Do high stakes create high sociability?

Beatnik59

There's a theory I see a lot posted on these and other forums that goes something like this:

In order to encourage players to be more social, the game needs to increase the challenge.

There's logic in this theory.  If you increase the challenge, you increase the premium on teamwork.  If you increase the premium on teamwork, you develop a need for teammates.  Since content is inaccessible without teammates, you encourage people to seek teammates out, and keep them.

All of this may be true, but then we have to ask ourselves whether encouraging teamwork is the same thing as encouraging sociability.  And I don't think it is.

When the stakes are high, people don't take chances on strangers.  They stick with people they know, and if they don't know anyone, they may require a lot of trust signaling before they are allowed to enter, and potentially mess up, the group.  We saw this a lot in the vanilla WoW days, where the elite guilds would require voice chat use, forum registration and demonstrable proof of competence before getting admitted into a guild.

That, to me, isn't encouraging sociability.  If anything, seems to encourage exclusivity and mistrust, since the game may be too challenging to play with strangers.

Perhaps instead of making the stakes for bad teamwork higher, we need to make them lower...that, or perhaps loosen the cap on player numbers in groups.  Because when you are limited to ten people in a three hour quest chain, and you need all ten to perform at peak consistency, it is only natural to take chances on the nine we know, rather than take chances on the guy who shouted LFG in the lobby.

Slapshot1188

My take is that the game has gone wrong simply because it allows people to shout LFG in the lobby...  At least if it's an MMORPG.   Stuff like that has killed the game.  Stuff like that destroys the sociability of the game.  The guys I have played with for the last 14 years are guys that I came across in game (DAoC).  My group (of guys from a previous game) ran into their group while striking into the enemy frontier.  We talked a few minutes, joined up, adventured together, and have stayed through countless games since.

sunandshadow

I generally play low stakes games, and they seem to represent an absence of pressure on players to be either more or less social.  The default amount of socialization people revert to is that they will talk to each other a lot, occasionally trade or give presents to each other, but mostly not take any actions together.

Scot

Sounds credible, but there is a limit, the reason devs do not like making games like this is that high stakes will turn some players off. The higher the stakes, the more will go.

You are trying to create interaction and community through gameplay. I think its easy to see how that could go horribly wrong. But I think the basic principle is sound, implementing it would be quite tricky.

Po_gg

I can only say what I've said under Christina's column with a similar topic a few years ago, you can't force your community to socialise. It's all up to each member's personal attitude, and attitudes are tough to change.

I agree, high stakes is making the situation even worse (elitism, closed-off small groups, etc), and as Scot says, it turns off way too many players since the market is stuffed with games where they can go instead. So high stakes can be a valid decision for a building a hardcore small playerbase, but not for sociability.
Low stakes, on it's own, doesn't help either. It helps on group play, but being social is still up to each and every player - so low stake alone just gives you easy group forming, where peeps doing the dungeon/insta/quest/etc. without a word, and then disband.

I think the only way for devs to build a more social community is a slow one, but refreshing / replacing the members   Luring in more folks with a social attitude, through small (i.e. not mandatory or endgame or hardcore, for avoiding the "high stakes" toxicity), optional but fun activities. Like music in LotRO, you can use the same LFG for seeking a minstrel to teach you drum or bagpipe for example: you won't get "high stakes"-esque answers of l2p, "your gear is weak", etc. simply if a mini near you has the time (and it's not on cooldown) will help you and teach you the requested instrument.
Or the Bad Date in TSW, you LFG a healer for a bad date (funny name, I must add  ) then you won't get bad responses - even if TSW has its fair share of elitism - since it's just a fun side-activity, so if a healer has a few minutes, s/he will help you with the date.

Helping each other just for the sake of helping creates a positive "word of mouth" and can bring in other peeps with a more social mindset, thus slowly the community as a whole will become more sociable. Community events, roleplay events, festivals also have the same effect.

It's maybe just my opinion, but I think this is the way devs can change / build the community. Simply forcing them into grouping, or putting in so-called "forced downtime" - not working. Imo, of course.

immodium

What do you mean by social? Getting to know people on a personal level/making friends or just talking strategies.

When I group for a dungeon  I'm there to play a game, not to make friends/chat crap. I do that in the main towns/fleet or guild.

So no, upping the stakes isn't going to create a more social game.

Also, in your scenario, a bunch of skilled players knowing what they are doing don't even have to chat.

Loktofeit

Immodium hit the nail on the head.

People aren't playing to socialize, so the bonding-through-ordeal approach just makes people leave. And as for 'social' channels that exist now, there are dozens of them, but the most popular aren't about people communicating with each other. The ones that people gravitate to the most are the ones where you just shout into the ether. Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter... it's not about talking with others. Hell, in most cases, people don't even type what they think, rather just relay some meme or image that someone else made. 

No one wants to talk to you. Not because there's anything wrong with talking or wrong with you. They're just not there for that. 

Boneserino

I am going to go off on a tangent here, but one of the things I admire about people who go to church, ( referring to mainstream religion here) is that one of the main goals is to foster community and help others.

So everyone gets together on Sunday, and it is like everyone is your friend, and they plan community events, and fund raisers etc.  Whether or not you believe in the actual religion, I think this is a good thing.

Contrast that to your average subdivision or suburb nowadays.  You might know your next door neighbor, who you say hi to if you happen to run into each other on the way to work and that is about it.  All these people living around you and you barely know who they are.

Society has changed over the years.  We don't need our neighbors or feel the need to socialize as much anymore.  I think it all carries over to MMO's as well.  In fact MMO's are a way to isolate yourself from others.  Your family can be in the next room and you are ignoring them because you want to get that next level.

It is a bad trend in society I am afraid.

waynejr2

Beatnik59 said:

There's a theory I see a lot posted on these and other forums that goes something like this:

In order to encourage players to be more social, the game needs to increase the challenge.

There's logic in this theory.  If you increase the challenge, you increase the premium on teamwork.  If you increase the premium on teamwork, you develop a need for teammates.  Since content is inaccessible without teammates, you encourage people to seek teammates out, and keep them.

All of this may be true, but then we have to ask ourselves whether encouraging teamwork is the same thing as encouraging sociability.  And I don't think it is.

When the stakes are high, people don't take chances on strangers.  They stick with people they know, and if they don't know anyone, they may require a lot of trust signaling before they are allowed to enter, and potentially mess up, the group.  We saw this a lot in the vanilla WoW days, where the elite guilds would require voice chat use, forum registration and demonstrable proof of competence before getting admitted into a guild.

That, to me, isn't encouraging sociability.  If anything, seems to encourage exclusivity and mistrust, since the game may be too challenging to play with strangers.

Perhaps instead of making the stakes for bad teamwork higher, we need to make them lower...that, or perhaps loosen the cap on player numbers in groups.  Because when you are limited to ten people in a three hour quest chain, and you need all ten to perform at peak consistency, it is only natural to take chances on the nine we know, rather than take chances on the guy who shouted LFG in the lobby.

it is about goals.   If your goal is to make group play ez-mode, then just do it.  If your goal is to encourage group play make it ez to form groups.  Clear cut goals are the driving force of your dev work.  But ask yourself, do you want simple (aka easy) content?  Is that the solution to grouping?

I bring up City of Heroes frequently but they had a great game and solo and grouping were both viable.  You could quickly form groups while wandering around and instances scaled to the group making it fun.  Plus you had content like task force missions that required a minimum group size.

Jemcrystal

No.  The make a game harder and it will become more of a social hub is a misconception. 

Old school players befriended some people in a few hard to level up games once and thought it happened because they were all standing around bored.  If that was the case then you should look for your next set of friends in public transport terminals.  But really it was the newness of the mmo genre and an older generations' willingness to blab.

I've been around long enough to get the tail end of this effect.  I got tired of hearing about so-n-so's baby was just born and my wife plays (any time someone says the word "wife" I get images of a man on all fours attached to a dog leash).  It gets BORING hearing the same thing over and over.

A sum of this generation of players:  You have your Tumblr pro acceptance give me a quick joke before I get depressed omg the cat just knocked over my mocha latte giggle giggle.  You have EXTREME NOISE my mom's yelling at me to go to school do you have a Minecraft account too let's be friends on Skype and make Youtube vids together.  You have I've been a daddy and there's another one on the way isn't it cute my wife and I got married in game together.  You have ex-military / going into military.  You have the gee I should quit this game it's so addictive but my tech finals bye guys I love you all I have to stop playing college.  You have the trolls probably abused or spoiled with issues, mental disorders, or the inability to digest sugar.  Then you have my type the dev wannabees gee looky I learned two lines of Python today how in the hell do I build a supper computer in a wall-to-wall carpet covered room with a shedding cat crawling all over me and static zapping thru my over-dried underwear pile those damn wrist things are a scam.

Why bother talking???  Isn't it enough we're killing things together in true murderous comradeship?

cameltosis

First point:

Grouping =/= Challenge


This is a big assumption that you make in the OP and it's simply not true. Increasing the challenge doesn't necessarily mean you need to group up. Likewise, requiring people to group up doesn't necessarily mean the game is more challenging. 


Secondly, we can't come to any proper conclusions without official numbers from games which we don't have. So, all we can do is rely on anecdotal evidence. So, heres mine!


In my experience, games that enforce grouping DO increase socialisation, but only with the players that stick with the game. A large proportion will be turned off the game due to grouping requirements.

Example:

Game A is heavily group based. 1 million people buy the box, 700,000 quit after free month due to grouping but the community / socialisation amongst the remaining 300,000 is great. 

Game B is more solo orientated. 1 million people buy the box, 500,000 quit after free month, community / socialisation isn't very good for the remaining 500,000


This is how it feels to me, personally, from the games I've experienced. 


As to the challenge. This is a tough one to judge as most MMOs are pretty damn easy. The difficulty tends to come from having the right gear more than being good at the game. However, as an ex guild leader and raid leader, I've seen 100s of raiders eventually reach their own personal limits if a raid starts to become challenging (gameplay wise).

With some players, they hit their limit and take it as a challenge and attempt to get better. These players are more social. 
With some players, they hit their limit and take it as an insult. They get angry at me (raid leader), the guild, the game and usually quit. These players are anti-social, but mostly, they tend to be idiots with an ego problem. 
With the majority of players, however, they hit their limit and just accept it. They are happy to sit out of progression raids and will just wait until the guild can carry them. 


The only benefit I've found to having challenging content is that I personally end up with a really tight knit group of ingame friends. These are the people who, like me, aren't idiots and are capable of beating the game without much effort. So, it ends up being a group of intelligent people with similar interests, similar gaming timeframes and generally relaxed attitudes. 

However, if you don't make the cut, I imagine it sucks. Challenging content makes me happy, but in general divides the endgame community, creates cliches (those who can and those who can't) and encourages an awful lot of jealousy. Its a real tradeoff. Make the game challenging and you'll make me and my friends happy and we'll subscribe for years, but you'll turn away millions of potential customers who just aren't good enough to overcome the challenge. Make a game too easy and we'll complete it within a few months and quit (im looking at you swtor!). 

Axehilt

cameltosis said:

Grouping =/= Challenge

In my experience, games that enforce grouping DO increase socialisation, but only with the players that stick with the game. A large proportion will be turned off the game due to grouping requirements.. 

These are two key truths.

Also high stakes has the exact same traits:

• High Stakes =/= Challenge
• Games with higher stakes DO increase socialization, because they make Achiever players leave (resulting in there being more Socializer players.)

The reason higher stakes don't affect challenge is that the skill required by a game exists in the challenge itself, and the penalty only happens after you fail (if you fail.) So higher stakes don't actually increase the skill requirement of a game, because they occur afterwards.

This results in gameplay that many Achievers find overly masochistic (it's penalty for the sake of penalty.) This causes many to quit since it's really just bad game design from their perspective.  So the resulting mix of other player types has fewer Achievers, and more Socializers as a percentage of the whole.  It's an ironically anti-social way to create more socialization.

Really if you were optimizing for Socializers you'd eliminate other types of play too (Exploration and Killing) which would result in a game with a high Socializer density, but well...we probably would stop calling it a game at that point because if you lack achieving, exploring, or killing, and you only have socializing, then what gameplay is even left to consider it a game?

Personally I don't mind grouping up to a point, because it tends to improve the achiever part of the game. But high stakes never improves the achiever part, it just makes playing the game more painful. Any risk-taking should be part of the challenges themselves, not the penalty afterward. If your spell-interrupt comes off cooldown and is also a significant source of damage for you, do you use it immediately for the damage, "risking" the chance that you might need it to interrupt a spell, or do you save it (potentially risking that you might not beat the boss' enrage timer)?  Lots of interesting risks exist within any given challenge a game offers, but once that challenge is over any additional risk tends to just be excessive and unnecessary.

Loktofeit

Axehilt said:

cameltosis said:

Grouping =/= Challenge

In my experience, games that enforce grouping DO increase socialisation, but only with the players that stick with the game. A large proportion will be turned off the game due to grouping requirements.. 

These are two key truths.

Also high stakes has the exact same traits:

• High Stakes =/= Challenge
• Games with higher stakes DO increase socialization, because they make Achiever players leave (resulting in there being more Socializer players.)

The reason higher stakes don't affect challenge is that the skill required by a game exists in the challenge itself, and the penalty only happens after you fail (if you fail.) So higher stakes don't actually increase the skill requirement of a game, because they occur afterwards.

This results in gameplay that many Achievers find overly masochistic (it's penalty for the sake of penalty.) This causes many to quit since it's really just bad game design from their perspective.  So the resulting mix of other player types has fewer Achievers, and more Socializers as a percentage of the whole.  It's an ironically anti-social way to create more socialization.

Really if you were optimizing for Socializers you'd eliminate other types of play too (Exploration and Killing) which would result in a game with a high Socializer density, but well...we probably would stop calling it a game at that point because if you lack achieving, exploring, or killing, and you only have socializing, then what gameplay is even left to consider it a game?

Personally I don't mind grouping up to a point, because it tends to improve the achiever part of the game. But high stakes never improves the achiever part, it just makes playing the game more painful. Any risk-taking should be part of the challenges themselves, not the penalty afterward. If your spell-interrupt comes off cooldown and is also a significant source of damage for you, do you use it immediately for the damage, "risking" the chance that you might need it to interrupt a spell, or do you save it (potentially risking that you might not beat the boss' enrage timer)?  Lots of interesting risks exist within any given challenge a game offers, but once that challenge is over any additional risk tends to just be excessive and unnecessary.

Different teams have their own name for that socializer content. We call it the Coffee Shop; the third, and often under-served, hub of virtual world content. 

Axehilt

Loktofeit said:

Different teams have their own name for that socializer content. We call it the Coffee Shop; the third, and often under-served, hub of virtual world content. 

Well socializing is almost completely player-driven. If you provide people with the location and means with which to socialize, they're going to do it.

So I'm not sure we can call them "under-served" since they only need a fraction of the development effort of the other groups. It does take effort (a reliable chat system and its related features don't come for free) but very little when compared with the rest of the game.

IAmMMO

There are many established clans communities even before a MMO launches, gone are the days when most logging in are looking for friends, they already have them. These groups act like tribes and contest each other fiercely, such content becomes cornered by the most successful group on any given server community. If the stakes are too high, hacking and exploiting is the issue, they'll be no honest competition for the content. If it's PVP game, then this goes down for sure.

Loktofeit

Axehilt said:

Loktofeit said:

Different teams have their own name for that socializer content. We call it the Coffee Shop; the third, and often under-served, hub of virtual world content. 

Well socializing is almost completely play-driven. If you provide people with the location and means with which to socialize, they're going to do it.

So I'm not sure we can call the "under-served" since they only need a fraction of the development effort of the other groups. It does take effort (a reliable chat system and its related features don't come for free) but very little when compared with the rest of the game.

It's more than just providing a location. It's about providing gamespace and supporting features within that space. It's about customization, ownership, and allowing players to display their affiliations. Some examples: 

There is little or no support for a Kazola's Tavern or Oasis Fight Nights to happen in most MMOs.
There is zero support for player-created tournaments in most PVP MMOs.
For a guild, clan, or community to have a uniform or matching gear, they are usually limited to cape decals. Either that or players have to go through hoops to obtain and have a matching appearance without sacrificing stats/performance.

Support for the social aspect of an MMO is more than just adding a feature-rich chat box. 

Axehilt

Loktofeit said:

It's more than just providing a location. It's about providing gamespace and supporting features within that space. It's about customization, ownership, and allowing players to display their affiliations. Some examples: 

There is little or no support for a Kazola's Tavern or Oasis Fight Nights to happen in most MMOs.
There is zero support for player-created tournaments in most PVP MMOs.
For a guild, clan, or community to have a uniform or matching gear, they are usually limited to cape decals. Either that or players have to go through hoops to obtain and have a matching appearance without sacrificing stats/performance.

Support for the social aspect of an MMO is more than just adding a feature-rich chat box. 

Nothing really stops players from claiming ownership over a tavern in a game. If they're in that tavern every day role-playing as its proprietor then how is that different from your tavern example?

As for player-created tournaments, as soon as the game supports it it isn't player-created. If I wanted to, I could easily host a WOW dueling tournament (or any other MMORPG which supports dueling.) It's only a matter of announcing it, optionally holding signups, and showing up to host the event and track wins, then post them online somewhere when it's all over.  How does that differ from Fight Nights?

While support is usually a bit limited, what MMORPGs do you feel lack guild uniform support?  WOW has tabards. I believe GW2 let you define guild colors and when you 'represented' that guild your colors would automatically switch (maybe it was just cape color? I forget the details.)  ESO allows good 3-color customization for every piece of gear you have. And several MMORPGs like WOW and EQ2 allow you to set your appearance independent of your "stat" gear. Games don't usually go crazy with these features, but it's pretty common to see support for it.

PottedPlant22

Project Gorgon has a boss in the tutorial area that is too hard for a new character to defeat on their own.  They are warned about this boss given you a nasty curse.  The screen flashes and there are words that tell you to avoid it.  It also gives you a percentage worse than death of your chances of beating the boss.  It also has a window that pops up on your screen saying the same thing in detail.

Anywhos this boss makes your head big.  You get +25 power, but you can't wear a helmet no more.  This then puts the player into a situation where they are asking fellow players (many whom might have big heads as well) to help them out killing the boss.  See killing the boss is the only way to get rid of the curse and cure your big head.  This challenge puts players together with a common goal and teaches the player something very important early on.  This game is not going hand hold you.  It's not going to be brutally punishing either, but your actions that you choose will have consequences.  Surprising how game mechanics like that bring players together.  Something missing in a bunch of MMORPGs lately.

Loktofeit

Axehilt said:

Loktofeit said:

It's more than just providing a location. It's about providing gamespace and supporting features within that space. It's about customization, ownership, and allowing players to display their affiliations. Some examples: 

There is little or no support for a Kazola's Tavern or Oasis Fight Nights to happen in most MMOs.
There is zero support for player-created tournaments in most PVP MMOs.
For a guild, clan, or community to have a uniform or matching gear, they are usually limited to cape decals. Either that or players have to go through hoops to obtain and have a matching appearance without sacrificing stats/performance.

Support for the social aspect of an MMO is more than just adding a feature-rich chat box. 

Nothing really stops players from claiming ownership over a tavern in a game. If they're in that tavern every day role-playing as its proprietor then how is that different from your tavern example?

As for player-created tournaments, as soon as the game supports it it isn't player-created. If I wanted to, I could easily host a WOW dueling tournament (or any other MMORPG which supports dueling.) It's only a matter of announcing it, optionally holding signups, and showing up to host the event and track wins, then post them online somewhere when it's all over.  How does that differ from Fight Nights?

"How is that different from your tavern example?"

In something like Oasis or Kazola's
- players choose the location to have the tavern
- players determine and can display in game any naming assignments they have for the venue or its property
- it is part of the game world
- players can set up and script NPCs for various tasks such as kiosk, bartender, or shopkeeper
- players have control over customization and personalization
- players have local storage for supplies for the location
- players control permission and access levels to buildings, sections of buildings and containers on the premises

"How does that differ from Fight Nights?"

It doesn't, so I guess it's a good thing I didn't use fight night and used the linked player-created tournaments for my example of player-created tournaments. But, if you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing and you really didn't see the linked content, here are the differences between your WOW tournament and the Puzzle Pirates tournaments

Feature	Y!PP	WoW
in-game ladder support	YES	NO
in-game registration support	YES	NO
in-game pot/prize display	YES	NO
prize money and item distribution	YES	NO
in-game event advertising	YES	NO
spectator mode	YES	LOCAL

You seem to be of the mindset that all players need is an empty room. "Here's space. Go do your thing." What you present is the limit of what most of today's MMOs offer, and I don't doubt others also scratch their head as you do when presented with the suggestion that more social tools could improve that aspect of virtual worlds interested in more social interaction.