Maybe this will help. Seems to be some of the usual extrovert confusion between asocial and antisocial.
I dislike when they think introverted means shy. lol
tr
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
All I know is that I find myself soloing more and more than ever as I run across more and more jerks, elitists, number crunchers, rage quitters, knit pickers, control freaks, sociopaths, attention deficit disorder, homophobes, womanizers, religious and political fanatics.....etc.
All I know is that I find myself soloing more and more than ever as I run across more and more jerks, elitists, number crunchers, rage quitters, knit pickers, control freaks, sociopaths, attention deficit disorder, homophobes, womanizers, religious and political freaks.....etc.
Someone has been using the Thesaurus tonight.
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
All I know is that I find myself soloing more and more than ever as I run across more and more jerks, elitists, number crunchers, rage quitters, knit pickers, control freaks, sociopaths, attention deficit disorder, homophobes, womanizers, religious and political freaks.....etc.
Someone has been using the Thesaurus tonight.
Some people have a larger vocabulary than the average college graduate.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
All I know is that I find myself soloing more and more than ever as I run across more and more jerks, elitists, number crunchers, rage quitters, knit pickers, control freaks, sociopaths, attention deficit disorder, homophobes, womanizers, religious and political freaks.....etc.
Someone has been using the Thesaurus tonight.
Some people have a larger vocabulary than the average college graduate.
Convenience over community. MMORPG are designed to not upset, inconvenience or challenge the players. Even the dumbed down, streamlined majority of the game play can be bought in most cases. No interdependency, solo combat, unchallenging and forgiving world and auto grouping eliminate most needs to interact.
Outside forms of communication are just icing on the cake.
Convenience over community. MMORPG are designed to not upset, inconvenience or challenge the players. Even the dumbed down, streamlined majority of the game play can be bought in most cases. No interdependency, solo combat, unchallenging and forgiving world and auto grouping eliminate most needs to interact.
Outside forms of communication are just icing on the cake.
In essence that is the issue. If dev's would put there pants on and made the mmo's like they used to be XP wise and hard like they where, then players would need to group up. Those that don't like to play regular mmo's would end up with so few choice over time that they would have to start playing the games like they are suppose to.
Even if they say they would quit they would end up been obligated to play them as is, otherwise run out of mmo's and end up in single player rpg's, mobas, fps, plateform games. Mmo's would still thrive but for now dev's are scared to take the steps needed to do so. Anyways to each there own. I hope one days we get at least a few real dev's that takes the nice decision and stick to there original plans and not cave in to the community that likes only easy mode mmo's.
Really though I have become one of the players that plays an MMORPG without talking to anybody. Most of the time I do it because it is easier. Teaming up in unnecessary for levelling, I will talk to people when the dungeon finder puts me into a group with them.
Unfortunately, playing this way seems to lead to a less enjoyable experience. Maybe I should stop.
After LFD content was primarily done with randomly assigned nameless-faceless strangers from other servers that you would never see again and couldn't contact later even if you wanted to.
Your reputation didn't change your place in the queue. There was no longer anything your fellow party members could reward you for being friendly aside from a sad "lol" in party chat and there was nothing of consequence they could do if you were the most obnoxious asshole possible.
The once epic dungeon run was now reduced to a silent meat processing factory that churned out loot with the least amount of human interaction possible.
There were many things that lead up to it but LFD put the definitive nail in the coffin of human interactions in MMORPGs.
After LFD content was primarily done with randomly assigned nameless-faceless strangers from other servers that you would never see again and couldn't contact later even if you wanted to.
Your reputation didn't change your place in the queue. There was no longer anything your fellow party members could reward you for being friendly aside from a sad "lol" in party chat and there was nothing of consequence they could do if you were the most obnoxious asshole possible.
The once epic dungeon run was now reduced to a silent meat processing factory that churned out loot with the least amount of human interaction possible.
There were many things that lead up to it but LFD put the definitive nail in the coffin of human interactions in MMORPGs.
I totally agree with this statement. I know many of people prefer to play solo now and keep their "human" contact to a minimum in MMOs these days. And I am with you. Because You can't get in a group without partnering up with people whom can potentially become serial killers.
But it wasn't always like this. Even in WoW early days the anti-socials were shunned out of communities. Even elitists had a totally different behavior. Like if you got in a PUG and made the same mistake 8 times in a row and get the group stuck at a certain point someone were bound to leave or start calling you names. But now these days, if you don't meet their "standards" you are entitled to hear a variety of F words and C words. Now at the sign of first wipe 3 out of 5 people would leave the group instantly. That's because you don't need to have a reputation anymore. You don't have to make relations in a game to advance.
I remember the days if one my guild members had left a PUG or been rude to someone their GM would contact me and I had to discipline or even kick the fella out of the guild. MMOs used to be a community.
There are filled with Anti-Social people since developers started to cater to Anti-Social people. Making the game "solo-friendly" is just a fancy word for that.
What's the freaking point of playing a MASSIVELY multi-player online game if you want to avoid all contacts possible?! I don't reach out to MMOs as a desperate attempt for human contact, not many people do. It's totally wrong that some people on this thread labeled others like that. I have enjoyed video games on a single player level, then a co-op level, then at a community-sized level. It doesn't mean that my parents never loved me or I can't find friends in real life or anything wrong with me.
If we're finding faults here there is something drastically wrong with people whom can't befriend a couple of virtual orcs in a silly game anyways.
Gaming Rocks next gen. community for last gen. gamers launching soon.
I've been an MMO player since UO/EQ. I have had the pleasure of playing with some truly great people and have made long term friendships along the way. I have my Online Friends who I game with and RL friends with whom I do other activities outside of gaming. On occasion RL friends and Online friends do cross paths.
I've played every major MMO in the last 15 years. Some good, some horrible, but I always meet some great people along the way.
More and more it seems all anyone is interested in, is a Multiplayer game that they can play solo. WTF? Why play an MMO if you don't want to play with other people? Kinda like going to a brothel to sit in the corner and masturbate..
Could someone please explain this phenomenon to me, because I just don't get it.
Preachin to the quire. Iv found out that Theme Park mmos have a very divided community, no need for Teamspeak or any Comms, just wana get their Raids done with their so called "Guild" and go back to solo jerking themselves in the corner. Sad. Play a Sandbox MMO, for example. Darkfall, Albion Online, Life is Feudal. The guilds are more connected and always using a comms like teamspeak. Its just that these No risk MMO's have no need for a community because the devs make it efficient to do everything by yourself and just make it a bother to try to group up to get what you need. They cater to the casual players, and when i say casual i mean in this case, Players who have Limited time to play their game and can not dedicate at least a 3-4 hour to their gaming session when they log in.
LFD IMO has to be the best tool to be implemented in a MMO. The need to make friends with others to play a game is probably the worst idea, and It's great it's not needed anymore.
Most just want to play a game with others, they'll communicate at a level where they talk tactics/strategies, mechanics, skills, lore etc. Group play should never have you be forced to make friends.
If they want to socialise at a level to get to know people personally/be their friend by all means do it after the dungeon/raids complete in tavern or city.
Makes me laugh seeing people say "You're all quite in here!" during group play. Like most playing are there to make friends.
Nope, we are here first and foremost to play a game with others, not to make friends.
Even with LFG tools in games, friendships are born everyday within MMOs still for those who seek it.
I agree with a lot of what has been said so far but I'd also like to add that voice chat was probably the turning point, even in EQ, between random interaction and social confinement. Prior to programs that did away with typing and corralled players into one voice server where they no longer had the need to communicate using "in-game" devices, there were FAR more opportunities to run into a stranger who might, somewhere down the road, end up being considered someone worth looking up again.
The game moved slower, people moved slower because they had to actually stop and type in order to communicate with one another, and that gave a lot of people time to actually formulate plans of attack, develop characters amongst their peers, and even roleplay a little.
Enter VOIP and all of that died almost instantly. No one wants to roleplay in VOIP because it's embarrassing and often silly. People join together in groups, further exacerbated (that was the word to get me in the big vocab club) by functions that have already been mentioned, and do not say a word to each other. This caused the player who was NOT in the VIOP channel to feel completely alienated. And at the new and improved speeds that players could now move without having to stop to type to one another, that was pretty much the end of trying to group with new people for a lot of folks.
Some games have attempted to circumvent this problem by adding chat functions within the game that allow people to speak to each other in a VOIP fashion once they join each others groups, and these games, although not as social as the games that were played prior to VOIP being used in a widespread fashion, have been the more social games to play. Developers however, have for whatever reason shyed away from keeping this function in their titles in lieu of allowing the players to choose the VOIP programs they liked and thus, continue the corralling.
Another thing that I believe has caused a great deal of harm to the entire genre has been area wide faction chat. Now this is just a "in my opinion thing" but, if it were up to me the only functions that a player would be able to use inside of an MMORPG that could speak to an entire zone, or even to anyone outside of what would be considered the normal range of their voice would be an "LFG" key. Inns and cities would have to be used for all other social interaction outside of standing in front of someone or being grouped or guilded with someone.
Faction chat, and the current abuse of it for attention, has become, in my opinion, the single most annoying thing to almost everyone who plays an MMORPG save for the abusers. What used to be a useful tool for learning how to play the game has now become a place where you get called stupid and/or given bad advice for asking a question as well as a podium for just about every person that got too drunk while playing or didn't get enough attention as a kid to shout obscenities. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. But enough of that. My wall has grown beyond my screen and I know what that means. Just wanted to add my two cents though.
Players never blame themselves always the developers fault. This topic is not new at all.
It's so easy for folks to point the finger never taking personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility of using entertainment?
If i want to solo, i solo ... this is not a job, and there is no responsibility.
He's saying that people blame developers for not forcing socialization on others when they should be responsible for their own social needs.
It's strange that in a thread full of people crying out for greater discomfort, inconvenience, and "callenge" in their entertainment they want socializing handed to them on a plate "hand-holding" style. Strange dichotomies never cease to amaze.
My whole point is that that there are so many factors going against interacting with players because of conveniences. If you don't give incentives or reasons or allowances to interact you're not going to get a lot of general interaction. I am not talking about the tunnel vision focus of EQ forced grouping/grinding. Hell, I liked UO and that game had no forced grouping though it did have forced interactions good and bad.
This isn't real life goes both ways. We don't live in these games. We just play them. The developers design and manipulate how players play. Even if developers don't understand how short term conveniences effect the long term. Though I think they do at this point.
You lose out on a lot of potential having everyone online and not using that resource. They're forced to give us crap filler to fill out our experience because there is nothing beyond the single player combat game to keep us playing. I fully believe its one reason the genre has dried up in the west. You look at the cost of "feeding" content to players who eat it in weeks. Its probably not worth it. The whole genre is over refined for ease and shallowly focus on combat questing.
Yes, inconvenieces and challenges are/were part of video games. You can tell MMORPG by design to get as many players are possible do as much as possible to keep them superficially happy and "unfailed." The problem comes into play that the brand of gaming combined with obsessive combat only oriented games fails to hold players attention for long. Its like giving children candy only because you don't want to upset them. Its not good for the players or the people creating the product in the long term.
LFD IMO has to be the best tool to be implemented in a MMO. The need to make friends with others to play a game is probably the worst idea, and It's great it's not needed anymore.
Most just want to play a game with others, they'll communicate at a level where they talk tactics/strategies, mechanics, skills, lore etc. Group play should never have you be forced to make friends.
If they want to socialise at a level to get to know people personally/be their friend by all means do it after the dungeon/raids complete in tavern or city.
Makes me laugh seeing people say "You're all quite in here!" during group play. Like most playing are there to make friends.
Nope, we are here first and foremost to play a game with others, not to make friends.
Even with LFG tools in games, friendships are born everyday within MMOs still for those who seek it.
Always great to have a perfect example of where the problem lies, thanks for stepping up.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I guess i am one of the lucky ones. Extremely lucky now that i think about it more. Started playing DAoC 14 years ago, first guild i got in i have been with since. Through numerous MMO's.
In the early days of MMOs, there was a genuine sense of terra incognita. Everyone was fascinated by where this genre would lead, a new form of society, emerging game-based economies. It was still a relatively niche early adopter activity, populated by the intellectually curious.
Some of these things did happen, but as they did, the game marketplace became increasingly entwined with the real world marketplace, game gold essentially became a real world currency. Suddenly things weren't just fun, they had value. In came the bots and the hackers and the cheats and the farmers and soon enough this wonderful frontier society became a greedy and often unpleasant place to hang out.
So the games companies fought back, curbing available behaviours, limiting outcomes, regulating the marketplace. This was somewhat necessary, but the sense of new world exploration receded. As systems congealed, so did the mentality of the playerbase. It became all about the grind to get the loot. Any time not doing that became time wasted.
This led to horrible social outcomes. Elitism. Rudeness. Bullying. Strong-arming. Impatience. There were those who paid their way to immense power. Those who grinded their way there. Rigid hierarchies emerged. The best items were so much better than the worst items, the idea of a fair competition disappeared with other utopian ideals.
What had been a happy playground of fellow explorers became a nasty stratified plutocracy, and in a nutshell, lost its magic.
There was still fun to be had, but increasingly less with random outsiders. Too many of the people you met in MMOs were creeps, who you would never want to hang out with in real life. Imagination and play were quashed at the altar of commerce and the grind for power. Why spend time with these people? You find enough of them at work, and the last thing you want is to sully your relaxation time with more of the same.
Unfortunately, as MMOs have advanced, they have become more and more like real life. Which, unless you're at the top of the heap, can be brutal.
Thus the renaissance of the single player RPG. These are fun, because they allow you to play. No dweebs cursing at you for mucking around, no groups kicking you out for not wearing the latest fashions.
The dream of 'be who you want to be' does not exist in MMOs. There's too much social pressure to conform.
Single player RPGs, on the other hand, still offer that possibility.
That's why, when people play an MMO, it's increasingly for that single player experience, with the added bonus of being able to watch other lone heroes do their thing.
Playing alone gives you the ability to play and dream. Playing with random others rarely allows that.
Comments
If i want to solo, i solo ... this is not a job, and there is no responsibility.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
Outside forms of communication are just icing on the cake.
Even if they say they would quit they would end up been obligated to play them as is, otherwise run out of mmo's and end up in single player rpg's, mobas, fps, plateform games. Mmo's would still thrive but for now dev's are scared to take the steps needed to do so. Anyways to each there own. I hope one days we get at least a few real dev's that takes the nice decision and stick to there original plans and not cave in to the community that likes only easy mode mmo's.
Really though I have become one of the players that plays an MMORPG without talking to anybody. Most of the time I do it because it is easier. Teaming up in unnecessary for levelling, I will talk to people when the dungeon finder puts me into a group with them.
Unfortunately, playing this way seems to lead to a less enjoyable experience. Maybe I should stop.
After LFD content was primarily done with randomly assigned nameless-faceless strangers from other servers that you would never see again and couldn't contact later even if you wanted to.
Your reputation didn't change your place in the queue. There was no longer anything your fellow party members could reward you for being friendly aside from a sad "lol" in party chat and there was nothing of consequence they could do if you were the most obnoxious asshole possible.
The once epic dungeon run was now reduced to a silent meat processing factory that churned out loot with the least amount of human interaction possible.
There were many things that lead up to it but LFD put the definitive nail in the coffin of human interactions in MMORPGs.
I know many of people prefer to play solo now and keep their "human" contact to a minimum in MMOs these days. And I am with you. Because You can't get in a group without partnering up with people whom can potentially become serial killers.
But it wasn't always like this. Even in WoW early days the anti-socials were shunned out of communities. Even elitists had a totally different behavior. Like if you got in a PUG and made the same mistake 8 times in a row and get the group stuck at a certain point someone were bound to leave or start calling you names. But now these days, if you don't meet their "standards" you are entitled to hear a variety of F words and C words. Now at the sign of first wipe 3 out of 5 people would leave the group instantly. That's because you don't need to have a reputation anymore. You don't have to make relations in a game to advance.
I remember the days if one my guild members had left a PUG or been rude to someone their GM would contact me and I had to discipline or even kick the fella out of the guild. MMOs used to be a community.
There are filled with Anti-Social people since developers started to cater to Anti-Social people. Making the game "solo-friendly" is just a fancy word for that.
What's the freaking point of playing a MASSIVELY multi-player online game if you want to avoid all contacts possible?! I don't reach out to MMOs as a desperate attempt for human contact, not many people do. It's totally wrong that some people on this thread labeled others like that. I have enjoyed video games on a single player level, then a co-op level, then at a community-sized level. It doesn't mean that my parents never loved me or I can't find friends in real life or anything wrong with me.
If we're finding faults here there is something drastically wrong with people whom can't befriend a couple of virtual orcs in a silly game anyways.
Iv found out that Theme Park mmos have a very divided community, no need for Teamspeak or any Comms, just wana get their Raids done with their so called "Guild" and go back to solo jerking themselves in the corner. Sad.
Play a Sandbox MMO, for example. Darkfall, Albion Online, Life is Feudal. The guilds are more connected and always using a comms like teamspeak.
Its just that these No risk MMO's have no need for a community because the devs make it efficient to do everything by yourself and just make it a bother to try to group up to get what you need. They cater to the casual players, and when i say casual i mean in this case, Players who have Limited time to play their game and can not dedicate at least a 3-4 hour to their gaming session when they log in.
[mod edit]
Most just want to play a game with others, they'll communicate at a level where they talk tactics/strategies, mechanics, skills, lore etc. Group play should never have you be forced to make friends.
If they want to socialise at a level to get to know people personally/be their friend by all means do it after the dungeon/raids complete in tavern or city.
Makes me laugh seeing people say "You're all quite in here!" during group play. Like most playing are there to make friends.
Nope, we are here first and foremost to play a game with others, not to make friends.
Even with LFG tools in games, friendships are born everyday within MMOs still for those who seek it.
The game moved slower, people moved slower because they had to actually stop and type in order to communicate with one another, and that gave a lot of people time to actually formulate plans of attack, develop characters amongst their peers, and even roleplay a little.
Enter VOIP and all of that died almost instantly. No one wants to roleplay in VOIP because it's embarrassing and often silly. People join together in groups, further exacerbated (that was the word to get me in the big vocab club) by functions that have already been mentioned, and do not say a word to each other. This caused the player who was NOT in the VIOP channel to feel completely alienated. And at the new and improved speeds that players could now move without having to stop to type to one another, that was pretty much the end of trying to group with new people for a lot of folks.
Some games have attempted to circumvent this problem by adding chat functions within the game that allow people to speak to each other in a VOIP fashion once they join each others groups, and these games, although not as social as the games that were played prior to VOIP being used in a widespread fashion, have been the more social games to play. Developers however, have for whatever reason shyed away from keeping this function in their titles in lieu of allowing the players to choose the VOIP programs they liked and thus, continue the corralling.
Another thing that I believe has caused a great deal of harm to the entire genre has been area wide faction chat. Now this is just a "in my opinion thing" but, if it were up to me the only functions that a player would be able to use inside of an MMORPG that could speak to an entire zone, or even to anyone outside of what would be considered the normal range of their voice would be an "LFG" key. Inns and cities would have to be used for all other social interaction outside of standing in front of someone or being grouped or guilded with someone.
Faction chat, and the current abuse of it for attention, has become, in my opinion, the single most annoying thing to almost everyone who plays an MMORPG save for the abusers. What used to be a useful tool for learning how to play the game has now become a place where you get called stupid and/or given bad advice for asking a question as well as a podium for just about every person that got too drunk while playing or didn't get enough attention as a kid to shout obscenities. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. But enough of that. My wall has grown beyond my screen and I know what that means. Just wanted to add my two cents though.
This isn't real life goes both ways. We don't live in these games. We just play them. The developers design and manipulate how players play. Even if developers don't understand how short term conveniences effect the long term. Though I think they do at this point.
You lose out on a lot of potential having everyone online and not using that resource. They're forced to give us crap filler to fill out our experience because there is nothing beyond the single player combat game to keep us playing. I fully believe its one reason the genre has dried up in the west. You look at the cost of "feeding" content to players who eat it in weeks. Its probably not worth it. The whole genre is over refined for ease and shallowly focus on combat questing.
Yes, inconvenieces and challenges are/were part of video games. You can tell MMORPG by design to get as many players are possible do as much as possible to keep them superficially happy and "unfailed." The problem comes into play that the brand of gaming combined with obsessive combat only oriented games fails to hold players attention for long. Its like giving children candy only because you don't want to upset them. Its not good for the players or the people creating the product in the long term.
"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
If people are incapable of making friends within a game unless you're forced to, how am I the problem?
If you're finding it hard to make friends, be it in the MMOs, online FPS/RTS/MOBA communities, then you're probably not that likeable.
And anyone thinking removing the LFG tool will help build better communities is deluded.
Some of these things did happen, but as they did, the game marketplace became increasingly entwined with the real world marketplace, game gold essentially became a real world currency. Suddenly things weren't just fun, they had value. In came the bots and the hackers and the cheats and the farmers and soon enough this wonderful frontier society became a greedy and often unpleasant place to hang out.
So the games companies fought back, curbing available behaviours, limiting outcomes, regulating the marketplace. This was somewhat necessary, but the sense of new world exploration receded. As systems congealed, so did the mentality of the playerbase. It became all about the grind to get the loot. Any time not doing that became time wasted.
This led to horrible social outcomes. Elitism. Rudeness. Bullying. Strong-arming. Impatience. There were those who paid their way to immense power. Those who grinded their way there. Rigid hierarchies emerged. The best items were so much better than the worst items, the idea of a fair competition disappeared with other utopian ideals.
What had been a happy playground of fellow explorers became a nasty stratified plutocracy, and in a nutshell, lost its magic.
There was still fun to be had, but increasingly less with random outsiders. Too many of the people you met in MMOs were creeps, who you would never want to hang out with in real life. Imagination and play were quashed at the altar of commerce and the grind for power. Why spend time with these people? You find enough of them at work, and the last thing you want is to sully your relaxation time with more of the same.
Unfortunately, as MMOs have advanced, they have become more and more like real life. Which, unless you're at the top of the heap, can be brutal.
Thus the renaissance of the single player RPG. These are fun, because they allow you to play. No dweebs cursing at you for mucking around, no groups kicking you out for not wearing the latest fashions.
The dream of 'be who you want to be' does not exist in MMOs. There's too much social pressure to conform.
Single player RPGs, on the other hand, still offer that possibility.
That's why, when people play an MMO, it's increasingly for that single player experience, with the added bonus of being able to watch other lone heroes do their thing.
Playing alone gives you the ability to play and dream. Playing with random others rarely allows that.