The real issue here isn't that games have bad communities, but that games no longer appeal to a single type of player. Back in the day, games were built around the "geek" mentality, for lack of a different word. They were aimed at a specific type of player and therefore, since those players all had similar interests and outlooks, they formed a single cohesive community within the game.
Today though, that's just not the case. Now that games are mainstream, they need to appeal to a broad range of interests, people who want different things from the game and have different outlooks on how the game is to be played. Therefore, instead of a single community, games have dozens or even hundreds. If you go into any game thinking everyone is going to want what you want and like what you like, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen that way ever again.
Welcome to reality. People need to start dealing with how the real world works today instead of pretending they can go back to the "good old days".
I'll try to use some logic now.. just trying to locate the very core of the problem.
1.Bad people are loud.
2.People like likeminded people.
3.Bad people and good people aren't likeminded when it comes to morals/ethics.
Since bad people are louder, it makes sense that good people are more inclined to stop playing than bad people are because it is harder for them to find likeminded people.
What this means is that given some time, there will be more bad people playing MMO's than good people. Can't say what happens after that though.
I myself stopped playing MMO's because of all the anti-social people.
The real issue here isn't that games have bad communities, but that games no longer appeal to a single type of player. Back in the day, games were built around the "geek" mentality, for lack of a different word. They were aimed at a specific type of player and therefore, since those players all had similar interests and outlooks, they formed a single cohesive community within the game.
Today though, that's just not the case. Now that games are mainstream, they need to appeal to a broad range of interests, people who want different things from the game and have different outlooks on how the game is to be played. Therefore, instead of a single community, games have dozens or even hundreds. If you go into any game thinking everyone is going to want what you want and like what you like, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen that way ever again.
Welcome to reality. People need to start dealing with how the real world works today instead of pretending they can go back to the "good old days".
Er...,.. yeah, exactly, I am living in a fantasy world when I game and I don't believe that I have to accept "bad community" as part of my gaming future. Perhaps the methodology has to be different, but it doesn't mean develeopers have to give up trying to make a game with a good commuinity.
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
The real issue here isn't that games have bad communities, but that games no longer appeal to a single type of player. Back in the day, games were built around the "geek" mentality, for lack of a different word. They were aimed at a specific type of player and therefore, since those players all had similar interests and outlooks, they formed a single cohesive community within the game.
Today though, that's just not the case. Now that games are mainstream, they need to appeal to a broad range of interests, people who want different things from the game and have different outlooks on how the game is to be played. Therefore, instead of a single community, games have dozens or even hundreds. If you go into any game thinking everyone is going to want what you want and like what you like, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen that way ever again.
Welcome to reality. People need to start dealing with how the real world works today instead of pretending they can go back to the "good old days".
Er...,.. yeah, exactly, I am living in a fantasy world when I game and I don't believe that I have to accept "bad community" as part of my gaming future. Perhaps the methodology has to be different, but it doesn't mean develeopers have to give up trying to make a game with a good commuinity.
You have to define what you mean by "good community" then. There really isn't any such thing as a "good" community or a "bad" community in games, just a collection of different communities. Like it or not, games need to appeal to a wide range of players in order to be financially viable. As such, they're going to generate a wide range of different communities as different people come together to play a single game. That means you're going to get people who want to solo, people who want to group, people who want to PVE, people who want to PVP, people who want to roleplay... all of those generate a different sort of community, yet without each and every one of them, the game is doomed.
So again, define "good community" without removing the lifeblood mainstream gamers that the game needs to stay in business.
But what sort of community do you build outside if your immediate team? I'm going to guess (since I don't care for FPS'ers) almost none (observing my son and his friends who do play them).
For those folks who enjoy the community MMO's can (and did) have this is a non starter, because in th end, all combat in games is repetitive and boring (well, repetitive anyways) and it doesn't foster a good community. (IMO)
Um, the sort of community I enjoy playing with?
Did you miss the part where I said I have fun playing those games with other people? Are you unaware even FPS'ers have buddy lists, guilds/clans, dedicated servers and forums?
Precisely what sort of community are you looking for? Because honestly, it sounds like your biggest obstacle may just be gaming itself.
Originally posted by Kyleran
As mentioned, what at first appears to be features designed to frustrate or lengthen sub times, it turns out that the timesinks, downtimes and other "unfun" aspects of games actually served as social enhancingl tools (not sure if this was truely by intelligent design or lucky coincidence as fallout of other goals.
Raph Koster's been trying to sell that same load of baloney for years now, and I still say shenanigans. His much lauded SWG was the same title that brought us AFK dancing, commonplace multi-boxing, and the phenomenon better known as "solo grouping".
Originally posted by Kyleran
So perhaps the real question is, what can developers employ now to improve community w/o resorting to some of the design tricks/tactics of old that players like yourself don't care for?
Don't over-think it. Concentrate on a fun game that's especially fun to play with other people. Toss in accessible, easy-to-use tools to help keep track of, communicate and play with friends. The rest will fall into place. No heavy-handed social engineering is necessary.
The real issue here isn't that games have bad communities, but that games no longer appeal to a single type of player. Back in the day, games were built around the "geek" mentality, for lack of a different word. They were aimed at a specific type of player and therefore, since those players all had similar interests and outlooks, they formed a single cohesive community within the game.
Today though, that's just not the case. Now that games are mainstream, they need to appeal to a broad range of interests, people who want different things from the game and have different outlooks on how the game is to be played. Therefore, instead of a single community, games have dozens or even hundreds. If you go into any game thinking everyone is going to want what you want and like what you like, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen that way ever again.
Welcome to reality. People need to start dealing with how the real world works today instead of pretending they can go back to the "good old days".
Er...,.. yeah, exactly, I am living in a fantasy world when I game and I don't believe that I have to accept "bad community" as part of my gaming future. Perhaps the methodology has to be different, but it doesn't mean develeopers have to give up trying to make a game with a good commuinity.
You have to define what you mean by "good community" then. There really isn't any such thing as a "good" community or a "bad" community in games, just a collection of different communities. Like it or not, games need to appeal to a wide range of players in order to be financially viable. As such, they're going to generate a wide range of different communities as different people come together to play a single game. That means you're going to get people who want to solo, people who want to group, people who want to PVE, people who want to PVP, people who want to roleplay... all of those generate a different sort of community, yet without each and every one of them, the game is doomed.
So again, define "good community" without removing the lifeblood mainstream gamers that the game needs to stay in business.
Well, reading the posts on the forums here, there seem's to be a collective perception by many gamers that today's communities are deficient in some respect to those of older games. We could start an entirely new thread on the topic of why we define them as such, at least from our perspective.
I'm going to take the short approach this time around and say I want a community that I experienced when playing DAOC, but to a lesser extent still experienced in a few other games such as Lineage 1/2, and even Shadowbane.
For whatever reason, (I think strongly related to game mechanics however) in those games players were more willing to group up with (and not totally fear or loath) strangers, spent time talking (OK, texting) with other players (besides their guildmates), were less likely to be douches to others (ninja looting is something I never really experienced until I had played WOW for quite some time, even at the start it didn't have much of that) and in generally, people really knew each other better and treated them appropriately.
Its not simply my imagination or nostalgia, the communities really were better, and while I agree, we can't put in game mechanics that would drive away the mainstream gamers, I think there's many (new) things that can be done to 'encourage, reward and reinforce' better behavior among players.
Or perhaps you're right, there's nothing to be done but carve out your small circle of friends and hang with them. I currently do that now, but its a pale imitation of what these games used to, and I believe still can offer in terms of good community.
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
Kyleran.. I agree with what you say.. I have taken notice in the change in the community as well over the years, since I started online MMO play in the 90's.. I do believe it's a 2 fold problem.. 1) Current generation of upcoming gamers have a different outlook of values then us so called old timers.. Swearing has increased, nudity has increased, unwanted pregnancy has increased, forms of entertainment rather it be music or movies have take a huge turn.. IMO, not for the better.. 2) I believe more and more gaming companies are identifying these trigger types and are designing game mechanics to attrack that growing marketshare.. I do believe the decline of our gaming communities is because of the decline of our real life next generation, and devs do absolutely nothing about it, other then target them as the next customer and design games for them.. Us old timers are a minority marketshare and not worthy of their attention..
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.
To be honest I can agree with what you posted, but I also wouldn't want to go back and take out the things you listed either simply to "force" a better sense of community onto the playerbase.
What I found a bit telling is LOTRO has all of the elements that you used in your examples and it is a game with a reputation for a very good community from what I have encountered in game and read on forums like this one.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I see alot of over analysing here. In my opinion the chage in community is simply due to larger player numbers and the earlier age at which people are exposed to the internet. Simply put if you have millions instead of thousands of people playing you will get more idiots playing and idiots are louder than gamers.
Nah been on the internet since creation , and the same horror stories and idiots , people have evolved and so must game developers and community .
in the past A/S/L was normal who still remember that
You could answer it politely or ignore it . both ways was valid .
Now everybody lies , if they still remember the meaning.
In the past why act like a jerk when real life has enough of those around . nowadays everybody is a expert at being a jerk
Its lack of consequnces that is making people act like that way .
See cheating and exploiting , in the past you got caught shame on you , nowadays you get caught no reprisals.
Infact maybe they should put up shame list again , usernames caught for cheating and banned .
Sure we all believe in protecting the innocent , but currently the guilty ones are abusing the system .
Same as forum flags , the trolls are the first to use and abuse it .
While sensible people try to argue or talk to them about it .
Good posts btw... I see some MMOs going this route tbh one day, more like enforcing real id checks to sign up for a game. Yup it's one future and one business model when a market saturates and quality service differentiates a product among many others.
I believe that the problem of having a community full of arrogant self centred insensitive jerks will be over when a person invents something capable of punching someone in the face over the Internet.
As a measure of what kind of community is 'good' or 'bad' count how many times you would like to employ this invention on a timescale. More instances where you would use it, the worse the community is. This is providing you arent some sociopath who would abuse the machine merely because it exists. Being threatened with real and immdediate consequences to your words and actions is a mighty fine incentive to not act like a jackass.
I think that the lack of respect shown is a reflection of how little people respect themselves. If people arent willing to walk around in real life mouthing off and being a jerk, but when online feel safe because its anonymous, then they are cowards, and have no self respect, so fail to respect others. If, however, they act like a jackass in all facets of their life, then they are merely bieng true to their nature, and can only be faulted for being a rather nasty human being, but at least they are consistently nasty.
Hey, we are not jerks or sociopaths, we are big kids playing a game and trying to figure out how far we can push without getting burned. It is very natural. Seems like we can go very far. That is not natural.
Lots of less known games with small playerbases have extremely good communities, so it's not like they aren't there anymore. I believe humans aren't "made" for as large communities as a lot of the popular games have. Similarly those living in cities are more likely to be unhappy and have less social life. City people create their own social circle, but alienation is likely. Small towns have very tight communities and people are more social to my experience. Of course on country side you may have the problem that people just live so far away, so social life may limited by it. I know though, that even if the neighbor lives a kilometer away, the relationship can be very, very close.
Then there's the problems of game mechanics, like you mentioned. In my opinion, WoW's biggest mistake was to implement the (almost) instant cross-realm dungeon finder. There's several things why it's absolutely silly for a MMORPG, a social game, but I won't go to that. The developers indeed aren't actively trying to improve and encourage social interaction with games. I'll take WoW as an example again (sorry). Auction house pretty much kills all socializing involving trading. They even made those enchantment scrolls, so enchanters don't need to enchant people's gear directly. Group quests are few and far between, most of them can be soloed. Group quests should be pretty much the base to build a quest based MMORPG on, in my opinion. FFXI was made solo friendlier as well. Then there's of course the problem, that all encounters are so easy and unimaginative, that no-one doesn't really need to say anything once you've read the tactics. I remember a hardcore guild, in which people didn't talk at all during raids, as they were supposed to study everything beforehand, socializing is just a distraction and not required. Well, that's not really Activison-Blizzard's fault...
Hey, we are not jerks or sociopaths, we are big kids playing a game and trying to figure out how far we can push without getting burned. It is very natural. Seems like we can go very far. That is not natural.
"... A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought..."
A lot of people who would be labeled as "griefers" in MMOs tend to fall into the above description. While they may not act like this in real life as well, doing so in an MMO is still sociopathic behavior.
However the way I look at it.. These gaming companies like Blizzard know damn well they have a community problem, and know damn well some of their game mechanics HELP with the drama.. Instead of addressing it, aknowledging it and correcting it, they keep their blinders on saying, "I see nothing, I hear nothing" and keep making the money..
As an example.. It's my house, and if the children can't learn to play well amongst themselves I'm going to STEP in and take care of the problem myself.. I don't see that happening these days.. If I refused to monitor the kids in my home and something happened to one of them.. Who gets sued? Exactly, the parent that didnt' do their job.. What that does mean is that instead of having 20 unruley kids, you kick some of them out, and enjoy 15 that do play well.. Eventually the 5 that are OUTSIDE looking in, might find the wisdom in their mistakes and change.. But who is going to be the first MMO company to take that rick as the cost of $$$$$ profit?
Well, reading the posts on the forums here, there seem's to be a collective perception by many gamers that today's communities are deficient in some respect to those of older games. We could start an entirely new thread on the topic of why we define them as such, at least from our perspective.
It's because in older games, the playerbase wasn't mainstream. Today they all are. You're never going back to a non-mainstream game. Either accept that or stop playing games.
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.
I agree that the aforementioned accelerations of gameplay did a lot to destroy communities. I recall how waiting for the next shuttle 15 minutes in SWG made great community meetings.
Alas, I don't think just turning back the wheel would work. First, most MMO gamers are so spoilt, they would just not buy a MMO with such slow downs. Second, going back to the past sort of never really is a solution.
Think of trains. In the past a train drove, say 50 km per hour. So it took often days to travel from one spot to another. Think of Agatha Christie's "Murder in the Orient Express", where people travel in one train for many days, they socialize meet and talk. (Ok, they also murder, but that's not the point, teh.) And today? Today we have ultra fast trains, driving 400 km per hour, you don't have your own comfy room in the train but some vast rows of seats like in a bus. Or you fly with a plane. Result: loss of socialization places. I really miss that old days slow train travel. But truth is, we can't just force trains to drive slow again. It just doesn't work. But what we CAN and SHOULD is creating other ways to make people socialize. Encourage them to take time. And even then, look at FFXIV, they tried to decelerate the gaming process and see how they were slapped for it.
I must admit I am not much wiser. People have a mentality of GOGOGO and speedrun questing, and even stopping to type a sentence is something many MMO gamers will see as a burden these days. It's terrible. I loath this hyper speed mentality. Rushing through a game world like this... where is the fun in that? I want to saviour the time I spent on my char, and I DON'T want to grind new chars every 2 months. But how to really battle that trend I have no clue whatsoever.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
DPS and Gear Score will be a non-issue after a few months I think. If what people are saying is true and such things as mob positioning, crowd control and understanding threat for DPS in CATA, people will go back to wanting knowledgable players in their group (especially if its very guild based too).
IRAWESOME Mage with a 7k gear score and can do 30k DPS on meters will not matter if he doesn't pay attention to threat and continually wipes the group because he is too busy to sheep because it will hurt his damage numbers.
At least that is my hope.
I really do hope that what happens is your hope, and not my fear.
My fear is that the IRAWESOME Mage with 7k gear score and 30k DPS who doesnt stop to sheep will die, and blame the game, go to the forums and cry with all the other facerolling herpderp mainstream casuals who loved how easy it was in Wrath, and want to have that back. They want to be able to AoE without thinking of extra trash, they dont want to slow the game down and CC a mob or two. They will cry and bleat and DEMAND that the game made to accomidate them. There are more of them, Activision will see a risk of lost revenue, and force Blizz to cave to the demands, and you will wind up with a slightly more difficult expansion than Wrath, but nowhere near BC and Vanilla WoW.
The guilded players who are enjoying the new difficulty will play, the casuals who do not like the slower paced thinking game will not play, but instead spend their time in forums complaining and campaigning to have it changed to how it used to be (in Wrath).
I would hope Blizzard would respond with "Learn 2 Play". I do not expect the dungeons to be the level of vanilla but more like BC level of difficulty. Of course anything would be better than WOTLK.
BC dungeons were harder than vanilla ones. Vanilla dungeons were long and tedious but not really that challenging.
Well, reading the posts on the forums here, there seem's to be a collective perception by many gamers that today's communities are deficient in some respect to those of older games. We could start an entirely new thread on the topic of why we define them as such, at least from our perspective.
It's because in older games, the playerbase wasn't mainstream. Today they all are. You're never going back to a non-mainstream game. Either accept that or stop playing games.
OK, I accept that we're never going back to a non-mainstream game. (well, I might actually, but setting that aside).
So you're saying that if games are mainstream there's nothing that can be done from a development side to encourage players to be more civil and build a better community?
You might be right, if so, perhaps I will eventually end up leaving the genre.
But I'm not ready to give up the fight yet. They're my MMO's too.
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
DPS and Gear Score will be a non-issue after a few months I think. If what people are saying is true and such things as mob positioning, crowd control and understanding threat for DPS in CATA, people will go back to wanting knowledgable players in their group (especially if its very guild based too).
IRAWESOME Mage with a 7k gear score and can do 30k DPS on meters will not matter if he doesn't pay attention to threat and continually wipes the group because he is too busy to sheep because it will hurt his damage numbers.
At least that is my hope.
I really do hope that what happens is your hope, and not my fear.
My fear is that the IRAWESOME Mage with 7k gear score and 30k DPS who doesnt stop to sheep will die, and blame the game, go to the forums and cry with all the other facerolling herpderp mainstream casuals who loved how easy it was in Wrath, and want to have that back. They want to be able to AoE without thinking of extra trash, they dont want to slow the game down and CC a mob or two. They will cry and bleat and DEMAND that the game made to accomidate them. There are more of them, Activision will see a risk of lost revenue, and force Blizz to cave to the demands, and you will wind up with a slightly more difficult expansion than Wrath, but nowhere near BC and Vanilla WoW.
The guilded players who are enjoying the new difficulty will play, the casuals who do not like the slower paced thinking game will not play, but instead spend their time in forums complaining and campaigning to have it changed to how it used to be (in Wrath).
I pray that your Hope eventuates.
My bet is that it will be the lazy hardcore who will be whining how the new dungeons are not more tedious and thus 'hardcore'. Casuals want accessibility and fun content, not easy content.
OK, I accept that we're never going back to a non-mainstream game. (well, I might actually, but setting that aside).
So you're saying that if games are mainstream there's nothing that can be done from a development side to encourage players to be more civil and build a better community?
You might be right, if so, perhaps I will eventually end up leaving the genre.
But I'm not ready to give up the fight yet. They're my MMO's too.
Civility... well, there have always been assholes in games, now there are just a lot more people and, by extension, a lot more assholes. I don't know that it's any worse than it ever was, except numerically. As for the "better community", again I think you're acting as if there's a single community when clearly there are not. People are building dozens of better communities all the time, you just may not like each and every community that exists. You may not even like any of the communities that exist. That doesn't make them necessarily bad, just not something that you can identify with. Maybe you just need to find the particular community that appeals to you and ignore the rest.
OK, I accept that we're never going back to a non-mainstream game. (well, I might actually, but setting that aside).
So you're saying that if games are mainstream there's nothing that can be done from a development side to encourage players to be more civil and build a better community?
You might be right, if so, perhaps I will eventually end up leaving the genre.
But I'm not ready to give up the fight yet. They're my MMO's too.
Civility... well, there have always been assholes in games, now there are just a lot more people and, by extension, a lot more assholes. I don't know that it's any worse than it ever was, except numerically. As for the "better community", again I think you're acting as if there's a single community when clearly there are not. People are building dozens of better communities all the time, you just may not like each and every community that exists. You may not even like any of the communities that exist. That doesn't make them necessarily bad, just not something that you can identify with. Maybe you just need to find the particular community that appeals to you and ignore the rest.
Yep, probably what I'll end up doing ultimately, but was fun to discuss here and see what folks thought the root cause is/was. (even if the perception only exists in the minds of folks like myself)
Doesn't appear to be a lot of good answers to change things going forward, as you mentioned, its either adapt or perish.
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
The real issue here isn't that games have bad communities, but that games no longer appeal to a single type of player. Back in the day, games were built around the "geek" mentality, for lack of a different word. They were aimed at a specific type of player and therefore, since those players all had similar interests and outlooks, they formed a single cohesive community within the game.
Today though, that's just not the case. Now that games are mainstream, they need to appeal to a broad range of interests, people who want different things from the game and have different outlooks on how the game is to be played. Therefore, instead of a single community, games have dozens or even hundreds. If you go into any game thinking everyone is going to want what you want and like what you like, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen that way ever again.
Welcome to reality. People need to start dealing with how the real world works today instead of pretending they can go back to the "good old days".
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
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I'll try to use some logic now.. just trying to locate the very core of the problem.
1.Bad people are loud.
2.People like likeminded people.
3.Bad people and good people aren't likeminded when it comes to morals/ethics.
Since bad people are louder, it makes sense that good people are more inclined to stop playing than bad people are because it is harder for them to find likeminded people.
What this means is that given some time, there will be more bad people playing MMO's than good people. Can't say what happens after that though.
I myself stopped playing MMO's because of all the anti-social people.
Er...,.. yeah, exactly, I am living in a fantasy world when I game and I don't believe that I have to accept "bad community" as part of my gaming future. Perhaps the methodology has to be different, but it doesn't mean develeopers have to give up trying to make a game with a good commuinity.
"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
You have to define what you mean by "good community" then. There really isn't any such thing as a "good" community or a "bad" community in games, just a collection of different communities. Like it or not, games need to appeal to a wide range of players in order to be financially viable. As such, they're going to generate a wide range of different communities as different people come together to play a single game. That means you're going to get people who want to solo, people who want to group, people who want to PVE, people who want to PVP, people who want to roleplay... all of those generate a different sort of community, yet without each and every one of them, the game is doomed.
So again, define "good community" without removing the lifeblood mainstream gamers that the game needs to stay in business.
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Um, the sort of community I enjoy playing with?
Did you miss the part where I said I have fun playing those games with other people? Are you unaware even FPS'ers have buddy lists, guilds/clans, dedicated servers and forums?
Precisely what sort of community are you looking for? Because honestly, it sounds like your biggest obstacle may just be gaming itself.
Raph Koster's been trying to sell that same load of baloney for years now, and I still say shenanigans. His much lauded SWG was the same title that brought us AFK dancing, commonplace multi-boxing, and the phenomenon better known as "solo grouping".
Don't over-think it. Concentrate on a fun game that's especially fun to play with other people. Toss in accessible, easy-to-use tools to help keep track of, communicate and play with friends. The rest will fall into place. No heavy-handed social engineering is necessary.
Well, reading the posts on the forums here, there seem's to be a collective perception by many gamers that today's communities are deficient in some respect to those of older games. We could start an entirely new thread on the topic of why we define them as such, at least from our perspective.
I'm going to take the short approach this time around and say I want a community that I experienced when playing DAOC, but to a lesser extent still experienced in a few other games such as Lineage 1/2, and even Shadowbane.
For whatever reason, (I think strongly related to game mechanics however) in those games players were more willing to group up with (and not totally fear or loath) strangers, spent time talking (OK, texting) with other players (besides their guildmates), were less likely to be douches to others (ninja looting is something I never really experienced until I had played WOW for quite some time, even at the start it didn't have much of that) and in generally, people really knew each other better and treated them appropriately.
Its not simply my imagination or nostalgia, the communities really were better, and while I agree, we can't put in game mechanics that would drive away the mainstream gamers, I think there's many (new) things that can be done to 'encourage, reward and reinforce' better behavior among players.
Or perhaps you're right, there's nothing to be done but carve out your small circle of friends and hang with them. I currently do that now, but its a pale imitation of what these games used to, and I believe still can offer in terms of good community.
"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
Kyleran.. I agree with what you say.. I have taken notice in the change in the community as well over the years, since I started online MMO play in the 90's.. I do believe it's a 2 fold problem.. 1) Current generation of upcoming gamers have a different outlook of values then us so called old timers.. Swearing has increased, nudity has increased, unwanted pregnancy has increased, forms of entertainment rather it be music or movies have take a huge turn.. IMO, not for the better.. 2) I believe more and more gaming companies are identifying these trigger types and are designing game mechanics to attrack that growing marketshare.. I do believe the decline of our gaming communities is because of the decline of our real life next generation, and devs do absolutely nothing about it, other then target them as the next customer and design games for them.. Us old timers are a minority marketshare and not worthy of their attention..
To be honest I can agree with what you posted, but I also wouldn't want to go back and take out the things you listed either simply to "force" a better sense of community onto the playerbase.
What I found a bit telling is LOTRO has all of the elements that you used in your examples and it is a game with a reputation for a very good community from what I have encountered in game and read on forums like this one.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I blame the parents.
Good posts btw... I see some MMOs going this route tbh one day, more like enforcing real id checks to sign up for a game. Yup it's one future and one business model when a market saturates and quality service differentiates a product among many others.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I believe that the problem of having a community full of arrogant self centred insensitive jerks will be over when a person invents something capable of punching someone in the face over the Internet.
As a measure of what kind of community is 'good' or 'bad' count how many times you would like to employ this invention on a timescale. More instances where you would use it, the worse the community is. This is providing you arent some sociopath who would abuse the machine merely because it exists. Being threatened with real and immdediate consequences to your words and actions is a mighty fine incentive to not act like a jackass.
I think that the lack of respect shown is a reflection of how little people respect themselves. If people arent willing to walk around in real life mouthing off and being a jerk, but when online feel safe because its anonymous, then they are cowards, and have no self respect, so fail to respect others. If, however, they act like a jackass in all facets of their life, then they are merely bieng true to their nature, and can only be faulted for being a rather nasty human being, but at least they are consistently nasty.
Hey, we are not jerks or sociopaths, we are big kids playing a game and trying to figure out how far we can push without getting burned. It is very natural. Seems like we can go very far. That is not natural.
Lots of less known games with small playerbases have extremely good communities, so it's not like they aren't there anymore. I believe humans aren't "made" for as large communities as a lot of the popular games have. Similarly those living in cities are more likely to be unhappy and have less social life. City people create their own social circle, but alienation is likely. Small towns have very tight communities and people are more social to my experience. Of course on country side you may have the problem that people just live so far away, so social life may limited by it. I know though, that even if the neighbor lives a kilometer away, the relationship can be very, very close.
Then there's the problems of game mechanics, like you mentioned. In my opinion, WoW's biggest mistake was to implement the (almost) instant cross-realm dungeon finder. There's several things why it's absolutely silly for a MMORPG, a social game, but I won't go to that. The developers indeed aren't actively trying to improve and encourage social interaction with games. I'll take WoW as an example again (sorry). Auction house pretty much kills all socializing involving trading. They even made those enchantment scrolls, so enchanters don't need to enchant people's gear directly. Group quests are few and far between, most of them can be soloed. Group quests should be pretty much the base to build a quest based MMORPG on, in my opinion. FFXI was made solo friendlier as well. Then there's of course the problem, that all encounters are so easy and unimaginative, that no-one doesn't really need to say anything once you've read the tactics. I remember a hardcore guild, in which people didn't talk at all during raids, as they were supposed to study everything beforehand, socializing is just a distraction and not required. Well, that's not really Activison-Blizzard's fault...
"... A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought..."
A lot of people who would be labeled as "griefers" in MMOs tend to fall into the above description. While they may not act like this in real life as well, doing so in an MMO is still sociopathic behavior.
True V.. so true..
However the way I look at it.. These gaming companies like Blizzard know damn well they have a community problem, and know damn well some of their game mechanics HELP with the drama.. Instead of addressing it, aknowledging it and correcting it, they keep their blinders on saying, "I see nothing, I hear nothing" and keep making the money..
As an example.. It's my house, and if the children can't learn to play well amongst themselves I'm going to STEP in and take care of the problem myself.. I don't see that happening these days.. If I refused to monitor the kids in my home and something happened to one of them.. Who gets sued? Exactly, the parent that didnt' do their job.. What that does mean is that instead of having 20 unruley kids, you kick some of them out, and enjoy 15 that do play well.. Eventually the 5 that are OUTSIDE looking in, might find the wisdom in their mistakes and change.. But who is going to be the first MMO company to take that rick as the cost of $$$$$ profit?
It's because in older games, the playerbase wasn't mainstream. Today they all are. You're never going back to a non-mainstream game. Either accept that or stop playing games.
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I would add...
1: DPS meters
2: Gearscore
3: min/maxing
4: Elitism brought on by superficial achievements
(and yes I play WoW and I was a raider...)
I agree that the aforementioned accelerations of gameplay did a lot to destroy communities. I recall how waiting for the next shuttle 15 minutes in SWG made great community meetings.
Alas, I don't think just turning back the wheel would work. First, most MMO gamers are so spoilt, they would just not buy a MMO with such slow downs. Second, going back to the past sort of never really is a solution.
Think of trains. In the past a train drove, say 50 km per hour. So it took often days to travel from one spot to another. Think of Agatha Christie's "Murder in the Orient Express", where people travel in one train for many days, they socialize meet and talk. (Ok, they also murder, but that's not the point, teh.) And today? Today we have ultra fast trains, driving 400 km per hour, you don't have your own comfy room in the train but some vast rows of seats like in a bus. Or you fly with a plane. Result: loss of socialization places. I really miss that old days slow train travel. But truth is, we can't just force trains to drive slow again. It just doesn't work. But what we CAN and SHOULD is creating other ways to make people socialize. Encourage them to take time. And even then, look at FFXIV, they tried to decelerate the gaming process and see how they were slapped for it.
I must admit I am not much wiser. People have a mentality of GOGOGO and speedrun questing, and even stopping to type a sentence is something many MMO gamers will see as a burden these days. It's terrible. I loath this hyper speed mentality. Rushing through a game world like this... where is the fun in that? I want to saviour the time I spent on my char, and I DON'T want to grind new chars every 2 months. But how to really battle that trend I have no clue whatsoever.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I really do hope that what happens is your hope, and not my fear.
My fear is that the IRAWESOME Mage with 7k gear score and 30k DPS who doesnt stop to sheep will die, and blame the game, go to the forums and cry with all the other facerolling herpderp mainstream casuals who loved how easy it was in Wrath, and want to have that back. They want to be able to AoE without thinking of extra trash, they dont want to slow the game down and CC a mob or two. They will cry and bleat and DEMAND that the game made to accomidate them. There are more of them, Activision will see a risk of lost revenue, and force Blizz to cave to the demands, and you will wind up with a slightly more difficult expansion than Wrath, but nowhere near BC and Vanilla WoW.
The guilded players who are enjoying the new difficulty will play, the casuals who do not like the slower paced thinking game will not play, but instead spend their time in forums complaining and campaigning to have it changed to how it used to be (in Wrath).
I pray that your Hope eventuates.
BC dungeons were harder than vanilla ones. Vanilla dungeons were long and tedious but not really that challenging.
OK, I accept that we're never going back to a non-mainstream game. (well, I might actually, but setting that aside).
So you're saying that if games are mainstream there's nothing that can be done from a development side to encourage players to be more civil and build a better community?
You might be right, if so, perhaps I will eventually end up leaving the genre.
But I'm not ready to give up the fight yet. They're my MMO's too.
"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
My bet is that it will be the lazy hardcore who will be whining how the new dungeons are not more tedious and thus 'hardcore'. Casuals want accessibility and fun content, not easy content.
Civility... well, there have always been assholes in games, now there are just a lot more people and, by extension, a lot more assholes. I don't know that it's any worse than it ever was, except numerically. As for the "better community", again I think you're acting as if there's a single community when clearly there are not. People are building dozens of better communities all the time, you just may not like each and every community that exists. You may not even like any of the communities that exist. That doesn't make them necessarily bad, just not something that you can identify with. Maybe you just need to find the particular community that appeals to you and ignore the rest.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Yep, probably what I'll end up doing ultimately, but was fun to discuss here and see what folks thought the root cause is/was. (even if the perception only exists in the minds of folks like myself)
Doesn't appear to be a lot of good answers to change things going forward, as you mentioned, its either adapt or perish.
"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
the communities haven't changed there are just more people now so the minority pop of idiots are more visible. Its really that simple.