The spread of “skill-based” matchmaking and ranked competitive ladders largely took away a valuable communal aspect of online multiplayer games, IMO. Getting dropped into a match with a bunch of random people you’ll probably never see again just makes things so impersonal, which can cultivate a lot of toxicity.
Some of the best times I’ve ever had with online gaming were from finding a dedicated server with settings I liked, hanging out there often, gradually getting to know the regulars, and becoming part of a community. I’ve never had that kind of feeling from a game with automated matchmaking.
This is why my online gaming has kinda died off. I don’t really mind matchmaking and I think skill-based matchmaking definitely has a place in actually competitive games, but I miss the communities that get built up around a dedicated server. My fondest memories of multiplayer games come from community servers, because eventually you just know who you’re playing with and it becomes a place to hang out.
As you say, it goes back even further that SBMM, to the large scale abandonment of the dedi server paradigm in favor of auto match making.
Nearly no online games even have actual server browsers now.
Back in the late 90s through the 2000s to early to mid 2010s…
Nearly every online game was a dedicated server, or at least you throwing open a temporary server with your own custom control over maps and gamemodes.
Many dedicated servers were run by a person or community… and this enabled communities to form around them, enabled lasting relationships to be made, hell, probably most mods or clans for most of those kinds of games arose from that, and a lot of those went on to later become massively more expansive, start their own game studio and put out their own games.
Now thats almost all gone.
You… used to be able to get onto a Battlefield server and know the regulars, like a bar.
That promotes at least a baseline of basic manners and etiquette.
Now all you can do is look at a general conception of an entire game’s community, because the player has no agency to actually choose to associate or not associate with certain people or groups.
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The spread of “skill-based” matchmaking and ranked competitive ladders largely took away a valuable communal aspect of online multiplayer games, IMO. Getting dropped into a match with a bunch of random people you’ll probably never see again just makes things so impersonal, which can cultivate a lot of toxicity.
Some of the best times I’ve ever had with online gaming were from finding a dedicated server with settings I liked, hanging out there often, gradually getting to know the regulars, and becoming part of a community. I’ve never had that kind of feeling from a game with automated matchmaking.
I play OpenRA.
Late in the evening, I sometimes get a training session with a “pro”.
We know who they are. No ranking, no skins, just the registered name. It’s enough to inflict terror…
Good stuff.
This is why my online gaming has kinda died off. I don’t really mind matchmaking and I think skill-based matchmaking definitely has a place in actually competitive games, but I miss the communities that get built up around a dedicated server. My fondest memories of multiplayer games come from community servers, because eventually you just know who you’re playing with and it becomes a place to hang out.
As you say, it goes back even further that SBMM, to the large scale abandonment of the dedi server paradigm in favor of auto match making.
Nearly no online games even have actual server browsers now.
Back in the late 90s through the 2000s to early to mid 2010s…
Nearly every online game was a dedicated server, or at least you throwing open a temporary server with your own custom control over maps and gamemodes.
Many dedicated servers were run by a person or community… and this enabled communities to form around them, enabled lasting relationships to be made, hell, probably most mods or clans for most of those kinds of games arose from that, and a lot of those went on to later become massively more expansive, start their own game studio and put out their own games.
Now thats almost all gone.
You… used to be able to get onto a Battlefield server and know the regulars, like a bar.
That promotes at least a baseline of basic manners and etiquette.
Now all you can do is look at a general conception of an entire game’s community, because the player has no agency to actually choose to associate or not associate with certain people or groups.