Positive online experiences with complete strangers.

[Zhukov]

That title sounds like the tag-line for a internet dating/hookup site. Huh.

Moving on.

It's no secret that online gaming can get rather... obnoxious at times. The screaming juveniles in FPSs. The utterly toxic MOBA user base. The trash-talking fighting game online warrior who pulls the internet cable as soon as they smell impending defeat. The list goes on.

I play a fair bit of Smite, a third-person MOBA. It's... well, it's a MOBA, join the dots. Today I was having a string of especially nasty matches. Lots of abuse, people feeding, then bitching about it, then sitting in the base and refusing to surrender. The whole lot. I was considering coming on here just to have a ***** about it.

Then something happened.

On the next game me and my lane mate got an early kill. The kill-ee promptly disconnected. "Oh great", says I, "Another bloody rage-quiter." He was then quickly followed by two of his teammates. I later learned that the three of them had queued as a party. This left the game a 5v2. Essentially unwinnable for our opponents and a hollow victory for us. (For those of you who don't play MOBAs, this would be like having over half of your soccer team get red-carded.)

We assumed the remaining two enemies would surrender, but the game doesn't allow surrenders within the first ten minutes. We didn't feel particularly good about the idea of crushing them, so we spent the next ten minutes just screwing around. I bought just movement speed items and went zipping about throwing out taunts.

However, ten minutes passed and no surrender was forthcoming. So after a brief conference we decided to do the unexpected and surrender to them, thus giving the two remaining stalwart enemies a free win to compensate for their cowardly teammates. Many laughs were had in the post-game lobby.

The whole thing left me feeling warm and fuzzy. It was nice to see a bunch of strangers being such good sports, especially in a genre rightly known for the complete opposite.

...

Another online game in which I've had consistently good experiences is Journey. That might seem like a no-brainer, given that there's no competitive element, no in-game communication beyond making a peeping chiming sound and no way to grief one another. However, I've also had people, complete strangers, message me over PSN after the game and actually thank me for playing with them, which is kind of crazy in a good way.

Also, somehow a tradition has emerged in Journey of drawing a heart in the white sand right before the end, which, considering that there's no way for players to communicate within the game, is kind of adorable - if a little saccharine.

...

So... anyone else have any accounts of friendly online gaming that diverged from the normal run of anonymous sociopaths?

 

[Xukog]

I used to play a lot of Mass Effect 3 online,and ran into a couple of people who became....I guess you would say gaming buddies for a while.Pretty much killed my free time for a while just playing with them. Was pretty fun.

 

[Bernzz]

For the most part Chivalry: Medieval Warfare has a good player base. I've had some assholes, including one dude who ran into my sword swing (started swinging before he was in front of me) and die. He then teamkilled me five times. How does that make him better than me?

That aside, it's a fairly good community. I've had people compliment me on my kills, when I've killed them. And most of the time when someone teamkills, they apologise, and the other person just says "No probs." and you're good.

 

[Keoul]

A round on TF2.
I was on a zombie mod server and playing medic, me and some other chap were the only ones alive and with a team of 10+ people after us it didn't seem likely, even more so when both of us were medics. And suddenly it clicked, a complete stranger and I were backed into a corner and that is when we suddenly both decided to medi-chain. For those that don't know what this is, essentially both medics equip an ubersaw and a regular medigun, every hit on the ubersaw refills the medi-gun meter for 25% and at 100% you and the person you're healing gain invulnerability for 10 seconds, we switched roles from healer to attacker numerous times and after about 2 minutes we finally rode out the clock and won the round. It was amazing and something you would never expect to pull off with a stranger and even more so without a microphone.

 

[Able Seacat]

I've come across some nice folk in Dark Souls. I invaded someone in the forest who was much better than me but he was only using fist weapons so the fight was lasting a while and when I was near death he backed off and dropped a humanity for me and messaged me to heal so we can just fight for a bit longer. He dropped me a few more humanities and even though he could beat easily he didn't gloat and we had a nice conversation too.

Another time I was playing co-op at the Duke's Archives and had a fun time defeating Seath and cutting off the tail. She then messaged asking if I wanted to fight Nito too. I was on ng+ and hadn't gone to that area yet but she said she'll wait which I thought was pretty cool of someone to do, so I made my way down and we kicked Nito's ass.

 

[Kenbo Slice]

Pretty much every time I played Apples to Apples on XBL. Everybody I played with was always so cool.

 

[Evonisia]

When I used to play Halo 3 multiplayer religiously every one was much kinder to each over than say in Halo: Reach, and nearly all my experiences on Custom Games, online matches, forge or campaign were positive.

For some reason following the release of MW2 and Halo: Reach I stopped encountering people acting like that, on pretty much any game.

Sadly, I only have two friends left on my list from those times. =/

 

[Jazoni89]

among all of the absolute shite experiences, i have a few good memories that stick out in my mind.

When I played with a 11 year old American lad on Borderlands. I was actually surprised at how intelligent he was for his age, and we had a really good in depth conversation.

When me and a bunch of American dudes were ripping on this Scottish dude in Left 4 Dead. He deserved it though, he was a bit of a arsehole to everyone, he even kicked me at one point for no reason.

I also have good Memories of people on GTA 4, and Medieval Total War 2.

When I used to play Halo 3 multiplayer religiously every one was much kinder to each over than say in Halo: Reach, and nearly all my experiences on Custom Games, online matches, forge or campaign were positive.

For some reason following the release of MW2 and Halo: Reach I stopped encountering people acting like that, on pretty much any game.

Sadly, I only have two friends left on my list from those times. =/

Funny that, Halo 3 was one of my worst online gaming experiences ever, everyone was just a complete and utter anti-social, racist bastard. I even got less shit on Call of Duty, and Left 4 Dead.

 

[Evonisia]

When I used to play Halo 3 multiplayer religiously every one was much kinder to each over than say in Halo: Reach, and nearly all my experiences on Custom Games, online matches, forge or campaign were positive.

For some reason following the release of MW2 and Halo: Reach I stopped encountering people acting like that, on pretty much any game.

Sadly, I only have two friends left on my list from those times. =/

Funny that, Halo 3 was one of my worst online gaming experiences ever, everyone was just a complete and utter anti-social, racist bastard. I even got less shit on Call of Duty, and Left 4 Dead.

Funnily enough that's how I'd describe post Halo: Reach and post MW2's community. It's either I didn't notice it during Halo 3/CoD 4, I got lucky or it just wasn't bad enough for me to call bullshit. Alternatively the fanboy wars might have drowned it out.

 

[purf]

There was Jedi Outcast back in the days, my first ever experience with these complete strangers.[footnote]Almost literally in a 'I wonder what this button does' way[/footnote]

Hanging out with them on (mostly) the landing pad on the Bespin map, fighting duels - while everyone not fighting was watching, cheering, GF!ing or fooling around with emotes instead. I was once practicing on my own in another part of that map when that one complete stranger took me under this wing for a rather long time to teach and help.

Good times.

Also, believe it or not, quite many moments in EVE Online.

 

[votemarvel]

I was playing Gears of War online and one of the people was singing show tunes throughout.

Usually this would be annoying but he was genuinely good.

 

[GoaThief]

My online experiences tend to be very positive, I'm not joking either. Obviously there are always some bad apples but usually just being positive, complimenting and being talkative in general conversation with non-gaming related matters tends to illicit a positive response in others. I don't play MOBAs however, but plenty of arena FPS, Left 4 Dead 2 (which is the core game of my clan), fighting games, to things like Uno on XBLA.

Private party chat has been quite detrimental on the whole however, many people who would have previously chatted and interacted now live in a bubble leaving the lone ass holes somewhat more prominent. Perhaps if people tried to use party chat a little less the online gaming world would be a little better.

 

[tippy2k2]

Private party chat has been quite detrimental on the whole however, many people who would have previously chatted and interacted now live in a bubble leaving the lone ass holes somewhat more prominent. Perhaps if people tried to use party chat a little less the online gaming world would be a little better.

My positive is going to turn into a negative real quick so I'll try to keep it positive...

I 100% agree that private party chat has kind of crippled gaming multi-player. It's terribly unfortunate but a gamer I play with (the positive, which I'll get to shortly) had the audacity to be born with a vagina. The sheer amount of bile and bullshit that she has to put up with for this sin against mankind is so utterly shocking that I can't in good conscious ask us to play outside of party chat. It's unfortunate that such a small user group (the bile throwers that is) has such a large effect on gaming. I weep for the friend we have never had the chance to make because these assholes shine such a bright spotlight on themselves...

Anyway, the positive is Sally Cat and company. In Call of Duty 4, six years ago to put this in perspective, I ran into a group of adult players like myself playing. We had ourselves a fun old time and eventually, I received a friends request from one of them. We have all become good friends. I play in their fantasy football league and we are trying to setup this year for me to actually go down to Ohio to be there in person to draft our teams.

A great friendship between a group of adults all because of Call of Duty.

 

[hazabaza1]

In the surprisingly toxic environment of Dota 2 I've managed to have a good few laughs. Occasionally just pointing out how fed someone has gotten (Be they friend or foe) or even doing some silly character roleplay. Dunking people as Axe is always good fun.

Also Dark Souls. Both in random invasions and a session of PvP. A lot of people who invade my world get into a "well, what is it?" match where we just spam the emote until we're basically hugging, and once you get to know the people playing at the particular time you are some good banter can come along. I remember one time when some guy was spamming fireball pyromancy so I'm dodging in the standard ways, he prepares another, stronger one, so it takes more time to be ready, and throws it and the end of my roll, without lock-on, hits me square in the face. Sent him a message saying it was so good I'm not even mad.

 

[TrevHead]

Also, believe it or not, quite many moments in EVE Online.

I'd 2nd this, best online community I've ever come across, the game might be half a spreadsheet and very dog eat dog in it's harsh capitalistic playstyle but it's online community is by and large very good (when I played the game anyway)

Hell even the griefers and scammers had great personalities.

 

[josemlopes]

I was playing Gears of War online and one of the people was singing show tunes throughout.

Usually this would be annoying but he was genuinely good.

Weird, that also happened with me. Although I only remember him singing Addams Family and in the end the entire team was singing this:

It was actually the first time I heard this song, it only started playing on my country 2 months later.

People singing is usually annoying but sometimes... sometimes they nail it and its actually fun.

 

[GeneralChaos]

Spy Party. A game of asymmetrical information and assassination where people are ridiculously friendly. After nearly every match I've played, both players have offered honest advice and help to the other-pointing out if they got something wrong, not to mock them but to help them improve. I've shared laughs with complete strangers over the outcome of a tense final countdown, whether or not I win. That game easily has the best online community of any game I've played.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

In TF2 I've had a LOT of these experiences, ranging from the entire 24 man server all changing their names to skeletor related puns, and going "Myah!" down the mic, to making friends with a very angry scottish person and larking around with him. And later when we got a good few people singing an acapella version of "Hit the Road Jack".
On the flipside, Journey probably counts in it's entirety
OH YEAH!
I also tend to make friends (real life or online) fairly well if we get talking, so had a LOT of those in a multitude of games.
Overall, I quite like Steam/PSN/

 

[Stinovitch]

I used to play a lot of Mass Effect 3 online,and ran into a couple of people who became....I guess you would say gaming buddies for a while.Pretty much killed my free time for a while just playing with them. Was pretty fun.

I too had some great experiences with strangers in mass effect 3 multiplayer and its very nice community. Some of them became really good friends and I still play with two of them every week.
Besides that I remember playing Company of Heroes a few years back. It was a 4v4 match, but the host didn't had a very stable connection and 3 players from the other team disconnected. They were replaced by the (second?) highest AI in the game and our team was cornered on our base island which you could only reach by crossing either a large bridge or a small wooden bridge. We knew we couldn't win, but we didn't want to surrender either and so we destroyed the small bridge and defended the large one with everything we had left. We managed to block the bridge with destroyed tanks and cars and the other team just couldn't get across. The funny thing is that all of the sudden the last remaining player on the opposite team just started chatting with us. I think we talked like over an hour before we finally had to surrender. That defeat is the most memorable battle I ever had in that game.