Seeing other people in the world is one of the most immersive and interesting things a non-instanced focused rpg can provide. I love being in another world full of friendlies and foes and all the interactions in between.
Even the bad interactions give you stories to tell and relate with new friends ^_^.
I believe the way strangers can enhance your gameplay experience is ,to some degree, limited to what is featured to provide for the game experience.
In some games like gw2,a character gets a birthday gift each year they live.
I think it wouldn't be bad if relations grow each year ingame the longer you play together,like wedding anniversaries;first year paper ,second year cotton etc
Was carried into the mmo genre by some friends" back in the days.Which now have grown strangers ironically
The advantage playing with family is that you know you can rely on them.Most strangers go with the weather;where the most reward is.
You never know what strangers are looking for.Thus they deserve a chance.
The effect strangers have on your gameplay experience is always uncertain;it can't be controlled.But enhanced features could improve the experience and guide us I believe
Kilsin said:Do random player interaction with strangers enhance your game experience or do you prefer playing with friends and family? #PRF #MMORPG
They absolutely make the game a richer and fuller experience provided those interactions aren't of the spammer, griefer, annoyer, harrasser ,etc varieties. Making friends, or even acquaintenances, is never a bad thing because you never know when you might need them or they might need you. The more people you know, the less likely you'll ever spend time standing there with nothing to do.
Most of my RL friends/family don't play MMORPGs, so the majority of my interaction from MMORPGs have come from random encounters. What I like about them though is if the game promotes a social environment, the random encounters turn into being close friends and even a few like family ultimately.
And, I haven't kept in touch much with older group members/guildies over the years, so it will mainly be forum friends and strangers in Pantheon for me :).
I usually come into MMORPGs alone. The exception was World of Warcraft where the Warcraft3 clan I was in tried their hand at MMOs. They weren't very successful haha...but I had plenty of exp thanks to EQ! I ended up playing with strangers and after my long break from WoW, came back and made all new friends in a different guild since my RTS guild had all quit the game. It's way better stepping into these games alone. I get the best experiences that way! EQ, GW1, GW2, EvE, Vanguard all MMORPGs I went into alone or with one other friend.
The best comparison I can come up with is going into a bar with friends vs going into a bar alone. When you go out with a large group of friends it drastically lessens the urge to strike up conversations with strangers. Not saying it doesn't happen, but speaking for myself I'm a lot more likely to make new friends when I go somewhere alone or maybe with one other person.
I would also have to say both, but the way it goes is, I play with strangers, and then they become friends.
In EQ, PUGS were some of the best groups. But with PUGS you often joined an established group that was holding a camp somewhere, and was lookig for a rep. Then you stayed until you in turn had to leave. Sometimes such a group would hold the same camp all day and when they finally broke up, none of the players who initially established the group was still there. Still these were often good groups.
With friends it was more like, let's go to Charasis again, or let's go to the Hole, then you went there and fought your way in to your favorite camp, or sometimes you went for a specific purpose such as some key quest or part of an epic.
LDoN was awesome. While it was sort of a precursor of the modern event dungeons, it wasn't the same gogogogogo frenzy, and you still had to play properly to succeed. And then after a while you had people you regularly ran with. But one of the things that was awesome about it was that you met all kinds of people. Members of endgame guilds often PUGged it, and then you found yourself grouped with a couple of people from your server's top guild. Outside LDoN that didn't seem to happen so often.
Strange how I remember more about groups I played with in EQ than in WoW... So yeah playing with strangers can be great, but I think the game also has to provide the right environment for it to encourage that kind of interaction.
Playing Everquest 2 I remember I rolled a Templar, and I was running around Thunderingsteppes. I ended up down by the knoll bridge abd I saw this group on the bridge having a hard time. They lost their healer and I just started healing them out of group. Next thing I knew i earned a life long friend from doing that. I'd say both myself as well.
As I don't have friends or family that play MMO's (I'm hoping that will change with Pantheon) those random encounters are a must for me and that magicial moment when you meet another player and end up becoming long time friends is what keeps me playing a game. If I can't make friends in a game I won't play it long. As I slowly build up a circle of friends to play with, I do prefer playing with them, that's why we became friends after all, but I always enjoy encounering new people and hopefully add them to my circle of friends. And then, hopefully, you have enough friends to put a guild together. And then you get to look forward to logging on with a whole bunch of people you just really enjoy spending time with.
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. You can be grouped with friends and family, and come across a random person and have an interaction. More importantly, it's the random interactions with other people that make MMOs so interesting. In a single-person or co-op game, the game is static and the game has a path or multiple paths you can't escape from. Except for the permutations of the choices that can be made in a game like that, there's no randomness. If you choose answer A, you'll finish with ending X. If you kill NPC B, you'll finish with ending Y. If you choose answer C and don't kill NPC D, you'll finish with ending Z. Lather, rinse, repeat.
From EverQuest to The Division, it's been the random, open-world encounters with other people -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- that make MMOs so appealing. That's why I'm so against hyper-policing people to the point where the game is bland. I've seen heroes born from fighting against people who would do harm in a game. I've seen hilarity ensue when someone accidentally trains the zone. I've seen freindships form from happy accidents. I've seen game mechanics born out of necessity (kiting) become SOP in the gaming world. I've seen raids saved and bosses taken down by calls for help in zone chat. I've seen Leroy Jenkins ruin a raid (ok, maybe not with my own eyes, but still ...).
These are all the things that VR can't program into a game, but these are the things that make MMOs magical.
I dont need friends/family, or strangers because as a healer I can solo... (scratches head)... um.... um... RATS! YES RATS AND... um...(crickets chirping).
As a healer main, strangers definitely enhance my expirence. If I didn't meet and interact with new people I wouldn't be getting very far. Lol even rats at higher levels would have their way with me. Strangers also have the ability to fully test my limits as a healer which can be fun depending on the game. I remember being in a group in EQ, we were in a level 45 zone, and had about 6 things trained on us in adition to the two we were fighting. Somehow we all managed to live, granted we were oom and almost dead, but its definitly one of my best memories in a game. I was so thankful for the ability to use lower spell ranks to save mana, and only use the higher ones in emergency situations, that kind of thing isn't allowed in todays mmo.
I will say while the majority (8/10 or 9/10) of strangers I meet tend to end in a plesent experience, theres always the occasional one that has me withholding heals and laughing as he goes up in flames.
Edit: spelling X_X
I used to love playing a druid in EQ. I would run by ppl I never knew or would never meet again and cast spells to heal/sow/etc. Sometimes they would realize what had happened and thank me and I would just wish them well and sometimes we would have longer talks and become friends. I like meeting new ppl as you never know which ones will become your next group of friends or even guildmates.
The best friends I made online I met in random groups. Take EQ as an example - A RL friend and I started EQ and being humans we started in Qeynos (not steenkin Freeport!). A few levels on we joined random groups hunting bandits in Karana and found out that we liked the way some of the others played. So we ended up on each others friends list and later joining the same guild. This was in the early days of EQ and some of those friends I made there I still keep in touch with even though we live all over the world.
We always tried to keep one or two spots open for randoms to join so we could meet new people and new friends. So a mix of the two is what I like :)
Part of the thrill of starting an MMO is the people you dont know. Diving into the world as a "new" person- its better than armchair travelling. No preconcieved notions except for those that you do or react to in game. Everything in game being new - and the people too- is a clean slate from which to paint that story.
Being my own private other characters life, having it creep into the real world can sometimes be wierd. They talk about "work-life" balance at work, meaning what you are at work stays at work, and be sure you have life time away from work to balance the work time. (so why the constant push to join this or that thing at work to benefit the community- unless it is work consicripted allowance to "not work" during those times? seems contradictory. Benefiting the community is what I do on my life time)
That life time; being away and unrelated to work, so is that MMO time is away and unrelated to life and work- sort of like voluntary escapism, like reading a good book.
Like camping as a sort of voluntary isolation, and (this is a joke-->) being on a small yacht being a sort of voluntary incarceration :)
Kilsin said:Do random player interaction with strangers enhance your game experience or do you prefer playing with friends and family? #PRF #MMORPG
I'm unsure if I am assessing the question correctly, but I am taking it to mean: do you prefer to play with friends/family/guildies or random pick up groups?
Once I get to a certain point of advancement I try to avoid pick up groups if at all possible. I find the experience in pugs is usually much worse than grouping with guild members or friends from other guilds.
So I guess I consider random player interactions to be detrimental. I'd prefer to control who I interact with as much as I can.
Both.
Grouping with strangers is probably one of the best things about MMO's, it's one of the reasons I play them instead of just single player games. Also, as with others in this thread, a lot of my gaming friends started as strangers or random groups. The social aspect of a game is key to the experience. That includes random player interaction, whether it's being grouped with people, or competing with people. It makes a game exciting and dynamic, IMO.
I like grouping with friends and family as well. We work well together and have lots of fun. However, as a PvPer, they tend to get upset if I keep killing them. I need strangers around. ;)
TL;DR: PuGs are important to an MMO if you want to foster community, friendship, and social interaction.
A bit more complex of an answer of course. To compare what I consider two extremes of the content consumption and pick up groups I'll use wow and EQ TLP servers. I know you're familiar with both of these games but I'll provide some detail just to make my point.
For wow you can level entirely alone, no problem. You can at least see the raid content through a menu option (LFR). Same goes with dungones (dungeon finder). Because of this you have to go out of your way to meet people and make connections. Pretty much you find a guild and really put forth effort to make friends and find people you enjoy playing with. So for me when an expack drops for wow I'll typically play it until the first major content patch or so because of the lore, my history with playing the game, and it's really just a good classic game. Apart from that I never play long term. I have little invested in the game socially or even just from a gameplay standpoint. Wow may as well be a really complex version of diablo with a different IP.
EQ TLP servers are very similar to old EQ. You can solo with some classes, but even then you're going to be leveling slower than you would be with a good group. Even open world stuff you're going to want to group. You can't do dungeons or raids from a menu. You have to either find or create pickup groups. The other part too is that for leveling groups and dungeon groups you typically spend a lot more time with those individuals since EQ is a much slower paced game. Making friends outside of your guild is great. Sometimes they join your guild, sometimes you join their guild, sometimes you just run off and do stupid stuff together. Either way for me this is a large part of why I enjoy playing EQ so much still. It gets all the great parts of a table top RPG into a video game and I love that.
As far as guilds go, they're crucial IMO for EQ. Not having a guild means you're going to try to build friends in pugs and those friends will likely be guilded and doing guild things more often than playing with pugs. So you're left with continually making more random friends - which isn't bad - and that is time consuming and often times tiring or lessens the bond you build with other strangers. To continue the analogy of a table top RPG, this would be close to having a gaming group that you regularly play campaigns with. You may love the game but if you don't have a regular crew to play with it just isn't as fun or possible in some cases.
Maybe a bit outside of the scope of the question but I do think having an LFG tool is important. Be it a global chat channel or a menu, something inbetween, or something completely innovative and different. Having a tool to facilitate players being able to connect is important. Soem zones, dungeons, raids, and even spans of levels are more populated or populated for shorter durations. So being able to have something to help you manage that is incredibly important.
Random player interaction is required for a game to be a good game, in my eyes. As recently as the EQ TLP server Phinigel, random player interaction has led to lasting friendships that continue to persist even after I stopped playing shortly after clearing PoP. It is an irreplaceable part of a successful game with socialization as a core aspect.
Right now I'm playing ESO and player interdependence is extremely limited. An extreme amount of content in ESO is soloable, but that is the nature of a game that is derivative of a single player franchise, as well as being heavily narrative driven aside from the top 1% of content. I'm enjoying it for what it is, but I've resigned myself to playing it like a single player game outside of PvP, which is a rather lonely and undesirable experience at times.
Pantheon can't come soon enough.
