Counterfleche said:Social elements are very important to me.
There needs to be a few night-club like sites that aren't used as anything but a hangout. They should be visually distinct and be laid out to have a main gathering area along with smaller booths overlooking the action. There should be one area that's the main focus (like a stage). The lighting and sound needs to be novel. A fair portion of the architecture and graphic assets needs to be original as well, so the area even feels like a mental break from the game.
I'd love to see a Gothic church turned dance club with stained glass images that look like they were created by a mad artist as he slowly went insane. Or perhaps the inside of a giant, hollowed-out tree where every surface is covered in colorful flowers and leaves, like a psychedelic Rose Parade.
There should also be some social areas for finding groups, like taverns. They could have a few mini-games to keep us occupied, but these should be separate from strictly social gathering areas.
Additionally, we can have other things to do. There should be a climbing challenge area in the city where we can practice on an artificial climbing area. We can have an art gallery, which shows framed concept art.
There was a Star Wars MMO a ways back, Star Wars Galaxies???, that IIRC, people could dance and play instruments, and such, in the bars. I seem to recall there were always a lot of people hanging out goofing off, playing games, entertaining, etc.
There are groups of people that love that stuff more than the adventuring, like crafters sometimes only adventure for materials, there are people who just love to log on and entertain or roleplay, and in turn entertain the other players. The ability to do so in tavern and towns would create some draw to those places during downtime.
Fulton said:There was a Star Wars MMO a ways back, Star Wars Galaxies???, that IIRC, people could dance and play instruments, and such, in the bars. I seem to recall there were always a lot of people hanging out goofing off, playing games, entertaining, etc.
There are groups of people that love that stuff more than the adventuring, like crafters sometimes only adventure for materials, there are people who just love to log on and entertain or roleplay, and in turn entertain the other players. The ability to do so in tavern and towns would create some draw to those places during downtime.
SWG was very social friendly that way. I would say that it was one of the better MMOs in regard to good roleplaying of all the games I have played.
Savanja said:Fulton said:There was a Star Wars MMO a ways back, Star Wars Galaxies???, that IIRC, people could dance and play instruments, and such, in the bars. I seem to recall there were always a lot of people hanging out goofing off, playing games, entertaining, etc.
There are groups of people that love that stuff more than the adventuring, like crafters sometimes only adventure for materials, there are people who just love to log on and entertain or roleplay, and in turn entertain the other players. The ability to do so in tavern and towns would create some draw to those places during downtime.
SWG was very social friendly that way. I would say that it was one of the better MMOs in regard to good roleplaying of all the games I have played.
True story: When I started playing SWG at its launch I barely knew anyone outside of a few fellow beta testers/forum posters. After getting my first character (a weaponsmith) set up, I found myself in the city of Nashal, on the planet Talus - which as SWG's cities went had basically nothing special going for it at all, and was *very* lightly populated. I walked into the cantina and there was a guy there starting out an entertainer and working on the different musical instruments. We ended up chatting, and our play schedules matched up, so we'd meet up at that cantina every couple of days and go run some terminal missions or even just talk as I did some crafting and he worked on his musician skills. That cantina more or less became our home base and over time, other players would wander by and some would stick around. It wasn't very long until we were helping each other get houses and eventually formed our first player city that way.
Personally, I will *always* hold SWG up as an example of how to really enable socialization between players by setting up a sandbox that people could live in. Even if the game had some pretty big flaws and was really lacking in terms of directed adventuring content, which was frustrating for everyone, the fact that everyone - literally - had concrete value that they could provide to other players, regardless of how they chose to play, really made it a world that we all enjoyed together, rather than just a game that we were trying to beat.
Anarchy-Online had a night club with a glass dance floor on the second level and many players would come to dance and socialize. There was also an active, community-run 'radio' station that had DJs who would stream audio while in-game. This really added to the sense of community.
This is odd, but i dont like people at all, even irl, the fact that MMOs are my fav genre is the most bewildering thing to me.
When im not playing 99% solo i only raid.
To encourage more social interactions they could add things to do in taverns, to name a few.
Minigames
Chess
Cards
Arm wrestling
Brawling
dancing (but the charactrs actually join onto each other and dance together)
They could also add arenas in cities that are pvp and pve that have a spectator mode that even lets you make bets with gold.
many things can be done.