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People and Their Failure to Join in With Their Community
Razeekster
Member UncommonPosts: 2,591
A trend I am seeing in the gaming community is players complaining that they can't seem to make friends and they have to solo everything. I personally can't wrap my head around this one. Yes, it may be harder in real life to make friends (I'm one of those more out-going people who it comes more naturally to), but in an online world? You should have no excuse unless you have some mental block that just won't allow you to socialize with others. Making online friends really shouldn't be as hard as people make it seem.
Just being positive to others makes a community better. I noticed since I returned to an old game and ignored all the nastyness and was just nice to everyone I came across they in turn seem to be nicer to others too. I'm not saying that it was because of me. I'm just saying I contributed to healthy communication which in turn made me more friends and everyone else around me seem more friendlier and less "trollish."
I think other people need to try this out before saying that their community sucks and that they solo everything. I personally think that it's the individual's fault if they have no friends in a game because it really isn't that hard to make them. Join a guild, talk, be active within your community and you will see a difference. I've made so many friends by just running across someone while doing something and striking up a conversation. It really isn't as hard as it sounds. Trust me.
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Comments
I do think it was because of you. Kindness is almost as infectious as a bad temper.
Yes it is. I notice people who are being mean to others and usually if you ask them to stop and what they are doing doesn't make them seem any cooler it usually stops too. People just think because it's in-game that it doesn't matter but it does to a degree.
Smile
Internet + Anonymous + No Consequences = Bad Behavior
On top of that you have
Several online games come out each year + Content is short or leveling is fast = Players not staying in the community for very long
I'm seeing no change to the community no matter how nice, helpful, or friendly I am in games. I don't make friends that last more than a day. "I added you to friends!" Ok, cool. Then I never see or hear from them again. It's as if nobody wants to form a friendship online anymore. Is everyone with the mind set that the community is only a body of players that happen to play together? I guess only when you are part of a guild does anyone want to get involved. And still, guilds are just another body of players, playing independantly.
Bad design is why I tend to "solo" in recent MMOs. It isn't my behavior or anything like that.
If I am encouraged to play solo for 60 levels (thanks story mode), I will be bothered and confused if I am forced into group content at level 60.
If I am encouraged to group for 60 levels, I will feel empowered to play level 60 group content.
It's simple. If you condition a player to play solo for 49 hours at the start of the game, how can you expect them to magically seek out other players for activities during hour 50? If you want people to join the community, they have to design the game around community from level 1. All the solo leveling and story nonsense needs to go away.
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Hang on... so, I play a game on the Internet and thus I am apparently obliged to make friends with people who also play the game? Sorry, it isn't obligatory, it's optional. It's a GAME, not a relationship.
When I'm chatting to RL friends and family via voice chat I'm socialising with the people who matter to me. I'm not interested in exchanging brief texts with some random gamer amongst 1,000 other random gamers. The level of chat and interaction I see in the chat window of an MMO actively discourages me from participating!
For me mmorpg dont last long enough to warrent the effort to join a community, since i can solo to endgame i usaly do and quit the game when i reach endgame.
If i group more then solo in games i will put in the extra effort to make friends and join guilds but very very few mmorpg need this atm.
Me and a friend of mine have played GW2 last couple of months we stopped becouse its many times no fun anymore how rude and distance people are, or no communication at all.
We are playing games in coop now so we don't have to deal with todays generation of players and there behavior. There are always exception sure but they are in my experience very rare these days.
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If you want to actually make friends in a game now days you usually have to join a guild and hope for the best. Most people playing just want to get things done and you're nothing more than a tool for them to use.
Even games that have group play end up just being two anonymus people who group for a quest, never talk once, and then carry on solo asap.
The real problem is numbers. There are more people playing who think if they can't see you in rl you're not a real person, than those who are out looking to make freinds in an MMO. Numbers = money and the games cater to their kind of solo no socalizing type of play.
A typical game would have what, around 300k-500k people?
That's the size of a small city.
Do I expect everyone in that city to be nice to me in RL?
Not really. So why would I expect anything different in a video game?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I will be nice, next level. I will socialize, after I got this stat.
With some MMO's trying the "it is not just a game, it is a job" approach, some people have gone into the mindset that they just want to login to do the daily routine to get shinies they can then use someday to do something fun. Tomorrow, next weekend, some day soon AFTER they got the shiny.
SWG is well known for having generated some amazing user adventures when people went beyond the games grind and went out and had an adventure. I have posted several BUT at the time, when they were organized, right then in a sandbox game with no end game, people were so busy grinding that they asked when invited on a rancor hunt (before doc-buff) what the reward was, what they would get, how much XP it would give...
For some players, the grinding has become such a core feature of MMO gaming, they can't see beyond it anymore. These people would grind EVERYTHING in any game and keep wondering when the fun is supposed to start. It starts when YOU stop boring yourself to death with daily tasks you hate to do and whose end result gives you no happiness.
I have organised just for fun events in some MMO's and for every person who happily signs up and then saids mails thanking you and then sends mail asking if you ever plan to do something else to please invite them again, you get responses like:
I don't have time now to join you carefully setup event that took a month to organize, do it when I do have time.
"What is the reward?"
"How much XP do I get for it?"
"there is no point in what you are doing, you do know you don't get XP for it!?!"
I even have on more then one occasion got angry tells from people who were upset that my nonsense events were taking people away from their dailies groups.
A lot of the people who claim they got to solo everything see other people as tools. I wonder how they approach team sports, you show up at the soccer field and a match just happens right then and there because you showed up?
Often it takes someone to take the lead, to make an event happen but for every great event a lot of players WISH they took part, think MMO's are all about such things but they were busy with a task and surely another event would come by or everyone would wait until they were done.
Gaming magic does not wait for you. If you didn't have fun lvl 1-80 you won't have it at 80. To many players in my recent experience who raced through MMO's like TSW, SWTOR and GW2 and then wondered why others rather liked them and where they encountered all that fun and socializing. It was happening right underneath your noses, while you were looking at your XP bar.
It is quite sad that most MMO developers seem to cater for the rushing crowd because they are also the ones to leave, so a game ends up having to spend a lot of money on servers to deal with the onslaught of rushers and then when they leave has to pay for empty servers and deal with loads of negative feedback on the servers.
It reminds me of people who work late for money they never spend, rush home eating fast food looking at their cellphone with music blearing in their earst to an empty house and then dream of a day they will sit in small bistro talking about life the universe and everything with someone special.
I will start playing this game for fun, just as soon as I grinded to 80 hating every second of it.
I got the rather fun advice in Lotro when I was still doing PUG Helegrod raids that if I joined with said player he would power level me with his maids so I could organize hope gear grinds because he enjoyed the stuff I did... poor guy was close but never quite understood that the low level stuff I did was fun because it was just for fun.
Take GW2, Ore or however that high level zone is called sucks. So? Don't do it. But in other zones it takes to long to get to 80... So? What is there at 80?
What is the goal for you loggin into a GAME? If it is NOT to have fun, you are doing it wrong.
I have to say going into a game and then trying to socialize is not the best way to do so.
Communities built around a video game are very fragile.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Good example there, because the mood and behavior of people in a city are not isolated, just as they're not isolated in an MMO. If you're living in a mega city where people step on your toes all the time, have no time for thanks and the traffic is like a death threat, it gets harder and harder to have a sunny disposition. Same in a crowded MMO where people just mind their own goals and see other players as more of an annoyance along the road to those goals rather than fellow citizens or adventureres.
This is why you have to initiate kindness: otherwise the community may turn sour despite the majority of it preferring otherwise - it's just that nobody bothers doing anything about it.
You can't make the whole server behave nicely, but you can noticably increase the number of better encounters. And from what I've seen, it's sort of a runaway effect, which is pretty good for the server you're on. I've seen single guilds absolutely transform server communities - towards good and bad.
I never had trouble making friends in FFXI. I was part of the same linkshell for years, and we did stuff together ocationally. Plus there was a lot of downtime in that game, so naturally you would get bored at times and just start taking to ppl.
But in a game like Guild wars 2, there isn't much downtime and your constantly pressing buttons to fight stuff, while ffxi you had plenty of time even in battles and between pulls to chat with ppl in your group.
And one more thing, in GW2 in order to chat effictivly ppl would use a Voice chat program, and i've always been way to shy to actually speak into a computer mic to ppl. So I've never used those before.
Several online games come out each year + Content is short or leveling is fast = Players not staying in the community for very long
I'm seeing no change to the community no matter how nice, helpful, or friendly I am in games. I don't make friends that last more than a day. "I added you to friends!" Ok, cool. Then I never see or hear from them again. It's as if nobody wants to form a friendship online anymore. Is everyone with the mind set that the community is only a body of players that happen to play together? I guess only when you are part of a guild does anyone want to get involved. And still, guilds are just another body of players, playing independantly.
I think people tend to act towards a player the way the player acts towards them or the way the player acts in the general or global chat. Players will respond to different people different ways. They'll respond to a nice person with niceness and they'll respond to a jerk by being a jerk or by not participating with them. I haven't played any games where the general tone of things wasn't mostly or completely determined by my behavior and attitude. I think the OP is right.
I think games like LoL break that rule, but I can't be sure since I don't play the game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think it's generally because in game mechanics that encourage alliances, and honor, friendship and wars are sadly lacking it current MMORPG's.
Asheron's Call had a great system. ~ From level 1 you we're searching for other people, it wasn't necessarily a necessity, but it was much funner and more productive with more players.
Then take say... World of Warcraft, from Level 1 you are trying to blast to max level, avoiding people when at all possible because of the mechanics of the game, monster spawn, quest loot ect, these we're all poorly implemented, and did not encourage players to seek players, instead you avoid instictivily!
I can see how that could be true. I've been playing the same game for 4 years so my name is somewhat known anyways (in that particular game).
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Honestly i've never had any problems making friends in MMO's. Maybe its because im not a "rabid screaming child who has to prove how great i am to some people i dont know and will likely not know if i continue acting like that"
Not accusing anyone in this thread of being one or anything, i just find being nice and occasionally Cute gets you pretty far in this genre.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
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Nah i think its correctly Written. a Community shouldn't bend over backwards to get somone to join it. That being said they also shouldn't be jerks with and then expect them to join it.
For example TSW has a amazing Community (other than Cerb) and will help anyone who asks 9 times out of 10. Should we sit in chat and repeat does anyone have questions we can answer, No. however if you ask a question will you get a answer, More often than not.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Nah i think its correctly Written. a Community shouldn't bend over backwards to get somone to join it. That being said they also shouldn't be jerks with and then expect them to join it.
For example TSW has a amazing Community (other than Cerb) and will help anyone who asks 9 times out of 10. Should we sit in chat and repeat does anyone have questions we can answer, No. however if you ask a question will you get a answer, More often than not.
Depends on the perspective. Largely; however, I see a lot of communities (aka guilds/clans) dropping the ball when it comes to incentivizing committment and giving players a reason to participate. 99% of all guilds/clans consist of the same boring crap, and a level of detachment.Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.