Savanja said:I don't think anyone likes time sinks for the simple sake of eating up time, but for the most part, all our time in a game is NOT necessarily gameplay. This is where social mechanics come in. Guilds are a major social mechanic made to coordinate various types of gameplay via small communities, but what else does a MMORPG need to encourage time well spent in a game meant for virtual interaction?
What do you do in a game, when you aren't actually gaming?
If I'm in game, I'm gaming. I'm working towards any number of goals, be that gaining levels, gear, etc. I don't ever log in to just socialize.
Hang around town and help people find things and places. General help chatting with other players.
Buying, selling, trading with other players.
Making fun of NPC's to make other players laugh (emotes, if they exist!)
If there are taverns in the game I'd probably spend some time in there ... if other players are hanging out in there.
Outside towns I'd probably be interesting in traveling parties. Getting help or helping others get from point A to point B.
Making fun of NPC's ... yes, in the wild too! lol
Maybe there could be outposts for players to hang out in in between adventures. If other players are there I'd probably stop and say hi, or tell a story or two.
Do things I shouldn't be doing....like trying to swim too deep, or too far, or climb too high, just to see if I can! I've already got one competetion lined up for release day :P
Crafting! If crafting can be social I will definitely participate in that part of crafting. Group gathering, or group projects, or organizing different trades to build something together, etc.
Edit: I'm not really sure what "actually gaming" means in this context so I just assumed it's the differenc between trying to advance my character vs living in the world. My character will have plenty of downtime where the purpose is simply to hang out and be.
The vast majority of my MMO time IS gameplay sans socialization. Getting every class/spec/role to max level, gearing, gathering, faction, transmog, and the like fill my time. I will go out of my way to be friendly to people but they are merely going about their business doing the same tasks as myself. Instancing and the auto-group tools have bypassed the need to interact, not to mention dumbed-down gameplay. While I was in a trader guild in ESO, I would still just auto-group dungeon runs (as a fast queue role) to fill out my gear sets. This path was easier and quicker with greater results.
It has been several expansions but just this week I joined a small veteran guild on Garona-WoW in an attempt to get back in the swing of that sphere to see if any potential drama is even worth the effort. Since they needed a healer I hope to help them progress in whatever tickles their fancy. (within reason!)
An MMORPG needs the player to need other people. Simple as that. Finding compatible souls in the solo-skewed landscape of MMO games is not so simple or even necessary. Sure, doing that next raid difficulty level would be great, but it is generally only a few item levels above what I can achieve solo/LFR and that gear is all irrelevant come the next raid tier. Hopefully, Pantheon can right the listing MMO ship when it comes to the value of player interaction/interdependence.
As an aside, having to master a large number of addons in order to effectively play a game at a high level is unfortunate. /tangent
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.
Outside of guild interaction - my socialization is mostly talking in chat while I craft or adventure.
The important part of the question, given who it comes from, is what can the game do to encourage and support socialization. I will suggest two things apart from the obvious needs to focus on both guild and group mechanics.
1. A hub or alternatively a small number of hubs where characters have an incentive to congregate. There is a downside, of course. Make it too appealing to go to one place and other areas become too empty. It has to be fairly easy to get to - which may mean a fast travel mechanism (but we will surely have other fast travel devices in the game regardless such as travel between continents and class teleport abilities). It probably should have a minimum level requirement - we truly do not want the starter areas to look any emptier than normal leveling out of new characters will result in. It should not make traveling easier than it otherwise would be - ideal might be an island that one can fast travel to that offers no access to any other part of the world other than the return to where the character came from. For example - suppose you can get there from any of three major cities. When you leave you would only be able to return to the city you came from - not use the "social hub" as a nexus to enable almost instant travel between one city and either of the other two.
What kind of incentive can it give? Their name is legion. A small crafting speed bonus for crafting there. The ability to earn cosmetic items, housing decorations or even mounts by doing festival type things. No God requires festivals to only be at certain times - we can have a festival type of area available all year to supplement seasonal festivals. A small xp bonus if there is anything that can be done there to earn xp.
2. A world chat channel. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It can become quite toxic, be a natural home to the worst type of troll, and be spammed without mercy. An /ignore feature will help control this, especially if it is accountwide. A good filter will minimize spam for gold selling - assuming any gold sellers notice Pantheon and think it is worth their time. A mark of success to attract such, perhaps.
In games without any world chat channel I find the amount of social interaction significantly reduced - often undesirably so. Regional channels are good but one is often in areas that are either not very crowded (after the game has been around for a while, at least) or where people are busy doing things that do not allow them much chance to just stay in a safe place and talk.
More social suggestions:
dorotea said:What kind of incentive can it give? Their name is legion. A small crafting speed bonus for crafting there. The ability to earn cosmetic items, housing decorations or even mounts by doing festival type things. No God requires festivals to only be at certain times - we can have a festival type of area available all year to supplement seasonal festivals. A small xp bonus if there is anything that can be done there to earn xp.
2. A world chat channel. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It can become quite toxic, be a natural home to the worst type of troll, and be spammed without mercy. An /ignore feature will help control this, especially if it is accountwide. A good filter will minimize spam for gold selling - assuming any gold sellers notice Pantheon and think it is worth their time. A mark of success to attract such, perhaps.
In games without any world chat channel I find the amount of social interaction significantly reduced - often undesirably so. Regional channels are good but one is often in areas that are either not very crowded (after the game has been around for a while, at least) or where people are busy doing things that do not allow them much chance to just stay in a safe place and talk.
These are really good ideas. If a game wants players to be social, there has to be an incentive! I've never minded world chat channels, but TBH, I don't pay attention to them super often. I've always appreciated chat tabs for that very reason.
I will toss in a few more ideas that relate purely to encouraging social activity rather than to encouraging people to be in a populated area where such activitiy is more likely to occur.
Titles - many people love titles. Give titles for sending /whispers 100, 500, 1,000, 10 million times. Give titles for receiving whispers 100, 500. 1,000, 10 million times. But with a strict cap e.g. no more than 5 per day and no more than one per day to any one account. Even with a cap this is probably a poor idea since it encourages spam and annoying people.
Emotes. The game will surely have emotes. Give titles for using emotes (see above) or perhaps better have a few emotes that can only be acquired by social activities For example if you courtsey 10,000 times to other players you get a particular dance or jump or step emote. Same need for daily limits. Maybe over a limited period tied to a festival e.g. a title or emote for using /hug during a valentine's day themed festival.
Emotes could also be used to enhance social interaction in these ways:
Crafting should have spontaneous problems arise that others can assist with. For example, a blacksmith could have embers from the forge start a fire and anyone nearby could help put out. The problem needn't cause the crafting to fail (though it could add time or some other consequence if no one helps) since having assistance shouldn't become a defacto requirement. This would encourage crafting in public areas and createa great opportunities for us to help each other.
Allow us pay to book a venue for events and have a message display on the marquee. Even with no event planned, some players would want to rent it just to have their custom marquee message displayed.
I want to add I disagree with world chats being promoted. The world chats become a pure cesspool in almost every game. Unless its a very small or dying MMO or just a period of time when no one is online.
The closest we have to a global chat in real life is more like a twitch stream. Its full of spammed emotes and nonsense most of the time. Please don't add it to the game as a default option as it just takes away from all of the more local chats.
The region / zone chat is what is important. Pushing more conversations here leads to actually running into the people you are talking to. The requests for help are always somewhat local and we get to know those playing around us leading to potential groups. It can still become spam in the high population areas, but its usually far more tame.
With that said please allow player chat channels. I am all for people joining chats with friends and guildies but we need PLAYERS capable of moderation to kick the trouble makers near instantly.
Maybe the dynamic is not so present now. The dynamic as I see it is: the player is alone in RL, and enters a game that is full of people. There is some shielding behind the 4th wall, hence begetting "keyboard warriors" who may not be as vociferous if met IRL. But otherwise, the realization of being a stranger in a strange land is apparent from day 1, compounded with the pressure of wanting to "get gud" in the game itself. In other words the player has to learn the way and learn to play while everyone else may or may not be looking. This makes the first grouping somewhat stressful, and a fierce addiction to a regular group- initially.
I would prefer talking out loud to tells as it will allow the newbie to eavesdrop and learn things along the way from other players or speak up and chime in and in so doing make instant cameraderie with those coincidentally seeking the same goal- the smithy is around here somewhere- Im looking for the smithy too! in tells, thats misssed. Asking the same thing in general chat is ok, but not as viseral I think. The big thing that opened my desire to be more social and more of an out-reacher was the first time (of many) I went into a dungeon with a group because one person said that was a good place to go. I had never been but heard it was hard. Already being apprehensive, to go in and hear the cacaphony of people being hit, accidentally trained, warning of trains, making rules about trains- trains left!, dying, rezzing, conquering, clearing- sharing the same apprehensions as I was and making the same mistakes I might along the lines of "if you prick us, do we not bleed?...and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" totally got me more out of my shell.
This is a hard one, like keeping starting cities populated I think, but that kind of passive social dynamic right away is fun. I dont know what to do, lets go to Faerthale and see whats up there, and when we enter there may be people speaking of other places or overhear someone say- lets go to amberfaet, that place is great, everyone is there. and we would know everyone (well, not everyone)- in this part of the world- is at amberfaet
In global chat the answer to where is the smithy isn't a tell its one heckle, one person saying the answer to a different city, one asking where they are, one person responding to a question asked a few minutes ago with a text wall, one person talking politics, one person spamming they are a smith and can craft items, and 1-5 bots selling gold.
I agree with low pop being a problem late into many MMOs. You don't want to be the only person in an area. The answer isn't global chat though, especially not global chat on launch day. Expand the zone chats after a year to a region or continent chat then again after another three when zones are too low to properly run an MMO. If VR ends up following the MMO trope and has 95% of the game world virtually empty after a few expansions due to everyone sitting around at max level then all those cities and zones can be merged into one chat. The almost global chat still shouldn't be global since most players are only in the new content areas. For the thousand people on the server only doing the new expansion content the normal zone chat system still works way better to promote local conversations.
In City of Heroes, I spend time looking at costumes and reading characters' biographies. Costumes won't really be a thing on Pantheon, but I really hope we can write bios. These can really draw out creativity and adds always changing content that's entirely player created.
I'd like to see a tavern with a message board. That message board is also posted on this forum, but is read only here and you must be in game to post.
While I cannot disagree with anything Jobeson says I still prefer world chat to the frequent silence (unless one is in an active guild) without it. One definitely should have the option of turning it on or off. In fact the point about having it off by default and only on for people that affirmatively select it may not be a bad one. Though if we launch with 10 starter zones (just made the number up - probably way too high) zone chat lets us deal with a world that feels 90% more empty than it actually is at least in terms of chat. Then again - this may be a good thing.
I was writing a response to someone hating fizzles on another thread and felt it also belonged here.
"I don't think anyone likes time sinks for the simple sake of eating up time" - savanja
I clearly enjoyed one of them. In EQ you were more of an apprentice at the start. Not a skilled battle hardened adventurer but barely capable of the easiest of tasks. One of the ways they showed this was the fizzle system on spells. Sometimes you simply failed to cast a spell.
People for the most part hated this system and I never understood why. I saw the system as a 13 year old and thought I need to train my characters casting so I fail less often. So I went out training, I helped lower level players while exploring a zone in full. Free damage shields, summoned armor and weapons, binding players, etc. I did it all as a form of building up my skills. I would meet new players often only for a few seconds but some of them would have nice RP conversations about their troubles. I did the same with my paladin and then my beastlord. I never once saw the system as a horrible mechanic.
Other people would sit alone for hours casting and meditating or macro the system.
My view is that the failure of the devs in this instance regarding fizzles, is they allowed the player buffing themself 20x in a row to work for skilling up. Nudge players into socializing because they will let efficiency make them miserable.
I'll agree with 'skilling up' as both a time sink and social mechanism. That's great you chose to help others in that way. I remember trading languages with people near zone borders. I also remember how much the gms supported roleplay and I eventually got into that. I once found a gm standing a ways outside of Kelethin and asked if they were lost. They replied they were so I showed them the way back to the tree city and, before they left, they dropped a reward. It encouraged me to give rp a shot with many people I've met in EQ and beyond.
Honestly, my biggest want when joining a guild is having an active chat. Some guilds are quieter than others. As a healer, this is bad for my groups since many a tank has died while I get engrossed in guild chat convos.
As for other areas I socialize, I agree with dorotea about the world chat. Helping others, whether I see them ask for stuff in global or guild chat is another chunk of my gaming time.
More importantly, I've been playing some games recently with slower paced combat and that really has been the #1 contributor to conversation in parties. I have no statistical data for this, but there's no other explanation for this with my experience grouping in the last few years. It makes sense though. When you have to press a button every 1-2 seconds to be an efficient or at least capable party member, I'm way less likely to casually chat when I know it can lead to a death or me playing my class in a subpar way.
Maybe that last point is an issue with myself always wanting to be the most effective I can be when with others. However, I know there are others that feel the same way when they group.
Regarding chat channels...in a recent interview Joppa comments on global chat vs zone chat. Skip to about the 15m40s mark if you want to go straight to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0paOTTs-QsI
Or for the summed up version:
"..in the world if I say something in general chat and I'm in Thronefast is it going to be
heard throughout the entire entire world? No."
Ranarius said:Regarding chat channels...in a recent interview Joppa comments on global chat vs zone chat. Skip to about the 15m40s mark if you want to go straight to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0paOTTs-QsI
Or for the summed up version:
"..in the world if I say something in general chat and I'm in Thronefast is it going to be
heard throughout the entire entire world? No."
I do remember this, was mostly responding to the question. I don't think there is an issue with more regional general chat channels as long as populations in those zones remain high. It becomes inredibly dull, however, when there's only 5 other people in that general channel with you. That's where world chat becomes better. Localized general chat is good for finding group/quest partners at least...
What do you do in a game, when you aren't actually gaming progressing?
When i'm not focused on the activities that invole one the ways of improving my character (leveling, crafting, gear hunting etc) or increasing my understanding of the world (exploring, finding secrets, reading lore), I "socialize" by helping other players - especially newbies and guildmates - in their endevours. I am a man of few words and always did enjoy listening, observing and actively helping far more than chatting, so the conversations I do have tend to take place while doing something else - the chances of finding me in the tavern or guild hall "just" chatting are rather slim.
Like I have said before, I will be 'Adventuring'. I love exploring and finding new spots in the world or unique things that have yet to be discovered or only a few know about. Most MMOS have so much dead and unused space that it borders on criminal. I was running through Stormwind in WoW some months ago(before I quit for the millionth time...lol) and was disheartened that I couldn't enter more of the buildings. So many new quests and mysteries could be made using an already made POI instead if building new ones. That's one of the things I loved hearing from VR when they talked about how they will use assests and create POIs.
I have told the story of how I spent a couple of weeks in the Wetlands in WoW helping other groups fight the elite Dwarves there even after I completed all the quests. I stayed until the content became trivial for me( I don't like just dominating mobs(maybe a tad...sometimes), I want some challenge) and then moved on. levelling in Pantheon will be a lot slower and there is a death penalty, so if I find a zone I really like, I can stay there for a lot longer just helping folks at that level or new to the zone. I look at Pantheon's open world as being a dangerous place and I look forward to staying in an area I like just harvesting, adventuring, exploring and looking out for folks who want to group or need help in that zone. If it's an area with Undead, then you will most definitley find me there for a good long minute...lol. I might even intentionally just be reckless not caring if I die so I can get some 'debt' to pay and level slower [which I don't think will be hard to do :)]
That is just some of what I will be doing. I love topics like this in relation to Pantheon.