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Community is killing this game
GrayGreene
Member Posts: 239
I too have joined others in canceling my subscription. I appreciate the game's polish, and enjoyed the remarkeable attention to detail concerning every aspect of the game. However, the community in this game is ridiculously awful. I have made some friends fairly easily, but throughout the cross server warfronts it's constant bickering, insults, and other anti-social behavior. I joined a role play server thinking i'd see less names like "JustinBeiber" and "Homersimpson" and of course the always present, "Azzhurtz," but a lot of players don't even seem to respect those who role play. I have no way of knowing if it's an influx of kids joining the game, or simply how people behave in todays mmorpg.
However, I have played Vanguard, LOTRO, and Everquest 2 and can attest to how communities can strive to be; Vanguard of course being the role model for excellence in community with the latter games coming in second.
Even in the levels 40-50 chat channel I encountered an unsually unfriendly atmosphere. Snarky comments and bad information in response to honest, and simple answers doesn't make for an enjoyable experience, especially one you pay monthly for. I've heard people complain about WOW before with similar concerns, so maybe I'm just the type of person who'd enjoy a smaller player base. Could be the worsening community in Rift is a direct indication of a growing population?
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I'd venture a guess and say a bulk of Rift's player base are former WOW players and the game's design is very similar (in terms of not supporting social game mechanics) so it's not surprising that you're experiencing the same sort of bad community that it has.
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Generally it's safe to assume that the larger the population of a game, the worse the community is. WoW is a prime example, other Non-mmo examples would be like Call of Duty, Halo and etc. Smaller games, with niche communities are generally better socially in my experience. It's hard to explain why, perhaps the smaller community forces people to work together, etc etc.
It's also due to the fact that generally a nice and respectful player, is normally a quiet player. Wheras the trolls of the world tend to scream at the top of their lungs in caps lock all day. So, if you just take a ratio of 1 troll per 10 players, well, if you only have a game with 20 players, then theres 2 trolls and you don't notice. However if there is a 1000 players, then theres 100 trolls all screaming at each other in trade. Making their annoyances much more noticable. And since the respectful players tend not to talk, all you hear are trolls.
It's unfortunate, but since there are no consequences on the internet, people are allowed to say/do these things without fear of reprisal.
Now, if only we could find a way to have their moniters punch them in the face whenever they said something stupid...oh well, perhaps one day.
Even if all that you have said were true, and I don't know whether or not your reported experience is more typical than mine, the game company can only moderate to a certain point. After that it is beyond the scope of their duties. If your complaint is that the community itself is bad, it is still no reflection on the quality of the game itself.
If you enjoy the game itself, then why abandon it to the scant mercy of those who offended you? Why not stick with it, and do your part to reshape your community into one you can enjoy? /ignore those who offend and they will no longer be a problem for you. Then those who are like you would at least have the benefit of your being strong in the community, and you could have the benefit of their being strong in the community.
This seems a more constructive approach. You could even organize together.
People are going to be people, in their almost infinite diversity, no matter where you go, be it game or RL. If you had a neighbor you didn't like in real life, would you let them run you off? Would you allow them to coerce you into selling your home for their sake? Would you abandon your (probably) more numerous good neighbors to them? That reaction, the reaction of running off when you dislike a few people, seems to put you into the role of victim. You could instead initiate a counter response, and for everything they do to offend you, turn that into making statements with your behavior, and how you play in the world. Together with those who think like you, it might instead become a victory for your way of being in a game community.
Just saying. But I realize I am an optimist, despite having a neighbor I confess I wish would either drop dead or leave town. I wish to counsel you to stick, and don't cut and run. Those people will be represented wherever you go.
To dream, perhaps to be.
The point I was just going to try and make. Very well put. Rift is one of the more popular games right now, and with more people and free trials it is a deadly combination for the good nature of the community. I don't think it is as bad as you mentioned on my server but I had to admit any other MMO I've played lately hasn't been much better.
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OP your concerns are why i rarely engage in normal chat channels - I usually stay with in the guild/kin/corp channel(s). It does tend to lessen the inane pointless chatter. In EVE not talking in "local" is almost a rule... tends to incite the griefers and get stuff started. I beta'd Rift and saw the problem then, too many WoW players coming in. Ignore them - block them - lose the channel they appear in the most and ENJOY the game.
Currently bored with MMO's.
I'm not so sure if the bad community is related to the population of a game any more. I think it's more along the lines of where the 'cool kids' hang out.
WoW is the big thing, everyone plays it so that's where most of the undesirable players go as it's cool and they all get to be cool together. Rift is still in it's 'next game to kill WoW' early days so all the cool kids jumped over to it which is why the community is such a mess. As soon as they realise WoW isn't going anywhere they'll all go back and Rift will start to develop a decent community.
I've seen this happen with a number of MMOs now. The anti-social players that talk trash all day generally don't stay with a game for very long and seem to jump onto the bandwagon of every major MMO launch. They ruin the early community and push the decent players away from the game and then leave themselves when they get bored.
The only game I never saw this with was LotRO... the community there was incredibly good from day one (although the cracks started to show when Moria came out with such an item grind for endgame; which incidentally goes a long way to show that mechanics DO also influence community). I expect this was mostly because the game didn't have proper PvP as the types of gamers I described above usually take no interest in a game if they can't kill other players...
(And yes I'm aware of my sweeping generalisations above but from my experiences and observations it seems to be true).
If the community is killing this game, WoW would have been dead a long time ago.
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You can find a bad community in any MMO if you look hard enough; personally I don't give a shit since I don't pay attention to the overall community. I play an MMO to have fun and I meet plenty of nice strangers in the chat channels even if they have what I feel are retarded names that do not conform to RP standards.
I'm not a role-player... but I do appreciate RP names. Overall I think the OP is being too picky, when I was playing RIFT I never had a problem with the local chat channels. I quit once I hit end game and realized I had quit WoW because of the end-game content of gear grinding / meaningless PvP.
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Games like this should have chat police. lol. I know it sounds funny, its been long but doesent LOTRO have zero tolerance on bad behavior in chat? I think people would be a lot more mature about what they posted if they were able to be banned from global chat,etc. I would say have dedicated server to specific age groups, but this would be hard to do with cross realm and also theres a lot of "kids" in their 20's that are just as bad.
One of my biggest reason for leaving WOW was the community. But for one 32 year old that leave 2-3 7 year old's show up.
Kids can be of any age, seems to me. Some of the worst 'kids' I've ever met were in their 60's on up. Some of the finest people were in that age bracket too, come to think of it.
Maybe we get enough years of practice and we get pretty specialized in who we are, good or bad.
Sure, there is an age before which people simply can't think well, but it might be 12 for one person and 24 for another.
I always liked that ad lib Harrison Ford came up with in the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark':
"It isn't the years, honey, it's the mileage." ~ Harrison Ford
What I've found is that, generally speaking, yes: The most objectionable people leave early, just as the fellow up above me somewhere pointed out. If they stick, then they have more to them than we might originally have appreciated. They invested themselves enough into the game we share to have stayed instead of bailing as soon as something new opened.
To dream, perhaps to be.
Gotta agree that the community can kill a game. The reason that Lotro is still my favorite MMO is because of its great community.
Rift is a pretty new game. May be you should give it some time to build on the community if you really like the game.
What bothers me is when someone replies with anything to do with "WoW".
Bad Community existed long before WoW.
In Ultima Online which was a FFA PvP game at release with full looting. I was a very social player and made a lot of friends. Some of them were people that originally tried to kill me or did kill me.
After playing EverQuest for a while when my UO guild moved there, I became very anti social and went back to UO. Then again I guess you could say in many ways WoW is like EQ (core design not overall game). Community entirely makes or breaks a game for the average player. If you are in an active guild or have a group you play with then its easy to ignore. For players who are looking for others to interact with... not so much.
Most games I could tolerate playing even if they are bad. When the community sucks more than the game.. I can't play it and why would I pay for it?
Honestly when I think the best "game additions" would be /accountignore and making sure nobody on my ignore list can join my "random groups"... there is obviously something wrong. Game companies can do a whole lot of moderation. They have ToS and EULA which largely are ignored enforcement wise. There are things that aren't really bad that people complain about as well. However, if companies were a bit more proactive on community policy... then their games might do a bit better subscriber wise.
honestly, it's not just the community, however i agree with that being a gigantic part of the problem. from my experience in Rift, and i played starting in beta 4 on up, i was severely dispappointed when i finally realized my time there needed to end. it stemmed from several things, the main one being telling us one thing, and doing something else entirely.
i came to Rift from playing several mmos as i needed a good home, and when i heard that the soul system was set up in such a way that i could play and customize my character in previously unforseen ways, i was sold. this held true until i hit 50. when i hit cap, i realized from being in groups and talking with dedicated raiders that there were essentially only a handful of classes and specs that were even acceptable. this was a deal breaker for me as that was the entire reason i came to Rift. it may or may not hold true now, but the reason this even relates to the topic at hand, is that it was the community that allowed this to happen in the first place.
it's not a terrible game...the leveling experience was quite enjoyable. i just got hosed on what i thought was true customization. this is also very much my own fault.
With all due respect, this is weak. Stop being told what you can and cannot do, customize however you want and enjoy the damn game. If you cannot enjoy the game without being acceptable to the leet raiding crowd because they think your build is 0.003% less efficient then well, that is really a problem with you rather than Rift. Don't you think?
Sorry, but i guess that just on your shard. OFC there are always annoying people (Example the dirge/anal spammers in WoW)
There is no mmo with a solid Community but i still find that this community excels above other MMO's since the rifts make it that you got to join group with other people hunt rifts togather if u like etc. Also The dungeon finder on this game is Shard only it means it's always with people from your shard which makes ninja looting a lot harder and after 2 dungeon runs they become your new friends.
Unlike WoW for example where you can just ninja everything cause u wont ever see those ppl from another realm again.
So i think you are just being over sensitive cause this game has one of the best community's i exprienced so far.
Uh? No.
You should experience the little, but SOLID community in Vanguard. Also, LOTRO has an excellent community on more than one of their servers -- truly a genuine community, with very little snarkiness and/or instigators. I'm sure there are other examples. Perhaps I am a bit thin-skinned, but I did not intend my OP to totally be about myself. I feel there are lots of contributing factors to an mmorpg that keep me playing, such as graphics, lore, classes, community, ect. Rift has many good points. I think community is not yet one of them. But I did like reading the posts concerning making the community better through example, which is why I try to help with questions when i see them come up on global chats. I also will sell blues lower than what im asking on AH if someone really needs it and sends me a tell. I'll enjoy doing my part, and there were some very good points brought up on this thread concerning that. I'm also learning that we can set up individual chat channels for invitation only. So cross guild friends can utilize a private type of global chat.
You just compared a MMO that cost the OP $50 plus a $15 a month fee to a real life house that cost ( just throwing out numbers here) $100,000. There is no comparing the 2, it just doesn't work. You cancel and MMO with the click of a button and don't ever have to look back. Try doing that with a home. When I bought my house the owner had been trying to sell it for 6 months and dropped the price 20k. So, I'm just saying that was a horrible analogy.
All I'm going to say about the OP is I agree. This is one of the many reason I cancelled after the 1st month.
And so, why didn´t you roll on a RP server? They have quite an enjoyable community. There at least there is a naming policy and in my experience people with ridiculous were names were forced to rename.
You obviously didn't even read the OP's post - not even a word (or so it seems).
Hint: He DID join an RP server
Hint: He IS right... the community is terrible, even on RP servers (though its far better than say... a PVP server)
The battlegroups are by far the worst. People thinking they're elite and those same people are ones I see running towards a group of opposing players by themselves, then cursing how they die and got no heals. No sense of teamwork at all - and it's everyone else's fault apart from their own.
I quit RIFT for different reasons (unfortunately) but the OP's post has a lot of merit. It's a sad truth.
Then you have played another game than me, or maybe the European servers have a better community. It's mostly friendly, except for some morons, which you can find everywhere.
See what you did there? Just trying to stand up for mewhywhy a bit. The comment was about his/her own experience and then you disqualified it with a "uh? no." This community on here could learn a few manners as well.
I've played mmos for the past 10 years...EQ,UO,DAoC,Vanguard,CoH,LOTRO,WoW....Rift...many others. I have the fondest memories of DAoC. Why? Realm pride, great guildmates, the help people gave for finishing your epic questlines. However, even DAoC had a$$hats. Every game does, even Vanguard and Lotro. They are just a lot more noticeable when you have highly populated servers.
I do think you will find more rude comments in Battleground type PvP. That makes a game more competitive....much akin to a FPS or even games like HoN or LoL. Once you introduce that esport aspect people are going to start talking smack. If you enjoy that type of gameplay then you have to get used to the comments. I play a lot of LoL (League of Legends) and I can tell you that in every game someone runs their mouth. You either accept its going to happen and still play or find something else. I think the same goes for battlegrounds in MMOs.
My personal Rift experience has been good, much better than WoW. I have not had an issue with rifts or dungeon groups. I ran Runic Decent yesterday and we wiped on one pull 4 or 5 times. The mob pathing was a little off and the tank had trouble only getting one group instead of 3. Everyone was calm and awesome. The tank finally had a good pull the last time. We beat the instance and no one complained. It was a completely random group. I'm also on a less populated server. No idea if that helps, but my experience has been a good one.
I actually play on a PvP server, and the idea that all PvP servers will have terrible communities is absolutely false. There will always be the few idiots that end up on just about the entire servers ignore list, but don't let that lead you into believing that everyone on the server are jerks.
Play on Spitescar as Defiant.... or better yet, transfer to Spitescar when 1.3 rolls around! *cough* We really need more Defiant players!
Rift is built right through to make rep and behaviour not matter... solo quest grind, auto group join, cross server matching. Add to that it'sstill the shiny new game.
I have no idea why anyone thought the community would end up anything then what it is.
You get good community by design, and Rift hasnt designed for it.