Unomat
- Male
- 38 Years Old
- Delft, ??
- NL
- Quote "Common sense is not so common - Voltaire"
- Plays: Poker Guildwars Global Agenda (Alpha) Runes of Magic
- Interests: nothing (except Alganon?)
- Offline
MMOs in general lack the capacity to make the whole community rise to the occasion and forge stronger ties by overcoming obstacles as one. I've tried to explain it to my wife (who's an abolute atheist as far as games go, so the perfect person to bounce ideas off that require a clear mind) why that is so:
Imo you have (table top) war-games and P&P RPGs on two sides of the spectrum, with MMOs in the middle and they are shifting more and more towards an aberration of war-games. In war-games there is a clear goal: one side wins, another side loses, usually the side with the best tactics & strategies wins. In P&P RPG there is only one objective: that the atmosphere remains pleasurable enough for people to get together again next time without lingering antipathies; it's the job of the GM to keep that goal in mind, while all participants try and do their utmost to feed the GM suggestions to make for an interesting, involving story.
However in SP RPGs and MMOs, powergaming has been dubbed the norm with the expected outcome of attracting mainly players who are prone to solve situations through combat, complaining when their preferred way of gaming receives the short end of the stick or when combat is not even an option to get ahead in the game.
The longer I've been thinking about it, the more I come to the conclusion that a game with combat as a core (if not the only) concept will always fail in the social department unless there's something added in to balance it; combat as a singular core concept will force players to gravitate towards the corporate model where they aren't allowed to be a part of more than one in-game player organisation, if they want to efficiently cash in on the 'content' that is. And as the guilds they are a part of provide them with all kinds of incentives to reinforce the hunt for carrots that are in-game, those guilds themselves become the biggest stick of all.
Let's be honest, few people quit their 'job' before they've found a better 'employer' and in most games that emphasize competition, corporate backstabbing reigns supreme: people quitting a guild for one that's 'better' (read: more advanced in having parts of the game on farm status) when a player himself has gone too far ahead on the gear-curve due to a fluke in the loot table probabilities coupled with an overshoot of DKP in 'their account', rage quits & kicks over players who bring 'the wrong build' to a raid or an event, a minimum required attendancy record to be even allowed to participate, we've all experienced them at one point or another and that has nothing to do with the P&P RPG experience anymore.
As Alganon has support for Families next to Guilds, I have high hopes they will take us one step further towards a P&P RPG experience in a massive world, where cooperation is as important as competition and the game appeals to people's willingness to participate again instead of cajoling them into playing for fear of 'getting behind on the power curve'.
-PnP dynamics is a nice sound bite, but that doesn't sell subscriptions by and large. Until we give them something to preview to see how beneficial such a game design philosophy can be, i'm afraid the trend will continue.
Alganon has started better than most to set that mood you speak of, with MyAlganon and the other features announced. I'm with you in that i hope Alganon moves us closer to seeing the PnP dynamic in MMOs sooner rather than later.
Nice read, look forward to reading more.
Jergis
This is a me too post.
But I do agree that the social atmosphere is just as important as combat. I have high hopes for the tools that Alganon offers but we will have to wait and see what pans out in the actual game.
I like what you're saying. A lot. However, I have come to believe that it all comes down to the people who play. At this point, I have really lost all hope that a whole game will bring this to all people that play it. The best I can hope for is for a game to support it as a subset group, basically, and I will join that group.
Maybe a pre-existing place for small guilds, families and such IS the initial step. Not everyone can setup and run a site dedicated to a guild or small group of like minded players. Even if they could, when they leave the game, the site may go with them. Myalganon gives them a permanent home to be a family, if you will.
The family Feature was not something that really interested me when I first looked at the game it seemed like just another chat channel, but the more I read about it and the more I think about how usefull it could be the more I'm growing to love the idea, I think it will be most usefull to the people that stray from the norm of the mmo those subsections of people that go down the rp route or the pvp route its a great tool to meet likeminded people.
I also like the back stories for the families, makes you feel like you need to uphold the family name.
I totally agree with you Unomat. What you have stated is what has been missing in MMOs for me. I would like to immerse myself into the gameworld and feel like I belong there.