[MUD-Dev] Re: MMO Communities

[Brendan O'Brien]

Byron Ellacott wrote:
> Freeman, Jeff wrote:
>> From: Byron Ellacott

>>> That's true, but Raph was speaking about retention.  Force,
>>> encourage, require social interaction and you presumably forge
>>> bonds that people are reluctant to sever by leaving the game.

>> I have a hard time accepting this as fact, personally, because it
>> hasn't ever worked to keep me playing a game.

> Anecdotally, I don't believe it has ever worked to keep me playing a
> game, either.

> The original quote, from
> https://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2004Q3/msg00243.php:

>    Raph Koster wrote:

>>     We may not like it, but all empirical evidence at the moment
>>     seems to show that requiring cooperative team play for success
>>     causes greater retention.

> Raph, or anyone else, could you clarify which empirical evidence has
> shown this, or offer an alternative explanation for why this is so?

Personally, I could see both sides of this.  On one hand, forced
grouping could encourage players to join a guild, and the bonds they
make in that guild can certainly keep them playing long after the
fun of the game wears off.  However, I really think that is a
best-case scenario.  The other side of it is that I find very little
holding me to a game when the guild I was a part of starts to lose
members.  If getting a group is both required and a pain, I tend to
lose interest very quickly.  That design is a casual gamer killer,
since it's not even worth logging if you can't dedicate a time block
of several hours to play.

The only game I can think of that encouraged groups that even casual
gamers could be a part of would probably be Shadowbane.  The reason
being that groups there could be composed of just about anything,
and it rarely took long to get to a hunting spot.  Of course, PvE
was not the focus of the game, so the leveling process was not all
that entertaining either.  Still, I would be much more likely to
play Shadowbane than EQ at this stage in my life, due primarily to
the time constraints.  CoH may be similar, but I have not played it
enough yet to make a good evaluation.

One other aspect that can be a factor here is multiple accounts.  I
know it is very common for players in games such as DAoC and EQ to
own multiple accounts at once.  I would say this is a direct result
of forced grouping, and becomes more prevalent the more you are
required to group in order to succeed.  Sometimes, it's much easier
to run two characters at once than it is to try to find a pick-up
group in a reasonable amount of time.  Also, when a player decides
to quit a given game, I have found it fairly common for his guild to
keep the account active, simply to have access to a certain
high-level character type.  In Everquest, where groups were not only
mandatory, but also required to have a certain balance of character
types to succeed, I have come to find players with as many as 6-7
accounts at once!  >From a business standpoint, this could be
considered a success.  However, from a design standpoint, I believe
it is a failure.  Encouraging players to buy up dead accounts in
order to keep playing a game is not the kind of retention I think we
are trying to talk about here.  I would actually love to see numbers
on how many unique players are in EQ, as opposed to the number of
subscriptions, but I doubt it will ever happen.  Nonetheless, it
would be very interesting to see, and it is a design that could be
worth considering (no matter how much I personally hate it).


- Brendan
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev