I’d advocate for player hosted / dedicated servers over “Locals Only”. When you have community tools to regulate toxicity, you end up with a much better community. See also the TFC, TF2, Soldier of Fortune, Jedi Knight, Quake 3, CoD 4, etc… servers I played and admin’ed on growing up.
I actually ran CS 1.6 servers on a spare desktop at home and met some close friends because they were on the same local node, their ping was constantly <80ms and so they chose my server over and over again. When I was playing and told them where I lived, they lost it and said they lived in the same area. We kept giving a little bit more information to each other, making sure it wasn’t just someone fishing for some kids address, and found out we lived in the same neighborhood. Met probably 6 guys this way that I’m still friends with. :)
Having a larger worldwide population to match with means matchmaking can do a better job of trying to find someone closer to your level. Playing any game with a high skill ceiling with IRL friends is what often just results in a skill gap too wide for either of us to have fun, and then who else can I even go play with?
And that’s assuming anyone you know IRL even wants to play the niche games you love best.
I like PvP games when they are among smaller circles. It’s easy to get good when the people you’re playing against all live locally.
But then you get into something like Destiny 2, and some korean kid who gets paid to main the game absolutely obliterates you the moment you spawn.
World-wide matchmaking is a mistake. If PvP were locally-matched, I think plenty of people would have a good time.
I’d advocate for player hosted / dedicated servers over “Locals Only”. When you have community tools to regulate toxicity, you end up with a much better community. See also the TFC, TF2, Soldier of Fortune, Jedi Knight, Quake 3, CoD 4, etc… servers I played and admin’ed on growing up.
I actually ran CS 1.6 servers on a spare desktop at home and met some close friends because they were on the same local node, their ping was constantly <80ms and so they chose my server over and over again. When I was playing and told them where I lived, they lost it and said they lived in the same area. We kept giving a little bit more information to each other, making sure it wasn’t just someone fishing for some kids address, and found out we lived in the same neighborhood. Met probably 6 guys this way that I’m still friends with. :)
Having a larger worldwide population to match with means matchmaking can do a better job of trying to find someone closer to your level. Playing any game with a high skill ceiling with IRL friends is what often just results in a skill gap too wide for either of us to have fun, and then who else can I even go play with?
And that’s assuming anyone you know IRL even wants to play the niche games you love best.