Best Community?

JeffSpicoli

I like WOW Chat, I often find it hilarious.

GeezerGamer

I would think that the more the game is shifted for solo play, the less likely the community will be to band together and form bonds.

There are execptions. Early in GW2, the community was great. It's still decent but not as much.
Early WoW was good and bad.....I think it was polarized. You had douchebags, but people who wanted to get things done and not in the elitist kind of way, were helpful as any other community.

Games that were really designed around groups and player coordination had decent communities because Douchebags couldn't solo/cheat their way up the ladder as easily as people who had their friends.

But nowadays, I can log in, find some guild spamming recruitment in chat channels, join them, and go about my business as if they didn't exist. 

kikoodutroa8

Probably Star Citizen, as proven by the bettybigtits episode.

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/441431/starcitizens-get-scammed-out-of-thousands-of-dollars-of-ships-by-bettysbigtits/p1

TheDarkrayne

LOTRO, easily. Most mature, most helpful and most talkative.

GW2 PvE is good... but GW2 sPvP is absolutely toxic, especially if playing ranked arenas.

Rollerrat

GeezerGamer said:

I would think that the more the game is shifted for solo play, the less likely the community will be to band together and form bonds.

Not always like this. Modern day LOTRO is pretty much solo to the level cap. But still the game has a community with a capital C.

Ungood

TheDarkrayne said:

LOTRO, easily. Most mature, most helpful and most talkative.

GW2 PvE is good... but GW2 sPvP is absolutely toxic, especially if playing ranked arenas.

I dunno.. The Raid and T3-T4 fractal community is pretty bad, I'd say on par to the PvP community in that game.

Kyleran

DMKano said:

The most important thing to note is that the quality of the community is a direct result of the underlying game design.

Game design that is focused on cooperation rather than competition is much more likely to have a nice supportive community.

Games with highly toxic communities usually have cutthroat competitive game elements.

So bottom line - the game design is what ultimately determines what type of community will thrive.

I agree and would add there needs to be some sort of independence between the players as part of the design as well.

This doesn't mean "forced grouping" but rather there should be mechanics that encourage player interactions and provides goals best achieved by working with others.

If a player has no need to interact with others, they often won't which I think most modern MMORPGS well illustrate. 

Scot

DMKano said:

The most important thing to note is that the quality of the community is a direct result of the underlying game design.

Game design that is focused on cooperation rather than competition is much more likely to have a nice supportive community.

Games with highly toxic communities usually have cutthroat competitive game elements.

So bottom line - the game design is what ultimately determines what type of community will thrive.

I agree but I think you are overestimating the qualities of the game. You can buy a really nice car for a road trip, great air conditioning, lovely comfortable seats, smooth driving experience, but if the gang in the car with you have the community spirit of roadkill, that journey is not going to be enjoyable.

cheyane

TheDarkrayne said:

LOTRO, easily. Most mature, most helpful and most talkative.

GW2 PvE is good... but GW2 sPvP is absolutely toxic, especially if playing ranked arenas.

Interesting that the sPvP community is the one that's toxic. Is it indicative of a pattern where PvP communities are concerned ?

Sephiroso

I think GW2 has the best community. I may be biased but i recently got back into it and was just chatting in /map and someone asked what expansion I had(we were discussing builds) and i said i didn't have either and was thinking about getting HoT but i couldn't afford both.

They offered, and followed through with purchasing PoF for me. All happened last night, honestly still can't even believe it all actually happened. Never had a stranger, someone i literally never spoke to before, drop cash on my behalf like that.

There's always helpful people in chat as well. I'm not saying it's spick and span, there are trolls, elitists, and asshats just like there will be in every game, but there are some massively cool people in the GW2 community.

KnightFalz

LotRO was alright when I was playing. SotA also, more recently.

In addition to game focus, as DMKano suggests, I have found the size of the player base relates to the community as well, generally the smaller the better.

Scot

KnightFalz said:

LotRO was alright when I was playing. SotA also, more recently.

In addition to game focus, as DMKano suggests, I have found the size of the player base relates to the community as well, generally the smaller the better.

It does seem the more people you get the more it turns into a mob, a lesson for social media perhaps?

Octagon7711

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

The most important thing to note is that the quality of the community is a direct result of the underlying game design.

Game design that is focused on cooperation rather than competition is much more likely to have a nice supportive community.

Games with highly toxic communities usually have cutthroat competitive game elements.

So bottom line - the game design is what ultimately determines what type of community will thrive.

I agree and would add there needs to be some sort of independence between the players as part of the design as well.

This doesn't mean "forced grouping" but rather there should be mechanics that encourage player interactions and provides goals best achieved by working with others.

If a player has no need to interact with others, they often won't which I think most modern MMORPGS well illustrate. 

In GW2, that's what world bosses and dynamic events are for.  It takes a mostly well co-ordinated group effort to defeat a world boss and boss groups that take players all over the land.

Octagon7711

DMKano said:

The most important thing to note is that the quality of the community is a direct result of the underlying game design.

Game design that is focused on cooperation rather than competition is much more likely to have a nice supportive community.

Games with highly toxic communities usually have cutthroat competitive game elements.

So bottom line - the game design is what ultimately determines what type of community will thrive.

I think the bottom line would be how well the Devs enforce the rules without letting personal feelings rules them.  Bad Devs or poor management decisions, can destroy a game faster than bad players.

KnightFalz

Scot said:

KnightFalz said:

LotRO was alright when I was playing. SotA also, more recently.

In addition to game focus, as DMKano suggests, I have found the size of the player base relates to the community as well, generally the smaller the better.

It does seem the more people you get the more it turns into a mob, a lesson for social media perhaps?

Social media is mob, so provides an excellent resource for the study of such.