kinda knew each other and as a result building a good reputation or a bad reputation mattered. Vanilla BC were a great experience as a result of this. It was only really in Wrath that I felt like my Guild mates were the only people who mattered albeit I did transfer to another server at that point but I did have the best guild I could have ever asked for.
You're 100% on point with this! I had many hundreds of hours in WOW back in the early 2000's. It was a ton of fun, i had good friends that played and some of us actually rented a house together and we would all play from our respective rooms together. But when the group fell apart, and it was down to finding groups online to join, a lot of the fun for me was lost. As age creeps up on me, I'm rapidly finding that time is the biggest restraint to gaming. Especially for MMO style gaming where it take hours and hours of grinding and raiding to get the best gear and progress to the highest levels. It's hard for me to find time to play for 2 hours straight, let alone spend 6 hours on a weekend grinding for one piece of armor. I don't have time to spend an hour or more trying to find the right group for a raid or dungeon. I don't have the reaction time any more to avoid crapping my pants when farting, let alone play COD. I'm not paying a monthly subscription to an online game that i get to play for maybe 5 to 15 hours a month. Just to be griefed by a bunch of 10 year olds who love to spoil everyone's day. I recently tried out WOW classic. Just the demo period. I forgot just how crappy MMO quests are. There is nothing interesting or fun about them. Kill 10 of these and bring me their horns. Go and kill 20 of these and bring me their ears. Run here, push this button, run there grab this thing, go out and grind, grind, grind, grind........ It's basically boredom simulator 2024. I remember it being so much more fun when I was in my 20's and had all my friends playing. I gave up when i was stuck in this bloody n00b area and trying to kill 20 of these deer looking things, but there were 10 other people there. So it took forever waiting for these things to spawn in. Long story short, he's on point. Getting older you just don't have time for crap like that, spending money on pointless stuff, being bored, dealing with grief. There are SO many good games out there to play that don't have the monetary and the time investment of an MMO or any other online game. it's just too bad that so many games are going multiplayer. So many games are going to the paid microtransaction model, live service, BS.
I have all the time in the world and i can tell you that the magic only lasts for so long anyways. It's harder to socialize and make friends when you're middle aged for most people as well. We simply don't share as much in common with the wider demographic. The games themselves likewise have grown much more predatory and a lot of online communities are toxic. Used to be only CoD and league had a bad name, oh and Barrens chat lol. It's not as much down to time as you think. We grow jaded and more secluded.
This guy is right. The culture of gamers online has changed a lot over the last 20 years. I started with 2nd gen mmos, city of heroes , WoW ect. I remember at the start you could group up with random and have agood time. Now lol. Go go go, must play xyz class spec. If you don't know everything about every encounter or beat a boss in one try the group disbands. It's like gamers don't play games to have fun anymore to experience actually playing the game. It's all about the reward. Mmos used to be about the journey. Now, no body talks It's gimmie my reward for the east effort possible. The games are designed this way. Not teaching the player anything about the game as they level because its designed to have zero resistance or threat by any content.
Everything is Gamified now with "rewards". Even reddit has some BS badges for posting or up voting comments. Post by end of day to get your "3 posts in one week badge!". Hell, 80% of the reviews on Steam are BS people write just to get some badge which means nothing.
We used to call people who avoided pvp and just wanted to kill monsters carebears and they were always like this if you killed them during their Dragon killing farms they would vent and curse on public channels. The mistake they made was catering to them like Everquest did and give them a platform to feel superior because they did what they always do cry on public channels and forums for more PVE only attunements to the game to the exclusion of everyone else, pvp, sandbox elements and so called Uncle Owen players who wanted to produce goods and services and not mindlessly monster farm all day. Too much leeway was given to a brand of player who wanted to grind monsters and stand in town AFK and glow.
@@zedeco PVPer were not responsible for Age of Shadows the NGE and every single other game breaking expansion that made it more raider friendly and handcuffed everybody into a life on rails existence. It was QQing locusts who jump from title to title looking for risk free monster battles.
These reasons are why I feel that the disappearance of couch co op is one of the greatest tragedies of the industry. I straight up am not going to play multiplayer anything unless the person im playing with is in the same room.
I’m 32 with two kids now and I’ve always loved MP games. With kids though, it’s tough since you can’t pause the games. I’ve naturally been playing more single player games because of this and just valuing my time more as well.
Same Tim- you hit the nail on the head. My friend is disappointed I don’t want to play an MMO with him, but I did it 20+ years ago, have a good idea what he’s asking me to sign up for, and I politely decline every time.
@@the_bunse Sadly it's already been happening in Helldivers 2. You have a segment of the player population already kicking people from squads if you're not using the armor and weapon load outs they feel are the "correct" ones to be using. The toxicity has already been infecting the game.
@@the_bunse I literally stopped playing at a time when my level was much higher than most of the playerbase I got matchmade with. I had nothing to prove, I just wanted to play with others, and all my level represented was a significant investment into the game. But they'd see my level, kick me... I thought it was a fluke, try again, kicked again... try again, kick... I got the hint after the 4th attempt and just said "I'm done..." this generation's gamers are officially cooked; toxic, petty, shameless and selfish
Everything you said here aligns with my own thought process it's so bad you can't fix it. I remember playing Goldeneye with my older brother and his friend it was a blast no mTx, skins, loot boxes, toxicity just you and the game. I'm so glad i grew up when i did so i could enjoy it for what it was.
I’m right there with you Tim. As a long time old-school MMO player I’m sick and tired of the griefing and toxicity. I try to be the friendliest player when I play those games because treat people the way I want to be treated.
I wondered for quite a long time why companies would keep mixing pvp and pve in their games. My thoughts: (For reference I've played Destiny 1&2, Division 1&2, ESO, Fallout 76 and Conan Exiles) Almost every bad experience I've had in game and on forums has been with pvp players. From what I have seen they leave the bulk of negative comments and feedback about games as well. It makes sense: they enjoy one-upping and hurting real people. *Not every person who plays pvp is a jerk obviously.* However, within that group you have a type of person who you won't find in pve only games because their general aporoach to life is based around the enjoyment of making others suffer. Being extremely negative and putting other players and the developers down when they get the chance in reviews or forums is just an every day way of being, whether they like the game or not. I used to wonder why people that reviewed a game terribly would continue to play that game as if nothing was wrong. Despite this group being a small percentage of the whole they are so aggressive that often devs give in to their demands and break things in pve to appease them. I've seen this happen over and over in every game I listed above. The thing is that those players will continue to be jerks no matter how much they get their way. Being jerks IS is their way. A big reason mmo's are feeling worse over time is that there are more and more people like this in each coming generation. Think of how little parenting kids get. They get a phone or a tablet before they can talk just to keep them busy. Parents don't pay attention to them because they themselves are on their phones, computers or TV's. Too often kids get sent out to daycare where again they aren't getting parented. There are tons of studies showing how harmful it is to kids not to have one on one time with adults during their early years. That, combined with way too much screen time and not having any safe place to go and re-group when situatuons are overwhelming is shown to really curb healthy development in brains and social behavior. I encourage anyone to look this stuff up and do some research even if you don't have kids. Whether by action or inaction we all share responsibility for where we're at as a culture. Back to mmo's 😅. Other things that bother me: locking essential items behind pvp content to force engagement, locking small amounts of essential crafting materials behind daily rewards so you have to play every day to keep up with the game, always nerfing popular items to force grinding some new item, RNG...seriously, RNG is one of the worst things to ever happen in gaming and it's done specifically to prey on people prone to gambling addiction. They don't seem to realize a lot of us just get annoyed with the whole system and play something else. If they would instead focus on making fun and interesting things to do in the game that would appeal to everyone and overall they would get more and longer term engagement.
48 here, I have very fond memoeries of playing Ultima Online with a few friends it was so different to anything i had played previously, and even enjoyed playing WoW for a few years but now it seems hard to find a multiplayer game which is 'finished' upon release and is genuinely fun.
I remember being griefed on a MUD back around 1995 or so. There I was, a low level war wizard minding my own business when this higher level occultist kept walking by with their summon, and it would one-shot me every time. It was just outside of town, so they technically weren't breaking the "no summons in town" rule, and they kept timing it just right so it'd hit me before I could grab my gear and re-enter town. So very annoying.
Omg you triggered a memory for me. My first time being PKed and it was in Ultima Online. I still remember the guy's name, Twin. He paralyzed me and my friend. My friend broke free and ran. I got pwnt. 💀
100% agree. I would also add (specifically about online fps): -i despise wholeheartedly metagaming. Within 2 to 3 weeks after the game release there are HUNDREDS of videos on youtube that immediately make clear that there is a specific weapon/attachment/build that dwarfs all the others and once a part of the player base picks up on that and starts using it, it basically invalidates all other choices. It then becomes either use the meta and win while not having fun because you dislike the meta or play how you want and not have fun because you get stomped. It’s not the developer’s fault most of the time, it’s next to impossible to balance an online game while not restricting gun/build variety, it’s the fault of youtubers/streamers/proplayers. -Engagement based matchmaking: i recently played for a couple of hours the most recent cod while it was on gamepass and noticed that it’s always 1 or 2 matches where you stomp the enemy team (while having the most kills on your team) followed by 4 to 5 matches where 1 or 2 guys on the other team continuously kill you. Basically, they throw you a bone making you feel good at the expense of the enemy players to get you through the next half an hour of getting stomped and do it all over again. I HATE not being able to continue playing with the same people in the lobby, where you could find a balanced lobby where the games were fair and down to the last second, where you could even start a small rivalry with a specific someone on the other team and maybe even become friends afterwards. -live service (it’s self explanatory)
@@lucasLSD sometimes absolutely, other times not so much. The last cod has an ABSURD gun variety and there are only so many variables you could tweak to make a gun different from one another, by nerfing/changing a certain one you’d push that gun in the territory of another one making them feel less unique, it’s a pretty tough job.
I think the answer to the metagame being figured out too quickly is to use a strict rock paper scissors model and just play with gameplay style variations for each class (kind of the way Total War series handles it) Of course, this doesn't happen because meta chasing is hugely profitable for companies and content creators.
@@lucasLSD As someone who spent a career in software engineering and also worked in the games industry, you are wrong about that. The ONLY way to make items and builds truly balanced is through mathematical symmetry. That means they have to be mathematically equivalent in ALL respects. If you do that, your game will be boring. At best, you only have "flavors" of damage (10 fire dmg vs 10 cold dmg). Even then, you are likely to have an asymmetry that makes one choice better. Perhaps there are more mobs that are resistant to fire, making cold a better choice per my above example. The real problem is that the analytical tools available to players coupled with the ease of distribution of information (the Internet)j means that players will understand the meta in very little time. This is unavoidable. The best way to handle this is not through "balance" because that requires complete mathematical symmetry, but through an abundance of build permutations and gear choices. Path of Exile is a good example of this. The skill "tree" affords so many permutations on its own that it is infeasible to find an "optimal" build. Couple that with an abundance of gear permutations, and you have yourself a system resistant to "meta" analysis.
@@Steve-xh3by Good thing you are an engineer and not a game designer. the comment above you gives a better example of how to deal with it than your "spreadsheet parity balance" method.
Skill based matchmaking and micro-transactions killed online gaming. On the rare occasions that my old team can get together to play online, our skill levels are so varied that any game we play will put someone at a disadvantage and make the best of us look like a God.
Pretty much why my friends and I don't play some games together anymore. There's always someone who's having a terrible time because of SBMM. I had people raging at Dead By Daylight because the matches were too tough for them due to my MMR being too high, but I looked like a God to them. Then, we go play Apex Legends or Warzone and I'm the one getting absolutely slapped around every match because my friends had the high skill MMR. The matchmaking doesn't know what to do with groups like ours. It didn't used to be like this though, before SBMM.
@@MillionaireHoyOriginal i dont think skill based match making was a problem. Infact there are some good studies and practical tests that have proven it makes games more enjoyable for every skill level. However Engagement based match making is definitely a problem.
There is something really tempting about being a part of a world where you can meet and interact with strangers, but ultimately real life will always be the best version of that 💁🏻 I really like sandbox games where the player makes their own server with only themselves and their friends as clients.
This is why I loved GW1, in that it is basically a single player RPG that you can play with other players if you want, or you can just use a wide range of fairly competent NPC companions to fill your party with to go through the main content, which is all instanced. - Almost all of the content doesn't take hours to get through. - Playing with other players is optional, and therefore you can be more selective with who you want to play with, so players are generally nicer as they know you have other options if they start being assholes. - Max player level is 20, which most players can reach in a few days, so players with less time to play don't fall behind. The levelling process is basically just a tutorial, after which you spend most of the game at max level, just picking up new skills to customise your build with. - Base gear stats max out quickly too, but with a lot of customisation to fine tune things towards a particular build, so you don't have to grind forever to keep up with a gear treadmill. - Character attribute points and even class can be modified on the fly, so someone can adapt their character based on team composition if needed. If you need another healer, someone can just switch to Monk secondary for some extra healing options.
@@pixelmentia It isn't really an MMO, and I think that is one of the best things it has going for it. I think a lot of people just call it an MMO as it felt a lot bigger that it actually was in terms of cultural impact and longevity, with towns once bustling full of players and activity, but still being small-scale and intimate while out in the maps with just you and your party. Basically why I didn't like GW2 as much, it is just too grand and epic and impersonal for my taste.
You're not alone, Tim! -- I've always favored single player (and games that END, haha), but there were years where I loved multiplayer. Now, I'm more of a single player player than I ever have been. I really miss the good ol' days of EQ, DAoC, and even WoW when it was all about making friends and grouping was fun and not something to gripe about or gatekeep new players into oblivion -- I remember spending so much time HELPING people so they could do better and have fun, which made it more fun. Leveling up was the result, not the only goal. Now it feels like a chore or that people just go through the motions without socializing (group finders killed this) and everyone is just in a hurry to level up. It's also sometimes like you said - scheduling and now some games make you do x y z before the reset your progress-- I don't want another job. It shouldn't matter if it takes me 6 days or 6 years. :XD
I'm 39. I've played DCUO, WoW , SWOTOR, FF14 and The Secret World. The Secret World was the only one of these games that actually held my interest for an extended period of time which had nothing to do with the actual "game" part of the game. It was the X Files meets X -Men meets HP Lovecraft setting. I learned real quickly that these games are designed to be addictive first and foremost, then tactics are deployed to monetize that addiction. Being a fun and enjoyable experience is not as high of a priority for these games as it should be. With the level of life obligations I have these days, my time is precious and I need my games to end.
I can relate to a lot of the points in this. I used to play a lot of multiplayer first-person shooters and did play World of Warcraft for about a year and a half after it came out. Between being unable to play with pubs unless I turn off all chat because of all the garbage being spewed, how every game is full of cheaters (anti-cheat systems work about as well as DRM, meaning they don't), and that I'm always matchmade against people who do nothing but play that one game all day long, it's just not fun anymore. Not to mention all the predatory monetization. I will still play co-op stuff, but I'm in my 40s and all of my friends have families and other things and never seem to be able to commit to a time and then reliably show up for it. Or if they do, they always have to leave way sooner than they said. It bums me out, but people have their own priorities and it is what it is. I mostly play single player indie games these days and there's enough of those to last me multiple lifetimes.
I believe the devs sell their own cheat codes. It’s a steady monthly income of usually around $50 per sub and millions of people around the globe pay it. Because of cheaters I play VR and what a game changer it is.
I remember a magazine article in the mid '90s describing an online game as a "petri dish of antisocial behavior." "Llama" was a common word for griefers if I recall correctly.
I had a friend in the 90s and early 2000s who called everyone a llama. Haha, good times. If he didn't like someone in classic Dota, he called them a llama.
Yup-30-yr gamer and I'm totally done with online-based games. Never been particularly competitive and graphical advancements are nominal compared to the leaps and bounds of the 'aughts. I'm perfectly happy in the Indy and last-decade space for 'new' games (dead mp/non live-service etc). There's so much I haven't played previously, and so much modern static, _now_ is the time to play all those great games of the last decade.
The irony is you play a game to try and forget the crappy people in the real world and playing online you once again have to deal with crappy people in the real world.
I like to couch co-op with my non gamer wife....we played resident evil 5 together and had the best time. Plus it's nice to share something you love with someone you love
I miss the old days of MMOs. Sure there was a lot of griefing, but the sheer amount of fun we were able to have in spite of that, before developers started policing everything, we were so free to just simply enjoy the wierd quirks of everything. Now everything is a bug, now there's a patch every month. Can't just vibe anymore, everything is in a state of repair and constant course correction. I miss the messiness.
Hi Tim. I'm Tim. Yes, I've also stopped playing multiplayer. I remember years ago playing World of Warcraft. I really started to see a lot of the toxicity back then. Over the years and a few dollars later I just started having enough of the keyboard warriors. My simple solution is that I've switched to single player games. I'm late to the game (see what I did there) but started playing Subnautica 3 months ago and really enjoying it. My family is what most of my time goes to but I still have an hour or 2 a day to sit down and game. Not bad for a 57 year old guy. Thank you for sharing this video. Subscribed!
I have only been playing Fallout 76 online lately…The community is pretty nice and people tend to be helpful for the most part you also don’t have to rely on others to go forward in the game.
I used to raid in FFXIV years ago during the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, then I realized I was sacrificing my free time to play with people I didn't even like to play a game that wasn't worth the time investment in any way, shape or form. Now I just play coop games with friends whenever we want to, I HATE being forced to play and I HATE being told when I have to play. The only MMO I play now is Guild Wars 2 because it allows my bestie and I to play whenever we want and do any content we want as most content can be done in duo, MMOs without single player or small group (2 to 4 players) friendly content won't thrive anymore.
Real, I was in a pretty cool and chill guild in Black Desert, then some tryhards entered and somehow ended up besties of the leader, now I had to be online every friday at 21:00 to do content, even though I explained I didn't get home until 22:00, so they just kicked me out. Never entered another guild since and eventually stopped playing.
Tim you are not only a legend to me, you are like totally bang on. You literally always picked the right project and teams and your achievements are like the list of some of my most enjoyed games. Loved Outer Worlds, figures you were tied to that in some way! Probably the only game (which I own) I never got into was the Pillars game, having not known you were tied to that title, I might just have to give it a try again! Haha. I will say it was refreshing to hear your comments/views because you are like 100% bang on on everything, it basically underlines everything I say to people to this day. Listening to you it's like me talking, it's really weird to hear someone say the exact same things I've been saying! I'm 110% behind you in terms of your views of online play. I subscribed to ya, because it's refreshing and mentally satisfying to listen to you. I'm not crazy after all, to hear it from you, I know that for sure now. I hope you work on more games and bring your perspectives to those games, because you have left a trail of excellence behind you. Thank you!
My daughter and I used to play Battle Block Theater and Halo in couch coop mode and all we did was grief each other - while laughing hysterically. Context is everything. :D
I remember a friend of mine and I would play co-op Forge in Halo Reach specifically to do stupid stuff. We would make tracks for the different vehicles, and sometimes we'd accelerate into a wall and switch out of flight mode. The resulting *BONK* "Suicide." was the funniest thing ever back then.
My brothers and I did the same. The thing about when it comes from strangers online is that it's mean-spirited, an action purposely made to ruin your time.
100% I feel exactly the same. I haven't played anything multiplayer for the last 3 years and probably won't ever will again. If I see multiplayer or requires online I just skip it. As I've gotten older I like to really immerse myself in the game and when everyone is constantly bunny-hopping or tea-bagging each other it just breaks it for me.
I think you've been very unlucky with the griefing and grouping issues you experienced during your early EQ days. I have amazing fond memories from Merdian59, UO and EQ back in the day. I think in the several years I played EQ especially, I encountered two times that I can remember with griefers, it was so incredibly rare, at least on the servers I played. and once I found a really nice guild, finding groups/people to play with was never an issues (I did play a Cleric though, so I was often sought after to join groups). At least from my experience, griefing and toxicity are a lot worse today
I'm old enough that I started gaming with the Atari VCS, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the arcades. On those systems, I hardly ever made use of the multiplayer feature. When online multiplayer games started getting mainstream attention in the late 1990s, I thought, "this sounds like a very bad idea." Even back then, I knew how toxic online communities could be, and I knew there would be people who would make it their life's work to spread misery throughout these online worlds. To this day, I have never played an online multiplayer game. Even not accounting for the toxic gamers, problems of scheduling and time commitments would make it difficult to enjoy those games. It's interesting to hear from people who used to play those games and then gave them up. The reasons they cite are the reasons that I never got into multiplayer games in the first place. I do not want a game to feel like a job, and I do not want other people in my games.
I just wanted to thank you for this video, Tim. Your detailed descriptions of these issues with online games really solidified the reasoning behind the fact that I do either single player, couch co op, or private server online games with a small number of friends over Discord (like Torchlight or Project Zomboid, for example). You really hit the nail on the head for why I tend to shy away from MMOs. Keep the good content coming!
I totally get this, things have definitely changed in the multiplayer space over the years. I used to have lots of fun in multiplayer PC games in the early 2000s. People weren't as toxic and it was actually pretty easy to find new people to play with. But it was also the time where server browsers were the norm in many games. You could say that every server had a small community around it, and it really wasn't unusual to recognize and know people that play on a given server after a while. Man, I miss that :(. Nowadays things are waaay more random and anonymous due to matchmaking and whatnot. I usually have to mute all in-game chat within ~10 minutes in games like CS2, as the constant complaining and flaming gets anxiety inducing after a while. It's bad.
Man... I used to love that in Counter Strike 1.6. I would always play on the same server and even made friends with the admins. Unfortunately, that server known as 'KIR' (Keepin' It Real) shut down because the server owners ended up getting in a divorce and shut the server down for some reason. They existed for years until right around the time Counter Strike Source came out. It was a neat server because of all the mods they used, like custom maps, sounds and songs that would play when the rounds start/end. I miss those people, and the times. We didn't even play competitively, we just did for fun. That vibe just isn't there anymore with CSGO and CS2. Ever since then I basically became a nomad gamer who never really settled down in another community, and just opted to play as many different games as possible. Well... I did get into an online relationship with a girl in World of Warcraft. We had a whole bunch of friends in our guild, even her mom was there. But... we just drifted apart. She found someone IRL. I don't want to get attached to anyone like that again in a video game, so I just distance myself from other people in games now. I thought I was just anti-social a few years ago, but... I'm not. I love people, I'm very social, I just get too attached, and just isolate myself from people out of fear of being hurt again. Sorry, I just like to yap. Your comment took me back 😅
Adding to the list: Addiction. I'm pretty sure I was starting to get addicted to MOBA games and it caused me to fail out of a semester of college. I've seen & heard of a lot of people getting addicted to games and suffering from a lot of mental health issues. They are always the online games. The incentives for online games are the same as social media, more engagement is better. Doesn't matter what kind of engagement that is. It just ends up consuming more of your life the more you play. Since I stopped playing online games, my mental health is better. I can put the game down and do something else that needs to be done like mowing the lawn or whatever. I can pause the game and respond to calls or texts. It's like I'm in charge of things, whereas with online games, the game or the match is deciding what my schedule is.
Yeah, I made some great online friends during vanilla and BC and continued some of those friendships though WotLK, but by Cataclysm, everything I loved about WoW was dead.
MMO's from the early days in the late 90's through to around WoTLK were peak. It's not even a shadow of what it was anymore. The genre is extremely stale.
I agree with this and focus on single player games as well. Also because I just love building and exploring and that usually is better si gle llayer anyway. Though I will say I remember good times running through the outback of Asheron's call where you could explore for hours and not see another player. Modern MMOs aren3like that though. What annoys me of late are the multi-player trolls who go into the steam forums of early access single player games and try to pressure the game devs to add multi-player features. Over and over this happens. Sometimes the game devs eventually give in to the pressure and reallocate resources to multi-player. I call them trolls because they are relentless and don't seem to care if it would harm the single player experience. I'll say it, these people who actually enjoy causing other people grief are the worst of humanity. They are dispicable. There are times where I may not actively care about others, but I have never gotten enjoyment out of causing harm or grief. I can't imagine how ugly one must be inside to be that way.
I don't play and never have MMOs. Strictly LAN or TCP/IP. Mostly TCP/IP. I know who I'm playing with. Still play games like Homeworld 2, Diablo 2, Iceeind Dale and Baldaur's gate. Games like that. Wish they'd go back to putting that in games.
Dunno how I found you but bro you and me are the same. UO came out right after I graduated High School and I was SO FREAKING addicted. I also played MUDS (the whole BBS scene) and everything else you stated. I too rarely if ever play online/MP games anymore for the same reasons. BTW, I still think Ultima Online is the greatest MMO ever created (although, it got very Toxic in it's time as well) I have to admit I got griefed so much in that game which kind of ruined PvP that I became a griefer and I am not proud about it ;) But I was not a jerk like a lot of them. We would grief and cause people to attack us then kill them - but we wouldn't loot them and we generally would res them and let them keep playing. It's sad though because the open PvP in UO as well as the looting, is what made it so great. Real risk reward and created some very compelling good vs evil battles and wars. It was great for many years, until it wasn't.
I played Lord of the Rings Online when it launched, and I remember back then, how the dungeons were huge time commitment, of an hour or more and having the same problem as you. But I've returned to it through the years, and am back on it as I type this. They cut the dungeon down in smaller pieces. So like the Great Barrows, the first dungeon, was this huge dungeon before, but now it's 3 different dungeon instances. Making them small bite size, so if you lose your tank or healer after the first part, then you won't need to redo it the next time.
You may find Final Fantasy 14 makes for an interesting comparison to this video sometime. They've gone out of their way to accommodate solo play, to the point where (almost?) the entire game and the full story can be played single player. The challenging/time-consuming content is largely just "What if?" or other non-canon events, so you're never missing out on story beats by not doing them. And, if you did want to group up, the community is famously generous and kind. It's also got a group finder and a party-finder system that makes finding groups for anything fast and simple. I'm sure it happens occasionally, but I don't think I've ever been griefed the entire time I've been playing it.
Agree 100%. Love settling in to a nice single player game. I love looking for hidden indie gems that have something new or unique to offer. I also loved couch co-op too. Halo LAN parties were a huge thing for me and my friends back in the day. So much fun. But i also think as i get older, many of those experiences are simply nostalgia, and i wonder if i would even want to revisit them again today. I think yes, with the right group of people, but everyone seems to have grown apart and its hard to have that in person co-op experience anymore.
I bought the first 3 Fallouts cause YOu seem really down to earth good creator, even though we for sure have them all on Cd's. My brother is a Truer fan than me but I love all you're stuff as well and very thankful you were in the Video Game Community that for sure has seen hard times recently.
Yep, I'm only 32 but I have similar reasons. 1. Can't get my friends to play anything with me. The last time we played online was during covid when we had lots of time and even then only got to play Star Wars Squadrons once a week, maybe twice. 2. Playing solo in an online game even like CoD is not that much fun. Everyone is running around their own way, and your team just gets decimated if your group of randos get grouped against like an actual group of 5 people who communicate and have some sort of plan. 3. Sometimes even finding groups or matches is difficult. 4. Skill gap / griefing, call it whatever you want. I'm a working adult, I have a life, I don't have the same commitment and time as a 14 year old kid who has nothing going on in his life other than playing games. It's not fun if you feel like you never even stood a chance, when you don't even know how they saw you and shot you down, when you can't tell if people are cheating or are just that good. I didn't really play MMOs other than SWTOR and thankfully didn't really see a lot of griefing or harassment or anything like that.
You are so right! Specially regarding the time to practice 8 hours a day to take the muscular memory to absolute perfection and get to know every single exploitable glitch and angle on the game. Not with a job, family and having to take care of of yourself. Almost no free time exists beyond that. And then you’ll choose to spend those two hours you miraculously got on a Friday night on a game where you are just massacred over and over? Screw that.
Your recap of Everquest gave me the willies. I was always the guy who wasn't able to keep up with the group's level (they were young and I was married with children - I would have to take a day or two off, and they were 5 levels above me!). I spent a lot of time solo in EQ as a result. I played a mage, and a bard at one point because I could solo easier with these classes, but I had to be very strategic. As for griefers: when they would hit the newbie area, we would call out our alts because inevitably, the griefer would have a high level healer hidden behind a tree who was in the friendly faction, so you couldn't touch them (I was on Vallon-Zek, the team PVP server). So we had characters who were on one of the enemy teams who *could* touch them, and we would log out, and login with our alt. The griefer was usually a low level wizard, and his accomplice was a high level healer of some type. Without our posse in action, they would close down the newbie area in Greater Faydark for days on end. What I did enjoy most was hanging out and meeting people in the home area. You don't get that as much in single player games, at least not until AI gets a lot smarter.
Brings back memories of classic WoW, trying to get 20 or 40 man raid. Some of the guilds were like applying a job and working at one. I still play online games, but only if it can be simple 3 or 4 man. Or playing Diablo games where I can solo.
Yeah, I came to this conclusion/realization 2-3 months ago. I decided that if I were to game, the only games I would play are single-player, regular co-op/couch co-op, and multiplayer games where I can create a premade team with individuals I personally trust. Playing with random people introduces too much unpredictability and variance in my enjoyment of the game. The people I play multiplayer games with have to be people I know in real life, so if they pull something, they’re held accountable (seriously or jokingly) face to face. The problem is that even if someone is banned for toxicity or trolling, they don’t face real-life accountability or consequences. A lot of the time, they feel more inclined to act this way because there are no real repercussions. They can soft int, create new accounts, or switch to different games and continue committing the same offenses. Meanwhile, you’ve already gone through the ordeal, and it keeps piling up as long as you continue queuing with random people in multiplayer games, whether it's on your team, squad, or guild. If you’ve finally had enough, just follow what I mentioned in the first sentence and you’ll have a better experience.
Your description of Everquest is identical to my time in Final Fantasy 11 (Squares Pre-WoW MMO) apart from one thing, the griefing. Griefing was very rare in FF11 (in my experience) due to two reasons. 1. Like Everquest Soloing was very hard past a certain level so you had no choice but to be co-operative. If you were an ass all the time you would become a well known ass and people would not want to play with you. 2. Unlike Everquest you can't take things off a dead player so there was no benefit to getting some one killed and if you did try to get some one killed you would often get in trouble with the GMs. FF11 was a difficult nightmare and i loved it.
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. Gave it up when the first kid came along. Started playing again a few years after watching Mythic Quest. It is mostly just RbR now. Which can be fun, but grouping is an issue for me because I rarely can devote an hour or two completely uninterrupted. It was weird coming baxk after almost 20 years, the maps had changed a bit, but what was the biggest hurdle for me was the slang and abbreviations. End up soloing a lot as a scout.
I agree with everything discussed in the video. I think the biggest thing that irritated me was that even though games would say that you could play them as a solo player the scenarios were setup to encourage you to play in groups. The problem was that when you did get in a group you were then penalized for working in a group. For example, only one player would get credit for doing the mission. Then both players would have to go back and redo the whole mission for the other player to get credit for it. So where was the reward for working as a team? 10% more points or something. It's just not worth it. And after playing with a partner as high level players for a long time you quickly discover that when you partner loses interest and doesn't play any more you can no longer do 50 to 75% or the content that you had been doing on a daily basis. Which means you find another partner or just give it up, which is what I eventually did. The other thing that infuriated me was that as part of the game you crafted "high end" armor and weapons but no one wanted it because you were competing with the company selling much better looking items in their market place in micro-transactions. And don't get me started on the whole "pay-to-win" packages.
I played EVE online from 2008 to 2015 or 16, and I quitted because in that last year it was feeling like a real job more and more and the fun was almost gone. It was also really getting expensive to pay for less and less fun.
Excellent video and overview of online gaming Tim. One minor thing, gaming companies seem to be going more towards solo online, but that's just a whole set of different problems. I play mostly Fallout 76 , which is the only non-toxic online game I ever played (pvp was completely rejected and avoided by the playerbase, as were complex "raids"), and Rocket League - the latest thing is invisible car hacks and skrubs ddos'ing the server when they are losing 😅😮💨
I basically only ever play multiplayer online games with IRL friends, and its games where we don't really have to interact with other players on our team
You make a lot of good points. I play Oldschool Runescape which is primarily played solo but you're still able to interact with other players in a big open world, which makes it to where you can still get some of the social aspect but still enjoy the game without others ruining it for you. It's also free to start playing and you can pay a monthly subscription fee to unlock the rest of the game. As of now there aren't micro-transactions and all you pay is the monthly subscription fee.
Ouch that's not a memory I wanted to remember lol. As a dark knight no one would party up so this was me every play session, recruiting rag tag teams made up of classes people refused to party with. Beastmasters, dragoons, thieves and usually some lesser healing class like a red mage. We were far from optimal exp gain but hey better than zero exp with no party!
I liked having to go to a crowded location to look for teams or shop. In Anarchy Online it was Old Athen hill where I did the shouting when that game was relatively new.
I was very happy to have half of a static (me as White/Red Mage, brother as Paladin, and friend as Dark Knight). And nowadays you can solo practically the entire game. Very different experience, with much more accessible story.
Completely agree. Your first bit about coordinating groups and getting everyone to play at the same time rings super clearly with me. I pretty much stopped playing MMOs altogether because I got tired of grouping with randos that will give up within a couple of tries. Naturally, you just group with friends, right? Except now the problem is, what do we do when a group member is missing. Well, if someone who's deemed a "core member" of the group is missing, we just don't run at all. If I'm missing however, I get replaced and lose out on gear for the week. At some point I find out on my own that I've been replaced. Not a great feeling at all. At this point in my life I just don't have time for that. I found I get the same satisfaction from speedrunning single player games instead, even if I'm not some world record player. I get that sense of commitment and feeling of success without any of the crap. I'm playing video games for my own enjoyment the way it should be, instead of wondering if people even want to raid with me at all.
In regards to the griefing you described such as dragging mobs onto players. That actually did come from a number of DikuMUDs, and was also fairly common in a specific one called MajorMUD (was for MajorBBS starting in 94 and still played on some boards). In fact it was more than just dragging one mob and usually it was done because the person was too low level for you to attack but had a limited item you wanted or had invaded an area you were farming (many players are very territorial in the game). So people, myself included used to do this, would drag as many mobs as possible into a specific room until the max number was reached then go one room out, go offline for a couple minutes or hide to prevent them from following. Then wait for the person to get killed by the mobs. Once they were dead, grab all their loot and stash/sell it. It was effective for chasing off people from certain places known for great exp/hr and income. This was also very minor griefing in MUD which some more major griefing in MUD would also follow to certain MMOs such as Eve Online. One such is long term camping and this was used heavily between groups that were at war and by players trying to get very valuable items from another player. Now this wasn't just camping for several minutes or a couple hours. Players would spend days/weeks in MUD camping the room that the target player disconnected in (I have done it many times). For long term camping we'd have multiple people in our alliance taking turns doing this. When this carried over to Eve Online, the camping has been known to go on for months until the other side rage quit the game.
You ever try Infinity Complex on MajorBBS? I remember back in Summer/1988 it blew my mind to play multiplayer over the modem back then. I first saw MUDs around 1990 but didn't get into that much. Infinity Complex was a nice fast paced text game; MUDs seem a bit slower.
@@cybernit3 don't remember that game but with the various boards I'd been on since mid 90s, I forgot many. I do remember Tradewars (I didn't get into it but my friends older brother did), LORD, and Lord's of Cyberspace (similar to the early rogue like games but playing as a hacker). For me I was mostly playing MajorMUD but did play some of the others at times.
@@desmien679 I remember Tradewars but only played afew times was turn based DOOR. I started to use the Internet around 1996 and quit bbsing mid 90s. Would be funny if the Internet never took off; be still using the modems and bbses, lol.
@@cybernit3 yeah, I started using the internet in 94 but my family got a modem in the early 90s. I got into playing MajorMUD through some friends in highschool around 95 that were playing it on a local board in Los Angeles. I do miss those days of playing on local boards too. Every weekend we'd meet up to go bowling, see a movie at a drive-in theater, or BBQ at a park. We'd also go camping at this one spot every few months. It brought us together not just offline but some good friendships offline. Those days were lost in the late 90s when boards started going on the internet to be connected and stopped being local boards.
Yeah, I don't even have a family and my work isn't that demanding and I've stop playing MMOs too. Maybe a couple rounds of Tekken8 and some other similar short match type of games. All the issues you've mentioned + I really am done with busywork/grinding in gaming, even in single player open world games I just skip most of the side quests I'd they include grinding Real life is filled with monotone grinding and I want my couple of hours of escapism to be fun
I stopped playing MMOs around 2006 because I realized I was paying money to essentially work on an assembly line. I loved the exploration and lore of some MMOs but everyone eventually (or from the start) only cares about their numbers and how efficient these numbers can be. That's not fun to me. I don't want to spend 3-6 hours in this particular location farming the same mobs because its the most efficient spot to grind. I want to see whats over that other hill, or go into that cave and explore. Not be told "Nothing is worthwhile there." I play games for the experiences, not for virtual clout.
Yep...playing on the high end of online play did feel like a job and at the end of the day you're right, it was all for some worthless virtual clout. Our guild cleared this first or was in the running to or look at my parse...looking back on it, I don't even think it was a skill issue, it was just whichever group/guild had the most people who had nothing else going on in their lives at the moment.
2006 and you already quit because of "min-maxxers"? That's crazy, because it's WAAY worse now. I feel like 2006 was at least a time when everyone was still bad at the game and didn't care so much about numbers.
I could talk about EQ all day. I remember going to meet up with a group at frontier mountains at 2am. At the time, it would take my computer 5 minutes to load between zones. So sometimes i would lay down and close my eyes while waiting. Zoning into frontier mountains, i laid down, and when i opened my eyes the sun was up.
I tried a PVP server before I quit. I never did get that warrior to level 60 but I did develop an invisibility potion habit. One day I chugged a potion and stood hidden in a nexus pvp area. Nearly a hundred players in that zone and several guilds battling. I waited for my opportunity to go berserk out of invisibility and just as I was about to... A wizard showed up and did some mana burn blast that annihilated nearly every player and I ran for my life... That might of been just before WoW launched.
I played a lot of MUDs back in the day too! I even helped run a few, and made my own areas for them, including a little bit of experimenting with my own class but I never quite finished it.
The part about microtransactions really resonates with me. I am so annoyed by games constantly asking for money for every little thing, it really sucks. I still play online games sometimes, but way less than I used to, mostly because of that. Why can't I just buy a complete game for a single payment and then unlock everything in it by playing the game? Of course, I know it's because of GREED, but it still annoys me.
Of the MMOs I think the only one that comes close to one is Warframe that has the least toxic community I ever played with. The game has been around over 10 years I think now. Its still adding amazing stories and the engine has been updated over all that time. Its a PvE game and you join up with strangers or join a clan and play with up to 3 others on any missions. So no big raids, manageable party sizes and if you find people to play with they will take you by the hand through some of the beginning. Plus they have one of the better monitization models where you can play everything for free. Then you buy the platinum currency to either add more warframe or weapon slots if you want to keep more of them ready at once and of course on cosmetics. And cosmetics is probably the end game with fashion frames. lol. So no pay to win, no locked content, and being free its easy to jump in and try and a huge catalog of story missions they never retire. Oh and I gotta say there are numerous secrets that get revealed as you play that I had no clue about because the community never tell the new players. they just wait for them to experience them. I played the game for 2 years before I did some story mission whose revelation opened up more of the game. I'd call it a MMO light since you do have open cities to run around and chat with other players but to do missions you only have the people you go with. even the open world Is an instance that no one else can get to OR you can just do content solo. Yes you might take a little more time but I've played all of it solo when I wanted to take time to explore. I think the most amazing thing I've seen in that game that I wish more games would do is have a program where artists can create concept art for skins of existing warframes and other players can vote. the winner the company helps get into a playable state and adds it to the game and the artists then get a percentage of the sale of that skin. This helps the artists so they want to contibute, and the community gets some gorgeous warframe designs.
I’d just like to add here that solo progression in Warframe is brutal and laborious. Being carried to max gear as a new player is taken for granted and so it is considered ‘light’. Try farming a solo Dojo and then grinding the materials to use inside that Dojo for example. Farm Kuva (insert resource here) etc solo. Those being carried in Space Marine 2 currently and then punching down on the challenge is the most obvious I’ve seen in a new game to date. Their posts in usual comments sections about difficulty and how they have ruined the game for themselves are typical of new gamers.
@@eustacequinlank7418 I played solo for almost 6 or 7 years. It has a slow progression. I just finished the rank 28 challenge after all these years. Its a slow climb and I just dont focus on it. eventually I will hit the next level after leveling up 28 items. High level people are great to teach you mechanics in the game but you can never get carried in warframe the way you can in other games. high level people in my dojo just come to do the vaults and explain how some of the challenges and puzzles work but maxing gear is really really limited. i can max the gear for doing a survival run but it doesn't help as much as max gear on a farming run or the load out vs the various factions. it is great when they can explain how stuff works because once I understood how things work the challenges became manageable. So yeah the progression is very slow in this game. trying to farm for a dojo solo is practically pointless because of the amount of material you need to just unlock it. then even more for every room and gear you want to unlock. But its meant to be done by a group. I joined a dojo and just contributed materials to unlock gear. I think we did one big 2 hour survival run to get particular components they needed. but most of the time its just solo runs or wandering around the open world looking for stuff to get into. its a system you enjoy or hate and money wont get around any of it. you can buy skins but you still have to play to get the warframe to wear it... oh well if you want primes you can buy them from other players but they had to play to get them so at every point people have to engage with the content even if its just to farm stuff to sell to other players.
By far the number one reason online games are not fun is: different from offline games the other people on online games are not there to entertain you.
That's why AIs have so much potential in games, with them we can experience very realistic reactions from someone that will be there to entertain you 😍
As a note, I really really miss Wildstar! I was online when they shut it down with all the players that wanted it to keep going. I was late to the game as I didn't know about it, and I really fell in love with it. No game has compared to it for me as far as the combat, the jumping puzzles/exploration...it felt magical and I will always miss it. I wish there was some way that we could all play this game again :(
There was a time that MP was my thing; I wasn't playing SP games anymore, because I loved to meet people around the world, to make real friends just playing those games, and holy mother of christ, how I miss that. It was maybe 20 years ago, or even more, but then I started to play with bots, games started to try and sell me EVERYTHING, some games asked for money to have more inventory space, to visit some portion of the map that was closed to me, unless I paid some fee/bought some DLC, ect. All started to crumble after that, so I don't play that anymore either. Back at that time not even those generic f2p korean MMOs would ask for so much money as the usual paid occidental online game today.
Agree with all your points. I'd add that I don't want to devote all my free time to one game, e.g. an MMO. There are too many awesome single player games coming out that I want to play, plus old classics that I want to revisit.
yeah I've been in that same boat for years now. I have a very low tolerance for that kind of bullshit, and haven't played much multiplayer games since LAN games aren't really a thing anymore, outside of a few sessions with family or close friends.
Yearly sports games are a great example of toxic game companies taking advantage of their player base. Paying full price for a yearly incremental update. Then they do everything they can to steer you towards playing their microtransaction pay to win modes. The sad part is knowing that the heyday of sports games in the PS2 era will never return. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
@@hippityhipflask I believe you to be correct on both fronts. Sega days were where all the innovation happened. Have a fresher coat of paint now, but they don't really look all that different even today.
I was never been big into online anything, especially multiplayer. To this day I only play single player. Way better experiences that don’t require internet connections with great stories
Used to go to internet cafés, where it was common for people there to play LAN multiplayer. There were always a couple of guys that would ruin it for everyone. The usual suspects every time, with mil-spec haircut and tattooed swastikas. Based on that experience, there's a limited blame I put on game design, because I know for a fact that for those people it's the suffering of others that's fun, and they'd only recommend games where the design's enabling that sadistic behavior. There are games that attract that short, intentionally or unintentionally. But recently, Fo76 is doing great in restricting these behaviors by design, and though boss events are done quicker by team play, it's adjusted more for time to kill than team skill. So as long as you, as solo or the team, can output the total damage needed to down the boss within the half-hour window, it's a win condition. The reason I'm mentioning Fo76, is cause I think you'd like it in its current state. It's the only multiplayer game I keep coming back to.
I'm a female gamer since the 1990's (earlier if you count the TI/99 4A and whatnot) and Ultima Online was my first MMORPG. I heard all the horror stories about creating female characters, so I created a male character as my main and never told anyone that I wasn't male in real life. This was before voice chat as well. Did the same in Everquest. While I did have female characters in both, everyone at that time just assumed you were male with a female character, so I very rarely got harassed or bothered for that reason. Nowadays it seems rare for anyone to play male characters at all, so while I'm no longer hiding being female, I still end up playing male characters. :D (And I still create female characters too....what determines the sex is the idea I get for their background, or sometimes it's superficial that I don't like the features of the males, so I'll choose female for that race, or vice versa.)
I haven't played MMORPGs in well over a decade, Fallout 76 excluded, in part for the reasons Tim gives. *But* I do have hundreds of hours in co-op games like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company - so for anyone in Tim's boat, I'd highly recommend trying to find indie co-op games. The nature of the games also means they *tend* to have less toxic communities.
Hi Tim! I mentioned this in your elementalist video, but if the itch to get into a multiplayer game ever becomes too intense, consider Guild Wars (the original) and its more traditional MMO sequel, Guild Wars 2. GW1 has some of the problems you mentioned about missions and time limits, but as a massively-multiplayer coop game, it's designed more like a structured N&D campaign but with optional explorable areas. It's an absolute classic, one of a kind game that nobody has been able to replicate (besides its tabletop inspiration, Magic the Gathering). Guild Wars 2 you can pretty much solo if you want to, and the developers built the game to create an as-inclusive, friendly environment as possible. There are unfortunately microtransactions, but they're all cosmetic. Apart from making the game a bit of a light show, it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment. That said though, if you've really tapped out, that's totally understandable. If you've ever watched the "it's rude to suck at Warcraft" video by Folding Ideas, you'll know that even with all the safety nets and moderation, online multiplayer is practically impossible to make "nice" when there's an objective with a win/lose state. Actually, if you have thoughts on that subject I'm sure we'd be interested in hearing them, considering your Wildstar experience. Anyway, have a great day Tim / Tim's subscribers :)
I didn't start gaming online until the mid-00s, but I share a lot of same feelings. And the crazier the RL world got, the less likely I was to try to play with my old guild mates, even if we played the same games. And that's not even to mention the anxiety I had about hanging out with guildmates who had become toxic themselves because ofnxultural politics. It's something I think I grieve as a loss, but it's nice to hear your similar story.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
It's a real shame that many younger people will simply never have the opportunity to experience the joy of online play in an actually fun environment that isn't geared toward squeezing every possible penny from them.
there's always the opportunity with backwards compatibility and emulation and such
We can make these type of games as well.
There are definitely games like that, you just have to select certain games. Squad, Minecraft, etc
there are still games where you can have that sort of fun without caveats out there, but a lot of them are lower-population
I had a great time with Rising Storm 2 even playing through the times when there were a few hundred players online in total, you'd recognise a lot of players by name and they were just there to have fun
I can't imagine there's so much of that attitude to be found in the MMO space these days without going to custom servers with far smaller communities
I'm mainly a single player guy, but this video made me realize I'd be ok with playing with friends, but the idea of multiplayer with strangers... nope, just nope.
The reasons I don't play MMOs anymore: 1) There is no end point. You end up being a slave to the game. 2) Video game accomplishments are completely hollow. 3) You need to spend a lot of time to make any progress. 4) This repetition leaves me feeling hopeless and empty the more I do it. 5) Despite you telling yourself your online friendships are real, they just aren't. I am a shut in agoraphobic and MMOs are too much of a waste of life even for me.
aint that thet truth ay?
MMO's had their place for me in phases of my life. I was unemployed and depressed, MMO's and the timesink helped me get through the day and have some fun. The reward grind/gamble aspects kept me interested in a time where nothing interested me. Online friends are what you are willing to put into them. I've had a couple last decades and we've met up, hung out, its been great.
Its hard to keep that up long term though. When I got a job and a career started it just took less priority. Now I play games where I can jump in and get immediate action and it respects my time. Fighting games are great for that.
Exactly. There's no lasting sense of accomplishment in a game until I see the credits roll. MMOs never get to the end. There may be many victories along the way, but you can never win.
Exactly! MMOs and mobile games and similar have created this “things” that you don’t play, they actually play you.
They are using you as a watch-ads-piece-of-meat essentially. And in order to maximise the possibility of you watching the ads or spending money they have reached a point where skill as been completely removed from the “gameplay”. The outcomes are extremely limited and highly programmed under algorithms developed only to maximise addiction.
That is not a videogame. It’s a casino machine made to play you, not the other way around.
I'm still playing FFXIV these days, but to be fair, I treat it more and more like an episodic TV show. I buy the newest expansion and get an excellent single-player story for about 50 hours every two years, then I put it back on the shelves until next time. I don't engage too much with the online aspects of it anymore, even though I take some news from old friends here and there. It's just more relaxed, better for my mental health and more respectful of my time and other stuff going on in my life. I've come to appreciate story-centered MMOs, whereas I saw them as pointless when I was younger.
I think FOMO being almost weaponised against the player in a lot of modern multiplayer games makes me burn out on them pretty fast.
This is a two edge sword, FOMO may keep some engaged but it can also become a barrier to reentry. When I was playing RDO2 I had played enough consecutive days to earn max gold per day. For a long time it kept me logging in even when I had more important things to do. One day life happened and I didn't get to log in and keep the streak alive and I was reset to the bottom. I didn't have enough time or energy to grind myself back to max and just gave up the game.
@@ItalianoYMexicanotrue, FOMO was always there- but the infrastructure for micro-transactions wasn’t. And OP is right, it has been completely weaponized against gamers not only to squeeze every penny out of them, but also every minute of their game time with daily grind systems and log-in streaks.
It’s tiring that I can’t enjoy a game for what it is anymore. The game is actively trying to manipulate me to swipe my card, or play longer than I intended in a single session.
That’s something we never had to put up with that with our SNESes and Genesis’. Or NES’ and Master Systems if you’re old like me. 😂
I would say the entire game genre is ruined. They simply make more, and more bad games. The game industry is a cash cow now more than ever! Not to mention everything needs to be pay2win.
couldn't have said it better. although not always the case, that feeling often lingers
True that, Im in point where if I see any FOMO i dont want to play the game instantly, and some devs are trying to push this BS to single player games, omFg.
I really enjoy coop online games with no pvp systems. Played many Deep Rock Galactic games with randoms and never got griefed. Everyone is usually friendly, helping and cheering each other. For Rock and Stone fellow miners!
Hell yeah! Rock and stone!
If you don't rock and stone you ain't coming home
I was going to comment that Deep Rock Galactic almost has a similar feel to couch co-op to me.
Rock and stone, you beautiful dwarf!
For KARL!
I miss the old in-person LAN parties
Yeah I'm 38 and basically I only play single player and story-driven co-op games. No competitive multiplayer whatsoever
Have you played killing floor 2 or vermintide 2? Highly recommend those games if you’re into co op games. Same with helldivers 2
Yup, I "own" (you don't really own anything digital these days) all 3! Lol. Lately we have been getting into a ton of VR stuff like demeo.
"What's it going to be next, patches that you have to pay for?"
Can definitely think of some day-one DLC that's felt like that.
Sounds about right. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened yet lol
@@JReed7560 it happened. It just really damages playerbase retention, so it was discontinued in favor of lootboxes.
Day One DLC shouldn't be a thing. Even if we were to give the company the benefit of the doubt, the message it sounds very loudly is "We carved out this content from the game that we were developing specifically to charge you extra for what should have been in the main release already."
@@JReed7560it happened, both battlefield and CoD used to have dlc maps and guns.
The problem was that the playerbase got fractured between those who bought dlc and those who didn’t, basically creating two separate playerbases and quickening the games death.
Paying for three day early access is the latest wheeze. It's just terrible gouging of those that are looking forward to the game. In multiplayer it gives some players a massive competitive advantage from learning maps, weapons and progression is a form of pay to win for me.
I'm 31 and all of my friends play nothing but MP games, and they get mad that I'm just not into it anymore. I especially do not like competitive facing games anymore, as I just don't feel like trying that hard. I simply just have a better time playing single player games, getting immersed, and having my time feel more respected, but nobody around me seems to understand it.
I can fully relate to a sentiment of "don't feel like trying that hard". I get that everyone plays games for different reasons, but man, the life stuff takes most of my energy and will to succeed. And usually it's worth it in a long run, both emotionally and financially. On the other hand competitive MP often feels like a mindless and pointless grind that at best gives you a fleeting feeling of being powerful, and at worst gobbles up your sanity like candies. I guess self-improvement in any field can be fun given a genuine interest in it, though looking at most people playing competitive MP doesn't give me a feeling that it's their honest motivation.
@@Terenfear Well said and energy is definitely a big part of it. I played FPS games competitively for probably 10 or 12 years and even made a bit of money doing it, but towards the end there I really questioned whether I was even having fun anymore. I argue to my friends that I’m “liberated” bc they are all angry 90% of the time when playing games and I’m not at all lol. It’s definitely a part of self improvement and standing my ground against the peer pressure to get into those games again feels like it only reinforces that improvement 😂
Yeah I'm 39 and stopped playing with my "squad" because I was tired of grown ass men in their 40s screaming into the mic every game just because they got rekt by random 12 year olds in any number of brainless online shooters. I'm just too old for it.
@@pixelmentia My dad is 65 and is still yelling at call of duty 😂 Idk how he does it man
I am 50 years old, and I've had a TH-cam gaming channel since 2018 (after 11 years on TH-cam making other kinds of content). I find it very, very hard to make friends, but I do have 3, who I consider to be my closest friends (even though they are all younger than me). We play together often, and we sometimes play together on the channel. But, even though I introduced them to each other, I often feel like the outsider, mainly because they are all fans of a lot of different games that I just don't care for: PvP Shooters... D&D style Multiplayers like Baldur's Gate 3 and Solasta... "Bullet Sponge" Games like Monster Hunter (which bore the hell out me)... and they're now starting to play Space Marine 2. I wish I enjoyed these sorts of games, but I'm too old to pretend I'm someone I'm not. On top of which, when we DO find a game we all love to play, they often have more time to play than I do, which means we start the game together, and it's fun, but by the next time I get chance to play I'm at level 4, and they're all level 58 or something, at which point it becomes less like a game for me, and more like a constant tutorial, where they're always having to explain how things work, and how to get a certain weapon, or reach a certain place.
I used to enjoy multiplayers, but it's becoming less and less fun, and harder and harder to find people who play my kinds of games, at my pace.
Maybe I'm just too old. 😆
As much as I loved playing WoW -- it was the community that killed it for me.
They just were entirely toxic and unfun a lot of time. I entirely agree with your perspective here and it's why I have spent so much more time in gaming in single player immersive experiences.
WoW did grow increasingly toxic and sweaty. The fact that logs exist is just... back in 07 when i began with TBC if you told me people would suck every once of fun and adventure from the game to crunch a fking calclulator to min max everything to shreds i wouldn't believe you. I would simply say "Why tf would anyone want to do that!?"
Vanilla wow had a great community experience you could not duplicate because even outside your guild players were known and had reputation for running instances and doing pvp . It was like being part of say a small town where everyone kinda knew each other and as a result building a good reputation or a bad reputation mattered. Vanilla BC were a great experience as a result of this. It was only really in Wrath that I felt like my Guild mates were the only people who mattered albeit I did transfer to another server at that point but I did have the best guild I could have ever asked for.
You're 100% on point with this! I had many hundreds of hours in WOW back in the early 2000's. It was a ton of fun, i had good friends that played and some of us actually rented a house together and we would all play from our respective rooms together. But when the group fell apart, and it was down to finding groups online to join, a lot of the fun for me was lost. As age creeps up on me, I'm rapidly finding that time is the biggest restraint to gaming. Especially for MMO style gaming where it take hours and hours of grinding and raiding to get the best gear and progress to the highest levels. It's hard for me to find time to play for 2 hours straight, let alone spend 6 hours on a weekend grinding for one piece of armor. I don't have time to spend an hour or more trying to find the right group for a raid or dungeon. I don't have the reaction time any more to avoid crapping my pants when farting, let alone play COD. I'm not paying a monthly subscription to an online game that i get to play for maybe 5 to 15 hours a month. Just to be griefed by a bunch of 10 year olds who love to spoil everyone's day.
I recently tried out WOW classic. Just the demo period. I forgot just how crappy MMO quests are. There is nothing interesting or fun about them. Kill 10 of these and bring me their horns. Go and kill 20 of these and bring me their ears. Run here, push this button, run there grab this thing, go out and grind, grind, grind, grind........ It's basically boredom simulator 2024. I remember it being so much more fun when I was in my 20's and had all my friends playing. I gave up when i was stuck in this bloody n00b area and trying to kill 20 of these deer looking things, but there were 10 other people there. So it took forever waiting for these things to spawn in.
Long story short, he's on point. Getting older you just don't have time for crap like that, spending money on pointless stuff, being bored, dealing with grief. There are SO many good games out there to play that don't have the monetary and the time investment of an MMO or any other online game. it's just too bad that so many games are going multiplayer. So many games are going to the paid microtransaction model, live service, BS.
I have all the time in the world and i can tell you that the magic only lasts for so long anyways. It's harder to socialize and make friends when you're middle aged for most people as well. We simply don't share as much in common with the wider demographic. The games themselves likewise have grown much more predatory and a lot of online communities are toxic. Used to be only CoD and league had a bad name, oh and Barrens chat lol.
It's not as much down to time as you think. We grow jaded and more secluded.
This guy is right. The culture of gamers online has changed a lot over the last 20 years. I started with 2nd gen mmos, city of heroes , WoW ect. I remember at the start you could group up with random and have agood time. Now lol. Go go go, must play xyz class spec. If you don't know everything about every encounter or beat a boss in one try the group disbands. It's like gamers don't play games to have fun anymore to experience actually playing the game. It's all about the reward. Mmos used to be about the journey. Now, no body talks It's gimmie my reward for the east effort possible. The games are designed this way. Not teaching the player anything about the game as they level because its designed to have zero resistance or threat by any content.
Everything is Gamified now with "rewards". Even reddit has some BS badges for posting or up voting comments. Post by end of day to get your "3 posts in one week badge!". Hell, 80% of the reviews on Steam are BS people write just to get some badge which means nothing.
We used to call people who avoided pvp and just wanted to kill monsters carebears and they were always like this if you killed them during their Dragon killing farms they would vent and curse on public channels. The mistake they made was catering to them like Everquest did and give them a platform to feel superior because they did what they always do cry on public channels and forums for more PVE only attunements to the game to the exclusion of everyone else, pvp, sandbox elements and so called Uncle Owen players who wanted to produce goods and services and not mindlessly monster farm all day. Too much leeway was given to a brand of player who wanted to grind monsters and stand in town AFK and glow.
@@Mollikar sure lest not blame the pvp players that complain nonstop because they can't kill others easily, both sides are to blame.
@@zedeco No.
@@zedeco PVPer were not responsible for Age of Shadows the NGE and every single other game breaking expansion that made it more raider friendly and handcuffed everybody into a life on rails existence. It was QQing locusts who jump from title to title looking for risk free monster battles.
These reasons are why I feel that the disappearance of couch co op is one of the greatest tragedies of the industry. I straight up am not going to play multiplayer anything unless the person im playing with is in the same room.
What's wrong with online co op with someone you personally know?
Path of Exile 2 is going to have couch co-op, oh and it's also going to be free.
Towerfall on switch with up to 6 controllers
@@ItalianoYMexicano shill tier take
@@ItalianoYMexicano It's not, there's no reason to phase it out and couch co-op was well and alive in 2012 so no it hasn't been "decades".
I’m 32 with two kids now and I’ve always loved MP games. With kids though, it’s tough since you can’t pause the games. I’ve naturally been playing more single player games because of this and just valuing my time more as well.
Same Tim- you hit the nail on the head. My friend is disappointed I don’t want to play an MMO with him, but I did it 20+ years ago, have a good idea what he’s asking me to sign up for, and I politely decline every time.
I'm gonna bet it's FFXIV 😂
Helldivers 2 is the closest game I’ve found in recent times where people mostly just want to have fun.
Give it time the toxicity will come as players start thinking they are superior because they have been playing longer.
@@the_bunse Well DOn't be level 30s trying to do a helldive.
Moster hunter games and deep rock galatic are good coperatives games
@@the_bunse Sadly it's already been happening in Helldivers 2. You have a segment of the player population already kicking people from squads if you're not using the armor and weapon load outs they feel are the "correct" ones to be using. The toxicity has already been infecting the game.
@@the_bunse I literally stopped playing at a time when my level was much higher than most of the playerbase I got matchmade with. I had nothing to prove, I just wanted to play with others, and all my level represented was a significant investment into the game. But they'd see my level, kick me... I thought it was a fluke, try again, kicked again... try again, kick... I got the hint after the 4th attempt and just said "I'm done..."
this generation's gamers are officially cooked; toxic, petty, shameless and selfish
I agree with you 100%! The era of EQ, Unreal tournament and Counter Strike. That was the best time to be a gamer. Miss those days.
Everything you said here aligns with my own thought process it's so bad you can't fix it. I remember playing Goldeneye with my older brother and his friend it was a blast no mTx, skins, loot boxes, toxicity just you and the game. I'm so glad i grew up when i did so i could enjoy it for what it was.
I’m right there with you Tim. As a long time old-school MMO player I’m sick and tired of the griefing and toxicity. I try to be the friendliest player when I play those games because treat people the way I want to be treated.
Yup, these echo my sentiments with the exception that I didn't enjoy playing with other people as much as you did in the first place.
I wondered for quite a long time why companies would keep mixing pvp and pve in their games. My thoughts:
(For reference I've played Destiny 1&2, Division 1&2, ESO, Fallout 76 and Conan Exiles)
Almost every bad experience I've had in game and on forums has been with pvp players. From what I have seen they leave the bulk of negative comments and feedback about games as well. It makes sense: they enjoy one-upping and hurting real people. *Not every person who plays pvp is a jerk obviously.* However, within that group you have a type of person who you won't find in pve only games because their general aporoach to life is based around the enjoyment of making others suffer.
Being extremely negative and putting other players and the developers down when they get the chance in reviews or forums is just an every day way of being, whether they like the game or not. I used to wonder why people that reviewed a game terribly would continue to play that game as if nothing was wrong. Despite this group being a small percentage of the whole they are so aggressive that often devs give in to their demands and break things in pve to appease them. I've seen this happen over and over in every game I listed above. The thing is that those players will continue to be jerks no matter how much they get their way. Being jerks IS is their way.
A big reason mmo's are feeling worse over time is that there are more and more people like this in each coming generation. Think of how little parenting kids get. They get a phone or a tablet before they can talk just to keep them busy. Parents don't pay attention to them because they themselves are on their phones, computers or TV's. Too often kids get sent out to daycare where again they aren't getting parented. There are tons of studies showing how harmful it is to kids not to have one on one time with adults during their early years. That, combined with way too much screen time and not having any safe place to go and re-group when situatuons are overwhelming is shown to really curb healthy development in brains and social behavior.
I encourage anyone to look this stuff up and do some research even if you don't have kids. Whether by action or inaction we all share responsibility for where we're at as a culture.
Back to mmo's 😅. Other things that bother me: locking essential items behind pvp content to force engagement, locking small amounts of essential crafting materials behind daily rewards so you have to play every day to keep up with the game, always nerfing popular items to force grinding some new item, RNG...seriously, RNG is one of the worst things to ever happen in gaming and it's done specifically to prey on people prone to gambling addiction. They don't seem to realize a lot of us just get annoyed with the whole system and play something else. If they would instead focus on making fun and interesting things to do in the game that would appeal to everyone and overall they would get more and longer term engagement.
48 here, I have very fond memoeries of playing Ultima Online with a few friends it was so different to anything i had played previously, and even enjoyed playing WoW for a few years but now it seems hard to find a multiplayer game which is 'finished' upon release and is genuinely fun.
I remember being griefed on a MUD back around 1995 or so. There I was, a low level war wizard minding my own business when this higher level occultist kept walking by with their summon, and it would one-shot me every time. It was just outside of town, so they technically weren't breaking the "no summons in town" rule, and they kept timing it just right so it'd hit me before I could grab my gear and re-enter town. So very annoying.
PK MUD griefers were the absolute worst. Special place in hell for those people.
Omg you triggered a memory for me. My first time being PKed and it was in Ultima Online. I still remember the guy's name, Twin. He paralyzed me and my friend. My friend broke free and ran. I got pwnt. 💀
100% agree. I would also add (specifically about online fps):
-i despise wholeheartedly metagaming. Within 2 to 3 weeks after the game release there are HUNDREDS of videos on youtube that immediately make clear that there is a specific weapon/attachment/build that dwarfs all the others and once a part of the player base picks up on that and starts using it, it basically invalidates all other choices. It then becomes either use the meta and win while not having fun because you dislike the meta or play how you want and not have fun because you get stomped. It’s not the developer’s fault most of the time, it’s next to impossible to balance an online game while not restricting gun/build variety, it’s the fault of youtubers/streamers/proplayers.
-Engagement based matchmaking: i recently played for a couple of hours the most recent cod while it was on gamepass and noticed that it’s always 1 or 2 matches where you stomp the enemy team (while having the most kills on your team) followed by 4 to 5 matches where 1 or 2 guys on the other team continuously kill you. Basically, they throw you a bone making you feel good at the expense of the enemy players to get you through the next half an hour of getting stomped and do it all over again. I HATE not being able to continue playing with the same people in the lobby, where you could find a balanced lobby where the games were fair and down to the last second, where you could even start a small rivalry with a specific someone on the other team and maybe even become friends afterwards.
-live service (it’s self explanatory)
By definition it is the devs fault, it's not impossible to balance guns, this isn't a fighting game where you would need to redo animations.
@@lucasLSD sometimes absolutely, other times not so much. The last cod has an ABSURD gun variety and there are only so many variables you could tweak to make a gun different from one another, by nerfing/changing a certain one you’d push that gun in the territory of another one making them feel less unique, it’s a pretty tough job.
I think the answer to the metagame being figured out too quickly is to use a strict rock paper scissors model and just play with gameplay style variations for each class (kind of the way Total War series handles it) Of course, this doesn't happen because meta chasing is hugely profitable for companies and content creators.
@@lucasLSD As someone who spent a career in software engineering and also worked in the games industry, you are wrong about that. The ONLY way to make items and builds truly balanced is through mathematical symmetry. That means they have to be mathematically equivalent in ALL respects. If you do that, your game will be boring. At best, you only have "flavors" of damage (10 fire dmg vs 10 cold dmg). Even then, you are likely to have an asymmetry that makes one choice better. Perhaps there are more mobs that are resistant to fire, making cold a better choice per my above example.
The real problem is that the analytical tools available to players coupled with the ease of distribution of information (the Internet)j means that players will understand the meta in very little time. This is unavoidable. The best way to handle this is not through "balance" because that requires complete mathematical symmetry, but through an abundance of build permutations and gear choices. Path of Exile is a good example of this. The skill "tree" affords so many permutations on its own that it is infeasible to find an "optimal" build. Couple that with an abundance of gear permutations, and you have yourself a system resistant to "meta" analysis.
@@Steve-xh3by Good thing you are an engineer and not a game designer. the comment above you gives a better example of how to deal with it than your "spreadsheet parity balance" method.
Skill based matchmaking and micro-transactions killed online gaming. On the rare occasions that my old team can get together to play online, our skill levels are so varied that any game we play will put someone at a disadvantage and make the best of us look like a God.
Pretty much why my friends and I don't play some games together anymore. There's always someone who's having a terrible time because of SBMM. I had people raging at Dead By Daylight because the matches were too tough for them due to my MMR being too high, but I looked like a God to them. Then, we go play Apex Legends or Warzone and I'm the one getting absolutely slapped around every match because my friends had the high skill MMR.
The matchmaking doesn't know what to do with groups like ours. It didn't used to be like this though, before SBMM.
@@MillionaireHoyOriginal i dont think skill based match making was a problem. Infact there are some good studies and practical tests that have proven it makes games more enjoyable for every skill level. However Engagement based match making is definitely a problem.
@@Goodgu3963 I don't mind SBMM in ranked or competitive play, but it absolutely doesn't belong in social.
There is something really tempting about being a part of a world where you can meet and interact with strangers, but ultimately real life will always be the best version of that 💁🏻
I really like sandbox games where the player makes their own server with only themselves and their friends as clients.
Hi, Tim, I'm really enjoying your history of gaming (your experience of it.) Thanks lots for Fallout 1. My favorite genre of games!
This is why I loved GW1, in that it is basically a single player RPG that you can play with other players if you want, or you can just use a wide range of fairly competent NPC companions to fill your party with to go through the main content, which is all instanced.
- Almost all of the content doesn't take hours to get through.
- Playing with other players is optional, and therefore you can be more selective with who you want to play with, so players are generally nicer as they know you have other options if they start being assholes.
- Max player level is 20, which most players can reach in a few days, so players with less time to play don't fall behind. The levelling process is basically just a tutorial, after which you spend most of the game at max level, just picking up new skills to customise your build with.
- Base gear stats max out quickly too, but with a lot of customisation to fine tune things towards a particular build, so you don't have to grind forever to keep up with a gear treadmill.
- Character attribute points and even class can be modified on the fly, so someone can adapt their character based on team composition if needed. If you need another healer, someone can just switch to Monk secondary for some extra healing options.
GW1 is such a gem -- one of my favorite games of all time. I'm genuinely surprised no other game has tried to replicate it's formula.
GW1 is like the last big MMO that hasn't been enshitified in some way. It's just as it was.
@@pixelmentia It isn't really an MMO, and I think that is one of the best things it has going for it. I think a lot of people just call it an MMO as it felt a lot bigger that it actually was in terms of cultural impact and longevity, with towns once bustling full of players and activity, but still being small-scale and intimate while out in the maps with just you and your party. Basically why I didn't like GW2 as much, it is just too grand and epic and impersonal for my taste.
Well said. Missing GW1 game design too.
Gw2 is like that to but has other flaws
You sir are a legend. And just like the infamous contentious quote war never changes. I hope you too never change. Keep gaming on. Klamath remembers
You're not alone, Tim! -- I've always favored single player (and games that END, haha), but there were years where I loved multiplayer. Now, I'm more of a single player player than I ever have been. I really miss the good ol' days of EQ, DAoC, and even WoW when it was all about making friends and grouping was fun and not something to gripe about or gatekeep new players into oblivion -- I remember spending so much time HELPING people so they could do better and have fun, which made it more fun. Leveling up was the result, not the only goal.
Now it feels like a chore or that people just go through the motions without socializing (group finders killed this) and everyone is just in a hurry to level up. It's also sometimes like you said - scheduling and now some games make you do x y z before the reset your progress-- I don't want another job. It shouldn't matter if it takes me 6 days or 6 years. :XD
I'm 39. I've played DCUO, WoW , SWOTOR, FF14 and The Secret World. The Secret World was the only one of these games that actually held my interest for an extended period of time which had nothing to do with the actual "game" part of the game. It was the X Files meets X -Men meets HP Lovecraft setting.
I learned real quickly that these games are designed to be addictive first and foremost, then tactics are deployed to monetize that addiction. Being a fun and enjoyable experience is not as high of a priority for these games as it should be.
With the level of life obligations I have these days, my time is precious and I need my games to end.
I really miss the secret world :(
I can relate to a lot of the points in this. I used to play a lot of multiplayer first-person shooters and did play World of Warcraft for about a year and a half after it came out. Between being unable to play with pubs unless I turn off all chat because of all the garbage being spewed, how every game is full of cheaters (anti-cheat systems work about as well as DRM, meaning they don't), and that I'm always matchmade against people who do nothing but play that one game all day long, it's just not fun anymore. Not to mention all the predatory monetization. I will still play co-op stuff, but I'm in my 40s and all of my friends have families and other things and never seem to be able to commit to a time and then reliably show up for it. Or if they do, they always have to leave way sooner than they said. It bums me out, but people have their own priorities and it is what it is. I mostly play single player indie games these days and there's enough of those to last me multiple lifetimes.
I believe the devs sell their own cheat codes. It’s a steady monthly income of usually around $50 per sub and millions of people around the globe pay it.
Because of cheaters I play VR and what a game changer it is.
I remember a magazine article in the mid '90s describing an online game as a "petri dish of antisocial behavior."
"Llama" was a common word for griefers if I recall correctly.
I had a friend in the 90s and early 2000s who called everyone a llama. Haha, good times. If he didn't like someone in classic Dota, he called them a llama.
Yeah I remember, It was a derivative of "lamer"
Wasn't specifically for griefers, applied to anyone whining and those who were awful at the game. Originated in the early days of Quake multiplayer.
To "Llama grab" was a Starsiege: Tribes term Either newbs or griefers would do it. Pretty much it was to take the flag while going very slow.
Pronounced with an L or Y?
Yup-30-yr gamer and I'm totally done with online-based games. Never been particularly competitive and graphical advancements are nominal compared to the leaps and bounds of the 'aughts. I'm perfectly happy in the Indy and last-decade space for 'new' games (dead mp/non live-service etc). There's so much I haven't played previously, and so much modern static, _now_ is the time to play all those great games of the last decade.
People are rude and demonic when I used to play online. Now I just play my Nintendo switch RPG games offline. Goodbye cruel world 🌍
of all the mmo's i've played WOW was by far the most toxic. now i just play my switch also.
The irony is you play a game to try and forget the crappy people in the real world and playing online you once again have to deal with crappy people in the real world.
People are largely Godless and hedonistic today. It was designed through pop culture to groom society into this mess we see around us now.
@@inseptra try lost ark 🤣🤣🤣🤣 more toxic than league of legends. Imagine that
@@Im_dsr Sounds epic! Gotta try that!
I like to couch co-op with my non gamer wife....we played resident evil 5 together and had the best time. Plus it's nice to share something you love with someone you love
Great game to play with the Mrs. We did the same when it was still fairly new.
I miss the old days of MMOs. Sure there was a lot of griefing, but the sheer amount of fun we were able to have in spite of that, before developers started policing everything, we were so free to just simply enjoy the wierd quirks of everything. Now everything is a bug, now there's a patch every month. Can't just vibe anymore, everything is in a state of repair and constant course correction. I miss the messiness.
My first console was an Atari; I played Moon Patrol back in ‘86.
It was good.
best year of all time (for me lol)
Hi Tim. I'm Tim. Yes, I've also stopped playing multiplayer. I remember years ago playing World of Warcraft. I really started to see a lot of the toxicity back then. Over the years and a few dollars later I just started having enough of the keyboard warriors. My simple solution is that I've switched to single player games. I'm late to the game (see what I did there) but started playing Subnautica 3 months ago and really enjoying it. My family is what most of my time goes to but I still have an hour or 2 a day to sit down and game. Not bad for a 57 year old guy. Thank you for sharing this video. Subscribed!
So to sum up: Hell is other people.
I have only been playing Fallout 76 online lately…The community is pretty nice and people tend to be helpful for the most part you also don’t have to rely on others to go forward in the game.
I used to raid in FFXIV years ago during the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, then I realized I was sacrificing my free time to play with people I didn't even like to play a game that wasn't worth the time investment in any way, shape or form.
Now I just play coop games with friends whenever we want to, I HATE being forced to play and I HATE being told when I have to play.
The only MMO I play now is Guild Wars 2 because it allows my bestie and I to play whenever we want and do any content we want as most content can be done in duo, MMOs without single player or small group (2 to 4 players) friendly content won't thrive anymore.
I've played FFXIV since ARR released and still haven't done most of the raid content. 😅
Real, I was in a pretty cool and chill guild in Black Desert, then some tryhards entered and somehow ended up besties of the leader, now I had to be online every friday at 21:00 to do content, even though I explained I didn't get home until 22:00, so they just kicked me out. Never entered another guild since and eventually stopped playing.
on north america 90% of players never even instance into a savage raid let alone complete it
@@chloesmith4065 Is that a real stat? If so that is fascinating.
@@Desmond-Dark yes on some servers like crystal only 5% cleared E8S. Aether was higher like 11%
Tim you are not only a legend to me, you are like totally bang on. You literally always picked the right project and teams and your achievements are like the list of some of my most enjoyed games. Loved Outer Worlds, figures you were tied to that in some way! Probably the only game (which I own) I never got into was the Pillars game, having not known you were tied to that title, I might just have to give it a try again! Haha. I will say it was refreshing to hear your comments/views because you are like 100% bang on on everything, it basically underlines everything I say to people to this day. Listening to you it's like me talking, it's really weird to hear someone say the exact same things I've been saying! I'm 110% behind you in terms of your views of online play. I subscribed to ya, because it's refreshing and mentally satisfying to listen to you. I'm not crazy after all, to hear it from you, I know that for sure now. I hope you work on more games and bring your perspectives to those games, because you have left a trail of excellence behind you. Thank you!
My daughter and I used to play Battle Block Theater and Halo in couch coop mode and all we did was grief each other - while laughing hysterically. Context is everything. :D
I remember a friend of mine and I would play co-op Forge in Halo Reach specifically to do stupid stuff. We would make tracks for the different vehicles, and sometimes we'd accelerate into a wall and switch out of flight mode. The resulting *BONK* "Suicide." was the funniest thing ever back then.
My brothers and I did the same. The thing about when it comes from strangers online is that it's mean-spirited, an action purposely made to ruin your time.
100% I feel exactly the same. I haven't played anything multiplayer for the last 3 years and probably won't ever will again. If I see multiplayer or requires online I just skip it. As I've gotten older I like to really immerse myself in the game and when everyone is constantly bunny-hopping or tea-bagging each other it just breaks it for me.
I think you've been very unlucky with the griefing and grouping issues you experienced during your early EQ days. I have amazing fond memories from Merdian59, UO and EQ back in the day. I think in the several years I played EQ especially, I encountered two times that I can remember with griefers, it was so incredibly rare, at least on the servers I played. and once I found a really nice guild, finding groups/people to play with was never an issues (I did play a Cleric though, so I was often sought after to join groups). At least from my experience, griefing and toxicity are a lot worse today
I'm old enough that I started gaming with the Atari VCS, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the arcades. On those systems, I hardly ever made use of the multiplayer feature. When online multiplayer games started getting mainstream attention in the late 1990s, I thought, "this sounds like a very bad idea." Even back then, I knew how toxic online communities could be, and I knew there would be people who would make it their life's work to spread misery throughout these online worlds. To this day, I have never played an online multiplayer game. Even not accounting for the toxic gamers, problems of scheduling and time commitments would make it difficult to enjoy those games. It's interesting to hear from people who used to play those games and then gave them up. The reasons they cite are the reasons that I never got into multiplayer games in the first place. I do not want a game to feel like a job, and I do not want other people in my games.
I just wanted to thank you for this video, Tim. Your detailed descriptions of these issues with online games really solidified the reasoning behind the fact that I do either single player, couch co op, or private server online games with a small number of friends over Discord (like Torchlight or Project Zomboid, for example). You really hit the nail on the head for why I tend to shy away from MMOs. Keep the good content coming!
I totally get this, things have definitely changed in the multiplayer space over the years.
I used to have lots of fun in multiplayer PC games in the early 2000s. People weren't as toxic and it was actually pretty easy to find new people to play with. But it was also the time where server browsers were the norm in many games. You could say that every server had a small community around it, and it really wasn't unusual to recognize and know people that play on a given server after a while. Man, I miss that :(.
Nowadays things are waaay more random and anonymous due to matchmaking and whatnot. I usually have to mute all in-game chat within ~10 minutes in games like CS2, as the constant complaining and flaming gets anxiety inducing after a while. It's bad.
Man... I used to love that in Counter Strike 1.6. I would always play on the same server and even made friends with the admins. Unfortunately, that server known as 'KIR' (Keepin' It Real) shut down because the server owners ended up getting in a divorce and shut the server down for some reason. They existed for years until right around the time Counter Strike Source came out. It was a neat server because of all the mods they used, like custom maps, sounds and songs that would play when the rounds start/end.
I miss those people, and the times. We didn't even play competitively, we just did for fun. That vibe just isn't there anymore with CSGO and CS2.
Ever since then I basically became a nomad gamer who never really settled down in another community, and just opted to play as many different games as possible. Well... I did get into an online relationship with a girl in World of Warcraft. We had a whole bunch of friends in our guild, even her mom was there. But... we just drifted apart. She found someone IRL. I don't want to get attached to anyone like that again in a video game, so I just distance myself from other people in games now.
I thought I was just anti-social a few years ago, but... I'm not. I love people, I'm very social, I just get too attached, and just isolate myself from people out of fear of being hurt again. Sorry, I just like to yap. Your comment took me back 😅
Adding to the list: Addiction. I'm pretty sure I was starting to get addicted to MOBA games and it caused me to fail out of a semester of college. I've seen & heard of a lot of people getting addicted to games and suffering from a lot of mental health issues. They are always the online games.
The incentives for online games are the same as social media, more engagement is better. Doesn't matter what kind of engagement that is. It just ends up consuming more of your life the more you play.
Since I stopped playing online games, my mental health is better. I can put the game down and do something else that needs to be done like mowing the lawn or whatever. I can pause the game and respond to calls or texts. It's like I'm in charge of things, whereas with online games, the game or the match is deciding what my schedule is.
the first few years of World of Warcraft was so fun, when everyone was playing the game and it was a new experience.
Yeah, I made some great online friends during vanilla and BC and continued some of those friendships though WotLK, but by Cataclysm, everything I loved about WoW was dead.
MMO's from the early days in the late 90's through to around WoTLK were peak. It's not even a shadow of what it was anymore. The genre is extremely stale.
I agree with this and focus on single player games as well. Also because I just love building and exploring and that usually is better si gle llayer anyway. Though I will say I remember good times running through the outback of Asheron's call where you could explore for hours and not see another player. Modern MMOs aren3like that though.
What annoys me of late are the multi-player trolls who go into the steam forums of early access single player games and try to pressure the game devs to add multi-player features. Over and over this happens. Sometimes the game devs eventually give in to the pressure and reallocate resources to multi-player. I call them trolls because they are relentless and don't seem to care if it would harm the single player experience.
I'll say it, these people who actually enjoy causing other people grief are the worst of humanity. They are dispicable. There are times where I may not actively care about others, but I have never gotten enjoyment out of causing harm or grief. I can't imagine how ugly one must be inside to be that way.
I don't play and never have MMOs. Strictly LAN or TCP/IP. Mostly TCP/IP. I know who I'm playing with. Still play games like Homeworld 2, Diablo 2, Iceeind Dale and Baldaur's gate. Games like that. Wish they'd go back to putting that in games.
Dunno how I found you but bro you and me are the same. UO came out right after I graduated High School and I was SO FREAKING addicted. I also played MUDS (the whole BBS scene) and everything else you stated.
I too rarely if ever play online/MP games anymore for the same reasons.
BTW, I still think Ultima Online is the greatest MMO ever created (although, it got very Toxic in it's time as well)
I have to admit I got griefed so much in that game which kind of ruined PvP that I became a griefer and I am not proud about it ;) But I was not a jerk like a lot of them. We would grief and cause people to attack us then kill them - but we wouldn't loot them and we generally would res them and let them keep playing.
It's sad though because the open PvP in UO as well as the looting, is what made it so great. Real risk reward and created some very compelling good vs evil battles and wars. It was great for many years, until it wasn't.
I played Lord of the Rings Online when it launched, and I remember back then, how the dungeons were huge time commitment, of an hour or more and having the same problem as you.
But I've returned to it through the years, and am back on it as I type this. They cut the dungeon down in smaller pieces. So like the Great Barrows, the first dungeon, was this huge dungeon before, but now it's 3 different dungeon instances. Making them small bite size, so if you lose your tank or healer after the first part, then you won't need to redo it the next time.
You may find Final Fantasy 14 makes for an interesting comparison to this video sometime.
They've gone out of their way to accommodate solo play, to the point where (almost?) the entire game and the full story can be played single player. The challenging/time-consuming content is largely just "What if?" or other non-canon events, so you're never missing out on story beats by not doing them. And, if you did want to group up, the community is famously generous and kind. It's also got a group finder and a party-finder system that makes finding groups for anything fast and simple.
I'm sure it happens occasionally, but I don't think I've ever been griefed the entire time I've been playing it.
I like that fighting games are basically the last bastion of a true contest between two people online
Even then, 10 year olds running around typing or saying you suck because you can't play 24 hours like they can because you have a job.
Agree 100%. Love settling in to a nice single player game. I love looking for hidden indie gems that have something new or unique to offer. I also loved couch co-op too. Halo LAN parties were a huge thing for me and my friends back in the day. So much fun. But i also think as i get older, many of those experiences are simply nostalgia, and i wonder if i would even want to revisit them again today. I think yes, with the right group of people, but everyone seems to have grown apart and its hard to have that in person co-op experience anymore.
I bought the first 3 Fallouts cause YOu seem really down to earth good creator, even though we for sure have them all on Cd's. My brother is a Truer fan than me but I love all you're stuff as well and very thankful you were in the Video Game Community that for sure has seen hard times recently.
Yep, I'm only 32 but I have similar reasons.
1. Can't get my friends to play anything with me. The last time we played online was during covid when we had lots of time and even then only got to play Star Wars Squadrons once a week, maybe twice.
2. Playing solo in an online game even like CoD is not that much fun. Everyone is running around their own way, and your team just gets decimated if your group of randos get grouped against like an actual group of 5 people who communicate and have some sort of plan.
3. Sometimes even finding groups or matches is difficult.
4. Skill gap / griefing, call it whatever you want. I'm a working adult, I have a life, I don't have the same commitment and time as a 14 year old kid who has nothing going on in his life other than playing games. It's not fun if you feel like you never even stood a chance, when you don't even know how they saw you and shot you down, when you can't tell if people are cheating or are just that good.
I didn't really play MMOs other than SWTOR and thankfully didn't really see a lot of griefing or harassment or anything like that.
You are so right! Specially regarding the time to practice 8 hours a day to take the muscular memory to absolute perfection and get to know every single exploitable glitch and angle on the game. Not with a job, family and having to take care of of yourself.
Almost no free time exists beyond that. And then you’ll choose to spend those two hours you miraculously got on a Friday night on a game where you are just massacred over and over? Screw that.
swtor was literally the best gaming times of my life
"only"
I never enjoyed online games because I want total control over my entertainment.
you could do a whole separate show on mmo culture, I find this endlessly fascinating
Your recap of Everquest gave me the willies. I was always the guy who wasn't able to keep up with the group's level (they were young and I was married with children - I would have to take a day or two off, and they were 5 levels above me!). I spent a lot of time solo in EQ as a result. I played a mage, and a bard at one point because I could solo easier with these classes, but I had to be very strategic. As for griefers: when they would hit the newbie area, we would call out our alts because inevitably, the griefer would have a high level healer hidden behind a tree who was in the friendly faction, so you couldn't touch them (I was on Vallon-Zek, the team PVP server). So we had characters who were on one of the enemy teams who *could* touch them, and we would log out, and login with our alt. The griefer was usually a low level wizard, and his accomplice was a high level healer of some type. Without our posse in action, they would close down the newbie area in Greater Faydark for days on end. What I did enjoy most was hanging out and meeting people in the home area. You don't get that as much in single player games, at least not until AI gets a lot smarter.
Brings back memories of classic WoW, trying to get 20 or 40 man raid. Some of the guilds were like applying a job and working at one. I still play online games, but only if it can be simple 3 or 4 man. Or playing Diablo games where I can solo.
Yeah, I came to this conclusion/realization 2-3 months ago. I decided that if I were to game, the only games I would play are single-player, regular co-op/couch co-op, and multiplayer games where I can create a premade team with individuals I personally trust. Playing with random people introduces too much unpredictability and variance in my enjoyment of the game. The people I play multiplayer games with have to be people I know in real life, so if they pull something, they’re held accountable (seriously or jokingly) face to face. The problem is that even if someone is banned for toxicity or trolling, they don’t face real-life accountability or consequences. A lot of the time, they feel more inclined to act this way because there are no real repercussions. They can soft int, create new accounts, or switch to different games and continue committing the same offenses. Meanwhile, you’ve already gone through the ordeal, and it keeps piling up as long as you continue queuing with random people in multiplayer games, whether it's on your team, squad, or guild. If you’ve finally had enough, just follow what I mentioned in the first sentence and you’ll have a better experience.
Your description of Everquest is identical to my time in Final Fantasy 11 (Squares Pre-WoW MMO) apart from one thing, the griefing. Griefing was very rare in FF11 (in my experience) due to two reasons.
1. Like Everquest Soloing was very hard past a certain level so you had no choice but to be co-operative. If you were an ass all the time you would become a well known ass and people would not want to play with you.
2. Unlike Everquest you can't take things off a dead player so there was no benefit to getting some one killed and if you did try to get some one killed you would often get in trouble with the GMs.
FF11 was a difficult nightmare and i loved it.
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. Gave it up when the first kid came along. Started playing again a few years after watching Mythic Quest. It is mostly just RbR now. Which can be fun, but grouping is an issue for me because I rarely can devote an hour or two completely uninterrupted.
It was weird coming baxk after almost 20 years, the maps had changed a bit, but what was the biggest hurdle for me was the slang and abbreviations. End up soloing a lot as a scout.
"What's next, patches you have to pay for?" Don't give them ideas, Tim!
I agree with everything discussed in the video. I think the biggest thing that irritated me was that even though games would say that you could play them as a solo player the scenarios were setup to encourage you to play in groups. The problem was that when you did get in a group you were then penalized for working in a group. For example, only one player would get credit for doing the mission. Then both players would have to go back and redo the whole mission for the other player to get credit for it. So where was the reward for working as a team? 10% more points or something. It's just not worth it. And after playing with a partner as high level players for a long time you quickly discover that when you partner loses interest and doesn't play any more you can no longer do 50 to 75% or the content that you had been doing on a daily basis. Which means you find another partner or just give it up, which is what I eventually did. The other thing that infuriated me was that as part of the game you crafted "high end" armor and weapons but no one wanted it because you were competing with the company selling much better looking items in their market place in micro-transactions. And don't get me started on the whole "pay-to-win" packages.
I played EVE online from 2008 to 2015 or 16, and I quitted because in that last year it was feeling like a real job more and more and the fun was almost gone. It was also really getting expensive to pay for less and less fun.
I play Fallout 76. Betgesda did a good job setting this up to not be toxic. I enjoy the commradery and lack of listening to chatter.
TLDR it feels like a job rather than fun.
Excellent video and overview of online gaming Tim. One minor thing, gaming companies seem to be going more towards solo online, but that's just a whole set of different problems. I play mostly Fallout 76 , which is the only non-toxic online game I ever played (pvp was completely rejected and avoided by the playerbase, as were complex "raids"), and Rocket League - the latest thing is invisible car hacks and skrubs ddos'ing the server when they are losing 😅😮💨
Couch multiplayer is amazing, why the switch beats every other console
I spent so much time playing TMNT and Contra with my sister.
I basically only ever play multiplayer online games with IRL friends, and its games where we don't really have to interact with other players on our team
This... I do have a few good online friends too, I consider them irl friends at this point though.
You make a lot of good points.
I play Oldschool Runescape which is primarily played solo but you're still able to interact with other players in a big open world, which makes it to where you can still get some of the social aspect but still enjoy the game without others ruining it for you.
It's also free to start playing and you can pay a monthly subscription fee to unlock the rest of the game. As of now there aren't micro-transactions and all you pay is the monthly subscription fee.
Shoutout to the FFXI players that spent 5-6 hours shouting for parties in Jeuno, only to have it disband after two kills
Ouch that's not a memory I wanted to remember lol.
As a dark knight no one would party up so this was me every play session, recruiting rag tag teams made up of classes people refused to party with. Beastmasters, dragoons, thieves and usually some lesser healing class like a red mage.
We were far from optimal exp gain but hey better than zero exp with no party!
I liked having to go to a crowded location to look for teams or shop. In Anarchy Online it was Old Athen hill where I did the shouting when that game was relatively new.
I was very happy to have half of a static (me as White/Red Mage, brother as Paladin, and friend as Dark Knight).
And nowadays you can solo practically the entire game. Very different experience, with much more accessible story.
oh my.
rdm checking in.
I stayed-up all night to hit 50 on my War/Nin, only to finally get a group at something like 7am.
No thanks.
Completely agree. Your first bit about coordinating groups and getting everyone to play at the same time rings super clearly with me. I pretty much stopped playing MMOs altogether because I got tired of grouping with randos that will give up within a couple of tries. Naturally, you just group with friends, right? Except now the problem is, what do we do when a group member is missing. Well, if someone who's deemed a "core member" of the group is missing, we just don't run at all. If I'm missing however, I get replaced and lose out on gear for the week. At some point I find out on my own that I've been replaced. Not a great feeling at all.
At this point in my life I just don't have time for that. I found I get the same satisfaction from speedrunning single player games instead, even if I'm not some world record player. I get that sense of commitment and feeling of success without any of the crap. I'm playing video games for my own enjoyment the way it should be, instead of wondering if people even want to raid with me at all.
In regards to the griefing you described such as dragging mobs onto players. That actually did come from a number of DikuMUDs, and was also fairly common in a specific one called MajorMUD (was for MajorBBS starting in 94 and still played on some boards). In fact it was more than just dragging one mob and usually it was done because the person was too low level for you to attack but had a limited item you wanted or had invaded an area you were farming (many players are very territorial in the game). So people, myself included used to do this, would drag as many mobs as possible into a specific room until the max number was reached then go one room out, go offline for a couple minutes or hide to prevent them from following. Then wait for the person to get killed by the mobs. Once they were dead, grab all their loot and stash/sell it. It was effective for chasing off people from certain places known for great exp/hr and income.
This was also very minor griefing in MUD which some more major griefing in MUD would also follow to certain MMOs such as Eve Online. One such is long term camping and this was used heavily between groups that were at war and by players trying to get very valuable items from another player. Now this wasn't just camping for several minutes or a couple hours. Players would spend days/weeks in MUD camping the room that the target player disconnected in (I have done it many times). For long term camping we'd have multiple people in our alliance taking turns doing this. When this carried over to Eve Online, the camping has been known to go on for months until the other side rage quit the game.
You ever try Infinity Complex on MajorBBS? I remember back in Summer/1988 it blew my mind to play multiplayer over the modem back then. I first saw MUDs around 1990 but didn't get into that much. Infinity Complex was a nice fast paced text game; MUDs seem a bit slower.
@@cybernit3 don't remember that game but with the various boards I'd been on since mid 90s, I forgot many. I do remember Tradewars (I didn't get into it but my friends older brother did), LORD, and Lord's of Cyberspace (similar to the early rogue like games but playing as a hacker). For me I was mostly playing MajorMUD but did play some of the others at times.
@@desmien679 I remember Tradewars but only played afew times was turn based DOOR. I started to use the Internet around 1996 and quit bbsing mid 90s. Would be funny if the Internet never took off; be still using the modems and bbses, lol.
@@cybernit3 yeah, I started using the internet in 94 but my family got a modem in the early 90s. I got into playing MajorMUD through some friends in highschool around 95 that were playing it on a local board in Los Angeles. I do miss those days of playing on local boards too. Every weekend we'd meet up to go bowling, see a movie at a drive-in theater, or BBQ at a park. We'd also go camping at this one spot every few months. It brought us together not just offline but some good friendships offline. Those days were lost in the late 90s when boards started going on the internet to be connected and stopped being local boards.
Yeah, I don't even have a family and my work isn't that demanding and I've stop playing MMOs too.
Maybe a couple rounds of Tekken8 and some other similar short match type of games.
All the issues you've mentioned + I really am done with busywork/grinding in gaming, even in single player open world games I just skip most of the side quests I'd they include grinding
Real life is filled with monotone grinding and I want my couple of hours of escapism to be fun
I stopped playing MMOs around 2006 because I realized I was paying money to essentially work on an assembly line. I loved the exploration and lore of some MMOs but everyone eventually (or from the start) only cares about their numbers and how efficient these numbers can be. That's not fun to me. I don't want to spend 3-6 hours in this particular location farming the same mobs because its the most efficient spot to grind. I want to see whats over that other hill, or go into that cave and explore. Not be told "Nothing is worthwhile there." I play games for the experiences, not for virtual clout.
Yep...playing on the high end of online play did feel like a job and at the end of the day you're right, it was all for some worthless virtual clout. Our guild cleared this first or was in the running to or look at my parse...looking back on it, I don't even think it was a skill issue, it was just whichever group/guild had the most people who had nothing else going on in their lives at the moment.
2006 and you already quit because of "min-maxxers"? That's crazy, because it's WAAY worse now. I feel like 2006 was at least a time when everyone was still bad at the game and didn't care so much about numbers.
@andrebonds4199 we used to call those types poop sockers. The ones on a rare drop mob for 15 hours a day.
I feel this. Every now and then I find a game that draws me in, but even then I tend to keep to myself as much as I can.
I could talk about EQ all day.
I remember going to meet up with a group at frontier mountains at 2am. At the time, it would take my computer 5 minutes to load between zones. So sometimes i would lay down and close my eyes while waiting. Zoning into frontier mountains, i laid down, and when i opened my eyes the sun was up.
As a gnome wizard on a PVP server I remember I had to log in at 2:00 a.m. just to sneak out of my starting City
As a gnome wizard on a PVP server I remember I had to log in at 2:00 a.m. just to sneak out of my starting City
I tried a PVP server before I quit.
I never did get that warrior to level 60 but I did develop an invisibility potion habit.
One day I chugged a potion and stood hidden in a nexus pvp area.
Nearly a hundred players in that zone and several guilds battling.
I waited for my opportunity to go berserk out of invisibility and just as I was about to...
A wizard showed up and did some mana burn blast that annihilated nearly every player and I ran for my life...
That might of been just before WoW launched.
I played a lot of MUDs back in the day too! I even helped run a few, and made my own areas for them, including a little bit of experimenting with my own class but I never quite finished it.
The part about microtransactions really resonates with me. I am so annoyed by games constantly asking for money for every little thing, it really sucks. I still play online games sometimes, but way less than I used to, mostly because of that. Why can't I just buy a complete game for a single payment and then unlock everything in it by playing the game? Of course, I know it's because of GREED, but it still annoys me.
Of the MMOs I think the only one that comes close to one is Warframe that has the least toxic community I ever played with. The game has been around over 10 years I think now. Its still adding amazing stories and the engine has been updated over all that time. Its a PvE game and you join up with strangers or join a clan and play with up to 3 others on any missions. So no big raids, manageable party sizes and if you find people to play with they will take you by the hand through some of the beginning. Plus they have one of the better monitization models where you can play everything for free. Then you buy the platinum currency to either add more warframe or weapon slots if you want to keep more of them ready at once and of course on cosmetics. And cosmetics is probably the end game with fashion frames. lol. So no pay to win, no locked content, and being free its easy to jump in and try and a huge catalog of story missions they never retire. Oh and I gotta say there are numerous secrets that get revealed as you play that I had no clue about because the community never tell the new players. they just wait for them to experience them. I played the game for 2 years before I did some story mission whose revelation opened up more of the game.
I'd call it a MMO light since you do have open cities to run around and chat with other players but to do missions you only have the people you go with. even the open world Is an instance that no one else can get to OR you can just do content solo. Yes you might take a little more time but I've played all of it solo when I wanted to take time to explore.
I think the most amazing thing I've seen in that game that I wish more games would do is have a program where artists can create concept art for skins of existing warframes and other players can vote. the winner the company helps get into a playable state and adds it to the game and the artists then get a percentage of the sale of that skin. This helps the artists so they want to contibute, and the community gets some gorgeous warframe designs.
I’d just like to add here that solo progression in Warframe is brutal and laborious. Being carried to max gear as a new player is taken for granted and so it is considered ‘light’.
Try farming a solo Dojo and then grinding the materials to use inside that Dojo for example. Farm Kuva (insert resource here) etc solo.
Those being carried in Space Marine 2 currently and then punching down on the challenge is the most obvious I’ve seen in a new game to date. Their posts in usual comments sections about difficulty and how they have ruined the game for themselves are typical of new gamers.
@@eustacequinlank7418 I played solo for almost 6 or 7 years. It has a slow progression. I just finished the rank 28 challenge after all these years. Its a slow climb and I just dont focus on it. eventually I will hit the next level after leveling up 28 items.
High level people are great to teach you mechanics in the game but you can never get carried in warframe the way you can in other games. high level people in my dojo just come to do the vaults and explain how some of the challenges and puzzles work but maxing gear is really really limited. i can max the gear for doing a survival run but it doesn't help as much as max gear on a farming run or the load out vs the various factions. it is great when they can explain how stuff works because once I understood how things work the challenges became manageable.
So yeah the progression is very slow in this game. trying to farm for a dojo solo is practically pointless because of the amount of material you need to just unlock it. then even more for every room and gear you want to unlock. But its meant to be done by a group. I joined a dojo and just contributed materials to unlock gear. I think we did one big 2 hour survival run to get particular components they needed. but most of the time its just solo runs or wandering around the open world looking for stuff to get into.
its a system you enjoy or hate and money wont get around any of it. you can buy skins but you still have to play to get the warframe to wear it... oh well if you want primes you can buy them from other players but they had to play to get them so at every point people have to engage with the content even if its just to farm stuff to sell to other players.
By far the number one reason online games are not fun is: different from offline games the other people on online games are not there to entertain you.
That's why AIs have so much potential in games, with them we can experience very realistic reactions from someone that will be there to entertain you 😍
As a note, I really really miss Wildstar! I was online when they shut it down with all the players that wanted it to keep going. I was late to the game as I didn't know about it, and I really fell in love with it. No game has compared to it for me as far as the combat, the jumping puzzles/exploration...it felt magical and I will always miss it. I wish there was some way that we could all play this game again :(
There was a time that MP was my thing; I wasn't playing SP games anymore, because I loved to meet people around the world, to make real friends just playing those games, and holy mother of christ, how I miss that.
It was maybe 20 years ago, or even more, but then I started to play with bots, games started to try and sell me EVERYTHING, some games asked for money to have more inventory space, to visit some portion of the map that was closed to me, unless I paid some fee/bought some DLC, ect. All started to crumble after that, so I don't play that anymore either. Back at that time not even those generic f2p korean MMOs would ask for so much money as the usual paid occidental online game today.
Agree with all your points. I'd add that I don't want to devote all my free time to one game, e.g. an MMO. There are too many awesome single player games coming out that I want to play, plus old classics that I want to revisit.
yeah I've been in that same boat for years now. I have a very low tolerance for that kind of bullshit, and haven't played much multiplayer games since LAN games aren't really a thing anymore, outside of a few sessions with family or close friends.
Good video man
Yearly sports games are a great example of toxic game companies taking advantage of their player base. Paying full price for a yearly incremental update. Then they do everything they can to steer you towards playing their microtransaction pay to win modes.
The sad part is knowing that the heyday of sports games in the PS2 era will never return. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
That's when you know you're old. Here I was thinking the heydays for sports titles where the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis days.
@@hippityhipflask I believe you to be correct on both fronts. Sega days were where all the innovation happened. Have a fresher coat of paint now, but they don't really look all that different even today.
I was never been big into online anything, especially multiplayer. To this day I only play single player. Way better experiences that don’t require internet connections with great stories
Used to go to internet cafés, where it was common for people there to play LAN multiplayer. There were always a couple of guys that would ruin it for everyone. The usual suspects every time, with mil-spec haircut and tattooed swastikas. Based on that experience, there's a limited blame I put on game design, because I know for a fact that for those people it's the suffering of others that's fun, and they'd only recommend games where the design's enabling that sadistic behavior. There are games that attract that short, intentionally or unintentionally. But recently, Fo76 is doing great in restricting these behaviors by design, and though boss events are done quicker by team play, it's adjusted more for time to kill than team skill. So as long as you, as solo or the team, can output the total damage needed to down the boss within the half-hour window, it's a win condition. The reason I'm mentioning Fo76, is cause I think you'd like it in its current state. It's the only multiplayer game I keep coming back to.
I'm a female gamer since the 1990's (earlier if you count the TI/99 4A and whatnot) and Ultima Online was my first MMORPG. I heard all the horror stories about creating female characters, so I created a male character as my main and never told anyone that I wasn't male in real life. This was before voice chat as well. Did the same in Everquest. While I did have female characters in both, everyone at that time just assumed you were male with a female character, so I very rarely got harassed or bothered for that reason. Nowadays it seems rare for anyone to play male characters at all, so while I'm no longer hiding being female, I still end up playing male characters. :D (And I still create female characters too....what determines the sex is the idea I get for their background, or sometimes it's superficial that I don't like the features of the males, so I'll choose female for that race, or vice versa.)
I haven't played MMORPGs in well over a decade, Fallout 76 excluded, in part for the reasons Tim gives. *But* I do have hundreds of hours in co-op games like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company - so for anyone in Tim's boat, I'd highly recommend trying to find indie co-op games.
The nature of the games also means they *tend* to have less toxic communities.
I’m entirely with you here. I’ll play multiplayer games with friends or my kids only now. Couch co-op games remain fantastically fun.
ps Lovers in a dangerous Space Time is a great couch co op game to play with your kids it has up to 4 player support, its a blast ;)
Hi Tim! I mentioned this in your elementalist video, but if the itch to get into a multiplayer game ever becomes too intense, consider Guild Wars (the original) and its more traditional MMO sequel, Guild Wars 2. GW1 has some of the problems you mentioned about missions and time limits, but as a massively-multiplayer coop game, it's designed more like a structured N&D campaign but with optional explorable areas. It's an absolute classic, one of a kind game that nobody has been able to replicate (besides its tabletop inspiration, Magic the Gathering).
Guild Wars 2 you can pretty much solo if you want to, and the developers built the game to create an as-inclusive, friendly environment as possible. There are unfortunately microtransactions, but they're all cosmetic. Apart from making the game a bit of a light show, it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment.
That said though, if you've really tapped out, that's totally understandable. If you've ever watched the "it's rude to suck at Warcraft" video by Folding Ideas, you'll know that even with all the safety nets and moderation, online multiplayer is practically impossible to make "nice" when there's an objective with a win/lose state. Actually, if you have thoughts on that subject I'm sure we'd be interested in hearing them, considering your Wildstar experience. Anyway, have a great day Tim / Tim's subscribers :)
I didn't start gaming online until the mid-00s, but I share a lot of same feelings. And the crazier the RL world got, the less likely I was to try to play with my old guild mates, even if we played the same games. And that's not even to mention the anxiety I had about hanging out with guildmates who had become toxic themselves because ofnxultural politics. It's something I think I grieve as a loss, but it's nice to hear your similar story.