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Why have MMORPGs become less social? Is it the design or the players? (Poll)
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
Whether you prefer the old school MMORPG style or the new, I think that everyone can agree that newer MMORPGs have made a definitive move towards becoming less social. Whereas players used to form communities, conduct trade, and group up for PvE; players now compete for quest goals while soloing and rush through dungeons with random people.
So my question is, what is the main factor behind this shift? Some argue that it's because the "new generation" of players are just not interested in being social and have a "gimme now" mentality. While others argue that the games themselves necessitate less social behavior due to things like quest-node leveling and dungeon finder.
So what is your opinion on the issue? Please answer the poll and tell us why you feel that way.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
It's the game design. Modern MMO's have become pretty much single player games with chatrooms, people aren't social because they don't need to be, they can spend their entire time doing their own thing with little to no interaction with other players.
I dunno, I get a general feeling now from players that if you're not fighting something you're a carebear looney who wants the game to be The Sims. There's a lot of unwarranted hostility towards anyone who isn't in their camp.
I voted both, but mostly the players because the developers will create a game around whoever has their ear and in my experience it's usually the aformentioned people who have it.
I believe it is a little of both.
I hate to, but I will use WoW as an example, as well as Everquest and Dark age of camelot.
In everquest, you had to ask questions to obtain your goals, you had to work together with people to acheive the things you wanted to acheive (generally.)
In dark age of camelot, it was similar. Player housing provided a new way to interact, as well as the "open dungeons" that you could go into, that were not instanced.
Then came WoW.
It was great at first, people grouped, people talked, there was Open World PvP, that was unstructured, people just did it for...(GASP) the fun of it.
Then...came dungeon finder, cross server PvP, cross server dungeon finder.
You no longer had to make friends, you no longer even had to know anyone. You could play your single player game without any player interaction what so ever.
Heck even the dungeons are so easy that you don't have to speak 1 word to your group, just go in and go through the motions.
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Now many other games are copying this type of play because they feel "this is what the players want" and it also is a prevention to when their game fails, because if they already offer cross server grouping, cross server instanced pvp, then they don't have to "introduce it" as a last ditch effort to keep people playing when the game is dieing.
I can see the "good" in allowing cross server grouping, but in my opinion it destroys server unity, it destroys relationships, and it defeats the whole purpose of playing a true MMORPG,
If you want "cross server grouping/pvp" maybe you should play a game like DIablo, which is designed around that sort of thing.
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I know it can be scary to actually interact with real people and talk to them, but aren't humans generally social creatures in some form or another?
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So I guess my closing statement will be that it is the players fault for the MMOs becomming less social, but it is also the developers fault for allowing these people to be so anti-social and basing their games around instance type scenarios instead of Open World type things, such as PvP, Bosses, Dungeons, Or even Live Events...(Live events in EQ were awesome and seemed to happen a lot, the only other game I have heard of live events happening would be Rift, but that was in beta, I do not play Rift in release mode).
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
I would say the people.
If the majority of people did not want the way the games are designed, then the majority wouldn't play them.
In the above example why would you blame the developpers for catering to the mass of it's customers. Generally speaking that's how business stay open (especially niches).
I personally enjoy not having to sit around looking for a group or rely on guildies for everything. I enjoy the games I play but I don't have time for LFG etc... etc...
It's a combo of both design and players.
I think the assumption of game producers and developers is there are a set number of gamers in total and to attract more to this particular genre you need to broaden the appeal, so by incorporating mechanics similar to other genres and platforms they appeal to a wider base in theory. But console and fps, two genres heavily drawn upon, are not really social beyond...."BOOM, HEADSHOT!!!!".
Thinking back to my fps days and six to eight hour marathon sessions playing Star Trek Elite Force, the only socializing I had ingame typically was, "GG." Even when I got on vent or TS and played team deathmatch or capture the flag, conversations were kept to a bare minimum, to plan or describe strategy.
My console days were even more abysmal, even though I had an XBOX360 with headset. You'd think it would have been a great tool to socialize, but conversations were typically adverserial, crude, racist, sexist and homophobic, so I turned off the feature.
After my fps and console days, I began to yearn for more than pew pew. I felt a void in my gaming life, and my virtual persona longed to be more than a 2d action figure. Enter Precu SWG. I was primed for it right from the start, and SWG did not disappoint.
Different genres of gaming require different skill sets, and socializing nicely is a particular skill set that is not requisite for success in other genres.
It's both.
The original mmo adopters were people who were excited by an online RP game experience. The original developers were coming from early ideas of pen and paper games so the game refected that.
Then game designers started looking at the games and desired to work out some of the tedium. Or at least what they thought was a barrier to getting more players. Suddenly more types of players start getting interested in these games but many aren't from early RP games.
different types of players start joining and developers kept trying to make the games easier for people to get in and play a bit.
yadda yadda yadda the evolution of the popular mmo.
The initial players were in it for the social aspects and exploring a world with people they met on the internet. The later players were interested in the games more as "games".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Its both.
MMOs have without a doubt become less social in design, like the previously mentioned dungeon finders etc.
But the thing is if the players genuinely to wanted to be social they still have everything at their disposal they had in older MMO's, they simply choose to take the easy route and use the tools in newer MMO's.
You cant put 100% of the blame, or even the majority of it, on game developers when they're simply giving the community tools - and its up to the playerbase to decide how (or if) they want to use them.
In early games your reputation meant A LOT -- so much so that if your rep got badly tarnished you might never find a group again. People in the game knew each other at that level.
With dungeon finders etc, you dont have that same level of blackballing. If you are hated for whatever reason you still can pop into a group so long as you have the proper gearscore.
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In earlier games, you sometimes ended up at the mercy of other players for help. This is not even necessarily for grouping purposes... This is "oops I lost my corpse and I can't get it back -- HELP" Even soloists needed buffs from various classes -- CLARITY PLEASE....
Now you simply dont. Death just means a run back to the action and buffs are designed to either only function in a group or are short enough in duration that it doesnt work to try to get them. IE in EQ a blessing of the 7 might last for 2 and a half hours. In a lot of games you are hard pressed to find any buff that lasts over 15 minutes.
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Crafting is not as important in current games. In earlier games finding a crafter was a much bigger deal and the crafters were often dependant on each other. Now all of those dependencies tend to be gone and crafted goods stink anyway so....
Both but game design encourages players to be more anti-social.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
or, the majority of players, because of their interests, what they are willing to do, want to do, etc, influence game design.
Developers don't just throw things into a game and hope for the best. At least now. Things are put in the game because of the audience they are catering to.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I see two big factors:
Console gamers being introduced to something that was once mostly a haven for roleplayers. No, that's not a knock on console players--just an observation early game experiences lead to two groups of players that seek their game experience from opposite ends of the spectrum.
The conscious push of game designers (beginning some time around ~2002, as far as I can remember--when the "forced grouping" complaints from EQ were at the loudest volume) to make the games much more solo-able. More me-centric than my-group centric.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
i would very much agree.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It is coused by the players. 10 years or so ago mmorpg was a small genre and it was easy to find players with a similar
expectations as your. nowdays grouping with most people is horribly boring.So if you wish to play group and raid content of the
games today you better convince all of your rl friends to play that game.
Both. The games rewards people for soloing and loot stealing and that makes players anti social.
Games that rewards co operation and socialization on the other hand do have the best communities and even those games can do a lot better.
But ultimately lies the power at the players hands. We need to become better here as well.
Both but more the players. They want* fast leveling, rapid gratification, solo oriented, single player gameplay with lobby based insta-grouping instanced coop or deathmatch. And the developers gave it to them.
* expressed as a gross over-generalization. Of course people are individuals and half of them couldn't agree as to what to put on pizza let alone how they want something as complex as MMO gameplay to work.
Well I think it can be safely said that humans haven't changed dramatically over the course of the last decade but you can demonstrably point out how mmo's have shifted focus away from game dynamics that encourage positive player interaction. So I say the games are at fault.
(off topic)
Related to this is something regarding terminology. Ask a console background gamer what a sandbox is. Ask a UO background player what a sandbox is. There's a clear difference. The two are miles apart.
I went with both, but mainly game design(game designers).
Blizzard massively pulled in their RTS/Adventure people. If Blizzard did not have the playerbase available from those already playing WC/SC/Diablo, I highly doubt that WoW would have surpassed the EQ max numbers in a few months like it did. They pulled in people from another genre unlike any of the pulling other companies had done before.
Sure, others had tried to attrack others previously - you can see evidence of cross-feature pollution earlier than WoW. We see further evidence after WoW . . . but man oh man, Blizzard really tapped a large market with those WC/SC/Diablo players.
Well - how was this a bad thing? Sounds like a damn good business practice. For Blizzard, it was. For those who had been playing MMORPGs, it was not. The majority of the playerbase was changed.
Look at Vanilla WoW - social MMORPG.
Look at now WoW - been a game lobby MMO for a while now.
MMORPG players - social MMORPG.
RTS players - game lobby.
So obviously the majority of the playerbase now wanted game lobbies - it is what they preferred. So it is the "players" fault. Blizzard "changed" the game for the "players"...
It was a turning point for the genre. Instead of a new genre being born - so that both could have existed, the old genre was consumed. It spread through the market like a cancer.
We're on the verge of another turning point for the genre with BioWare and SWTOR. Much like Blizzard was that RTS/Adventure game developer, BioWare was that single-player game developer. Right off the back, we've seen the hype for cutscenes, companions, and personal story. Heavy single-player elements, no? It's not a case of saying SWTOR is a single-player game - just a case that those heavy single-player elements are there.
So is BioWare going to pull more single-players into the "MMO" genre like Blizzard did with their RTS/Adventure people? Will SWTOR start out as one thing, like Vanilla WoW did - only to evolve to reflect the "majority" of the players - those single-players?
Will a new genre be born, or will another cancer begin spreading?
So it is definitely the players, though I would argue that it is not the MMORPG players - it is the players pulled in from other genres to the point they've become the majority.
So it is definitely the game design/designers, though I have to admit that they are designing for their new majority - I just believe that new genres should have been created.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Bit of both. I think there's social players and non-social. Group-based games please the social players but annoy the non-social players. The switch to solo-based games pleased the non-social but drove off the social ones.
I think you could probably design a solo-based questing game that attracted more social players by keeping in mind one type of player plays the game first and might socialize in the gaps between playing the game whereas social players socialize first and might play the game in the gaps between socializing.
So, imo, they'd need 1) social hubs with a critical mass of socializers (not just a lot of players afk) 2) low concentration and low risk game activites within those hubs they can do at the same time as chatting, 3) the ability to jump into the game in spurts i.e. have the quest chains revolve around the city hubs too. Those kind of changes wouldn't effect the non-social players.
The group vs solo thing is a personal preference debate but i think the post-WoW games missed a trick by not replacing the social aspect of grouping with alternatives because grouping was part of the appeal of the games for sociable type players,.
There are what, 12 to 16 million more mmorpg players now? Since there are roughly 30 times as many players out there for mmorpg, it can safely be said that the population of mmorpg players has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.
It should also be noted that 'being social' is not stifled in any way in mmorpg. You can be as social as you want to...anybody can. If people wanted to be 'social', they would.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You know, I would actually have to disagree here. There's a lot of hate for console gamers here, and I really don't understand why. I don't think that console gamers that play RPGs are that different from PC gamers that play RPGs.
I imagine that if I asked a console gamer what a sandbox was, they would bring up GTA and/or Oblivion (ES:IV). Both games that did well on consoles.
And TBH, I think both of these games are FAR more sandboxy that most modern theme park MMORPGs. They may not be UO with all the social interaction, but in terms of world interactivity and amount of things you can do, they beat games like WoW, Rift, and Aion cold.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Who gets to decide which ongoing game design developments are "cancers"?
I vote for me!
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Interesting argument, VD.
I've always been of the opinion that WoW was a one time anomaly, 'right place, right time' occurance. They definitely leveraged their position and fan base with other games to pump up their WoW subscribership. Interesting that EA may be trying to get the lightening to strike twice, by leveraging the combination of Bioware RPG and Star Wars fans.
As for the original question, I think the bigger dev teams have a pretty good idea of what irritates and drives off customers. They tend to streamline things in those areas.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
But back in the day people were forced to be social in order to group. Being social with a gun to your head doesn't mean you want to actually be social.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Oh? Really?
Imagine two scenarios...
Scenario 1: You are placed in a room with 3 other people, you are all asked to work together to solve a puzzle and when you're done, you'll all get $50.
Scenario 2: You are placed in a room with 3 other people. There are two boxes in the room and each box contains one ticket. If you retrieve the ticket you get $50 and can leave. After a ticket is taken, it takes 1 hour for a new box with a ticket to appear.
Which scenario do you think would make for a better social experience?
Scenario 2 is basically what quest MMORPGs are like. There are a bunch of people that have to compete for limited resources, and they know if they don't get the resource before the other guy, they will be stuck waiting for it to respawn.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?