I think the Ark community is a little weird in so far as it is an extraction shooter, but the majority of players are opposed to PvP.

Dwarf Fortress has a community like a think tank of scientists all fucking around in game to find out new and novel ways that mechanics synergize with each other.

Smash Brothers

Find your local tournament, get accepted by them. They will teach you new tech, be super friendly and accept you as one of their own. Then one of the TO’s will sexually harass and/or attempt to rape you. If it’s not a TO, it’s another member of the community.

Really weird and consistent shit.

Those of us left playing Titanfall 2 are generally a pretty great bunch. Most of the people who still play actually engage with the movement system and my word, that game has aged well. I love the community; it’s small enough to recognize people, but large enough to maintain an active base at all times of day. As for the meanest, definitely Rust. That community is such a cesspool. It’s not even funny. Nowhere else will you find such a wretched hive of bigotry and ideological subservience. Weirdest to my mind is probably the Batman Arkham one. From what I understand they have splintered, with one side developing an internally perpetuating sort of humor that focuses on making no sense, or being intentionally absurd in some way. The other side has remained largely a normal game community, but harbor an intense hatred for the splinter cell fandom insanity.

Coming from LoL/Dota2 to Heroes of the Storm was like going from ninth circle of inferno to like second or so. Mobas are still cancer imo, but transferring to a nicer community felt great.

Left 4 Dead 2 unfortunately has been consumed by what seems a community of Russians and Germans. Neither of them are nice to you regardless of what side you play on. They’re good at game tho.

One of the greatest communities I’ve participated in was an almost dead game of Town of Salem. Due to how small community is, people are generally nice to each other and just want to have fun playing this game. This doesn’t mean that there are no bad actors. In fact there are plenty since game is f2p. But they are usually quickly dealt with.

Unfortunately I play Rocket League… this game is ridden with bad actors. I keep the text chat on because when you encounter good faith players it’s the nicest thing to be able to converse, but the price is really high. Almost constant abuse, under all its forms : racism, insults, etc. I think it’s mostly unattended teenagers, but boy do they ruin stuff.

Based on years of experience moderating a public Discord server:

• Weirdest - Trails. Unfortunately, this is weird in the problematic way; think Pragmata. Some of the most well-known names in the fandom are that kind of weird. The series doesn’t do itself any favors leaning into it a bit, too. Adding to it is the perception that series fans are gatekeeping when they tell you to play the series in order when in reality, yes, the developers are insane enough to keep building a continuous narrative that’s gone 20 years, One Piece-style. Hard to convince people of that when video game series just don’t do that.

• Nicest - Stardew Valley. I agree with the others here on that.

• Meanest - Fire Emblem. I’ve seen some wars, holy hell. Aside from general fandom insularity from out-groups, there are intense, internecine wars going on within the fandom over the newer parasocial elements in the series. And then there are waifu wars on top of that within the part of the fandom that’s embraced the parasocial stuff. It’s a fandom crucible.

Warframe has all three. Late-game players will gladly carry new players through some of the early farms and often foist upon them a crapton of important items that are difficult to get in the early game (we remember and nobody should have to go through the early game alone).

There are some who call the game woke trash and trying to boycot it because the latest female warframe has a larger body type and they can’t goon to it, or because of a relationship between two male characters that is hinted at being romantic, or because there are two nonbinary characters (both of whom are far better executed than most in media)… and some who sent the developers death threats for making a particular farm easier for new players.

Nicest has got to be Stardew Valley.

Last time I played No Man’s Sky players were pretty nice.

Nicest: Factorio. No matter what you build, people will applaud you for it. Someone comes in, excusing their design for neither being efficient nor pretty. “If you had fun building it, it’s already great.”

Worst: War Thunder. So much toxicity in the chat it’s impressive. Plus a fair bit of edgy kids dabbling in racism and neo nazism. I guess that’s a side effect of being Free to Play

EDIT: Downvoted by war thunder players.

The Satisfactory community is very encouraging and helpful.

My Summer Car has weird fans, but you need to be weird to enjoy that game.

Halo fans. Some of them are either Neo-Nazis/n-word users or the equivalent of your average Star Wars nerd, no in between.

Kerbal Space Program had a super nice community. Well, until KSP2’s cancellation, that brought a ton of haters seemingly out of nowhere. Fortunately I think that’s blown over and all the kind and creative people are moving over to Kitten Space Agency, which seems like a way better project.

The Animal Crossing fandom is all three at once.

Some players are super nice and helpful. They do things like giveaways, share when they have high turnip prices, and let others in their town to recruit moving villagers.

Then you also have people who literally charge entry fees for their island. They’ll use this to sell items and villagers to other players. I’ve even heard of people running scams this way. Even worse is the people who charge real money (this is generally frowned upon in most communities, but pretty lucrative on eBay and Etsy).