Greentext

we have successfully urbanized online games. the days of a small town feeling in new online games are over

i was having lots of fun talking to people on call of duty until the game ended and it put in a completely new lobby. what the fuck happened?

This basically describes my experience with counter strike pre-1.6.... like 1.3 thru 1.5, circa 2002-2005. Lost thousands of hours of my youth negotiating knives-only rounds and doing stupid totem pole camping on de_dust while 1 guy on the other team tried to AWP everybody. Am I old?

Nostalgia might be pushing a bit hard here. Even playing obsessively on relatively small games on a limited number of servers for hours every day, I never got to recognize people just by being there. Occasionally someone would friend you, but otherwise, you knew people for 4-5 rounds at a time, and then never saw them again. Internet, even back then, was a big place.

One of the last good public multiplayer experiences I had was DiRT 3. Simple lobbies, small player count, people randomly joining and leaving and everyone was chill. You'd occasionally get that guy who was stupidly good, perfect lines through every corner, and the entire lobby would try so hard to keep up. Loved it.

One time I stumbled into a lobby where the host was "hacking" but instead of cheating for an advantage, he was selecting weird car class and track combinations for the entire lobby. Stuff that the game wouldn't normally allow. Shit like trailblazer cars on rallycross circuits. So much fucking fun, one of my favorite memories from that game.

That must've been what, 4, 5 years ago? DiRT 3 released in 2011, so...oh my god DiRT 3 came out 13 years ago...

Use to play alot on a CS:Source minigame server, such good times. Was exactly like this, where you'd recognize players and make friends. I'm glad i was able to live this.

I'd say Minecraft's multiplayer experience is close to what Anon describes as "good multiplayer", probably because it hasn't changed much in 15 years - there's not even an in game server browser (at least on the Java edition), and playing Minecraft in and of itself is usually a big time commitment so you're more encouraged to find a couple of servers you like and stick to them.

However, the last time that I feel like I integrated into a server's community was 4 years ago - a blank server list doesn't really encourage you to go looking for more, and it's been harder to commit time as I get older and have more responsibilities (that I ignore anyways, but still).

I think Lethal Company also has a lobby system without matchmaking, but I haven't played it so I don't really know.

Gamespy back in the day. Could make core friends and join the same servers across games.

Hmm, it's pretty much the same as 15 years ago if you stay away from the smallest common denominator popular AAA games.

I've started playing squad again after my last try in 2020. I just favourited a couple of low ping well populated servers and have been playing on the same three or four that are working well.

War of rights only has around 150 players in the evening on public servers and they all enter the same one as this game is meant to be played in large squads as well.

Both games are great fun.

I had a very similar experience a few years ago with Tannenberg. An eastern front WW1 shooter that, at least at the time, I don't know the current status, had just enough players in the evening to fill up one server, so I'd play with the same people night after night. It never felt empty because of that and it was great fun.

I HIGHLY recommend Holdfast: Nations At War for the same experience nowadays. There's usually 1-2 full 150 player servers running in the browser, and you start to recognize the slaughterers and shitters over time.

It's a Napoleonic era musket shooting game with locational open VC that gives bonuses for teamwork and line-firing. Recently I've been talking mad shit in a ridiculous accent matching whatever faction I'm playing at the time, and people are now recognizing my name, which is kinda warming :)

Quake ]I[ was the last real multiplayer game.

Fite me.