The Unsocial MMO
This started a few days ago with a post at Massively about soloing in MMOs, and was further compounded today by a post at Bio Break which featured a single question:
If we are lazy and resistant to being social in MMOs (the path of least effort, etc.), is it the game’s/devs’ responsibility to encourage — or even force — us to do so?
This has always been a pet peeve of mine. As a long time soloist, I admit that I’m not generally a social person around people I don’t know, especially in situations where I’m expected to do something. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate grouping and socializing, but not as a replacement for my soloist ways. After all, I’m playing for my own enjoyment, not as employment, and not for the benefit of others.
So the opinion that the only reason why people should play an MMO is for the social aspect is one that’s never sat well with me. I have been able to enjoy MMOs for years, primarily as a soloist, which in my mind makes the argument moot. Still, people persist with this asanine idea that if you’re not chatting up a storm, jumping from PUG to PUG, or signing up with a guild on day one, you have no business in the MMO genre.
The usual avenue of attack usually comes in the form of “if you’re not going to [socialize], go play a single player game”. Unmitigated bullshit, and here’s why:
MMOs offer something DIFFERENT then single player games. The two are NOT mutually exclusive, nor are they divided be a social/not social partition.
Single player games control you. Look at Mass Effect. It gives the illusion of freedom because you can choose the order in which you take your missions, but you’re really dealing with a hub location (the Normandy) which serves as a gateway to very scripted missions. ME tells a good story, but doesn’t really give you a lot of authentic choice. You’re still bound to the Normandy, or the mission locations that you choose. When I want a story to immerse myself in where I have absolute control over myself and my party, I’ll go with a single player game.
MMOs — even the most theme-parked — are more lenient because you can choose to quest or not quest. You can craft or not craft. You can explore or not explore. You CAN socialize, or you can solo. You do give up some of the single player advantages like immersive storylines, but you do get options, and a certain degree of freedom that you don’t get from a single player RPG.
Add to this the patches and changes and expansions that add more areas, more content and more features and you’ve got a living product. Sure, a lot of single player RPGs get DLC and sequels, but at a certain point (usually within a year of release), the single player game is left in a specific state and will not change any further. Healthy MMOs change over the course of years, for better or worse, but the game you get at launch is never the game you’ll get when the servers finally shut down (except, you know, APB, Auto Assault, or Earth & Beyond).
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I’m not pinning that quote on Syp directly…I don’t know where he got it, but it struck a chord with me because I remember somewhere, at some point, a developer actually said that THEY didn’t understand why people played MMOs if they weren’t going to socialize. To me, that was the same as saying, “don’t bother playing our game if you don’t want to play it the way WE want you to play it”. Was that what this particular dev meant? Maybe not, but if this dev couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that not everyone likes to play according to his rules, then I don’t know if I can trust him — or perhaps the rest of his team — to provide me with a product I want to support.
At the end of the day, however, someone telling soloists to “go play a single player game” isn’t anywhere near as obnoxious as people who actually use social opportunities to denigrate and exclude other players. Obviously, gearscore exclusion is one example, using someone’s decisions against them. If that’s “social”, I’ll play alone, thanks.
I guess this is why I like WAR’s PvP. Teabagging and smack talk are childish; I know why it happens, but the fact that you couldn’t communicate with the opposition in WAR’s battlefields meant that if you failed, or made a mistake, or even if you made a brilliant decision that turned the tide of battle in your favor, you sould’t get shit from the other side. It was liberating to a degree, even for a soloist.
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I *loved* the idea of War’s public quests, even if they didn’t pan out. The idea that you’d autojoin into a group, get the fun of group gameplay, but then leave after 2 minutes or 2 hours without anyone caring… that was perfect for me.
The Scenarios were the exact opposite; they were everything I hate about social gaming. If our side win it was all obnoxious smack talk about what wretched people were on the other team. If our side lost it was all about how everyone but the player speaking sucks.
When I played War everyone was hung up on chain-running Scenarios and the public quests were empty, which is why I quit.
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I fell in with a decent group in WAR. They were concerned with their own performance and the objectives in the scenarios and the open RvR so that they didn’t badmouth anyone. It was pretty clinical, but not to the point where it was controlling. They relied on the idea that everyone understood what they were doing, and let them do it.
I suppose if I had fallen in with an e-peen crowd, I would have been turned off it a lot sooner as well
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“don’t bother playing our game if you don’t want to play it the way WE want you to play it”
That’s an all too common attitude in the MMO world, I think. Seems to me that MMO devs should be more concerned with presenting a place to play and rules for the world’s behavior, and utterly unconcerned with how players play. There’s a good reason to ask for baseline civility and enforce it, but playstyle is none of their business.
Methinks that too many devs have played God too much in creating their worlds that they extend it to their attitude toward the players. It’s an amazing arrogance that inevitably kills a community and a game.
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#6 written by rowan 2 years ago
I agree with both of you. I’ll need to read Syp’s post, when I get a chance. I see MMOs as similar to Real Life in this aspect. Many of us are simply out there enjoying the scenery on our own, no need to group up and be part some big party. We have our close friends and that’s it. Iam somewhere in between. I like watching guild chat, while I play solo. If someone needs help–or I need help–I can jump into a group. But it’s not usually necessary.
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I’ve been in a handful of guilds where I really liked the people and that was awesome. The guild chat was just another venue of people watching, if you know what I mean. I still mostly played solo but if someone needed help and I had the (real life) time I’d go and help ‘em out.
And twice (been playing MMOs since Ultima Online) I found guilds full of people that I was actually comfortable being around for long periods of time, and did a lot of group activities. And I’ll admit those were fun times! But I guess I’m just really picky about who I spend time with.
But I love to explore, and I actually do enjoy reading quest text, or reading books that you find in games that have them stashed here or there. In a group I always feel pressure to skip all that “fluff” and get on to the killing ASAP.
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Exactly! When in a guild, I have a problem asking for or accepting help, but I’ll help out where I can. I even have trouble rolling greed on items I really can’t use XD But I still sometimes enjoy noise around me, especially in games like Perpetuum where I might be mining, which is an otherwise boring task. In cases like those, I think it’s important to at least be a silent member who shows up, if for nothing else then to have a distraction for a while.
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Syp was just asking a provocative question. I don’t think any value judgement was implied.
I agree with the rest of your post though. I am remarkably intolerant of much that passes for acceptable social interaction in modern MMOs. I don’t want to be forced to group with people I can’t stand in order to play.
Of course an MMO should have some content that requires grouping. I’m cool with that, provided I have enough to do when I don’t have suitable companions.
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Credit where it’s due, I DO like WoW’s dungeon finder mechanism, although many would say that it falls outside the realm of socializing, because it removes the need for people to “socialize” in order to group.
But is the point of “socializing”, as the question implies, to “chat” or to “work together for a common goal”? If it’s the former, then yes, the dungeon finder fails. If it’s the later, then the mechanism does it’s job.
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I treat it just like life. I’m not overly social in real life, though I have my moments. I am far more chatty over… chat… than over VOIP but I won’t hesitate to hop on a VOIP either. I might listen, I might talk a little, or depending on my comfort level with those I’m talking with (just like in real life) I might talk your ear off.
Too many people equate “social” with “grouping” and I gotta tell ya, even in LOTRO, I’ve met some of the most anti-damn-social people in groups than I ever have out of groups. (I am deliberately ignoring the obvious “if they’re anti-social, they wouldn’t be in a group for you to meet them in the first place.”)
Are single-player games *necessarily* not social? Or more to the point, gaming? I can, and have, blog about single-player games. Blogs are social, if the reader chooses to participate. *tries to restrain a tangent about bloggers who -never- read/participate in discussions over their posts* I can jump in a Party on XBL with friends and all of us could be playing single-player games but we’re being social, aren’t we? Sometimes we could be playing the same game and at the same point and discuss our different tactics for an encounter. Isn’t that the same as we do in an MMO?
Before (and after) MMOs came along, wasn’t EVERY. SINGLE. MULTI-PLAYER. GAME. forced grouping? Are they all “social?” HA!
People say they simply like to see other people in the game. Whether that is “social” or not is debatable. At first, that was (more than) enough for me back in the day. Now… there’s still something to it. I’m the odd type who will JOIN global chats rather than turn off all the chats. For example, I’ve been playing STO lately and I’ve joined the “TTS” (Tribble Test Server) channel, which is extremely busy with all the people playing there testing the Season 3 stuff. I don’t participate in that chat but to a certain degree simply seeing the chat scroll by gives a certain level of comfort (if that’s the correct word for what I’m getting at?) that other people are “here” even if I can’t see them. But I could also say the same for say, Red Dead Redemption if I’m playing online. Or Fable 3 when I see the little orbs of people on my Friend List who are also playing the game.
At some point I have to step back and ask if I’m enjoying the game for the game or if I’m just piddling around in a game with a much lowered sense of enjoyment and paying $15/month for extremely basic chat features that don’t come anywhere near what the 22-year old IRC protocol can do. That’s probably tangential to the conversation, though, but isn’t that what I do?
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Hehe. I had to take notes on that comment XD
You make a good point, though, about multiplayer games prior to MMOs. Board games are multiplayer…and social. Part of the earliest criticisms on video games was that they WERE SINGLE PLAYER and therefor, anti-social. Kids were rotting in front of the TV instead of playing outside with their friends.
Seeing other people around you has it’s advantages, even if you don’t interact. The most obvious is that you CAN interact with them IF YOU WANT TO. Another is that people can sometimes be amazingly funny to watch. If you can find em, watching RPers is like going to the theater, if they’re any good.
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“People say they simply like to see other people in the game. Whether that is ‘social’ or not is debatable. “For me at least, I wasn’t claiming that was social, but I was claiming it as a reason I play MMOs (as a foil to the ‘go play a single-player game.’) argument.Personally I never play the MP modes of non-MMO games. I’m never dedicated enough to get good at them and I kind of dislike doing something I suck at with other people watching and laughing at my ineptness. I can stomach that if I know I’m going to practice and get better but with most non-MMOs I know I want stick around for that long, so the whole process seems pointless.
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“is it the game’s/devs’ responsibility to encourage — or even force — us to do so?”
Short answer, no. Long answer, Hell no.
Creators and purveyors of virtual worlds are to create a stage for players to play on and rules to keep griefing down. Social engineering isn’t something they should indulge in.
Beside being annoying and offensive, trying to make players play the One True Way limits your potential audience. It’s not rocket science to realize that devs should restrain their controlling impulses if they want to foster community and longevity. People naturally rebel. The fewer things to rebel against, the more welcoming a game world can be.
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I think the undercurrent here is that PEOPLE can be the problem, not the
mechanics. For example, with Black Friday only two days away…who here is
going to brave the Maul? Who is going to purposefully place their person in
harms way by wading shoulder to undeodorized shoulder with a legion of other
people who’s only goal is to get the last X, Y or Z AT ANY COST?The same can apply to being pushed towards grouping in MMOs. You CAN score a
decent group (and the smaller the community, the better chance you have,
IMO), but you can also score a group that will make you want to disconnect
your phone and Internet, draw the shades, lock the doors and barricade
yourself in your basement for the next 20 years.-
The Maul… haahahaha!See, I’m with you. I do not go close to the Maul between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ll Amazon something and wait 2 days for it to arrive rather than go over there.But my boss can’t wait for Black Friday. He and his eldest daughter look forward to the whole “stand in line, be the first in” thing. To them that’s FUN. I think I heard him say they’re getting up at 3:30 am!!To me that’s like saying “For fun I stick needles under my fingernails.”
Er, so the point I was trying to make is… people are damned diverse and for devs not to acknowledge that is pretty stupid, IMO.
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I always lament the lack of socializing in MMOs because it is what I desire most. I loved EQ for its “forced” grouping (I hate that word, because even in the early days I was able to solo every single class, I just had to pick my battles and know how to play to my strengths). MMOs have gone the other way to where most of the leveling game doesn’t need grouping, and in fact is actually easier and faster without grouping, and grouping with the Dungeon Finder is barely social. I don’t demand that every game force people to be social… but I would like someone to make a AAA quality game that does, so that people like me have a game they want to play, rather than settling for play styles I’d rather not… much like soloers used to hope that games would allow for better/easier soloing and not “force” them to group all the time.
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That’s an excellent counterpoint.
However, I don’t recall hearing any developer mentioning that there should
be more solo support in their game. I suppose that a dev answering a
question by saying “yes, we’re making X soloable” COULD count, but it’s a
loaded response. It may be phrased in away that makes it sound like a
previously group-oriented experience was begrudgingly modified
to accommodate soloists.I think the angst comes from the historical perspective that the games were
new and exciting when introduced because you COULD play with others, so
after so many years of playing alone, why would you jump into this genre
only to continue to play alone? This is a technological revolution in video
games! You can play with other people without having to be in the same room!
Soloists have had to fight for years to get someone to acknowledge that
there was a faction out there that really enjoyed the game FEATURES, but
didn’t want to have a game STYLE forced on them. The difference now is that
soloists are being elevated to the level where grouping was, in terms of a
valid play style, but grouping hasn’t been depreciated in any way. If it
has, then it’s through the actions (or inaction) of the player-base, but I
think that the acknowledgement of soloing as a viable way to play is an
important milestone.-
Mmmm I’d say grouping was “depreciated” years ago — ever since MMOs started giving less reward (XP, etc.) for the hassle of putting up with players (“these multi-player games would be great if it weren’t for all the other players!”) which makes it more viable to solo.
I could go off on yet another tangent dealing with how vertical progression breaks multi-player and segregates the playerbase but Pete will whap me over the head for Daring to Defy the Dastardly Diku again! =D So I won’t. Or did I just? :p~
This isn’t necessarily on the “social” part of the topic either, but I’ve always desperately wanted to place tracking systems on the “hardcore” groupers who put down the soloers and and track how much time they are logged in per day, week, month, year, etc. they are physically in a group versus not, and shove that “hardcore” data in their faces.
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Ehh… yes and no. With the huge swing from kill rewards to quest rewards, even when you are grouping in most MMOs today, you are working on a personal goal. You don’t have to stay in the group to finish the quest, you leave the group, turn in and get your exp and reward, both of which often far outweigh anything you got from the group except in raid situation.
Grouping HAS been depreciated. As I said, especially in WoW, leveling is actually easier and faster solo than trying to PUG it. Grouping only remains as a leveling method if you are grouping within a guild or group of specific friends who can eliminate all the downsides of grouping and agree on where to go and what to do.
The dungeon finder tool is crap for me… I have no desire at all to group with people from other servers whom I will probably never play with ever again.
And I feel that people not needing people outside of guilds and raids is a large contributor to a lack of server communities in WoW as well, something I enjoyed a ton in the EQ era.
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That is true, in regards to the DFT. I play with two friends, and when
they’re not available, I usually work on quests. I have yet to use the DFT
by myself. But even still, we’ve been blessed with pretty good groups
(except the few that have just blinked out before we get started without
saying a word, but I’d rather they do that then stick around and bitch the
whole way through XD)Part of the whole universe of this is the question of what we’re ultimately
talking about here. Are we talking about talking to people, getting to know
them, socializing, through the application of game mechanics? Or are we
talking about just putting up with other people because the mechanics say we
must/should? I’m not against meeting new people; Quite the opposite, but
finding decent people (meaning people who get along with me, and whom I can
get along with) is a crap-shoot, especially in games as large as WoW. We
could spend all of our game time interviewing other players for fitness.
Instead, we rely on DFT and gearscore to shortcut PUGs. As you said, there’s
little to recommend these people for long term interaction, especially when
you choose each other based on game engine mechanics.But like any aspect of MMOs, things are in constant flux. Original MMOs were
all about grouping. Then the soloists bitched, and so soloing was elevated.
Now grouping has been devalued (though things like dungeons and raids have
not _depreciated_ it, really). These things are cyclical, and in a few years
we may see it swing back, like we see nerfs and buffs swing over time.But should developers tell YOU, the player, that your preferred style is the
“wrong” style for their game? I don’t think so, and I think that’s where the
disconnect is happening. A lot of pro-social folks berate soloists for
wanting to have the _opportunity- to play the game in a certain way. I don’t
see how accommodating soloists is a problem for the more vehement pro-social
crowd. We’re not sacrificing one mechanic for another; if anything, it’s a
shift of the playerbase in response to the option of being able to play
solo, or in a group. It may be that there were more soloists out there then
we knew, or that more people are accepting that soloing is OK, but at this
time, no one is mandating one over the other, which I believe is the way it
should be.-
Actually, the developers should be telling you what is the preferred style for the game. They have to design the game, and they have to design it so that it can be soloed, or not soloed. If they design a non-solo game, then they are telling you that soloing is the “wrong” way to play… it won’t be impossible, but it is not designed for such. In the same vein, if they design a solo friendly game, then they are telling you that solo is okay. If they further design the game such that your progress is impeded by grouping because solo is faster, then they are telling you that grouping is the “wrong” way to play… you can do it, but you will advance more slowly than people who solo.
Unless a game removes leveling, either solo or grouping is always going to be better than the other. The balance will shift back and forth, but one will always be better because the design will favor it.
On the other hand, EVEs time based advancement is the most fair there is, except for the inability to “catch up” to older players… they temper that, however, by diminishing returns AND a system that values only the skills that apply to your gear. In EVE, it doesn’t matter if you have Missiles rank 5 if you ship is equipped with Cannons. Most people, however, cannot stand a system where they cannot take action to affect the speed of their progress.
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In your LOTRO example, I believe what Turbine has done is to make solo version of the fellowship-only Book quests for the older Volumes. Like now that we’re on Volume 3, all the Volume 1 stuff in its Epic Book chain is solo-able. If you enter the quest instance solo, you get a super-buff that should allow you to complete it. I don’t think they’ve made that change for Volume 2 yet, however; if they keep to the previous schedule that won’t happen until Volume 4 ships.
One thing to consider: most bloggers (who I read, which is admittedly a small circle in the big scheme of things) are veteran players from the EQ days, if not earlier. Back then, in addition to the “forced grouping” there was significant downtime where there simply wasn’t the option of running off and doing something solo until the group was ready again. You were stuck there for all the downtime, for all the camping, etc. So your choices were: be social and chat, just read the chat, logout and stop playing for the night. Also the majority (my made up stat based on a decade of reading EQ vets complain) of those same veteran players came from tabletop RPGs, MUDs, etc. and were already a niche audience keyed into the magic of seeing the first steps towards seeing their passions put into a 3D (or 2D for UO) virtual world with OMG LOOK THERE’S OTHER PEOPLE! most of whom had similar interests and backgrounds, so being “social” seemed easier back then when nearly everyone was there for the same reasons. Now that MMOs (or WoW and a select few others) are mainstream, you have mainstream audiences who are there to game, to relax, to chat with friends or family, all the while whacking moles and getting shiny XP, gold and loot.
Has WoW and the Diku games with their DING! and B I G N U M B E R S and SHINY LOOT! taken MMOs past the point of no return for having true “virtual worlds?”
Another semi-tangent: assuming any of the others still read this (blog posts have a desperately short lifespan) let me ask this: I’ll use WAR as an example-ish. Let’s say you really loved the whole Public Quest idea. You walk into the PQ area, and what if instead of having to click all the Open Group crap to join, if the game just auto-joined you? Kinda like playing Arathi Basin in WoW, I guess? You can still “solo” but you’re also part of a bigger group automatically working on the tasks at hand. You have the UI frames of everyone else working on that PQ so if you happen to be a healer class you can wander over and help someone who needs a heal or whatever. Buffs can work over the entire group (by “group” I probably mean “raid group” but without the whole “your skill only works on the 5 people in your small group” limitation), etc. If the grouping aspect of PQ’s worked more like that as opposed to you manually having to handle it, would you have been more inclined to group for the PQ’s versus everyone soloing and doing their own thing? (I’m ignoring that PQ’s should have scaled, etc. and other half-assed, if not utterly broken, mechanics that PQ’s had.)
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“You walk into the PQ area, and what if instead of having to click all the Open Group crap to join, if the game just auto-joined you?”
My faulty memory had me remembering it as working that way… I wonder if it did in the beta, or if I just invented it, or what?
But yeah, I’d love a system like that. Or just ditch groups altogether and let people organically join forces to defeat monsters. Groups to me are such an artificial construct… but of course with all the ‘tapping’ and insistence that everyone get exactly the right number of experience points for each encounter, that won’t really work.
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True but then you lose the joy of progressing through levels. (This is where Scott and I always butt heads!)
But sure, there are definitely room for both kinds of game.
But here’s another thought… even with levels, why does everyone have to be the same level to fight together? What if you based combat on naval tactics? There’s a place in a (historical anyway) naval combat for both the small speedy PTO boats and destroyer and the huge battleships and cruisers.
Most group-based MMOs force you to put together a pretty homogeneous group in terms of power/experience.
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Ok this is getting ridiculously narrow… stupid disqus.
The joy of progressing through levels is what we butt heads over? WHAT? Well, maybe, but I didn’t know that’s all it was. Hmm… See this is actually where I paint myself into a corner. (Nearly) all the games that have come out *since* I left SWG have the vertical levels, the DING! with the graphical and audio effects, which I just LOVE! I intentionally chose LOTRO as the last straight-laced Diku game that I would call “home,” though now GW2 is on the horizon. Although I note a LOT of Call of Duty players love that series not *necessarily* for the gameplay itself but because of the rapid leveling, the unlocks, the customization, etc. which is very in-your-face and goes to great lengths to satisfy the same instant gratification urges that Diku games do while still preserving the ability for *EVERYONE* to play together, which is what I am ultimately seeking.
SWG had that to a degree. I could make a new character, run through the tutorial then join my guild on Dathomir or wherever doing “end-game-ish” monster hunts. Was I able to do as much dps as the higher-level players? Nope! And to the people raised on Diku and parsing combat logs, I was “mooching” off my group and taking up a valuable spot in the group that could have been filled by someone more useful but… SWG wasn’t that way. It was a virtual world, first and foremost, and that means everyone can play together in some way even if, since it’s “limited” by the constraints of being an RPG which means everyone will be “contributing” differently anyway, that some players “parse” drastically different than others. It wasn’t about parsing dps and waggling our e-peens. It was about us all living in that virtual galaxy, being social, and… ya know what? With the player cities, the ability to put notes on items you sold in the bazaar, player shops, the housing/decoration system, the deep and meaningful crafting… it was about not only exercising some of our own creativity but also *giving back* to that virtual galaxy we loved.
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I didn’t want to get into a big pissing match with Syp, but I took umbrage at the implication (intended or not) that if we just weren’t so damned lazy we’d be more social in games. I’m not a social person. That’s just a fact. I don’t know why social people find it so f’ing hard to understand that not everyone is exactly like them. I don’t have a problem understanding that other people aren’t like me and are social!Anyway… let’s talk about Red Dead Redemption. I *loved* that game. My game of the year unless something unexpected and amazing happens between now and Dec 31st. And now, a few months after release, it’s over. There’s no indication of more DLC to come. Maybe in years we’ll get a sequel but that’s not a certainty.Then look at any MMO that I enjoy. Those games are living entities, always changing, always expanding, until the day they sadly die, but in general terms they last many, many times longer than a single player game. And that’s why I love MMOs.Plus, being not-social doesn’t really mean hating people, despite what some people think and my own joking about my behavior. I enjoy being around people in games. I love people watching, and I love the chaotic energy that people bring to a game.I do not like being part of a team. In games, in real life… anywhere. I just don’t like it. I don’t play team sports, picked a profession where I generally operate alone, and don’t spend a lot of time in groups in my social life. It isn’t because I’m *lazy* and if a game developer decides to try to force me to eat their dogfood, I’ll just find another game.