Multiplayer PC game suggestions?

[huttj509]

So, my friends and I gather together to play each week online. As Diablo 3 has been feeling a bit stale, as has Heroes of the Storm, and Starcraft 2 vs ai only goes up to 3, we've been trying to think up new options.

Criteria:
Coop vs ai (either ai team, or "players vs world" type gameplay) preferred, teaming together against other humans can work, but we tend to find it less fun.
Accommodates older PCs (one of us can't run SC 2 in a stable manner, for example)
Older games are fine, as long as no juryrigging needed to actually play (was looking into rainbow six 3, and learned the multiplayer doesn't work anymore out of the box).
Can accommodate 4-5 people, 5 preferred. (Trying to decipher if someone's *actually* fine with sitting out, vs "oh no, it's fine, I'll just sit here, in the dark, alone" is not my idea of a good time).

Flexible on genre.

[Corlindale]

Path of Exile is really, really good. It's the same genre as Diablo and it has an amazing level of character and skill customization built in. There's also a huge expansion coming in less than two weeks with a lot of nice additions and updates.

It runs fine on my work laptop, so I don't think it's too demanding of the hardware.

It's also completely free, so it doesn't cost anything to try it out :-) (you can buy cosmetic stuff, but there's no pay-to-win).

[LibraryOgre]

Torchlight is a Diablo-like that might interest you. You can probably also get older versions of Civ for cheap and play them together, though that's not as twitchy.

[huttj509]

Torchlight is a Diablo-like that might interest you. You can probably also get older versions of Civ for cheap and play them together, though that's not as twitchy.

Main issues with Torchlight are 1) if we wanted diablo, we'd play diablo, and 2) something about how it scrolls the screen gives me vertigo, though it doesn't happen with diablo, diablo 2, or diablo 3.

Civ's big hinderance is that we play for 2 hour blocks. Which would be what, 4 turns? (I like the game, but man multiplayer can bog down).

[Erloas]

Most games are set for 4 players, "they" decided that was what people wanted so that is what they do most of the time.

Left 4 Dead (all)
Boarderlands (all)
Killing Floor

Are the ones I've played and at least remember or liked enough to mention. I think they are all well known enough not to have to go into much detail on them, just a reminder that they are there.

Rainbow Six 3 didn't run? I thought it had a LAN/direct IP option. I know many of the newer ones require an online service, but I know a lot of the older ones did direct connect and that should still work just fine.
I actually tend to prefer the old ones, they are more brutal and don't have many of the refinements of the new ones, but I really preferred the one-shot-one kill design style of the earlier ones, instead of now where a bit of a rest or a shot and you can get up from many gunshot wounds. Although I couldn't say how any particular one runs on modern systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperative_video_games


And while not coop, it can still be a lot of fun, and easy to set up, to run games like World of Tanks, or Team Fortress. You are against other players but generally the matches run quickly. Only problem with World of Tanks is that (at least last time I played, been a while) you could only team up with 3 people in normal games, the rest of the team was random.

[GolemsVoice]

You can get the Serious Sam series on steam for a few bucks, they have a coop mode and are real fun. Another good series is the Lego X series. The games are aimed at children maily, but are a lot of silly fun.

[thorgrim29]

Civ 4 maybe? Not the same genre obviously but it's super cheap on steam and since it's on steam you don't have to bother with pitboss. Other than that I don't know, my friends and I are more adversarial. What was that game where you had a team of starcraft-like marines vs pseudo-zerg and one player on each team was the commander? You could maybe play as a team on that if it's still active, that was pretty fun.

[LibraryOgre]

Not knowing the specs on SC2, you might also go with ME3 multiplayer.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Castle Crashers. A cartoony beat-em-up with various magic abilities. Mostly co-op with some PvP.

Hammerwatch. Like Gauntlet, but with more focus on exploration, lots of secrets hidden throughout the well-crafted levels. Also, you can't shoot the food.

[Anxe]

Warlight, a browser game version of Risk. Lots of different maps and very customizable.

Age of Empires 2 is also good. Just going to assume you've already heard of it and know what it is though.

[DodgerH2O]

I really like Monaco. It's up to 4 players, and a great Co-op stealth/heist game. Each level is fairly quick but you can easily play for more than a couple of hours at a time. I can't imagine it would be taxing on older hardware either (though I could be wrong).

[gooddragon1]

Tone rebellion. 4 players max. Sidescrolling strategy game. Older game.

[thorgrim29]

Oh guilds 2 is pretty fun, though it's pretty buggy. It's technically not co-op but you can take over a town as a team and compete against the other towns.

[Silfir]

Off-the-wall suggestion - Tabletop Simulator?

[Blackhawk748]

Castle Crashers. A cartoony beat-em-up with various magic abilities. Mostly co-op with some PvP.

Castle Crashers is great. I also recommend Stronghold Crusader Extreme. Its a bunch of fun and will run fine on pretty much anything now-a-days.

[Legoshrimp]

Most games are set for 4 players, "they" decided that was what people wanted so that is what they do most of the time.

Left 4 Dead (all)
Boarderlands (all)
Killing Floor

A note killing floor is 6 players.
Also it is really fun.

I would possibly suggest Wh40k retribution/last stand, but I don't remember if it is 3 or 4 players.

Payday 2 is a lot of fun, but it it is only 4 players.

I haven't played that much but sins of a solar empire: rebellion might be worth looking into. It is kind of like a real time civ, and I think you can have 5+ in a game.

speedrunners might be worth looking at as well. It isn't really the non competitive, but it is more like a mario party minigame sort of thing. Although it might be only 4 players don't remember.

Sanctum 2 and dungeon defenders 1/2 might be interesting. Both are tower defense games. Although I think both are only 4 players.

Doing something in terraria, minecraft, space terraria(starbound) might be good. And you can have more then 4 players for those, but I assume you already know about them.

MMo style things: Warframe might be fun, but only 4.
Clearly you should start playing WoW (and other MMOs I think) since 5 people is perfect for dungeons :smalltongue:

[Inarius]

Magicka is a pretty fun co-op game though there can be a lot of mayhem via friendly fire but thats the price you have to pay for magical godhood. You could also try Europa Universalis 4. Its sort of like Civ but with a lot more mechanics, but it does have one advantage over Civ for co-op which is it's a real time game. It plays out slow enough that its not a big deal ( I think theres even a slider for game speed), but everyone is participating at their own pace without bogging down the game.

[SVamp]

How about a free-ish mmo like DDO? (d&d online) - it has an action combat system and it's fairly fun, with moderate system requirements. I used it to play online with my best friends when we were living in different states, it worked rather well.

[LibraryOgre]

How about a free-ish mmo like DDO? (d&d online) - it has an action combat system and it's fairly fun, with moderate system requirements. I used it to play online with my best friends when we were living in different states, it worked rather well.

Once you get up to about 20th level (which doesn't take long), Lord of the Rings Online could be fun, running skirmishes as a group. I actually inherited a max-level kinship in LOTRO (all of the other kin members quit playing, then disappeared with the server migration), and don't play often. Y'all'd have to handle getting a kinship house, still.

[Triaxx]

Sacred is like Diablo, but has more overworld and 5 is actually a magic number in multiplayer. Any more than that and it gives an XP penalty, but there are actually a couple of challenges you almost need 5 people to do because of the trouble killing 7000 enemies to unlock it with just one person.

Total Annihilation is STILL fun, and supports up to 10 players. 5 makes for some awesome FFA's.

Age of Empires 2 is awesome, and it had an HD rerelease not too long ago, and either one is still lots of fun. There's also Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds if you want to go a little more sci-fi.

Baldur's Gate 1/2, and Icewind Dale 1/2 both support multi-player. Up to 6, or you can take 5 and one of the AI's in BG, or share a 6th in Icewind Dale. Three of the four have also had HD rereleases, though the originals are still playable. You may want TuTu or Trilogy for the original BG, which lets it use BG2's more capable engine.