It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Dear MMORPG.
A make or break for my MMO/Multiplayer gaming experience is the community of players. I know that the larger and more mainstream a game gets, the more likely you are to have a lot of unsavory folks involved (the argument made commonly for World of Warcraft).
My question to you all: What game mechanics exist that contribute to a positive MMO/Multiplayer game community? What mechanics could be invented/would be nice to see to make communities stronger, friendlier, and a better experience overall?
Thank you for your time and your thoughts!
Comments
"Forced" grouping and no group / dungeon queue.
Grouping to create an interdependence on others and lack of queue to make people go out and search for players while reducing the risk of getting grouped with one of those total douchebags that you routinely get using cross server LFD which will hopefully put more focus on someone's reputation not letting them just queue up for the next dungeon with random people you won't see again allowing the douchebagery behavior.
Played: EQ1 (10 Years), Guild Wars, Rift, TERA
Tried: EQ2, Vanguard, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Runes of Magic and countless others...
Currently Playing: GW2
Nytlok Sylas
80 Sylvari Ranger
Take a page from UO. Create a Virtual World. Thats about all you truly have to do. I new my neighbors in UO, I saw them often enough so we got to know each other and adventured together. We'd go over and visit with each other and play board games in our respective houses.
No forced grouping worked well as well. People weren't sitting around lfg all day. You grouped if you wanted to with whom you wanted to group with. People would go off and adventure, gather resources, complete collection quests for actual achievements and meet people along the way. Each group in UO had it's own community. Tamers run into each other all the time, help each other out, compete with each other, teach and help new tamers, share what they've learned with each other. Same with crafters and same with any group in UO.
PK's would try to kill players doing dungeons in fel while others would try to protect them. Different communities formed but for the most part we considered ourselves as part of the larger community.
Forced grouping (traditional, not the GW2 coop way)
No solo play.
Increased difficulty.
Sandbox.
Might be an unpopular vote but, games that generally have less self-sufficient classes usually have better communities. At least from my experience.
Otherwise, having more challenging PvE content while moving away from a looted-centric game towards a more crafter-oriented one would be great for communities as well.
By more challenging PvE content, I don't mean strictly bosses, but the overall monsters in the world that players fight daily. Currently they serve as nothing more than static pinatas waiting to be killed. Kill a mob and the other mobs around it won't even react. That's rather sad. Chronicles of Spellborn tried to make the combat more challenging (and they did to some extent) but we all know how that game turned out sadly.
As for crafter-oriented games, I used to play as a dedicated crafters in many MMOs in the past and I'd often end up with a very large network of connections and friends of both crafter and fighters. We'd be helping each others all the time, trading ressources, learning about other players and knowing what they needed, helping create groups because we knew "x" group were looking for something similar, or just chatting in general. The amount of interaction between players was amazing and really fun.
There is a chat block in most games. I think if more than 25 players have someone on chat block the blocked should be sent a warning. If more than 50 the blocked should be banned for a day. If more than 100 the blocked should be banned for a week. If repeat offense they should get the IP Block.
This is mostly anti gold spamming measures which would improve community chat.
make the content a lot harder..force peeps to group.afterall its an mmo.also crafting..do it like vanguard where you can group to get resources ,especially rare stuff..more peeps gathering means more resources to make the goodies.what is the point of having solo shit in an mmo..i just dont get it.saying that though i,m guilty of playing these solo type games.
pvp also should be banned from pve servers totally. mainly because all most pvp'rs do is bitch and moan about how their class is always being nerfed and everyone else is overpowered.nothing to do with the fact the guy that just kicked your fuckin arse is better than you.(i dont do pvp can you tell ).if the guys wanna pvp do it on a pvp server.if the game does'nt have it then tough.
dont mean to offend anyone..its just my opinion guys.
p.s the whole idea of an mmo is that you most times work has a team and by doing that it makes the community better.just my 10 cents or pence
Would these things appeal to make a stronger community?
lol No most of that has proven to kill communities and simply breed "cliques".
Look back at all the MMO's that people have complained about for having a lack of community.
You'll notice those games tend to have forced grouping, less self sufficient classes, most content was group content.
The bosses in FFXI kept the community in competition and in conflict with each other. It was a hinderence to the community. Many have come to verbal blows with each other over camping specific NM's.
Everyones going to have different ideas about what is going to breed a strong community so my advice is to research the games that actually did and look at the games that didn't. Try to find the differences and commonalities.
You will have better luck doing that than asking the community.
Pretty much the opposite of this.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
+1
The more solo-centric a game becomes the more disjointed the community becomes. I don't know why you added sandbox in there though
Two from my perspective.
Eiliminate guild perks / rewards completely. The reason for guilding should be people, not perks.
Eliminate automatic guild rankings. Reputation with a guild is based on how the guild itself feels about a person, not by how many quests they complete.
"No most of that has proven to kill communities and simply breed "cliques"."
I personally felt FFXI had one of the best communities out there. What has failed from those things?
Themeparks are inherently detrimental to community. If they aren't near your level they aren't of use to you and with the forced grouping usually found in these games you must replace them. Same goes for the raid centric side of themeparks, they don't have the right gear, they aren't the right class, they aren't this, they aren't that lol.
I'm not sure I'd really have rankings, but I think it would be nice for people to be rewarded for having a long-standing, active Guild. Whether it be just some cosmetic things or not.
My intention would not be to have any guild or PvP warfare at this point.
Because sandbox generally means more interconectedness between players, eg crafting and economies.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs
Couldn't you do the level-syncing method from FFXI, or exemplar/sidekicking method from City of Heroes/Villains to allow people to party together in a themepark even if they're at different stages?
This is easily exploitable by a large guild
FFXI have a revolving clique system not really a community. What community it did have was disjointed and scattered. The main reason is in almost ever aspect of the game, most other players were your enemy. That healer wants my spot in PT, they RDM needs the same piece of gear I need, that Bst is attempting to camp the same NM I am camping, that Party is taking all the mobs in this area and we were here first... that kind of stuff.
I made a lot of friends in FFXI, but it was more on the lines of the begining of the community decline in games.
Ahh but where is their carrot on the stick for going to lower level areas to group with people they have level synced with? FFXI did ok with level sync because the main goal was xp, but most western MMO's focus on the "phat lewts" which are typically more abundant in higher level areas.
I would say for group crafting/questing requirements, guild quests/activities, that sort of thing. If your game isn't heavily gear-based than it shouldn't really be an issue who you pick up.
I don't think challenging PvE content should be limited to (field) bosses or 'elite' mobs. You need the average monster encounters to be more challenging than they currently are in MMOs today.
Taking Chronicles of Spellborn as an example, monsters would often be grouped up in 2-3 or more mobs. You'd have some warrior mobs and a caster mob. Their AIs were designed so that the warriors would act as tank, trying to be in the way of your abilities while the caster would prepare his spells to attack you. (It should be noted that CoS was not a tab-targetting game, you had to aim your skills and attacks).
Group-oriented crafting is a great idea, but they're usually more of a Guild-type of thing than group ones. Building a city is more commonly 'reserved' for Clans where players would work together to acquire all the ressources necessary to build their city. DarkFall is an example of that. ArcheAge (albeit not released yet in Korea, let alone North America) also has more 'group-oriented' crafting (where several players are needed to greatly hasten the process of building a house, ship or city) . But this does indeed encourage communities to come together more, so more group-oriented crafting could be a great idea.
FFXI and FFXIV, although does not have group-craft, did have many recipes (if not most) that would require the ressources created by several other crafter jobs. So for example to craft a spear, I might need a pole created by a woodworker, a blade crafter by a smith, and a cloth by a leatherworker. Each of which would require ressources of their own, so it would develop a pretty solid network of crafters, harvesters and fighters that would exchange ressources to create more items.
By less self-sufficient classes, I refer to how classes today have all become Tank/DPS/Healer in some ways. It's made solo-oriented gameplay that much easier by removing the necessity to rely on other players to fulfill areas you are lacking. Using FFXI again as an example, the White Mage had very little in terms fighting capabilities, but were pretty much a 'must' for any parties hunting mobs. Battles were relatively long (in comparison to today's standards) so sustainability was important.
On point number 4, I'm not sure how you'd do that unless the game was a Sandbox. Because those later content would technically be impacted by all other players as well
Point #5, most content should indeed be more group-oriented. Solo play should still exist however, but it should be nowhere near as viable as grouping is.
Point #6 Yes and No. Depends on the MMO in that case I would say.
Point #7 As far as Guild Bonuses goes, I don't view them as necessary. I'd prefer to see more horizontal development (guild housing, activities, etc) rather than vertical ones (bonuses to xp gain, stats, etc) for Guilds. Give players a place to be together as a guild, and give those places some purpose higher than to act simply as a meeting place to encourage players to visit them (Access to certain Vendor NPCs, crafting stations, etc) but that's just personal taste in this case.
I like this concept. Ways to reinforce grouping together, ways to reinforce doing good things/being helpful. The question is just how to incorporate this well into a multiplayer / mmo design. I'll also need to look more in depth into this honorable opponent system.
Thank you so much.
I agree completely. I don't think we can have, community-wise, a better game until we have a better gamER. While there have always been outliers to behaviour patterns, the earliest MMO's were -not- populated by the kind of acerbic trash-spewing infantile 'gamer' that populates them today. Until something is done about this - be it the LoL method or something new and innovative (and other than a heavy banhammer, I must admit to not having much in the way of ideas) - there can be no real 'community' improvement no matter what tools/resources you use.
Simply recreating the structures of the past doesn't recreate their conditions.
How more heavily focusing on group-craft, with many of the necessary materials being found in dungeons/zoneacross all of the level spectrums. Entering the dungeons brings you back down to the appropriate level range for the dungeon/zone. If you enter with a guild or volunteer to join a random group, you have the option to increase the likelihood for a certain item of your choosing to drop that's found within the dungeon. You would get to see a table of items and choose to increase the drop rate for a particular item.
Also the possibility of main city crafting/upgrades where buildings improve with player contributions, allowing bonuses to crafting, access to other types of buildings/features. These would be huge amounts of money/resources/crafters/etc needed and all of those who participate get some recognition/achievement/etc for doing so.