World of Warcraft would be a much better single player game if it had a proper quest line and none of the raiding, PVP bullshit. I always played on a private server with only a handful of people so that I didn't have to deal with any of them. If I was lucky, I could play for hours without seeing any other player.

The big problem with modern day multiplayer, for me, is that you don't really get the same sense of community like you did in the past (I have no evidence to support this, but I just don't feel as welcome as I used to). The learning curve with some games is too steep, it seems quite easy (thanks to skills and ranking systems) for some players to dominate certain games. People tend to play the same maps over and over again (very similar to how Dust and Dust 2 are played over and over in Counter-Strike). I just don't have the time to play for hours (like I did in high school) to master some of these games and I don't feel like getting my ass handed to me for hours over weekends.

Evert wrote:

The big problem with modern day multiplayer, for me, is that you don't really get the same sense of community like you did in the past (I have no evidence to support this, but I just don't feel as welcome as I used to). The learning curve with some games is too steep, it seems quite easy (thanks to skills and ranking systems) for some players to dominate certain games. People tend to play the same maps over and over again (very similar to how Dust and Dust 2 are played over and over in Counter-Strike). I just don't have the time to play for hours (like I did in high school) to master some of these games and I don't feel like getting my ass handed to me for hours over weekends.

This, coupled with F2P/pay-to-win models is more or less exactly why I have no interest in any game that touts itself as "massively multiplayer" or "primarily multiplayer" etc. 😵

I play Team Fortress 2 on occasion since I do enjoy the silliness of it, but I've found COD and BF have completely lost their ways. I used to play BF1942 and COD1 at LANs with my friends after school and those were some of the best gaming moments in my life. These days they're all about ranking up and just dominating a game or map with unfair advantages. It's just stupid.

I only like couch co-op. Team deathmatch once in a while is ok.

Skyrim is not a multiplayer FPS game series like CoD/Battlefield, if you didn't know. It's a very large single-player exclusive game.

This is a common misconception. I didn't know that it was strictly single player for a while.
I am guessing that it's big online presence misleads a bit.

I didn't mind mindless deathmatch gameplay in games back then. I used to play alot of Anarchy in Descent 3 when PXO still existed. I always enjoyed CTF in Starsiege: Tribes and Team Deathmatch in Starsiege.

Nowadays I can't really stand any sort of PvP gameplay. I prefer cooperative gameplay. Weither that be some form of "PvE", or actually doing a singleplayer campaign through a cooperative multiplayer setting.

I prefer single player games to multiplayer, but I will (rarely) play multiplayer against other people, depending on the game and the people. I don't like online multiplayer much, as I mostly don't know the people I'm up against, and so (a) it's not nearly as enjoyable as playing against your friends, and (b) the most enjoyable multiplayer games I've ever played (Goldeneye/Perfect Dark/Halo/Timesplitters 2 and 3, etc) have been split screen, as by far the best multiplayer gaming experience is when you're in the same room as your mates, so you can laugh at them when you're winning and insult then when you're losing. It's a fantastic experience, unlike the mostly clinical experiences I've had when playing online.

Then there's the other extreme, when multiplayer online is far from cold and clinical, which is when you get racist/immature/brave-because-they-are-anonymous-and-behind-a-monitor-screen morons who hurl abuse at you, or quit if they are losing, or think it's somehow funny to shoot/hinder their own team mates.

Or, in a way this is worst of all, when the only people you can find to play against online are extremely skilled and you just get killed repeatedly before you even get a shot lined up yourselves. This latter situation is all you get with many online games when it's been out for a while, and most people have abandoned it for the latest Medal of Duty XXXVII, and the only players left have been hammering it for eight hours a day, seven days a week since release, and know everything about the game, and the learning curve you, as a newcomer, face is all but insurmountable.

What I do really like is multiplayer where their are good bots (computer controlled opponents), as you can play against these at any time (even years later, when you're the one person on planet Earth who is still playing the game), you can play on the maps you like, with the settings you like, the bots don't rage-quit/shout abuse/deliberately kill their team-mates/etc, and it helps you get to know the game and get better at it (by facing higher skilled bots when you choose) in case you do want to play other humans online.

And if the bots are good enough then playing against them can be really enjoyable. My favourite multiplayer-against-bots games are Perfect Dark, the original Unreal Tournament (1999), Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Championship 2, and Timesplitters 2 and 3). I don't like class-based/streak-kill/etc type games, I much prefer the everyone's equal old-school death-match type games. I've put countless hours into these games with just me and the bots, and though it's not nearly as good as playing against your mates, it's still enormously fun. These are games I honestly don't think I'll ever abandon, as I can pick up and play them any time and it just feels right.

This is exactly how I feel. I dislike any games involving other people. I have a really nice chess set and I only play with myself. I try to admire the craftsmanship of the pieces and board as much as possible. I think playing with another person would likely ruin the immersive experience of dominating another kingdom's army and murdering their king and queen.

I don't want to plug but I want to point out the irony that I run a multiplayer game I don't even play. 🤣 But its existence is partially fueled by the aforementioned things.

I used to love multiplayer games when they first came out (Quake, Tribes, Unreal Tournament, Age of Empires series) but now I avoid them (outside of playing Age of Empires 2: The conquerors on voobly.com).

diablo 3 and starcraft 2 made me quit those series (and I loved the original ones) because you had to be online to play. I loved single player Diablo 1 and 2 very much. Companies make too much money for online games to bother with single person ones anymore. Too many crazy kids online ruining games, plus the cheaters.

Interesting mix of responses! I'm surprised that so many favor the single player experience.

One recurring thread seems to be the difference between local multiplayer and internet gaming. I've had lots of negative experiences with the latter, but almost no experience with the former. Growing up, I was the only one of my friends who was interested in PC gaming, so I never had anyone to play against. I envy those who had the chance to play against friends over LANs or even split screens. I can see how that would be a real blast.

It strikes me that the single player bias on these forums may not be entirely random. I started to really take an interest in retro gaming around 2008. At the same time, I was rapidly losing interest in newer games due partly to the heavy emphasis on muliplayer gameplay, as well as the increasing prevalence of always-online DRM schemes. I wonder if if these forces haven't played a role in shaping the identity of today's retro gaming community.

maximus wrote:

Interesting mix of responses! I'm surprised that so many favor the single player experience.

It strikes me that the single player bias on these forums may not be entirely random. I started to really take an interest in retro gaming around 2008. At the same time, I was rapidly losing interest in newer games due partly to the heavy emphasis on muliplayer gameplay, as well as the increasing prevalence of always-online DRM schemes. I wonder if if these forces haven't played a role in shaping the identity of today's retro gaming community.

Well the responses are biased just because of the loaded question title. Asking if anyone else dislikes multiplayer
would make those that dislike multiplayer more likely to comment than those that like it.

smeezekitty wrote:

This is a common misconception. I didn't know that it was strictly single player for a while.
I am guessing that it's big online presence misleads a bit.

I wondered if that wasn't the case. There being a multi-player game in the series (TES: Online), and its title being shortened to "Skyrim" (officially it is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and I think if people saw "The Elder Scrolls" they'd probably be more apt to be like "oh, like Morrowind" or "oh, like Oblivion" or "oh, like Daggerfall") probably also doesn't help things. Kind of in reverse: it took me a while to figure out that "GTA Online" was not a separate game, but actually the multi-player functionality in GTA5. 🤣

maximus wrote:

Interesting mix of responses! I'm surprised that so many favor the single player experience.

Anecdotally, this actually seems to be true for most people I know (e.g. friends and family). I've only ever met two bona fide competitive FPS players, and both of them were also legitimate pro gamers. MMORPGs seem to be the exception there, and from my own experience with those titles, they should be grouped separately from the Battlefield/CoD/Counter-strike/etc style multi-player.

One recurring thread seems to be the difference between local multiplayer and internet gaming. I've had lots of negative experiences with the latter, but almost no experience with the former. Growing up, I was the only one of my friends who was interested in PC gaming, so I never had anyone to play against. I envy those who had the chance to play against friends over LANs or even split screens. I can see how that would be a real blast.

I think one big difference here, that's potentially being skipped over, is the existence of multi-player arcade machines and multi-player gaming on consoles. When I got back into consoles a year or two ago I was kind of surprised that 2-4p games are basically a thing of the past (and I'm not even sure if you could hook up 2-4 controllers to a modern console). Certainly LAN gaming is a consideration, but older non-PC platforms tended to support multiple players all at once, and it was fairly cheap. I'm not sure why that changed - I'd guess it wasn't an entirely/exclusively top-down or bottom-up process though.

It strikes me that the single player bias on these forums may not be entirely random. I started to really take an interest in retro gaming around 2008. At the same time, I was rapidly losing interest in newer games due partly to the heavy emphasis on muliplayer gameplay, as well as the increasing prevalence of always-online DRM schemes. I wonder if if these forces haven't played a role in shaping the identity of today's retro gaming community.

Oh absolutely - we're a self-selected sample responding to a biased question. It's nowhere approaching random sampling. 😊 Still, an interesting discussion! 😀

*COUGH* Battlespire *COUGH*

Did Battlespire's multiplayer work just like SkyNET's?

Speaking of multiplayer, I absolutely dislike the Steam scene, what with CS:GO, CS:S, CS 1.6, TF2... oh god TF2 is the worst.

Strictly single-player, here. I don't exactly like to interact with people in real life. I don't want to do it in a game. That was the advantage that video games had for me when growing up. You can play them alone. You don’t need to be dependent on other people to enjoy it. To me the concept of multi-player misses the point regarding the appeal of video games.

A computer can never recreate the experience of 8 human players doing a RTS game, which is why I have probably played Age of Empires II online for more then 2000 (lasting 30 minutes to a few hours each) games over the last 15 years. Having to pay a monthly fee is why I never bothered with any subscription model games.

Consoles used to be the perfect single player (or 2 player same room) experience with games that took a minute to understand and play, now they are online and super complicated might as well fire up the PC.

I grew up playing the Atari 2600 when it was cutting edge, and seen the rise and fall of arcades so I am an old fart.

We used to do a lot of single player plus LAN when available in the game - generally setting things up for my kids to multiplay Quake, Warcraft 2 & 3, Black & White, Dawn of War, UT2004, AvP. Great fun, for us a variation on PlayStation/N64 multiplayer and of course single player. I've played quite a lot of WoW too. So I don't dislike multiplayer as such but I do dislike -

- being forced to be online with a single-player game - so I never bought Dawn of War 2 because of online activation, nor Diablo 3 or StarCraft 2 because of always online - though I tried the f2p bit of D3 and it didn't appeal for other reasons anyway - and I've never bought anything on Steam

- playing with people I don't know in circumstances that give them a ridiculous advantage - once upon a time this was because I only had dialup, but also my time is limited and I can't practise all day. So that kills things like Quake 3 as well as PvP modes in things like WoW [whether or not that's just a gear grind].

- playing games where too many other players act like spoilt, self-centred brats - you always get some, and a bit of it adds variety and dare I say it fun - but too much of this attitude can kill games completely for me. To my mind this is what WoW PvE has turned into due to a combination of and interaction between maturity and turnover in the player base, and changes to the game itself [I'm not sure it's fair to "blame" anyone or even Blizzard - there may be some inevitability here].

But I also generally dislike always-online anything, data sucking, email harvesting, junk mail, forced adverts, cloud storage, smart metering, targeted or otherwise intrusive marketing etc! I spent half of yesterday unsubscribing to all sorts of crap and reducing the pull on me from various online mind-parasites...

I like multiplayer AOE2, AOE3, CivNet, Civ4 and used to play C&CG(ZH) and the C&C series up to RA3. 🤣

I am really good @ AOE2.