Originally posted by botrytis

People are solo-oriented. Games can force you to group, it doesn't mean people want to be social.

I don't even know that's true.  The problem with the pro-groupers is they simply refuse to acknowledge that the genre and it's playerbase has changed over the years, they think that it's possible to reset things and it will go back to the way it used to be.

The reality is, back in the day of UO and EQ, the majority of people playing MMOs were the geeks and the nerds, they were the only ones that had access to high-end machines and broadband Internet.  Therefore you already had a group of people who fundamentally had a lot in common outside of playing the game.  It wasn't horrible to get caught with nothing to do once in a while because no matter who you were with, you probably had something to talk about.  There probably wasn't a group I was in back then that  couldn't quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail from memory.  There was an actual community because virtually everyone playing the game belonged to the same social group.

Enter the broadband explosion and now *EVERYONE* has access to these games.  Instead of one single unified community, you have dozens, even hundreds of different communities with different interests, different tastes, different goals.  Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game.  That's why people started playing solo because it avoided those uncomfortable encounters.  Everyone played for their own purposes and their own goals and if they could hook up with a couple of people who shared their interests and were on at the same time, great.  If not... you played alone.  Games changed to reflect this new reality.

The fact is, even if you did go back to forced grouping, you'll never go back to the same feeling of community that games once had.  Those days are simply gone, at least unless you restrict games to a single social group, which no one is going to do.  I'm sure people want to be social, they just want to do it with people that they share common interests with.  It's just not that easy to come by in modern games, or in modern online life.

Originally posted by Arclan

 

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Originally posted by nariusseldon

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Originally posted by Arclan  

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Originally posted by Greyface I like TSW's approach, where everyone who participated in a fight gets equal credit, even if there's no actual group.  

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  Best approach! I should check out TSW. Now they just need to automatically randomize loot based on how much aggro each player generated (by damaging mob or healing its enemies, etc).

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Just random private loot like in WOW LFR or D3. You don't have to base that on anything. Since player A's loot won't impact player B .. there will be no dispute.

 

And players have the incentive to help kill faster to get more loot anyway.

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If those games roll loot per player instead of per mob, I think that's pretty awesome too! Never knew that! So long as not too much loot is given out.

Re: the grouping issues, I think a lot of it can be solved by slowing down the pace at which players level. It's gotten out of hand.

Yeah .. the drop rate has nothing to do with the system. The private loot system is designed to do away with ninjaing, and loot drama. There is zero of those in D3, and WOW LFR.

The drop rate, obviously need to be tweaked based on progression curve and stuff like that. And you can run the same system with low drop rate or very high ones.

Originally posted by Alberel

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Alberel

This doesn't make much sense to me... the ones who voluntarily group tend to be the better members of the community from my experience. It's the ones who hate grouping but are forced to who tend to be the most immature or incompetent.

Not remotely true.  Now granted, I'd argue that 95% of everyone in most MMOs are immature and incompetent, but in my experience at least, most PUG groupers are only in it to use other people for their own advancement.  They want to throw other people in front to take the hits first, throw more firepower at more powerful targets, get free healing, so they can get better drops and more XP.  They don't give a damn about anyone else in the group, they're just cannon fodder that they'll never see again.

What do players in PUGs have to do with the difference between players who voluntarily group and players who are forced to group? Most people in PUGs only do it because they are forced to do so to achieve certain goals; beyond those ends they solo exclusively. This means they fall into the first group I was talking about, which means what I said was correct. The players who group voluntarily tend to do so in isolated groups with the same people on a regular basis, because they're well aware that PUGs are almost exclusively formed of soloers with no desire to group, but feel forced to do so to complete certain content.

When a game has a mix of solo and group content you tend to find the soloers who don't want to be in groups are the real problem. In a game with nothing but 100% group content you don't get this problem as those soloers don't touch the game in the first place. Go see FFXI pre-Abyssea for a good example; groups in that game were exceptionally positive experiences, and if someone was excessively negative or did something to deliberately annoy they simply wouldn't get any groups again as the community would blacklist them.

How is that a problem?  A soloer who doesn't want to be in a group with you affects you how, exactly?

The OP was attributing immature behaviour to players who choose to group voluntarily. I was explaining that it is the opposite; it is usually soloers who feel forced to group for some reason that are a detriment to the experience of all in that group as they are usually excessively negative and just use the group as a means to an end. I thought this was obvious...

The irony of solo-oriented MMOs is that they invite one type of player with solo content during the levelling process whilst endgame almost universally is group content that doesn't appeal to those soloers. This problem would be fixed by making grouping so attractive at low level that players get used to it before the cap... it doesn't have to be 100% forced grouping, just make it so rewarding that soloing is seen as a last resort if you can't find a group.

Lots of us don't play end-game content at all.  For me, once I hit level-cap, I retire the character.  I don't raid.  I don't PvP.  Game is over.  Either re-roll a new character or go find a different game.

Good for you, what does that have to do with the discussion in this thread? We're talking about behaviour of people in groups here... if you never group then how on earth could you have an input to this discussion?

Do try again.

Why are you attacking me with snide remarks like that? It almost makes you sound like one of the immature players you're complaining about...

 +1

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Originally posted by Cephus404

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Originally posted by botrytis People are solo-oriented. Games can force you to group, it doesn't mean people want to be social.

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I don't even know that's true. The problem with the pro-groupers is they simply refuse to acknowledge that the genre and it's playerbase has changed over the years, they think that it's possible to reset things and it will go back to the way it used to be.

The reality is, back in the day of UO and EQ, the majority of people playing MMOs were the geeks and the nerds, they were the only ones that had access to high-end machines and broadband Internet. Therefore you already had a group of people who fundamentally had a lot in common outside of playing the game. It wasn't horrible to get caught with nothing to do once in a while because no matter who you were with, you probably had something to talk about. There probably wasn't a group I was in back then that couldn't quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail from memory. There was an actual community because virtually everyone playing the game belonged to the same social group.

Enter the broadband explosion and now *EVERYONE* has access to these games. Instead of one single unified community, you have dozens, even hundreds of different communities with different interests, different tastes, different goals. Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game. That's why people started playing solo because it avoided those uncomfortable encounters. Everyone played for their own purposes and their own goals and if they could hook up with a couple of people who shared their interests and were on at the same time, great. If not... you played alone. Games changed to reflect this new reality.

The fact is, even if you did go back to forced grouping, you'll never go back to the same feeling of community that games once had. Those days are simply gone, at least unless you restrict games to a single social group, which no one is going to do. I'm sure people want to be social, they just want to do it with people that they share common interests with. It's just not that easy to come by in modern games, or in modern online life.

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Wait, are you suggesting now the 'cool' people are playing MMOs? Kinda funny. I've never met a cooler group of people than I did in EQ around 1999. Met several of them IRL; all cool, good looking, successful people with personalities. I was shocked.

Gaming today is different. MMO companies fail to offer gameplay that many vets enjoy; so we aren't playing. What's left are probably mostly folks who like to solo. But just because companies have failed to capture vet's attention, it doesn't mean they should count them (or their money) out. It's a big opportunity for a company that gets it right.

Originally posted by Arclan

 

Gaming today is different. MMO companies fail to offer gameplay that many vets enjoy; so we aren't playing. What's left are probably mostly folks who like to solo. But just because companies have failed to capture vet's attention, it doesn't mean they should count them (or their money) out. It's a big opportunity for a company that gets it right.

 

Yet for a  lot of vets, the only way to "get it right" is to completely throw away 95% of the market in favor of old-school gaming.  That's not going to happen and until the vets get it through their heads, nobody is going to make a game that they're  going to like.

Forced interdependance tends to breed more polite behavior simply because people who act in an anti-social fashion get selected against (e.g. do worse). People are therefore acting in thier own enlightened self-interest by being nice to others.

However this does get mitigated to a very large degree when dealing with much larger communities where there are very low odds that you'll ever need to interact with the same people in future.

So if a player is in a game community of 1,000 people and they know they are going to need to interact with those people in future (interdependence), they'll tend not to act like jerks because in the long run they'll be hurting themselves by doing so.

If the same player is in a game community of 100,000 people even with forced interdependance there is not a very strong push to avoid acting like a jerk because the odds of needing to interact with any of those people they are jerks to in future is low...thus not much disincentive.

If there is no forced interdependance then there is no consequence to acting like a jerk whether it's a community of 1,000 or 100,000. There is not much rocket science to it.

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Forced interdependance tends to breed more polite behavior simply because people who act in an anti-social fashion get selected against (e.g. do worse). People are therefore acting in thier own enlightened self-interest by being nice to others.

However this does get mitigated to a very large degree when dealing with much larger communities where there are very low odds that you'll ever need to interact with the same people in future.

So if a player is in a game community of 1,000 people and they know they are going to need to interact with those people in future (interdependence), they'll tend not to act like jerks because in the long run they'll be hurting themselves by doing so.

If the same player is in a game community of 100,000 people even with forced interdependance there is not a very strong push to avoid acting like a jerk because the odds of needing to interact with any of those people they are jerks to in future is low...thus not much disincentive.

If there is no forced interdependance then there is no consequence to acting like a jerk whether it's a community of 1,000 or 100,000. There is not much rocket science to it.

The part of your non-rocket science that you are missing is that you are basing acceptance and rejection on your view of societal norms; views that may or may not be mirrored in the online world you are in. If the norm is speaking in textese, sending group invites without asking first and regularly using profanity, then the polite gentleman is the pariah.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by botrytis

People are solo-oriented. Games can force you to group, it doesn't mean people want to be social.

I don't even know that's true.  The problem with the pro-groupers is they simply refuse to acknowledge that the genre and it's playerbase has changed over the years, they think that it's possible to reset things and it will go back to the way it used to be.

The reality is, back in the day of UO and EQ, the majority of people playing MMOs were the geeks and the nerds, they were the only ones that had access to high-end machines and broadband Internet.  Therefore you already had a group of people who fundamentally had a lot in common outside of playing the game.  It wasn't horrible to get caught with nothing to do once in a while because no matter who you were with, you probably had something to talk about.  There probably wasn't a group I was in back then that  couldn't quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail from memory.  There was an actual community because virtually everyone playing the game belonged to the same social group.

Enter the broadband explosion and now *EVERYONE* has access to these games.  Instead of one single unified community, you have dozens, even hundreds of different communities with different interests, different tastes, different goals.  Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game.  That's why people started playing solo because it avoided those uncomfortable encounters.  Everyone played for their own purposes and their own goals and if they could hook up with a couple of people who shared their interests and were on at the same time, great.  If not... you played alone.  Games changed to reflect this new reality.

The fact is, even if you did go back to forced grouping, you'll never go back to the same feeling of community that games once had.  Those days are simply gone, at least unless you restrict games to a single social group, which no one is going to do.  I'm sure people want to be social, they just want to do it with people that they share common interests with.  It's just not that easy to come by in modern games, or in modern online life.

During UO - the geeks and nerds only way to socialize was through gaming. Sad but true.

Originally posted by Cephus404

 Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game. 

Isnt it more a testament to the shallowness and simplicity of the games if players dont feel the need to talk about them and exchange information and opinions about them?

I dont talk politics in clan chat, do you?

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by Banaghran

Originally posted by Cephus404

 Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game. 

Isnt it more a testament to the shallowness and simplicity of the games if players dont feel the need to talk about them and exchange information and opinions about them?

I dont talk politics in clan chat, do you?

Flame on!

:)

There's quite a difference between "I like this game because of X" or "I don't like this game because of Y" and "I hate all games because they aren't catering to a niche audience that I happen to fall into, developers need to make a game for me!"

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Banaghran

Originally posted by Cephus404

 Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game. 

Isnt it more a testament to the shallowness and simplicity of the games if players dont feel the need to talk about them and exchange information and opinions about them?

I dont talk politics in clan chat, do you?

Flame on!

:)

There's quite a difference between "I like this game because of X" or "I don't like this game because of Y" and "I hate all games because they aren't catering to a niche audience that I happen to fall into, developers need to make a game for me!"

There is, but what does it have to do with anything, especially people talking about the game INSIDE the game?

Flame on!

:)

MMORPG's before 2004 did NOT force grouping. You could still solo, it was just harder, more time consuming, and less efficient to do so..unless you were also doing it for the chance at some lucky loot drop (Depending on the game. Which also depended on how loot tables were distributed in said game).

If you really think about it...games such as WoW and Rift for instance almost force you to solo. Now you CAN group in these games, I know this...but it's tough to get groups unless you join some rabid hadcore raiding Guild...because no one wants to group since you can get almost everything alone, or if you aren't in that clique. No one wants to take the time to talk to others, group up and maybe chat and become friends you put on your friends list and look for for that content that may need some grouping.

At least with more group oriented content MMORPG's people are more likely to group and discover community. AND they STILL have an option to solo at any moment they wish. The other way around, it is MUCH harder to get groups than to solo.

I am not saying there shouldn't be solely group oriented MMORPG's, nor am I saying they should be solely solo oriented ones. They should have the ability to do both. But if anything...they should have a bit more group oriented features to them because to me that provides more of a balance and the option to do one or the other more freely with little or at least less of a wait.

Originally posted by Banaghran

Originally posted by Cephus404

 Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game. 

Isnt it more a testament to the shallowness and simplicity of the games if players dont feel the need to talk about them and exchange information and opinions about them?

I dont talk politics in clan chat, do you?

Flame on!

:)

No. Why would i need to discuss endlessly only if a game is deep. Do you discuss endless chess strategy when you are playing chess? Do you discuss endlessly about poker when you are playing Texas Holdem?

Some people may not like to talk .. did that ever occur to you?

Some don't play games to talk about games, you know.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Forced interdependance tends to breed more polite behavior simply because people who act in an anti-social fashion get selected against (e.g. do worse). People are therefore acting in thier own enlightened self-interest by being nice to others.

However this does get mitigated to a very large degree when dealing with much larger communities where there are very low odds that you'll ever need to interact with the same people in future.

So if a player is in a game community of 1,000 people and they know they are going to need to interact with those people in future (interdependence), they'll tend not to act like jerks because in the long run they'll be hurting themselves by doing so.

If the same player is in a game community of 100,000 people even with forced interdependance there is not a very strong push to avoid acting like a jerk because the odds of needing to interact with any of those people they are jerks to in future is low...thus not much disincentive.

If there is no forced interdependance then there is no consequence to acting like a jerk whether it's a community of 1,000 or 100,000. There is not much rocket science to it.

The part of your non-rocket science that you are missing is that you are basing acceptance and rejection on your view of societal norms; views that may or may not be mirrored in the online world you are in. If the norm is speaking in textese, sending group invites without asking first and regularly using profanity, then the polite gentleman is the pariah.

Well "polite" is clearly subjective to the context of the society it is used in (e.g. in some culture's belching is considered polite in others it is considered rude)....... However, the mores of that subjective context are also going to be heavly influenced on things that objectively harm the individual or groups abilitity to function. For example, it would be very unlikely in a gaming subculture context that spamming another players screen with nonsense or doing a "bad pull" would be considered polite because they objectively harm the individual/groups ability to succeed at tasks that are important in the game.

The principle remains valid. The more a person needs another person and expects to need that person in future, the less likely they are to do things which they expect will cause that person to have a negative opinion of them.

I'd say neither side of the fence is more douche-like than the other, it's simply as a result of grouping that you are exposed and effected by douche bags.

Much of it depends on personal circumstances. I have always tended to solo. Why? I do not enjoy, nor can i often justify, being virtualy tethered to my keyboard for a protracted period of time. I don't like to keep people waiting, wether they be inside a virtual world or not.

The older days of having to LFG were often not great fun. PUG'ing often resulted/results in being taken in a direction of play that you didn't really want to go in, unless it's for an instance or specific boss etc. If you're not careful you can end up spending an hour clearing some guys quest chain only for him to "soz gotta go byeeee"... 

I much prefer, much like a majority of the fanbase/consumers of MMO's, to be able to group up easily and as an option. 

currently not playing much...

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Forced interdependance tends to breed more polite behavior simply because people who act in an anti-social fashion get selected against (e.g. do worse). People are therefore acting in thier own enlightened self-interest by being nice to others.

However this does get mitigated to a very large degree when dealing with much larger communities where there are very low odds that you'll ever need to interact with the same people in future.

So if a player is in a game community of 1,000 people and they know they are going to need to interact with those people in future (interdependence), they'll tend not to act like jerks because in the long run they'll be hurting themselves by doing so.

If the same player is in a game community of 100,000 people even with forced interdependance there is not a very strong push to avoid acting like a jerk because the odds of needing to interact with any of those people they are jerks to in future is low...thus not much disincentive.

If there is no forced interdependance then there is no consequence to acting like a jerk whether it's a community of 1,000 or 100,000. There is not much rocket science to it.

The part of your non-rocket science that you are missing is that you are basing acceptance and rejection on your view of societal norms; views that may or may not be mirrored in the online world you are in. If the norm is speaking in textese, sending group invites without asking first and regularly using profanity, then the polite gentleman is the pariah.

Well "polite" is clearly subjective to the context of the society it is used in (e.g. in some culture's belching is considered polite in others it is considered rude)....... However, the mores of that subjective context are also going to be heavly influenced on things that objectively harm the individual or groups abilitity to function. For example, it would be very unlikely in a gaming subculture context that spamming another players screen with nonsense or doing a "bad pull" would be considered polite because they objectively harm the individual/groups ability to succeed at tasks that are important in the game.

The principle remains valid. The more a person needs another person and expects to need that person in future, the less likely they are to do things which they expect will cause that person to have a negative opinion of them.

You are confusing mores and norms with skill and tactics, or is your assumption that every bad pull is the person intentionally acting like a jerk?

In other words, when in Rome...

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Novusod

Really wish some game would try mandatory  Forced grouping again. It has been a decade since a game really forced players to group up. No solo content at all so people like the OP don't even bother setting foot in this game.

Sure, if you wan to see a game fail even faster than SWTOR, go for it.

Really?  The last game I played that forced grouping (FFXI) did quite well.  Solo players have hundreds of games to choose from, why begrudge group players 1 game.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by botrytis

People are solo-oriented. Games can force you to group, it doesn't mean people want to be social.

I don't even know that's true.  The problem with the pro-groupers is they simply refuse to acknowledge that the genre and it's playerbase has changed over the years, they think that it's possible to reset things and it will go back to the way it used to be.

The reality is, back in the day of UO and EQ, the majority of people playing MMOs were the geeks and the nerds, they were the only ones that had access to high-end machines and broadband Internet.  Therefore you already had a group of people who fundamentally had a lot in common outside of playing the game.  It wasn't horrible to get caught with nothing to do once in a while because no matter who you were with, you probably had something to talk about.  There probably wasn't a group I was in back then that  couldn't quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail from memory.  There was an actual community because virtually everyone playing the game belonged to the same social group.

Enter the broadband explosion and now *EVERYONE* has access to these games.  Instead of one single unified community, you have dozens, even hundreds of different communities with different interests, different tastes, different goals.  Nobody wants to get caught in these uncomfortable silences caused by downtime because they have nothing in common with the people they are playing with, except for the game.  That's why people started playing solo because it avoided those uncomfortable encounters.  Everyone played for their own purposes and their own goals and if they could hook up with a couple of people who shared their interests and were on at the same time, great.  If not... you played alone.  Games changed to reflect this new reality.

The fact is, even if you did go back to forced grouping, you'll never go back to the same feeling of community that games once had.  Those days are simply gone, at least unless you restrict games to a single social group, which no one is going to do.  I'm sure people want to be social, they just want to do it with people that they share common interests with.  It's just not that easy to come by in modern games, or in modern online life.

I think you hit upon an interesting point. Obviously people play games for different reasons and everyone does need a certain amount of personal space and "alone time".  However, at thier core people are "social animals" which means they do instinctualy want to spend a significant amount of time engaged in social activity (millions of years of hard wired instinct will see to that). However they also have a hard wired anxiety about "strangers". One of the ways this is overcome is when people become less of a stranger due to repeated encounters (i.e. you see the person every day). Another way is when people are purposefully going out of thier way to engage in a certain pre-designated group activity (e.g. "signing up to play baseball/softball".) This breaks a certain amount of the anxiety about the stranger.

Modern games probably work against this in 2 ways. Firstly much larger populations on each "server", meaning less chance of seeing/meeting the same people repeatedly and gaining some familiarty with them that way. Secondly, much broader target audiences and range of activities supported within a single game....e.g. your there to PvE level, I'm there to PvP, Joe's there to explore, Suzy is there to RP, Billy is there to raid/equipment grind, etc. Thus no way to reduce the natural sense of anxiety about strangers by introducing a common built-in assumption about why we are there and want we want to do there.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Forced interdependance tends to breed more polite behavior simply because people who act in an anti-social fashion get selected against (e.g. do worse). People are therefore acting in thier own enlightened self-interest by being nice to others.

However this does get mitigated to a very large degree when dealing with much larger communities where there are very low odds that you'll ever need to interact with the same people in future.

So if a player is in a game community of 1,000 people and they know they are going to need to interact with those people in future (interdependence), they'll tend not to act like jerks because in the long run they'll be hurting themselves by doing so.

If the same player is in a game community of 100,000 people even with forced interdependance there is not a very strong push to avoid acting like a jerk because the odds of needing to interact with any of those people they are jerks to in future is low...thus not much disincentive.

If there is no forced interdependance then there is no consequence to acting like a jerk whether it's a community of 1,000 or 100,000. There is not much rocket science to it.

The part of your non-rocket science that you are missing is that you are basing acceptance and rejection on your view of societal norms; views that may or may not be mirrored in the online world you are in. If the norm is speaking in textese, sending group invites without asking first and regularly using profanity, then the polite gentleman is the pariah.

Well "polite" is clearly subjective to the context of the society it is used in (e.g. in some culture's belching is considered polite in others it is considered rude)....... However, the mores of that subjective context are also going to be heavly influenced on things that objectively harm the individual or groups abilitity to function. For example, it would be very unlikely in a gaming subculture context that spamming another players screen with nonsense or doing a "bad pull" would be considered polite because they objectively harm the individual/groups ability to succeed at tasks that are important in the game.

The principle remains valid. The more a person needs another person and expects to need that person in future, the less likely they are to do things which they expect will cause that person to have a negative opinion of them.

You are confusing mores and norms with skill and tactics, or is your assumption that every bad pull is the person intentionally acting like a jerk?

In other words, when in Rome...

No confusion...I'm simply stating that while mores and norms are subjective....they are often strongly influenced by objective factors which effect performance.....and using the hypothetical example that doing a "bad pull" would unlikely to ever become an accepted more because it objectively harms performance.