But what I'm really upset about is that people aren't communicating and cooperating and being respectful of each other and working together and being social and pushing back the alienation and playing and finding joy.
I'm so fucking isolated these days. This is the closest thing that I have to a social outlet. And so many people in multiplayer games just have no interest in communicating or working together, or have no interest in, like... playing in a way that supports the team and works towards a cooperative goal? Like they're playing by themselves, in a multiplayer lobby, and I absolutely do not understand it and I hate it. I don't understand why people play multiplayer games when they don't wan to play with people.
I don't understand why people play multiplayer games when they don't wan to play with people.
They don't want to play with people. They want to play against people. This is most clearly seen with scrub accounts that people use when they feel like curbstomping their opponents. The really bad offenders would purposefully tank their scrub accounts' matchmaking rating so that the accounts' rating is artificially lower than their true rating, which means they will almost always be matched with players with a lower rating.
it's mostly because multiplayer games are being played by
and thus you will receive the most bigoted vile shit you've ever seen if you make any contact with them.If you're playing too well? G*amer cries.
You've having an off day? G*amer cries.
You talk too much in the chat? G*amer cries.
you can't win with these (and i use this word very loosely) people
I'm a professional companetive
and I need to talk to the dev manager because while I was streaming on Twitch with my 20k followers someone of a NON PROFESSIONAL CLASS outwitted me and 
RUINED MY SWEET MONTAGE CLIP!
I respectfully demand you nerf the fuck out of this class because we don't play that class in competive mini meta game. A PUG should not swat a PRO while mid streaming ever! I will continue to demand you NERF this class and buff my pure true pro essence class that only I can handle because of my vast experience in CoD pro leagues. Otherwise I will just go find another game to stream and take my viewers with me!
Wouldn't that mess the balance of public games?
DO YOU WANT E-SPURTZ OR NOT? YOU NEED MY PRO STAR POWER! E-SPERM = Publicity = money. What don't you devs understand?!
Well if you suck the life out of the casusals then they won't care about your E-Sports and won't support the game.
E-SPURRRRTTS WILL KEEP THEM IN LINE! I'M A PROFESSIONAL!
Fuck it 
nerf casusal 20% buff Pro 10-15%$20 Early Acces + $80 season skin pass. <----- so much drama
Show
Even funnier when the casual playerbase has been saying the competitive scene is corporate astroturf and divest from it anyway, even before balancing for 'pro' play. You mean to tell me ANYONE was paying attention to OWL2 or whatever passes for Halo Infinite's league without there routinely being skins or currency for skins getting dangled off the hook for 'incentive'?
Multiplayer games are the kind of stress I play games to get away from.
Is this a Helldivers thing?
Because I am very tired of people who's only mean of communication is dropping air strikes on me
Yes it is 100% a helldivers thing. I want to work together to complete the mission. I want to shoot bugs and bots, but i want to do so within the context of completing a mission. I tried to play five or six 7+ games tonight and ended up leaving most of them when it became clear that the players had absolutely no chance of completion. Generally there was no communication, no marking enemies or objectives, no cohesion. Helldiver's is so much fun when you have a tight team coordinating and working together. It's easy, relaxed, enjoyable. But without solid team players it frustrates me to tears. Constantly doubling back to find out why people have fallen behind, and they're fighting a bunch of bug breaches for no reason, for stuck in a battle for their life against a single charger that is no threat and they could easily just walk away from. Or people bring all strats with 5min cooldown, and then i'm doing all the at work bc i've got eat17s, because the railcannon is massively inefficient. People are just doing whatever they feel like instead of being part of a team, and the game is miserable that way. Every fight is much harder. No in a fun way, but in a very frustrating way. Problems that should be solved by players working together to use complimentary weapons don't get solved and it turns in to lots of kiting and dying instead of four people laying down solid walls of firepower like you're supposed to. People complain that high level is all kiting and it's bc they don't know how to play as a team, pick strats as a team, work together as a team. It's so frustrating.
I don't have any friends nearby, i don't get out of the house much. This is what i've got right now and i can't enjoy it bc most of the people playing at the diff level in find challenging aren't skilled enough to be at that level in the first place, and aren't team players. Everyone wants to run in four direction doing their own "i'm the main character" power fantasy. Hd1, you couldn't do that. You were screen tethered and everyone was forced to work together. No one was dropping a mech and wandering off to waste time, lives, and resources fighting bug breach after bug breach, not only being wasteful but removing a whole player from the team. And since the game relies so much on synergistic combos of strats and weapons you're losing way more than 1/4 of the teams effectiveness.
And every time i try to say "hey, we need you over here, with the team, playing the objective" i get sneers and passive aggressive comments for having the audacity to ask someone to perform their role in a cooperative game that really relies on cooperation. I'm used to herding cats in tactical shooters, but so many people don't realize they're in a tactical shooter and just want to fuck around, usually by themselves, and the game turns in to me and maybe someone else doing all the objectives while the other players fuck around. I have no idea what they're doing and why they think they should be doing what they're doing. I rarely have any trouble moving around the map, disengaging from fights, finding resources. So i just move around, and then i look back and they're not with me, they're losing all their weapons and lives and using up all their strats trying to solo some bug hole and it's just slowing everything down and making everything harder. And i don't know what to do, bc i don't want to chase them around and babysit them the entire game, i want to do the mission. But if i go do the mission myself i might as well be soloing.
The game is so much fun, so much relief from the tedium of depression and isolation, except it's not, because so many of the people playing are playing wrong. They're trying to play a casual horde shooter in a niche hardcore tactical shooter, without even considering how badly that fucks over their teammates, and when you even gently try to get them on track so the mission doesn't get bogged down you get scorn and abuse and "how dare you tell me that i can't just do anything i want without any regard for anyone else?"
I'm frustrated to tears. I hate being stuck with this as the only thing i have to do most days.
Here's my friend code, me and my partner play it pretty often and we want to go higher difficulty, so we need some decent players
#1973-1772
Commenting for later visibility
Don't really have any friends to play with, so I typically end up playing solo or with randoms
Like i use the minimap all the time to keep track of where enemies are all around us, and i'll tell the team bc you're supposed to report contacts so the team can maintain situational awareness because eight eyes are a hell of a lot better than two, and people get snippy and upset with me like by making contact reports i'm treating them like a child or insulting them for telling them things they already know. And it's like dude, you don't need to make shitty comments to me, this is what you do in tactical shooters so everyone knows waht's happening and can cooperate effectively. I'm not even talking to you, specifically, i'm telling the whole team. If you already know about it just say copy or roger or use the emote wheel to say yes. I'm not being a dick, i'm being a team player and getting treated badly for it. And then it doubly stings bc the players making snippy comments then go and get stuck in an easily avoided ambush and killed and then get killed again and again trying to get their silly useless railgun back, while i'm stuck trying to get them out with my endless bounty of eat17s and airstrikes that are efficient and chosen because they're effective, not becuase they're "what i like" and make me feel cool. I feel like i have to bring eat17s/airstrike/110mms/ems every mission bc so many people bring laser railcannon shield railgun and just cannot handle the enemy bc their stuff is always on cooldown and is so inefficient in terms of actually killing high threat targets. No one ever brings precision strike with its 100sec cooldown, it's always railcannon that kills one thing every five minutes. Meanwhile i got ten eat17s, six 110mm strikes, and six air strikes in that five minute period, and all they got was one rail strike, one railgun they don't have the skill to use, and one shield pack that is totally unnessecary if you have good movement and use cover. They've given up a huge amount of battlefield control for what? I don't know. People say "oh well the 110mm is useless" and refuse to take eat17s and then they don't have any at and complain about it and then yell and insult me when i say i don't have that problem bc in the time it takes their railgun to come off cooldown so they can kill one tank i've got enough ordnance to kill up to 16.
It's just so frustrating. I don't need people to play meta because the meta is a good team comp. You can take any strat as long as you talk about it with your team so the team covers all bases, and then stick with your team so you can use you strats to best advantage. Instead people are running around by themselves, using up half their strats on shields and railguns, shooting railcannons at single chargers and then being unable to help with heavies for five minutes.
It's all just so frustrating. And i struggle to understand why they're doing these things and why they're having these problems and what they think is happening. I have thousands of hours of time leading squads or higher in hard core tactical games. This has been what's kept me alive through years of severe depression. "I want to" doesn't even exist in my mind. It's all about the team, about the group. There is no i in a rifle team. You work as a unit or you die. The "i'm the main character" playstyle doesn't work in games like arma or ready or not or insurgency where one bullet can down you.
But so many people, the idea that a team is much stronger htan four individuals, that they should use their mic and communicate, it's just not there, and i don't understand what people could be thinking or experiencing that they don't see that, and it's so frustrating.
Christ and people will. Not. Disengage. Game after game we get bogged down for ten minutes doing seaf artillery or some random bug nest and it turns in to a death spiral as people die, respawn, and run directly back in to the swarm, alone, without asking for or waiting for help, to get their damn railgun and rover and shield pack, and then they die again, and again, and it all goes to hell and none of them will ever just disengage. I try to gently coax them to move away from the fight and regroup, but i don't have the authority to just give orders to randos, but god if they were an arma group that would actually listen to me i could get them all out of these stupid messes so we could get on with the game.
It's the same problem i had in dnd, as a dm, where anything i put in front of some players, they decided it was there for them to kill, and that meant it was a level appropriate challenge and that they'd win. It drastically limited potential for storytelling.
And there's this same murderhobo fixation. People don't want to be a small special forces team doing hit and run raids. They think they're playing halo or something, where they're the invincible hero who always wins, and every enemy is hand placed for them to kill. They can't cope with the idea of a game where enemies are there to kill you, and they have unlimited reinforcements, and the game design requires you to stay on the move, choose your battles, work with your team, get your objectives done, and gtfo.
I don't think the vast majority of the player base has ever encountered a game like this before and they have no idea what to do with it. There's constant complaints that "the guns feel weak" and then you pry in to it and people want a 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle to be able to pen tank armor, they want their assault rifle to kill giant 500kg armorered aliens in a few shots, it's silly. It's not that kind of game at all. They expect a borderlands style arcade horde shooter and when they get a weird mashup of hardcore tactical shooter, slapstick comedy, and b-movie sci fi they're confused because it doesn't behave like they expect it.
And then so many of them will not adapt. They know with absolute conviction, that they're playing a normal horde shooter. So if the guns can't effortlessly blow away hordes of enemies, if the mechanics require cooperation, if they have to weigh the strengths and limits of weapons when choosing their loadouts, the game must be wrong because they cannot possibly be wrong,because there's "no wrong way to play" so if the game doesn't let them win and win easily with any weapon they want to use it's broken, bugged, badly designed.
I'm just upset about the whole thing. Helldivers one was this totally unique, fun, weird twin stick tactical shooter and there was nothing like it, but it never had a large following. Now hd2 has exploded in to one of the biggest games ever and trying to enjoy it is so frustrating because people don't know how to play, they don't know they don't know, and because it's apparently taboo to correct anyone or tell them that the game won't indulge their whims and they need to play tactically they won't learn, they refuse to learn, and a lot of people have been gaslighting me, like "the thing you know how to do and can do reliably anf tried to teach me how to do is impossible and you're a liar and an asshole for claiming that it can be done" gaslighting.
I'm so fucking lonely, and a huge part of it is not having people in my life who see the world the way i see it, who understand things the way i understand them. I can't enjoy this game that i love because assumptions and tactics and goals that are so natural to me are completely alien to others, and i can't bridge the gap bc most people don't know their is a gap, and wouldn't want to cooperate anyway if they did. People have outright said that cooperation robs them of agency, that teamwork is a burden. So many of them want any complexity or challenge in the game stomped flat bc they're frustrated the game doesn't let them do everything by themselves and let them win.
I hate depression so much. I don't want to live like this, where some silly game is so important to making the hours pass day after day, where i can't really go out and be around people and touch grass and live a life. This shouldn't be important to me but i barely have anything else so it is.
And i've always had this problem. I'm so team focused, so group focused. I think in terms of we, of us, of the community. And how does that go over in the hyperindividualistic, callous, selfish us society? Misery. Just misery. I don't understand people and their motivations at all. Things that seem so simple and obvious are totally alien to others. "We're stronger together, we should support and aid each other" and i just get blank stares sometimes. People seem to believe they can live a complete human life with just themselves and maybe a spouse and. Acat, cut off from everyone else in the world.
People seem to believe they can live a complete human life with just themselves and maybe a spouse and. Acat, cut off from everyone else in the world.
I mean, physically speaking, they do live a complete human life with just themselves or a few people. It’s why people are isolated in the first place because they live in a society of abundance and treats and opportunity, and they waste it.
This is why I stopped playing games that you need a stack to enjoy. Even my friends get that response at this point-- if I have to pay 40 to 70 dollars just to play a game with whatever stack I happen to be around at the time until they drop it(usually in two months) and I'm stuck solo-queueing anyway, all I've really done is wasted money. Happened to Overwatch, happened to Destiny, would happen to Helldivers if I got it. I miss free-for-all deathmatches, but not enough to stomach cracker propaganda and go back to CoD.
These days, all I really play anymore is heavily modded Minecraft and Baldur's Gate. Multiplayer's a fucking wash ever since proper Doom and proper Halo died.
This was a good post and I get it. Gamers are some of the most atomized, hyper-capitalist freaks on the planet. Reminds me of that Dan Olson video game essay. I showed my friend who plays FF14 it and I don't think he got the idea that was being communicated in the video about how external factors warp people's experiences with art/games and couldn't help but just comment on how people should or shouldn't raid. I felt like how you feel a bit when I was talking to him a little, and obviously feel similarly about talking politics with the masses of liberals.
Dan Olson video game essay
Could you send me a link? I'd like to read it.
Someone linked me this, it's an hour and a half in depth analysis about how optimization and minmaxing and data mining turned WoW from a fantasy theme park to a number crunching exercise that required so much precision and conformity players had a mission controller and various bots and automation program telling them exactly how to play the game optimally. It was really painful to listen to because I've seen it happen in so many games, and it's awful, any goofiness or whimsy has been crushed out of a lot of games by this all consuming need, not even to win, but to just turn the game in to calculator that will spit out the biggest possible number.
Yeah, it was the "Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft" video by Dan/Folding Ideas you're referencing.
what is it with randos dropping eagles right next to me no matter if they’re level 5 or 35? like my friends’ll do so occasionally, either by accident or as a joke, but my god it happens all the time with randos.
Anyone here play Deep Rock Galactic? That's a team game I'd love to get back into.
Have it, never played (my
friend got tired of it before ever playing with me 😢). I'd give it a shot with you, if ya wanted.I play on PC (Steam), but I thought it did have crossplay? Just looked it up, and apparently the crossplay is only between MS versions (Xbox One and Win 10 Store), which sucks.
Honestly there's too many "co-op" games that don't enforce cooperation, and rank players according to personal achievements rather than group effectiveness. Stuff like L4D and the warhammertide games are better because the AI directors directly punish groups that split up, and some stuff like Warframe have various mechanics that reward co-operation and sharing tasks, but even then you still encounter the odd asshole.
I don't get the impression a lot of darktide players even know the game punishes them for running off.
I can't play Helldivers with randos. Too many open mics with feedback, people kicking me for arbitrary reasons or not taking the "meta loadout" (come on dudes, we're playing on medium), weirdos on voice chat. I have some friends who play, but they're all on PS5 and I'm on PC and crossplay has been broken since release.
The game is fun but I've completely given up on playing until I'm able to spread democracy with my bros.
Anyone on steam wanna be friends
and defect to Cyberstan?I would be friends, but I don't plan to play it a ton right now. I'm busy with other stuff. Plus, I'm not really good at the game. If that doesn't disqualify me, send me your Steam friend code via DM, and I'll add you. Should have some time on Sunday and maybe Thursday.
Yes! I'm on steam. dm me.
Also crossplay hasn't given me any issues? Whats broken about it?
On release you couldn't add friends across PS5 and PC if the PC player's steam name was anything other than 3-16 alphanumeric characters (like a PSN name). My name had a special character in it so when I friend my bf he gets the request, but clicking accept doesn't do anything. So I changed my steam name to one that should work, but it doesn't update on the back end so my friend requests still have my old unfriendable name. Following the bug reports on discord, it looks like the mech update broke it for some more people even.
It's frustrating because it has sort of worked for other people. My bf has one friend on steam. We've been waiting for her to get online to see if she can be a hinge to get us in a game together, but I guess it's finals or something.
It's my weekend now so I'll add you both. I'm a little soured on The Community right now and the new update didn't fix the problem.
I sadly resigned to this aspect of the world many years ago, in my League of Legends playing days.
My most successful approach in reaching a good online multiplayer experience is to really make an effort to remember and friend players who are actually at all tolerable to play with, then you can slowly assemble a decent team. I've even a couple actual good friends this way, over the years.
I mostly play solo queue, I play fill support roles and defenders, I go for saves not for plays, I telegraph my lane choice, I gg my teammates in the endgame and then nobody ggs me back :( i think cos other people are in duos or trios and they only look out for each other or discuss on external comms so they don't use in game chat.
I used to roll in a premade two stack or three stacks when my friends played the same games and that can take the edge off, but I totally feel you.
Discord has been so bad for gaming, especially combined with the steady destruction of private server communities and the shift to ranked matchmaking. People aren't in the game, they're not playing on their favorite server with all the people they've gotten to know over months and years. They're all on discord, in their own little insular discord worlds, talking with their discord friends and not interacting with people in the game.
MMOs especially do not feel like they did back in the day. I remember getting into so many stupid hijinks just goofing with people in town and stuff. Nobody wants to interact in games anymore. We need more online games with just the goal of being goofy with strangers online.
Half the reason people played Ultima Online back in the way back was to just hang out near the bank and talk to people
On the flip side, I've had success making a discord server for a specific game and inviting leftists to join from places like this.
Where are you in my games lol. I saw someone on Pokemon unite who had a possibly hexbear related name, I added them as a friend but I'm too chickenshit to actually invite them into a lobby
Honestly, with the way g*mers are nowadays, I literally never want to interact with people I randomly met in-game anymore. Too much risk, not enough reward. I gotta know a guy(and know they're not some 4channer invertebrate) to want to hear them actually talking in my headset where games are concerned.
I've been on both sides yeah. Like I was in a three stack for Dead By Daylight on disco, and I was on PC, my two friends on Xbox. Our fill was on PC. I was the only person who could communicate with the fill and I was apologetic like sorry my friends are playing selfishly, they're going for the three person escape and sandbagging the fill to get themselves out. It definitely creates a pretty antisocial divide
I have three friends who will play the game with me and only one takes the objectives and tactics seriously. He gets burnt out because his brother is an idiot who does engage everything and our third friend desperately wants to be accepted by the brother, even though he's kind of a selfish pos.
The only multiplayer game I play anymore is Monster Hunter. Hunts with random people tend to go well, outside of like getting tripped by people who don’t know about that weapon mechanic.
I don't understand why people play multiplayer games when they don't wan to play with people.
Because people are annoying and many times most of the content is online only. Back when I played GTA 5 I always played in a solo lobby because I could do missions or glitches or roam around without dying
A lot of games also do not offer any alternative ways to way to communicate. It’s either voice chat or rage typing on the chat. If the game is half decent you might get markers or call out menus.
Tribes vts or whatever it was system was such a good idea and it's one of those things i look at and think "why isn't this the norm?" You could hammer out a lot of relevant game information with just a few key presses, you could use it across language gaps. : (
Lorez has been trying to neuter VGS as of late iirc. Removed just about any punch-in from any of their games still using it that could be sarcastically hammered out because the one-trick "i only play snipers"-type obstructions got huffy that their shit "me-hanzo-or-throw"-assed "lul i can clutch this 1v5'-type plays were getting slagged.
Shit sucks. You really have to go like, find a discord or something to find people to play with for a lot of games, it can be pretty nice then, but you do kind of have to take initiative the whole way. A better gaming experience is possible.
One reason I love going back to warthunder, specifically air-sim for mid-tier warbirds, is the small community of prop plane sim players have several bits of unwritten code that goes across language barriers. Specifically, sim players use the "follow me" call out to signal position to team mates. Typically, you see a dot on the horizon, call out "follow me", then one by one all 8 of your team mates ping back and you can check your map to see if you're about to fire on a friend or foe.
There's a ton of other toxic aspects to that game, but over all the narrow band of propeller sim players are pretty decent. The slow and expensive nature of the sim game type also rewards calculated moves over leeroy jenkins type play styles. If you go head first at low altitude to try to yoink a kill, you're not going to have a good time, that 5 minutes of side climbing pays off when you can leverage the energy against an opponent who just burnt all theirs up in a turn fight.
I love that kind of thing. I recently found out that some AI in Tarkov will mimic the leaning side to side "Friendly dance" that people way back in DayZ would use to indicate friendly intent towards strangers, or identify themselves to other teammates when someone asked "Hey is that guy in the window one of us? Everyone do the friendly dance!"
