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The individual goal of item ownership, being enforced with a group structure.
Tengwar
Member Posts: 20
The subject matter of this thread is a long time concern of mine in MMORPGs
Its a contradictory idealism and philosiphy for getting people to work together. Almost as if the designers of some of the MMOs said "We have to trick them into working together!" (lol)
But seriously. I feel 'the individual goal of item ownership, being enforced with a group structure' (A.K.A, RAIDING) {or having to depend on [insert # of players here] to help you kill X monster to get Y item]...
Is the great divide that made gear and loot matter to people more than the gameplay, the system that encouraged people to become serious about a game, and gave birth to the need for extreme organization (Ventrilo) and loot distributational systems (DKP) it harbored the first examples of eliteism and helped spur the judgemental process of {[A person] deserves [X item] more than [B person] because...}
With that, it deadened the immersiveness of MMOs in general and in the sense that while people were seemingly "working together" to accomplish a common goal, its a forced situation under a bunch of chaos and stress, mainly because of the "big carrots" stigma. And the fact that most raid encounters across any MMO require 20+ people. (eq? 70? 100 people raids? phhft.)
I sound like an awfully stingy and "I in Team" kinda guy but im not. not at all. Infact I love grouping, and playing with random people at random times.
But enough about me. -- this isnt about me, and never was.
Theres a line being crossed here, and someone coined a cornerstone example on the WoW forums with this Subject line : "WoW is no longer a game, its a lifestyle"
Thattttts what im talking about right there. The line crossed that produces such "wonderful" MMO side-effects such as schedruled raiding, DKP, guild associations, "waiting in line for items (and incidentally sometimes the only way to advance with your character...) while watching people who are buddy-buddy with guild leaders get their items first.."
This kind of stuff is what makes Open-endedness in MMOs impossible. Suddenly, you find yourself pinned under the pressure of a whole bunch of semi-strangers that you dont-really-kinda-know but find yourself bottlenecked with them cause all of you need the same items from the same place. (Forced Guilding)....
This could go on for weeks.
I might get the flame on for saying such outlandish stuff, but "a house divided against it self cannot stand" so to speak.
There needs to be a big break in the preconcieved notion of what "Teamwork" is in MMOs. Because the truth about teamwork in MMO's is, Its how you set teamwork up to happen that will determine how well it will actually work, and if you have a whole bunch of people stepping over each others heads on a looting pyramid, trying to get to the top... well.. teamwork isnt gonna work out so well.
(maybe im full of crap and it has for plenty of people, please be gentle if you think im an idiot 
)
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The Kurgan. He is the strongest of all the immortals. He's the *perfect* warrior. If he wins the Prize, mortal man would suffer an eternity of darkness. -- How do you fight such a savage? -- With heart, faith and skill. In the end there can be only one.
Comments
What I find interesting about raid guilds is that they actually remove the "Massive" from the massively online role-playing game. 40, or 70, or 100 people doesn't really qualify as 'massive' in my book, it's having hundreds of thousands (or tens of thousands, though I think only EVE has that many in one game) of other players in the world at once. But once people go into a raiding guild, they pretty much only interact with that guild. After all, you don't want to raid with someome else, you won't get precious DKPs for it and won't be able to get any loot because you won't have their DKP, plus (in WOW at least) you can only run those raids once a week. For the non-raid stuff, you probably do any instance runs with guildies unless you absolutely can't avoid playing with someone else, and you don't need to do much of that anyway once you start on raids.
It was one thing that suprised me in my taste of WOW's endgame, most of the people in raid guilds only ever even talk to guild members.
A proportion of people will play any game seriously just from a personal propensiity to do so, But I think two things exert pressure on MMO players to force them to get serious, and it is a pity to pressurize players into activity that they don't actually enjoy.
1) The persistance of the effect. When we were playing Fallout II, the vast majority of players wouldn't be bothered exhastively wandering through the desert to find item X, or skill Z, because after a few weeks the effect would disapear when you finished playing that character having reached the end of the game. With the persistance of the online game, you could be using item X or skill Z for many months, and will therefore feel the pressure to go to extreme lengths to get it, doing things that you don't actually enjoy.
2) Lack of alternatives. All games naturally have a difficulty curve to give a sliding level of challange. Obviuosly when you start exhasting the content that you had fun doing, you get left with every more difficult parts of the game, that were designed for, and require 'serious' play.
There are solutions to these inherent issues, though of course they raise their own issues.
1) Reduce the persistance. If the game server resets after one faction wins an overall victory, there's no point spending great effort doing something that you don't enjoy. Your character will get archived when the current scenario ends, so the rewards for farming/grinding are far reduced.
2) The reduced persistance also helps this. If the contest resets, you have to start a new character, and then can pick your own level through the game again, without ever having to go hard core just by running out of things to do. Another option is player controlled content, where the players themselves provide the new content by launching a collective effort to do XYZ.
I believe the Dev's will make much more use of both these routes in future. As with all things, it just takes one successful implimentation to provoke imitation.
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.