Sociabilization on MMORPGs...

try to aim to get your point across without creating a confrontation and you might change your opponents perspective.

i realize how hard that is and i struggle to do so myself in many situations but it is the most effective tactic.

I play solo because all the game systems tell me to do so. I understand your point of view. The reason you play an MMO is for the Social Aspect, so for you, interacting with players and making friends and being nice... Well, that's the whole point. Anything to do with the game itself is secondary or tertiary for you.

I understand that point of view. I disagree with it, but I understand it.

I like helping players when:
A. The mood strikes me to do so.
B. I don't have to go very far out of my way to do so.
C. I'm enjoying who I'm chatting with, so I want them to enjoy the game and stick around longer, so I can continue chatting with them (very selfish of me, but there is no truly selfless act in the entire world. We all do things out of selfishness).
D. I see someone genuinely struggling and not asking/begging for someone to help them.


You're not really helping out yourself by helping someone else. Unless the only thing you want to get out of it is that Selfish Feeling of "I did a good thing, so I feel really good about myself and feel super important for doing so". I don't really crave that. So, unless there's some kind of tangible reason for me to help someone else, then you're getting nothing out of it except a superficial feeling of being a better person. One that fades in less than 20 minutes and is only remembered once in a while for a Hit of Nostalgia. If you remember it at all.

That being said... I enjoy helping people. But, I engage in it through "Random Acts of Kindness". The minute my "helping people" becomes the least bit mandatory (or even expected of me), then I'm gone. I suspect you'd have kicked me from your guild for rarely, if ever, helping anyone in it. Because, frankly, if someone was like, "Hey, come run this raid with me" or "could you help me run this quest?", unless I felt the desire to do those things, that answer would be "no". Well, that, and I don't spend a lot of time playing MMOs due to the grindtastic nature of them.

Okay, so what are my Random Acts of Kindness? Sometimes, I see a low level newbie, just starting out... And I drop 6000 gold into their trade bar for absolutely nothing. I don't care if they remember my name. I don't care if they say thank you. I felt like giving them a boost very early in the game, so they got one. Some guy needed help with a Quest I already completed, I was in the area, I was bored, it's like 5 minutes out of my way... I help them complete the Quest. In fact, I used to help people with Quests a LOT when I used to play Runescape. I can't tell you how many times I've completed the "Phoenix Crossbow" Quest that teaches players about Trading. I completed it the first time Solo by simply buying the key I needed to get into the other hideout (players are expected to pick a side and then not have access to the other half of the Quest... then talk to people who did the other side and trade items with each other so you can each get the reward for completion). I got in, completed the Quest, got two rewards (you have to give the other reward to the player who helped you, and using it gives you XP, Quest Points, Quest Completion, and a small amount of gold). I ended up just dropping the second reward on the ground, in the middle of the busiest town, because once you use the reward, you can never use it again, and I completed the Quest solo. Someone who picked it up got lucky that day and completed the Quest without any effort. But, I've helped dozens of people with the Quest even though I literally get nothing out of it. Simply because if I'm passing through, and someone is asking about it, I stop and help them, since it's a stupid and broken quest that is frustrating for newbies.

What else have I done? Oh, before stat requirements and "Binding" Equipment, I use to give newbie players my old armors as I traded up. Didn't matter the MMO I was playing to do this. I didn't sell it, I just gave it to some newbie who never asked for it. "Here's some good armor, no payment, have fun!". MMO Designers decided to stop this Random Act of Kindness by implementing the ed "Binding" system. Oh, this "Soul Binds". Oh, this "Account Binds". UGH. Bind Quest items. Bind things I bought from your Cash Shops... Bind things you can only ever get a single drop of. But, binding old armor I crafted? Old armor that I found and had equipped? Why is THAT something that binds? Go ahead devs, keep enforcing that SOLO PLAY.


I've never once experienced that in an MMO. Usually, once I give a player something and try to strike up a conversation, it simply leads to future interactions where they ask me for more stuff... or ask me to help them with something... Or ask constantly if I want to go do something they're doing.

Not a single time has any player said, "Hey, what are you doing?" and then if I said I was doing something that they didn't want to do, simply said, "Oh, I was just checking to see if you wanted to do X with me." and then waited to see if I wanted to do what they're doing. It is almost universally "Hey, let's go do X". Or "I'm doing X and could use some help, want to come with?". At that point, they're trying to obligate me through pity or ordering me around. Or, even more fun. Even if we end up doing different things... They don't stick around to chat anyway. They don't invite me to the party to chat with them while they do their thing. They want to interact with me only in-so-far that I can help them. Which means, they're Solo Players too. They're just pretending to be Social and Nice to get things they want. Whereas, I'm at least honest about it.

So, for me... I'd rather solo play than deal with that. But, that's my personal preference and it doesn't really stem from a game system. Though, some game systems could probably be revamped so that the effects of such interactions are minimized.


The problem is that you think the social aspects of MMO's wouldn't happen without people deciding to be nice. Those things will happen regardless. But, players being nice to each other? Across the internet where nobody knows your name, where you live, or your face? 98% of those people are selfish jerks. Because they have no investment in you as a person. They don't know you, they don't care. My point is that if you include systems that reward players for helping each other... Or make some systems mandatory on some level... Then solo players are more likely to interact with other players. More likely to stop and help someone. Guilds are more likely to run smoothly with less drama (except in the cases of personality conflicts). Players then don't feel "obligated" to help people, but will because there's a genuine reason to do so, in game, with strangers.

Plus, most Solo Players realize something about MMO's that you haven't yet:

That act of meeting new people and their friends become your friends and you hang out and do stuff? We can do that in the real world. Many of us often even do so. Go downtown, strike up a conversation with a stranger, find out you have some things in common, hang out, maybe become friends. For us, such an aspect is "less special" when you never know who that other person is and when they leave your life the minute the MMO dies. That's the trouble with making friends in a video game. That friendship only exists there. Thus, it is superficial and is little more than "acquaintances". But, that's the same with friends you make at work... you're not really friends, especially if you stop interacting with them when you get a new job, they get a new job, the business goes under... whatever. Or, school. When everyone goes to college and stops talking to everyone else, you quickly realize they weren't really your friends.

But, few people in the world rarely ever have more than 1 or 2 friends anyway. The people that stick with you wherever you go, whatever you do, no matter how far away. No matter how much time has passed, they're still talking to you, hanging out with you when they can, and sharing a laugh. Those are the true friends.

Most of us who Solo... We know that. We'd just rather avoid all the Obligations and Drama that come with the badly designed systems that make partying up with strangers mandatory.

---

I could honestly give you stories for days on times I've interacted with random people and helped them for no other reason than I wanted to. I have a lot of instances where I was just nice to people... just because. I got nothing out of it except the feeling that I made someone's day.

Heck, in Guild Wars 2, whenever a Mesmer helps me with a Jumping Puzzle, I give them a tip for doing so. They can create teleport zones to teleport everyone to the end of the Jumping Puzzle and give everyone instant credit for completion. They do it for free. Even worse? They have to complete the JP themselves, without a teleporter, to get to the end, before they can make the portal for anyone else. There's no rule written that you have to tip them. They never ask for money. But, they help me, I tip them 1 Gold (Gold is harder to come buy in Guild Wars than other MMO's I've played), and then encourage everyone else to tip the Mesmer. I'll stick around 5 or 10 minutes and encourage people to "Tip your Mesmer. They do the work so you don't have to! They earned it!". Do people tip the Mesmer? I don't know. But, I do. I encourage others to do so.

I want to interact with other players in an MMO. I want to help people out. I want others to readily and quickly help me when I need it. Unfortunately, every MMO I've ever been in? Yeah, none of the systems are designed to encourage that kind of play. They're all actively designed to discourage that kind of play. Designed to encourage Toxicity. To make people not want to Guild Up. To make people feel obligated to give their time to other players.

It's all designed to actively punish players who don't Solo. So many systems these things have that enforce Solo Play.

So, why should I play any other way than what they demand I play?

some games really do force the coop situation.. for example in diablo3 the only way to be compeditive in the leaderboards is to play in a four man group...they give bonus exp to groups just for being in a group. solo players literally cant keep up not even a duo and they openly express this since the point of the game is multiplayer.

logically speaking.. it makes sense. If i can do better to play alone thats what id do even if i was invited to a group why would i join it if i can gain more experience faster on my own? if you're going to create a multiplayer game it makes sense to try to promote multiplayer even if the tactics they use are very carrot on a stick...

@Countyoungblood

I agree, if you're going to have an MMO, promote the multiplayer side of things. Make playing in a group far more advantageous than playing Solo. Make the multiplayer side of the game attractive, even to the Solo Players.

I mean, as a Solo MMO Player, I don't want to be obligated to be doing multiplayer stuff if I don't want to... But, I think there's room in there for devs to improve existing systems and content and their games to make me want to play in groups. I think there's probably a way out there for them to even entice me to join a Guild and stick with it.

But, the way MMO's are currently set up for a Solo Player like me? They simply entice Solo Play a lot more than multiplayer, and I simply don't play MMO's that force me into the multiplayer aspects due to how onerous the systems are or how "high pressure" and "high maintenance" playing in multiplayer feels all the time. I get annoyed anytime I get a party invite, because it immediately means "obligation to play with them, how they want to play, doing what they want to do" when I get it. And, if it doesn't, it means, "I have to babysit this person while we do what I'm doing".

Current MMO systems simply build a lot of animosity towards other players and the only thing that exists to "balance that out" is someone deciding to make a guild like CleanWater… which amounts to "The Players had to create a system to foster team play since the game doesn't do that at all".

The answer to a design solution in any game, I don't care how much of an MMO it is... should not be, "Rely on the players to fix the issue for us".

one of my life goals is to commission a 2d mmo....and i plan to design it to be very...cruel. pvp globally and pvp/pve goal crossing. i want players to ship goods in caravans while being protected by mercenaries that have the choice to double cross them the whole time. i want the route to cross into large distances of pvp territory... i want a game that players can actually decide how to behave through their actions. i want to build real camraderie by working together with a team... to pillage or protect.. overall i just want dying to matter.

Funny, I have a similar idea for a MMO. xD
But it probably wouldn't work, since everyone might choose to kill everybody in their sight instead of doing alliances. :guffaw:

the ability to betray is what makes an alliance meaningful. its not the game restricting your actions its you deciding to stay loyal or not. most players wouldnt be interested in playing the game i want to design but the ones who would play would love it.

It's the same premise of the old Tibia, I think, but when I tried that game, I gave up the PvP server, because I often got killed by high level players in the post-beginners towns. Even when I managed to do a party with another newcomer, we both got killed by a lvl 85 (or something similar). We both were at lvl 10~12, so we stood no chance against that one. :aswt:

indeed though I believe it would be beneficial to provide a small degree of hand holding for new users but not too much.. you want to maintain the possibility for players to chose to rise to the occasion and protect and teach new users... or kill them. both are fine. my vision would involve global pvp but larger cities wouldn't allow combat anywhere guards can see.

Yeah, PvP should be allowed only outside of town, or have a penalty system (like the red mark in SAO).

Hi, solo player (who often runs multiple accounts in certain games to avoid grouping) reporting in. I get the feeling there's a lack of understanding regarding people who play like I do, so let's clear up some misconception!

Why play a mmo if you're going to run solo?
I'm not against the concept of grouping, but being forced by the game mechanics to group for everything makes the game feel tiring and unpleasant rather than relaxing:

• Having to sit outside a zone or in a town, spamming, "need group for [content here]!" all day isn't something I enjoy. I'm playing the game to do stuff I want to do, not sit around and wait for people before I can get anything done.
  
• Feeling like I have to commit to finishing the content for the other people in my group isn't something I enjoy either, because what if I want to take like an hour break in the middle of it? Many MMO communities have this GO GO GO mentality where they want the stuff done as quickly as possible. I can skip that nonsense by just playing solo, or using an alt account. World of Warcraft's community is really bad about that, and I suspect the game's shift toward "raid or gtfo" over the last few expansions might be why I'm just not that interested in it anymore
• Scheduled gameplay sucks. What I mean is how, in games like wow, your guild might say things like, "raids are at 7:00pm every wednesday and you are expected to show up." Yeah no thanks, I'll play the game when I want. Scheduled tasks are for jobs and appointments, not relaxation.

So why not just play a single player game?
Despite wanting to play on my own terms, having a community around just makes things more interesting for times when I do want to play socially. That's really all there is to it.

@Aesica if you could create a character that could play "solo", without the need of making multi-accounts, would you prefer it instead them?

Let's say, a class that can do everything by it's own. So, playing "socially" would be completely optional.

That depends on other factors. In one of the games I play, bringing 2 characters means getting twice as much reward in the same amount of time. Specifically, finishing "the objective" may yield 40 gold per person in the party, so that secondary alt account could turn around and hand my main its share and I've doubled my earnings in half the amount of time.

Overall, I tend to favor classes that can solo as much as possible (in wow, I prefer tanks or pet classes over squishy mages and rogues for that reason) but even in spite of that, there's still often good reasons for using multiple accounts.

it doesn't end well.
some people try, tho.... but it doesn't end well.

Y'all are right on the money about FFXIV being toxic.

Personally, I love socializing with people--I love to just approach someone in game and say "Hey! You're gathering, I'm gathering--let's gather together!"

I can't say I've ever had a bad experience with that, usually people are very friendly. In a game like FFXIV, I noticed a few--clicks (so to speak) that existed on the server I played on (RP oriented server.) There was an air of superiority among many of the free companies. I didn't really care, I just continued on; made a few friends and got in my girl's free company (she's a big wig on the server these days.)

I learned early on that FFXIV was not the game for me... as I had no interest in RPing that game (I used to RP in The Secret World, figured FFXIV might be fun--but no... I was wrong about that.) Not to mention, I didn't like a lot of aspects of the game--for instance, forcing you to queue up for dungeons as part of progression... I don't agree with that. Personally I don't care, I'll do it and joke my way through it with the random people. Though, am not the type of person to poke fun or mess with people--I'm friendly and I stick around, even if people get salty and rage (which they do a lot in FFXIV) but for someone wanting to play solo--they're forced to commit to either making friends or playing with randoms. To me, there's no winning when you're forced to do something that you'd rather skip; but FFXIV wont allow it if you want to proceed in the story.

To me, there's nothing wrong with playing an MMO on your own. If it works for you, and you're having fun--the sure, why not? I did that in The Secret World a lot, not because I didn't have anyone to play with--but because the design of it allowed for fun solo play; especially with many of the investigation quests (where you would have to figure out a mystery using clues.) Playing a game like that on your own was not only acceptable, but it was just plain old fun. Sure you can group up for most of the quests and necessary for the dungeons/raid; but those are the only instances of needing to do it; as all you would get in return is the chance of rolling on gear, which--you can also get if you PvP... so TSW to me, did the MMO thing a different, but great way.

I agree that the design for many of these games is terrible; especially when they force you to group up; much to the chagrin of others or yourself when there's a wipe with 3 (FFXIV) or 4 other randoms. That's not fun at all, so I understand the hesitation.

creative mode minecraft server? how is this an example of anything relevant? please don't try to start an argument with "you said let them decide" and expect me to give players what would be creative mode in an rpg. I didn't realize i needed to specify that i'm not going to let players destroy the game by mass editing the map or spawning in items.

it wasn't creative mode, only the owner had creative mode.
it was a regular server.

You uh... didn't watch the video. It was a Survival Mode Realm with no rules. He only enabled Creative after the last day of the 7 day experiment was over, in order to survey what happened over those 7 days.

The players who managed to get large quantities of items were exploiting Duplication Bugs in the game to get them. Which probably explains all the massive TNT Damage at spawn.

The video pretty much demonstrates what most people instinctively know. It takes 1 person to destroy the work of thousands, and it's far easier and faster to destroy than it is to create.

If you let players "decide who they are and will be through actions" without rules and consequences... You ultimately end up with a "dead game" as the good players will flee it in droves since anything they try to do that's good invariably gets destroyed and that act of destruction beats them down over time... They leave for games where there's less of that nonsense (just like in the real world!)… And then the bad actors either get bored of what they're doing and leave as well... or try to come up with even worse things to do to the remaining bad actors.

Though, to be fair... the video really does sum up "Lord of the Flies" quite nicely and in far less time.

Lol, does it really matter if it was creative or an exploit? most of what you see here is TNT i couldnt listen to the audio but I've played minecraft at least one time before. what you'd probably consider a "good" player is the audience id be intentionally not catering to but the rest of your posts on this thread highlight that pretty well. this isnt really on topic anymore though. go create a thread in game mechanics about anything and I'l debate you on it if you're bored.

I'm not looking for a debate. I was explaining to you what you missed from the video.

You're welcome to disagree, but World History would prove otherwise on the matter of "letting everyone do anything with no rules or enforcements". The first thing those places do is close down the borders to keep people from leaving. Even they know how it works. If you have a state of essentially pure anarchy and horror and people abusing power... The productive people... the people who just want to live peacefully... who just want to have a job and a family and work their way up in life... Well, they leave.

The same is said of video game players. Only those who want to continue being antisocial psychopaths invariably stay in such games. Everyone else opts out.