Massive Suck : Social gameplay leads to grind?

Quick thought for the day - do MMORPGs actually need to be unfun to play?

More specifically, do socialised MMORPGS (which perhaps some would say they all are) need to actually be unfun to play and...essentially suck?

The thing is, the whole emphasis on social means player skill can't get you out of suck ville.

No, for a social game, the way out has to be social. That you have more friends, or have a big guild, grants you resources that get you out of suck ville.

So the game has to suck. Not at the most shallow level (thus explaining why gamers seem to fetish graphics), but the heart of the game has to suck. And not suck in a 'your the last starfighter and only pure skill will get you out from the aliens evil grasp, even though it sucks to be put in such a position', because as said, it can't be player skill.

So it just has to be plain, out and out suck. Just in a way that you don't have X and...that's it, you don't have it. No zing, no surprise twist on aquiring it. It takes ages. It's grind. It sucks. Unless you got other players on your side to give resources or make it go faster.

Having socialising first and foremost as a priority of the game necessitates having grinding, sucky gameplay.

These are your mmorpg friends...

There's a thing in table top roleplay, where people will play together but then they spend absolutely no time doing anything else with each other - they don't see movies together, they don't hang out and drink coffee or beer and talk crap. They don't go camping together. They do nothing else.

Yet some people at these games will call them friends.

They aren't. They are not part of your real life, they are just part of your game life.

And over here we have someone who, in a mmorpg, thought someone was their friend - but really that person gets crossed in the game - and the game life is all that's important to them. They don't share your real life with you, they aren't your friend.

But everyone talks about how they make such good friends on mmorpgs. It's really social!

Bullshit.

Now if you manage to catch up with these people in real life, for other events (and sitting around drinking beer and talking crap qualifies as an event!), then cool...but see, it's not about the mmorpg anymore. It's bigger than that.

Suzina bought some wow gold.

Think about the stuff you've forgiven friends for in your life. I bet some of them have drunk all your beer, or maybe vomited in your car or something. Did you put them on ignore?

When you start putting the integrity of a frigging game ahead of a 'friendship', it either means you into that game like a cult, or it just wasn't a friendship.

Grouping isn't always healthy

Augh! Just reading Tobolds blog and I find the attitude in one entry kind of sick. I'll quote my responce for context

Augh, Tobold, your position sounds like a kind of sickness? You want people to make friends, not because they actually like the other person, but because they can't have fun with the product they bought if they don't.

That's a terrible reason to make friends! That's not even making friends, it's just finding people to use.

If people like other people, they'll make friends and group with them even if there's a bunch of NPC's to group with. This whole article seems to be tainted with some idea that it's not important whether people want to do things with each other.

What you need is some mechanism to help people come in contact more, so they actually know what other people are like in order to have a chance at making friends

I mean honestly, it goes back to the worst of the worst table top roleplay habits, where people who would have absolutely nothing to do with each other outside of roleplay, would indeed roleplay together so they could get their game fix. It's an incredibly unhealthy attitude, but here we have the same perpetuation of the idea the game should force people together not because they like each other, but because they want their mmorpg fix.

What you need is some system by which players can get to know each other. This was done, retardedly, by forcing people to group or they get nowhere. You just need a system which gets them in contact without such a blunt instrument involved.

And it's not hard to knit together a bunch of reward systems for entering in details of what you like, then more rewards for browsing other players. And no, I don't mean holding back part of the game like loot and seeing the insides of certain dungeons - I mean handing out some gold or such. Which will mean social gamers are richer, but that's not gimping the main content for any soloer.

Honestly, the fact that mmorpg design kind of fell together into a retarded block content unless you group model is excusable since it fell together. But to perpetuate a culture of people finding other people, not because they like them, but because they want to use them to get at a game they've already paid for? It's unhealthy.

Live by the social sword, die by the social sword - or what 'killed' WAR

From a responce I gave on Tobolds blog

What killed war is people phrasing the question as 'what killed war?'. Or to be more exact, what removes subscribers is some sort of mental toggle switch which has 'The best mmorpg' or 'It's been killed' and can only toggle between them, with no middle ground that's 'Hey, I like this and it doesn't matter to me much what other people do or don't like'.


It's the fiscally nasty side of aiming for a viral 'social' game, because social customers come with this mindset. Live by the social game sword, die by the social game sword.
 
In other words, it doesn't matter if you make great content, if you then try to attract customers who don't care about content and only care about what other people care about.