Wolftar said: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 ;).
I definitely get where you are coming from. My wife and I are very similar.
Thats why we prefer a guild where we can really get to know each other. I am pretty quiet around strangers. But, when I find good friends, I can let my freak flag fly.
>forced into grouping <
I didn't have to read past this in the post to know I disagreed.
Encouraged to group - certainly. Given better tools for grouping - certainly. Needing to group to do any of the dungeons and some world content - without doubt. But *forced* to group - a game that doesn't give choices on things like this is not likely to be much of a success.
And I note that although a basic tenet of Pantheon will be to have this much more of a social game than so-called modern MMOs grouping is just ONE way to be social and not necessarily the most important. One can be social in guilds. One can be social in chat. One can talk to and help new players (or old players for that matter).
Grouping is important and we are all likely to do a lot of it but the more it is *forced* as when EQ2 briefly converted open world mobs into elites that required groups to kill at-level the more this will be resented and will backfire. Let's stick to making it desirable and encouraged and avoid making it mandatory.
Wolftar said: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 liked this statement as it follows somewhat closely with how I feel about the approach people take with making 'friends' in . To translate from todays definition of 'friend' I would most likely use the definition for 'acquaintance' or even 'casual acquaintance'. i.e. somebody you have come across in a limited way, perhaps even your friend's brother's co-worker.
It is for that reason I dislike only have ONE button marked 'friend' with which to label:
a. Actual friends
b. Potential friends
c. People who invited me to their Guild/Raid
d. People who helped me who I might like to later thank/help
e. Traders with a bargain I missed/want/liked
f. Very good customers for my trade goods
And I particularly dislike the 'friend' buttons where it also:
A. Makes them befriend me if I friend them
B. Requires them to click 'Accept XYZ as your friend'
C. It adds 'Friend' for ALL my Alts when I am friended on this characters
SUGGESTION:
This is where I think some work could, and should, be done. Perhaps in the form of :
1. An in-game Journal to reflect 'selected' info/lists, or perhaps
2. Merely having a log file for selected categories, or
3. Categories (or tags) for 'friends' and such like - even user-created ones.
Anything that allows us players to more easily tag a player we grouped with as 'good tank' or 'always NEEDS in NBG' or for any other simple thing we want to keep track of for game purposes. Every one of these pieces of information makes us more social ... makes reputations more important etc.
Evoras, usually waits until level 20 before joining a Guild...
In my opinion, less is more when it comes to encouraging socialization. Years back, it wasn't uncommon to spend an hour or two putting a group together. There were many challenges. I personally remember many a day or night where I would spend a significant amount of time looking for the elusive bard, enchanter, or red mage (depending on what game I was playing) to fill out my group. This was back when role interdependence was truly important ... when it was worth spending an extra 30-45 minutes to find the right class because of what they brought to the table. When I started groups, I would usually let everybody know ahead of time what the plan was. We're going to play for X amount of hours. We'll start at Camp A and stay there until Player Y is Level Z. Then, we'll move onto Camp B in Zone C. I would create a roadmap and clearly define the expectations of everybody in the group. I enjoyed long sessions, usually 3-4 hours minimum. Considering how difficult it was to put together a well balanced group, once you had it going, players would stick it out as long as they could. If someone had to go, it was considered courteous to inform the group leader at least 30-45 minutes ahead of time. This would allow them to find a replacement and give that replacement enough time to make their way to camp.
Nowadays, you don't have to work for a group. You just que up and the game takes care of all that for you. There is no meaningful dialogue. There is no expectation. Your group is haphazardly thrown together with no emphasis on class synergy or shared goals. Once you get the group going, if someone starts lagging behind or under performing, it wasn't uncommon to see a group band together to remove the person being "carried." There was no penalty for doing it, either. As soon as the player was kicked, another person would magically appear in their stead. That right there is what started this mentality of players kicking each other for under performing. The dungeon finder mechanic was supposed to provide convenience and save time, but it also fueled impatience. Why would someone spend any of their precious time trying to help another player improve when they could just kick them out and see what the wonder wheel of mystery spits out as their replacement?
The instant gratification of the dungeon finder mechanic ruined dungeon crawls for me. There was never a sense of adventure. There was no journey leading up to the crawl. I never felt vested in those grouping endeavors because they required literally zero effort to be there. When it takes an hour to put together a group, and another 20-30 minutes just to get there, it creates a sense of committment to seeing it through that just isn't possible to be had while using the dungeon finder mechanic. When players aren't magically replaceable on a whim, they are significantly more valuable to the group as a whole. Relationships were meaningful. You just spent all that time putting a group together ... now that you have it going, and it's working well, a bond formed. You realized that you could count on this person and they realized they could count on you. That connection is something we don't get nowadays. Players would rely on other players to help solve the challenges of spending their time efficiently. Because the pool of players was limited, and classes/roles important, everybody had a sense of duty when it came to helping someone out. It was worth taking the time to explain a quest, help someone improve their spell rotation, or even offer them a piece of gear.
The dungeon finder mechanic caused players to become a commodity. You don't socialize or interact with commodities. You use them for their purpose until they can no longer serve you, and then you move on with your day. Removing this mechanic will create value in every player, every relationship, and every journey. Now, beyond the dungeon finder mechanic, there are several other issues that have contributed to the state of socialization in modern MMO's. Instant travel is another culprit. As I mentioned earlier, players feel more vested in seeing something through when it requires effort to get there in the first place. If it takes you 45 minutes just to get to a desirable location, you want to make the most of the opportunity available once you're actually there. Most players appreciate efficiency especially when it comes to their time. I have plenty of memories of playing FFXI where travel was always meaningful. Sometimes you would have to wait 5 minutes just to board the airship, and then you'd have to spend another 6-7 minutes on the flight to another city. Once there, you would leave the city on a rented chocobo (mount) and set off to your destination. Sometimes you would have to navigate through 3-4 zones. Some paths were relatively safe, but they took longer. There were shortcuts available but they were generally more risky. Depending on your class, or if you had help, you would take that shortcut. Other times ... not so much. You wouldn't want to die and then end up having to make the entire journey again from your original city. Time was valuable. Your group was counting on you to get there.
Another major culprit ... instances. Instances would literally steal people from the world and tuck them away into a private little dimension where all players involved would be subtracted from the world. Instances are absolutely horrible when it comes to socialization and player interaction. Some folks might appreciate having their very own dungeon to crawl, free from interference and competition. They would kill every boss and loot every corpse, no sweat. But where is the fun in that? There is no opportunity to lend a helping hand to someone who got caught out of position trying to sneak around for a quest update. There is no sense of urgency to try and beat out a wave of respawns while you trek back to Named Boss X. There is no strategic discussion to be had other than how you kill the next boss. There is only a single, linear path between you and the end. Once you have the encounter mechanics of each boss down ... every time you run that instance in the future, it will be the exact same experience, plus or minus class/player variables. There is no risk vs reward element to mess around with. Your fate lies in the hands of the RNG Gods. Welcome to monotony.
With all of that being said ... I don't think there is a need to introduce any fancy mechanic that encourages interaction. Interaction should be a fundamental. When you remove the instant gratification of dungeon finder ques, instant travel, and instances ... socialization will be restored, and it will be done organically. Organic socialization is the best kind. If there is an incentive to play with random people, it would feel super lame to me. I would honestly equate it to the phone app games out there that use interaction as an artificial progression barrier. If you want to advance to Level X, it requires that 3 unique players help you. The phone app rakes in the dough because they force players to seek out the help of others ... and I'm sure many of you know how annoying that is. I've had to remove people from my friends list on many platforms because of the request for help spam. It's not that I didn't want to help ... it's just that I didn't play that game, or I would be busy with something else. I had no vested interest in what they were doing. It was an absolute gimick tactic used by the app developer to force more people to play their game ... and they used the human emotion of friends wanting to help friends to get there. It's pretty obnoxious, but effective! Personally, I would advocate against any sort of artificial incentive for grouping with new people. It feels fake. I'll group with new people when I need to ... but if I have 5 people I know and trust that are ready to go ... whats wrong with that? Where is our bonus for consistency and longevity?
At the end of the day, we don't need a fake-feeling incentive to interact with other players. We just need a world that allows these things to happen organically, and with minimal possibility of circumvention. I don't need help or incentives to help recruit people to my guild. I have damn near 100 players in my guild for a game that hasn't even started pre-alpha yet and we've been toughing it out for several months already. I just miss the old fashioned way. Player to player interaction was a beautiful thing when we actually needed each other to progress ... when players were people, rather than a commodity. Socialization is more fulfilling when we do it for the reasons that are actually important to us rather than attaining a bonus or achievement. Force feeding conversations down my throat is only going to annoy me. No, I don't want to help you get a bonus. No, I don't want a friendship meter that tells me how I feel about someone. No, I don't want to wear my social butterfly hat today to spice up my life and check out the scenery of what could have been. No, I don't want you to hold my hand and teach me how to make friends, or instruct me on why it's so important to have them. Just give me a world that's scary as all hell and full of obstacles and challenges. Then, make sure that players are able to use knowledge, skill, and teamwork in as many creative ways as possible to overcome them. Once you do that ... leave us to our own devices and we'll figure out the rest.
Just wanted to add a comment really quick. I've had several people PM me on Discord asking me about the sudden epiphany I had on the XP chain thread and if it had anything to do with my post here. Most know I was being sarcastic at the end there but for those that didn't, yeah, I was being sarcastic. I still believe the XP chain feature in FFXI was awesome and that it could work in Pantheon. It discouaraged multi-boxing and added a layer of consistent strategy throughout the game. I understand why many would interpret it as an artificial gimmick or whatever and that's fine ... that's why I essentially gave up. I just wanted that conversation to die as further discussion was only tainting the perception of how it actually worked and felt in game.
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread, just wanted it to be clear that I didn't go crazy over night. I was pretty adamant about why I felt XP chains were awesome and stand by what I said throughout the thread. I do regret ever bringing it up though because it was a feature that played out much better than it sounds on paper and it's a little frustrating seeing how it was perceived by those who never had a chance to use it. There was no sudden epiphany and I can see how my stance might appear a little contradictive between threads ... but I do find solace in knowing that at the very least, folks who played FFXI can understand where I am coming from. That is all, thank you.
Mod Edit: Merged double post as per guidelines.
dorotea said:>forced into grouping <
I didn't have to read past this in the post to know I disagreed.
Encouraged to group - certainly. Given better tools for grouping - certainly. Needing to group to do any of the dungeons and some world content - without doubt. But *forced* to group - a game that doesn't give choices on things like this is not likely to be much of a success.
And I note that although a basic tenet of Pantheon will be to have this much more of a social game than so-called modern MMOs grouping is just ONE way to be social and not necessarily the most important. One can be social in guilds. One can be social in chat. One can talk to and help new players (or old players for that matter).
Grouping is important and we are all likely to do a lot of it but the more it is *forced* as when EQ2 briefly converted open world mobs into elites that required groups to kill at-level the more this will be resented and will backfire. Let's stick to making it desirable and encouraged and avoid making it mandatory.
I don't know where you got the forced into grouping thing from because it certainly wasn't me. I might have missed it as I was reading the thread though.
in the name of Socialization, I declare the official government of Pantheon as Socialism! ... any questions?
>I don't know where you got the forced into grouping thing from because it certainly wasn't me. I might have missed it as I was reading the thread though.<
First paragraph of initial post.
>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).<
And I agree that it is much better for people to meet other people occasionally and not just do *everything* within their own guild. Bad as PUGs (pick up groups) can be they can be surprisingly good also and lead to new friends and guildmates. The only part of the sentiment I took exception to was the word "forced" and that is because quite a few people on these forums do feel that Pantheon should be designed almost exclusively for groups. So every now and then I like to point out that one can be very social outside of groups and the game can meet its core objectives with grouping only one of multiple paths to players working together a lot more than is common in "modern" MMOs. Interdependent crafting and guilds not least among these avenues.
I think the game should only focus on better, simple systems for encouraging social play... An example is a chat system that has many simplified mechanics like being able to menu selections just by targeting player or the player's name in chat.
Some of the best days come from organically joining a couple others, which a little later turns into full group. Then suddenly you end up meshing with a few of the players that turns into a friendship down the road.
I think the only thing that really matters is being able to communicate with others easily and having a LOT of different things to do, places to go at various levels throughout the game. I would like to see a really meaningful chat system come back into play. I would also love to see a section on your player's list or friend's list where you can place personal notes (good and bad) about other players. This can be stored on your personal info...
Evoras said:This is where I think some work could, and should, be done. Perhaps in the form of :
1. An in-game Journal to reflect 'selected' info/lists, or perhaps
2. Merely having a log file for selected categories, or
3. Categories (or tags) for 'friends' and such like - even user-created ones.Anything that allows us players to more easily tag a player we grouped with as 'good tank' or 'always NEEDS in NBG' or for any other simple thing we want to keep track of for game purposes. Every one of these pieces of information makes us more social ... makes reputations more important etc.
Wouldn't it be interesting if you could have logs tied to other characters so whenever you ran across that character you would see an asterisk beside their name or something to let you know you had a previously saved log entry concerning that player which you could then recall, read, edit, delete, etc.
I'm not sure if that would be a good thing or not, but I can tell you with certainty that I would use it if it existed.
I made the following associations from the original post:
I did not like it when having just started a Pug and maybe one or two pulls in and the needed cleric then says " sorry I have to leave to help a guildie" (not going to a guiild event)
I did not like it when having gotten into a good groove with people I put on friends list after some months- just when we were about to go to the next level in adventuring that could take more months, the friend says " sorry, I am leveling my alt" ( which is why I am a fan of one account only servers).
I did not like it when some in a PuG then refused to go anywhere because there was not a proper slower, for like 30 to 45min. (I had a BST and BSTs can slow! not as much as a shaman but still- I had to console the BST, but she left the game soon after)
I did not like it when a PuG decided that the strategy to kill them as fast as possible with all this DPS and then bind wounds inbetween, going so fast that the tank would get low on health but not die was not atteptable and instead would rather wait around 30-45 minutes for a cleric and not a druid when a druid was available. It would be slow, but doable.
I did like it when in PuG and a member of a guild in the PuG would ask if another guild member of theirs could join to till the empty spot, it helped me get to know the guild zeitgeist.
I did like it when guilds in their power would come through the area I was in and clear the monsters to break the spawns while on their way- waving to the friends in the guild I knew.
I did like it when I was in guild and there were people I could call on to do things or help with my projects/quests and vice versa (I mean, that is the point of being in a guild!)
I did like it when guilds, (or the guild I was in) held open raids for random for everyone and the guildies would not roll, or advertized helping classes get their hard epic pieces, or offered to run non-guilded people through flagging/progression events.
("doing Posky for mage epic pieces all afternoon!- PST first come first served, once you get your piece pls gate out and make room!- LF 3 more for TipT runs- doing 3 today!)
I think the issue is more being on the other end of what is a priority of the other person- unfortunately that's the breaks and cant really be enforced. Hopefully therer will be a large enough population that the like-minded will find each other, which usually happens.
"Come, see a man..."