What do you mostly play? Single or Multiplayer games?

[Pestluder]

95% single these days.

Multi just trigger my stress response most days... my multiplayer friends will attest to my rampant ragequitting over last two years

 

[Saturn_V]

Mostly multiplayer- but there's a group that I play with almost exclusively. (maybe less than <10% solo with randoms)

Mass Effect LE was the first SP game I've purchased in over two years.

 

[U-238]

Depends how you define it, a lot of my gaming time is spent in multiplayer co-op games with friends so it's technically multiplayer but with a lot of single player essence.

 

[The Mad Atheist]

Mostly single since i pirate.
Used to play Planetside 2 a lot and have yet to get into MWO since I paid for the legendary pack back in the day.

 

[renswic]

I've played and enjoyed a few online games but single player is my jam

 

[defaultluser]

I used to play mostly multi, but in the last decade I've grown tired of the same-old boring grind

 

[Smoblikat]

Mostly SP, but I do like playing Rocket League.

 

[CrimsonKnight13]

Single player mostly with random spats of co-op & MMOs

 

[Derangel]

I used to really like MP back in the day, but now I simply have neither the time to get good at games nor do I have any interest in dealing with how utterly shit the gaming community has become over the years. I’ve been 95+% single player for a very long time now. I’ll dabble in MP stuff from time-to-time but never stick with it. I don’t even do co-op stuff that often anymore.

 

[JavaLava]

I used to really like MP back in the day, but now I simply have neither the time to get good at games nor do I have any interest in dealing with how utterly shit the gaming community has become over the years. I’ve been 95+% single player for a very long time now. I’ll dabble in MP stuff from time-to-time but never stick with it. I don’t even do co-op stuff that often anymore.

Agreed on SP. A lot of my friends these days are all across the U.S so we play the co op games/games as a service such as Destiny, Vermintide 2, Outlanders, Division, etc. Just fun games to get together in once or twice a week.

 

[Saturn_V]

but now I simply have neither the time to get good at games nor do I have any interest in dealing with how utterly shit the gaming community has become over the years.

The gaming community (in my neck of the woods) has become less about "playing the game's objective" and more about griefing, trolling and "casual/fuckin' around" gameplay. A generation of gamers is being graded not on how well they play- but the size of the trolls and lols. It's not just hacks and cheats, but spamming chat, voice and actions to render games unplayable.

I blame Twitch, YouTube and Minecraft.

 

[SecretStash]

Alzheimer's will cull the single players

 

[Flogger23m]

The gaming community (in my neck of the woods) has become less about "playing the game's objective" and more about griefing, trolling and "casual/fuckin' around" gameplay. A generation of gamers is being graded not on how well they play- but the size of the trolls and lols. It's not just hacks and cheats, but spamming chat, voice and actions to render games unplayable.

I blame Twitch, YouTube and Minecraft.

Think it depends on the game and its community. But in the early 2000s things were worse for me. I got started on online games like CS Source and the shouting into the mic was off the charts. As were abusive admins. Not as much in BF4. In CoD MW, I assume there is a good amount but I mute mics. There will always be a bit of intentional team killing and the like. But generally it seems to be about the same for me. I'd assume if you played games that cater to a younger audience like Overwatch and Fortnite things would be even worse. But I'm not seeing any difference for me.

 

[GoldenTiger]

The gaming community (in my neck of the woods) has become less about "playing the game's objective" and more about griefing, trolling and "casual/fuckin' around" gameplay. A generation of gamers is being graded not on how well they play- but the size of the trolls and lols. It's not just hacks and cheats, but spamming chat, voice and actions to render games unplayable.

I blame Twitch, YouTube and Minecraft.

That's why you scout out a good guild/clan/gaming group and stick with them . Minimal extra effort but a leaps and bounds better gaming experience.

 

[Zepher]

I play mainly multiplayer shooters, been playing Overwatch since Beta and usually play it everyday for an hour or so.

 

[ThreeDee]

I play solo only in Hunt:Showdown .. so is that kind of a bit of both?
I started CyberPunk 2077 .. but only played a couple hours total
I play Destiny 2 once in a while with my 12 year old daughter .. she has gotten my scraps over the years and has a pretty decent 1080p gamer now. (5600x, 2 x 16GB HyperX 3200 @ 3600, RX 580 4gb)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I used to be the resident Counter-Strike addict from 1999 to about 2006 when I discovered the Red Orchestra Franchise, which I played the crap out of until Red Orchestra 2 came out and then I played the crap out of that, even joining a clan, 2.Fjg (not for competition but for server admin stuff) which ran the best RO2 server online for several years. Realism and Classic modes were awesome.

All multiplayer, thousands of hours each.

Red Orchestra 2 all but died over time, and even the community maps started being played to death either way, so it kind of got boring.

I looked around for alternatives.

I tried to go back to Counter-Strike, but I found CS-Source to be silly fast paced and run and gun, and mostly uninteresting after getting used to Red Orchestra. I tried CS:GO and it was just obnoxious.

I played a little PUBG when it first hit Early Access in April 2017. Didn't like the 3rd person view. When an FPS only mode came out a few months later I played that a bit. It wasn't a bad game, but a few "Chicken Dinners" in, it started getting old, and I got tired of it. There was only one map at the time. More maps may have helped, but when they finally added them, I felt like the game had been dumbed down, and hollowed out. It wasn't the same beefy gaming experience it was in the beginning. It seems like in their quest to adapt it for mobile and for low end PC's in the third world, the PC version just suffered.

I wasn't about to play Fortnite, Overwatch, Apex legends or Valorant. They all seemed like lame fast paced run and gun games. I also was not about to play any of the "Call of Modern Battlefield: Online" games. Well, except maybe Battlefield. The first one or two weren't half bad from memory.

I crave gritty realism, with real life realistic movement speeds and chances of survival. This is why the Red Orchestra titles appealed to me so much. I did briefly consider playing Hunt Showdown and even Rust, but I never got around to installing it and trying them. It turns out my life has become a hell of a lot busier, and finding a couple of hours uninterrupted to play a multiplayer game is just incredibly rare and difficult.

So, in answering this poll, I wanted to say "Mostly Single / Some Multi" but then I realized that the last time I played any multiplayer was probably in 2017. That was 4 years ago now. So I selected "All Singleplayer, no Multiplayer" because I guess through a combination of losing interest in modern titles, and not having the time, that's just where I have wound up...

Growing up is fun, huh?

It's not all bad thogh. I've enjoyed it though. I really get into open world single player FPS titles with mild RPG elements and a strong story. I am starting to run out of them though, and have resorted to playing older and older titles I have previously missed. In between them I'll often fire up another Sid Meier's Civilization game to pass the time.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The gaming community (in my neck of the woods) has become less about "playing the game's objective" and more about griefing, trolling and "casual/fuckin' around" gameplay. A generation of gamers is being graded not on how well they play- but the size of the trolls and lols. It's not just hacks and cheats, but spamming chat, voice and actions to render games unplayable.

I blame Twitch, YouTube and Minecraft.

This is exactly how I feel.

Aside from the fact that most new games just don't appeal to me, the players almost exclusively suck. They are more interested in trying to stand out to their viewers on some stream or whatever rather than playing the game the way it is supposed to be played.

I also think that while auto-matchmaking and official servers have made things a lot more convenient, they have also ruined the community feel. You used to be a regular on a community server. You picked your community server based on the style of game play you liked. You got to know the other regulars. it was fun.

Now no one is invested in the community anymore. They just fuck around. There are no admins to ban them. They don't care.

It's a form of the "tragedy of the commons". People just arent invested in their community anymore when they can just jump in and out off official servers with people on their friends list.


So yeah, maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old fart (or have been one for years) but I'd argue there are three things that keep me from multiplayer gaming these days:

1.) Most new multiplayer games just don't appeal to me
2.) I lack the uninterrupted time to dedicate to it
3.) Even in good games, the combination of streaming and official servers has pretty much ruined the games.

 

[scojer]

This is exactly how I feel.

Aside from the fact that most new games just don't appeal to me, the players almost exclusively suck. They are more interested in trying to stand out to their viewers on some stream or whatever rather than playing the game the way it is supposed to be played.

I also think that while auto-matchmaking and official servers have made things a lot more convenient, they have also ruined the community feel. You used to be a regular on a community server. You picked your community server based on the style of game play you liked. You got to know the other regulars. it was fun.

Now no one is invested in the community anymore. They just fuck around. There are no admins to ban them. They don't care.

It's a form of the "tragedy of the commons". People just arent invested in their community anymore when they can just jump in and out off official servers with people on their friends list.


So yeah, maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old fart (or have been one for years) but I'd argue there are three things that keep me from multiplayer gaming these days:

1.) Most new multiplayer games just don't appeal to me
2.) I lack the uninterrupted time to dedicate to it
3.) Even in good games, the combination of streaming and official servers has pretty much ruined the games.

100%

As I mentioned The ONLY multiplayer game I recently played was Dead by Daylight. It has it's moments of fun, playing as a survivor and when there is a fantastic killer that hunts the survivors down one by one, it then becomes an intense game of cat and mouse. Playing as a killer is also very thrilling when you have survivors that are competent and hunting them down is a rush.

What I hate in that game, is when you play as a killer, and the survivors want to "toy" with the killer, thinking they're untouchable. They communicate with each other and alert each other to where you're at and just dick around.
So, I've learned when I play with those type of players, I troll them back.
If I'm a survivor and the fellow survivors are that type, I'll work with the killer and point out the ass hole survivors.

 

[Comixbooks]

I'll jump on the 1st good MMO but that hasn't happened in a while unless you like BDO.
I like Co-OP but ever since Vermintide 1 there hasn't been much.
I do like Rainbow Six seige though that game is a Riot. The closest thing to that game was Dirty Bomb but that
game shuttered it's doors.

 

[Flogger23m]

I will say I find it interesting that very few people here have selected "About Half and Half". I know this place is a small sample size and I know many people prefer either one or the other, but I assumed most big gamers played a good mix of SP and MP games.

I used to be the resident Counter-Strike addict from 1999 to about 2006 when I discovered the Red Orchestra Franchise, which I played the crap out of until Red Orchestra 2 came out and then I played the crap out of that, even joining a clan, 2.Fjg (not for competition but for server admin stuff) which ran the best RO2 server online for several years. Realism and Classic modes were awesome.

You can look into Insurgency Sandstorm. It isn't as realistic overall but is okay. Maps are smaller and the scale is smaller than RO. I mainly do the co-op against NPCs because I don't like the PvP modes. Problem is the developers got bought out and now I see some cheesy looking cosmetics creeping in. I hope it stops.

But this is lead by Jeremy Blum, the guy who created the original Insurgency mod and Red Orchestra mod.

 

[M76]

We used to have a lot of LAN parties in the 2000s. That was the last time I played any significant amount of multiplayer. I was never a fan of online multiplayer, playing with faceless strangers. I also tried a few MMOs but to me those all seemed like weak single player games with other players cluttering the map. So in the past say 5 years I played exclusively single player games. The only thing I miss is online racing, but I just can't be bothered to adjust my schedule to other people anymore. It was fine while I was young and seemed to have oozes of time.

 

[Armenius]

I will say I find it interesting that very few people here have selected "About Half and Half". I know this place is a small sample size and I know many people prefer either one or the other, but I assumed most big gamers played a good mix of SP and MP games.



You can look into Insurgency Sandstorm. It isn't as realistic overall but is okay. Maps are smaller and the scale is smaller than RO. I mainly do the co-op against NPCs because I don't like the PvP modes. Problem is the developers got bought out and now I see some cheesy looking cosmetics creeping in. I hope it stops.

But this is lead by Jeremy Blum, the guy who created the original Insurgency mod and Red Orchestra mod.

When you think about it, is it really possible to play half of one and half the other? I guess it is if you don't play that many games, but I will play through a rotation of about 4-5 games every month or so. The idea of dedicating a lot of time to grinding a multiplayer game isn't very appealing to me. Ironically I played a lot more multiplayer back in the day when you could just select what you wanted and go. The carrot on the stick has no appeal to me, and the new FOMO tactics of rotating out content every "season" just about completely destroys my desire to play any of it.

 

[Denpepe]

How you liking the new content released with the patch? Personally I'm enjoying it immensely!.

Not that impressed, more of the same and not looking forward to doing this opening stuff 10+ times with alts since it is pretty long.

Also the nemies seem a lot toughr which will be a pain on lesser geared alts to just jump in, will see how it evolves over time.

 

[Flogger23m]

When you think about it, is it really possible to play half of one and half the other? I guess it is if you don't play that many games, but I will play through a rotation of about 4-5 games every month or so. The idea of dedicating a lot of time to grinding a multiplayer game isn't very appealing to me. Ironically I played a lot more multiplayer back in the day when you could just select what you wanted and go. The carrot on the stick has no appeal to me, and the new FOMO tactics of rotating out content every "season" just about completely destroys my desire to play any of it.

Typically I only play a few multiplayer games. That seems to be the trend, due to time and commitment. And just overall taste. People pick 1-3 games and play them for a long time. One typically wins out above the rest but I jump into another one every now and then. These days I am mostly doing CoD MW. I played some BF4 again last month. Every few weeks I'll play Insurgency Sandstorm, or Ace Combat 7 (probably dead at this point) or Star Wars Squadrons.

Offline games I play are mainly sandbox style with mission editors or mission based games without a story. You just can't jump into a game like Mass Effect partway through. So when I do one of those, I won't play an MP game for a week or so. However long it takes for me to finish the SP game.

 

[Saturn_V]

That's why you scout out a good guild/clan/gaming group and stick with them . Minimal extra effort but a leaps and bounds better gaming experience.

I've been playing with the same people for almost ten years. But there are far fewer "purists" that play the objective now since casual matchmaking arose and community servers were eradicated.

My team has it's shit together. The others couldn't give 2Fs. It's worse than playing with randos. Randos will at least try. These guys just think it's funny to not try and it's uncool to "tryhard". And if you have people that don't care- they almost always cheat. "it's just a game", "it doesn't matter", "if I'm entertained by pranking/hacking/griefing the server- so be it".

Aside from the fact that most new games just don't appeal to me, the players almost exclusively suck. They are more interested in trying to stand out to their viewers on some stream or whatever rather than playing the game the way it is supposed to be played.

I also think that while auto-matchmaking and official servers have made things a lot more convenient, they have also ruined the community feel. You used to be a regular on a community server. You picked your community server based on the style of game play you liked. You got to know the other regulars. it was fun.

Now no one is invested in the community anymore. They just fuck around. There are no admins to ban them. They don't care.

There's two types of suck. Players that have no skill and players that insist that *their way* to play is what matters. And they have to emulate every YouTube/Twitch creator that uploads funnies and griefs. (half these avatars cite YT links or other YT creators) There is no community now. Especially if the community is split smack down the middle between "playing the objective" and "just fuckin' around casual."

It's like going to your neighborhood basketball court wanting to shoot but finding the court filled with kids playing "Mother May I" instead.

 

[Skott]

I prefer single player games but I have been playing World of Tanks since beta so there is that.

 

[Deleted member 143938]

I played since the "golden" age of late 90s gaming and find SP games these days uninspired/re-hashes so I try online, but there aren't many good online games geared/suitable for adults. Sure the young crowd finds some MP games but (Battlefield and Epic stuff) but the toxic community and unbalanced games ruin it. I don't know. Currently, trying to enjoy OW again as much as I can, but failing. Gaming has been non-existant/fun for me since the early-mid 2000s.

It seems like the medium has reached its limit in terms of originality, similar to movies. And young kids needs to be stop being the main audience for developers! Probably the biggest barrier to quality now. Parents of young kids will buy them any credits/loot boxes/junk to keep them occupied so the parents can spend all their time away from their kids. And the developers developing for kids don't exactly have good mechanics and interesting stories in their hands to play.

Not many games geared at adults/mature crowd now adays Just the least common denominator. And those that are more for adults - well, if you've been in the scene long enough, you probably seen it all by now. I feel the 90s were different in that regard.

I feel the next interest from me would be in VR when it matures beyond a short-term gimmick, which may or may not still be the case. Expensive investment to get into/gamble on right now.

 

[learners permit]

Too many nitwits on the net these days to enjoy multiplayer games and very few games worth the effort. A few coops like Division1 and 2 occasionally but that's become a rarity as well.

 

[T4rd]

I played since the "golden" age of late 90s gaming and find SP games these days uninspired/re-hashes so I try online, but there aren't many good online games geared/suitable for adults. Sure the young crowd finds some MP games but (Battlefield and Epic stuff) but the toxic community and unbalanced games ruin it. I don't know. Currently, trying to enjoy OW again as much as I can, but failing. Gaming has been non-existant/fun for me since the early-mid 2000s.

It seems like the medium has reached its limit in terms of originality, similar to movies. And young kids needs to be stop being the main audience for developers! Probably the biggest barrier to quality now. Parents of young kids will buy them any credits/loot boxes/junk to keep them occupied so the parents can spend all their time away from their kids. And the developers developing for kids don't exactly have good mechanics and interesting stories in their hands to play.

Not many games geared at adults/mature crowd now adays Just the least common denominator. And those that are more for adults - well, if you've been in the scene long enough, you probably seen it all by now. I feel the 90s were different in that regard.

I feel the next interest from me would be in VR when it matures beyond a short-term gimmick, which may or may not still be the case. Expensive investment to get into/gamble on right now.

Dude, if you can't find any decent/original SP games in the market today, then you're either burned out or aren't looking very hard. Or maybe limiting yourself to a single platform, because although I'm a big PC gamer, most of Sony's exclusives (which are almost all SP narrative-driven games) have been great for me. With how huge the gaming market has gotten, there's never been a more diverse or amount of titles available in both the AAA and Indie realm. Recent example is A Plague Tale: Innocence, which I'd never heard of until it was free on PS+ this month, so I played it on PS5 (it's on all platforms though) and was pleasantly surprised by it for the most part.

 

[M76]

Dude, if you can't find any decent/original SP games in the market today, then you're either burned out or aren't looking very hard. Or maybe limiting yourself to a single platform, because although I'm a big PC gamer, most of Sony's exclusives (which are almost all SP narrative-driven games) have been great for me. With how huge the gaming market has gotten, there's never been a more diverse or amount of titles available in both the AAA and Indie realm. Recent example is A Plague Tale: Innocence, which I'd never heard of until it was free on PS+ this month, so I played it on PS5 (it's on all platforms though) and was pleasantly surprised by it for the most part.

Just decent? That isn't exactly a stellar recommendation. I agree that games are derivative nowadays. Everyone just trying to shoehorn their IP into the current trend, may that be VR, BR, MMO, Live service, or whatever. Sony's exclusives might be narrative driven, but aren't exactly breaking new grounds, they are just more of the same formula, not trying to add new things.

 

[T4rd]

Just decent? That isn't exactly a stellar recommendation. I agree that games are derivative nowadays. It's as if they aren't even trying new things. Everyone just trying to shoehorn their IP into the current trend, may that be VR, BR, MMO, Live service, or whatever.

Decent = worth playing, but whatever; semantics. I agree with your generalizations, but again, there are plenty of relatively unique games out there to play still if you're looking at all. If you're pigeon-holed into a specific platform and/or category of games though (say FPS games on PC), then yeah, you're going to feel that way.

 

[Armenius]

Just decent? That isn't exactly a stellar recommendation. I agree that games are derivative nowadays. Everyone just trying to shoehorn their IP into the current trend, may that be VR, BR, MMO, Live service, or whatever. Sony's exclusives might be narrative driven, but aren't exactly breaking new grounds, they are just more of the same formula, not trying to add new things.

When you get right down to it nearly every video game is derivative of Gilgamesh.