co-op games without combat are more social than competitive shooters

Competitive shooters put friends in the same lobby, but most of the conversation becomes callouts, blame and somebody asking why nobody traded the elimination. Noncombat co-op leaves room for actual personality. Moving furniture, solving a route, operating a terrible machine or trying to understand one vague objective creates stories because the game is not constantly measuring which friend performed worst. Combat can absolutely be social. The problem is that ranked systems turn every mistake into evidence. A low-stakes co-op task lets the loud friend improvise, the quiet friend notice details and the chaotic friend create a disaster without deleting twenty minutes of progress. The best group games are not always the ones with the deepest mechanics. They are the ones that leave enough silence for friends to be funny.