I don't talk a lot in games. Not because I'm anti-social. In fact I'm perfectly social. It's because most people I encounter are complete assholes and it's best to avoid them.
Originally posted by Alders The influx of douchebags caused by the removal of allowing the player base to police themselves.
Unfortunately the player base in games that allowed it did not police themselves well or consistently, allowing people to be douchebags, which then drove the friendly players out leaving only the douchebags.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Originally posted by ArclanSuch is the state of MMOs and why many millions of players are opting out. Everything about current MMOs causes anti social behavior. The biggest culprits are "F2P," rapid-leveling, and quest-driven gameplay.
What are you talking about? The MMO market is growing, particularly BECAUSE of F2P games.
We know you love "F2P" games since you post it 100 times daily, but please try to stay on topic.
i am disputing the point that millions are opting out .. in fact, millions are opting in, and grow the market. Do you dispute that? Do you have any evidence that millions are opting out?
Then start another thread and we can discuss how wrong you are. Until then, stay on topic.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Originally posted by AldersThe influx of douchebags caused by the removal of allowing the player base to police themselves.
Unfortunately the player base in games that allowed it did not police themselves well or consistently, allowing people to be douchebags, which then drove the friendly players out leaving only the douchebags.
This was never a problem in EQ. You must mean WoW or one of its endless clones.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Originally posted by ArclanSuch is the state of MMOs and why many millions of players are opting out. Everything about current MMOs causes anti social behavior. The biggest culprits are "F2P," rapid-leveling, and quest-driven gameplay.
What are you talking about? The MMO market is growing, particularly BECAUSE of F2P games.
We know you love "F2P" games since you post it 100 times daily, but please try to stay on topic.
i am disputing the point that millions are opting out .. in fact, millions are opting in, and grow the market. Do you dispute that? Do you have any evidence that millions are opting out?
Then start another thread and we can discuss how wrong you are. Until then, stay on topic.
Nah .. if you make the point here, i question you here. You can, of course, ignore me and concede the point.
Originally posted by ArclanSuch is the state of MMOs and why many millions of players are opting out. Everything about current MMOs causes anti social behavior. The biggest culprits are "F2P," rapid-leveling, and quest-driven gameplay.
What are you talking about? The MMO market is growing, particularly BECAUSE of F2P games.
We know you love "F2P" games since you post it 100 times daily, but please try to stay on topic.
i am disputing the point that millions are opting out .. in fact, millions are opting in, and grow the market. Do you dispute that? Do you have any evidence that millions are opting out?
Then start another thread and we can discuss how wrong you are. Until then, stay on topic.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
Originally posted by AldersThe influx of douchebags caused by the removal of allowing the player base to police themselves.
Unfortunately the player base in games that allowed it did not police themselves well or consistently, allowing people to be douchebags, which then drove the friendly players out leaving only the douchebags.
This was never a problem in EQ. You must mean WoW or one of its endless clones.
This was never a problem in FFXI either, until server transfers were implemented years later. If we ran into a douchebag or a loot whore/thief, they were ostracized until they quit the game since no one would allow them into their guilds. Everything changed once players could go anywhere they wanted and change their name.
Originally posted by Soaapy I don't talk a lot in games. Not because I'm anti-social. In fact I'm perfectly social. It's because most people I encounter are complete assholes and it's best to avoid them.
Yup, this. I play almost entirely solo today, not because I'm anti-social but because I hate the overwhelming majority of assholes currently playing these games. Find me a game with a mature, intelligent, rational community of players and I'll be the first one to group up.
I'll probably be saying this a lot, I love anti-social players. Social = Socialism. Socialism is where the governing bodies are in charge of distribution and consumption. The word government literally means to govern the mind; mind control. Thus, anti-social is nothing other than being an individual who does not follow accepted methods of behavior dictated by popular culture (cult), and are far less likely to support fascism by choosing to stand up for freedom of expression; free will.
Maybe the correct term is non communicative players, and if that's the case, I don't blame players, lots of pain arises from relationships, so I can relate to those that minimize their desire to form a relationship the second someone says "Hi".
So the answer simply is, our society and culture as a whole, is very damaging to people, and that translates into the fantasy games we play.
Not sure if you are aware of this but there is a difference between being social and socialism.
Common (but not only of course, as it is a root word of socialism) definitions of being social are :
marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with friends or associates social life>
tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others. For these defintions - anti-socal has nothing to do with mind control. Whereas socialism is: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods And no - that is not what government means. That may be what it started as, I don't know, but the word has definately changed. Today it means the act or process of governing; specifically: authoritative direction or control. and governing means: exercise continuous sovereign authority over; especially: to control and direct the making and administration of policy in While there is some truth that society is damaging to some people in some instances. It is also true that without group efforts, there would be far far far fewer humans, and life would be short and brutal. There are more benefits to most societies than negatives.
Aye, okay I may have been reaching on the social being socialism. It's just, like in highschool when the group points to the kid who's having issues at home or something, then call him anti-social and other names without having any consideration for what he's going through. No empathy. This word, along with community gets thrown around ALL THE TIME as some kind of saving grace of MMORPGs. When I actually am communicative in games, I'm pretty super friendly and sometimes even start role playing. Sometimes I'll challenge people when they are bullying someone, yet I don't call people names of speak in the manner of the examples that I'm actually defending on this site.
Constantly saying people are anti-social or communities are horrible doesn't get us anywhere, just makes us stay divided and conquered. Sure, not everyone will like everyone else, and that's cool, yet maybe a little bit of tolerance for our differences would be beneficial.
I really passionate about this subject because recently, I've had my most crazy experience in an MMO. I came back to a game after a few months of being away, and I was just hanging in one of the big cities, and reading map chat, and it was just a bunch of people, talking about another person. Now I may have been paranoid, but it felt like they were talking about me, and I'm just like, "what?!". I barely remember what was said, yet it affected me so much that I deleted my character and the game. A few days later, I realized that I shouldn't stop doing something I enjoy to do, simply because others have issues with me. (This ties in the post above about shunning someone out of a community simply because people will gang up on that person, and why a comment like that breaks my heart). So I reinstalled the game, made a new character which then made me public enemy number one simply because I was different from the rest of the group. And I proceeded to get death threats. Now, it's nothing new, I've had people in real life do the same. But honestly all I was doing was doing was enjoying the game, yet because I didn't follow along with the crowd, the crowd was offended, and apparently because of me, they weren't enjoying their game.
So this leads me to conclude that really, the people behind the screens may not be enjoying their games to be intolerant of outsiders or people who are different.
In terms of society being beneficial. Well, I disagree about the Western world. We may have advanced technologically, yet it's a mess. Of course, I do think the levels of human consciousness is increasing thanks to the internet, ancient eastern practices and healthy/clean western living(lots of people run and work out), yet popular culture is a mess, and doesn't help people.
The music is pretty bad, especially compared to what I listen too. Television induces alpha brain wave states, and I'm not sure about today, but I don't watch any new shows, the last show I loved that was good, in my opinion was LOST. Fringe was okay, yet I'm not even sure what's on now and days.
See, our society is all about rush, so this seeps into the games. No time to role play. We're all stressed due to work and the constant rush, so in games we do the same.
Another thing too is, with the advent of Feminism is the west, it becomes tough for men to find success in the real life game, so success in video games becomes the next best thing, because people want to succeed, people want to be happy, people want positive, harmonious relationships.
So what I'm trying to say with all of this is, all this finger pointing and name calling doesn't help, and is simply the symptom of deeper issues that exist within the consciousness of the human being, due to environmental factors, and why it's super sad to read comments sometimes, a mixture of the picard facepalm and heartbreak.
But, at the same time I do love these forums, as I'm really into human behavior and figuring out what is going on in the world and what this is all about. Like it's kinda weird, that we're all here, talking about video games, on a pretty neat site.
Even with all this text, I'd still call myself an anti-social gamer.
I think as much as we try to be adults, inside we're still children, children who need love.
And as much as I dislike society, life and nature itself can and is very beautiful. We have so much abundance on this planet, even an abundance of games to play, hence why it's tough to see how we're not happy with games. I'm not saying never be critical, but common, we have it good in the west, and I mean, REALLY good, that's why I think we're lucky to have so many games, and I'm grateful not only to be able to play these games, but that I can actually spend time discussing the state of games.
SO, (see, lol, and I'm anti social ) the "problem" is human consciousness and education. And maybe elitism. Anyways, I've rambled way too much for one post.
Hopefully it's explained in here why I think being social is following along with the majority, it may not have direct connotations with socialism, yet in some ways they may be more linked than semantics with say.
Anyways, thank you for the feedback, allows me to learn more about myself and see where I am wrong and need improvement.
After a post like this I've gotta put a link to a song I love. Only 2,000 views. This probably illustrates my point exactly.
Well, as always, and in agreement with some previous posters, I think it might be useful to think of a wider context than just games. I find it very hard to accept that people behaved better in games like EQ because of game design. Personally, I am polite, friendly and generous with other players regardless of context (ie whether a pug or group with guildies) because that's how I am in the rest of my life (well, most of the time). I like to be helpful in real life, ergo I like to be helpful in games because I'm still me, I'm just me playing a game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a saint, and I hate when other players are rude, selfish, greedy etc, and I quickly withdraw from such people. I notice a tendency for this type of behaviour generally now, though. People seem to be more stressed on the whole and stress causes irritability which can lead to aggressive behaviour. It may be that I'm mis-remembering the past (I'm 56 and live in the UK), but my memory is that people's attitudes to one another were different in the 50's/60's and 70's. They started to change here in the 80's with the whole yuppie thing ... me, me, me, my rights, my career, my big house/car etc.
I'm talking broad brush strokes here, of course, the picture is much more complex, but I'm simply saying that I've noticed a change in people's attitudes generally over the past 20-30 years and that obviously this will be reflected by player behaviour in games.
Aye, okay I may have been reaching on the social being socialism. It's just, like in highschool when the group points to the kid who's having issues at home or something, then call him anti-social and other names without having any consideration for what he's going through. No empathy. This word, along with community gets thrown around ALL THE TIME as some kind of saving grace of MMORPGs. When I actually am communicative in games, I'm pretty super friendly and sometimes even start role playing. Sometimes I'll challenge people when they are bullying someone, yet I don't call people names of speak in the manner of the examples that I'm actually defending on this site.
Constantly saying people are anti-social or communities are horrible doesn't get us anywhere, just makes us stay divided and conquered. Sure, not everyone will like everyone else, and that's cool, yet maybe a little bit of tolerance for our differences would be beneficial.
I really passionate about this subject because recently, I've had my most crazy experience in an MMO. I came back to a game after a few months of being away, and I was just hanging in one of the big cities, and reading map chat, and it was just a bunch of people, talking about another person. Now I may have been paranoid, but it felt like they were talking about me, and I'm just like, "what?!". I barely remember what was said, yet it affected me so much that I deleted my character and the game. A few days later, I realized that I shouldn't stop doing something I enjoy to do, simply because others have issues with me. (This ties in the post above about shunning someone out of a community simply because people will gang up on that person, and why a comment like that breaks my heart). So I reinstalled the game, made a new character which then made me public enemy number one simply because I was different from the rest of the group. And I proceeded to get death threats. Now, it's nothing new, I've had people in real life do the same. But honestly all I was doing was doing was enjoying the game, yet because I didn't follow along with the crowd, the crowd was offended, and apparently because of me, they weren't enjoying their game.
So this leads me to conclude that really, the people behind the screens may not be enjoying their games to be intolerant of outsiders or people who are different.
In terms of society being beneficial. Well, I disagree about the Western world. We may have advanced technologically, yet it's a mess. Of course, I do think the levels of human consciousness is increasing thanks to the internet, ancient eastern practices and healthy/clean western living(lots of people run and work out), yet popular culture is a mess, and doesn't help people.
The music is pretty bad, especially compared to what I listen too. Television induces alpha brain wave states, and I'm not sure about today, but I don't watch any new shows, the last show I loved that was good, in my opinion was LOST. Fringe was okay, yet I'm not even sure what's on now and days.
See, our society is all about rush, so this seeps into the games. No time to role play. We're all stressed due to work and the constant rush, so in games we do the same.
Another thing too is, with the advent of Feminism is the west, it becomes tough for men to find success in the real life game, so success in video games becomes the next best thing, because people want to succeed, people want to be happy, people want positive, harmonious relationships.
So what I'm trying to say with all of this is, all this finger pointing and name calling doesn't help, and is simply the symptom of deeper issues that exist within the consciousness of the human being, due to environmental factors, and why it's super sad to read comments sometimes, a mixture of the picard facepalm and heartbreak.
But, at the same time I do love these forums, as I'm really into human behavior and figuring out what is going on in the world and what this is all about. Like it's kinda weird, that we're all here, talking about video games, on a pretty neat site.
Even with all this text, I'd still call myself an anti-social gamer.
I think as much as we try to be adults, inside we're still children, children who need love.
And as much as I dislike society, life and nature itself can and is very beautiful. We have so much abundance on this planet, even an abundance of games to play, hence why it's tough to see how we're not happy with games. I'm not saying never be critical, but common, we have it good in the west, and I mean, REALLY good, that's why I think we're lucky to have so many games, and I'm grateful not only to be able to play these games, but that I can actually spend time discussing the state of games.
SO, (see, lol, and I'm anti social ) the "problem" is human consciousness and education. And maybe elitism. Anyways, I've rambled way too much for one post.
Hopefully it's explained in here why I think being social is following along with the majority, it may not have direct connotations with socialism, yet in some ways they may be more linked than semantics with say.
Anyways, thank you for the feedback, allows me to learn more about myself and see where I am wrong and need improvement.
After a post like this I've gotta put a link to a song I love. Only 2,000 views. This probably illustrates my point exactly.
Well, as always, and in agreement with some previous posters, I think it might be useful to think of a wider context than just games. I find it very hard to accept that people behaved better in games like EQ because of game design. Personally, I am polite, friendly and generous with other players regardless of context (ie whether a pug or group with guildies) because that's how I am in the rest of my life (well, most of the time). I like to be helpful in real life, ergo I like to be helpful in games because I'm still me, I'm just me playing a game.
They were not.
When i was playing EQ, plenty of people are training, arguing about camp queues, kill-stealing, loot and stuff.
EQ is much worse than today's game just because they can really grief you. At least in modern games, i can hit the quit button whenever i don't like the group, and they cannot training and got me killed and lose progress, or kill-steal the boss i have been waiting for hours.
Today's game is much better at providing tools to avoid players you don't like, or minimize their impact.
can't say I've noticed much difference lately, perhaps I was just lucky.
BTW what is a 'literal surge' ? Is this what is known as "dropping the literally bomb" ?
The "surge" is a tricky word, since we've been reading variations of this same theme since (at least) 2002.
Probably the first forum denouncement of these "new" rude people took place about two minutes after the first pick-up group.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't think they're anti-social, i think they simply want to play the game.
Unlike EQ where you would sit in the same exact camp and never have to move to avoid attacks that would kill you, the newer games you do have to move, you actually interact with the game. You're not just sitting there chatting away while one person chain pulls the same exact spawn point monster to you.
You can still chat but a lot of people are slow at doing it and thus your group ends up just blasting through the dungeons. I've seen so many players have to stop for two minutes just to type out a message while the rest of the group is moving on.
So sure it doesn't help the social aspect for slow typers but it is still an option. It's just different, not gone. You can act like the EQ days were so great because of the social aspect but i hated it. Plus there's not much to being "social" when you're just chatting with the same three or four people for ten plus hours a day. Of course there was shout chat also, but you might as well consider that the trade or general channels.
"They were not.
When i was playing EQ, plenty of people are training, arguing about camp queues, kill-stealing, loot and stuff.
EQ is much worse than today's game just because they can really grief you. At least in modern games, i can hit the quit button whenever i don't like the group, and they cannot training and got me killed and lose progress, or kill-steal the boss i have been waiting for hours.
Today's game is much better at providing tools to avoid players you don't like, or minimize their impact."
Yup, i remember that. It wasn't being social then, it was non stop drama.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief. Join me on TwitchFacebook Twitter
So sure it doesn't help the social aspect for slow typers...
I wonder....are typing skills degrading in the text-message age?
My kid can do (probably) 40 wpm with his thumbs. But he's (relatively) helpless on a standard keyboard.
One data point, of course, does not establish a trend... anyway, senseless digression, nvm.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
When i was playing EQ, plenty of people are training, arguing about camp queues, kill-stealing, loot and stuff.
EQ is much worse than today's game just because they can really grief you. At least in modern games, i can hit the quit button whenever i don't like the group, and they cannot training and got me killed and lose progress, or kill-steal the boss i have been waiting for hours.
Today's game is much better at providing tools to avoid players you don't like, or minimize their impact."
Yup, i remember that. It wasn't being social then, it was non stop drama.
and there is a reason why modern games got rid of all those things so players have fewer ways to make it non-fun for others.
I really passionate about this subject because recently, I've had my most crazy experience in an MMO. I came back to a game after a few months of being away, and I was just hanging in one of the big cities, and reading map chat, and it was just a bunch of people, talking about another person. Now I may have been paranoid, but it felt like they were talking about me, and I'm just like, "what?!". I barely remember what was said, yet it affected me so much that I deleted my character and the game. A few days later, I realized that I shouldn't stop doing something I enjoy to do, simply because others have issues with me. (This ties in the post above about shunning someone out of a community simply because people will gang up on that person, and why a comment like that breaks my heart). So I reinstalled the game, made a new character which then made me public enemy number one simply because I was different from the rest of the group. And I proceeded to get death threats. Now, it's nothing new, I've had people in real life do the same. But honestly all I was doing was doing was enjoying the game, yet because I didn't follow along with the crowd, the crowd was offended, and apparently because of me, they weren't enjoying their game.
er, I hate to say this but I suspect there is more to this story.
I've been playing these games since 2004 and, other than socializing with like minded people, I have never had any issues like that.
I mean, if we are to take this post on face value then "every person who makes a new character has received scorn and death threats".
Which is just not true.
I suspect the issues here have more to do with "what happened when you were socializing". Heck, the idea that you deleted the game and your character because you thought someone was talking about you should give you an idea that there might be a greater concern here.
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I think the anti-social behavior can be attributed to the anti-social mechanics of MMO's today. Most MMO players are achievement focused (Want to get to endgame and get the best loots). When the path to get to that point is to solo up as fast as you can then people are not going to go out of their way to communicate with others and risk slowing that progress down.
Cross-Realm LFG
Instant Port to Dungeon
Gather quests that don't share
Mob XP not splitting when grouped
Those are in my opinion the main reasons MMO's have become an anti-social environment.
It is not the games. It is the people.
The only difference is that you have a CHOICE of not socializing today, compared to the past. Choices are always good.
And if the choice reflects a desire NOT to socialize, well, that is what people want .. give it to them.
All the features are you listed are good games feature. If people value progress over socialization .. what is the problem then? Shouldn't electronic entertainment products cater to the desire of their customers?
People want endgame as fast as possible. More often than not in games today it is much faster to solo your way to endgame then it is to group up and quest/grind together. People won't risk the slow down to group. Why should they? Why would you group with 4 or 5 other people only to gimp yourself in progression?
That is the reason the anti-social behavior has become rampant in todays games. It is a design flaw that preys on people's path of least resistance behavior, or path of least effort as its known.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Originally posted by Fusion Answer to OP's question: World of Warcraft. Pre-WoW (when MMORPG's were a niche) most if not all gamers joined MMORPG's because of the community as much as the gaming aspect or even mostly because of the community aspect.
I was waiting for that answer. Although I believe that WOW was a contributing factor it is only due to WOW bringing more people into the hobby. WOW was not a bad place on chat. Back, prior to the end of WOTLK chat was full of jokes and people actually helping people. Personal attacks were rare and in general the environment was civil. Near the end of WOTLK things started changing. I went back to wow for a bit with Cata and Mop and the social environment completely changed. Personal attacks, flaming, provocative comments filled chat. I played about a month on each and then dropped. I speak from a pve/alliance perspective mainly (except I leveled three horde to 60).
The whole "why are mmo's not civil anymore" question is just a comment on society - throughout the world. The more people there are the more rectums there are both in games and in life.
As a care bear I have learned to be anti-social. I just keep my mouth shut, play solo and try to be polite even with ninja looters. Most importantly - I play on a pve server.
I think the anti-social behavior can be attributed to the anti-social mechanics of MMO's today. Most MMO players are achievement focused (Want to get to endgame and get the best loots). When the path to get to that point is to solo up as fast as you can then people are not going to go out of their way to communicate with others and risk slowing that progress down.
Cross-Realm LFG
Instant Port to Dungeon
Gather quests that don't share
Mob XP not splitting when grouped
Those are in my opinion the main reasons MMO's have become an anti-social environment.
It is not the games. It is the people.
The only difference is that you have a CHOICE of not socializing today, compared to the past. Choices are always good.
And if the choice reflects a desire NOT to socialize, well, that is what people want .. give it to them.
All the features are you listed are good games feature. If people value progress over socialization .. what is the problem then? Shouldn't electronic entertainment products cater to the desire of their customers?
People want endgame as fast as possible. More often than not in games today it is much faster to solo your way to endgame then it is to group up and quest/grind together. People won't risk the slow down to group. Why should they? Why would you group with 4 or 5 other people only to gimp yourself in progression?
That is the reason the anti-social behavior has become rampant in todays games. It is a design flaw that preys on people's path of least resistance behavior, or path of least effort as its known.
No. It is not the design. The root cause, in fact you mentioned it .. is that people value fast progression over socialization.
No amount of design is going to change that. You can suppress that but that is what people prefer.
The whole "why are mmo's not civil anymore" question is just a comment on society - throughout the world. The more people there are the more rectums there are both in games and in life.
Yeah .. it is human nature.
I don't play games to be social. I play games to have fun. Just focus on the entertainment aspect of games.
Well, as always, and in agreement with some previous posters, I think it might be useful to think of a wider context than just games. I find it very hard to accept that people behaved better in games like EQ because of game design. Personally, I am polite, friendly and generous with other players regardless of context (ie whether a pug or group with guildies) because that's how I am in the rest of my life (well, most of the time). I like to be helpful in real life, ergo I like to be helpful in games because I'm still me, I'm just me playing a game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a saint, and I hate when other players are rude, selfish, greedy etc, and I quickly withdraw from such people. I notice a tendency for this type of behaviour generally now, though. People seem to be more stressed on the whole and stress causes irritability which can lead to aggressive behaviour. It may be that I'm mis-remembering the past (I'm 56 and live in the UK), but my memory is that people's attitudes to one another were different in the 50's/60's and 70's. They started to change here in the 80's with the whole yuppie thing ... me, me, me, my rights, my career, my big house/car etc.
I'm talking broad brush strokes here, of course, the picture is much more complex, but I'm simply saying that I've noticed a change in people's attitudes generally over the past 20-30 years and that obviously this will be reflected by player behaviour in games.
I agree with you. People are different today. I usually blame Ayn Rand but that's just my somewhat obscure shorthand way of saying that, at least in the western world, selfishness is much more socially acceptable than it has ever been.
You mention the yuppies of the 80s and I don't disagree but I think the context is even wider. The world was reshaped in those same '80s yuppie years by Reagan, Thatcher and others with the whole bogus concept of "trickle down economics." 30 odd years later we are living in the aftermath of this Big Lie and the "common man" has a lot of anger, resentment and frustration just barely restrained.
That anger spills over everywhere people feel safe enough to express it...and the internet, an anonymous place to do it with few if any real consequences, is as safe a place as there is.
We now know for a fact that hard work is not rewarded... that people born at 3rd base all think they hit a triple... our favorite pastime is virtual stalking of the rich and the famous. Greed is good and admirable and the "smart" thing to do is lie, cheat and kill your way to the top just like those very same people we watch nightly on TV. Those things influence any and all social interactions and we see it manifested in the social games we play by a much larger incidence of total selfishness and asshattery.
People here constantly kid themselves about game systems being the root cause of these problems. You'd have to live a very isolated life disconnected from the real world to believe that all of this objectionable behavior is not also happening at an increasing rate in RL as well.
We play these games partly to escape from all that but it follows us here and it's much more evident in the games. These are social games and, like it or not, you have to cope with the social part of it in pretty much the same way you do in RL: you huddle together with friends and family (guilds) and when you can't, you go about your business quietly by yourself (solo game play.)
The biggest difference is that it's much easier to see in games who the anti-social predators and asshats are since there is very little reason for them to hide it. I only wish they were as easy to identify and avoid in RL. The harshest imaginable consequences of bad MMO behaviour, banning, is something they can just shrug off while moving their act over to one of the other 100 MMOs.
So... deal with it. Find a group of like-minded individuals and stay with them: the selfish asshats are here to stay...and, oh yeah, beware PUGs.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
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Unfortunately the player base in games that allowed it did not police themselves well or consistently, allowing people to be douchebags, which then drove the friendly players out leaving only the douchebags.
Then start another thread and we can discuss how wrong you are. Until then, stay on topic.
Unfortunately the player base in games that allowed it did not police themselves well or consistently, allowing people to be douchebags, which then drove the friendly players out leaving only the douchebags.This was never a problem in EQ. You must mean WoW or one of its endless clones.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Nah .. if you make the point here, i question you here. You can, of course, ignore me and concede the point.
This ^^^
And MMOs are just games. I don't see why people act as if they are more superior than console games.
Heck, some console games like Dishonored is more fun to me than 99% of the MMOs.
can't say I've noticed much difference lately, perhaps I was just lucky.
BTW what is a 'literal surge' ? Is this what is known as "dropping the literally bomb" ?
I sometimes make spelling and grammar errors but I don't pretend it's because I'm using a phone
This was never a problem in FFXI either, until server transfers were implemented years later. If we ran into a douchebag or a loot whore/thief, they were ostracized until they quit the game since no one would allow them into their guilds. Everything changed once players could go anywhere they wanted and change their name.
Yup, this. I play almost entirely solo today, not because I'm anti-social but because I hate the overwhelming majority of assholes currently playing these games. Find me a game with a mature, intelligent, rational community of players and I'll be the first one to group up.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Aye, okay I may have been reaching on the social being socialism. It's just, like in highschool when the group points to the kid who's having issues at home or something, then call him anti-social and other names without having any consideration for what he's going through. No empathy. This word, along with community gets thrown around ALL THE TIME as some kind of saving grace of MMORPGs. When I actually am communicative in games, I'm pretty super friendly and sometimes even start role playing. Sometimes I'll challenge people when they are bullying someone, yet I don't call people names of speak in the manner of the examples that I'm actually defending on this site.
Constantly saying people are anti-social or communities are horrible doesn't get us anywhere, just makes us stay divided and conquered. Sure, not everyone will like everyone else, and that's cool, yet maybe a little bit of tolerance for our differences would be beneficial.
I really passionate about this subject because recently, I've had my most crazy experience in an MMO. I came back to a game after a few months of being away, and I was just hanging in one of the big cities, and reading map chat, and it was just a bunch of people, talking about another person. Now I may have been paranoid, but it felt like they were talking about me, and I'm just like, "what?!". I barely remember what was said, yet it affected me so much that I deleted my character and the game. A few days later, I realized that I shouldn't stop doing something I enjoy to do, simply because others have issues with me. (This ties in the post above about shunning someone out of a community simply because people will gang up on that person, and why a comment like that breaks my heart). So I reinstalled the game, made a new character which then made me public enemy number one simply because I was different from the rest of the group. And I proceeded to get death threats. Now, it's nothing new, I've had people in real life do the same. But honestly all I was doing was doing was enjoying the game, yet because I didn't follow along with the crowd, the crowd was offended, and apparently because of me, they weren't enjoying their game.
So this leads me to conclude that really, the people behind the screens may not be enjoying their games to be intolerant of outsiders or people who are different.
In terms of society being beneficial. Well, I disagree about the Western world. We may have advanced technologically, yet it's a mess. Of course, I do think the levels of human consciousness is increasing thanks to the internet, ancient eastern practices and healthy/clean western living(lots of people run and work out), yet popular culture is a mess, and doesn't help people.
The music is pretty bad, especially compared to what I listen too. Television induces alpha brain wave states, and I'm not sure about today, but I don't watch any new shows, the last show I loved that was good, in my opinion was LOST. Fringe was okay, yet I'm not even sure what's on now and days.
See, our society is all about rush, so this seeps into the games. No time to role play. We're all stressed due to work and the constant rush, so in games we do the same.
Another thing too is, with the advent of Feminism is the west, it becomes tough for men to find success in the real life game, so success in video games becomes the next best thing, because people want to succeed, people want to be happy, people want positive, harmonious relationships.
So what I'm trying to say with all of this is, all this finger pointing and name calling doesn't help, and is simply the symptom of deeper issues that exist within the consciousness of the human being, due to environmental factors, and why it's super sad to read comments sometimes, a mixture of the picard facepalm and heartbreak.
But, at the same time I do love these forums, as I'm really into human behavior and figuring out what is going on in the world and what this is all about. Like it's kinda weird, that we're all here, talking about video games, on a pretty neat site.
Even with all this text, I'd still call myself an anti-social gamer.
I think as much as we try to be adults, inside we're still children, children who need love.
And as much as I dislike society, life and nature itself can and is very beautiful. We have so much abundance on this planet, even an abundance of games to play, hence why it's tough to see how we're not happy with games. I'm not saying never be critical, but common, we have it good in the west, and I mean, REALLY good, that's why I think we're lucky to have so many games, and I'm grateful not only to be able to play these games, but that I can actually spend time discussing the state of games.
SO, (see, lol, and I'm anti social
) the "problem" is human consciousness and education. And maybe elitism. Anyways, I've rambled way too much for one post.
Hopefully it's explained in here why I think being social is following along with the majority, it may not have direct connotations with socialism, yet in some ways they may be more linked than semantics with say.
Anyways, thank you for the feedback, allows me to learn more about myself and see where I am wrong and need improvement.
After a post like this I've gotta put a link to a song I love. Only 2,000 views. This probably illustrates my point exactly.
Linky!
Well, as always, and in agreement with some previous posters, I think it might be useful to think of a wider context than just games. I find it very hard to accept that people behaved better in games like EQ because of game design. Personally, I am polite, friendly and generous with other players regardless of context (ie whether a pug or group with guildies) because that's how I am in the rest of my life (well, most of the time). I like to be helpful in real life, ergo I like to be helpful in games because I'm still me, I'm just me playing a game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a saint, and I hate when other players are rude, selfish, greedy etc, and I quickly withdraw from such people. I notice a tendency for this type of behaviour generally now, though. People seem to be more stressed on the whole and stress causes irritability which can lead to aggressive behaviour. It may be that I'm mis-remembering the past (I'm 56 and live in the UK), but my memory is that people's attitudes to one another were different in the 50's/60's and 70's. They started to change here in the 80's with the whole yuppie thing ... me, me, me, my rights, my career, my big house/car etc.
I'm talking broad brush strokes here, of course, the picture is much more complex, but I'm simply saying that I've noticed a change in people's attitudes generally over the past 20-30 years and that obviously this will be reflected by player behaviour in games.
Interesting how you left out exactly why you was receiving death threats.
You are not disconnecting fantasy from reality.
Or maybe society is disliking you.
They were not.
When i was playing EQ, plenty of people are training, arguing about camp queues, kill-stealing, loot and stuff.
EQ is much worse than today's game just because they can really grief you. At least in modern games, i can hit the quit button whenever i don't like the group, and they cannot training and got me killed and lose progress, or kill-steal the boss i have been waiting for hours.
Today's game is much better at providing tools to avoid players you don't like, or minimize their impact.
The "surge" is a tricky word, since we've been reading variations of this same theme since (at least) 2002.
Probably the first forum denouncement of these "new" rude people took place about two minutes after the first pick-up group.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't think they're anti-social, i think they simply want to play the game.
Unlike EQ where you would sit in the same exact camp and never have to move to avoid attacks that would kill you, the newer games you do have to move, you actually interact with the game. You're not just sitting there chatting away while one person chain pulls the same exact spawn point monster to you.
You can still chat but a lot of people are slow at doing it and thus your group ends up just blasting through the dungeons. I've seen so many players have to stop for two minutes just to type out a message while the rest of the group is moving on.
So sure it doesn't help the social aspect for slow typers but it is still an option. It's just different, not gone. You can act like the EQ days were so great because of the social aspect but i hated it. Plus there's not much to being "social" when you're just chatting with the same three or four people for ten plus hours a day. Of course there was shout chat also, but you might as well consider that the trade or general channels.
"They were not.
When i was playing EQ, plenty of people are training, arguing about camp queues, kill-stealing, loot and stuff.
EQ is much worse than today's game just because they can really grief you. At least in modern games, i can hit the quit button whenever i don't like the group, and they cannot training and got me killed and lose progress, or kill-steal the boss i have been waiting for hours.
Today's game is much better at providing tools to avoid players you don't like, or minimize their impact."
Yup, i remember that. It wasn't being social then, it was non stop drama.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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I wonder....are typing skills degrading in the text-message age?
My kid can do (probably) 40 wpm with his thumbs. But he's (relatively) helpless on a standard keyboard.
One data point, of course, does not establish a trend... anyway, senseless digression, nvm.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
and there is a reason why modern games got rid of all those things so players have fewer ways to make it non-fun for others.
er, I hate to say this but I suspect there is more to this story.
I've been playing these games since 2004 and, other than socializing with like minded people, I have never had any issues like that.
I mean, if we are to take this post on face value then "every person who makes a new character has received scorn and death threats".
Which is just not true.
I suspect the issues here have more to do with "what happened when you were socializing". Heck, the idea that you deleted the game and your character because you thought someone was talking about you should give you an idea that there might be a greater concern here.
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Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
People want endgame as fast as possible. More often than not in games today it is much faster to solo your way to endgame then it is to group up and quest/grind together. People won't risk the slow down to group. Why should they? Why would you group with 4 or 5 other people only to gimp yourself in progression?
That is the reason the anti-social behavior has become rampant in todays games. It is a design flaw that preys on people's path of least resistance behavior, or path of least effort as its known.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
I was waiting for that answer. Although I believe that WOW was a contributing factor it is only due to WOW bringing more people into the hobby. WOW was not a bad place on chat. Back, prior to the end of WOTLK chat was full of jokes and people actually helping people. Personal attacks were rare and in general the environment was civil. Near the end of WOTLK things started changing. I went back to wow for a bit with Cata and Mop and the social environment completely changed. Personal attacks, flaming, provocative comments filled chat. I played about a month on each and then dropped. I speak from a pve/alliance perspective mainly (except I leveled three horde to 60).
The whole "why are mmo's not civil anymore" question is just a comment on society - throughout the world. The more people there are the more rectums there are both in games and in life.
As a care bear I have learned to be anti-social. I just keep my mouth shut, play solo and try to be polite even with ninja looters. Most importantly - I play on a pve server.
No. It is not the design. The root cause, in fact you mentioned it .. is that people value fast progression over socialization.
No amount of design is going to change that. You can suppress that but that is what people prefer.
Yeah .. it is human nature.
I don't play games to be social. I play games to have fun. Just focus on the entertainment aspect of games.
I agree with you. People are different today. I usually blame Ayn Rand but that's just my somewhat obscure shorthand way of saying that, at least in the western world, selfishness is much more socially acceptable than it has ever been.
You mention the yuppies of the 80s and I don't disagree but I think the context is even wider. The world was reshaped in those same '80s yuppie years by Reagan, Thatcher and others with the whole bogus concept of "trickle down economics." 30 odd years later we are living in the aftermath of this Big Lie and the "common man" has a lot of anger, resentment and frustration just barely restrained.
That anger spills over everywhere people feel safe enough to express it...and the internet, an anonymous place to do it with few if any real consequences, is as safe a place as there is.
We now know for a fact that hard work is not rewarded... that people born at 3rd base all think they hit a triple... our favorite pastime is virtual stalking of the rich and the famous. Greed is good and admirable and the "smart" thing to do is lie, cheat and kill your way to the top just like those very same people we watch nightly on TV. Those things influence any and all social interactions and we see it manifested in the social games we play by a much larger incidence of total selfishness and asshattery.
People here constantly kid themselves about game systems being the root cause of these problems. You'd have to live a very isolated life disconnected from the real world to believe that all of this objectionable behavior is not also happening at an increasing rate in RL as well.
We play these games partly to escape from all that but it follows us here and it's much more evident in the games. These are social games and, like it or not, you have to cope with the social part of it in pretty much the same way you do in RL: you huddle together with friends and family (guilds) and when you can't, you go about your business quietly by yourself (solo game play.)
The biggest difference is that it's much easier to see in games who the anti-social predators and asshats are since there is very little reason for them to hide it. I only wish they were as easy to identify and avoid in RL. The harshest imaginable consequences of bad MMO behaviour, banning, is something they can just shrug off while moving their act over to one of the other 100 MMOs.
So... deal with it. Find a group of like-minded individuals and stay with them: the selfish asshats are here to stay...and, oh yeah, beware PUGs.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED