I’ve recently taken a keen interest in finding a multiplayer game (I’ve got a ps4) that encourages, to some extent, just hanging out to spend time with a friend or two that I do not see as much IRL these days.
To give you an idea of what I mean, I played a bit of Fortnite when it first came out and my partner has played a bit more than I and we’ve both noticed that while the game itself is fun the best part of it seems to be that it encourages some amount of just moseying around the landscape. This means that when played with friends it became kind of just a space/place to hang out that happened to have a battle royale’ game attached.
I’d love to hear suggestions/stories from folks in the community about what games have kind of just become a fun place to hang out and shoot the breeze with friends.
Currently I’m considering No Man’s Sky (for just chatting while looking at alien landscapes) and am keeping an eye on what early post-release buzz about Fallout 76 says.
I think this kind of game can have a lightning-in-a-bottle effect. It’s hard to predict what’ll catch on for you and your friends at the same time (unless you coordinate around it like some groups do) and so finding a good ‘hang-out’ game can be hard.
For me and my friends, it’s currently Overwatch, which is a game we picked up together and just use as a place to hang out and chill. Overwatch isn’t a great game for this in my experience (the competitive elements and changes to the game both fight against it being a good chill-out game), but it works for the 2-3 of us and our interests. We’ve talked about PUBG or other games, but it’s hard to get the impetus to go to another game and to just keep slamming that Blizzard launcher.
e: I’d also say (since you put this in #games), tabletop and board games are a great way to spend times with friends! Board games can bring together folks who might not be your typical game players and can be an absolute blast with the right group, as both a chillout or generally fun experience.
I agree with robowitch that it’s likely going to be hard to predict what people will latch on to, and people may experience the games in different ways.
For me, Destiny 2 is kind of a hang out game. My partner is super into it, and a number of my IRL and online friends are more serious with it as a “game”, but I mainly play it now only as a way to hang out.
While it’s been a hot minute since I’ve last played it, I can see something like GTA V Online being a good hang out game. There’s already so much to do in that world, but also just running around making your own fun with your friends is just as rewarding.
It’s the same with my group and Overwatch. We’ll just log on, shoot the shit, and maybe win a couple of games. It’s pretty chill because we know the flow of the game so it’s not too demanding to play and keep the conversation going. I’ll admit getting a little tired of playing the same game for over two years, but the inertia is strong and we have a few thrifty folks in the group who don’t want to shell out for something new.
Terraria is the perfect hangout game. There’s a lot of variety in things to do (building, mining, exploring, boss fights, etc), and most, if not all of them, are pretty engaging.
It’s not a new game by any means, but its definitely one I can always come back to and feel engaged by.
Any low-intensity ‘survival’ game can work this way. I’ve had a lot of fun hanging out with friends in Terraria and The Forest. Minecraft is probably the most typical example, and surely the most popular one, but it just wasn’t my thing. That said, it could be yours! No Man’s Sky is a good choice, too, though I found that staying in one place for longer periods of time (something that seems to be a staple behavior of this kind of play) is much less alluring because of the simplicity of that game.
I prefer talking while building than while fighting, because I just have a harder time talking while trying to aim, and I would wager that most do. I also thinking exploration and finding good, interesting secret stuff is a great catalyst that keeps the game and the conversation going. Good luck!
I would recommend warframe it is free co op and there is a ton of stuff to do. The missions are fairly low intensity and you can take them at your own pace.
Team Fortress 2 can be a surprisingly good place for just kind of hanging out and goofing around with friends, especially if you can find some community servers with fun mods or weird gamemodes. I generally stopped playing it back around the matchmaking update, but it was always a place where no one really took things all that seriously, and all of its weirdness with emotes and odd physics and characters can lead to a lot of fun.
I’ve yet to do any NMS multiplayer, but this is basically what I’m looking for out of Fallout 76: I just want to get away from the griefers and Gamerz and hang out with some friends in a nice forest clearing and run a little coffee shop and occasionally go on cryptid safaris.
Matching up with friends in Monster Hunter World is kinda finicky, but there is sort of a roaming mode that allows you to explore a map for as long as you want. You can gather resources, fish, fight or just look at the lush scenery.
For me it was Star Wars Galaxies. I decided to give the 14 day trial for a bit, ended up running into another crew who were also on the trial. It was real cool learning the game from them. The part that stuck out most was when we decided to stop and take a break. We setup our own camp and just chilled, chatted which side we’d join. But after a while folks didn’t come back and that was a little disappointing.
PUBG is a good pick. I currently get that feeling in Ring of Elysium. I love the snowy environment, and when I’m playing with my group of friends, sometimes I wish we were free to explore, rather than avoid getting murdered.
Yeah, something about the early phase of PUBG is fantastic for just wondering around with buddies checking houses and chatting. I’m lucky I still play with people I grew up with from nursery (20 years ago) so any game for us is just hanging out, but PUBGs quiet early phase really is peefect for it
So, if you have VR, I’d highly recommend VR Chat as an example of this. Actually, if you don’t have VR, VR chat has got you…
It’s a wild and interesting place. With any space like this, there’s a lot of problematic people, but It’s fun to just interject yourself into a conversation in those spaces.
For me, for years, it was Garry’s Mod and Minecraft. GMod is more of a toybox than a game so you can just build cars and racetracks with your friends, design a room, join some RP servers or whatever else. Lots of fun.
ff14 can be good for it. just the other night me n some friends were just hanging out it someones ingame house, n decent chunk of my time is doing stuff like that like on a beach or w/e.
