In most MMOs you see players splitting off into different guilds and then they only group with people from within their guild. I'm guilty of this myself and I have managed to build up quite a large European guild in Pantheon. But this game is being sold as a social game in order for that to be true people need to be forced into grouping with people they don't know in order to make new friends (or enemies).
I propose the following solution to the problem of forming cliques and only grouping within that clique. If you only ever group with guild mates you get a slowly increasing XP penalty until you spend a certain number of hours in a group with people outside of your guild after which the XP penalty returns to 0%.
This would ensure that people are always looking for groups outside of their usual clique in order to reset their XP penalty and this would mean that people on the same server would get to know everyone and friendship groups would also grow in size. Also people who are bad players would soon earn a bad repuation across the server and would find it increasingly hard to find a group until they mend their ways.
This is what I would call a social game. If you constantly stay in your little clique you can't really claim to be socialising because you'll never meet new people. This is why the XP penalty is needed in order to make it most efficient to do a mixture of groups between friends as well as grouping with people outside of your friendship group.
Say for every 10 hours spent in a friendship group you gain a 2% XP penalty and as soon as you start grouping with people outside of your friendship group that XP penalty returns to 0% after say 5 hours.
I think this would be a great way to promote the social aspect in the game because as EverQuest has shown us in the past if players are left to their own devices they would try and avoid grouping with people they do not know.
I don't think imposing a penalty would be nearly as effective as adding a bonus to grouping with players you've never grouped with. You shouldn't be punished for playing with your friends, especially when they are trying to KEEP players together. This is an issue they already seem to be tackling based on:
There will be an entire system of features and mechanics to help people find new friends and others to group with -- there is no one special solution to such a challenge -- it must be a priority and addressed from many angles.
Some quick and easy examples, of course, would be to reward people who don't know each other to group together, to help them stay in contact, to allow to share personal information if they want, to allow searching for new friends if that person chooses to participate in matchmaking. The main point is that we'll be doing all sorts of things to proactively bring people together and KEEP them together.
This is the opposite of something like a dungeon finder that randomly brings in people you need to do an instance, you then do the instance without speaking a word and once the instance is over the group disperses. This is what damages communities and prevents true social interaction."
*removed blockquote since it seems to break the thread.
Being social, in my opinion, is interacting with others. Removing instances will single-handedly make this game more sociable than those who use them. I can socialize with people without grouping with them. It would feel like a huge slap in the face if there was a penalty for grouping with guildmates. I imagine the following scenarios:
"Hey, it's been really fun grouping with you. My guild could really use a healer like you. We've had the opportunity to play together for the past few hours and it was fun getting to know you. I see that you don't have a guild ... would you be interested in learning more about mine?"
Response:
"Sorry man. Your guild sounds great, but maybe it would be better if I joined at max-level? I wouldn't want to feel penalized for joining. Let me finish leveling without a guild ... it will be quicker that way, and we can revisit this conversation later."
Or ...
"Hey guys, getting a group together if anybody wants to join."
Response:
"Would love to, but I really want to try and get 48 tonight."
Or ...
"Hey guys, I'm going to temporarily leave the guild while we group. You can reinvite me after our session is over but I want to circumvent the guild-grouping penalty."
Iksar said:I don't think imposing a penalty would be nearly as effective as adding a bonus to grouping with players you've never grouped with. You shouldn't be punished for playing with your friends, especially when they are trying to KEEP players together. This is an issue they already seem to be tackling based on:
There will be an entire system of features and mechanics to help people find new friends and others to group with -- there is no one special solution to such a challenge -- it must be a priority and addressed from many angles.
Some quick and easy examples, of course, would be to reward people who don't know each other to group together, to help them stay in contact, to allow to share personal information if they want, to allow searching for new friends if that person chooses to participate in matchmaking. The main point is that we'll be doing all sorts of things to proactively bring people together and KEEP them together.
This is the opposite of something like a dungeon finder that randomly brings in people you need to do an instance, you then do the instance without speaking a word and once the instance is over the group disperses. This is what damages communities and prevents true social interaction."
*removed blockquote since it seems to break the thread.
Yeah a bonus would work as well and would probably be better received by the player base as a penalty might be consider as too harsh.
I totally missed that item in the FAQ. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. It certainly sounds good. I love the idea of bringing the whole server together so that people get to know each other even if they are in completely different guilds. I'm a member of another gaming community and even though the game hasn't been released yet there is a great community forming around the game on Discord and people really know each other know even though they are in completely different communities. I'd love to see something like that in Pantheon because for me community is what really makes a good MMO.
oneADseven said:Being social, in my opinion, is interacting with others. Removing instances will single-handedly make this game more sociable than those who use them. I can socialize with people without grouping with them. It would feel like a huge slap in the face if there was a penalty for grouping with guildmates. I imagine the following scenarios:
"Hey, it's been really fun grouping with you. My guild could really use a healer like you. We've had the opportunity to play together for the past few hours and it was fun getting to know you. I see that you don't have a guild ... would you be interested in learning more about mine?"
Response:
"Sorry man. Your guild sounds great, but maybe it would be better if I joined at max-level? I wouldn't want to feel penalized for joining. Let me finish leveling without a guild ... it will be quicker that way, and we can revisit this conversation later."
Or ...
"Hey guys, getting a group together if anybody wants to join."
Response:
"Would love to, but I really want to try and get 48 tonight."
Or ...
"Hey guys, I'm going to temporarily leave the guild while we group. You can reinvite me after our session is over but I want to circumvent the guild-grouping penalty."
I stated very clearly that you would be able to group with guild mates you would just be encouraged to also group with people who were not guild mates. The same bonus / penalty would effect players not in a guild who still played with the same people so not joining a guild would not free you from the requirement to group with new people if that is what you are worried about. I'm a guild leader. I run a guild with nearly 50 members and would love to group with them all in game but if you want to grow a guild you need to group with people outside of your guild in order to get to know them and to show them how good your guild is.
I wouldn't mind a bonus for grouping with new players. I probably wouldn't make much use of it myself but I do see how it could add value to the community as long as it isn't a system that can be gamed. Beyond that, the rest of the examples sound like something that can be achieved with an advanced friends list and LFG tool. Perhaps there will be an option to add both soft/hard friends to our lists. Soft friends would be for an individual character, such as wanting to reconnect with someone that advertised a piece of gear that you're interested in. Hard friends would be account wide, allowing you to interact with them regardless of what character they are playing on. As far as matchmaking is concerned, I imagine players being able to flag themselves as LFG or LFM (Looking For Group / Looking For More) -- it would also show their name, class, level, and location. Beyond that, perhaps they can add a personal note of some sort such as "Looking for healer with access to Crypt X" or "Looking to play until 9 PM, prefer Zone X or Zone Y."
On the other side of the equation, I feel that there should be incentives for players to stick together. Guilds will probably go a long way toward realizing that, and VR has already taken the stance that we can expect robust functionality in this area. I actually enjoyed the guild perks in WoW. There were plenty of achievements that the guild could work on together, and some of them unlocked some pretty cool perks. Guild levels felt like a sense of shared progression and that fits right in line with several of the established tenets. Additional bank vaults, guild cauldrons (as opposed to individual flasks), exclusive mounts, cloak customization ... those were all pretty cool. I would like to see all of that and more. Guilds are the heart and soul of any MMO as far as I'm concerned and I think it's very important that they can distinguish themselves from each other. The guild recruiting tab was pretty cool. It allowed guilds to create a splash page of sorts that could be viewed in-game. They could highlight their playstyle, roster size, requirements, etc. It helped guilds find new players, and players find a guild that fit their style.
Cromulent said:oneADseven said:Being social, in my opinion, is interacting with others. Removing instances will single-handedly make this game more sociable than those who use them. I can socialize with people without grouping with them. It would feel like a huge slap in the face if there was a penalty for grouping with guildmates. I imagine the following scenarios:
"Hey, it's been really fun grouping with you. My guild could really use a healer like you. We've had the opportunity to play together for the past few hours and it was fun getting to know you. I see that you don't have a guild ... would you be interested in learning more about mine?"
Response:
"Sorry man. Your guild sounds great, but maybe it would be better if I joined at max-level? I wouldn't want to feel penalized for joining. Let me finish leveling without a guild ... it will be quicker that way, and we can revisit this conversation later."
Or ...
"Hey guys, getting a group together if anybody wants to join."
Response:
"Would love to, but I really want to try and get 48 tonight."
Or ...
"Hey guys, I'm going to temporarily leave the guild while we group. You can reinvite me after our session is over but I want to circumvent the guild-grouping penalty."
I stated very clearly that you would be able to group with guild mates you would just be encouraged to also group with people who were not guild mates. The same bonus / penalty would effect players not in a guild who still played with the same people so not joining a guild would not free you from the requirement to group with new people if that is what you are worried about. I'm a guild leader. I run a guild with nearly 50 members and would love to group with them all in game but if you want to grow a guild you need to group with people outside of your guild in order to get to know them and to show them how good your guild is.
Sorry, I wasn't able to interpret your message clearly.
"I propose the following solution to the problem of forming cliques and only grouping within that clique. If you only ever group with guild mates you get a slowly increasing XP penalty until you spend a certain number of hours in a group with people outside of your guild after which the XP penalty returns to 0%."
I do see other parts in your message where you used the term clique and friendship group but I thought you were still referencing guilds based on the above phrase. My bad man.
I must admit I am not a fan of mechanic that punish players for playing with their friends, now if you was to flip this idea on its head and provide a decreasing BONUS to party with strangers until the bonus reaches zero that might be better.
Either way I must admit I wouldn't be very happy about such a system, any system that punishes people (the EXP is less) from forming well organised, efficient functional groups in favour of potenitally poor badly function groups is bad in my book.
DuxDux said:I must admit I am not a fan of mechanic that punish players for playing with their friends, now if you was to flip this idea on its head and provide a decreasing BONUS to party with strangers until the bonus reaches zero that might be better.
Either way I must admit I wouldn't be very happy about such a system, any system that punishes people (the EXP is less) from forming well organised, efficient functional groups in favour of potenitally poor badly function groups is bad in my book.
Understood. But if you think about this for a little bit this might make the entire player base more efficient and train everyone how to play their class well. If you are encouraged to group with new people then it is in your best interest (and the best interest of the players you will be grouping with) to learn how to play their classes in groups of strangers. Rather than seeing this as a bad thing (and I totally understand where you are coming from) try and look at it in a positive light. It might actually result in the general population of the game actually playing together better and increasing the skill of the player base. So in previous games pick up groups were normally pretty bad because the players in them were normally quite inexperienced but if this mechanic is brought into play it should result in people gaining the ability to play their classes well much faster. It could actually be a really good thing for the game.
Having thought about this a bit more I agree with you and the others who have said a bonus would be better. I won't edit my original post to change it but I agree that it would be better to reward people rather than punishing them.
oneADseven said:On the other side of the equation, I feel that there should be incentives for players to stick together. Guilds will probably go a long way toward realizing that, and VR has already taken the stance that we can expect robust functionality in this area. I actually enjoyed the guild perks in WoW. There were plenty of achievements that the guild could work on together, and some of them unlocked some pretty cool perks. Guild levels felt like a sense of shared progression and that fits right in line with several of the established tenets. Additional bank vaults, guild cauldrons (as opposed to individual flasks), exclusive mounts, cloak customization ... those were all pretty cool. I would like to see all of that and more. Guilds are the heart and soul of any MMO as far as I'm concerned and I think it's very important that they can distinguish themselves from each other. The guild recruiting tab was pretty cool. It allowed guilds to create a splash page of sorts that could be viewed in-game. They could highlight their playstyle, roster size, requirements, etc. It helped guilds find new players, and players find a guild that fit their style.
I've been in the same guild since 2003 when I joined it in EverQuest. Since then I've played with them in EverQuest 2, Vanguard and World of Warcraft. They are a great bunch of people and I love grouping with them and enjoy their company but that doesn't mean I don't want to meet new people who might also be really cool and fit in with the guild. I think if we encourage people to group with new people it will help guilds get an influx of new blood and will be a great way for people to make new friends. It would also apply to people who weren't in a guild and they would be encouraged to group with new people as well.
Even the best guilds in the game have a constant churn of leaving and new members and making friends with new people will allow guilds to replace people who leave with fresh blood. If those people have the experience of already playing with high end guilds then guilds have to do less training of new members and it is better for everyone. I seriously think this would help everyone even the most hardcore of hardcore guilds. I mean I've done high end raid content with my current guild and am planning on doing it again in Pantheon but there are still people to replace from time to time. If you never group with anyone outside of your guild how do you know who the good people are to invite to replace those losses?
As I said in my last post I also agree with you that a bonus would probably be better than a penalty. Better to reward people than punish people.
Edit: God I hope the new forums have multiquote. Replying to multiple people on these forums sucks.
I don't see how penalizing you for grouping with the people you have socialized with the most/best is going to have any benefit. I think we can encourage social interaction by doing things like limiting auction houses and non player based fast travel.
Krixus said:I don't see how penalizing you for grouping with the people you have socialized with the most/best is going to have any benefit. I think we can encourage social interaction by doing things like limiting auction houses and non player based fast travel.
I'm in agreement that limiting fast travel is a good idea and have supported it since I joined this community. As to auction houses I'm on the fence. I was quite pleased when they said they would have regional auction houses rather than one main auction house as that would lead to people being able to sell items that are expensive in one area and buy them where they are cheap in another and in effect create a new mini game from that interaction.
Having said that I fail to see how either of these systems encourage players to group with new people. If there is no system in place then there will be quite a lot of static groups that just travel around together. While I love being in static groups and leveling quickly I also love the opportunity to group with new people. After all MMOs in my mind are all about making new friends.
Hell, no.
People seriously need to let people play the game their way. VR does not care if we play with random people or friends. Why should you care if I play with random people or friends? Why should I care if you play with random people or friends?
This is not high school. Their is nothing wrong with people playing with their guild, friends, or clique.
Social does not mean strangers. You can be quite social with friends.
You play with the people you want to play with. I will play with the people I want to play with.
All these ideas lately are nothing but ways to punish people who play differently than you. I think we get enough of that in real life. This is a game we pay for. It's supposed to be fun. Not some forced socialization experiment.
If you enjoy playing with strangers, find other strangers who think like you do. If you only want to play with your friends, that's great too.
No system is necessary. This is yet again, a solution to a problem that does not exist.
If I am happy playing only with my guild of favorite 100 or 200 people, that should be fine. No reward or punishment needed.
That's a really harsh way of handling a situation that doesn't need fixing, I know grouping in Pantheon will be "forced" but penalizing you for playing with your mates, that's insane, some players will only be able to play 2-3 hours a week, maybe they only play at set times with their mates, penalizing them for that is not the way to go, searching for PUGs should be a natural and integral part of the game that happens when you're lacking a group spot or logged in an none of your guild mates are online or available, forcing to PUG wouldn't go well it needs to be a choice.
Beefcake said:Hell, no.
People seriously need to let people play the game their way. VR does not care if we play with random people or friends. Why should you care if I play with random people or friends? Why should I care if you play with random people or friends?
This is not high school. Their is nothing wrong with people playing with their guild, friends, or clique.
Social does not mean strangers. You can be quite social with friends.
You play with the people you want to play with. I will play with the people I want to play with.
All these ideas lately are nothing but ways to punish people who play differently than you. I think we get enough of that in real life. This is a game we pay for. It's supposed to be fun. Not some forced socialization experiment.
If you enjoy playing with strangers, find other strangers who think like you do. If you only want to play with your friends, that's great too.
No system is necessary. This is yet again, a solution to a problem that does not exist.
This wasn't about punishing people who play a different way it was about encouraging people to try something different. I think variety is the spice of life. Some people do the same job all their life with the same people day in and day out. Do you really think their life is as fulfilling as someone who travels all around the world on a regular basis meeting new people from different cultures?
I'm not saying working in the same job all your life is bad. In the same way as I am not saying that grouping with only guild mates or friends is a bad idea. But humans are creatures of habit and they tend to take the easy route when making decisions. Sometimes you need someone in your life to give you a kick up the arse and say "Come on mate it is about time you tried something a bit different!". That is all this idea is meant to do.
In that sense it would be a good for the game to give you some sort of benefit for doing something different.
Cromulent said:Beefcake said:Hell, no.
People seriously need to let people play the game their way. VR does not care if we play with random people or friends. Why should you care if I play with random people or friends? Why should I care if you play with random people or friends?
This is not high school. Their is nothing wrong with people playing with their guild, friends, or clique.
Social does not mean strangers. You can be quite social with friends.
You play with the people you want to play with. I will play with the people I want to play with.
All these ideas lately are nothing but ways to punish people who play differently than you. I think we get enough of that in real life. This is a game we pay for. It's supposed to be fun. Not some forced socialization experiment.
If you enjoy playing with strangers, find other strangers who think like you do. If you only want to play with your friends, that's great too.
No system is necessary. This is yet again, a solution to a problem that does not exist.
This wasn't about punishing people who play a different way it was about encouraging people to try something different. I think variety is the spice of life. Some people do the same job all their life with the same people day in and day out. Do you really think their life is as fulfilling as someone who travels all around the world on a regular basis meeting new people from different cultures?
I'm not saying working in the same job all your life is bad. In the same way as I am not saying that grouping with only guild mates or friends is a bad idea. But humans are creatures of habit and they tend to take the easy route when making decisions. Sometimes you need someone in your life to give you a kick up the arse and say "Come on mate it is about time you tried something a bit different!". That is all this idea is meant to do.
In that sense it would be a good for the game to give you some sort of benefit for doing something different.
This train of thought always gets my goat. It's like those movies with the career minded guy hooking up with the wacky girl and being forced to change. They are all about saying that achievement is bad and new experiences are better. Maybe some people enjoy their sheltered life and wont be happy with your "fulfilling" ideals. Why don't these movies ever force the wacky girl to change and learn focus in life?
if I want fulfillment, it's up to me to get it. I don't need someone else deciding what fulfilling is to me.
Contrary to your statement, I believe regularly doing things different, just for the sake of being different, is the easy way out. It takes hard work to remained focused.
Well said Beef. As an extremely introverted person, few things irritate me more than the constant droning about how my life would be improved by doing any number of things that I demonstrably do not enjoy doing.
Constant change works for some people. I like to find my comfort zone and refine it into my own ideal environment. That means forming cliques and hanging out with a lot of similarly minded people regularly. It's in my genes. Enforcing gameplay decisions on me to dictate the way that I socialize is just about the worst thing I've ever heard.
A game being "social" does not mean "everyone is a social butterfly".
Tera online has a rewarding system to what you are describing. They rewarded the players in "Friendlist" had a buddy up program. The more time you spent with your buddy in your Friendslist regardless of being in a guild or not you would level your friendship. The reward for both was Buddy Kits to give to others that gave you an XP Boost and some Fun Items when giving it to a new Person below Level 10. You would get a buddy up Key to pass on to a new player or even existing alts as far I remember.
Now with that said, I can see a system like that as an additional "Fluff & Fun" thing. But I have to agree with Beefcake on this one. Let people play how they want.
Putting in a Reward or Punishment System to the effect you are suggesting just alienates people. Not everyone is social and open to engaging with others and we shouldn`t force any kind of system on them that gives them a disadvantage or advantage. Let people play with whoever they want.
There are enough good hearted people in MMO`s that this is something that does not have me concerned at all.
VR are planning on having Guides in the game to help out others lets leave it to them don`t take away their role^^. We do not need a system to force grouping with "outsiders" for whatever the reason.
If people just want to stick to themselves then so be it. That's their choice.
Look at it this way too, with such a system the only people who can profit or fend off such a system would be those people with lots of time to play. But what about the casual player who might be limited in time, how would you keep them from being in a constant loop of trying to wiggle off the punishment or profit from it?
You can still socialise without being in a PUG by just responding to chat and giving back advice etc. To be honest, i cannot say I have ever witnessed any MMO where a guild is just amongst themselfs, there will also be grouping with others. Socializing comes in many forms, not just grouping. Cliques are going to happen regardless of what you do to try and stop it. There is no way to stop that from happening.
The only way to succeed in bringing unaffiliated players together is to limit or exclude the accessibility options (mentoring, caravans) that would allow players to circumvent it. There's a reason why EQ was such a social game: it's because you actually needed random players. No matter how big your guild was, finding 5 friends in your level range, not already engaged in something else was always problematic. Because the world was big and required time to travel, and the time necessary actually get into a camp, you simply couldn't rely on known acquaintances each and every day.
Basically it comes down to limiting convenience in general. If it takes time to travel, if it takes time to get into an area you want to farm (contested content/no instances), if you can't magically change your level to group with others, these are the kinds of things that will bring together unaffiliated players out of necessity.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3215/matchmaking/view/post_id/49116
Cromulent said:DuxDux said:I must admit I am not a fan of mechanic that punish players for playing with their friends, now if you was to flip this idea on its head and provide a decreasing BONUS to party with strangers until the bonus reaches zero that might be better.
Either way I must admit I wouldn't be very happy about such a system, any system that punishes people (the EXP is less) from forming well organised, efficient functional groups in favour of potenitally poor badly function groups is bad in my book.
Understood. But if you think about this for a little bit this might make the entire player base more efficient and train everyone how to play their class well. If you are encouraged to group with new people then it is in your best interest (and the best interest of the players you will be grouping with) to learn how to play their classes in groups of strangers. Rather than seeing this as a bad thing (and I totally understand where you are coming from) try and look at it in a positive light. It might actually result in the general population of the game actually playing together better and increasing the skill of the player base. So in previous games pick up groups were normally pretty bad because the players in them were normally quite inexperienced but if this mechanic is brought into play it should result in people gaining the ability to play their classes well much faster. It could actually be a really good thing for the game.
Having thought about this a bit more I agree with you and the others who have said a bonus would be better. I won't edit my original post to change it but I agree that it would be better to reward people rather than punishing them.
I'm not so shure your idea of "playing their class well" and my idea of that is the same thing. I'm in this for a Role Playing Game (I understand that's what a MMORPG is) . I don't need, nor want to be the master DPS, or the first to 50, or the greatest tank that ever walked the land of Terminus. I just want to roam the land, group up with who I want, when I want and see what comes next.
Don't get me wrong, I always learn to play my class well, I pride myself in being an asset to a group and having people send me tells when I log in to join them wherever they are. But I'm really not thrilled about any mechanic that's going to try to "teach" me to be a better player, or try to dictate who I play with or who plays with me.
Experiance and leveling is not what it's all about for me, Its a very small part of it actually. IMHO experiance should be a flat rate other than the harder the mob the more exp of course. But not "bonus" for this and "penalty" for that.
I like the thought behind this to promote socialisation but I do believe it needs to be turned into a positive, rather than a negative if it would have any chance of working, a very small reward for grouping with newly made friends can kind of help but people will naturally play the way they are used to and trying to incentivise or lure people to make friends can lead to other community-related problems like "friends spam" and then dumping people when they are done getting exp, which promotes the opposite of what you are intending, I am sure.
I am not sure anything needs to be done in this area to make people more social but it is definitely something I will be keeping an eye on to make sure our community grows and interacts in the best way possible, even if that means leaving people to do their own thing which seemed to work out ok in EQ and VG. :)
It seems misery not only loves company, but in this case...DEMANDS company.
All I see is "if you won't play with me, I'm going to make you". Which is pretty much the opposite of any mindset which would attract friends.
It runs parallel to the "I like to play slow, and don't really care about making progress quickly, but for some reason I get really bothered by others progressing quickly" mentality in some other folks.
In my opinion there should never,nor in any form, be a penalty attached to grouping,or playing together (as oneADseven mentions you can socialize without grouping)
As one of my favorite monks on youtube always says ,all you can do is *opening the door to your heart*
You can't force relations
But relations once established can grow ,thus on the other hand a friendlist progression system would make sense
Maybe a progression that affects how characters relate to each other,synchronize in (and out) of combat
With very long relations ,people sometimes become inseparable.Think about the couples that have stayed together for 60 years or longer.
In some MMOs there has been a very small aspect of what could be a larger/greater relation progression system: marriage (and the benefits it brings like instant summons)
In my opinion it would be worthwhile to make an advance progression system for building relations (also friends) with other players
It deals with the problem from a whole different angle;with a positive note and it provides a solution that does not force players
to play together ,yet rewards them for their dedication towards each other
Beefcake said:Why don't these movies ever force the wacky girl to change and learn focus in life?
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility actually does something along those lines though admittedly that's the only example that I know of :).
My zen comes from routines. I know where I'm coming from and where I'm going and that's where I'm most comfortable with. I'm also one of those silly people who solo in mmos lol. My day to day job is dealing with a lot of strangers, it's customer service where I have to figure out my customer's persona a little to be able to help them the most.
On my spare time I want something different. Yeah, why am I even excitedly waiting for a group-oriented and social game to come out, right XD? I love socializing, I'm just very slow at making friends. I can chit chat and be light hearted aplenty in a group environment but I don't find that relaxing necessarily. Actual friends are a bit different matter.
I love grouping once I've eventually, finally made my connections, it's great to get a decent pull spot, fulfill my role in the group as best I can and camp for a few (dozen? hehe) hours. My friends know I'm not in a bad mood even if I reply with half a syllable or barely take part in the conversation. That's just not very social behavior as it comes to grouping with strangers, see? I still might spend the hours with a smile on my face and enjoy the grouping, whether people talk in group chat or no.
But, to case in point, I'd be devastated if I had to seek new people to group with all the time or be penalized if I didn't. Of course I do that, but I like to call my pace of socializing as 'thoughtful' hah. First I must scan through the first people I group with, then the next, and then the next until I find my own place. This process takes months, sometimes even years before I can truly be comfortable with all the people around me (a.k.a a guild for example).
We are all different, I understand this game isn't for everyone but I think rewarding people towards certain behavior is always better than penalizing. As I think VR is already doing :). One of the reasons why I look forward to this game is that it will be slower paced than the "fashionable" rush-through-levels -mmos. I'll have better time to get myself acquainted with my level 20 and hope not -all- my friends have already whooshed past me to max level ;).
