/arcade/ - vidya gaems and other gaems too

do you mean co-op games where you play with strangers??

i made steam frens in Vermintide 2, Darktide, and Deep Rock. But you have to play at a certain level that doesn't attract rotten players - above this level is sweaties that yell at you for the slightest mistake and below this is sweaties that yell at you because they can't carry on easier difficulties but they'll take it out on others as cope.

some games like Helldivers 2 and the EDF series have friendly communities but i haven't actually made frens in them. i think these kinda games have less communication, so people don't really become frens.

i was too scared to play some games with strangers, like Payday and Risky Rain 2.

in games that aren't set up for playing with strangers, you can try reach out outside the game to play together with them. you can try on boards and forums and other communities: "Hello, does anyone want to play Baldur's Gate 3/Satisfactory/Valheim/etc with me?" this type of thing.

>>2635
i think my main problem is that most good online multiplayer games out there are usually pretty gritty and "badass" with their aesthetics and gameplay values because if they were more fun and cute then it'd harbor an entirely child fanbase that is just a whole other can of worms. (i.e. one of my favorite multiplayer (kinda) games is cookie run, but i cant even engage with the community at all because theyre all kids who arent fun to talk to)

its not like i cant ever enjoy a more badass game, its just that, if im trying to find someone more likeminded, we'd probably be spending more time in a game were *both* a lot more interested in.

i think ror2 is a good example because i have played and enjoyed that game:
>aesthetics are fine, dont pop out *that* much to me but its not like its bad for it or anything, plenty of designs like grovetender or the wisps that i like alot.
>gameplay is kinda vampire survivors-esque where you kinda pace around enemies and shoot at stuff and hope you dont die from some random champion enemy with 10x dmg from behind or something, not really bad but, like, if *i* made this game, it'd probably look extremely different, so not being able to see "myself" in it makes it harder for me to see it as a "home"

and then theres games like webfishing or atlyss that do fit my aesthetics/ideas better but kinda mostly fall under category 2 and dont have the most entertaining gameplay (the former isnt even supposed to be engaging and the latter gets to a point where friends are kinda the only way to enjoy it)

i dunno, i might just be too weird. i wish i could just *make* the games i wanna play but i need friendship to maintain the energy needed to produce such a thing, let alone the secret programmer knowledge i'd need to get from other people that simply cannot come from a google search or forum post.

also picrel just reminded me, there was actually an mmo i played alot, it was a petscop recreation where you could create a custom avatar and just fuck around and place tiles, it was a really simple premise and incredibly bare bones but the way it was executed was incredibly entertaining, a great example of how aesthetics can play a huge role in how fun a game can be (also creative freedom in games is awesome), but i cant play it anymore because the people behind it just didnt wanna moderate it. which is really sad since its really one of the few instances of a cute unassuming game still mostly having an audience of adults and not being too normie either.

I didn't know that aesthetics were important. Deep Rock Galactic isn't gritty at all though, you can just jump in and play with randoms and make friends sometimes!

>mmo
i liked playing Tree of Savior with frens! but i didn't like grinding and farming drops and whatever usual MMO nonsense, I just liked going through the areas and beating the boss with my frens and how cute it was and the way the Highlander's pantsu would peak out of her skirt and the fun hats and stuff. I hope one day i can play a co-op game that plays and looks like ToS without the MMO stuff, and is cute and fun and fun builds and frens!

chess
chess is the most popular game. you can play it in person, over the internet, over email, over physical mail, with Morse code, in a box, with a fox you can play it here or there. you can play it anywhere

there's Japanese chess,Xiangqi, western chess and other variations. you don't need to attach yourself to any specific organization. there are at least 5 different major free western chess sites. I know you have a concern about normalfigs but I'm sure I can find you some chess players on your wavelength given enough time, you can also join a community and just join to partake in the activity itself

along the lines of what >>2638 said, board games in general are a good option if you're willing to meet people in real life. Lots of gaming stores will hold board game nights where you can just walk in and join games.

For online games there's generally an inverse correlation between the intensity of the gameplay and the social aspects. If you don't want to do something super simple like fishing or VR chat your next best bet is probably a casual MMO.

>>2638
>>2642
i mean at that point i might as well just browse the internet trying to find people, if i just played board games with nothin to do with my interests theres just a whole lot of waiting to meet other people and not getting to actually get to know people much, not good options. ESPECIALLY in real life, which is perhaps the worst possible place ever to try to make friends, not only is sushi rollymity basically nonexistant, having to actually up and go somewhere heavily lowers the odds of meeting someone, especially someone like me, who mostly finds enjoyment from video games and the internet

>fishing or vr chat
i do try those, and theyre generally my best options, if theres any more anyone can suggest i'd like to hear.
webfishing is just, okay, its a dead game and the main audience is kinda just your average early 20 year old stoner with not much diversity in interests or aspirations. vrchat is extremely diverse and there are many *worlds* that speak to me but not many *people*, public lobbies are usually full of the usual
>guys who have no sense of internet or culture and act like they still have to be a normalfig for real life public
>guys with an "i wanna be famous" personality that completely neuters their ability to actually get to know somebody because they barely even know themselves
>people who have *too much* sense of internet and treat it as if it WAS their real life, leading to a generally dull and underdeveloped soul
people, and smaller obscurer lobbies are, well, obscure, and usually contain a friend group that would be akward to try to insert yourself into.

truly i think i need an mmo that requires creative input to be enjoyed because it enforces individuality one way or another, though it'd have to be careful to prevent "tumors" from forming and creating a "community" of creating the same shitpost or popular character over and over again. or iunno, anything to that degree, hell, even if there was just vrchat.. 2!! itd be better because itd be more fresh and the normalcy tumor wouldntve developed yet, and more diverse people will be more common since everyones just giving it a shot

>>2645
Have you tried board games? Also you don't need to play chess in person. You can be quite sushi rollymous while playing and improving.

Is your prompt actually "what MMOs are comfy and nice?" Because I can't help you there, I can only help you with f2p stuff. Ganbatte making friends on a MMO. I hope you find what you're looking for

>>2645
Probably not what you want to hear, but if you want a community to follow your ideals, you have to create and lead it yourself. Or usurp an existing one.
You're never going to find a community that perfectly follows your ideals. Best you can do is find one that's reasonably similar and adopt or at least learn to tolerate their ideals.

>>2647
its impossible to do that when most if not all places online follow a mindset that mostly involves following a crowd, leading to perpetual normalcy. i would create it myself, and i have tried, but its not a realistic endeavor at all, the most you can possibly do is make a server (will not work) or a social media account (more successful and maintainable) and just continue to do the exact same thing you have been doing (looking for other people and places to integrate yourself into, because for a *community* to be formed you *need other people*, so "leading it yourself" is already an impossible and unrealistic feat unless you have 20 million followers on twitter or something in which even then itd be easy for your community to be overflown by people you just dont rock with)
ursurping an existing one is just entirely out of the question because every community i do slither into is one in which im pretty sure half the userbase would have my head on a stake if they knew enough about me, if there were any ursurp-worthy servers i wouldve already called it my home. (and no im not going to make myself more appealing to normalfigs to do so because then the entire thing will be foundated on lies and wont allow me to express myself meaningfully)

i always frankly found it really silly whenever people go "heh, silly sushi roll, youre just not trying hard enough, put in the work", as if the possibility of me actually doing everything im supposed to is somehow impossible, meanwhile refusing to elaborate on how i could do anything better, like, who wouldve guessed a singular person can only do things a singular person can do and just look for other people. sometimes you can do literally everything right and still have things go wrong, life doesnt have a "justice" system in place, yknow.

>>2646
>have you tried board games?
yeah, everyone has. theyre better off with people youre already friends with, falls under
> is too involved of an experience to really get to know anyone at a reasonable pace with.
especially with the usual lack of story or character design to fawn over or discuss with other players, its really just a game. people play it *for* the game, it'd be making it akward if you tried starting small talk in the middle of it especially when you know nothing about your playmate who is most likely an incredibly different person from you.

>Is your prompt actually "what MMOs are comfy and nice?"
doesnt have to only be MMOs, mmos are just the first thing that come to mind, albeit specifically the ones that sort of break the established norm of MMOs like vrchat before quest or manyland when it was still alive, but any multiplayer game at all that allows for lots of opportunities to socialize work, its just that that sort of genre happens to be the best at it, despite constantly being scrubbed away for whatever reason.

>>2647
From what I've seen, communities aren't formed by individuals, but by trends. One does not simply make a new community and invite people into it, but rather an existing community has a trend that grows large enough that the participants in that trend split off to create a new community. You see this a lot in video game guilds, often due to differences in focus or philosophy.

So instead of recommending that others simply buck up and create new communities, I think it's more productive to encourage others to be active and make connections within their local existing communities. And through those connections, they find other people who follow the trends that more closely align with their own, and they can work with these people to form a new community.

You don't have to ask them to leave necessarily, but rather to join your new community alongside your current community. And once you've formed it, you are already close enough to the core founding members that you can establish community leaders that you trust and know will align with the core values of the community.

i really don't think this isn't necessarily true. plenty of communities are made when someone just makes a server and sticks all their friends in there and then all their friends' friends etc. then they all go play Skribblio together or whatever.

>>2648
That's what you do though – you create a server or a social media account or a guild or whatever and you keep advertising it everywhere until you have enough people who agree with you. Yeah it's tedious and frustrating and you'll get a bunch of people who show up just to mock you, but there's not much of a better way to find people. You don't need 20 million followers. A core of somewhere around 5 to 20 people is about right. That's what a normal community is.

>>2649
That's basically what I meant by usurping an existing community.

>>2652
>>2651
>>2652 (Me)
in all seriousness though, "making a community" is difficult when the kinda thing i look for is more nebulous than just "is a fan of X" or "likes Y games", i dont even think i want to create a clique, at least out of randoms online, because it kind of creates this atmosphere where where normalfigs will still dominate regardless, like, theres small, safe amounts of normalcy, and itd be plain rude if you just rejected them for that, since everyone's a little normal, but then it starts creeping in more and more inevitably, through sheer phenomena and abundance rather than any individual person's fault, and it just creates another atmosphere that you dont really feel welcome in anymore. for example, some of the games/manga i like are notoriously lewd or spooky or both, and yet whenever i try to find a server or multiplayer game for it, the communities are usually very safe and even the ones based in series that are extremely blatant with how creatively unhinged they are, shameless creator and all, they tend to actively fear ever getting into or discussing the more non normalfig safe topics, and will even forbid it in most cases despite it being a central part of the series' appeal and writing, to the point it doesnt even feel like a fanclub and more like just another place for normals to talk about hype moments and aura or whatever
i know its mostly a matter of me just properly moderating the community i create, but, like, in spite of that, its still going to be incredibly difficult to actually pass around, especially considering how dangerous big public spaces online can be, so i think i'll need to look for better alternatives than making a discord server (i know discord is lame but its the only option that isnt dead and broken)
i could try only inviting people from imageboards but i feel like thatd only work if ive already harbored a community in an imageboard before doing so, in which i have, and attempted, and failed (especially considering despite our similarities im ultimately pretty different from the most of them)
so now i explore many different imageboards trying to find something more, (which is why i am here to begin with), but again, not to much avail, and considering how hidden they are and the difficulties that arise with sushi rollymity and slow pace its been harder to really rely on, so thusly i made a thread on one of them asking for hints to one of the most successful methods of finding people since its one of those things that can consistently keep blood pumping through a community even if its in a somewhat comatose state (though not always successful)