When crafting community, little goes a long way

Ac2 was a great game; by far my favorite MMO, and I wish they would bring it back! It's even picking up steam again too with a fansite at www.lost-company.info and a lot of momentum on mmorpg.com and Turbine's Youtube channel. Hopefully Turbine will consider relaunching it.

Accountability is the issue, and there's a lot of ways to address it.

Personally I think games that required grouping to actually progress always had an advantage in that if you were a jerk, your name got around and you didn't get into groups. You wouldn't make it to the max level a lot of the time, unless you had some group of friends with you, but even then you're presumably not being a jerk within that group. Of course it's still amplified in a smaller community.

WoW has issues because it becomes easy to get to the end game without ever having to interact with someone. From that point on all you have to do is really quietly slip in. Jerks will still get weeded out, but the size of the community definitely does have its part in making it impossible to entirely prohibit them.

I've always been a fan of guilds and such as being self enforcing. Guilds ideally require proper etiquette and behavior of their members, and if their members misbehave, they feel their reputation's been tarnished, and the offender is then forced out of the guild and likely much of the community depending on the guild's influence. Still you see guilds that have "us vs. them" mentalities that don't mind a member making them look bad as long as they have the required amount of people for whatever they're doing. Blah.

What I want to see though is games where the jerks just plain and simple get punished in game, via game mechanics, by the community. You're stole loot? Well now the community is aware and you're killed every time you leave town. Problem though always being the same jerks tend to take advantage of those systems to mess with new players, etc. And... well I'd like to see someone balance it out one day, I don't know how, no one's paying me to figure it out.

Actually the dungeon tool in WoW has shown me just the opposite. Where once I was convinced the majority of gamers (not just WOW gamers, but all gamers) were flaming jerks, the vast majority of people I group with in the new dungeon finder are polite and sometimes even outright friendly. It's the rare group that has someone who really deserves the kick. I suspect this is due in large part to the true jerks being weeded out of the new tool, self-selecting themselves out either because they're too elitist for the tool altogether, because they refuse to PUG and only group with guildies, because raid night interferes, because they're too busy ganking noobs in STV, because they're busy running their twentieth AV of the night, or because they are genuinely afraid someone with the vote-out option will call them on their 'tudes.

I just don't buy the small-communities-are-friendlier-meme, I've played in far too many and seen too many amazing small servers/games ruined by their supposedly superior communities. I think small communities are just different kinds of jerks -- snobs rather than punks, perhaps.

Fuck community. Leave your house or find a good forum if you want community. Games are for G A M I N G. I cannot fathom the level of social retardation you'd need to be afflicted with to view the people you play MMORPGs with as "friends" and community members.

*Hands Tzeriel his sign* I have played MMORPGs for the last 6 years. Closed betas, open betas, half finished, fully finished, you name it and I've probably tried it. The only games I have stuck with are the ones that have a real sense of community. I value honest people who play for the sense of fun and wonder of a really well thought out world. I have made many real life friends over the last 6 years. Friends who live all over the world but who I talk to, laugh with, commiserate with and learn from every day.
The community of the Order shard in Istaria are some of the most helpful and giving folks I have ever had the privledge to know and work alongside in my life. We have built things that are world changing, we have struggled over many setbacks to the game, shed tears over members that have passed away, and are all better for knowing each other.
The folks I play with on Silverlode in LOTRO are much the same. Community means everything to us. I wouldn't change the last 6 years for anything.

This is a well-known social phenomenon, I first heard about it in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

which basically claims that the optimal size of a social group is about 150.

This is a well-known social phenomenon, I first heard about it in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

which basically claims that the optimal size of a social group is about 150.

One of the bottom lines is that if you want to make a decent community in a game, there are a few things you should stick to.

1) Make it a sandbox type of experience. When people are free to craft, fight, dance, sing, whatever (old SWG is a good example of this non-reliance on fighting to play and advance in the game) then you get a wider swath of playstyles. This is turn forms a more complete community in the game, where everybody isn't the 'ace' of the skies, or the best jedi ever, or the most awesome sniper around.

2) Make characters distinct. When you do that you get people to specialize in one thing (or many things) but discard others, based on their playstyle. When you do that you introduce reliance on other classes. One you do that interaction with those classes is a must if you want to compete and finish the higher level quests in the game.

3) Limit alts and things like 'transfer to other server' or 'rename now' options. When you grant people the tools to be anonymous, don't then lament the poor community that develops around that system. Now, by limiting alts you can still allow players to respec or redevelop their skills so they can experience other aspects of the game. But you're making it so that if they can't simply leave or rename their character, they are then caring about what happens on the server they're playing on.

4) Make character development meaningful. Make it so that when you put time into a character over the months and years, that character has elements to it that will take just as long to develop on a new character. This makes people less inclined to re-roll at a whim. There would be actual consequences to doing so. Perhaps not game altering, but perhaps things like rewards for how long a character has been around. Something like housing or decorations or non-combat items. Or minor abilities that affect the game (nothing game-breaking or a 'must have' to win, but a little boost).

Just off the top of my head this morning those are the things that would certainly help in making a community vibrant and stable. The entire point of a community in a game is that you want to make the actions people take and the choices they make have significant meaning (both in determining their character and abilities in the game as well as determining the place in the community at large). Right now in games like WoW (for instance) it's simply too easy to switch servers, change your name or roll an alt when a person acts like an idiot. You start taking away some of that ability, make a game that doesn't only have combat as the sole progressor, make characters more meaningful, and make it so that characters that have been around for a while get benefits and you'll see the upsurge in community again.

woooooooooooooooooooooooooo AC2 represent!


...okay, now time to read the article.

Just to plug AC2 (I posted on Eric's blog):



When was the last time any of you saw grass that looks that good? It swayed in the wind.


....the game came out 7 years ago and new releases still have painted on terrain.

This cannot be serious? You're not building anything, you're not doing anything meaningful. It is a video game. You're killing pixelated monsters. If you sit around with real people and play DnD, yes, that has meaning and community. But to call the people you meet in video games real friends? That is a serious mental problem. People you meet in online games are no more real than the NPCs. They are stepping stones to further your game.

I was delusional enough when I was 17 and playing EverQuest to think community mattered. Then I was lucky enough to play other games and realize that it doesn't. It is a game. A Game. G A M E. Can you imagine the massive inconvenience and sheer fucked upedness that it would take if you needed 16 people on the phone together to enjoy Assassin's Creed 2? That is what this "Community" argument amounts to.

TLDR: There is no "Community", only other people who happen to play the same game.