For the most part, maturity's where you find it. I've played with two mature, stand-up guilds in Guild Wars - including being in the same alliance with a guild that was in the alpha testing of the game. So my experiences in GW have far the most part been terrific, despite the lack of maturity and rudeness from the general Battlenet kiddie public. A good guild goes a long way to improving your enjoyment of a game, even a game with a notoriously rough community like GW.
As to the original OP's question about why online games seem to attract immature players, I'd argue that even in real life you see many, many examples of rude and immature people. Go to the movies today and watch how people are talking loudly, taking cell phone calls, even getting drunk throughout a movie you just paid $7-$10 for. I was with my wife at a baseball game recently and a fan from the other team called my wife a bitch (fortunately for that jerk I was at the food counter when it happened). So if people are going to ruin your day in person, is it any surprise that there are a large number of immature jerks who act out online?
I like the idea of a rating system, but from what I've heard about Sims Online such a system could easily be abused. Very quickly some kid will be spamming you with "gimme a gold piece or I'll rank you as a bad player" or whole guilds will be running an extortion ring. The only thing I think devs can do about the problem is strongly police the community and start banning accounts after one or two warnings.
An 18 and over age limit is the only semi-solution I see. The age limit would shed off a slight percentage from the under 18 crowd that are immature. People would get around it though.
At the same time not all under 18 are immature and not all over 18 are mature either. Odds are that a higher percentage under 18 are immature :P. You're not gonna be able to escape it though.
To be truthful, it is really not the 10-18 year old crowd that bothers me. I can ignore them. Instead, it is the immature 18+ year olds that give me the most trouble. They walk around with a huge chip on thier shoulder, acting like all-knowing gods of MMORPGs. Everytime you get into a group with them, they want to dominate everyone, and then demand preferential treatment for gracing you with their presence.
This crowd makes me worry about the community of AoC. These people will flock to the game just because it is being advertised as an "Adult" game.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
The root of the problem in my opinion is the fact that it's completely annonymous. Players feel free to act like total idiots, because no one knows who they are and they don't know anyone either so they couldn't care less if someone thinks they are an idiot. That's both a curse and a blessing to the genre however. If you didn't have this total annonymity, would people feel comfortable enough playing the role of Thor, god of tanking!!! For most people, MMO's are an escape from reality, an escape from rules, an escape from limits. Part of that is an escape from having to reign in our desire to be obnoxious jerks from time to time. You can't have a fantasy world where we are free to fight dragons with swords and sorcery if at the same time we all have to act civil to each other all the time. They don't go together. If you go back in history and look at the great armies, they consisted mainly of a bunch of drunken heathen brutes for the most part. They had very little regard for others opinions or feelings. But that's partly why they were so successful. That's part of the package. So while it would be really nice if we could all just play nice, if you actually had a game where everyone did that, I'm not sure that it would be much fun. Go with the flow. Have a little fun. If someone acts like a jerk, don't let it get to you. /ignore is a pretty cool feature. Effective use of it does wonders for gameplay.
You know thorsnes, i was actually thinking about this heavily about two days ago and was wondering what good it would do to even try to post it on the forums. Thank you for coming forward and doing this. As to the answer of the question, "how do you you make a gaming community more mature?" well the sad fact of the matter (even after all my years of studying games as i play them) is that it really is not a simple task. You have people that are older that are more immature than some bratty kid, then on the flip side you have people that are younger that are some of the most mature people i've seen.
Ok well then here comes a bigger question: "How does one build a more mature community when you really can't use the aspect of age to limit immature stuff happening?" Then the answer kinda hit me. You have to change the kind of gameplay. Now keep in mind i'm not talking about playing chess or anything like that. Im talking change the way people look at the game. Is it all about killing (aka the level rush/pvp)? If it is its probably a game that will have more immature people due to the fact that they can grief others and always get the satisfaction from it due to no death penalty.
"But what do you mean archeus?" Simple. Change to gameplay to be more sandboxish and make it more about making choices, defending homelands, should i kill this person? No, becuase his group may come and kill you resulting in a major death penalty. What am i suggesting? A thinking mans game that makes you enjoy socializing with people but on the other hand makes people do what these games were meant for in the first place: "ROLEPLAY". Am I saying that their shouldn't be killing mobs, quests, etc etc etc? Not at all. In fact im trying to show and tell people that games can be much more entertaining and deeper than just the run of the mill stuff we've seen recently. And in the same respect, be more mature.
Just my two cents.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
Ban anyone that doesn't adhere to the conduct desired. The size of the player base that you're left with indicates how many people agree with the conduct.
Mind you, if you're left with too small a population to enjoy the game you'll have to ask yourself some deeply personal questions about what you consider to be "mature conduct."
The only real solutiuon i can see i having a rating system for players to moderate their own. If you are kind and dont ninja loot and help out people who require it, they send in a positive vote for you. If you steal someones kill or you lure mobs to them and get them killed (intentionaly) you get a nevative vote. After awhile you get a rank of some sort. Depending on your rank you can or cannot speak in certian channels or perhaps you get a flag over your head. This way you can be shunned by your fellow players. If you see someone coming who has a "ninja looter" flag beside your head (or on your portriat after you have selected the user). That way you know to watchout for this guy. Perhaps each type (positive feedback or negative) can watch the others channels but cannot communicate unless through PM (that way trading could continue.
This won't work and in fact something like this has been tried before and it was a huge failure. Why? Because it's so easy to abuse. Who do you think is going to be voting for you? The same people that you're complaining are being immature. You think those people are gonna give honest votes? No they are going to spam the votes that you are a complete idiot, just for the fun of it.
Another reason why it won't work is because for it to be of any use, your rank has to be displayed for all to see correct? What did you just do? You created a high score table for abusive behaviour!!! Woohoo!! Now EVERYONE will want to see just how bad they can get their score. Damn, I'm only 20th on the list of most abusive people in the game, I'm SLACKING OFF AGAIN!!!
Personally, I think the amount of immaturity is overestimated in most online games. The problem is that even if 99% of the population are nice, mature and considerate, you'll probably never hear from 97% of them, because they have very little need to use the public chat channels. it's that immature 1% that uses chat and game mechanics to the fullest extent of annoyance that make games seem much worse than they are.
I'm coming from Guild Wars, a game that is considered by many to have one of the worst communities out there. Since I rarely stuck with a guild, I usually used PuGs for tougher areas. In the hundreds of PuGs (most usually consisting of 8 people) I've been in, I'd say about 15% of them had an annoying, but harmless, player and about 2% had an elitist, a ragequitter and/or a ninja looting wannabe that made the group difficult to continue with. However, that's one player out of 8 that's problematic. The rest of the group was fine in those situations and when there were no troublemakers, the groups were usually great.
The best advise I have to avoid immaturity is simple: "Be Nice." If you simply act like a decent (i.e. normal) human being - participate in group conversations, maintain a civil tone and remember you're just playing a game - you'll find that other decent people will be find you. Eventually, you should have a decently-sized friends list and/or guild group that you won't ever have to deal with immature jerks again. Just thinking about all my friend lists, guild invites and PuGs in my past MMOs, I realize that most of my gaming relationships started because I simply acted nice in a group and other nice people responded.
If everyone would just follow a few rules like always be honorable and do not encrouch upon others basicly meaning dont insult no steal killing and etc, honestly we moderators in the game or move immature folks to there own server, im just speculating here.
there will always be people that think since they payed for the game, and a monthly fee, it gives them the right to do anything they want, even at the expense of other players. these games almost always have set rules and policies you agree to when you enter the game, but of course no one reads them. companies have to just be willing to enforce the rules and mediate, even if it means getting players to do it, like the guides in eq.
it is sad how hard it is to get perma-banned from a mmo though. people that act out and get reported alot, at most get a slap on the wrist and maybe a small suspension from the game. usually those people just come back bitter, and act out all over.
its pretty well known that the players have to police themselves. which works in smaller games, or games that arent so solo friendly.
eh (nerd alert) , its like in .hack, they were commenting on the same issue. and basically said the only thing you can do is just set a good example for other players, but not go out of your way to police and judge everyone.
immaturity in MMORPGs will only grow as long as the gaming developers fail to stop holding the hand of their players and making the game easy for them.
Of course, griefing will happen in every MMORPG no matter what, because you simply can't prevent those bastard 13 year olds from playing the game. What you can do, like said above, is just conduct yourself in a mature manner, and hopefully it rubs off. Too bad gaming developers think the solution here was to split player types (pvp servers and rp servers). That's never the solution, if anything it's the thing that leads to a game being boring and uninteresting.
My guild in WoW wouldn't take members who we could tell were children in vent. Discriminating against someones age has never been a bad thing, especially if it's done with a purpose. It's kinda like a 'social cleansing' thing that guilds and clans can do to weed out immature players. If this was coordinated with all the other clans/guilds in the game then I'm sure it would be successfull.
Until then, we'll sit back and enjoy the ever-so-interesting conversations in Barrens chat.
MMOer since 1997. Beta Tester for UO, DAOC, SB, PS, AC, and WoW. MMO Pro.
Developers and players need to set the tone from the start. Naming is very important. Developers should enforce strict guidelines regarding naming in whatever genre it is they are offering, and be proactive about changing names to fit it. Players should take the time to choose quality names and discourage others from choosing silly nonsensical names or names from popular culture.
I tried to get some feedback on this topic a few months back, but the thread didn't get the response I was hoping for and ended up in a troll fest, so I'm giving it another shot. Most - if not all - online games have very immature communities despite the fact that a lot of the players are - believe it or not - what we commonly refer to as "adults". Maturity obviously can't be measured in age, but more likely in a social intelligence test. Personally, I think this is both an interesting and very important topic and I know there are people out there who agree with me. Now, here's my question: How can both game developers and players make the online game communities feel a bit more mature (or less immature, if you will)? Knock yourselves out but try to keep it in a civilized manner.
Games need an online IQ test mostly aimed towards simple english and grammar usage.
Whoever fails, has their IP Address banned from joining, this would remove most idiots. That would be fantastic.
This reminds me a bit of the Leisure Suit Larry games where you would desperately try to get all the answers right in order to play (just to find out later that there was a cheat code to skip the questions - d'oh!). Anyway, if it works I'm all for it.
Yeah, It sickens me to think that most of the players in all MMOS are immature.But don't go assuming everyone under 18 is immature. I have seen 18+ year old people act like assholes and play the game JUST to piss people off.Trust me age does not reflect maturity and intelligence.
I tried to get some feedback on this topic a few months back, but the thread didn't get the response I was hoping for and ended up in a troll fest, so I'm giving it another shot. Most - if not all - online games have very immature communities despite the fact that a lot of the players are - believe it or not - what we commonly refer to as "adults". Maturity obviously can't be measured in age, but more likely in a social intelligence test. Personally, I think this is both an interesting and very important topic and I know there are people out there who agree with me. Now, here's my question: How can both game developers and players make the online game communities feel a bit more mature (or less immature, if you will)? Knock yourselves out but try to keep it in a civilized manner.
social engineering anyone to behave in a fashion that you want rather than what they want is one of the many facets of fascism
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
The short answer is no, you cannot stop immaturity in games unfortunatly. Making a game 18+ would require people to give up their ID number and I for one would not do that. Other than using the "ignore" feature which most games have there is nothing else to do at the moment.
One idea is to add a "do not group" list. If someone was greedy or an annoyance you could put them on the list. Before a group invitation was accepted it would check and alert you if a player on your list was already in the group. It would also alert you if you were trying to invite a person on your list. The only problem would be if the group leader invited the listed person when you were already in. Going a step farther would be checking for the players account not just one name.
This is a subject I've been thinking about for a long, long time. I've played MMO's since the original EQ up through the current WoW and LOTRO phase. The issues of maturity, civility, and anonymity are of great concern to me, as I'm finding myself increasingly repelled by the attitudes of players. I think there are numerous reasons that would explain the immaturity present in online games, but I'll just plop down my top three:
The rise of Individualism in society. There have been countless news articles about how we, as a society, are becoming increasingly self-centered and isolated as time goes by. The values our parents and grandparents had, especially about community, appear to be fading away. You're more likely to know the name and bio of your favorite sitcom star than you are of your next door neighbor. With this focus on individualism, and not community, is it terribly surprising that the same things occur in MMOGs? A MMOG is simply a reflection of society, not some paradise as portrayed by a fantasy writer.
The anonymity of the internet. Certainly, this is valid. This type of behavior has occurred for decades in many forms of social interaction, most obviously driving. How many times have you flipped someone off out of anger (or maybe took that last-minute cut-in on an onramp), knowing there was little they could do about it in return? How often would you do the same thing if you were standing face-to-face with that same individual? MMOGs are increasingly about getting "stuff." If there are no real-world repurcussions for negative behavior, what incentives are there to abide by the rules? If you have no solid moral center (and many, many people in this world lack a conscience), there is little cause to behave constructively.
In-game dynamics. Player expectations for MMOGs are rising at a precipitous rate. Whereas in the days of UO and EQ, simplistic graphics and experience grinds were fine and dandy. Content and raids were less about heavily-scripted encounters and more about a simple smash-and-dash approach to gaming. Now, with games like Warcraft, LOTRO, and others, players have come to expect highly-complex encounters and deep in-game content.
This type of content is increasingly difficult for developers to create in a timely manner, so they are forced to resort to large timesinks and other artificial ways of ensuring a revenue stream. Rep grinds, limited drops, and instance timers have all been invented in an effort to mete out loot and keep players paying month after month. This has led to complex DKP systems, casual-vs-raider animosity, and general loot envy, especially (and I hate to say it) among younger players who have less perspective on "how things work." Players are stressed. They want to log in and play and enjoy themselves, but they are met with a barrage of boring, tedious tasks to make progress, coupled with high administration time (assuming you are a raider) needed to organize and deploy a raid-level guild.
For many, these shortcomings have led to frustration and burnout. And, as anyone who has burned out in a real job can tell you, it's extremely easy to turn on your co-workers when you are miserable at your job.
I think there are probably dozens more reasons for players to behave the way they do, from a lack of time to simply using other players in a MMOG as a dumping ground for their own feelings of negativity. Whatever the cause, I do hope that developers find new ways to address this. To get to the core question, "What can developers do?" Heck, I love making suggestions. Here are a few goofy ones:
Finding a better model for rolling out content. Nintendo has demonstrated with the Wii (love it or hate it) that simple games are often big sellers. There is no reason that players HAVE to have massive dungeons and ornate gear farms when perhaps more adventures would be just as beneficial. If a developer can find a way to more rapidly roll out frequent content that serves their various audiences, it might help alleviate community stress.
Recognition for good behavior. Why NOT incorporate a player rating system? Give players a limited number of "thumbs-up" and "thumbs-down" markers that they can apply to players they meet. Allow other players to see the ratings so that they can be drawn to those who are considered good at what they do, and stay away from those who act negatively towards the community. There's no reason to ban someone, but it's not a bad idea to let a community ostracise them for misbehavior.
Provide more in-game community tools. Guild houses, in-game message boards, voice chat, etc. Run in-game community events (by GM's) such as character weddings, guild wars, etc. Anything to promote an active, involved community. In EQ, there was nothing as cool as interacting with a GM in a world event. Sadly, that type of interaction among players (and with the company running the show) seems increasingly remote.
Anyhoo, in most cases this has been "TLDR", but it's my two cents. Not as valid as some, but more valid than others
Its a complicated subject because in part the definition of 'immaturity' is probably going to differ from person to person. However, I thought I would bring something up in relation to the last post. Warcraft 3 has this popular mod called Dota Allstars. (This is basically 5 people or so on each team pitted against each other and the end result one team destroying the other's base) The problem with this game is that there will be either leavers- which ruin a game when it can take 30-45 mins to complete or you can have people that will just continually abuse in the game.
Anyway in response to this and with many people wanting good games the banlist was made up by someone. This banlist basically records leavers and owners of this banlist can add people who may have ruined a game or whatever and along with this there is a forum where people can get other people's banlists if they want to. Of course this does have a few big problems like it is just easy to namechange and some of the banlists can be just pretty personal reasons that another person would reason the same. Anyway it is an interesting system that I think does maybe have benefit in a game like WoW just to maybe improve the quality of pugs.
I know there was something similar in WoW called Karma mod that people having had a group with someone then could keep a personal karma rating of those people so as to note those who may have ruined a group experience. - But I think the person who made the mod didn't continue it and also there wasn't any forum that accompanied it to expand its usage or whatever. Maybe a system like that will find its way to WoW or general mmorpgs one day as I think despite some of its weaknesses(ie improper nameshaming from personal grudgery for instance) it could be very useful.
Recognition for good behavior. Why NOT incorporate a player rating system? Give players a limited number of "thumbs-up" and "thumbs-down" markers that they can apply to players they meet. Allow other players to see the ratings so that they can be drawn to those who are considered good at what they do, and stay away from those who act negatively towards the community. There's no reason to ban someone, but it's not a bad idea to let a community ostracise them for misbehavior.
In the same vein as my above post that would be useful like in the same way as forums with reps and that. Just the abuse of it and personal grudgery would be problems to have to get around.
In the same vein as my above post that would be useful like in the same way as forums with reps and that. Just the abuse of it and personal grudgery would be problems to have to get around.
I agree. I can totally see room for abuse, which is why any ratings system of this kind would need to be heavily considered before it was implemented. However, Ebay seems to have done it rather successfully for their business, so I have hopes that such a system is possible. Unfortunately, I can't see something like this being added to games that are already on the market, as it seems that the current desire is to remain "hands-off" with the customer base as much as possible. (Which is invariably more about $$$ than anything else.)
The short answer is no, you cannot stop immaturity in games unfortunatly. Making a game 18+ would require people to give up their ID number and I for one would not do that. Other than using the "ignore" feature which most games have there is nothing else to do at the moment. One idea is to add a "do not group" list. If someone was greedy or an annoyance you could put them on the list. Before a group invitation was accepted it would check and alert you if a player on your list was already in the group. It would also alert you if you were trying to invite a person on your list. The only problem would be if the group leader invited the listed person when you were already in. Going a step farther would be checking for the players account not just one name.
Making an 18+ game would do nothing. You think there are no immature people over the age of 18? I would argue that there are just as much immature people over the age of 18 than under the age. Age has nothing to do with immaturity in online games.
And the "do not group" idea sounds good, but I would extend that. If anyone adds a person to the "do not group" list, it would show up when ANYONE tries to invite that person. But to distinguish them from the real immature people, show how many people have added him, with a rating - but then you still decide if you want him to join.
So you invite some random person and it says something like "____ has 327 bad grouping complaints, do you still want to go thru with the invite?" So each person has their own personal "quota" on how many complaints they can deal with.
Comments
For the most part, maturity's where you find it. I've played with two mature, stand-up guilds in Guild Wars - including being in the same alliance with a guild that was in the alpha testing of the game. So my experiences in GW have far the most part been terrific, despite the lack of maturity and rudeness from the general Battlenet kiddie public. A good guild goes a long way to improving your enjoyment of a game, even a game with a notoriously rough community like GW.
As to the original OP's question about why online games seem to attract immature players, I'd argue that even in real life you see many, many examples of rude and immature people. Go to the movies today and watch how people are talking loudly, taking cell phone calls, even getting drunk throughout a movie you just paid $7-$10 for. I was with my wife at a baseball game recently and a fan from the other team called my wife a bitch (fortunately for that jerk I was at the food counter when it happened). So if people are going to ruin your day in person, is it any surprise that there are a large number of immature jerks who act out online?
I like the idea of a rating system, but from what I've heard about Sims Online such a system could easily be abused. Very quickly some kid will be spamming you with "gimme a gold piece or I'll rank you as a bad player" or whole guilds will be running an extortion ring. The only thing I think devs can do about the problem is strongly police the community and start banning accounts after one or two warnings.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
To be truthful, it is really not the 10-18 year old crowd that bothers me. I can ignore them. Instead, it is the immature 18+ year olds that give me the most trouble. They walk around with a huge chip on thier shoulder, acting like all-knowing gods of MMORPGs. Everytime you get into a group with them, they want to dominate everyone, and then demand preferential treatment for gracing you with their presence.
This crowd makes me worry about the community of AoC. These people will flock to the game just because it is being advertised as an "Adult" game.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
The root of the problem in my opinion is the fact that it's completely annonymous. Players feel free to act like total idiots, because no one knows who they are and they don't know anyone either so they couldn't care less if someone thinks they are an idiot. That's both a curse and a blessing to the genre however. If you didn't have this total annonymity, would people feel comfortable enough playing the role of Thor, god of tanking!!! For most people, MMO's are an escape from reality, an escape from rules, an escape from limits. Part of that is an escape from having to reign in our desire to be obnoxious jerks from time to time. You can't have a fantasy world where we are free to fight dragons with swords and sorcery if at the same time we all have to act civil to each other all the time. They don't go together. If you go back in history and look at the great armies, they consisted mainly of a bunch of drunken heathen brutes for the most part. They had very little regard for others opinions or feelings. But that's partly why they were so successful. That's part of the package. So while it would be really nice if we could all just play nice, if you actually had a game where everyone did that, I'm not sure that it would be much fun. Go with the flow. Have a little fun. If someone acts like a jerk, don't let it get to you. /ignore is a pretty cool feature. Effective use of it does wonders for gameplay.
You know thorsnes, i was actually thinking about this heavily about two days ago and was wondering what good it would do to even try to post it on the forums. Thank you for coming forward and doing this. As to the answer of the question, "how do you you make a gaming community more mature?" well the sad fact of the matter (even after all my years of studying games as i play them) is that it really is not a simple task. You have people that are older that are more immature than some bratty kid, then on the flip side you have people that are younger that are some of the most mature people i've seen.
Ok well then here comes a bigger question: "How does one build a more mature community when you really can't use the aspect of age to limit immature stuff happening?" Then the answer kinda hit me. You have to change the kind of gameplay. Now keep in mind i'm not talking about playing chess or anything like that. Im talking change the way people look at the game. Is it all about killing (aka the level rush/pvp)? If it is its probably a game that will have more immature people due to the fact that they can grief others and always get the satisfaction from it due to no death penalty.
"But what do you mean archeus?" Simple. Change to gameplay to be more sandboxish and make it more about making choices, defending homelands, should i kill this person? No, becuase his group may come and kill you resulting in a major death penalty. What am i suggesting? A thinking mans game that makes you enjoy socializing with people but on the other hand makes people do what these games were meant for in the first place: "ROLEPLAY". Am I saying that their shouldn't be killing mobs, quests, etc etc etc? Not at all. In fact im trying to show and tell people that games can be much more entertaining and deeper than just the run of the mill stuff we've seen recently. And in the same respect, be more mature.
Just my two cents.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
How? Quite easy.
Ban anyone that doesn't adhere to the conduct desired. The size of the player base that you're left with indicates how many people agree with the conduct.
Mind you, if you're left with too small a population to enjoy the game you'll have to ask yourself some deeply personal questions about what you consider to be "mature conduct."
Another reason why it won't work is because for it to be of any use, your rank has to be displayed for all to see correct? What did you just do? You created a high score table for abusive behaviour!!! Woohoo!! Now EVERYONE will want to see just how bad they can get their score. Damn, I'm only 20th on the list of most abusive people in the game, I'm SLACKING OFF AGAIN!!!
Ranking systems do not work.
The one way to 'ban' immature morons is by employing Darwinism, if a game punishes the retards they'll go elsewhere to another game real pronto.
Personally, I think the amount of immaturity is overestimated in most online games. The problem is that even if 99% of the population are nice, mature and considerate, you'll probably never hear from 97% of them, because they have very little need to use the public chat channels. it's that immature 1% that uses chat and game mechanics to the fullest extent of annoyance that make games seem much worse than they are.
I'm coming from Guild Wars, a game that is considered by many to have one of the worst communities out there. Since I rarely stuck with a guild, I usually used PuGs for tougher areas. In the hundreds of PuGs (most usually consisting of 8 people) I've been in, I'd say about 15% of them had an annoying, but harmless, player and about 2% had an elitist, a ragequitter and/or a ninja looting wannabe that made the group difficult to continue with. However, that's one player out of 8 that's problematic. The rest of the group was fine in those situations and when there were no troublemakers, the groups were usually great.
The best advise I have to avoid immaturity is simple: "Be Nice." If you simply act like a decent (i.e. normal) human being - participate in group conversations, maintain a civil tone and remember you're just playing a game - you'll find that other decent people will be find you. Eventually, you should have a decently-sized friends list and/or guild group that you won't ever have to deal with immature jerks again. Just thinking about all my friend lists, guild invites and PuGs in my past MMOs, I realize that most of my gaming relationships started because I simply acted nice in a group and other nice people responded.
If everyone would just follow a few rules like always be honorable and do not encrouch upon others basicly meaning dont insult no steal killing and etc, honestly we moderators in the game or move immature folks to there own server, im just speculating here.
Good advice I had a hard time doing that in wow.
there will always be people that think since they payed for the game, and a monthly fee, it gives them the right to do anything they want, even at the expense of other players. these games almost always have set rules and policies you agree to when you enter the game, but of course no one reads them. companies have to just be willing to enforce the rules and mediate, even if it means getting players to do it, like the guides in eq.
it is sad how hard it is to get perma-banned from a mmo though. people that act out and get reported alot, at most get a slap on the wrist and maybe a small suspension from the game. usually those people just come back bitter, and act out all over.
its pretty well known that the players have to police themselves. which works in smaller games, or games that arent so solo friendly.
eh (nerd alert) , its like in .hack, they were commenting on the same issue. and basically said the only thing you can do is just set a good example for other players, but not go out of your way to police and judge everyone.
I just want to say that I'm positively surprised at how to-the-point this thread is so far. Great reading!
immaturity in MMORPGs will only grow as long as the gaming developers fail to stop holding the hand of their players and making the game easy for them.
Of course, griefing will happen in every MMORPG no matter what, because you simply can't prevent those bastard 13 year olds from playing the game. What you can do, like said above, is just conduct yourself in a mature manner, and hopefully it rubs off. Too bad gaming developers think the solution here was to split player types (pvp servers and rp servers). That's never the solution, if anything it's the thing that leads to a game being boring and uninteresting.
My guild in WoW wouldn't take members who we could tell were children in vent. Discriminating against someones age has never been a bad thing, especially if it's done with a purpose. It's kinda like a 'social cleansing' thing that guilds and clans can do to weed out immature players. If this was coordinated with all the other clans/guilds in the game then I'm sure it would be successfull.
Until then, we'll sit back and enjoy the ever-so-interesting conversations in Barrens chat.
MMOer since 1997. Beta Tester for UO, DAOC, SB, PS, AC, and WoW. MMO Pro.
Developers and players need to set the tone from the start. Naming is very important. Developers should enforce strict guidelines regarding naming in whatever genre it is they are offering, and be proactive about changing names to fit it. Players should take the time to choose quality names and discourage others from choosing silly nonsensical names or names from popular culture.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.
Games need an online IQ test mostly aimed towards simple english and grammar usage.
Whoever fails, has their IP Address banned from joining, this would remove most idiots. That would be fantastic.
This reminds me a bit of the Leisure Suit Larry games where you would desperately try to get all the answers right in order to play (just to find out later that there was a cheat code to skip the questions - d'oh!). Anyway, if it works I'm all for it.
Yeah, It sickens me to think that most of the players in all MMOS are immature.But don't go assuming everyone under 18 is immature. I have seen 18+ year old people act like assholes and play the game JUST to piss people off.Trust me age does not reflect maturity and intelligence.
social engineering anyone to behave in a fashion that you want rather than what they want is one of the many facets of fascism
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
The harder the game, the more mature people act (age doesn't matter). The easiest, the more childish they act.
The short answer is no, you cannot stop immaturity in games unfortunatly. Making a game 18+ would require people to give up their ID number and I for one would not do that. Other than using the "ignore" feature which most games have there is nothing else to do at the moment.
One idea is to add a "do not group" list. If someone was greedy or an annoyance you could put them on the list. Before a group invitation was accepted it would check and alert you if a player on your list was already in the group. It would also alert you if you were trying to invite a person on your list. The only problem would be if the group leader invited the listed person when you were already in. Going a step farther would be checking for the players account not just one name.
Just not worth my time anymore.
This is a subject I've been thinking about for a long, long time. I've played MMO's since the original EQ up through the current WoW and LOTRO phase. The issues of maturity, civility, and anonymity are of great concern to me, as I'm finding myself increasingly repelled by the attitudes of players. I think there are numerous reasons that would explain the immaturity present in online games, but I'll just plop down my top three:
This type of content is increasingly difficult for developers to create in a timely manner, so they are forced to resort to large timesinks and other artificial ways of ensuring a revenue stream. Rep grinds, limited drops, and instance timers have all been invented in an effort to mete out loot and keep players paying month after month. This has led to complex DKP systems, casual-vs-raider animosity, and general loot envy, especially (and I hate to say it) among younger players who have less perspective on "how things work." Players are stressed. They want to log in and play and enjoy themselves, but they are met with a barrage of boring, tedious tasks to make progress, coupled with high administration time (assuming you are a raider) needed to organize and deploy a raid-level guild.
For many, these shortcomings have led to frustration and burnout. And, as anyone who has burned out in a real job can tell you, it's extremely easy to turn on your co-workers when you are miserable at your job.
I think there are probably dozens more reasons for players to behave the way they do, from a lack of time to simply using other players in a MMOG as a dumping ground for their own feelings of negativity. Whatever the cause, I do hope that developers find new ways to address this. To get to the core question, "What can developers do?" Heck, I love making suggestions. Here are a few goofy ones:
Anyhoo, in most cases this has been "TLDR", but it's my two cents. Not as valid as some, but more valid than others
Its a complicated subject because in part the definition of 'immaturity' is probably going to differ from person to person. However, I thought I would bring something up in relation to the last post. Warcraft 3 has this popular mod called Dota Allstars. (This is basically 5 people or so on each team pitted against each other and the end result one team destroying the other's base) The problem with this game is that there will be either leavers- which ruin a game when it can take 30-45 mins to complete or you can have people that will just continually abuse in the game.
Anyway in response to this and with many people wanting good games the banlist was made up by someone. This banlist basically records leavers and owners of this banlist can add people who may have ruined a game or whatever and along with this there is a forum where people can get other people's banlists if they want to. Of course this does have a few big problems like it is just easy to namechange and some of the banlists can be just pretty personal reasons that another person would reason the same. Anyway it is an interesting system that I think does maybe have benefit in a game like WoW just to maybe improve the quality of pugs.
I know there was something similar in WoW called Karma mod that people having had a group with someone then could keep a personal karma rating of those people so as to note those who may have ruined a group experience. - But I think the person who made the mod didn't continue it and also there wasn't any forum that accompanied it to expand its usage or whatever. Maybe a system like that will find its way to WoW or general mmorpgs one day as I think despite some of its weaknesses(ie improper nameshaming from personal grudgery for instance) it could be very useful.
I agree. I can totally see room for abuse, which is why any ratings system of this kind would need to be heavily considered before it was implemented. However, Ebay seems to have done it rather successfully for their business, so I have hopes that such a system is possible. Unfortunately, I can't see something like this being added to games that are already on the market, as it seems that the current desire is to remain "hands-off" with the customer base as much as possible. (Which is invariably more about $$$ than anything else.)
Making an 18+ game would do nothing. You think there are no immature people over the age of 18? I would argue that there are just as much immature people over the age of 18 than under the age. Age has nothing to do with immaturity in online games.
And the "do not group" idea sounds good, but I would extend that. If anyone adds a person to the "do not group" list, it would show up when ANYONE tries to invite that person. But to distinguish them from the real immature people, show how many people have added him, with a rating - but then you still decide if you want him to join.
So you invite some random person and it says something like "____ has 327 bad grouping complaints, do you still want to go thru with the invite?" So each person has their own personal "quota" on how many complaints they can deal with.