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How to make MMOs more social
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
So I've returned to my roots and started Mudding again. One of the things that really seperates the MUD experience from MMOs is the sense of community that you get when playing them. I've wondered why this is for a very long time. Most of the time it's because the players are also builders (TinyMud, MOO, MUX, etc.), and other times it's becuase socializing is built into the games mechanics.
Let's take the venerable Federaton II as an example. This is kind of a light hearted forerunner of Eve. The basis is space trading, but there are several things in the game that allow you to socialize easier. For instance, as you play, you'll lose stamina that can only be replaced by eating or drinking something. You can walk into any of the main pubs, cafes, restaurants, etc, and buy everyone there a round of drinks. It's actually recomended for New players to do this in order to introduce themselves. There's also an in-game stock market so that players can join different companies and take them over rather than just destroying them militarily.
Anyone can make an open PvP game with the options to form guilds for fighting. But it requires special game mechanics to get people to mingle and work together. This is the flaw with the FFA PvP crowd. They only want to fight and they don't seem to care what they're fighting over. There are lots of diffrent was to compete or cooperate.
I really want to know what it would take to make a more social and cooperative medieval fantasy game. What game mechanics would you need to make to help people meet and work together. And no, straight PvE doesn't count.
Comments
I'm a big fan a mudding...the difference between mmo and mud is of course graphics...however this is a huge RP limiter in MMO because it prevents you from emoting... good emoting can make or break the scene or mood. I think allowing players to RP situations or scenes would add to socializing a little more.
However what would really help socializing is kinda forcing players to stop for a while and relax.
For example.... For every 2 hours of daylight there is 15-25 min of night. Night being cold and well dark would mean that while still possible there would be severe penalties for search, fighting or traveling(even with torches)... player would have to find shelter in pubs, homes or resturants or if out in the wilds, build a small campfire and sit the night out(a possiblity of attracting hostile night creatures though
)...this would allow player some time to chat a bit and socalize...
I don't think 15-25 min of stopping for a bit is huge but i'm sure some players would cry over being forced to stop mindless grinding or ganking.
Just found this review of Sociolotron and it seems to have some rather interesting ways of socializing. Although most people are just going to see the sex. There's more to the game than that, but once people see actual game mechanics for sex and drug addiction, they just can' t seem to get over it.
If you look at the game as a whole though, it does seem to have a more social feel to it. Even if a great deal of it seems anti-social.
I'm not so sure that forcing people into a playstyle they'd otherwise avoid is a recipe for success. Star Wars: Galaxies tried that with battle fatigue. The idea was to get players to spend time in cantinas where they'd socialize with each other, as well as with entertainers. In practice, however, people usually just went afk in the cantinas while their fatigue healed. Nearly every guild in the game had a bot entertainer that would save people trips to cantinas, as well. Rather than introducing a new way of playing the game to the playerbase, the playerbase altered the mechanics to fit the way they preferred to play it. People are who they are. You can show them the door, but it's ultimately up to them whether or not they step through it.
As far as MUDs go, I think the main difference there is total population. On an MMO server/shard, there may be 50,000 or more characters registered. It's like a massive city; you can't possibly know everyone, so you don't even try. Like-minded people gather together in guilds and call it a day. A typical MUD, on the other hand, might have a total population of 300 players, only 25 of which are on at any one time (obviously I'm not talking about the exceptions like Gemstone). MUDs are like little townships where everyone knows each other, where reputations have meaning and news travels fast. In MMOs like Horizons and Saga of Ryzom, you'll tend to notice that people also tend to be a lot friendlier on average than in monsters like World of Warcraft; the smaller the community, the tighter-knit it is. Small communities band together, whereas large communities tend to divide themselves into subcategories of various "us" and "thems" (roleplaying guilds, raiding guilds, age-related guilds, Texas guilds, you name it). Certainly some of this goes on in the smaller games as well, but the boundaries between groups tend to be less absolute because they can't afford to sequester themselves away from one another.
I suppose I could have saved a lot of space simply by saying that the best way to make a more social MMO would be to limit the population size. Instead of having 50,000 players registered on one shard, have 1000 players registered to 50 "community" instances on that shard. Of course, it'd never work. One of the reasons people play MMOs is for all the other people, so they'll have to accept the relative anonymity and lack of cohesive community that goes along with it.
Well put and well said. However, if people aren't playing these games to be social, then why even bother with massively multiplayer part. It may be because most people that play MMOs are "power gamers" that are looking for a bigger war to fight. I'd like to think that these games could be more than one really big Quake mod though.
I'm not really talking about forcing people to be more social so much as I'm talking about ways to encourage people to be social. I'm thinking that a better way of triggering emotes in the game would go a long way. Players don't have the patience to type or read in MMORPGs, so it would make sense to make the emote system graphical as well. I believe that the original Hero's Journey (that was scaped BTW) was experimenting with a quick gesture/emote system. It isn't much, but it's a start.
I have a friend playing Eve right now and, from what he tells me, it's actually more social than a number of MMORPGs out there. This seems like a small thing, but I have a feeling that it strikes right at the heart of what a MMORPG is.
A Tale in the Desert is quite cooperative and social too (well, i havent played, but that is what all the reviews say...)
Also EVE is sometimes cooperative, like when an aliance wants to build a titan, it is not only one person that can build it. not even one corp. it needs the cooperative effort of many corporations.
In the camp musicians could heal your mana curses, and you could even make meals in the best camps.
scientology
Hi all!
I think that every person is diferent and is not good to force them to play a concret mode.
Personally i will make a social system how the real life. Nobody know nobody, i dont know what is the name of the people that i can see in the street, why to show the name in the heads?. If you want to know what is the name simply talk with them, keep a conversation and you will would know the name and see it in the head, add them in the friend's list, send them mails, etc, etc...
Stop to general chat, only should to exist the say, group and whisper chat (if he/she is near of you). If you want to know people, search them, talk, walk or drink with them, KNOW THEM. When you feel alone socialize... if you want...
i have some ideas
*** bigger servers like eve with 20k people online
***player economy that forces a player to interact with people to buy clothing, homes, weapons armor..etc.
*** class variety, some classes are crafters, others spies, others miners, others fighters etc.... this way cooperation in guilds would be necessary, ie, you protect the miner while he makes a refinery, the refinery makes ore that can be crafted by your guild crafter into weapons and clothes.
*** non instanced gameplay 24/7, seamless everything
*** factions that actually have an effect, e.g. horde can take over your town, so you need to work together to build a defense as alliance.
ways to improve mmo's
*** lose and easy control scheme (enjoyable) like in wow, not like in guildwars and shadowbane
***unique character creation system as seen in SWG... you can literaly make billions of different looks
*** player driven economies
*** in game housing
*** ability to take over and burn towns
*** blend of the rts genre into mmo's, ie crafters can build walls and defenses that can also be destroyed
*** sandbox games that make players mold the game rather than forcing them on a linear path
*** making the game world moldable, e.g. destructible terrain, player houses, player forts, destructable towns etc.... (stimulates creativity) this is necessary for sandbox games to be fun, the player can make the world into what they decide to, thus cooperation is necessary if you want to build and empire and then create a great wall of china.
*** class variety- wow is a great game, but it is only combat oriented... having classes that do other things than combat will make the game world more real,
*** some are warriors, and some are intellectual peasants, and some are politicians---
players are forced to work together, an all warrior guild wont be as effective as one that forms a nation by combining elements from every individual class
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
great idea that i didnt think about, it would be a nice way to make you thankful that you can simply survive... games that dont make you do anything to continue living often make you take it for granted, and then you grind leveling for too long and it gets tedious...
this is a really great idea
i loved how some classes could make campfires in swg... i think those were fun times sitting at campfires.. it felt really... massively multiplayer
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
i really like this idea... you should be able to enjoy just existing as an anonymous nobody...
i forgot the dismay i orginally felt when i realized that i always had to have my level plastered over my head in wow compared to the total anonymity i had in swg.
i think the reason people get burned out by that game is because it denies people the qualities of and mmo and offers more the qualites of a good singplayer game, e.g. fun controls and combat
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
All the games that people consider 'the best', such as WoW, Guild wars, MMO's like that, in my opinion, they always seem to have the worst community, and the most kiddies who have never before played an online game.
Wonder why this is? lol
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
yes.... i really enjoyed that about swg... the class variety. the cantina thing really worked out for me.
i only played thef irst 5 months until my parents destroyed the game because of "naked women" in it, but i thought the cantinas were awesome.
i think it's another thing that wow lacks... all you need to do is play a nd grind and grind.
cantinas really broke up the monotony, going to themedical bay and watching people waiting for doctors to come help them..
it was just fantastic to me.
i hope other games arent scared away form these ideas because of soe's stupidity.
eve online... gotta say ihated this game. you never get to control your character, it's only a picture. you feel way lonely... it's not fun to play because it's all autopilot, and then you are also forced to stay inside a spacecraft.
since the craft changes as you buy new ones, your character is never familiar or recognizable. you cant make a char you like and keep it, because all you ever get to see is your ship...
no emotes whatesoever... i really hope games like this never reappear
i'd like to see a game where you start on a planet with a higher customizable character who can join a guild who can work to purchase a mother ship ala homeworld.
when you logon, you log inside your guilds mothership if its in space, or if it's docked on the planet.
then as you buy fighters and ships and turrets, you and your guildies can man them in realtime combat yes twitch, and launch your ships out of the homeships docking bay... so fun.
then of course when the ship is about to explode, or when enemy bording craft drill holes in thes hip and start loading it full of other enemy human players, you can run your ass to the escape pod and jettison, attempting to land on a safe planet before getting blown up.
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
i actually have to say i'm for bubble chat only and ending guild chat.
people say they hate the clutter... but for me it totally fags up the experience when they stuff you into a chat room...
mmo's are fun when they have compelling rl elements, it's more fun to play a game when it draws you in by being more lifelike....
i say do away with general chat and bring on bubble chat... it just feels more right that way. you actually have an idenity to go along with what you say, instead of just a name.
when people see you talk, they see your character, rather than some anonymous person in general chat.
general chat further removes you from the game, and seperates you from your avatar.. i think they should be closely connected to make the game interesting.
using only bubble chat would force people to act more realistically... i really dont know, i guess you'd probably badly need a guild chat, but i really diagree with people spamming general all day as you attempt to strain something worthwhile from the hordes of text...
it would be cool if when you book it the hell out into the desert if you couldnt talk to other people (except guildies who i'd expect you'd have radio communication with)
it would further allow players to escape heavily trafficked cities and areas, if you needed advice you'd have to find someone and say it to them rather than just chatting away about pointless crap in general...
i think general chat also damages role playing more than people expect. the ability to just talk about anything from anywhere makes the game into a chat room, thus the role playing element is dead
when people can only speak with you if they can percieve your character, it puts you into the character, and thus increases roleplaying... it forces you to play actively and be aware of whats going on in order to converse...
it also allows you too see whot he fuck is aying what
how many times have you heard "selling blah blah blah at area blah blah"
"how much"
"how much?:
" uh... giantantic squid... how much are you selling that blah balh balh for?"
:uh... can you hear me!?"
"yea i'm over by the mailbox"
:where?
' next to the mailbox"
"which one?"
ok.. just join my group "
'/invite giantantic squid
ok.. one sec
ok how much?
60 gold
wtf??? no way
i know all of them arent this bad, and you have tells, but in my opinion tells and general chat trivialize the game....
if anyone doesnt yet know why game chat is immature and tehre is a lack of RP it's because you can instantly spam general chat from anywhere until the entire game community bans you
then you just log onto one of your other 9 chars on the server and do it again
or you delete your characters and do it again.
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
i think the multiple characters per server ruins rp
you can jsut instantly adopt a new reputation any time you want.
if you only have one character, then you have to chose wheter or not to be an asshole, you also have to realize that if someone mutes you, you cant speak to them with another character.
1 character per server makes each character responsible for what they do and say... i really think this needs to come back.
also, if you can have all 10 differnt classes on one server, youd ont ever really need to work with teamates, because you can simply switch to your level 60 alt preist or druid or rogue or warlock or monkeyslayer or wtfever...
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
guildwars has a pretty good community, but it's not fun... it's boring.
there arent any cool mmo elements either... it does absoulutely nothing well...
wow is kiddie because of
*multiple chars per server
*it's teen
*it's being played 24/7 on every cp in ever game cafe by little kids.
*general chat too
*there are no compelling mmo qualities, it's a fun game, but very limited... it's not a place you can build on or change, thus people get frustrated or bored and say crap
because h onestly, theres nothing else to do and no reason to roleplay or be courteous
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
i think that the whole loot system does that... but if you had to have a complex method of getting items, ie traversing enemy territory and digging a mine, then hauling the stuff back to be crafted...
that would involve lots of classes and lots of cooperation. i think that would be nice?
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
I think a large part of the issue is distrust, and a sense of disparity. People are naturally more social as they get to know eachother, and feel they have things in common. Further, I think that to feel the needed sense of common ground, it helps to be in contrast to those they don't have anything in common with. Commonality has more of a trust-building effect, the more specialized it is.
So, in most MMOs, we're all playing the same game, with similar goals, but that's insignificant, because we're all doing it. I think it'd help socialization to give people social directions to go into, almost similar to how kids in highschool seperate into cliques. Social frameworks, which mean something to players, which they'd both choose and eschew due to thier personality types. This is basic human psychology, something which MMO devs would do well to study..
Normal guilds fill this role to some extent, but I think it could be done much better, with more social themes, if not left entirely to the players. Such as guilds in the more traditional fantasy world sense (which would work in combination with player guilds, not instead of them) but rather than guilds being based on class, such as thieves guild, wizards guild, etc, it might be based on gods which are decidedly unrelated to class. e.g. one might be a dark and sinister cult, another all nature and love, and of course, they might not get along so well, promoting players in each to bond a bit, based on thier choices. They could be loosely based on the nine alignment directions, embelished with appropriate themes.
I think that sort of thing would be the first step. Then add the encouragement for players to hang around and chat, if they'd like. Maybe they can go afk when they rest, or whatever, but won't be so inclined to, if they feel more affinity with eachother.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I'm getting the feeling I am getting ignored here. Which is ironic coming from people who are talking about wanting a more social game.
Everything your saying your wanting is in The Chronicle. Check it out for yourself. This game is unlike any other. It combines all the great things people want. They also have awsome customer service and interaction with the community.
nice thread, I agree mmos need to be more social.
Ways I think could do this is 2 things, one possibly having profiles, and secondly having some sort of emoticons.
Additionally, you could have some sort of card game ingame which Final Fantasy toyed about with.
The best way to promote long-term social relationships in MMORPGs is to create the proper, condusive enviroment. This can be accomplished quite easily using the method that follows:
- Add bodily funtions to all characters, including pets, mounts, summoned beings, etc.
- Penalize players for ignoring nature's call beyond a set time limit; the penalty could be that you explode after 15 minutes and lose xp.
- Synchronize the number of lavatories with the number of active players so that there are always fewer lavatories available than the population requires.
- Now, sit back and rest easy as diverse persons mingle and chat on the waiting line, the spectre of player explosion charging the air.
- Personal latrines could be created by anyone at any level but unless you've learned Latrine I and II the chances of a boss mob spawing next to you are one in three.
Problem solved.