Into anything else multiplayer these days?

devildark

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Feel free to delete if this overlaps with the "what else are you playing" thread. Was just curious what other multiplayer games people still play these days. Here's the ones I've tried:

PSO2 - ruined by the typical SEGA mismanagement and downright malicious monetization and FOMO baiting. Logged into NGS yesterday just to try it (since the NA client at least works on linux now) and got hit with 3 different popups for daily/weekly/monthly "don't forget to log in every day!!!" type nonsense. If this game got a private server free from SEGA and maybe with some custom quests I would be all over it.
FFXIV - excessively homogenized and streamlined, another "race to endgame" raid-focused post-WoW MMO, a dev team that seems far too focused on never trying anything new, cost cutting and spectacle and an overly dramatic, fanboyish community.
FFXI - has also been turned into a race-to-endgame type MMO. Haven't looked into private servers much but haven't heard anything particularly good.
Multiplayer shooters in general - haven't liked them ever since they became so matchmaking-focused. Miss the days of player hosted servers with regular communities of dudes just hangin' out.

Pessimistic, I know. I'd just like to hear about more nice games to hang out in, if anybody knows any. Hell if anybody even knows any still active forums around older games (I'm a big JRPG man) then I'd love to hear about those, too. The internet's felt quite barren for me ever since social media and discord took over.
 
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Bli$$ard ruined diablo 2 as well just like they did with everything they touched in the past decade or so, but there are a few servers for the original game with a somewhat active community such as Project Diablo 2(last ladder reset was in December-ish), median-XL and Path of Diablo. And Clementine for PSU seem to be good too.
 
You know I've played a ton of Diablo clones throughout the years but never Diablo itself. Maybe I ought to try one of those private servers...

I've always heard bad things about PSU itself, but I suppose it can't be that bad if people got together to make a private server for it.
 
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Median-XL is the most fast paced and custom out of these 3 I mentioned, but still really fun to play.

As for PSU I haven't played myself, but from the streams I watched it really caught my interest because of all the cosmetics(yes, I am one of those), I just don't know how it would feel in the long run compared to PSO.
 
I am also "one of those" and it's almost enough to get me to put up with PSO2's shenanigans. Great character creator stuck in an OK game run by a bad company.

PSU at a glance reminds me a lot of the first Phantasy Star Portable. Got those funny harelipped beastmen, too.
 
Sadly for me perfect gear on PSO2 wasn't very attractive due to the amount of better gear they would add to the game every 1-2 months, so at some point I gave up and started collecting cosmetics, excubes and grinding all classes to lvl cap on 2-3 characters instead.
 
Cosmetics is the only gear that matters in these modern MMOs with no horizontal progression that invalidate what you grinded for every few months to keep you on the treadmill :)

When I played PSO2, I basically just got by on event handouts and saved my meseta for clothes and accessories.
 
Project diablo 2 is a blast. Had a wonky start (really crashy) but seems solid nowadays.

Don't really do a lot of online multi nowadays for a lot of the same reasons. Its mostly co-op friend stuff. Technically tf2 still has server shenanigans but eh.

Though I might drop into Neverwinter Nights again, as some people are doing funky module toolset stuff
 
Yeah, I kind of just end up doing stuff with people I already know lately too. Fightcade is good for that since it supports genesis, SNES (this one doesn't seem very smooth last I tried, though), pc-engine multiplayer as well now.

People (at least on the popular games) just don't seem as interested in meeting and getting to know new people these days. I guess at least some of that is the games themselves not really encouraging it like they used to.
 
Project diablo 2 is a blast. Had a wonky start (really crashy) but seems solid nowadays.
PoD used to be my favorite, unfortunately the last ladder reset was like 2 years ago, some mod on reddit did say there will be another before bli$$ release diablo 4 and people realize it's another garbage game though.

Yeah, I kind of just end up doing stuff with people I already know lately too. Fightcade is good for that since it supports genesis, SNES (this one doesn't seem very smooth last I tried, though), pc-engine multiplayer as well now.
That reminded me of Archipelago, as a fan of randomizers that mod is amazing, they support a lot of games and even though most of them are singleplayer(even ALTTP, DKC3 and OoT are in there) you still get to play in a co-op environment where items you find are sent to other people and vice versa.
 
FFXIV - excessively homogenized and streamlined, another "race to endgame" raid-focused post-WoW MMO, a dev team that seems far too focused on never trying anything new, cost cutting and spectacle and an overly dramatic, fanboyish community.

"Excessively Homogenized" is pretty accurate these days, but the rest of this seems pretty unfair! As a Savage raider i've never really cared about any kind of race in XIV, and the game itself seems to kind of discourage that kind of thinking outside of Ultimate releases, which like 0.1% of the playerbase even touches.

There is a wonderful amount of purely horizontal content in FFXIV that can be done at leisure that's not only well managed but fun in its own right. Bojza/Eureka/HoH/PotD/ crafting and housing, golden saucer, fashion, ect. The best part of XIV IMO is how incredibly easy it is for me to just log-in and find something to do. For the last month i've been on Solo PotD runs and it's really fun.

There are communities within communities and activities within activities in XIV. Just ignore the few morons like everyone else does, the rotten parts of XIV are pretty vocal but they're basically just a tiny blemish on an otherwise beautiful game. Just throw a band-aid over it lol

After playing Lost Ark very heavily for months and being on the leading edge of that game's content, there is no amount of value I can give XIV's community for not only not being toxic, but having a PUG raiding culture that's willing to literally wipe to mastered phases just to get random newbies up to speed for the clear.

Cosmetics is the only gear that matters in these modern MMOs with no horizontal progression that invalidate what you grinded for every few months to keep you on the treadmill :)

When I played PSO2, I basically just got by on event handouts and saved my meseta for clothes and accessories.

This is the secret sauce PSO had that basically every MMO has abandoned.

As an early MMO, PSO never had the luxury of treating its core content as things to eventually be replaced. Episode I & II's weapon pool is essentially balanced as though it's a single-player game.

By the point of PSO2 this concept clearly wasn't even a side thought. Which is a pity because if PSO2 worked this way, i never would have stopped playing it.
 
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Damn, both those Diablo 2 servers ban you if you use pirated copies/keygen'd keys. I imagine this is to discourage cheaters from just making new accounts? Shame because I don't really feel like giving Bli$$ard money, and it'd make it hard to get friends into it too.
 
Destiny 2 is a game I occasionally play from time to time, but I don't play it anywhere near the extent that I used to. The killing blow was the fact that the content you get from Annual Passes tends to get deleted/vaulted.
 
I hop on Gundam Evolution every now and again but the community is way smaller these days. Some nights I have to switch to the JP server to even find a game.
 
All mew can say about her previous Multiplayer life is...."Never wanna get STABBED in the FACE with a FLAG Ever Again!!!" X'D!!
 
Destiny 2 is a game I occasionally play from time to time, but I don't play it anywhere near the extent that I used to. The killing blow was the fact that the content you get from Annual Passes tends to get deleted/vaulted.
Yeah this really soured me on the game as well. I understand their reasoning however instead of removing old content as it becomes irrelevant or reused in other ways in the future they could've just made new content instead in addition to a zone on a map and expanded it out, they've even already done this in the EDZ for quests so it's not a foreign concept to them. Also I don't like their current season model where if you don't purchase and play their content within the year of the content is released, you don't get to experience that content ever and even if you did, you don't keep what you paid for. I still don't understand why people are paying for such a garbage temporary access content model.

I don't really have the time to play games online and when I do I usually play an online game it's something I can pick, play for a few minutes then put back down without feeling like I'm being punished content wise for a lack of time commitment. My current situation is temporary however and hopefully after a month or two I can finally get back into the grove of playing something that actually has more depth and storyline, or just more PSO which is the video game equivalent of comfort food. With that said I've been leaning towards splitgate for that really quick fix.
 
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It's possible to play Phantasy Star 0 on the DS again so while it's not always online I've been playing that a bit again. Haven't played it in years.

If anyone wants to play my friendcode is: 5GUY - 0650 2566 1528
 
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