the social interaction stuff wont work if...

the social interaction stuff this game is proposing and relying on wont work unless the servers are much smaller than the 50k accounts and up to 10k players currently online.

for example, a need before greed system, will go like this (on a group of random strangers): item drops, all need always since you can sell items and nothing is soulbound. one guy actually needs the item to equip right now as an upgrade.
now this can work out fine, where he asks winner and is traded for free, or he is declined. for the social dynamic to work, you need to see alot of the same people, you need to know that your reputation even as a lowbie leveling matters, and i dont think this will happen on such big servers. i recently played wow classic on such big servers, and there were so many people to choose from, that nothing social really mattered on the high pop servers. you dont like someones dps, just kick replace, so what if he ignores you? you have potentially 50000 others to choose from. note here, that the original wow vanilla had alot of the social interactions aspect and it worked very successfully, but back then due to tech constraints, servers were about 1/3rd to 1/4th of what they are on current wow classic or what is proposed for AOC.

even in real life, compare the interactions of humans in a village vs a large city. you will find tons of antisocial behavior in the large city, that gets unpunished or even rewarded, while the opposite is true of a village. also to note, that some experts have noted how for thousands of years the average size of villages of humans we have found are around 150 people, consistently. it seems our brains are just wired to be able to recognize and know alot about, roughly 150 people, so we are not only talking about personal preferences, but biological and psychological constraints when we decide the size of each server.

so, i would like to ask that alot of thought, research and testing be done, and possibly rethinking and change the sizes of the servers, as its important to see alot of the same people, for social dynamics and social interaction to matter and be successful.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Aisa Aax

Well, somehow these things work in FFXIV for example.
You know why?
Because the company that is running it is willing to BAN people for that stuff. Literally.
You're toxic? They will ban you.
Complaining that someone is watching a cinematic in a dungeon? Get banned.
Ninja-looting? Get banned too.

And as a result, FFXIV is one of the nicest and most positive communities I've seen in years. Because toxicity spreads. It takes 1 jerk to make 10 other players toxic when they otherwise wouldn't have been.

I think that the same should be done in every MMORPG. The simple fact of life is: internet communities devolve into a trollfest without strict moderation and a threat of a ban in case you misbehave.

unknownsystemerror

Reputation will be local and have impact. With limited fast and fast(er) travel, no groupfinder, and a focus on content balanced for group play people will have certain areas that they cling to around their "home base" If you don't like the loot system selected by the group leader, leave group. If you have someone who "ninjas" gear, take note and do not party with them again. If you get a leader that puts on master loot and doesn't share, then again, take it as a lesson learned and don't give them your effort anymore. The days of mashing the groupfinder button, being teleported to an instance for a dungeon run comprised of random people you have never interacted with and because you know will probably never interact with again, allow you to act like an ass, are gone. The target is 10k concurrent. If you took the population of a server and spread it out over the nodes equally (would be weird, but need it for the point I am making) you would have less than 100 people in a node at a time. Nodes are huge, the world is vast, and people will naturally clump together for the same reasons they do IRL.

Raoul9753

Honestly, it seems to be a giant world, and even with a big server population, you will most likely have very little contact to most of the accounts and your social circle will havily depend of which node you call your home.

IllusionTokomi

I feel like there is far too much information missing to put together a strong opinion on this matter.

Population spawn-in will affect density. Resource availability and densities are beyond our understanding, and will remain so until (presumably) launch. Those are 2 major factors, and not the only factors as well. Also, one of the primary reasons people want to play this game is for it's social feature. That renders a real life comparison invalid since the population sample is asymmetrical.

I appreciate the fact that you offer examples, and are simply not gainsaying, nor have you seemingly constructed a straw man argument. But, I still offer to you: it's just too early to cast hope or doubt on the matter.

So, I respectfully disagree

Rule #4: Let it cook.

Over1ander

I think the node system will influence basic social contracts and the average player won't err on the side of toxicity unless it's in their net benefit to do so as nodes will break up these 10k players. These broken up players will end up around certain nodes and repeat toxic names within said nodes will get around quick and shunned, if its as social as intended to be.

Haraxa

@bollyblob
I appreciate your concerns, but I would like to challenge it on two levels:

First: I think your view on small villages and their impact on behaviour is not like you are pointing out. For the last centuries big towns are known for liberating people. In german there is a quote "Stadtluft macht frei", like "a town lets breath you more freely". What towns do is, they grant more freedom, that can lead into the behaviour you are pointing out. They are also preventing a small group of people easily dominate the ones that are marked as "the others", as you can find "others" that are like you.

Regarding servers in a video game, second level:
Gaming- and Decision theory clearly shows, that you can prevent "toxic" behaviour the best, by creating the need of future encounters. How I behave is not as strong influenced by the size of the population, as of me suspecting that I (or the group I am associated with) will face the other person (or his group) again.

You're argument is valid, though. It is harder to spot people, who try to benefit from being anynomous. If I can easily replace someone, the "cost" of investing into the relation to the other player can be higher, then the cost of just replacing him. I think, as @Over1ander pointed out, AoC differs from classic WoW in three meaningful ways:
1. As you are located in cities, villages AND guilds, there are more, and smaller sub-groups.
2. You have more to loose, if you're flagged as unsocial and greedy by this subgroups. In WoW you have the 2 factions system and even PVE servers. That means you are in a world in which your own party cannot attack you and on PVE-Servers even the opposite faction can't. Being person widely known asgreedy and selfish, can cause you much more problems in an enviroment, that can punish you in substantially more ways than in WoW.
3. Guilds need to work together. In classic WoW I co-founded and played the first months in a leading guild on my server. We were completely self-supplying and had (most of the time) the control of the meaningful worldbosses. There was no need to cooperate with anybody. We could (if we wanted) just ignore bad behaviour of guild members, as long as they are nice inside the guild. As you will most certainly need help from other guilds to improve a node (or defend it), you cannot do this in AoC.

Last but not least: having a larger server, has benefits on its own: You will find more niches for your type of gameplay. There will be bigger chance that you can creat a dwarfen guild for example or having a big casual players guild...or a smaller elite squad that plays at the times you mostly can play.

The high population server is not just the ugly big sibling of a lovely smaller server.

Of course it is not save to say: There will be no problems. But to me it seems, that the game moves in the right direction.

Best regards,
Haraxa

Wandering Mist

Even though there will be 10,000 concurrent users on a server, the world will likely be so big and with limited fast travel you won't interact with most of the people on the server. Most of your interacts will be with people in your particular node and perhaps the nearest nodes. To use your real world analogy, back before the era of trains and cars, you could travel from 1 end of the UK to the other, but it would take so long that most people wouldn't bother, so you kept within your community and sometimes ventured to nearby towns for trading.

Mork

Aisa Aax wrote: »

Well, somehow these things work in FFXIV for example.
You know why?
Because the company that is running it is willing to BAN people for that stuff. Literally.
You're toxic? They will ban you.
Complaining that someone is watching a cinematic in a dungeon? Get banned.
Ninja-looting? Get banned too.

And as a result, FFXIV is one of the nicest and most positive communities I've seen in years. Because toxicity spreads. It takes 1 jerk to make 10 other players toxic when they otherwise wouldn't have been.

I think that the same should be done in every MMORPG. The simple fact of life is: internet communities devolve into a trollfest without strict moderation and a threat of a ban in case you misbehave.

Punishment works.

Drag13

@bollyblob

@Haraxa answers your concerns very well. The only thing I would like to add is that being social, and finding your own group will answer many of your concerns as well. Making yourself part of a group makes everyone responsible to each other. Empowering one another for the greater good of your group is a great motivator for success.

Wandering Mist

Aisa Aax wrote: »

Well, somehow these things work in FFXIV for example.
You know why?
Because the company that is running it is willing to BAN people for that stuff. Literally.
You're toxic? They will ban you.
Complaining that someone is watching a cinematic in a dungeon? Get banned.
Ninja-looting? Get banned too.

And as a result, FFXIV is one of the nicest and most positive communities I've seen in years. Because toxicity spreads. It takes 1 jerk to make 10 other players toxic when they otherwise wouldn't have been.

I think that the same should be done in every MMORPG. The simple fact of life is: internet communities devolve into a trollfest without strict moderation and a threat of a ban in case you misbehave.

No, aggressive punishment like that just forces the toxicity underground. Do you honestly believe that the players who have run the same dungeons thousands of time are happy that new players are watching the cinematics and stalling their progress? Oh I'm sure a select few enjoy helping the newbies out but the vast majority of veterans only do the dungeons for the rewards. They don't say anything for fear of being punished but that doesn't mean the toxicity isn't there.

bollyblob

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Aisa Aax wrote: »

Well, somehow these things work in FFXIV for example.
You know why?
Because the company that is running it is willing to BAN people for that stuff. Literally.
You're toxic? They will ban you.
.

No, aggressive punishment like that just forces the toxicity underground. .

i have to agree, fighting toxicity with toxicity sounds like a terrible idea

Child Item