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Friday, January 11, 2008
Kill Ten Rats on the social experience
Ethic from Kill Ten Rats wrote an excellent post on "where did the social go?". Early MMORPGs like Everquest had enforced grouping, and developers discovered over the years that the ability to solo was very much valued by the players. But then they overshot the goal and instead of making soloing possible, they made soloing the most efficient and fastest way to advance your character. With the sad consequence that MMORPGs lost a lot of their social cohesion. Concepts like loyalty to your guild or the reputation of your character are only alive in some veterans, while players new to the genre change guilds more often than their underwear, and take the guild bank with them if possible.
As Ethic points out the solution is to "Don’t force the group, make it so you can’t wait to group." Developers spent too much time to develop ways to sanitize their games from possible anti-social behavior by minimizing player interaction. In the previous post I mentioned how Pirates of the Burning Sea managed to set up a player-run economy that doesn't contain any actual contact between players. Ethic mentions how games introduced mechanisms against power-leveling and kill-stealing that ended up isolating players even if they were at the same time at the same place and after the same monster.
Simple thought experiment: You see at equal distance a rare named mob and another player. What do you think?
A) I need to hurry to grab that mob before the other players tags it
or
B) I should cooperate with that other player to overcome the challenge of that named mob
In many cases the answer is A), because cooperation isn't rewarded. Only if the mob is an elite quest mob (and most elite quest mobs have just been removed from WoW in patch 2.3) where grouping with the other guy and killing the mob would solve the quest for both players would it be advisable to team up. But in most cases you are well able to kill that mob alone faster than the time it takes to form the group, and if you kill it alone you get more xp and loot. The game mechanics encourage us to solo, and while there are other players around us, we end up being alone together. This lack of social interaction has consequences in diminished longevity of MMORPGs. If you don't make friends, there is no reason to keep playing the same game as your friends do. If you can hop guilds, you can hop games.
This is sad, because it would be so easy to remedy this situation. People do not group in World of Warcraft (especially not below the level cap), because the challenges and rewards are structured in a way that a group which doesn't turn out perfect earns less rewards than solo play. A pickup group where maybe one player isn't playing all that well, or somebody has to leave due to Real Life ® events, is a high risk, which isn't compensated by the rewards you could achieve if the group turns out well. And for some quests (of the "collect 10 foozle ears" type, as opposed to "kill 10 foozles) even the most perfect group would take more time and get less rewards when doing the quest together than if every member just soloed it. As Ethic suggests groups should have more possibilities to work together, like combo moves. And as I already mentioned previously, the group xp bonus has to be raised substantially. If you meet a stranger in the same area where you are questing, inviting him should give such a substantial bonus that you overcome your fear of the risk that the guy might turn out to be an idiot. Advancing solo should be a definitive possibility, but it shouldn't be faster than cooperation with other players.
And of course games, especially World of Warcraft, need to introduce more tools to enable cooperation. The guild tools of WoW are woefully inadequate. Why is there no in-game event calendar? Why does every guild have to go through the painful process of finding somebody able to set up guild forums, finding free or cheap hosting, chasing after the members in game to tell them where to sign up for the forums, setting up a system of forum access rights, and organizing a way for new players to apply for membership? It would be so easy to offer guild forums automatically to every guild, accessible from in-game and outside browsers, with access rights handled automatically based on guild titles, and new players being able to apply for membership from inside the game. And that would only be covering the bare necessities of guild life, the stuff players already set up privately outside the game because it is so essential. It is easy to imagine far more powerful guild tools and ways for a guild to cooperate on common projects, with reward structures that encourage loyalty and cooperation.
Players don't like to be forced into anything, but they strongly react to rewards. Just look how suddenly everyone is doing PvP while group PvE is in decline in WoW, just because the rewards for PvP are now better. If it is so easy to influence behavior with rewards, instead of putting up lots of barriers to isolate players from each other and prevent anti-social behavior, we need reward structures that encourage social behavior. The stronger communities that would follow from that also benefit the game companies, in the form of higher longevity of the game. "I can't quit this game, my guild is already level 17" should be a developers dream.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:08 AM Permanent Link
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Aye!
In addition to making grouping more lucrative option could be a simple change in the exp gain from normal mobs. Just make the mobs grey after passing their level by one and you're off.
This would cause a terrible rubble, crying and whining 'why has the game been changed to more difficult' for a while, but as far as I see it, people who are levelling now (for the first time or third alt) are taking the easy way of grinding only greens, no challenge but fast gains.
Also the quests should be made more so that they turn grey faster: in a way the recent change in the exp changed that, as now you are levelling faster than you can fullfill your quests. But that is exactly the wrong way to enforce grouping!
IMHO the removal of elite quest mobs was a stupid move: instead the grouping should have been done more interesting to counter these obstacles. Heck, they could make the instances as bottlenecks, so that you had to go through the grouping to progress further. (ok, that was a bit facist idea... I'm not pro-forcing people to do anything, as that will kill the games as Tobold stated...)
More challenge without making the game too extreme, with grouping as the preferred way of levelling. Clear code for guidance in there, right?
Copra
In addition to making grouping more lucrative option could be a simple change in the exp gain from normal mobs. Just make the mobs grey after passing their level by one and you're off.
This would cause a terrible rubble, crying and whining 'why has the game been changed to more difficult' for a while, but as far as I see it, people who are levelling now (for the first time or third alt) are taking the easy way of grinding only greens, no challenge but fast gains.
Also the quests should be made more so that they turn grey faster: in a way the recent change in the exp changed that, as now you are levelling faster than you can fullfill your quests. But that is exactly the wrong way to enforce grouping!
IMHO the removal of elite quest mobs was a stupid move: instead the grouping should have been done more interesting to counter these obstacles. Heck, they could make the instances as bottlenecks, so that you had to go through the grouping to progress further. (ok, that was a bit facist idea... I'm not pro-forcing people to do anything, as that will kill the games as Tobold stated...)
More challenge without making the game too extreme, with grouping as the preferred way of levelling. Clear code for guidance in there, right?
Copra
socializing = trust
That's not as important now, and the reasons go beyond easy soloing.
In EQ, you would have been nuts to go into most dungeons unless you knew the players in your group. Corpse recovery, ninja looting, and death penalty (exp lose), made it extremely important to have a good rep.
So while WoW severely restricts the harm a griefer can cause, it also diminishes the value of having trustworthy and dependable teammates.
That's not as important now, and the reasons go beyond easy soloing.
In EQ, you would have been nuts to go into most dungeons unless you knew the players in your group. Corpse recovery, ninja looting, and death penalty (exp lose), made it extremely important to have a good rep.
So while WoW severely restricts the harm a griefer can cause, it also diminishes the value of having trustworthy and dependable teammates.
# posted by 
: 11/1/08 11:29
: 11/1/08 11:29
Here's another typical anti-social phenomenon I've experienced: People camp near elite mobs, wait for a group to tackle it, and then try and tag it just before the group does, and let the group kill the mob for them.
No excuse for that behaviour.
No excuse for that behaviour.
# posted by : 11/1/08 11:55
: 11/1/08 11:55
Opening and improving the genre became a double edge sword, irconic isn't it? While we now "see" more players than ever, we actually see less than ever.
The problem, especially in WoW though, is way more complexe than just a lacking xp-bonus for groups. The game creates a climate, that is pretty much very unfriendly in the long run. Think restrictions in every way, class envy in pve, class envy in pvp. There is enough trouble in the endgame, you will not get into such things while leveling, thus you stick to soloing.
One of the most awesome things in early EQ was the way a valueable item went. It kinda never died, but was given from one player to the next, for months and years. A subtle thing, but it worked like a charm. I met three very long ingame buddies, trading in Kelethin at was than called the bazaar.
Open and shared dungeons offered a huge social value. You met the worst and best while crawling side by side. For convenience of instances, a very important social playground was killed. I also miss a healthy amount of randomness. Your rare spawn example is spot on. Imagine this random being only handable by more than a single player/group, roaming your grind zones, suddenly you have a very valueable element, maby not convenient, but valueable nevertheless.
I think the genre has to learn to differentiate again between convenience and accessibility. It's not the same. Being forced to wait for hours to just kill foozle mobs is inaccessible. Soloing as the most effective way to max level is too much convience. There has to be a better middle ground. I don't believe encourage grouping isn't enough, there has to be some amount of enforcement.
The problem, especially in WoW though, is way more complexe than just a lacking xp-bonus for groups. The game creates a climate, that is pretty much very unfriendly in the long run. Think restrictions in every way, class envy in pve, class envy in pvp. There is enough trouble in the endgame, you will not get into such things while leveling, thus you stick to soloing.
One of the most awesome things in early EQ was the way a valueable item went. It kinda never died, but was given from one player to the next, for months and years. A subtle thing, but it worked like a charm. I met three very long ingame buddies, trading in Kelethin at was than called the bazaar.
Open and shared dungeons offered a huge social value. You met the worst and best while crawling side by side. For convenience of instances, a very important social playground was killed. I also miss a healthy amount of randomness. Your rare spawn example is spot on. Imagine this random being only handable by more than a single player/group, roaming your grind zones, suddenly you have a very valueable element, maby not convenient, but valueable nevertheless.
I think the genre has to learn to differentiate again between convenience and accessibility. It's not the same. Being forced to wait for hours to just kill foozle mobs is inaccessible. Soloing as the most effective way to max level is too much convience. There has to be a better middle ground. I don't believe encourage grouping isn't enough, there has to be some amount of enforcement.
# posted by : 11/1/08 12:28
: 11/1/08 12:28
The trouble with graying out quests and mobs earlier is that the level is not an accurate representation of the difficulty. The most glaring example of this is the rogue poison quest, which seems to be nigh-impossible at first.
Question - why have I never seen anyone talking about a reputation system?
As one poster says above, socializing = trust. Anything from a simple Ebay-style positive/negative feedback system to something more sophisticated ("People who enjoyed grouping with 1337killa also enjoyed grouping with...") would help with that problem.
And it'd be relatively trivial to set up. I've considered writing such a thing myself.
As one poster says above, socializing = trust. Anything from a simple Ebay-style positive/negative feedback system to something more sophisticated ("People who enjoyed grouping with 1337killa also enjoyed grouping with...") would help with that problem.
And it'd be relatively trivial to set up. I've considered writing such a thing myself.
Good post!
"But then they overshot the goal and instead of making soloing possible, they made soloing the most efficient and fastest way to advance your character."
My wife and I like to play together, and leveled a pair of characters to 70. But from what I can tell, our paired characters got significantly less XP for mob kills than when soloing. I didn't stop to measure it, but it seemed pretty obvious. And there is also a subtle "penalty" for grouping: When one person can't play, the progress of both is stopped. Another obvious problem is that if you want to do what we did - quest together - you cannot solo quest, because then your quest logs get out of synch.
Your "Simple thought experiment" happens every day on WoW in the Skettis escort quest, the design of which seems to bring out the worst in players. My response is to leave a spawn point if it is already camped, and if I'm the one camping the spot I invite anyone of my faction who shows up. But that is not reciprocated; opposing faction players try to 'steal' the quest, and I have even had 'friendlies' steal the quest out from under me while I was inviting them!
And it is kind of funny that Blizzard can't find a spot on their web site for guild space for players in their own game - but other providers do, and for free (with ads and email registration, of course). And I also agree that it is odd that guilds are forced to download a calendar add-on if they want to organize within the game.
Finally, you didn't really touch on it here, but have in the past: Raiding has (had?) potential to be an endgame social space. But right now I consider it to be the most difficult aspect of the game in terms of time investment, with gear requirements and raiding costs multiplied over many persons who need to coordinate to succeed. While raiding is more casual than at TBC release, it did not take too long for me to become a bit tired of repeating the same bosses when our team was not well geared enough to progress past a certain point. And since most raiding-quality gear is either BOP or very expensive, there is not much opportunity to progress in gear as a group unless either you run the same bosses, again, until you get the drop or the number of badges you need, or the individual pays the time-price for crafted or rep or PvP gear appropriate for raiding.
"But then they overshot the goal and instead of making soloing possible, they made soloing the most efficient and fastest way to advance your character."
My wife and I like to play together, and leveled a pair of characters to 70. But from what I can tell, our paired characters got significantly less XP for mob kills than when soloing. I didn't stop to measure it, but it seemed pretty obvious. And there is also a subtle "penalty" for grouping: When one person can't play, the progress of both is stopped. Another obvious problem is that if you want to do what we did - quest together - you cannot solo quest, because then your quest logs get out of synch.
Your "Simple thought experiment" happens every day on WoW in the Skettis escort quest, the design of which seems to bring out the worst in players. My response is to leave a spawn point if it is already camped, and if I'm the one camping the spot I invite anyone of my faction who shows up. But that is not reciprocated; opposing faction players try to 'steal' the quest, and I have even had 'friendlies' steal the quest out from under me while I was inviting them!
And it is kind of funny that Blizzard can't find a spot on their web site for guild space for players in their own game - but other providers do, and for free (with ads and email registration, of course). And I also agree that it is odd that guilds are forced to download a calendar add-on if they want to organize within the game.
Finally, you didn't really touch on it here, but have in the past: Raiding has (had?) potential to be an endgame social space. But right now I consider it to be the most difficult aspect of the game in terms of time investment, with gear requirements and raiding costs multiplied over many persons who need to coordinate to succeed. While raiding is more casual than at TBC release, it did not take too long for me to become a bit tired of repeating the same bosses when our team was not well geared enough to progress past a certain point. And since most raiding-quality gear is either BOP or very expensive, there is not much opportunity to progress in gear as a group unless either you run the same bosses, again, until you get the drop or the number of badges you need, or the individual pays the time-price for crafted or rep or PvP gear appropriate for raiding.
# posted by : 11/1/08 15:01
: 11/1/08 15:01
IMHO, any sort of stick used to discourage soloing is likely to result in a giant sucking sound which is the result of many casuals quitting the game.
If you're going to encourage grouping, then you should offer more carrots for grouping. It's hard enough finding groups at your level, which Tobold has mentioned quite a bit in the past. The last thing you should do is make it even harder for a solo player to catch up to his lvl 70 friends.
The thing is, if you could find a good group, then you could go run instances where you're likely to get some better equipment, and I believe you can get a better xp rate than just soloing.
If you're going to encourage grouping, then you should offer more carrots for grouping. It's hard enough finding groups at your level, which Tobold has mentioned quite a bit in the past. The last thing you should do is make it even harder for a solo player to catch up to his lvl 70 friends.
The thing is, if you could find a good group, then you could go run instances where you're likely to get some better equipment, and I believe you can get a better xp rate than just soloing.
# posted by : 11/1/08 15:15
: 11/1/08 15:15
If you want to encourage grouping, you need to make it easy for people to put groups together.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned so far is the really, really poor implementation of Looking For Group in WoW. It's horribly primitive and simply can't be used to put together all sorts of common groups.
Now I know a lot of people refuse to join pick-up groups at all and only consider runs with other guildmates, but sometimes, with so many things to do -- raids, arenas, bgs, etc -- and especially during off-hours, it can be hard to find the people you need for just through the guild. In those cases people either decide to do something solo or log out to do something else.
A better, more convenient LFG tool that worked regardless of location in the game, would be one more big way to encourage grouping.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned so far is the really, really poor implementation of Looking For Group in WoW. It's horribly primitive and simply can't be used to put together all sorts of common groups.
Now I know a lot of people refuse to join pick-up groups at all and only consider runs with other guildmates, but sometimes, with so many things to do -- raids, arenas, bgs, etc -- and especially during off-hours, it can be hard to find the people you need for just through the guild. In those cases people either decide to do something solo or log out to do something else.
A better, more convenient LFG tool that worked regardless of location in the game, would be one more big way to encourage grouping.
# posted by : 11/1/08 15:53
: 11/1/08 15:53
I've really been dismayed lately at my attempts to group with people in WoW. For instance, last night I got called a "stupid b####" in my enhancement shaman's first Ramparts run for rolling alongside a warrior for a BoE green cloak. He didn't seem to understand that something good for one melee class might be just as good for other melee classes, and had the nerve to insult my intelligence (while dual wielding despite being the nominal tank). I ended up giving him the cloak and dropping from the group, because I didn't need the gear or the run so badly that I was going to put up with abuse, but I was kind of shocked by his reaction.
I then tried to contact an officer in his guild so at least they were aware of what kind of people they have and what kind of damage they're doing to their reputation, but the officer didn't even seem to really care that much. I'm not sure I should have done that (as I wasn't exactly looking for retribution), but I know I wouldn't want a guy like that in my guild and felt like it was appropriate. But people just honestly don't seem to care about treating others with respect or maintaining a good reputation in this game at times. This hasn't been an atypical incident for me lately either; I obviously don't have a big enough sample size to make generalizations, but I feel like things have been getting worse.
I then tried to contact an officer in his guild so at least they were aware of what kind of people they have and what kind of damage they're doing to their reputation, but the officer didn't even seem to really care that much. I'm not sure I should have done that (as I wasn't exactly looking for retribution), but I know I wouldn't want a guy like that in my guild and felt like it was appropriate. But people just honestly don't seem to care about treating others with respect or maintaining a good reputation in this game at times. This hasn't been an atypical incident for me lately either; I obviously don't have a big enough sample size to make generalizations, but I feel like things have been getting worse.
# posted by : 11/1/08 16:16
: 11/1/08 16:16
Good thoughts on this topic, Tobold. Your question about what you would do in that situation reminded me of something that happened in Lord of the Rings Online recently. I had a quest to kill a named spider. I get to the room and there are 4 people waiting for it to spawn (crappy design that every game seems intent on using) and as we sit there I'm talking in local explaining that we could group up and all get credit for the very next kill. No response. So I invite people. No response. The spider spawns and the race is on for the kill. Rinse and repeat. Drove me crazy.
People are so used to soloing that they don't even know how grouping can help get things done.
People are so used to soloing that they don't even know how grouping can help get things done.
# posted by : 11/1/08 16:27
: 11/1/08 16:27
I think if blizzard had removed the grouping penalty from 20 to 60 instead of increasing the xp rewards for quests and mobs that would have solved it during the leveling phase of wow. And IMHO if you can get people to group while leveling the grouping continues at end game because people have made friends along the way.
@busket
I think things began to really go south when BC hit. The few months before BC a lot of people I knew were looking forward to running BWL, NAX, and AQ at 65 or so and getting thier chance while the hard core guilds hit the new content. BC killed all hope of that and "cemented" the rush to end game or be forever left out of the fun. Then they changed PVP and made it more lucrative than anything PVE for your casual player so there is really no comparable reward for grouping.
Add that to the mistake of tieing the 5 mans to faction grinds which turned them into a chore instead of places to get loot and have fun and the devs unintentionally made grouping the absolutely least efficient thing to do in game.
I think things began to really go south when BC hit. The few months before BC a lot of people I knew were looking forward to running BWL, NAX, and AQ at 65 or so and getting thier chance while the hard core guilds hit the new content. BC killed all hope of that and "cemented" the rush to end game or be forever left out of the fun. Then they changed PVP and made it more lucrative than anything PVE for your casual player so there is really no comparable reward for grouping.
Add that to the mistake of tieing the 5 mans to faction grinds which turned them into a chore instead of places to get loot and have fun and the devs unintentionally made grouping the absolutely least efficient thing to do in game.
Might the ubiquitous and globally available chat options (eg. guild, general, trade, etc) provide one less reason to group (ie. to socialise)?
I have guild chat running constantly, and there is quite the usual stream of inane blathering going by, but I have a stronger recollection of /say conversations with a fellow guildie while we hid out inside a hut in Ratchet and similar "in game" discussions.
Forming a pug to do an instance is something most people shy away from because you never know what idiots you'll get .. idiots that haven't had much experience of being in groups
What would a game look like if it didn't have such free and easy chat options? Certainly some things would be much harder .. but the game could be made richer for it .. there could be extra spells or items or NPCs available (eg. Ritual of Communion to form a chat channel, Telepathy for one to one communication, Astral Messenger to send a tell, and so on), guilds would have a reason to congregate in the same place for guild discussions, and so on.
Taking away global chat might be difficult though ...
I have guild chat running constantly, and there is quite the usual stream of inane blathering going by, but I have a stronger recollection of /say conversations with a fellow guildie while we hid out inside a hut in Ratchet and similar "in game" discussions.
Forming a pug to do an instance is something most people shy away from because you never know what idiots you'll get .. idiots that haven't had much experience of being in groups
What would a game look like if it didn't have such free and easy chat options? Certainly some things would be much harder .. but the game could be made richer for it .. there could be extra spells or items or NPCs available (eg. Ritual of Communion to form a chat channel, Telepathy for one to one communication, Astral Messenger to send a tell, and so on), guilds would have a reason to congregate in the same place for guild discussions, and so on.
Taking away global chat might be difficult though ...
# posted by : 11/1/08 17:44
: 11/1/08 17:44
Actually it was my experience when they did away with the Global LFG channel, grouping dropped. I would usually pick up someone who had an alt that needed to run the instance I was looking for because they'd see us forming the group. Now only people actively looking or in your zone actually see that your forming a group.
And I'm just as bad. I'll usually happily go on a pug if asked but a lot of times if I have quests to finish or and just messing around I won't que up in the tool.
And I'm just as bad. I'll usually happily go on a pug if asked but a lot of times if I have quests to finish or and just messing around I won't que up in the tool.
Yeh, that LFG tool is truly awful. They took away something that had devolved into something sub-optimal and replaced it with something that was completely unworkable, while leaving available alternative global chat channels (eg. trade) for LFG.
The problem with groups and grouping, currently, is that people only form them when there is some objective on the line (an instance or an elite quest), and thus the risk that you'll encounter an idiot actually matters. Compare that to grouping to simply chat while you work an area .. not so much pressure, and you get to observe their playing style (which you can ungrouped too, but that feels too much like creepy stalking).
The problem with groups and grouping, currently, is that people only form them when there is some objective on the line (an instance or an elite quest), and thus the risk that you'll encounter an idiot actually matters. Compare that to grouping to simply chat while you work an area .. not so much pressure, and you get to observe their playing style (which you can ungrouped too, but that feels too much like creepy stalking).
# posted by : 12/1/08 01:43
: 12/1/08 01:43
I think the problem with grouping in wow now is a couple of things.
Most low level toons are alts. Or rerollers on a new server. Those players are trying to get to end game quickly. for the most part.
New people coming into the game are told by most to hurry up and get to end game where the real game is.
Add that to a LFG tool that now only advertises to people looking for the level specific places you select and you have a situation in which you are literally scraping the crumbs together to get a group.
So getting a group takes longer than it used too. If the pug sucks you've lost more time and potential progress than before under the old system. Thus it bothers you more and are less likely to suffer that again.
The system they have let develop has really hurt grouping. I'm sure that was not the devs intention but now whatever they do they have to figure out how to add enough incentive to change peoples attitudes about grouping. Something I predict will be hard for blizzard because they like to use the big stick instead of rewards.
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Most low level toons are alts. Or rerollers on a new server. Those players are trying to get to end game quickly. for the most part.
New people coming into the game are told by most to hurry up and get to end game where the real game is.
Add that to a LFG tool that now only advertises to people looking for the level specific places you select and you have a situation in which you are literally scraping the crumbs together to get a group.
So getting a group takes longer than it used too. If the pug sucks you've lost more time and potential progress than before under the old system. Thus it bothers you more and are less likely to suffer that again.
The system they have let develop has really hurt grouping. I'm sure that was not the devs intention but now whatever they do they have to figure out how to add enough incentive to change peoples attitudes about grouping. Something I predict will be hard for blizzard because they like to use the big stick instead of rewards.
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