No one to play multiplayer with

[ImBigBob]

I spend the majority of my time playing single player games, but every so often I'll get the urge to try out a multiplayer game. In this case, I just picked up Persona 4 Arena on sale (considering P4 is my favorite game ever, it made sense). The story's okay, and playing ranked matches online is nice, but it made me realize something that's been true for a long time: I don't have anyone to play multiplayer with.

Gaming is so diverse these days (unless you play Call of Duty) that I find it very difficult to find anyone who plays the same games as me. I don't know anyone in real life who's played Spec Ops: The Line, Asura's Wrath, FEZ, or Trials Evolution (all games I bought this year that I loved). Of course, I can still enjoy those games just fine on my own, but when it comes to a game like P4A, I almost feel like I'm throwing money away. If I dragged my friends to play it, I would demolish them because I'm the only one who's played it beforehand. If I go to tournaments, I'll get my ass kicked because these guys practically play it for a living (I've learned this with fighting games the hard way).

Which makes me wonder what the hell the point of multiplayer is. Of course, that's obvious: playing with your friends is fun. But only a handful of games this generation have managed to get that excitement out of me. My friends all grew up playing Super Smash Bros, so we all managed to learn it at the same pace. Alternatively, I got four friends to all buy Left 4 Dead at the same time during a sale, and we actively adjusted our schedules in order to play it together. But now I have this fighting game that I actually like quite a bit, and no one to play it with.

How often does this happen to you?

 

[username sucks]

well, in a strictly 1 vs 1 game like you got, yes it is difficult. I never played persona 4, but if there is matchmaking other than tournaments (like non-ranked matchmaking) do that, and talk to the people you play with. You should find yourself making some friends with some people that have similar skills. Not as good as real life friends, but it works. About half of my friends I play with I've never met in real life, but it still makes games much more fun to play with someone at least familiar to you.

 

[Fijiman]

I had a pretty bad case of this recently. Playing Minecraft by yourself can only be so fun for so long. And sure you can play with randoms on just about any multiplayer game, but it's not the same as playing with your buddies. It also doesn't help that most people don't use a mic and most of the people who do are either assholes or squeakers. Hell, sometimes it's nice just to be able to talk to someone else for a while, even if you both aren't playing the same game.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The point of multiplayer is to play with other people, getting a completely different (and generally harder) challenge than you get playing against a computer. Not to mention infinite re-playability, thanks to the unpredictability of human opponents. The point of online multiplayer is so you can play multiplayer whether you know anyone else who plays the game or not. I'm not really sure what's to get here.

 

[GeneralFungi]

The point of multiplayer is to play with other people, getting a completely different (and generally harder) challenge than you get playing against a computer. Not to mention infinite re-playability, thanks to the unpredictability of human opponents. The point of online multiplayer is so you can play multiplayer whether you know anyone else who plays the game or not. I'm not really sure what's to get here.

You are completely missing the social aspect of gaming; the party games, the cooperative games. And just the simple desire to have someone as a rival to exchange friendly trash talk with.

I do have a group of gaming friends, but my computer is so poor that what I can play with my friends on the pc is very limited. And none of them ever really play on consoles. It's a blast to play with them when I can, though.

If there's anyone who wants to attempt to set up any kind of game at some time, pm me or something and we might be able to exchange skype details. Though on the pc I'm actually very limited in what I can play. Ah well.

 

[Squilookle]

The point of multiplayer is to have bots, so no matter how far into the future you play your game, this exact situation will never happen.

Games should be for life- not for a couple of years till the next shiny object comes out.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The point of multiplayer is to play with other people, getting a completely different (and generally harder) challenge than you get playing against a computer. Not to mention infinite re-playability, thanks to the unpredictability of human opponents. The point of online multiplayer is so you can play multiplayer whether you know anyone else who plays the game or not. I'm not really sure what's to get here.

You are completely missing the social aspect of gaming; the party games, the cooperative games. And just the simple desire to have someone as a rival to exchange friendly trash talk with.

I do have a group of gaming friends, but my computer is so poor that what I can play with my friends on the pc is very limited. And none of them ever really play on consoles. It's a blast to play with them when I can, though.

If there's anyone who wants to attempt to set up any kind of game at some time, pm me or something and we might be able to exchange skype details. Though on the pc I'm actually very limited in what I can play. Ah well.

Eh, it's called dedicated servers and voice chat. Consoles may not have the dedicated servers part, but that's a flaw with their implementation of online multiplayer, not with the concept of online multiplayer in general. You get whole communities springing up around good servers on the PC.

 

[Angie7F]

me too. I have several games I am interested in playing but at the end of the day I have no one to play it with.

 

[Pimwing]

I have some friends that own the same games as I do. But for some reason we never really have the time to play them together on a regular basis.

Playing against/with random people can be fun but it's like playing a single player game with other people. There is no interaction beside the game itself.

 

[N3squ1ck]

Playing against/with random people can be fun but it's like playing a single player game with other people. There is no interaction beside the game itself.

Basically that, but there is sometimes in the chat some conversation going on (depends on the game though and how bugridden it is)

Also something like DayZ could not work without multiplayer. But I dunno if I am really the right person to say something really negative about multiplayer, having devoted quite a chunk of my life to Counterstrike back in the days.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I have had this problem for years. I play on dedicated servers on PC, but never end of friending anyone or getting friended. I've never played the same people twice. I get jealous when I hear all these people talk about steam chat and seeing what friends are playing when they log into steam, because, well, there isn't anybody.

I guess the solution is to just get over it and randomly friend people I've had a good match with, and let it grow. What's strange is that I've been playing SWTOR and it's easy to just get parties together and bullshit in the general chat. Maybe it's because with MMOs the point is to be social and work together with people. Unfortunately there the "individual class story" deal clashes with those aspects a bit.

 

[Doclector]

I've recently had the sad degeneration of my group of xbox live friends highlighted by the massive difference between the launch of Halo reach and halo 4.

We were all there to play halo reach together. We played the beta, we all got it on launch either limited or legendary edition, we had hilarious moments and rage filled achievement attempts.

Unfortunately, not long after it launched, one of my friends had a major falling out with another. Practically everyone aside from me took sides, and gradually, everyone stopped talking altogether.

Fast forward to now, with halo 4's launch. There weren't enough people who were going to be playing it for me to justify completely fucking my strict budget to get it the week after halloween.

I got it recently, and thus far, i haven't played with a single person I know. And whilst my tradition of being awesome at halo when nobody's around to see it has held true, I do miss the companionship, and it all makes me kinda sad that all these people who used to be great friends barely speak anymore, not to mention that I barely see any of them.

 

[Pimwing]

I've recently had the sad degeneration of my group of xbox live friends highlighted by the massive difference between the launch of Halo reach and halo 4.

I had this with a minecraft server that was run by a friend of mine. We played fairly regularly and during a longer downtime between updates the spark just died. People stopped playing and the server slowly died. I miss it, it's rare to find a close group on a server.

 

[Ljs1121]

I've recently had the sad degeneration of my group of xbox live friends highlighted by the massive difference between the launch of Halo reach and halo 4.

We were all there to play halo reach together. We played the beta, we all got it on launch either limited or legendary edition, we had hilarious moments and rage filled achievement attempts.

Unfortunately, not long after it launched, one of my friends had a major falling out with another. Practically everyone aside from me took sides, and gradually, everyone stopped talking altogether.

Fast forward to now, with halo 4's launch. There weren't enough people who were going to be playing it for me to justify completely fucking my strict budget to get it the week after halloween.

I got it recently, and thus far, i haven't played with a single person I know. And whilst my tradition of being awesome at halo when nobody's around to see it has held true, I do miss the companionship, and it all makes me kinda sad that all these people who used to be great friends barely speak anymore, not to mention that I barely see any of them.

I've gone through the exact same problem recently. The worst part is that the two who had a falling-out have both become inseparable friends with people I can't stand. I want the old days back.

On topic, I realize that I'm the same way. I almost never play multiplayer, and when I do I just play random games for an hour or two before becoming bored and going off to do whatever else. Back when Black Ops 1 was released I could go for at least a day matchmaking with my team of friends, but since they divided I've got no one. At best I just talk to someone while we both play our single-player.

 

[V8 Ninja]

While I have no stance on what the OP has said, mostly because I view it as bizarre, I kind-of get the same feeling (I think). Whenever I play a non-structured multiplayer game (think Borderlands or Torchlight II), I cannot for the life of me find a player who is in sync with what I am wanting to achieve. I feel as though there is no coordination or team effort put into any actions we do, and thus we just drift apart because we have no urge to work together. As I am now playing the multiplayer for Torchlight II, I would really love to play with some coordinated groups just to experience what it is like to play with other individuals who are on the same wavelength.