What Game Features Do MMORPGs Need to Foster Better Player Relationships? | One Good Roll | MMORPG.c

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What Game Features Do MMORPGs Need to Foster Better Player Relationships? | One Good Roll | MMORPG.com

If you had to make some changes to MMORPGs of today, what features would you add to create a game where players would want to build lasting relationships with each other?

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Angrakhan

The magic of forming relationships boils down to quality time. Not just time, but quality time. That's what fostered all these friendships in games like EQ or DAoC. If you wanted to get anywhere in the game past the newbie zone you had to group, you had to work together, and you had to spend a lot of time doing it. Anything less and you weren't going to get far in the game. When you have to work together to achieve a goal, suddenly everyone gets polite. It's all please and thank you. No one is trolling or arguing politics because that's the fast train to sitting on the sidelines.

Modern MMOs are largely massively single player online roleplaying games. What group content is there is bite sized, facilitated by group finders, and doesn't require much if any communication to complete. Which is all in opposition of forming friendships or even encouraging people to be nice to each other. That's why most modern MMO communities (of you want to call them that) are stinking cesspools, representative of the worst in us as humanity.

ashiru_1978

What is the game in the thumbnail? https://images.mmorpg.com/images/heroes/posts/126022.jpg

MMORPGs need to create a challenge that requires people to work together in a way that one player making a mistake cannot result in something like a wipe or something like that so that there is no toxicity or animosity between players. There should be more puzzles like in DDO too.

Another important facet of this should be that the encounter should have some kind of randomization so it's not always the same thing, in a way like procedural generation so that it cannot be documented in a Wikia article and people to try and run it "by the book".

It should have some good reward in the end so it entices people to take part in it and work together as a team, not a bunch of strangers that hate being together, but have to push through something just to get the lollipop at the end.

StevenWeber

ashiru_1978 said:

What is the game in the thumbnail? https://images.mmorpg.com/images/heroes/posts/126022.jpg

Greetings MMORPGer! 

The hero image is none other than FFXI!  I've started to label the hero images at the bottom of the article for future reference because the system currently doesn't allow an easy way to label the photo with a description or provide alt text as it currently stands. This is something we're looking into!

I really like the thoughts so far on making games more group friendly. I'm looking forward to seeing more opinions. 

Happy posting!

DigDuggy

Hmmmm,  I think VOIP would be helpful.  This way people aren't forced to download things like discord.  They can talk directly through the game during limited encounters and not just as part of a guild.

I think that reducing the ability of global chat in favor of more localized chat would help.  That includes things like help and trade.  They just become global chat when you remove general chat.  There are ways to allow global chat through, single use items and such.

This one is gonna sting.  Remove dungeon finders.  Some of the friends I made online were in old school WoW, waiting outside a bloody dungeon and being forced to try and get a group together.  It sucked, but you met people and formed some friendships.

just some thoughts.

eoloe

Angrakhan said:

The magic of forming relationships boils down to quality time. Not just time, but quality time. That's what fostered all these friendships in games like EQ or DAoC. If you wanted to get anywhere in the game past the newbie zone you had to group, you had to work together, and you had to spend a lot of time doing it. Anything less and you weren't going to get far in the game. When you have to work together to achieve a goal, suddenly everyone gets polite. It's all please and thank you. No one is trolling or arguing politics because that's the fast train to sitting on the sidelines.



Modern MMOs are largely massively single player online roleplaying games. What group content is there is bite sized, facilitated by group finders, and doesn't require much if any communication to complete. Which is all in opposition of forming friendships or even encouraging people to be nice to each other. That's why most modern MMO communities (of you want to call them that) are stinking cesspools, representative of the worst in us as humanity.

Well, this is the expected speech. I don't disagree with it but I think it deserves also more elements of explanation.

Players are not always college students who have an indecent time to play (even if they should study instead ). Players are also employed, and/or have a family to take care of.

The goal of the MMO industry is catter as most people as they can. This is why MMOs try to encompass a lot of various activities and that we have on these forums the PvP vs PvE or Elitists vs Casual shitshows.

In order to achieve this goal, game designers went from "You need to spend 3 hours to finish this dungeon after 5 hours of grouping with socially deficient so-called friends" to "press a group-finder button, and complete whatever task just before the angry wife shuts down the computer!"

Soloization of MMOs is real. And yes, like you mentioned, I agree, it does not help to build nice online communities. But this move does not come from thin air. It is the response of the industry to an evolving online world and to financial requirements.

Scorpium

This is what i think killed MMORPG games (in order):

1. LFG systems
2. Microtransactions
3. Streamers/Elitism on video platforms
4. Gold bots
5. Publishing/Selling unfinished games

DigDuggy

Scorpium said:

This is what i think killed MMORPG games (in order):

1. LFG systems
2. Microtransactions
3. Streamers/Elitism on video platforms
4. Gold bots
5. Publishing/Selling unfinished games

The first 2 are self imposed shots to the head.  People flocked to f2p.  Companies have to make coin to operate, so this was one solution and let's be fair, people take advantage of these microtranactions.  I think they're here to stay, but you can definitely restructure them to focus away from buying game breaking abilities.

The LFG is because people complained about having to find groups.  Like I stated in my post, it sucked, but...the almighty but, it fostered meeting people and forming some friendships.

Gold bots, I'm not so sure how they affect forming relationships.  I'm hoping most don't partake in the very devil and his gold bot minions.

Elitism has always been there, although they do have better reach now, and I think the internet has just goteen meaner.

Unfinished games is another one I'm not so sure about.  I've met people and had fun.  Even ditched games together and moved on to something else.

Uwakionna

Skill systems that are not entirely insular in their meta would be a good try for fostering more player interaction.

I get that the push for soloable content is a big force there, but like many things, it's not all or nothing. You can have a solo friendly experience as a baseline that then leans on the strongest combinations being cross-discipline skills that no one player can obtain.

Bring back some measure where you can only attain high performance in a particular track. And create more divergent scenarios where such divergent skills have unique necessity in improving the outcome of a scenario.

And that means out of combat as well. Traps, conversational skills, enchantment, hacking, etc. Most any skill can be applied as a contextual challenge, and it's a missed opportunity to focus almost entirely on combat in the core loop of dungeons or a game more broadly.

Mendel

Qbertq said:

Hmmmm,  I think VOIP would be helpful.  This way people aren't forced to download things like discord.  They can talk directly through the game during limited encounters and not just as part of a guild.

I think that reducing the ability of global chat in favor of more localized chat would help.  That includes things like help and trade.  They just become global chat when you remove general chat.  There are ways to allow global chat through, single use items and such.

This one is gonna sting.  Remove dungeon finders.  Some of the friends I made online were in old school WoW, waiting outside a bloody dungeon and being forced to try and get a group together.  It sucked, but you met people and formed some friendships.

just some thoughts.

VOIP doesn't have to be such a hassle.  Voice communications is long overdue for some real QoL enhancements, such as volumes on individual speakers and background filters.  Nobody wants to hear some other guy's dog/children/pizza delivery/police raid making a terrible racket while I'm trying to play.

I remember sitting outside Droga trying for hours to build a group in EQ1.  Couldn't find people who were actually interested in moving away from Overthere.  Eventually, the group fell apart without ever going into Droga.  It had only been 4 hours.  Sheesh!

Lithuanian

Absolutely none feature is needed, for all of them are in place.
It is not feature that could be programmed we should talk about. It's just personal approach. System where lvl.100 comes to aid little ones. 

System where noob questions ('how to kill this mob, does my Sword fit?", "how to un-equip Frying Pan?? Help!!:)  are answered in polite way, not "just google it".

System where new player asks if there is better armour than his/her lvl. 8 and kind crafter sends it (after asking if it is needed).

System where cold invites are just history. Where every invite is preceded by question - "Wanna join StinkyRat dungeon? May need you as a healer".

System where any kind of politics means automatic ban.

None can be scripted. All could be done by us, players.

eoloe

Mendel said:

<<div>I remember sitting outside Droga trying for hours to build a group in EQ1.  Couldn't find people who were actually interested in moving away from Overthere.  Eventually, the group fell apart without ever going into Droga.  It had only been 4 hours.  Sheesh!

Oh yeeeeeeeees.............. I do have similar stories, in which we try to get a tank and a healer. Got a tank after 30 min of chat LFG spam. Then same process with the healer. But by the time we got a healer, the tank lost patience and left. We waited even more (motivated people right?) and finally disbanded. Nothing was played for probably 2 hours

Enjoy the LFG spam grind !

OldKingLog

I'll tell you what. A feature that's been left by the wayside in the never ending stream of themepark MMORPGS. FUN. Its very hard to socialize with other gamers when you start to see them as just another set of numbers to be used, conquered, or avoided.

Scot

Scorpium said:

This is what i think killed MMORPG games (in order):



1. LFG systems

2. Microtransactions

3. Streamers/Elitism on video platforms

4. Gold bots

5. Publishing/Selling unfinished games

Welcome to the forums!

Scot

There are many ways to induce grouping that we have lost but one thing that concerns me is that grouping could be a playstyle more appropriate to the past. Obviously the reasons soloing became the predominate playstyle start with trying to entice single player fans in, but we have moved beyond that now, gamers play in a different way.

Looking at the way people play games now, on a rotation, frequently with friends I am not sure that is conducive to playing with players you don't know. Back when we used to hang around for ages to get a group it just felt normal, now the youngsters would not put up with it. It may be that gameplay inflicted down times offer a better way of socialising in game.

One final thought, all those vendors were putting a lot of time in, would there still be players willing to invest so much time in a game these days? I think so because if there is one thing that surprised me in MMOs it is that the crafting players still thrive in MMOs with a decent economy.

Amaranthar

If you want a game that builds lasting relationships, the first thing you need is a game that fosters open interaction and communication.
You can't bake a cake without the ingredients. 

Equally important, you should do everything possible to remove reasons to not interact with other players. 
-- Levels are the biggest factor here. You have a game where Players can only effectively play with a small percentage of other Players? Then they are going to ignore anyone they can't effectively play with. 
-- We all know how Levels divide Players. And anyone who builds a relationship with a few others, and then can't keep up, or Levels past them, suddenly doesn't have that "lasting" relationship. 
-- Gear levels are just as bad. Combined, they are devastating to lasting relationships. 

But it's not the Level system itself. It's the Divide. (Big Power Gaps.) 
So a game can have a Level based system, and the typical Classes that so many love, as long as that Divide is small(-ish). 

Scaling systems help a lot, but they come with a very much underappreciated problem. 
They take away a Character's indentity and relationship to the game world, as well as other Player Characters. 
This does a lot of harm to how a Player feels about their Characters. 
Scaling also removes the identity of the content, in the same way. 

There's a lot more involved in this topic, but this is the absolute foundation of the problem of socialization > community > and lasting friendships. 
(Unless you don't care about your Level 40 Character who's sometimes a Level something-else, and other times a Level still-another-thing.) 

incusgame

You want to foster community. Stop catering to the solo casual market. Remove auto group systems, for dungeons and raids. Design raids, dungeons and even quests behind a group ethos. Quest need for an example. Someone to carry a heavy item from point A to B. Player 1 has to protect player B. Force the roles to switch in the quest so its not boring for Player A or B.

Add a good LFG system that is not automatic. That perhaps will do a slot filler but have veto options with player ratings and flags. So people actually have to engage with the community.

theGnade

I don't see how LFG ruined MMORPG. LFG is nothing more than parsed text chat. I don't see how MMORPG were more interesting when you had to spam "LFG BC Tank" or had to scroll and analyze text chat different formats of messages to find your instance. I don't remember making friends and having some awesome social moments because of having to spam text chats.

We made friends because back then games were not built for snowflakes. Now you have everything instanced and timegated. Everything is watered down and systems to protect you from even slightest negative that could make weakest player to cry. MMORPG worlds just arent fun anymore.

theGnade

Amaranthar said:

If you want a game that builds lasting relationships, the first thing you need is a game that fosters open interaction and communication.
You can't bake a cake without the ingredients. 

Equally important, you should do everything possible to remove reasons to not interact with other players. 
-- Levels are the biggest factor here. You have a game where Players can only effectively play with a small percentage of other Players? Then they are going to ignore anyone they can't effectively play with. 
-- We all know how Levels divide Players. And anyone who builds a relationship with a few others, and then can't keep up, or Levels past them, suddenly doesn't have that "lasting" relationship. 
-- Gear levels are just as bad. Combined, they are devastating to lasting relationships. 

But it's not the Level system itself. It's the Divide. (Big Power Gaps.) 
So a game can have a Level based system, and the typical Classes that so many love, as long as that Divide is small(-ish). 

Scaling systems help a lot, but they come with a very much underappreciated problem. 
They take away a Character's indentity and relationship to the game world, as well as other Player Characters. 
This does a lot of harm to how a Player feels about their Characters. 
Scaling also removes the identity of the content, in the same way. 

There's a lot more involved in this topic, but this is the absolute foundation of the problem of socialization > community > and lasting friendships. 
(Unless you don't care about your Level 40 Character who's sometimes a Level something-else, and other times a Level still-another-thing.) 

Scaling system are sh#t and should never be part of MMO that has RPG in it.

MMORPG players want to feel power. They want to see their gear scores go up, damage to go up and see their character getting stronger. That is one key component that made old MMORPGs so great. One of the worst things you can do is add scaling. WoW PVP is great example. It started as fun side game. Then they deleted gear and scaled everyone to equal levels. Now the PVP sucked. Few years later they realized the mistake and started to reimplement gear importance into PVP, but now they don't know how to do it and keep breaking things even more.

cameltosis

I won't go into specific features, but there is a generally accepted set of conditions required around building social bonds:

1) Players need a reason to communicate and cooperate with one another

2) Players need tools to help them communicate, the more convenient the better.

3) Players need time to communicate.

4) Players need to bump into each other a lot in order to build up trust over time.

When all four of those conditions are met, social bonds will form naturally and a decent community will build up. Doesn't really matter whether it's a hardcore or casual game, doesn't really matter on what the underlying reasons for socialising are.

Tools like LFG, or systems like shallow combat mechanics, tend to undermine point 1. MMORPGs are on a downwards tradjectory in terms of complexity and depth, so reasons to communicate are diminishing.

Tools and time don't seem to have changed much imo. Chat is in every MMO, but most of them still don't include voice chat. Downtime still exists, sure, action combat may have sped the actual combat up, but u still need time to heal after a fight, and there is still an obscene amount of travel time.

Point 4 - repeated contact - is also an area where the genre has been dropping the ball. In a truly open world with no layering and minimal instances, you bump into the same sorts of players a lot. You see them whilst leveling, pick them out in PvP, you see them forming groups. This repeated contact builds trust, even before you've ever spoken to them. But, the trend of megaservers and layering, as well as cross-server features, has really destroyed this point. You're basically always surrounded by strangers.

Scorpium

Scot said:

Scorpium said:

This is what i think killed MMORPG games (in order):



1. LFG systems

2. Microtransactions

3. Streamers/Elitism on video platforms

4. Gold bots

5. Publishing/Selling unfinished games

Welcome to the forums!

Thank you

Quizzical

The problem with the article's proposals is that they all reward players who have large amounts of time to spend on a game at the expense of making things inaccessible to players who have little. Meanwhile, most people who play MMORPGs are in the latter camp. Make a game inaccessible to them and your target playerbase will be very small.

That's why developers have been going in the opposite direction with things like daily rewards. Sure, if player A has three times as much time to play a game as player B, player A will tend to progress faster than player B. But developers want to push it toward player A progressing twice as fast as B or some such to narrow the gap, while your proposals will push it closer to four times as fast.

Hariken

Sorry but it's not going to happen today. Players today just care about loot. They will group up for that then part ways. It's sad really because i remember how it was with the first gen.mmo's. And back then only computer nerds played mmo's. They weren't mainstream at all. 2001 i was playing Anarchy Online and on the weekends all the nightclubs and bars would be filled with players just hanging out getting to know new people. Even devs would login and start events and giveaways out of the blue. Devs today wouldn't dare do that because they would get toxic players bugging them. Sad but those days are over now.

Quizzical

If you want players to repeatedly group with the same other players, then you have to start by asking why they don't already do so.  The problem is that if there are a hundred things that you could group for in a game, two players can only group together if they want to do the same thing at the same time.

If those hundred things have a natural, linear order, then even if you group together with someone one day, if he stays online an hour longer than you after the group breaks, you'll be the wrong level or content area to group again tomorrow and may never be able to group with him again.

Some of the early MMORPGs had few things to do, which didn't naturally break up players into doing as many different content areas.  That's not repeatable today because most players won't play a game that consists mostly of grinding one area for several hours before moving on to grind the next for several hours.

In order to allow longer-term groups to be common, you have to kill the model of doing one piece of content to level up and/or gear up for the next.  Rather, you need power gains to be far more granular.  If you stay at the same power level for several hours before you get a jump, then it becomes far more reasonable to group with the same people several times in a row, only breaking up as people jump to the next tier.

Some games have tried to fix this with level scaling.  That has been a dismal failure.  Optionally scaling a single person who is way outside of the proper level range means that he's doing the wrong content and getting the wrong gear.  Try to make the rewards reasonable and endlessly farming one particular area quickly becomes the optimal strategy, which makes for a miserable leveling process.

Worldwide scaling where everything scales to your level, as in WoW, is even worse.  The problem is that that blocks the traditional way to ensure that you didn't get stuck in RPGs:  if you can't beat something, go gain a few levels elsewhere and then come back, and it then will be easier.  If you're stuck, so you go gain a few levels and the world levels up with you, then you're still stuck.

So game developers had to ensure that no one gets stuck, even incompetent players with poor gear and terrible builds.  Making everything beatable for such players means making it trivial for nearly everyone else, and that makes the game boring to play.

My solution to this is power tiers.  Make it so that power gains are much rarer.  Make every tier have a bunch of content of comparable difficulty so that it can readily be done in any order.  Meanwhile, your character only gets stronger when you move from one tier to the next.  Make those tier jumps considerable, however.  That way, if it's reasonable to group with a particular person once, it's commonly going to be reasonable to group again later or the next day.  If there are ten areas to clear in a given power tier and two people have each done half of them, then they can probably find a common one that they both still need.

How to make power tiers work with experience and builds is pretty obvious.  For gear, the way to do it is to set the minimum level requirement such that all gear that is acquired in one tier cannot be equipped until you reach the next.  You lose the ability to get a drop and equip it immediately, but still have the intrigue of assembling your gear for the next tier.

Ungood

If you want a more social game, you need to have more social features.

No amount of dungeons, raids, or content, especially not content that forces players to suffer though dealing with each other, will help build communities.

You want to have players build communities, give them good tools to build those communities.

Right now, most games have really lacking community building tools.

Simple as that.

Kyleran

Ungood said:

If you want a more social game, you need to have more social features.

No amount of dungeons, raids, or content, especially not content that forces players to suffer though dealing with each other, will help build communities.

You want to have players build communities, give them good tools to build those communities.

Right now, most games have really lacking community building tools.

Simple as that.

I think the question is what exactly are the best social features to implement which clearly from this thread many disagree on.