Creating camaraderie in MMOs
Thursday, July 5, 2012 at 03:14PM (NOTE: Frankly, I (Peter) have very little experience with MMOs. However, I had a few ideas about building a community within an MMO (because a terrible community is the death of most MMOs), and thought I’d think about them more and then write a blog about it. So, if this idea already exists (or won’t work for any reason), let me know about it at the bottom. Otherwise, enjoy someone else’s thoughts for a while.)
Yep, you’re a member of the Horde. And nothing makes you feel more like an individual than being in the Horde.
Well, you are an individual. You know that.
But all those other guys in the Horde? Who do they think they are? Why would I want to hang out with a bunch of green… things?
MMOs aren’t awesome because they’re online. Or because they’re massive (Skyrim’s proved (again) that massive can be done in single-player). It’s because of the other players! So how do you make a bunch of strangers want to work together?
Align their personal goals.
It’s easy! I mean, that’s how you make anyone work together, right? You make them want the same things, and then they work together, form bonds, and voila! You have millions of subscribers!
Okay. But how do we do that very easy thing?
First, it’s important that they feel an “us vs. them” dynamic within the game. People want to be on a team more than almost anything else. If they tell you otherwise, they clearly haven’t read the research. People don’t even care what unifies them—different color shirts is enough to create a tribe, and human society only exists because we formed tribes.
Point being—being on a team is a huge motivator. It doesn’t matter what goals the team is trying to achieve so long as your team is compared to the opponent’s team.
But, this being a discussion of games… of course we care what the goals are. The goals are the game. And the better we frame the teams and the competition between them, the more people will feel they have at stake. Shirt color’s one thing—bringing fame and fortune to your tribe (and yourself) is even better!
There are constraints, though. What goals can we present to players that put them in conflict with the opposite team as early as possible—but without creating balance issues? Worse, if all of these players are in open contact with each other, griefing becomes a rampant concern. If players are harassed by opponents too early in the game, they’ll jump ship and you’ll only have harassers as subscribers.
Here’s an idea for creating “us vs. them” without dooming noobs to grieve:
Create small-scale and insulated battles over territory and/or resources.
Scenario: there’s a mine with ALL OF THE GOLD in it. You want ALL OF THE GOLD (hereafter shortened to “gold”)—but those bastard Thems are after it too! You’re standing at one entrance to the mine with your Us friends, and the Thems are at the other entrance, with oddly symmetrical challenges facing both of you. Whoever fights through the mine and gets to the gold first gets the best loot.
Clearly, this must be instanced—players queue up, teams are matched, and a batch of Us competes against a batch of Them, both batches starting at the same time. Keep it as balanced as possible in order to keep both factions playing.
Most of the dungeon is structured just like a regular dungeon: teams fight through mobs of monsters, with the dungeon well-paced with some boss monsters throughout. This is a very short dungeon, however—probably something lasting 10-20 minutes, allowing players to replay multiple times in a single gaming session. The toughest challenge doesn’t sit at the very bottom of the dungeon, however—each side faces the toughest challenge with perhaps 15-20% of their side of the dungeon remaining.
Why?
The very bottom of the mine has to be relatively free of challenge—a few mobs that present a challenge only if you were wiped out by the largest challenge in the dungeon, perhaps—for two reasons. First, it’s the final sprint to the end of the mine. Don’t put a huge wall that players have to climb—let them race to the bottom! It’ll make the end even more exciting, and virtually guarantees that even the losing team will beat a challenging boss that gives them decent loot, making the experience worthwhile even if they don’t get ALL OF THE GOLD. Second, it’s more fun to ambush the losing team while they’re sprinting to the end.
Yep, ambush.
There are a couple of different ways to deal with the end of the dungeon, but ambushing definitely seems like the best one. It’s mostly a good idea because of humiliation—if it’s possible for the opponent to humiliate you, you’re going to try harder. And if you get to humiliate Them noobs, you’re going to try even harder! Potential humiliation is a great motivator, especially when the consequences are relatively small. In this case, the losers already aren’t getting the best loot—they were too slow and don’t “deserve” it—and obviously, we won’t punish them further with any of the regular on-death penalties (if the game has them).
Humiliation creates tension; if players are worried about being humiliated, that final sprint is going to be fraught with suspense. Players’ excitement over the competition will be high at the beginning (they’re psyched about winning loot), it’ll spike during challenges and dip during smaller mobs, it’ll reach its second-highest peak during the largest challenge, and then absolutely top out during the final sprint. That’s a good attention curve right there.
But I never explained that ambush thing. You beat the final boss, you’re sprinting and slaying the final mobs, and you make it to the bottom of the mine. There, atop a pedestal, is a sign that says “We’re Friends of Monsters!!”.
It can be anything, really, so long as it means monsters won’t attack you. Even better, they’ll follow you and attack anyone you attack, so your team runs through the bottom of the mine and into the opponent’s side, and then you and all of your new minions ambush the Thems and laugh at the slaughter.
This takes advantage of the tension of getting to the loot first without punishing the losing team too harshly. Yes, it’s embarrassing and frustrating to get slaughtered, especially when you’re not getting the major loot you were hoping for. However, players will still get good loot from the final boss monster, plus they’ve gained experience during the entire encounter—they’re leveling up and enjoying the core mechanic of the game. Plus, it doesn’t take long—10-20 minutes isn’t a huge loss when you’re still gaining loot and experience along the way.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, this humiliation will also create friendships within the game world. It’s easy to see for the winners—a strong team will cheer itself on, boosted by its victory and the epic way it slaughtered the Thems. But what about those embarrassed losers? Won’t they be too ashamed to be friends with anyone—especially their fellow losers?
Clearly, you’ve never lost anything.
Player ego is a pretty resilient thing. Even if you lose a match, it’s not your fault that you lost—it’s that noob’s fault! Players are always willing to give themselves a break, especially when they have an immediate chance to redeem themselves.
But what happens when there actually is a noob on the team that caused the defeat?
It’s not as bad as it sounds. First, players find a way to excuse their behavior, at least to themselves—they’re new to the game, or this class, this dungeon, etc. The player’s ego may be bruised, but it’s not damaged beyond repair—especially since he has an immediate chance to redeem himself. If he doesn’t want to be on a team that thinks he’s horrible, he can simply join a different team to continue playing. While this means he won’t be forming bonds immediately, it may actually improve the bonds that all of the other players on his team form. After all, they’re being assaulted in two ways—by the Thems, and from within by a terrible teammate. Having a scapegoat gives them another tribe—they’re on the good team, the noob is on the bad team, and the Thems are on the bad team they have to defeat. They’re double-defining themselves as Us, which gives them common ground (and perhaps more importantly, something to complain about—almost any conversation is good conversation when trying to create bonds).
Additionally, that noob? His stigma is gone as soon as he games with other people. He is given another chance to prove himself without anyone knowing that he just destroyed another team’s chances of winning”.
This sort of dungeon design should come very early in a player’s experience with your MMO—not the first five levels, but perhaps as a quest somewhere around levels 8-10. First, you’re trying to build a community—don’t let players get used to playing on their own! Introduce them to this sort of competitive PvE early and they’ll learn the benefits of playing with others before they grow too shy about joining a group.
Concerns:
But there are going to be players that can game this system! You’ll have tweaked players running rampant through the dungeon, wreaking havoc on the balance!
Nah. That’s what the level cap is for—you keep the reigns really tight about who can play this, and players will have to move on. Remember, this isn’t some PvP mode where players don’t receive experience for playing the content—half of the point is that they are gaining experience. It teaches them the core gameplay while introducing them to the potential of working with other players to achieve a goal. Plus, this is early game content—a tiny fraction of players are going to create an alt just to run through this dungeon with a tweaked character again. Make it a mandatory quest (the first run-through—all others are icing) for characters levels 8-10, and strictly limit the content to characters within that range. If you put another dungeon of similar design that targets players at levels 13-15, potential tweakers have very similar content to look forward to soon anyway. The vast majority of players want to experience new content and advance their characters. That’s the appeal of the genre, and it’s unlikely that a group of players is going to spec themselves out just to play this content over and over again when there are greater challenges (and greater abilities and loot) available later in the game.
Plus, it takes virtually no time for players to advance through those levels. The amount of time you’d get to play would be roughly equal to the time it would take to create an alt and get back to the content—hardly worth it for most players.
Restricted to only three levels? That seems too limited.
The level range accomplishes a few things—making tweaking and griefing difficult is a major one, but the tight level cap will also encourage players to try their hand at the dungeon again.
While a level 10 character is puny in comparison to a level 20, the difference between 8 and 10 is small. It’s close enough that players within that span will hardly tell the difference between someone barely 8 and someone closing in on 11. That means that the barely-8s will try the content without too much fear of bringing down the whole team.
Ten or thirty minute run-throughs? So I’m going to run the same content how many millions of times in order to reach the top level?
This isn’t the design for all of the dungeons. There should still be dungeons of a design we’re all used to—difficult dungeons with huge bosses that you can take your time running, since the difficulty level demands it.
This design is made to foster community and let players see the benefits and fun that can come with playing with strangers. It needs to be quick so that players don’t feel cheated if they don’t make it to the bottom first—and so they can try it again without having to stay up all night. It’s building friendships, which will be strengthened by gaining levels together and tackling that higher-level large-scale content together.
Wait—you said there was tension about who would get there first. How, exactly? It’s a blind race to the bottom.
Nope—create progress meters that show how close you AND your opponent are to the bottom of the dungeon, but mask the opponents’ progress during the last quarter of the dungeon. You’ll know where you stand going into the final few minutes of the dungeon, but with a boss monster still in the mix, it’ll be unclear who will win. Tension rises, driving players to fight with new fervor.
But I have a point about your system that proves you’re dumb!
All right—tell me about it! It’s all about throwing out ideas and learning here, so tell me how I can be smarter. I look forward to it!
