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Everquest Next, please bring back social interaction to MMO's
supa_fly
Member Posts: 11
Long time visitor, finally registered to add my “hopeful” thoughts on Everquest Next.
I will get right too it, and state that I hope that Everquest Next brings back the human interaction component to MMO’s. I started playing MMO’s going back to the days of UO, and over the years have played just about every iteration of an MMO since. It finally occurred to me that the single problem “for me” with the evolution of the MMORPG genre has been the steady and unfortunate decline in human interaction. The early MMO’s were so popular and fun, because for the first time players could play in fantasy worlds with other people. At that time, that was such a foreign thing that it was no surprise that the initial triple A title MMORPG’s (EQ/WoW) were so immensely successful. For the first time, you could log into a world full of other real players and literally get immersed together in an alternate reality. Hell, I remember logging in and doing nothing more than fishing with a couple friends one night, drinking and shooting the breeze. Over the years, new features have been added to MMO’s that on the surface make sense, but ultimately erode the social interaction of players. Now before anyone picks one or two of these items to get on a soapbox about, please be aware that not any single item was ultimately responsible, but collectively they all had a hand in killing the “Multiplayer” component of MMO’s. Additionally, I am not saying that Everquest Next should steer clear of “all” of these, but should be mindful in their implementation and avoid overdoing it and removing the requirement to interact with other players entirely.
- Maps, reduced/eliminated relying on others to find your way around
- Fast travel, eliminated the time spent with others using “public” transportation, looking for players that could port others, or needing help from others to get there safely.
- Instanced dungeons, completely isolates you and your group from the world (i.e. other players). Add in the insult to injury dungeon finder and you find yourself more or less anonymously grouped with random people with no desire to talk, communicate, or work together as chances are you will never see them again.
- Quest NPC markers, eliminated the need to learn from other players (even if that’s on some fan site forum) where an awesome quest started.
- Quest progress/area markers, eliminated player interaction on where to go to find “x” for the quest.
- Removal of global/zone/region/level chat, not all games have completely abandoned this concepts, but it’s fair to say it’s on its way out more than ever. Sure chills of barren chat run through my spine, but for all the bad nights I can remember…I always found myself talking about some of the idiots I saw running their mouth or I knew who to avoid grouping with.
- Corpse runs, not a lot of people cherished these, but this required help from other players more times than not.
- Raid finder, same concept as dungeon finder, just on a larger, more idiotic scale
- Story driven main quest lines that progress to max level, generally these have been solo in nature and are designed in such a fashion that the entire game play revolves around it. This “generally” leaves the player feeling like they just finished a good book, and once over have little desire to keep trudging along in its absence.
- Max level obtainable entirely through solo play, this eliminates the need to interact with any other players.
- Fast pace encounters, eliminates the ability to communicate real time strategy as the fight unfolds.
- Jack of all trades classes, having classes have the ability to do just about everything themselves, eliminates the dependency on other players filling that role in a group, and along with that the accountability of doing it right. Which leaves players feeling like they can’t depend on anyone but themselves and so they play with a “me” first...you maybe mentality.
- Solo mobs, with each MMO release the laughable increase in solo capable mobs has players feeling more like the hunter than the hunted. What is so scary about adventuring, when you know you easily wade through 4 or 5 of whatever you may run into without any help from anyone else?
- No death penalty, eliminates the potential for player assistance regaining back what was lost.
- Instancing in general, artificially and randomly segments you from other players on your server. You are blind to what human interaction you’re missing out on in another instance.
- Guild halls, these are instanced and generally come with benefits that negate the reason to visit a town, thus leaving obvious social areas eventually void of players.
I could go on and on, and this is just a random list of often discussed aspects of MMO’s but without looking at the impact to human interaction. At the end of the day, recently released MMO’s feel more and more like single player RPG’s with visitors. As I write this, it only becomes clearer and more horrifying to me how little player interaction occurs today versus the MMO’s of the past. When I look back at the glory days, I don’t reminisce about any particular “old school” aspect of MMO’s, but rather the people, players, and the random events that transpired tackling the world together. You would think that developer’s would have realized at some point that game content is finite (aside from periodic additions to the game), but the social interaction is what keeps players logging in. On every MMO I ever played with longevity, it was the friendships and social interaction that kept me logging in.
To wrap this up in a nice pretty bow, if Everquest Next can bring human interaction back to the MMO genre, than I think it will have a long and fruitful lifespan…and I for one will be happily be a part of it. Facebook, twitter, myspace, and instragram are all obvious indicators that people enjoy interacting and communicating with each other online, having MMORPG’s steadily move away from that concept boggles this old man’s mind.
Comments
Game developers adding stuff, or removing it from games just to lforce people intoo having more social interaction does not work.
Its the people that need to change, its their attitude that needs to be changed, the thing that needs to be done is rewarding them for being social.... But taking things away they used to have, and then tell them that they need to be social and then get rewarded with the stuff you took away from them in the first place... That doesnt work.
actually making games more social would only work if the content got more dynamic, and dungeons and zones would feel different every time, forcing players to actually communicate if they want to make a chance,... Now that would work.. It would make the games more challenging, more social and would still keep the game free of irritators..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
IMO the biggest killer of social interaction in mmos are mainly from the overuse of Instances and the "Global" auction house.
Get rid of both, having open world housing that isn't instanced, have player run shops where you can't just hop onto the global AH An dbuy everything without ever talking to a crafter and this will greatly help with social interaction.
They can do like SWG did with their AH, have it be region based and have a money cap to it so only CHEAP items are for sale on them (IE resources, noob gear) but for the better gear and things you had to go to a crafters shop and find your goods or talk to people to find it.
Dungeons, I think it'd be nice if they were open, however I still think instancing has a place for SPECIFIC dungeons, like for a story-based quest the player has, where the develops want to present a storyline that's geared toward a specific player, that is the best use of an instance.
However there should be plenty of "open" dungeons with other real players coming in/out of them and exploring.
Diagree. Pick up raids and expansions like LDON were responsible for the much of the good community in Everquest. Without instancing they would be impossible.
In fact instanced dungeons in LDON brought people together at the LDON camps. Many people cam back to EQ during LDON.
I'm against dungeon finders, but not against instances.
Instances were introduced in response to griefing, so was the Play Nice Policy, all benefitted the community. Before there was drama and griefing.
I agree, and please don't take my post as a request to arbitrarily remove items from the game (even those I listed in my OP). On the contrary, it's a plea to change the focus of making players more self-sufficient and less inclined to interact with each other, either intentionally through class design or un-intentionally through a feature list as a whole that de-emphasizes player interaction. Either way you cut it, an MMO that doesn't encourage player interaction isn't an MMO at all, and in the end relies solely on game content which is finite and not universally appealing to everyone (i.e. niche).
Having people wayt 3 hours before their group is finally formed is not social eiher, is it?
Giving up all convienence to make games not more social, it will scare away many mnay potential players
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Sort of hit and miss post here.
Making the game difficult, as the OP suggests, does create rewards for being social. I am not sure that your suggestion of randomizing NPC behavior would do that. It may not hurt it, but it surely would not be an cure all. Basically you're saying the same thing - make the content require communication to handle, but trying to call it something else.
The #1 thing that made EQ a game 3 times more social than WoW and 10 times moreso than Rift or GW2 is simply, downtime. If you need to sit and recover mana before you can do your next fight, guess what you're going to do, whether you're by yourself or in a group? You're going to talk. What happens when people talk? They become social.
The problem is that a large percent of the player pool is of the Ren & Stimpy ADD generation and they cannot tolerate sitting and chatting while waiting for their mana pool to regen. Hell, even SOE introduced their card game so you could have something else to do while waiting for your mana pool to regen. Stupid.
It will be interesting to see if SOE has realized that downtime, while "boring" does create social interaction and it's this same interaction that drives long term usage of a game. If I am constantly mashing on buttons while "playing the game", I am not being social, and honestly, there are single player games that are going to offer better second-to-second gameplay than an MMO can.
As to the remainder of the OP comments, he's right. Developers haven't really taken a step back and looked at the big picture since WoW came out. Let's hope SOE has and actually figured out what made some of their great games great.
People gathering before an instance -> community building and social interaction
You keep saying this. Which EQ server did you play on? Povar didn't have any pickup raids after Luclin was released and pickup groups were actually hurt by LDoN (oh, you're doing Mistmoore, but I need Guk for my aug), compared to (let's go to BoT and get a shit load of exp and maybe a useful drop).
I doubt this is true, I didn't play there so I wouldn't know. Instead of whining you should have started one then.
Maybe if I repeat some biased speculation based on my personal preferences 20 times in 10 different threads, people will think I'm insightful and my opinion is fact.
Well, eating fast food is a great way to feed yourself, going out to dinner with friends and drinks is a more memorable dining expeirence. One takes 5 minutes to accomplish, while the later takes longer and can form friendships that can last for years. That's about the best way I can describe it to you.
Your photo proves me correct. Two guilds doing a raid is not a pickup raid. that's two guilds doing a raid. A pickup raid is like one to seven people from 10 different guilds doing a raid. You'll also notice that in your photo everyone is guilded. They have already established their social connections in the game (probably through forced grouping if they played a long time). You've got to look at things from a developer's perspective, not your own perspective to have a true understanding of how game design decisions impact how the game is played. At least now, I can see where you're coming from.
And you lied, took me 10 seconds to find this: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1114374461437391427&h=50
and this:
Apparently povar had an extensive pick-up raid system.
They had a whole site dedicated to pick-up raiding:
http://eaftermath.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=180594&TabID=1527702&ForumID=853787
Don't lie next time, it doesn't look pretty on you.
/agree
"Brute force not work? It because you not use enought of it"
-Karg, Ogryn Bone'ead.
All Sony has to do is look to a MMO they created SWG. If Sony was series about going back to the roots they should have hired Raph Koster lead Dev for UO and SWG. There is a guy that understands social interaction in a MMO. I'm not saying they don't have people that have these skills but why not go to the man that has done it before.
We shall see in a few days but I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be disappointed including me. The number one thing I would do if it was my choice is put a cap on the AH and bring back player shops.
Downtime is the key to an immersive mmo world. But there also needs to be a reason for the downtime. In a game like SWG the fact you needed a cantina and doctor buffs provided an excuse to hang out in certain areas. The lack of a global auction house made it so there was a reason to go to player cities and explore different shops. Buffing and shopping definitely fall under the category of downtime, but it was active downtime which made it a little more interesting.
If you look at WoW it's amazing how little there is to do in a main city . You basically stand in Stormwind or Org and watch trade chat spam fly by while you wait for a que to pop. This standing around and waiting is a huge chunk of time for players and WoW doesn't address it in any meaningful way.
Most MMO's today are theme parks and made for solo players. There is no old school MMO out there that really requires you to join a guild to get things done.
In order to bring back what a lot of us want, casuals need to be removed. They need to give players the old reasons to want to play with others,
Cross server stuff, looking for group(instance and raid) need to be removed forcing people to once again play on the server they chose and get involved with others on that server. There just is no reason to join a guild anymore because you no longer need them to complete things in the game.
When i started to play MMO's you needed to commit time to play and if you did not have time to play you were told an MMO is not for you and you were pointed to Multiplayer games and lobby games like Diablo.
Once MMO's decided to tap into the casual players, true MMO's stop being made. There is no place for a cash stop in a true MMO IMO.
The only thing that is stoping social interaction is easy mobs.
EQ had great communities until they dumbed it down. Before and after instances,before and after fast travel and maps there was great social interaction. I hear a lot of talk about how today we don't have the time for hard games well I call bs to that as if we didn't have the same if not more of a busy life stle back in the 1990s . Every mmo since WoW has been too easy and if that don't change and I hope EQN does change to hard mode then there is no future for MMOs anymore.
OP - posted a very similar thread to your own a few days ago. I agree with nearly everything you said...
I've had some good conversations with my guildmates and friends over the past few weeks - there are a number of us that are excited for what EQN may turn out to be. We are to old to buy in the hype - but we'd be lying to say we are not excited for what may come..
If SOE and Smed can deliver on a game that gives the old school crowd what they've been pining for... for so long, they will have a huge hit on their hands. If they can deliver what the newer generation wants as well, they will have a MEGA hit on their hands.
I'd like to think there can be a nice mix between old and new, make the game hard but rewarding.. slow things down but have reasons to slow down. Give us a place to call home, these MMO gypsies we've become...
"Youre in our world now!"
Hmm, so waiting 3 hours isn't social but then neither is jumping straight into the dungeon via a DF encourage social game play either.
So we know what doesn't work, question is, what will?
BTW, like most examples, hyperbole is over used. Currently playing a form of DAOC and we form groups the old fashioned way via LFG chat channels and no one seems to have a problem getting groups together in a fairly short amount of time, even for lower level leveling.
Why, because the game design favors large group size (8) making it much easier to find the necessary tank (several classes can do it) and healer (pure and hybrids cover the role) and the rest of the slots fill in with DPS/CC/buffers of several types. Heck people will even let a stealther in on most occasions.
It's all about design, and todays smaller groups of as few as 4 has really made it an issue to put together a proper trinity group.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You should actually read what you post. The whole forum is dedicated to pick-up raiding consists of 50 people asking for help with raids and no on responding.... and then to bring it back to your assinine contention... these aren't instanced raids they're typically requesting help on. But good job at taking the thread off topic, and also filling it with lies. Go onto any Everquest server and ask for a LDoN party, then come back to us and report what you find, but don't lie this time... wait, are the time-locked progression servers on PoP or LDoN, maybe you could find a group there, LOL.
I would agree old school, only from the standpoint that many of us that played the "old school" MMO's remember what it was like to play an MMO that had an abundance of social interaction and community. I don't want to get into a debate, per se, about whether old school or new school is better and why...but merely re-iterate that it would be good if EQN would buck the current trend of MMO's and put an emphasis on encouraging player interaction. If player interaction is encouraged throughout the game design than alot of what I am hoping for will naturally fall into place.
I want to get to know poeple, I want to feel like it's a world full of people struggling just like I am trying to make my way through it. If it's faced paced, solo friendly, and heavily instanced...it will be yet another MMO where I feel like it's just me against the world and I for one don't want another soul'less MMO that will inevitably let me down.
I agree with some of this stuff,
No LF raid type crap that WOW has for sure, a LFG tool is kind of needed though as well as zone chat.
One thing you still see even today in EQ is people in zones calling out rotting loot drops or that rare mob spawn that someone could be looking for. Im hoping that this type of thing is in EQN, as far as the rare mob weather it just be a random named or an epic quest mob. But that added a nice feel to EQ.
I agree with no instance dungons or raids.
One thing that i felt added a lot of player interaction back in the older days of EQ, still some today but not nearly as much is the way buffing was done. MGBs and people giving out randome mana or HP buffs weather they wanted a tip or not was a nice way to get to interact with people. Even if it was just for a few secs to get the buff thrown on you, chances are you remembered that persons name and would look for them again.
I agree with no hand holding quest hubs or map markers that point you directly to where you are supposed to go. I remember when i first started playing EQ, once the tuturial was finished, you were kind of just tossed into the world and let to sink or swim on your own. Yes there are npc in game now that are labled task givers, but you still are pretty much just told a basic area to hunt in, not given a big arrow pointing you to it. And there needs to be epic quests, weather it be for a weapon or a special item of some other sort. And it needs to be EPIC, rare mobs, that pain in the neck rare drop, having to have certian trade skills at a certian level to get it done were all parts of EQ epic quests that made it feel like you were actually doing something epic, and not just hunting down a couple items and are done.
I do have to say i do not agree with getting rids of maps. Yeah having no maps may increase player interaction, but I think it would do more harm than good. Even in EQ maps are kind of needed, it helps you find that zone line if you have a group of very pissed off mobs after you, or it helps you find your group when you get turned around and you loose site of them.
And speaking of zone lines and pissed off mob packs...Trains, as much as we all hated them and had to keep an eye out for them, i want them in EQN. It added to the game. It gave it that feel that you were interacting with the world around you weather you wanted to or not. If you were in a hostile are it didnt matter if you didnt pull the mobs, you were in there area and they didnt want you there and they let you know it quick.
I did play EQ2 for a little while, but it was never the same to me as EQ was, and i am still playing EQ even now, IMO i would like to see more of what EQ did with maybe a more modern feel to it rather than it be closer to EQ2.