Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Theocritus
There's little doubt that the death of the community started once players could do everything solo (cough WoW)...... Make your game where players have to depend on other players for things and you will ahve a better community, but that won't happen until these companies quit copying WoW.

Look around. Games like LoL are toxic partly because of the player dependency. You make one mistake and you wont hear the end of it. One player has the ability to throw the entire game for his/her team. You want more of that in games?

You know what made old communities so good? -Because they were small!

The difference between the old non-solo  WoW where communities existed and LoL is that you self-selected your groups while pugging. Players had to actually be dependable or you wouldn't play with them. Players had reputations and when word got around consistent assholes didn't get groups so much.

LoL is just current LFD wow where your reputation doesn't mean that you can't find a group. You can always find a group, and if someone is behaving poorly, it's the person who leaves because he doesn't want to deal with it that gets punished with a wasted que, not the asshat.

Why improve the community within the game?

That'll be toxic no matter what the game devs do.

Engage the meta-community sites that are built around having a community; SomethingAwful / TeamLiquid / Reddit etc.

Originally posted by RefMinor
Interdependcy and paid server transfers and no cross server LFG.

People never seem to understand that assholes are the price they pay for convenience. Want 10 second group finds in 30 minute arena matches? Accept that you are going to play with assholes.

But if you play long sessions in a game with voluntary associations and localized interaction you get awesome people.

Why do people behave well in real life? Consequences.

Originally posted by infiniti70

No auction house - peddle your wares

Coop required content - does not have to be combat oriented

Coop crafting - best things come from shared minds

No mini map - need help finding something, find a guide

No instant travel - time to group up, safety in numbers and all that

No global chat - localized chat okay, clan chat better

No mini games - here is a big bueatiful world, go play in a cage

Harsher downtime - nothing like a "OOM" break get get to know your fellowship better

Dangerous world - Maybe the most needed ingridient. If content can be solo'd it will be by most

Community goals - stronger community opens up content in area, work together for better personal progression

 

None of this is difficult to acheive, just unappealing to the grind for gear players

 

agree with most but mini mad and global chat...i remember back in wow global chat was great....especially when horde was coming through global chat was useful...back then when that happened people responded and fought...example of a bad global chat is tera...that chat is horrible. i like a good mini map...i remember in wow i had to use this site to figure out where stuff was etc..just was more annoying..i mean i like to figure it out but when the quest dont give direction...then wtf

Originally posted by xeniar

You wanna know how to make a comunity?

Have players need each other. Thats the only thing needed nothing fancy.

 

This will creat even biger audience for bad people.

All you need is a harsh rulles for offenders, even bans, if people don't learn from their first lesson.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by RefMinor
Interdependcy and paid server transfers and no cross server LFG.

People never seem to understand that assholes are the price they pay for convenience. Want 10 second group finds in 30 minute arena matches? Accept that you are going to play with assholes.

But if you play long sessions in a game with voluntary associations and localized interaction you get awesome people.

Why do people behave well in real life? Consequences.

I also think a big part of the problem is that while most people would agree that there are assholes in every gaming community, rarely do most people realize they are probably one of them.

Force them to group and improve their teamwork. Reward great groups with more exp / faster endgame progression.

Games like WoW/GW2/SWTOR can be soloed from 1 to max level without needing anyone and anything. You can be an asshole to everyone and never face any consequences. 

In old school games like DAoC exping with a group was at least 2-3 times faster than soloing. Exping with a GREAT group was even faster. Most of the assholes never made it to 50 because nobody would group them after a while and soloing was extremely slow and boring. At level 50 it was the same thing. Only stealthers could solo effectively (that's why many of them were assholes).

Originally posted by jpnz

Why improve the community within the game?

That'll be toxic no matter what the game devs do.

Engage the meta-community sites that are built around having a community; SomethingAwful / TeamLiquid / Reddit etc.

It's good to do both. jpnz, I think you're the first one here to suggest that. It's something many MMO devs do already. It's the type of suggestion that makes many of the control freaks here shutter, but it is a great way to bring existing communities (some of them are HUGE) into your game community, in effect broadening both communities.

synergy, man.

Originally posted by steelheartx
A buddy of mine hit it right on the head yesterday.  Players need a reason (a fear) not to die when playing a game.  Once you have this the community will start to help each other for mutual survival.  In hindsight i do believe he is correct for the most part.  EQ1 had once of the best communities i ever played with, and looking back this may have been one of the main reasons for it.

Agree,

As for making a community in a game it simply boils down to one simple thing, You must need the help of others in the game simple as that. Lets face it If you need people in a game to survive your gonna look for people to help you with that and if somone an ass hole or what ever no one will wanna help them so, and if somone was an asshole in Everquest there name reach the ends of Norrath eventualy and no one would let him join there groups and so on because no one likes to play with those types of people. For example there was no need/greed roll system in everquest an item dropped on the corpse and anyone could ninja loot it there were no safe guards on that item however 99.9% of the population would never ninja loot somthing because they knew there would be negative reprocusion to there game play later on in the game. If you did something negative your name would always be remembered kinda funny that.

As for the quoted post with a death penalty such as Everquest 1 its absolutly right. No one wanted to die so they seeked help of others and if the worst happen and u did die and needed help to get your body back you could quite often easily find somone to give you a hand retreiving it because they knew how much it sucks to die so they quite often went out of the way to give somone in need a hand, These actions led to friendships within the game some have even lasted a lifetime. Everquest was one of those games that you knew that if you helped somone else the favor would be returned by somone else someday for some reason a name of somone doing a good or bad deed would always spread to other player in the world of norrath. I know i found my first guild in EQ because i died and some kind soul helped me and because of that ive helped other people in there time of need and im sure atleast one of those many people i helped has done the same.

The moment you take away the need of other people in the community it goes down hill from there. As games come out more and more of these thing that make you rely on other people in the game are removed and this is why we been seeing worst and worst game community as time progresses.

Originally posted by sketocafe

I'm sure these have both been mentioned in the thread. but here they are again anyways. 

Put a legal translation of "Don't be a dick" in your ToS and enforce it on people who habitually make others feel sad.

Doesn't need a legal defintion, it's covered by the "terminate your account at any time" clause.

Problem lies in the inability of remaining employed, after cutting the company's income. In short, you need a boss that really will keep your ass covered if/when you choose to excercise that clause. And in a corporate environment, that protection ends the moment that he does.

PR repercussions.  Mouthy Punk, after being terminated, of course runs to the nearest forum and begins a "For No Reason" thread. Gamers, being gamers, of course go "Rawr! Outrage! Burn the Witch!" The rest is all too familiar.

Originally posted by sanshi44

Lets face it If you need people in a game to survive your gonna look for people to help you with that and if somone an ass hole or what ever no one will wanna help them so, and if somone was an asshole in Everquest there name reach the ends of Norrath eventualy and no one would let him join there groups and so on because no one likes to play with those types of people.

I once received a call from a buddy at 3AM to do a corpse rescue, in time to avoid losing the gear. We actually had to do that kind of stuff, once upon a time.

Now I could conclude that the beneficial effect Droppage+Janitors had on the Community (capital C) was well worth the fairly frequent loses of lifetime gear collections.

But I'm just really hard pressed to envision that kind of inter-dependence working in the World of the Internet. That was already fading away; the moment people began to realize what a dangerous place the Internet could be.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by sketocafe

I'm sure these have both been mentioned in the thread. but here they are again anyways. 

Put a legal translation of "Don't be a dick" in your ToS and enforce it on people who habitually make others feel sad.

Doesn't need a legal defintion, it's covered by the "terminate your account at any time" clause.

Problem lies in the inability of remaining employed, after cutting the company's income. In short, you need a boss that really will keep your ass covered if/when you choose to excercise that clause. And in a corporate environment, that protection ends the moment that he does.

PR repercussions.  Mouthy Punk, after being terminated, of course runs to the nearest forum and begins a "For No Reason" thread. Gamers, being gamers, of course go "Rawr! Outrage! Burn the Witch!" The rest is all too familiar.

Ultima Online had a "spirit of the game" clause in its code of conduct but did away with that around 2003 or so. It was probably constantly being contested and more of a hassle than the current common "terminate your account at any time" clause.