7 ms·

This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. Y

• nol13 8y ago
  Internet's been all downhill since Westwood Chat got shutdown.
  • spc476 8y ago
    It's all relative. There are some that think the Internet has been all downhill since September of 1993 [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
    • B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
      Or April 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...
• notaspider 8y ago
  I wish I had thought to cash out my hats before Overwatch came out :(
• dannyw 8y ago
  The smallness and novelty of the internet made it more of a community. If you played TF2 in 2008, I would say the interests of each player is more homogenous and compatible compared to Overwatch in 2018. I think this is one factor at play. The other is the shift from desktop to mobile, from community participation to content creation or consumption - almost mutually exclusive. Finally, deprioritization of the identity (Reddit, Hacker News, many forums, even Medium to some extent) doesn't help either.
  • ruytlm 8y ago
    In terms of gaming, it's also the result of a shift from dedicated servers to matchmaking algorithms. On dedicated servers, a community of 'regulars' forms through repeated interactions. Modern matchmaking is a more disposable approach - here's a set of players that you'll be up against for 10 minutes, and then you'll never see them again.
    • s_m_t 8y ago
      And leads to "toxic" behavior. If you behaved poorly in a dedicated server environment you could be banned from multiple servers in one go as each clan might host multiple servers. Eventually all that would be left for those people would be a handful of lawless servers, enough threat of punishment to deter shitty behavior, not enough of an impetus to buy a new cd key and reimpose yourself on others. In practice, most people just behaved better. It is bizarre to see riot and blizzard run around in circles trying to combat their toxicity problem... its your meat grinder matchmaking system. As it turns out, matching people against those who are exactly their skill level isn't what you want to do.
      • ruytlm 8y ago
        Going down the rabbit hole a bit further, I was always a bit pissed off with the 'match at exact skill level' method. The best thing I ever did to progress in skill in a game was to play with/against people far better than me. I don't want to learn how to beat people who are only as good as I am; I want to learn the techniques and skills to beat the people who are at the top of the game.
        • Freak_NL 8y ago
          And lets be honest — thinking back to how a typical game in Team Fortress 2 went — sometimes just the complete and utter satisfaction of having an awesome killing streak at the expense of a bunch of n00bs (and after such a round the server would automatically rebalance the teams, so everyone gets a chance to meet their match).
        • 8y ago
• Terr_ 8y ago
  I think the key distinction is the concept of "place". TF2 has (or had) a concept of "place" in the form of named servers. That made it possible to encounter the same stranger repeatedly over time. In contrast, Overwatch wants you to already know and specify your friends into their social-media graph and group up before going to a random/anonymous/ephemeral location. So you seldom knowingly encounter the same stranger twice. > FFXIV Thinking about an MMO, a "placeless" MMO would randomly assign you to a one of a great many small instances every time you log in. Eugh.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • y2bd 8y ago
    With games like Destiny, "placeless" MMOs are already starting to become a thing.
    • b3orn 8y ago
      Same with GTA Online.
  • hkmurakami 8y ago
    “Places” is exactly how I think of making new friends in adulthood irl.
    • ehnto 8y ago
      Meatspace, the new spatially aware social networking site. No installation required. Make friends where your feet are!
      • rolandog 8y ago
        I'd like to make a complaint that Meatspace is inaccessible for n00bs and amputee character classes. Also, higher level characters seem to be stopping new players from leveling up.
• frio 8y ago
  This is a thing that's bugged me for a long time: the death of dedicated game servers. Game servers had to be run by communities, and they were gateways and feeding grounds for those communities. However, games don't typically use dedicated servers anymore; they use matchmaking. You're right -- matchmaking means you gather your friends first. More insidiously, it means you probably won't see the same players again, and even if you did, there's nowhere to find them again later. There's no community to join.
  • cheschire 8y ago
    If you friend them through whatever walled-garden chat system that game has, then you might have a chance. But good luck getting conversions to a proper gaming community. I think a lot of this has to do with how casual the gaming community has become. Not that there are fewer hardcore players, just that the very games that killed the dedicated servers (call of duty) also onboarded millions of casual gamers who felt like using gamespy to find "good" servers was too much effort. Now there are so many casual gamers that you have almost no chance to find someone who deeply appreciates a game enough to join a community you are in. My internet statistics generator says that 1-in-10 is a good ratio for number of conversions 20 years ago. Now it's maybe 1-in-500. And if the game is popular enough, then everyone's just going to use the subreddit to chat by default, and that's a clusterfuck of a topic all on its own.
  • gsich 8y ago
    That's good and bad. Good: You can finally play the game as it was meant to be. You could not find a decent server in CS 1.6 where you could play 5v5. You need additional sites/communities/XYZ (e.g. ESL) to play it. Similar with TF2 in the early days. Also, bad admins can't kick you anymore because you use a weapon they don't like. I could forgive such behaviour, but as games introduced some leveling or other statistic stuff, I can't. Just make your server unranked (nobody playing on these). Bad: No sense of community. Like you said, you need friends first. Reports for cheating are useless, as you won't see that person again anyway.
    • ohyes 8y ago
      The leveling and statistical stuff is so lame anyway. I feel like CS and TF, the point was to dick around and shoot people. It was cool because you bought half-life and could play these two totally different games (we referred to them as “total conversions” at the time). The ranking stuff is all just trying to capitalize on esports, which is weird because the vast majority will never be that good anyway. It’s a big part of what makes various communities toxic rather than fun. Playing a game where winning doesn’t really matter vs. people dreaming of being paid to play video games. It’s turning something that was a fun sort of power fantasy to kill time in, into something misconstrued as a profession. (In the same way an average guy might believe Himself of the quality to play DB for the colts, without the ability to discern the obvious physical differences between himself and a guy who is 6’5”, can bench 450 pounds and run 30 miles an hour. It actively creates these sort of mean/ delusional types who are harder to laugh off than they would be in another arena.
• ehnto 8y ago
  Same experience with TF2 and older games of course. You would get to know the regulars to particular servers. Internode #14 was my TF2 haunt, and it was always fun to have friends popping in and out. Some of my favourite moments in Star Wars Galaxies were waiting for shuttles and just chatting with whoever was around. That spontaneity with strangers is gone, but also the places you go regulalrly to just "be there" and enjoy others company seem to be gone too. Even going to a pub you find people are specifically with a small friendship circle and when they aren't they are on their phones trying to avoid the pang of solitude until their friends come back. I think the contrast is most striking when you come from really community focused areas like university or even school, to realise that those kinds of communal situations are actually quite uncommon in an ordinary life. To borrow a gaming term, I sometimes wonder if people haven't become too preoccupied min-maxing their social metrics and as such feel they don't have time for strangers. Everyone is content with having one or two okay friends and a few dozen more acquaintances they never speak to as a substitute for community. TL;DR strong communities are hard to foster and hard to find, perhaps thanks to isolating technologies that undermine some of the common ground, such as matchmaking and groupless/roomless social tools.
• eswat 8y ago
  I’ve also felt this experience when it comes to content creation for games. I missed the modding communities in the late 90s/early 00s that had a sense of place and community. Things tended to gravitate around their IRC channels and those of the actual game. Was great to develop relationships online with not only the modders but the people developing the games. As an example, Epic Games were super-accessible back in the Unreal Tournament 99/2003/2004 days to chat with on IRC and not just about modding or stuff related to their products. There were also some game servers where you know certain employees made it their haunt. But now everything is hyper-optimized so both Epic and customers waste the least amount of time talking to each other to solve a problem. It definitely feels more like you’re talking to a corporation than engaging with a community of creators now.
  • Aco- 8y ago
    You mention UT99/2003/2004, did you play competitively by chance? I miss the good old days of gaming, clans, ladders, forums & IRC. If it weren't for UT's modding & hacking community I wouldn't have got in to this industry. A lot of people I know have similar stories.
    • eswat 8y ago
      Nope I wasn’t part of the competitive scene. I was just an active participant in some of the fansite communities (BeyondUnreal, Planet Unreal) and the various mods like The Third Reich and Red Orchestra. The only artifact of that era I still carry is still hanging around the neotokyo IRC channel after 15 years. Like you said, the modding community helped a lot of people get in this industry. I wonder if it’s still the same now that it’s less about modding/hacking a game with a group of people and more about contributing content piecemeal (Elder Scrolls/Fallout) or working on an actual game from nearly scratch.
• soulnothing 8y ago
  TF2 was my world back in early college. I ran a number of online communities, and a number of modded servers. I also think back to enemy territory wolfenstein as well. Back then you joined a server and played on a community. I really miss the derth of dedicated servers now a days. I agree with the sentiment but the servers I played on are either gone, or drastically changed.
• ehonda 8y ago
  I never got into TF2 because I was all into TFC and found the lack of accompanying grenades in TF2 a kind of dumbing down of the game. Nades and concs were crucial to use along side your main weapon and it was no fun without them. Sadly there are only 2-3 active TFC servers left :'(
• Jemmeh 8y ago
  Join a discord channel for whatever game you're playing. You can voice chat with people and make new friends that way. I'm in the League of Legends discord and party up with strangers all the time. If the game goes well or people are just particularly friendly we usually play a few rounds and sometimes friend requests are sent and we end up playing more often. I've met a fair amount of people this way. I do agree though, love MMOs for community. Some of my oldest friends are from my MMO days, but those games often get grindy and take up too much time.