Back to PC Gaming , seasoned player.

[Bald-Eagle22]

Guys ,

Now the kids have grown up a bit I'm looking to get back into PC gaming.

I used to play hours of BF2 , over 2000 hours with the old 50K clan, left 4 dead and a few others .

So in my 7 year absence where has multiplayer on line gaming gone and what are the latest games to play to get me going .

 

[Tombstone]

So in my 7 year absence where has multiplayer on line gaming gone

Not meaning to sound negative, but to answer this part...

In your 7 year absence, multiplayer on line gaming has essentially gone nowhere. New BF games have come and gone, almost entirely just reskins of earlier versions. Co-op Multiplayer campaigns in games are still the red-headed stepchild of gaming and by and large ignored and forgotten (its easier to destroy each other than work together I guess). MMOs continue to make the same mistakes game after game. Balance issues continue to plague online games.

So, in summary, compared to things 7 years ago, stuff looks prettier but plays mostly the same

 

[Nate75]

give it another 7 years and there may be some new multiplayer stuff...


Having said that I have been loving GTAV since I picked it up in Feb and the new VR stuff looks fantastic...

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Just to add, there are some potential saving graces. The big-name stuff (as already suggested), has gone nowhere from a gameplay perspective.

There are however some potential interesting new ones, i.e.
- insurgency, which feels a little like a really well done version of CS
- Squad. Which is a lot more hardcore than just about anything out there. I'll be getting a copy if/when it ever goes on Steam sale

 

[Mockingbird]

Main changes in online play:

- When someone loses and gets upset, they are no longer "butthurt", they are "salty".

That is all.

Seriously though - if you like FPS, then the battlefield/COD brands are still going strong - BF tends to be bigger with more vehicles, COD tends to be infantry based and feels a bit more arcade-y (all that is quite subjective).
Outside those two, there are smaller, squad-centric games that have their own fans (see Mr Sukebe's post for some ideas to look into).

I'm not sure when they started (i.e. the 7 year gap may mean you are well aware of these), but consider MOBAs - Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (I think that's the acronym anyway) - they look like multiplayer RTS games, but are quite hard for me to explain. Check out some videos of Heroes of the Storm for a start. They are popular with streamers, competitive players and people who take their gaming seriously, so if you enjoy the clan-type of experience there's a lot to do there. I understand the community in them is often perceived as hostile to newbies and people joining solo, hence going in from a clan is often more fun.

In left 4 dead news, try Vermintide - it's basically fantasy L4D versus Skaven (rat men) in the warhammer world. Pretty fun!

On the open-world do-what-you-like front, there's Minecraft (family friendly) and GTA Online (not family friendly, but appears to be the cause of endless inventiveness).

If you want to try something else, look at Rocket League. It's football played by rocket powered cars. People who play it tend to record every god damn goal they score and upload them to the /r/gaming subreddit, and I hate them with the heat of a thousand suns, but playing it is supposed to be fun.

On the ARPG front, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Diablo 3 (after loads of patches/changes compared to release) and Marvel Heroes appear to be the main current contenders.

MMORPGs I am not up on, so can't help there.