The learning curve, however, can be surprisingly high.
I've been playing for something like a decade at this point... I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing... Except that I can drive a mag rider... and surprising can fly a galaxy pretty well...
Same tbh. Been playing for over a decade. I'm an Infil main, so I got that down in its various forms (as VS). I'm alright with Engi and Medic. And that's about it. I'm bad at LA and I definitely can't play Heavy. Weird, I know.
Busses I'm fine with, Gals and Harasser I'm OK. Skyguard lightning I'm pretty decent at though.
If you like survival games… Ark, 7 days to die, Conan Exiles, Valheim*… You can self-host all of them so you don’t need to deal with griefers.
Valheim’s doesn’t work so well if you don’t all play together. Resources from exploration are finite and it really sucks if all the places you go, your buddies went to and looted already. Works best if most people play together and everyone plays around the same amount of time.
Agreed, and with this mod, you can actually have up to 8 players. I've been using it for a group of 5. Issues are infrequent and minor (e.g., one person not having a chest at camp, one player's stats/inventory getting cut off on the overview page, etc.).
If you want to avoid the hassle that it takes to set up a Microsoft account you may try Minetest instead of Minecraft.
It's an free and Open Source reimplementation that needs no Java, and the game mode "Mineclone" is very close to the original.
Regardings RTS I can recommend Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
I you want to try out a business simulation you may look at OpenTTD which is free (and free of ads) over Steam.
You mentioned LoL. Dota 2 is really fun if you guys haven't tried it, highly recommend. Biggest thing to get used to compared to LoL is the movement (most heroes have a turn speed)
This was always my issue with Dota. It just feels so sluggish to have to turn around to run away instead of instantly changing direction like in LoL. That being said I love Dota! Now whenever my friends drag me into League I constantly find myself wishing I had a courier.
Barotrauma should be able to take up to 16 players and if you as a group can get into this game then you will have a good laugh for a good amount of time.
Golf With Your Friends - up to 12 p. Simple game but getting hit by your friends ball right before scoring the hole kinda never gets old.
Any grand strategy will be able to host many players Civ, HoI, HoMaM, AoE, RoN, Stellaris, ...
Factorio (actually not sure what the MP limit is without mods; but I know there's a mod that makes it infinite due to seeing the Spiffing Brit playing with like 300 people at once).
EVE Online (the bigger your group the stronger you'd be. Get 100 of 'em; start your own corporation)
Actually while thinking about what supports more than 4 it's mostly creative games and MMORPGs (that know of). Damn near everything centers on groups of just 3-4 with the exception of the 5v5 competitive shooters.
MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 are a great way to play together. With 5 players you can exactly fill a party in both games.
RTS games like Starcraft 2 (which is free now) or Age of Empires could also be fun, but 5 players is a bit awkward because it's too many for a single team and uneven so you can't play like a 3v3. But at least in SC2 there's a 2v2 and a 3v3 ladder so you could always split into two teams or play a free for all. There are also a bunch of cool custom games in the arcade like Ice Baneling Escape or Zealot Hockey you could try.
Very different, but Trackmania is also fun with friends. Not the right choice if you enjoy ramming your friends off the road, but there are probably other games for that too. To set up and play in a club/server you'd need club access which costs like $20 a year, but you can try the game for free first to see if you like it. You can compete for records on a map, play an RPG together (a map style where the focus is on finding the right way instead of just racing) or build tracks for each other.
You could try an ARPG, unfortunately most of them (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch) seem to limit parties to 4 players, but Path of Exile allows up to six. And if you're not serious about the end game you'll never need to spend any money (if you are it's like $40 for stash tabs one time and you're set forever).
Most of the overland content is so incredibly easy to do solo, its not very fun to do as a group. Cyrodiil or Imperial City pvp might be fun and the base game goes on sale frequently.
I'd suggest valheim but I'm not sure how is the performance nowadays, our rented servers struggled a lot with only 3-4 people and I think 10 is the max. Sailing was especially very laggy and glitchy because if it unfortunately.
The issue with Valheim is it's not really a dedicated server. It's more of a shared saved game repository.
Whoever gets to a region first is the host, and everyone nearby connects to them. If that person has a slow machine, or high latency to the other players it can be really painful. When I was playing with friends, we banned one person from entering dungeons first because they had the worst computer in the group and it was really bad for the rest of us. Same thing with our main base, if they wound up the host, they'd disconnect and log back in so someone else would become host.
For some slightly less common games:
Golf with your friends is a great mini game to play, effectively really crazy golf online
From the Depths build ships/planes/tanks with entirely custom guns, engines etc. then play on the campaign map with fleets of these ships. you can make some really complicated vehicles if that's your thing. Unlimited player count as far as I'm aware.
A less deep version of that is Avorion - Mine resources to build custom ships (less complicated) then even small fleets and do quests, make allies/enemies as you venture to the centre of the galaxy. Supports unlimited players as far as I'm aware. It also allows you to form an alliance to share resources with other players. Resource gathering (mining/salvaging) can be automated by your fleets if that's not your thing.