this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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Oh no I no longer can play the incredibly toxic matchmaking multi-player games and instead have to enjoy the automation, exploration, story, management and strategy games I've always loved
Factorio, my beloved
Hmm should I try different party combos in BG3 to see how the dialogue changes or run around a COD map getting shot in the back of the head every 9 seconds while ads for mtx strobe flash my corneas?
Yeah. Now I only have like 3 hours to play by day and I'm not gonna waste them in losing.
I'm the same way. I know some like the feeling of beating a hard boss after trying for hours, but I just don't have that time.
The secret is they like the process of beating them too. It's not all about "winning".
Feel kind of lucky. They weren't so toxic when I was good. The only place to really find that was from the notorious Xbox Live kids experimenting with their first ever swear words.
It was when gaming reached a broader audience and wasn't just for "nerds" that toxicity became commonplace. Went from making friends with strangers all the time to just default muting mics and avoiding communities.
Nowadays, the less reflex-deoendent, the more you'll be surrounded by players from those days and the less toxicity. Compare HLL to MW, for example.
As always, the closer a game gets to being a full blown simulator, the older the playerbase tends to be.
Almost like arcady bs with autoaim and automatchmaking and very short game round times and superhuman movement capabilities appeal to people with poor impulse control.
... of course you can then go way, way too far into fullblown sim territory and end up with actual geriatrics and/or turboautists, lol.
(I say this lovingly as a turboautist who has spent probably an unhealthy amount of time in various niche sim communities, lol)
Kind of. Growing up playing Counter-Strike and Battlefield titles, toxicity was still a much rarer thing than these days. Hell, smacktalk wasn't even a thing unless playing with friends and joking around.
Hrm, I encountered plenty of toxic assholes back on CS and BF/42/Vietnam/2, to the point that I had to explicitly seek out better communities, and then landed at Project Reality, being an alpha/beta tester / gameplay design concept discussion enthusiast (lol) with them for years.
Maybe I just had worse luck back then, or maybe its just way, way worse now with modern casual shooters.
Could be a bit of both.
...
I still remember the final test before PR 0.5 was released.
DBzao had written the first iteration of the injected python script that was to govern how you could request which kits depending on which squad you were in, who had what kits in your squad, how many kits were available to your whole team, etc.
Problem was... sometimes, for a completely indiscernible reason... some players just couldn't use the system at all.
We spent 3 hours in TS ... or maybe it was Ventrilo?... we spent hours trying everything we could think of, could not identify any pattern.
As the session was being wound down, as we had basically given up... I had a realization.
I pulled up the in game scoreboard... many times.
I then started barking orders at various remaining players to see who could and could not use the kit system.
If a non alphanumeric character was in your username, you could not use the kit system.
DBzao didn't believe this at first, pulled up his code, and then screamed.
... yep, he hadn't properly handled strings or string conversions or special characters at some stage of the code.
We'd been stuck on this for almost 2 weeks, and 6 hours later, it was fixed and released.
Or you can graduate to milsims.
The controls and game mechanics tend to be so complicated that... well, people tend to have more realistic expectations from their teammates, and if you find a decent community, people tend to be more mature and friendly.
It actually requires a part time job level of commitment to be an exceptional shooter or tanker or pilot or even medic if you're playing with a sufficiently complex health simulation... so, somewhat true to life, people tend to specialize and thus have much, much more incentive for decent communication standards.
Downside: Also true to life, a lot of games will end up feeling like 90% camping/hiking/road trip, punctuated, often essentially randomly, by 10% sheer terror.
...
You are not authorized for retirement unless you want a dishonorable discharge, soldier! If you need a wrist splint and vertical ergonomic mouse to continue your duties, check the nearest supply depot! Dismissed!
lol
What milsims would you recommend?
Well, you got Arma 3 or Arma Reforger...
Those are pretty much the most commonly played milsims, with tons of available mods and dlc, huge expansive maps, players have their own inventories, can customize your whole load out and such...
SQUAD is sort of a milsim lite, maybe? It evolved out of Project Reality for Battlefield 2, they eventually made their whole own game in Unreal.
It retains the round based, class base core concept, but greatly expands on the more arcady nature of the Battlefield series with many more realistic gameplay concepts, much of them revolving around playing a role in a squad.
The maps aren't as big as Arma, but you can still end up with a whole game session taking an hour or two.
There are also other games that basically aim for what SQUAD does, but not in a modern combat setting, Hell Let Loose for WW2 as an example.
I think Gray Zone Warfare is trying to be a new sort of milsim on the block, but so far I've heard roughly mixed reviews of it... and there are tons of 'tactical shooters'... but they tend to be smaller in scope and usually lack vehicles, or don't include near as many, or simulate them as extensively... and a whole lot of them tend to be developed by basically people who vastly overestimate their ability to make a game, and can be very toxic / in denial about this... so be careful with those, haha, probably check youtube for some reviews before diving in.
There's also Gunner Heat PC if you want a very tank oriented tank sim, and DCS if you want an excruciatingly detailed, combat oriented flight sim, and you also hate money, lol.
Oh right, for basically most of these, you're probably going to want to try and find and join some kind of larger community on discord or something like that... usually they'll have guides, tutorials, plan matches/games on a schedule, maybe even offer some kind of psuedo boot camp / training for enthusiastic noobs, hehe.
Thank you so much for the detailed response, a upvote wouldn't be enough. <3
I threw in some more details after I made the comment, more context and hopefully more useful info =D