Errant Signal: Social Spaces & Payload Races - General

[video=youtube;-hj1haLcdI0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hj1haLcdI0[/video] This is probably one of his best videos in a while.

I'm a strict advocate for what Errant Signal said: Overwatch does need a TF2-style community servers. Imho.

I miss the times when I was younger and had favorite servers in CSS and Gmod and HL2DM and the like. Valve games were unlike almost any other simply because the games functioned so well, made it extremely easy to communicate with others, and were so modable. Sometimes I wish like I could break my mold and find some new people to play games with online, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.

[QUOTE=Period;50698132]I miss the times when I was younger and had favorite servers in CSS and Gmod and HL2DM and the like. Valve games were unlike almost any other simply because the games functioned so well, made it extremely easy to communicate with others, and were so modable. Sometimes I wish like I could break my mold and find some new people to play games with online, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.[/QUOTE] It's what Errant Signal said: A lot of games now are being moved into being streamlined and centralized. And although that's fun for IRL friends or friends made outside of said medium it severely hampers the impact of how fun the game can be for a lot of players especially Solo Q'ers on Overwatch. A few years ago I used to enjoy myself with TF2 by frequenting a server that ran a modified ctf_2fort map. There were no limits on how much you could cap and neither a time limit to end the match. Yet for some reason people still joined. There was an absolute community I found to be beautiful that I even made some friends with. And some of the most poignant memories I had on that server consisted of sniper battles on the rooftops of the ctf_2fort with the opposite team where we could chat (along with the other 20 or so players) as we traded headshots. I don't mean to sound like a doomsayer. But it's genuinely this piece that I miss the most about a lot of games; They no longer come with the accessibility that it once had. And no matter how many times i've had fun on Overwatch it felt to me that something was lacking: A temporary home that I could run into to see friends who've I made on there playing and welcoming me, as I would them.

Community servers in TF2 and CSS made up my best multiplayer experiences, period. Having a home server with familiar names and faces from all over the world all interested in playing that particular style of the game that the server was customized for made the experience great *because* of its multiplayer aspect, whereas matchmaking at least to me tends to create experiences where I enjoy the game *despite* its multiplayer aspect, and if I could exchange my opponents for really good AI, I'd be happy to do so. There's just something really special about you joining a server and being instantly recognized and greeted by 5-10 people and a sarcastic admin with a soundboard at his fingertips.

[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;50698402]Community servers in TF2 and CSS made up my best multiplayer experiences, period. Having a home server with familiar names and faces from all over the world all interested in playing that particular style of the game that the server was customized for made the experience great *because* of its multiplayer aspect, whereas matchmaking at least to me tends to create experiences where I enjoy the game *despite* its multiplayer aspect, and if I could exchange my opponents for really good AI, I'd be happy to do so. There's just something really special about you joining a server and being instantly recognized and greeted by 5-10 people and a sarcastic admin with a soundboard at his fingertips.[/QUOTE] There's the other end of the spectrum too though. I didn't enjoy tf2 because I could rarely just sit down and play the game and not be subjected to not being part of an in crowd. It wasn't like I hated those times I just didn't love them. I grew up playing a lot of console games online, Halo 2 jumps to mind because I made more friends in that game than any other besides Rainbow 6 Vegas. In those games, meeting with randoms and getting stuck with them for a while bred a lot of friendships for me

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50698767]There's the other end of the spectrum too though. I didn't enjoy tf2 because I could rarely just sit down and play the game and not be subjected to not being part of an in crowd.[/QUOTE] When I wanted that experience I just hopped onto those servers ran by semi-professional hosting services that often ran chains of 24/7 servers. Those servers were so popular that I'd rarely see the same guy twice, and they were impersonally designed to have broad appeal. Were more liable to scummy premium services, but less liable to whimsical admins. At least in my experience.

oh man, this video takes me back. i really miss joining the same server each week to a handful of sarcastic assholes with offensive sprays with soundboards and micspam. it was fun.

i miss the old days of slamming your head against a shitty jump map in counter strike 1.6 and becoming friends with the other people on the server

I'm honestly really, really glad the latest tf2 update removed quickplay, leaving the vanilla tf2 experience at the hand of community servers

I'll admit that one of the best things about TF2 was joining that one server you loved and just shot the shit with the people you met. I basically met one of my friends that way, and I even hooked them up with one of my other friends and they've been in a relationship for four years now. It's a shame really, I enjoy Overwatch, but not on my own - I'm glad when I'm able to get a couple of friends in a group, but yeah there's really no way to meet new people otherwise because you're shunted from one server to another. While I can appreciate the attempts to match the skill levels, you really don't get a chance to meet and greet. I will say though that I really couldn't care much about the downgraded customization options in OW, because as ES says, it's 'safer, prettier and less exploitative'. I'm neurotic when it comes to art design, but even then, there are some choices in Overwatch in terms of cosmetics that I find baffling (Native American skins for Pharah, for example). In a way, I'm glad TF2 is still thriving even when I'm not playing anymore (for a myriad of reasons), because as much as I rag on it, it was basically the game that got me back into PC gaming, made me a ton of friends, and so much more and hopefully it gives people more of a platform to interact. So yeah, good video.

[QUOTE=DesumThePanda;50700212]oh man, this video takes me back. i really miss joining the same server each week to a handful of sarcastic assholes with offensive sprays with soundboards and micspam. it was fun.[/QUOTE] The unsanitized nature of gaming is dead, and it's really killed my interest in gaming. Everything is sanitized, a safe space. I can't enjoy games anymore because of it. Arma is like the only game I play now, because there's just that slight bit of customization left to it. That said, there isn't much left to it though. Most communities are just as sanitized as everything else, which is why I've ended up running my own community.

[QUOTE=Binladen34;50702164]The unsanitized nature of gaming is dead, and it's really killed my interest in gaming. Everything is sanitized, a safe space. I can't enjoy games anymore because of it. Arma is like the only game I play now, because there's just that slight bit of customization left to it. That said, there isn't much left to it though. Most communities are just as sanitized as everything else, which is why I've ended up running my own community.[/QUOTE] I usually end up going to places like GameJolt or Itch.io to find indie games. Or find as many abandonware games as i can from sites hosting that.

This is such a neat video. It really reminds me of the things I love about certain multiplayer games. I really have never found myself to enjoy a multiplayer game that forced you into constant action. It feels superficial and really exhausting. That's kind of a similar problem with the new Star Wars Battlefront. The old ones I could immerse myself and explore the map or just fuck around with friends. The new one is just a constant shit show. Also, I remember almost every single custom server in Jedi Knight Academy having a rule in which you can't attack anyone that isn't wielding a weapon. Most of the time people weren't fighting. What were we even doing in a multiplayer game that had lightsabers? Regardless of what we were doing, the community is what makes a game. It seems like just another huge downfall in recent games. A removal of deep community, which also kind of started with a majority of developers removing/admonishing mods. I really want a Jedi Knight 4, but imagine it with mods. I'm glad Valve is a company that seems to really encourage user content.

Man, this thread is making me nostalgic of the different communities I've been apart of, all the servers I used to frequent & all the people I've met while playing the different source games This is going to sound weird but one thing that I loved was all the broken gamemodes in Gmod, there were two half-life 2 coop servers I used to frequent in Gmod that both used the same unfinished code, the only difference between them was which level it started on whenever the server reset. I loved that the gamemode was broken because whenever the server reached a point where an important NPC would break & make progress impossible, then the whole server would band together to find a way around it. It really did feel amazing when all the people on the server starting working together to find different ways to get out of bounds in order to get around a locked door just because an NPC derped & refused to open it. it was also heartbreaking to come back to the gamemode a year later to find that everything had been fixed & everything I loved about the gamemode was taken away along with the sense of community that gamebreaking bugs had somehow created

[QUOTE=axemunger;50702568]Man, this thread is making me nostalgic of the different communities I've been apart of, all the servers I used to frequent & all the people I've met while playing the different source games This is going to sound weird but one thing that I loved was all the broken gamemodes in Gmod, there were two half-life 2 coop servers I used to frequent in Gmod that both used the same unfinished code, the only difference between them was which level it started on whenever the server reset. I loved that the gamemode was broken because whenever the server reached a point where an important NPC would break & make progress impossible, then the whole server would band together to find a way around it. It really did feel amazing when all the people on the server starting working together to find different ways to get out of bounds in order to get around a locked door just because an NPC derped & refused to open it. it was also heartbreaking to come back to the gamemode a year later to find that everything had been fixed & everything I loved about the gamemode was taken away along with the sense of community that gamebreaking bugs had somehow created[/QUOTE] I will sound elitist but what the hell... I agree with this post because these games ,mods that people like you here mention used to have an inside-community I could say. People knew the jokes,how the game works, work arounds like you mentionted etc. You know it took some effort to find a mod for half-life 2 and find a way to install through steam and that made the user more know more shit about the community. Not saying that installing mods on steam back in 2007 was hard but it took far more effort to installing something than it does today and you know what? I enjoyed the shit out of it. I remember playing zombie panic source (anyone remember the Xanatos videos?) and all the fun gmod mods .

What kind of communities still exist that are like those we saw in the past? I feel the pain of losing this aspect of gaming; the close-knit groups of people, huddled around maybe a couple servers, running special software that they had developed. Does that still exist today? It's painful for me to think about where it's all going when you think about where it had been.

best part of custom servers was CSS: 4chan party van server and spamming this over and over again [video=youtube_share;KAsrhd6ujEw]http://youtu.be/KAsrhd6ujEw[/video] or over 9K for days every round.

overwatch kiddos of today will never know the bonds formed over maps like this [t]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/3300321172047881898/CB0D7835F66A72DF1AC8EF76D9E06C1EF56DD021/[/t] the source community is super interesting to compare to overwatch. it's no holds barred, so everyone just kinda went with it. you could be a total asshole and have a porn spray and micspam all the time but honestly most of the people on there were chill and there could be conversations had. i once found a really cool dude who was an actor in tf2 and he ended up voicing a character for me. that kind of investment is why i spent so much time with the games, and why so many other games and mods and everything inbetween cropped up, because valve just kinda let people at it. overwatch to me is low risk, i can just drop in a game and play it and carry no investment in the game. to be fair, thats nice every once and awhile but it doesn't keep me coming back. i still go back to games like csgo and tf2 or hell even gmod rp because its fun to just fuck around with folks over the mic and ive honestly had pretty good experiences when i don't take the game seriously. i don't want to call overwatch a bad game cause it's nowhere near bad. but it bares a stark contrast to tf2, not because of its content, but how that content drives people in the community.

When I played CS1.6 my friend and I would almost always be on the Fun Maps NeonDragon server. RTD, nipper maps, and custom sounds. I doubt any other game will top the amount of fun I've had back then.

[QUOTE=Sub-Zero;50702877]I will sound elitist but what the hell... I agree with this post because these games ,mods that people like you here mention used to have an inside-community I could say. People knew the jokes,how the game works, work arounds like you mentionted etc. You know it took some effort to find a mod for half-life 2 and find a way to install through steam and that made the user more know more shit about the community. Not saying that installing mods on steam back in 2007 was hard but it took far more effort to installing something than it does today and you know what? I enjoyed the shit out of it. I remember playing zombie panic source (anyone remember the Xanatos videos?) and all the fun gmod mods .[/QUOTE] Fuck me Zombie Panic Source the stories i could tell, It was one of those games which was not very good but i still got hooked playing it and as result I got my entire community populating that game within a week, it was fucking hillarious. We'd take over a server with about 30 of us, and just sing happy birthday to random players. I was also pretty damn good at it and have oh so many stories of being the last human alive with a litteral train of zombies behind me trying to catch up but never quiet doing it, or climing out the confines of the map and having all the zombies trying to build a makeshift ladder out of props on the cinema map while chanting one of us. Or the many situations where sacrafices for the cause were made, i can still remember the exact moments in my friends eyes where they decided to let their fellow human buddies die just so they could buy another 5 seconds of life at most and begging for forgivness on voice chat. Hell the last time we did anything real as a community was when I joined our BC2 server at night when no one was on and just started destroying all the trees, mostly to see if it could be done and to see what the map looked like. Then my friends joined the server called me a sad cunt over teamspeak and then joined in setting up a litteral logging company with 40 people all on there doing the same thing, leaving the map completely devoid of any fauna. And then we played one of the most horrible matches in gameing the world has ever conceived where it was 40 people with no cover at all left anywhere. God it's depressing thinking back now because gaming is just so bloody anonymous and we just don't do anything that anymore.

I'll never forget the FPUK server. When it was full it was the most fun I'd had with TF2. When everyone would micspam songs and mess around, that was just pure joy. I miss those times. Here's a video of it, actually: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm4qQHgBmso[/media] I'm actually in this video, back when I had the username Cthonic.

[QUOTE=Gamerman12;50704843]overwatch kiddos of today will never know the bonds formed over maps like this [t]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/3300321172047881898/CB0D7835F66A72DF1AC8EF76D9E06C1EF56DD021/[/t] the source community is super interesting to compare to overwatch. it's no holds barred, so everyone just kinda went with it. you could be a total asshole and have a porn spray and micspam all the time but honestly most of the people on there were chill and there could be conversations had. i once found a really cool dude who was an actor in tf2 and he ended up voicing a character for me. that kind of investment is why i spent so much time with the games, and why so many other games and mods and everything inbetween cropped up, because valve just kinda let people at it. overwatch to me is low risk, i can just drop in a game and play it and carry no investment in the game. to be fair, thats nice every once and awhile but it doesn't keep me coming back. i still go back to games like csgo and tf2 or hell even gmod rp because its fun to just fuck around with folks over the mic and ive honestly had pretty good experiences when i don't take the game seriously. i don't want to call overwatch a bad game cause it's nowhere near bad. but it bares a stark contrast to tf2, not because of its content, but how that content drives people in the community.[/QUOTE] I will never forget the countless hours I spent on 2Fort2Furious's 24/7 Mario Kart server in the Summer of 2011, right after the game went free to play. That server was a family, yeah there was a lot of trolling and micspam and dumb shit but most didn't take it too seriously and everyone enjoyed themselves. That dumb shit is half the reason I loved playing on that server, it was laid back. People got to know each other, I still remember a guy named GARBAGE DAY who was on there every day. Stuff like Overwatch can't replicate that.

I've made a lot of friends through overwatch already so this isn't entirely true. But I do miss the ol' server. The bar analogy is great.

[QUOTE=bdd458;50705777]I will never forget the countless hours I spent on 2Fort2Furious's 24/7 Mario Kart server in the Summer of 2011, right after the game went free to play. That server was a family, yeah there was a lot of trolling and micspam and dumb shit but most didn't take it too seriously and everyone enjoyed themselves. That dumb shit is half the reason I loved playing on that server, it was laid back. People got to know each other, I still remember a guy named GARBAGE DAY who was on there every day. Stuff like Overwatch can't replicate that.[/QUOTE] jesus christ i think i was on that server too. i definitely remember someone named garbage day on mario_kart, but who knows at this point. there weren't a lot of server communities i specifically remember unfortunately, since i hopped around a ton. but there was one that stood out to me named Ruca, i eventually made a short lived series about playing on there. the only way i remember it tho. but 2fort2furious was one of the more popular servers so i think i spent a lot of time there since i mostly went to the most popular one.

To be honest, I prefer the Overwatch version of things. I'm an ultra-casual though, as far as multiplayer shooters are concerned.

I guess this brings up the question: how come TF2/CS/etc servers maintained a balance even when [I]anyone[/I] could join [I]any[/I] server? Is it a difference in how those games' difficulties work, compared to games that [I]need[/I] matchmaking? Were votekicks and team shuffles enough to keep a server balanced? If so, why do we need algorithm-based games now?

[QUOTE=latin_geek;50706123]I guess this brings up the question: how come TF2/CS/etc servers maintained a balance even when [I]anyone[/I] could join [I]any[/I] server? Is it a difference in how those games' difficulties work, compared to games that [I]need[/I] matchmaking? Were votekicks and team shuffles enough to keep a server balanced? If so, why do we need algorithm-based games now?[/QUOTE] I remember the majority of the games I played in TF2 being wildly unbalanced so [editline]13th July 2016[/editline] And games like BF4 still use the same basic premise and there's shit teams on a lot of servers quite often. Honestly, I think a lot of this video hits REALLY hard on nostalgia for a lot of you.

Usually someone that's winning gets bored and joins the losing team.

[QUOTE=Fr3ddi3;50705750]Fuck me Zombie Panic Source the stories i could tell, It was one of those games which was not very good but i still got hooked playing it and as result I got my entire community populating that game within a week, it was fucking hillarious. We'd take over a server with about 30 of us, and just sing happy birthday to random players. I was also pretty damn good at it and have oh so many stories of being the last human alive with a litteral train of zombies behind me trying to catch up but never quiet doing it, or climing out the confines of the map and having all the zombies trying to build a makeshift ladder out of props on the cinema map while chanting one of us. Or the many situations where sacrafices for the cause were made, i can still remember the exact moments in my friends eyes where they decided to let their fellow human buddies die just so they could buy another 5 seconds of life at most and begging for forgivness on voice chat. Hell the last time we did anything real as a community was when I joined our BC2 server at night when no one was on and just started destroying all the trees, mostly to see if it could be done and to see what the map looked like. Then my friends joined the server called me a sad cunt over teamspeak and then joined in setting up a litteral logging company with 40 people all on there doing the same thing, leaving the map completely devoid of any fauna. And then we played one of the most horrible matches in gameing the world has ever conceived where it was 40 people with no cover at all left anywhere. God it's depressing thinking back now because gaming is just so bloody anonymous and we just don't do anything that anymore.[/QUOTE] holy shit man the sacrifices!!! The most awesome part is that the developers didnt even think of that shit happening. The players came up with this shit. Nowadays shit is so fixed in games due to balance and the metas and all the bullshit. HOW THE FUCK can i compare the fun in getting a dude to die in order to survive with anything else? What? do a play that was intended by the developers in overatch? It was our games man, we made em what they are.