Group play vs. casual - why are sandboxes so isolationist?

ArchivedUser

I was wondering what others think about this, it is something that has bothered me for a while but I've only recently managed to put it in words. Plainly said: I tend to play sandbox games almost exclusively and those seem to all be build on the premise that casual players want to be forced into solo-ing the whole experience. And by solo I mean that playing next to someone else is not an interaction or "group" play.
For me a sandbox game is one where I can "advance" freely with plenty of features both in numeric values advancement (levels etc) as well as achievements not translating in numbers (building a house, terraforming a landscape, designing an adventure, stealing everything not nailed down, finding (not grinding) a rare item, solving a puzzle, obtaining a mount or such, decorating a home). The games I've played and would place into this category - you might disagree with the term "sandbox" but please bear with me while I try to explain my point - are: EQ2, UO, Landmark, Minecraft, Skysaga, Creativerse, Boundless, Wurm, Salem, BDO, Puzzle Pirates. Yet what seems to be a major issue in those is that usually casual and/or sandbox play means nobody's playtime matters for the other really.
I can solo everything - which I am grateful as someone with job and family. But I realized that I pretty much HAVE to solo everything. Or in cases like Wurm and Salem, it becomes insanely grindy to force people to team up/specialize. Why do game designer feel that you have to do one or the other? In Puzzle Pirates you need several people on a ship to sail it, but still you can always drop in and out without much issue if your playtime is over or the team isn't working well. Really limited gameplay features (just a handful of repetitive minigames) but it merge casual play and cooperation where everyone matters nicely. BDO is in my opinion the pinnacle of this odd "let's have people all online together play solo". There is no group harvesting as in ATitD where it makes sense for several people to join together to make something special or even be able to harvest certain resources. There is no point to specialize besides grind penalty. Where are the gameplay features and mechanics that reward you for playing together besides some group combat? Why is being casual considered to be so lacking of interest in being social?

I've been brooding over this for month now and tried to come up for ways how to address it, how to ensure that everyone can matter and be involved in a joint process together no matter level or skill (<a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/crafting-resources-tiered-raw-materials-versus-blends-and-alloys/">for example by crafting from alloys/blends instead of having tiered resources</a>). But I've only realized today how little interactive gameplay mechanics are part of modern casual MMO's besides some group combat thing. Why is that and am I the only one really missing that?

ArchivedUser

I've read through this twice now and I'm still having a very hard time understanding your point.

ArchivedUser

How about exaggerated: Why is there so rarely game mechanics where people achieve synergy from playing together? And why is "made for casuals" suddenly translated into "game mechanics for solo player"?
There is a lot more to this but for example two people sitting in a room reading both a book each or thousand of them doing the same next to each other ... does not make a social experience in my opinion. The closest there is is groups in MMO's (tank plus healer plus dps can achieve more and matter as a team), group harvesting in ATitD (you can't work a quarry if you don't have enough people join and work at the respective spots), group smelting in Salem (needs one or more to work the bellows and one to handle the ore) and sailing in Puzzle Pirates (needs one to steer, one at least to sail, one to rig, one the bilge pump and one to patch the holes, the more and the better each does the better the speed etc).

ArchivedUser

Nail on head.
I think you are trying to voice what every one instinctively knows, but has been unable to really put into words.
It is like a mist covering the eyes of understanding.

You must solo or form a small group....and thats as far as cooperation goes.
They are in effect mutiplayer games with 1000s of people which pretty much ignore each other because they are not enabled to interact and cooperate in any larger meaningful fashion than that.

You have your 1 man, 4 man, 8 man, 16 man content.
You go do your thing. And nothing you do actually relates to anyone else.
You might join up with new people but cooperation never extends beyond the upper lit of the group size.
You may have leader boards, buts thats competition, not cooperation.

This game is not only trying to put cooperation and an even playing field with competition.
Its actually demanding that cooperation extends way beyond groups and upto the whole server level.
No cooperation and you end up with mindless barbarism and no progress.
Full cooperation and you end up with 5 metropolis in full production working together to maintain it all.

ArchivedUser

MMOs are ultimately a simulation of how we dream the world could be.
It is a form of desperate escapism from the real world.
Its is and acknowledgement of our failures in the world we share.

ArchivedUser

Demand drives the product. While you may find many on forums waxing poetic about the game they want, what appears to be happening within the gaming world over the last decade or so is mmo’s are developing to cater to demand. To answer your question more directly I guess I can offer an example from my real life. Remember though this is the internet so believe what you want. I used to own a services company, we helped companies make more money (essentially) I had at one time a staff of over 40 people.

I had all kinds of people working for me, the most productive/most profitable for me? The soloist. I had this one guy who just didn’t work well with other people, I isolated him and gave him projects where he didn’t need to rely on anyone. With guidance he flourished and executed a lot of critical tasks for me and he made a good buck doing it too. The coop groups I had to run were productive too, and we had clients who PREFERRED having a group of people work on their particular issue.

In the end I had to offer several different approaches to remedy similar problems due to the customers demand. That’s what’s happening in MMO’s and I think it’s a good thing. I want games where all forms of playstyle is encouraged and impactful. The trick is creating the conditions by which everyone feels as an equal contributor. That elitism (for lack of a better term) is identified, and not squashed but understood and addressed. When fissures appear in a community, whatever that community is, that the question isn’t “who” its “why”.

Addressing, fixing and smoothing out the “why” is the trick and it’s a dam hard one to pull off when you have literally thousands of people consuming a product.

ArchivedUser

At the lowest level of civilisation you had personal identity.
Those people would settle in a place and anchor their civilisation, lay down the roots of their peoples tree.
This would become their home.
Other individual would come and cooperate or fight.
Unique compromises would be made with their nearest neighbours.
These unique individual compromises would be what later defines their local cultural identity.
And these hamlets would grow and meet others.
They too would either cooperate or fight and eventually reach unique compromises.

And so neighbours, would become villages.
Villages would become towns.
Towns would become cities.
Cities would become Nations.

BUT everyone single one of their unique identities, at all levels, would be preserved and honoured.

That is why invasion is so destructive.
All of that bottom up establishment of agreed traditions and conduct are destroyed.
That process that took 1000s of years to establish a local identity, peace and order through mutual cooperation..
... wiped out in an instant.
Those cultural roots that single out the unique variety of tradition and belief among every people, ripped up and shredded.
The local knowledge of the local biome and its history..lost.

ArchivedUser

@Malic-Valdon

I agree. Group size has been used as a scape goat for the real problem.
A distinct lack of global cooperation.
Without global cooperation....you might as well have just a multiplayer game rather than an MMO.
Civilisation is community.

ArchivedUser

Well, I think one of the challenges game designers face there is that for "group play" to feel meaningful, and potentially challenging, there has to be more coordination and communication than is usually found with players simply existing near each other. It becomes at the very least a UI challenge, but also the social abstraction of not directly interacting with people, but their avatars. Makes it hard!

I'm sure there are ways... for example, if a tree fell over on top of a wagon and you saw a fellow player trying to lift it to help rescue the wagon riders, you could jump in without knowing anything other than "intact with tree" - And then you might see the tree lift a little more, until another person comes along ,etc.

But those are probably hard to design and also make very engaging, without feeling repetitive at least.

Solo is easiest because it doesn't require communication and coordination, and it's the default mode we log in with.

Anyway, it's a good topic but not one that has an easy answer!

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=18357]Demand drives the product[/quote]

This is it. Why does these mmorpg feel more like solo games? Because companies are catering to a new generation of gamers. It's sad and you can't even blame the players. We live in a world where people are working to make ends meat. Wages are stagnant but the price of living keeps going up. People have less and less time to enjoy and fully immerse themselves in a game, but they still want the experience of achievement and progress without investing the time.

Thus P2W mechanics became prevalent. Thus the flashing lights when you level up. Thus the streamline instance dungeon and teleportation travel. Thus already theory crafted and fixed character builds. Thus games you just jump into like Mobas. Thus content that is easy and soloable. Thus death penalties became obsolete. With less and less time to invest, we fail to build relationships and find friends, no one wants to invest time into creating a bond that seems pointless.

We forget as individuals, what makes us human isn't the final destination, but the journey to the goal. We build character under conflict, we learn to appreciate through hard work, we make friends through challenges. All of these things are lost when games becomes just a quick-fix drug after a hard days work.