Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Poor Communities in modern MMORPG's - Root Cause Analysis
Kyleran
Member LegendaryPosts: 44,069
You see it all the time, game "XXX" has the crappiest gaming community out there. No, some folks say, all gaming communities suck no matter what game you're talking about.
Maybe its just nostalgia, or I'm looking through rose colored glasses, but I don't recall it always being this way folks. My first few MMO's, Lineage 1, DAOC, Lineage 2 and even Shadowbane all had much better communities (from a random encounter perspective) than those of more recent games.
So why is that?: I've read some theories, some of which I heartily agree with. I'll kick it off with a few prime suspects but I'll be interested to hear what others have to say.
1) Lack of forced downtime. The older games used to make us wait to regenerate our health, mana or whatever, it wasn't constant fight, fight, fight that it seems to be in every game today. This was a good thing IMO, it gave us time to chat with our groupmates, guildmates, or even random strangers in global chat. Nowdays it seems everyone is either soloing or even grouping through the (usully quest based) content to the point there's no time for player interaction.
2) Quick travel options - yes, I know they are seen as a benefit, but in their ultimate form, being able to queue for dungeons without ever traveling to them and looking for a group, while ideal for those who want to just get in and get busy, are some of the biggest detriments to building a strong gaming community. Truely a case of the negatives outweighing the positives, at least if the goal is to build a better community.
3) Game mechanics that discourage grouping, specifically quest based mechanics. Most games don't provide enough reward for re-running a quest with someone,(if its even possible) therefore people complete most quests solo. How many times did you try to group up only to be told, "no thanks, I've already completed that one". Say what you will about the old camp grinding games, it rarely happened, people always wanted some competent and friendly folks to join up, help with the kills and to pass the time.
OK, there's 3 off the top of my head, let's hear what others think.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
Yup, I agree with all the points you've made. Here's a forth:
4) The new gaming generation grew up in the interweb age. Anonimity, Instant information at the click of a botton, the exploding 15 sec media where flashy news are presented then tossed for the next even more shocking news about a faceless ennemy( terrorist) or whatever news to scare people.
It dulls the senses & after a while you start seeing interacting with stranger as something to avoid. You can even subconciously start thinking that what you don't know is a potential threath & become hostile to people for no good reason.
Edited to make my point clearer.
Definitely agree. EQ had a good community because if you were a dick that couldn't keep it to himself, you generally got kicked out of groups and never got groups again.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
QFT
Remember the movie Idiocracy? It wasn't a comedy, it was a documentary about our future.
I agree with number three.
The biggest cause, imo, is that there is no dependency on other classes. In EQ you could seek out buffs from other players, you had to physically sell and buy goods from each other. There was no bazaar or auction house.Of course, let's not forget about the ports. Also, there was little to no soloing in EQ, which "forced" us to be friendly so we weren't labeled as problems. In DAoC crafting was meaningful, and we held crafters in high regards. We were kind to crafters, we made them happy, we tipped them well, and we sought them out. Also, in DAoC you again had to group if you wanted to do well in RvR. There was no grouping with complete strangers, or, at least, if you did you weren't strangers for long. Most people in DAoC know each other, or of each other. That encouraged people to keep a good reputation.
Nowadays, no class needs another. Parties(pvp and pve) are formed from pooling together servers, so the chances of seeing the same group mate again is slim to none. Raids are capped on the number of people who can attend, which leads to exclusivity. Heck, in some games you can only run a dungeon once a day, so there is really no time spent together.
Another lesser cause, imo, is the total lack of any economy. Everything nowadays is BOE/BOP. Most crafting is just a hobby for crazy people, which adds little to the game. MMOs have been turned into a single-player game with other people that get in our way.
The fast paced, solo centric gameplay is the reason for the bad communities IMO.
Playing - EVE, Wurm
Retired - Final Fantasy XI, Anarchy Online, Mabinogi
Waiting - ArcheAge, Salem
Yet one of the most common games to be mentioned regarding its exceptional community is... LotRO, which has all those things.
I sdon't see much correlation between the quality of the community and the things you mention. And I certainly don't recall better communities in the games that lacked them.
I think what's missing in alot of current games is... OTHER STUFF. Most games nowadays... if they provide enough combat advancement content on launch it's pretty much a miracle. Social content??? Hee hee!!! It's kinda sad that in most games you can't even sit, nowadays.
When I think of forced downtime activities that... kinda worked, anyway, I think of pre-cu SWG wound heals and doctor buffs. but even then, it seemed like interaction occured among but a few people.
I think that all of these three points are all symptoms of one bigger cause. Game developers failing to have the community interact with each other, or rather, making the game very easy to play with minimal interaction with your fellow server population. By pandering to the ADHD instagratifcation hyper casual that wants everything NOW NOW NOW who lacks patience or the ability to contemplate what it means to wait for something, they have created this abomination of a modern gamer. That and there are way too many jaded gamers out there who remember the good days before this neuvo gamer chic happened along and gaming became cool, which meant that gameplay, consistency and substance went out the window and in comes the shallow, mediocre and banal.
<strike>Game devs</strike> Publishers see money in mass market and dictate that the game must be made to their base specifications.
I don't think communiies are the product of mechanics, rather a sense of cohesion.
Back when if you were playing any MMO you were part of a small exclusive group, you all shared an interest in common that seperates you from the rest of society, so you were more apt to see this community as more meaningful.
Now MMOs are big and have lots of players, playing a MMO is like playing any video game or watching a movie, sure you do it, but so does everybody else, MMO players are not a small group anymore and simply playing the same game as another person isn't enough connection to see the community as meaningful. That is why the more meaningful communities are found in guilds rather than the game as a whole.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
I think the major points have been mentioned but even things like mail systems and to a larger extend auction houses have taken away from the feeling that you're playing with real people. And when a younger generation, who is generally less respectful of people than their elders (and this certainly applies to me) has no incentive to learn to interact in a friendly, mature manner, then that don't.
At a very high level, and this goes to all of the things mentioned pretty much, it's a basic failure of the developers to enforce any consequence to anti-social behavior. A third of the games that come out actually tend to encourage it, and then they can't figure out why their games are populated by ass-hats... it would be comical if it weren't so sad.
I'd love to know what the root cause is. Even WoW had a good community at launch with very little anonymous knuckleheads that liked to stir up things or were just rude. All the old MMOs I've played (early 2000) had awesome communities but now a lot of the games, not just MMOs are filled with extremely arrogant people who love to spout out 4chan memes everytime they speak or do nothing but try to piss other people off, with the exception of Fallen Earth.
That is one of the more recent of MMOs where the community was nearly full of polite, mature people. I guess it has something to do with there being more gamers as a whole that understand that they can get away with nearly whatever they do on them.
It can't just be because there are more younger gamers playing, most of the scum bags I've run into in my entire gaming experience have been adults. That always blew me away whenever I was a young teenager playing MMOs. I used to think that adults weren't capable of being so... childish until I started playing MMOs and using the internet in general.
It's quite simple, as games and genres grow larger there will be a higher probability that you will meet someone or many someones that irritate you.
Also as games grow larger guilds or guild like systems cause players to be more self segregating and self sufficient. Take for example FFXIV. I spoke to possibly 3 or 4 people outside of my LS because there simple wasn't a need to do otherwise.
In a modern MMO how many people do you pass by, interact with, or at least overhear in general chat? Compare that to "the golden years"
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
That was well said. I pay less attention to the gaming 'community' and am more interested in the cohesiveness, activeness and cooperativeness of the Guild community I am a part of. Thats really what it's all about for me.
I agree, your point 3 is probably the main issue.
But overuse of instances, dungeonfinders, auctionhouses (as opposite to player run shops) and similar things also messes up the community.
But it seems like GW2 will try to fix at least some of these issues (not fast travel and downtime however), so it will be interesting to see if that helps or not.
Yes I'm interested to see what a non-faction based MMO that actually encourages players to team together (dynamic events) and has no open world PvP if you don't go into the mists, will do for the community.
Not sure if I like this analogy. If the going to a movie was like playing an MMO is today, it would be full of people talking and texting and yelling at the screen.
It used to be that you could find a guild organically, now you've got to search online for one because finding like-minded players is so difficult through all the "barrens chat" spam.
The great irony here is that it seems...
typing /sit and waiting for a minute after every encounter
watching your character's arse or horse's arse for hours and
waiting ages for a mob to respawn and kill it as quickly as possible before everyone else gets in over and over...
make games more enjoyable for some people. That inactivity and boredom breeds the need to fill up the awkward silence.
"Soo... I had some tomato juice for breakfast..."
-"I like tomatoes."
-"Oh yeah?"
-"Yeah..."
"..."
"Wanna see my sword? It's shiny!"
Awful... just awful... 90% of the time after something like this, I want to hang myself with my mouse cord. I would use a cordless mouse as a blunt instrument. ...it will kill you eventually.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I'll touch on your #1 and #2 points.
In ffxi, the dunes was hilarious. Usually people died a lot, and people would leave party frequently, which usually led to downtime. During this downtime people would mess around do emotes, and TALK to each other. This is true through my first time through this zone, as well as coming back many years later to level up other stuff when end game got boring. You still met new people, even though it was for a few moments, and they weren't all super hardcore -- It was fun.
The traveling aspect (taking the ferry to the dunes) was also very fun. If you missed the ferry to the dunes from Windy, you'd have to wait a few minutes at the dock, and then ride the boat over to the zone, which took time as well. It was a fun chance to talk to people and see if the ferry got attacked by pirates and such, but nonetheless, people talked and interacted with each other, or just went fishing. lol
I don't know when it happened, but when I was playing Aion, it just seemed the chat was always filled with WoW comparison bullshit and mega-trolling. I'm sure even WoW had it's glory days, before the community ate shit. I wasn't there though, when that happened I was clinging firm to ffxi, which saw a mass exodus of players that went and hopped on the WoW bandwagon.
Ever since then, it seems like the new generation of online gamers have had a powerful impact of what was once a hobby where mostly mature and educated people were the main crowd that populated the genre. =(
I have to agree with point #3 as well. I remember the tears that were shed after they implemented WTZ(warp to zero) in EvE. I had literally thousands of bookmarks(player created coordinates) for damn near every gate I used. I can travel from on end of empire space to the other end in 1/3 of the time now. So, the "massiveness" of the universe does feel smaller now.
I think there is something to the idea that instant travel is better and i'm a bit undecided on it. I do feel though that it really depends on the game however. Grouping or attempting to do it, was what drove me out of CoH. I couldn't stand it anymore. In retrospect, joining a guild/clan might have kept me longer.
I also feel that due to the vast majority of games are themeparks or possibly "quest" driven games. I personally hate quests and while I believe they have a place, they should only be in a game to "assist" or gently push the lore/story, never be the main focus. Now most younger gamers/new adult gamers join in MMO's essentially install/create character/do tutorial and then ask in global chat.."where do I get my quests from"? I find this repulsive and this is why these players are sometimes killed in DF just for asking these questions.
I hope that World of Darkness or whatever the new MMO's coming out operate an open ended sandbox with quests/NPC task givers as a supplement to the game and not the "backbone" of the game.
Playing: BF4/BF:Hardline, Subnautica 7 days to die
Hiatus: EvE
Waiting on: World of Darkness(sigh)
Interested in: better games in general
Well actually it does. Endlessly killing things w/o "other stuff to do" does lead to a pretty solitary existence.
I remember crafting in DAOC pretty painful, but people spent the time chatting with others while they did it, which lead ultimately to a stronger community.
It's especially hard on the solo player, they die inside sitting by themselves, but trust me, that awkward conversation you're mocking actually led to some really interesting conversation regardless of the game.
I realize that it didn't appeal to you, but from the looks of this thread so far, there were many of us who enjoyed it.
But more to the point, what do you think contributes to the more anti-social nature of today's gaming communities, or perhaps, you don't think they are any better or worse today vs back then.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think one of the best game to enforce community and working together was pre cu SWG. You depended on the doctor to give you buffs at the starport while you waited on the 10 minute shuttle. You needed the Smuggler to slice your weapons and locked containers. It was one big family on my server and I miss the forced interaction.
Nowadays it is solo quest to level cap while talking to no one except maybe some of your guildys. There are no more darkness falls pve/pvp trips to fight Legion with a group etc. What it comes down to is most mmo's today are too easy and instant gratification. Not like when I had to grind out 26 professions for jedi, but while doing that I met a ton of great people along my journey. I grouped when I had to, got my buffs and battlewounds tended by others.
Ok, I do miss the olden days
Often the contention is that MMO communities suck because they are made of people with anonymity, but the reason many MMO communities suck is because they are not made for how people interact and pile people of different goals and desires into the same pile. Rather than cnp a bunch of stuff, I'll drop a link here and I am intersted in hearing your thoughts on it:
Me and My 140 Best Buddies
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
the cause of the bad communities aren't the games - although i admit that all of your points would improve the games and the social interaction. the cause of the bad communities is the change the internet and the media initialized within our society and especially on our youth.
the bahaviour of the people changed and because of the anonimity there were no frontiers and noone had to be afraid of the consequences of deviant behaviour. combined with all these reality-talk-shows like jerry springer or big brother in which the media made the people belive that deviant behaviour is now 'normal' the communication and interaction changed.
f.e. take the kids from 'generation lol'. 10 years ago the had their first contact with the internet. playing counter strike, starcraft and warcraft. 5 years later all these 12 to 14 years old kids who started to play world of warcraft. they never saw an internet with 'netiquette' (something mostly everyone back in the `90 had), they never saw a tv-programm with entitlement and a higher standard.
i'm really aren't one of these 'in the past everything was better' representative, but one of the truths are that the development and influence of our media was much faster than the capabillity of the people to adjust the social education.
(if someone wants a deeper impact on this kind of stuff i recommend a look at the works of clay shirky)
Interesting post. Got me to thinking, back when I played DAOC, my server (MLF) averaged 1700 people online in the evening divided between 3 realms. I'd say being an Alb we had the largest community, say about 800 or so but spread out meant that we interacted with a very small subset of a few 100 at any given time.
Perhaps this did let us get to know each other better, same people where always around as you leveled up, fought in the BGs and eventually grouped with you in the realm wars at end game.
We even got to know our opponents, I recall some very fierce Hib opponents who we battled constantly and they were legendary opponents.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
1) Lack of forced downtime. I agree, this really affects newer players, it's sort of hard to get to know anyone when everyone is rushing destroying the idea that MMO's are community games. I don't mind the idea of making regenerating health/mana and what not faster, but they need to find a better medium. However, out of the 3 things you said were bad with building a strong community, I think this is the least bad.
) etc...it was probably the number 1 way I made friends. Then I played War and Lotro, the quest helper thing was showed me where everything was, and the chat was always quiet, there was no reason to ask anyone for anything. Also, a lot of times the quest would ask yo to kill this super powerful enemy, that took no effort to kill....really 
. I remember people saying Lotro had a great community, it probably does, but I wasn't going to wait forever to make friends.
2) Quick travel options - I like quick travel, however I agree that instant travel options should be eliminated or built as the worst and/or last choice you would choose. Take WoWs LFD thing, I consider it the single most destructive thing to the wow community. I think the basic idea is great: group up with people cross server when you don't have enough people, however they implemented it completely wrong. Using it is better then grouping with people in your own realm: you get to instantly travel there, and you get better rewards...really, how dumb. It should've been a last choice thing, not the better choice.
I think the faster a travel option is, the more people you have to be around, just like the real world. Like when riding a bike you can be alone, but riding an airplane or boat you have to be around everyone else, but not like a real airplane where you are stuck in a spot looking at the back of a chair, obviously.
3) Game mechanics that discourage grouping, specifically quest based mechanics. I don't think that being unable to redo a quest is that bad of a quest mechanic when it comes to grouping, though it could be made better. I personally think the worst quest thing implemented in a game is the helpers. I played WoW before I played WAR or Lotro, so I don't know if the last two games always had the ingame quest helper. When I leveled my first character on WoW, it didn't have the helper thing, yeah it had the ! and ? thing, but that wasn't that bad, I mean there were tons of quest were you could be looking for hours wondering where that book is or whatever, so people would ask "where's this?" (Mankriks wife
I think the last 2 reasons you gave are the most impactful things to the community, so no matter how much you try to make anything else more community based, with those two messed up, it ultimately doesn’t matter. That being said, these are other things I would do to make the community a little better, but aren’t needed:
1. The Economy: I like AH’s, however they prevent people from getting to know one another. It seems nobody is trying to finding an alternative to AH’s, besides just going completely back to the old days of just selling the stuff yourself. I think the bazaar thing in EQ was good, they could also make a grocery store like thing, not as community based as just selling items on there own, but much more then just isolating yourself at an AH. A game should make an AH more like the typical AH in the real world, some dude standing in front asking an audience if they want to buy this or that item. I think there are tons of ways to make the economy thing more different.
2. Events:
I’m talking the holiday like events, ones that occur more then once. I think there should be more of these in a game. Most MMO’s just have the holidays, or don’t have any events at all. They need more stuff to happen daily, weekly, monthly or whatever, like a sport like event or “art” shows or whatever.
-I want a Platformer MMO
I agree with the OP. But, I don't think changing any of those things would really affect the current community that much. There probably would just be less players. Which I guess isn't a bad thing in retrospect. But it's too late now, in my opinion. Pretty soon we will have cash shops in every single-player game as well. I think greed has a lot to do with what is ruining today's communities (ties in with #3 of the OP). Its on both sides really; the players as well as the publishers.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.