IMO, the friction between players is the point. The dependency on others in the world is what makes it an MMO, otherwise it’s just a bunch of people playing a single player game next to each other.
But that’s also not the current design meta of MMOs. Dependency on other players means that it’s difficult to have a clear definition of a player’s experience with the game will be, which means it’s hard for the designers to make guarantees about player retention to investors. Imagine telling an investor who doesn’t play games that “we don’t know exactly what keeps players playing, but we do know that it’s possible for one player to ruin another player’s experience.” So over the last 15y, player interdependence has been optimized out of MMOs.
I wind up feeling like my lackadaisical approach is probably fucking up someone else’s farming loop…I feel like the person that cares enough to grind a dungeon reward as fast as possible should get right of way over my happy ass
Those players exist, but they’re not important. I do think most players want to go at a chill pace and have an experience they will remember. Running dungeons as fast as possible to farm gear without interacting with any other players creates a very dependable dopamine loop, and a very forgettable experience.
I don’t think it’s fun to be forced to interact with others in an MMO, but I do think it’s fun when your best option is to interact with other players. Ex. make it possible to do something by yourself in 5h of play, or with a group in less than 1h, and people will just prefer interact. I think cave quests in wow are a great example of this. Caves can be lethal to a player questing by themselves, very inconvenient, but if they run into another person questing the same cave, there is safety in numbers. Their survivability goes up exponentially, and they can complete the work faster. It just makes sense.
I think the cave quest has been optimized out of modern/retail wow. Every quest is easily solo-able, everyone can self-heal, everyone can take on 5+ mobs at a time, everyone can just fly in/fly out. My hope is that they’ve learned how unfun this, and WoW Forever will retain that old-style fun where players just have to talk to each other.
IMO, the friction between players is the point. The dependency on others in the world is what makes it an MMO, otherwise it’s just a bunch of people playing a single player game next to each other.
But that’s also not the current design meta of MMOs. Dependency on other players means that it’s difficult to have a clear definition of a player’s experience with the game will be, which means it’s hard for the designers to make guarantees about player retention to investors. Imagine telling an investor who doesn’t play games that “we don’t know exactly what keeps players playing, but we do know that it’s possible for one player to ruin another player’s experience.” So over the last 15y, player interdependence has been optimized out of MMOs.
Those players exist, but they’re not important. I do think most players want to go at a chill pace and have an experience they will remember. Running dungeons as fast as possible to farm gear without interacting with any other players creates a very dependable dopamine loop, and a very forgettable experience.
I don’t think it’s fun to be forced to interact with others in an MMO, but I do think it’s fun when your best option is to interact with other players. Ex. make it possible to do something by yourself in 5h of play, or with a group in less than 1h, and people will just prefer interact. I think cave quests in wow are a great example of this. Caves can be lethal to a player questing by themselves, very inconvenient, but if they run into another person questing the same cave, there is safety in numbers. Their survivability goes up exponentially, and they can complete the work faster. It just makes sense.
I think the cave quest has been optimized out of modern/retail wow. Every quest is easily solo-able, everyone can self-heal, everyone can take on 5+ mobs at a time, everyone can just fly in/fly out. My hope is that they’ve learned how unfun this, and WoW Forever will retain that old-style fun where players just have to talk to each other.