Originally posted by altairzq

In old EQ community was decent, because everybody knew they could need the help of others at any time.

 

Moder MMOs can be played quite succesfully without much need of help from the rest of players, so some people behave like absolute morons.

 

That's it.

Yep, that IS it.

Said so much more elegantly and concisely then I could do :)

Originally posted by gillvane1

Originally posted by winter

. Personally I hate PUG groups they generally have at least one asshat in them. I'd much rather group with my guild mates, and if I'm playing in a off hour when thats not possible I'd much rather solo. I don't like being forced to group. Sure some might be totally cool but in experience just as many are not. The old answer of "well just don't group with them, and instead get a different group" Just means I spend more time doing nothing but waiting around in the community for a group.

  The thing is I don't actually play MMO's for the community. If theresa good community its a plus, but I deal with people in RL, I have no problem calling up a friend to tell a joke etc. Community, real community is what you deal with in real life. Fake community ie little Jimmy online hoping to pick up a pixalated girlfriend, or Joe Smoo wanting to show off his latest epic to feel better about himself is not community. 

 

A good example why they should make different games for different types of players. I only play MMORPGs for the community, I never solo unless it's just to whack on mobs waiting on a group, and I pretty much ONLY play in Pugs.

That's my favorite thing to do in an MMO, play in pick up groups.

I don't feel like I'm ever being "forced to group" because there's really nothing in an MMORPG I want to do, if I'm not in a group.

Doing quests solo, or grinding on mobs solo? Why would I bother, because it's so boring? If I'm playing an MMORPG solo, I'm not having any fun, so it's pointless for me.

Yep, agree with what you say here, on all counts.

Originally posted by Loira

I call foul for using the word Asshat 3 times in the same post.

 Hah! ok, fair enough :)

I agree with some of your points, but just having a game be accessible to casual players does not lead to bad community. 

No, I agree, I wasnt saying that.

I was saying that making the game too easy (fully described quests, marked objectives on GPS style full detailed maps, safe paths to all quest points etc) DOES though...

I do not feel casual games have to be easy... I am not sure where the idea they do came from... The notion didnt exist before very recently tbh...

Casual games have to be accessable, sure, but why does that not mean challenging? Even a casual MMORPG (and I think there are enough of though already... time for a semi-casual at least plz?) should be designed to be more them moving wallpaper you barely have to click on to play?

I think maiking it too easy to solo does.  Games also tend to be missing something that ties gamers together now.  No "For the Greater good" feeling anymore.

Spot on :)

There is no reason for me to help John Doe because him sucking means nothing to me.  If John Doe sucks it only matters to him, not the community.  If Billy is an Asshat then it only matters to him.  There is nothing that ties the two of us together in any way. 

Now if Billy being an ass means he will be ostricised by the community then maybe he will be nicer so he can get in groups and raids.  If John sucks and it means that all these players like John that suck will mean I get less reward and loose more often then I will be more willing to help John get better so we can win more.

So I agree with community being a design choice, but making games accesible and more casual friendly does not mean bad community.  But making them solo friendly does IMO. 

Agreed :)

Originally posted by gillvane1

Maybe this will help the solo advocates get the picture.

 

I want to play football. Football requires you have  a team.

 

You're telling me, you want to play, but without a team, so could I please change all the rules so you can play the game solo?

Yes, we can do that, but then it's not football anymore.

It's not that I want to force you to be on my team. I don't care if you aren't on my team. It's that I want to play football, and once we change all the rules so you can play solo, it's not football anymore.

And the solo players are saying, well you can still go off and form a team, can't you? No, I can't because you've completely changed the field to the point I can't use it to play the game of football anymore. You've removed one of the goal posts, and shortened the field by 50 yards.

Sure, I can go form a team, but what the hell are we going to do with a 50 yard field that only has one goal post?

Yes, QFT, nicely put.

Originally posted by Terranah

Okay, I am going to agree with you that part of the problem I think is the current mmo design which to me is flawed.  Current mmo design seems to concentrate more toward quest grind, a more single player game type mechanic, as opposed to appealing to the more obvious strength of the genre, which is as an online medium of social interaction.

 

I have an analogy from my experiences as a youth.  I remember going to this dance in high school.  The DJ sucked and the music was horrible.  No one was dancing, but rather just standing around, irritated with the music and complaining.  Well, that's where I feel  we are as a community.   It's not that we don't like to dance, or that we don't like mmo's. 

 

Finally, enough people complained and the DJ put on some better music and people started to dance.   Happy faces and happy times, and no time to grumble and complain because we had found our groove.

 

I hope we can find our groove.

Ok, I will stop spam posting now, but I was gone for a few days and the quality of so manyreplies here made me wanna reply.

Including this one.

Really nice analogy.

I find this topic most interesting, and I mostly agree with the OP. The design choice to create communities is alas a feature mostly ignored these days. One can only ponder if devs in past times were better or if the community making features came into the old MMOs by accident. Personally I suspect rather the latter.

Now a community can be established by two things, simply said:

a) creating player hubs, where people can meet in interesting places with needful things to get and do

b) by adding non-combat activities which are connected to the game and have an actual function

To (A): I was so often surprised how bad many player hubs are placed in the game world. One of the most stunning examples for me remains Vanguard. I never will forget how wonderful I found New Torgonor the capital of it's continent, and how totally misplaced it is. Instead, players mostly start in small villages, spread ALL over the world. What reason is there to go to New Torgonor? None. It is totally out of place, away from the beginner players (which is a NEED for a player hub) and most important: it lacks ANY unique feature. Take for counter example Warcraft. Ironforge and especially Stormwind have always been meeting places. Why? They are placed so every player can easily reach them right from start and with the AH there are good reasons to go there.

AoC for instance with they crafting entirely connected to the far outlying regions an took one important part of their central cities away, and their player cities, like those of Vanguard, are FAR away from everything you need and want to go to, and they totally lack any function you really need. Same to the LOTRO ghos-town player cities. They are nice to see, and thats all.

For me the best example to create communities will always be the old SWG. Both the premade cities and the player cities were busy hubs of meet and greet. People were just standing on the streets to talk, to roleplay, to duel, to haggle or whatever. SWG had actually REAL city lives! Our guild city for instance used to be busy with buyers and sellers, but one other things, which brings me to (B):

(B) For someone who played a dancer for many years in SWG it will remain one of the universes big mysteries why no other MMO ever applied the use of really functional non-combat classes. For those who dont know it: in the old days players in combat gathered so called battle fatigue, which lowered their XP income and their stats. So after a time they had to watch a dancer or listen to musicians for a while to get rid of battle fatigue and they could get combat buffs, too. This was the fundament of the best MMO community I have seen to this day. Everyone who was there in the grand old days, when Mos Eisley, Theed and many other places were buzzing with life will know what I mean. Lines waiting for an imagne designer to give them a new haircut, or just standing in some backwater cantina to listen to some musicians making a gig, or a beach party or a player made auction. It were really, litterally the grand old days of community MMO gaming. For me its a passed golden era.

These days, people use cities only to rush in, hurriedly sell their good and buy food and drink and rush back to the field to grind. Partially the mentality of the players changed. But a lot of missed opportunities and bad game design is in the bag as well, and especially the lack of functional, social  non-combat professions. In that PRE-NGE SWG was the best designed game, when it came to ingame community creation. The buzzing streets, the active city life... I have never ever seen something even remote close to it, and when I think it I have to suppress a little tear watching all those sterile, lifeless "modern" MMOs where people just rush through levels and the game worlds as if to break a record. It's sad, but it is also a design feature apparently lost to developers these days.

 Great thread! I am so glad to see that I am not the only one who believes something is very, very wrong with modern MMORPGs. 

@Yunbei

Man, you have some valid points regarding city hubs! I am alway baffled who much developers or game designers seem to underestimate the value of city hubs! It's insane. I mean, do those developers live in the wilderness or what? Do they really do not grasp the importance of cities, even in real life? Did they never talked about the importance of cities in every century? Maybe some of those developers need more free time and go out into the city to get back their feeling for real-life, don't know.

I am playing computer games for a very long time now. My first online games were those funy text-based MUDs. What I always likes about online games was the opportunity to interact with other players in a virtual world. Play together and have some fun. 

During the last years something has happened. I feel that MMORPGs are not longer multiplayer games. They have become solo player games without any kind of "soul". Player do no longer play together, no, they mostly play against each other. 

Why is that so? I think the core mechanic of many games favor solo-play over teamplay. Take WoW for example. In this game there are many collector quests. Since the required items will only drop for one member of the group it's faster to go solo. Same applies to drops/loot. When something nice drops you are forced to roll _against_ your party members. 

But I feel a good game should reward teamwork. it should be a win-win situation for everyone. The performance of the group should scale with the number of players involved. 

Vanguard has a nice feature in this regard. When you farm a resource the amount you can farm is only limited by a given timeout. So it all depends on how much you can get out of the resource in the given timeframe. The good thing is, that another player can farm the same resource in this timeframe, too! So with two players you will get more out of this resource than one player.

Another example is EvE Online. Mining alone is boring and very inefficient. But mining scales pretty well with the number of players participating. Suddenly you can mine more, have players who do the transport, have scouts, have guards and so on. So a team is much stronger and way more effective than a solo player. Of course you can still go solo. But you wlll notice that you are way more effective in a team. 

 Ah, and one more thing regarding solo-play vs teamplay. I do understand that some players prefer solo-play. Ok, I am fine with that. But why has EVERY new MMORPG out there to be a solo-game? Don't we have enough of them already? Where is the game for the rest of us?

Originally posted by woeye

 Ah, and one more thing regarding solo-play vs teamplay. I do understand that some players prefer solo-play. Ok, I am fine with that. But why has EVERY new MMORPG out there to be a solo-game? Don't we have enough of them already? Where is the game for the rest of us?

They aren't. There's nothing preventing group play. Group play should be encouraged, and is in the majority of games, but it shouldn't be mandantory. The problem isn't the ability to solo it's lack of depth at all levels of play and mechanics that encourage a "me first" mentality even in group play.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by woeye

 Ah, and one more thing regarding solo-play vs teamplay. I do understand that some players prefer solo-play. Ok, I am fine with that. But why has EVERY new MMORPG out there to be a solo-game? Don't we have enough of them already? Where is the game for the rest of us?

 

They aren't. There's nothing preventing group play. Group play should be encouraged, and is in the majority of games, but it shouldn't be mandantory. 

1. Please read first, then comment. Thank you.

2. I agree with you that group play should be encouraged. And it shouldn't be mandatory, yes. But I disagree that the majority of games is encouraging group play. No, in fact I believe they are punishing group play:

• Collector quests and low drop rate favor solo play because this way players will finish the quest faster
• Grouping is only required to get into a dungeon. It is mandatory. It does not encourage because you will have to roll against your groupmates over loot.
• Grouping hurts XP gain in many games, if not most.
• In case of Warhammer: Why do you think so many players are leaving their group in scenarios? Right, because they will gain WAY more XP and RP this way. And this is called a teambased PvP game?
• Again in case of Warhammer: many, many quests are bugged in group play. Even more worse: you have to kill certain NPCs multiple times because it doesn't count for the group. 

Group play should be a win-win situation for everyone. Unless group play provides no real benefits there's no reason to group for many players.

Originally posted by woeye

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by woeye

 Ah, and one more thing regarding solo-play vs teamplay. I do understand that some players prefer solo-play. Ok, I am fine with that. But why has EVERY new MMORPG out there to be a solo-game? Don't we have enough of them already? Where is the game for the rest of us?

 

They aren't. There's nothing preventing group play. Group play should be encouraged, and is in the majority of games, but it shouldn't be mandatory. 

 

1. Please read first, then comment. Thank you.

2. I agree with you that group play should be encouraged. And it shouldn't be mandatory, yes. But I disagree that the majority of games is encouraging group play. No, in fact I believe they are punishing group play:

• Collector quests and low drop rate favor solo play because this way players will finish the quest faster
• Grouping is only required to get into a dungeon. It is mandatory. It does not encourage because you will have to roll against your groupmates over loot.
• Grouping hurts XP gain in many games, if not most.
• In case of Warhammer: Why do you think so many players are leaving their group in scenarios? Right, because they will gain WAY more XP and RP this way. And this is called a teambased PvP game?
• Again in case of Warhammer: many, many quests are bugged in group play. Even more worse: you have to kill certain NPCs multiple times because it doesn't count for the group. 

 

Read the edit.  I just dispute the games are made to be  solo play. The things that are wrong in these games are wrong for both group and solo play. Warhammers faults are easily corrected and should have been before launch. That's not a conscious design choice as loot drops were in WoW it's simply a matter of emergent play revealing a weakness in the game mechanics. Solo play is a red herring. The problem is an emphasis on selfish play both solo and oin group.

How often have you picked up some loot in a game and thought  "someone could really use this" but junked it for gold or tried to sell it at a large profit instead because the game mechanics actively made it difficult to identify and sell reasonably or give it to that person. You should be rewarded for unselfish deeds.  Even a solo player should be rewarded for being unselfish. Many players play solo because selfish play is rewarded and unselfish play is punished. Not because they wouls choose choose to play solo otherwise.

 Hm, ok, I think I've got your point. There is a difference between solo play and selfish play. Because even a solo player can be an unselfish player in the right setting. Now that I think of it I've seen good examples for this in EvE, indeed. Solo players who still contribute a lot to the community. 

Traders or crafters are a good example. Or take stealth classes, for example. In WoW's AV rogues/druids can be very helpful in order to capture an objective. In Warhammer, however, objectives do not play an important role at all, because they give no reward. 

Warhammer really confuses me most, to be honest. A game, marketed as THE team based MMORPG PvP game. Yet they did wrong in so many aspects of the game where team work is involved. Starting with the unfriendly and meh chat-system, the solo XP/RP bonus in scenarios, the missing rewards for objectives. Nothing that cannot be fixed. But then again it should have been fixed in the beta anyway.

I don't think any community can be very viable without social consequences.  Social consequences are one of the things that recent MMORPGs lack.  Everyone is too anonymous now.  They just create a new character, change their name, or move to a new server.  Avatars are so quick and easy to level that losing them is no longer a deterrant.

Forums are part of the communities as well.  It allows people from different servers to mix.  Allowing people to log into the official forums under alts (i.e. WoW) was a horrible idea.  People should only be allowed to log onto the offical forums with one screen name that cannot be changed.

Making all of a player's characters on one server have the same last name would probably help.  No one would be able to hide from the consequences of their behavior.

I think to some degree Vent has hurt communities as well.  A lot of people are talking in Vent channels with their friends and don't pay attention to chat channels.  You can't build a strong community if everyone is off in their own little world.

Instances help people to hide from the community as well.  Why does every dungeon have to be instanced?  Throw in some open dungeons as well as instanced.  The bosses of open dungeons can serve as targets of opportunity, and instances can be ran when nothing is available.

Like others, I believe that group play should always be encouraged by never required.  Soloing is too easy in a lot of games.  Solo progression of your avatar should always be available, but it should also be downright difficult and time consuming at times.

Originally posted by Kyntor

 

 

I think to some degree Vent has hurt communities as well.  A lot of people are talking in Vent channels with their friends and don't pay attention to chat channels.  You can't build a strong community if everyone is off in their own little world.

 

It has. At one point I believed voice chat support built  into  MMOs was was unecessary. I thought separate voice chat was good enough. Now I think there needs to be group and scenario level voice chat built into the game. Not global or area voice chat but just something for people engaged in a common activity to use.

Originally posted by ianubisi

I have yet to hear of a single way in which a game designer can turn an antisocial person into a social person.

In essence, that is what is being demanded here: that antisocial behavior be "corrected" through game design. It's preposterous.

 

Although it may not be "popular" to do so, I have to agree with this statement.

For example:

My partner and I BOTH play MMOs.  We have VERY different play styles, but we do enjoy playing together.  I'm the most social of the two of us.  I love to do group quests, dungeons, raids, world PvP/RvR (not BGs or scenarios), etc.  She, on the other hand, enjoys some of those things SOME OF THE TIME, however......it is not her PREFERRED style of play.  She actually enjoys more of the soloing and a BIT of questing with one or two people a LOT more than much of the more "populated" social "stuff."  She doesn't talk in guild chat a lot.  She's rather shy, and more of a private person than I am.  Her job forces her to be "social" all day long.  By the time she gets home....she wants to "chill" on the socializing stuff somewhat.

Now...should she just not play?  She would MISS it horribly.  She really enjoys games (of assorted genres, just like myself).   We just don't necessarily enjoy all the same THINGS in each game we play.

And developers are always riding the line of trying to meet the "gaming needs" of all these different personality types.  ONE of the reasons that Blizzard has been so successful with WoW, is because they did TRY to cater to ALL of those gaming personalities.  And they've actually DONE that a bit better than their predecessors.

I could have NEVER gotten Sharon to play EQ with me, and she won't TOUCH EVE...at ALL.  ROFL   It would have just been too much for her.  Those games are far TOO social for her.  They don't much allow the OPTION of "being alone" and yet sometimes being with others too.  Heck, LOW level quests were HARD in the original EQ, without someone (or more than one someone) to help you.  And just TRY to go mine rare minerals in EVE ALONE in low sec space.  HA!  Can you say "all my isk is spent buying new Hullks?"  It's just not practical.

So.....this is where the compromise entered the genre.  It is both good.....and bad.  Most compromises are.  We are either forced to co-exist with other gamers that have different "gaming personalities" than we do, OR.....we can just change games until we find a developer that caters only to a niche market, and doesn't mind alienating some people that want to game, or losing the revenue that the "compromise"  has brought forth.

EDIT:  An yes.  The OLD SWG did have community down to a fine science.  I have NO idea where that went or why there is no other game that has done some of those things to facilitate community.  :(