You've created an antisocial community

[Deewe]

SWG was a wonderful game in many ways. I liked the crafting and decorating especially, that was top notch. But, I'm not a raider or groupy sort of person, and the one thing I utterly despised about that game was the need to waste time sitting in a cantina pretending to enjoy the entertainment so I could get a buff, that usually needed to be paid for anyway. The sociability factor in that game was hard core and I didn't like it. I probably wouldn't have stayed as long as I did, were it not for the one friend I had in the game, who I'd met in a different game.

I was a master dancer and ID at some time and I have to admit, while I'm not into grouping that much it gave me great moments.

 

What I did not like though is, as you're pointing it at, the devs kind of forced players to sit down and wait. It was a bad decision. It could have been mitigated but well it was their choice. Personally I totally understood people going AFK during the buff sessions. Some others where very entertaining for sure.

[ShardODarkness]

By adding xp bonuses to guilds and making heroics and flashpoints soloable you have created an antisocial community. Why even join a guild which is meant to be social and to make friends to play with people? (The xp bonus in my opinion is stupid its already easy to lvl up without it)

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This post makes me feel anti-social

[Darevsool]

To me, a 'social' game is less about group content then it is about the overall general chat experience.

 

"Hey, can someone tell me where this thing I'm supposed to click is located? I can't seem to find it" being answered by various levels of profanity, or "L2P" or "google it" is not a very 'social' experience in my opinion.

 

Helpful answers, genuine conversation....that would be something I would consider a 'social' environment.

 

It also has nothing to do with the way the game was made.

 

Group content can be social, or not. If you group with three strangers for the credit bonuses in heroics...not much socializing needs to be done. It's a grind and most people know how to get through them.

 

Spending 3 hours in an op is TORTURE for me, personally, but that's what I would consider social group content.

[rklontz]

MMO means nothing more than a bunch of people that are online in the same game at the same time.... nothing more.

The romantic notion that we are all craving eachothers company and are longing for that fellowship feeling has been beaten out of most of us through verbal abuse and pointless evenings spent waiting on others that never show up or have insane demands.

 

Instead of beeing treated like an NPC we can now team up with our NPC companions and do all the relevant content we like.

 

Given the choice we may even decide to team up with other players if we so desire.

 

Sorry but without multi-player content then there is no mmo there isn't any romantic notions involved with that concept. Multi-player is part of the name for a reason.

You can try to call it what you want but as it stands right now swtor is no longer an mmo. Once a developer stops making multi-player content and trivializes multiplayer content it ceases to be one.

[Baldrix]

Sorry but without multi-player content then there is no mmo there isn't any romantic notions involved with that concept. Multi-player is part of the name for a reason.

You can try to call it what you want but as it stands right now swtor is no longer an mmo. Once a developer stops making multi-player content and trivializes multiplayer content it ceases to be one.

 

Everything IS multiplayer content as soon as there is a choice to group up (or even as soon as you run into another player). It pretty much always is as far as i know.

 

You are confused with content that forces people to group up and shuts out those that don't want to or are unable to/ unwanted (for whatever reason). That type of content is okay ofcourse, as long as there is a solo alternative.

 

The days of your type of MMO is fading fast. Today grandpa wants to play as well... and he wants the same rewards as you get, or else....

[banimoka]

By adding xp bonuses to guilds you have created an antisocial community

- nope

By making heroics soloable .... antisocial community

- are u mad ? do u know how much time do u have to spend in trade chat to get a full group ? it's a good thing they are soloable

By making flashpoints ... antisocial community

- solo flashpoints don't drop anything they are story events

Why even join a guild

- if u don't like the guild you are in find another

Why even make friends and play with people

- if u don't like your friends find others

[CorellianWannabe]

By adding xp bonuses to guilds and making heroics and flashpoints soloable you have created an antisocial community. Why even join a guild which is meant to be social and to make friends to play with people? (The xp bonus in my opinion is stupid its already easy to lvl up without it)

 

Solo flashpoints means I don't have to compete with others for mob kills/glowing objects to collect, so I guess that makes me antisocial. I pop an xp boost, board the esseles/black talon again, and gain another level or two. Then at 65 I can grind out the story without worrying about others impeding my fun.

[beattlebilly]

Or, did they create those things because the community was already anti-social?

[DarthWoad]

It's anti social because you can level 1-65 without speaking to a single person, you can go into raids, and even hard mode raids and flashpoints without speaking to anyone.

 

SWTOR is a themepark MMO. It's easy to understand how to play, and there aren't many systems in place which require a lot of communication.

 

If this was a sandbox mmo, (SWG back in the day for example), it wouldn't be "anti social". A difficult game that's hard to master will mean people will talk to each other more.

[Thoronmir]

You know what I hate? I hate "book club." I love reading books. I enjoy discussing books. I like drinking wine. You might think I'd love "book club" ... but no, I hate it. It feels so artificial and forced. And who are you to decide which book I will read next and when I will discuss it and whether I drink white or red wine and whether we tell Darlene that her new hairdo looks awful? Does hating "book club" make me antisocial? Nope. My natural misanthropy makes me antisocial. Hating "book club" just means I hate "book club." Would being required to attend "book club" in order to read a book make me enjoy "book club"? Nope ... not even a smidge. Would it make me a better participant of "book club"? Afraid not. It would likely curb the number of books I read.

 

The OP posits that opening up previous group-only content to solo players has created an antisocial SWTOR community. Perhaps it simply revealed how antisocial we always were. Perhaps we find other ways to remain social in SWTOR. Perhaps one should not assume that forcing people together meant the people wanted to be together in the first place. Perhaps everyone who participated in group content in the past did so out of unabiding love and joy of grouping with random people to play a videogame, in which case, why did they stop?

 

You know what I love? Poker night. I've played in a regular game with the same four guys for the past ten years. With the advent of online poker, I really could have stopped making that 30 minute drive to my friend's house every Tuesday night, buying everyone beer when it was my turn, and enduring our host's wife's Glare of Doom when the jokes grew so raucous as to wake the kids. I could have, essentially, "soloed" poker night. But I keep making that 30-minute Tuesday drive each week because I enjoy the group content.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Thoronmir

[BrotherJohn]

Not really sure its the game developers that created an atmosphere that creates an anti-social gaming experience, as much as it is really probably more along the lines of they just do not care about guilds in the game. The general approach to guilds from the very start was one of, meh it's an MMO so yeah we will have guilds. After that point, it was just an after thought.

 

Now I will say that they saw that guilds were and need to be part of any healthy MMO gaming experience. And while can easily just play the game without a guild or join a guild and never participate, they did attempt to add in guild conquest. This was their attempt at guild content. Ultimately it was an utter flop and while it was a step in the right direction, yet again it is content they added in broken and unfinished and now just forgotten about. Typical BW content development and deployment.

 

So really it comes down to this, the original developers just did not care, the ones hired on after did not care and have moved on and now the last of the developers left just do not care or just are incompetent and do not see that it would create a healthier game in the long run to implement meaningful and helpful guild changes and improvements.

[ikinai]

Look community, it's not you, it's me. It's not that I'm antisocial, I'm just not that into you anymore. I mean, what we had? Shared? Was wonderful, it was magical. But, it's over. You deserve someone who wants you, for you, that special person that finds you funny and attractive, and wants to be with you. It's just, it's not me, I'm sorry. but, it's not you, it's me.

[TUXs]

Look community, it's not you, it's me. It's not that I'm antisocial, I'm just not that into you anymore. I mean, what we had? Shared? Was wonderful, it was magical. But, it's over. You deserve someone who wants you, for you, that special person that finds you funny and attractive, and wants to be with you. It's just, it's not me, I'm sorry. but, it's not you, it's me.

I can change!!! I can be funnier and more attractive - do you prefer body type 1, 2 or 3? I'll bathe in the swamps of Zakuul and even change my armor for you...can't we work this out?

[PlasmaJohn]

By adding xp bonuses to guilds and making heroics and flashpoints soloable you have created an antisocial community. Why even join a guild which is meant to be social and to make friends to play with people?

 

What's the actual complaint here? I don't have anyone to play with? Nobody wants to join my guild? Queues aren't popping? I can't find a reliable and/or competent team to tackle content? Some or all of the above? Other?

 

Through neglect and some extremely poorly considered changes EA has created an atmosphere that has left the newer players ill-equipped to tackle group content. EA has pretty much abandoned creation of new group content leaving what few veterans left bored doing the same old stuff yet again.

 

Yes very few people have the patience to teach the content and more often than not expect folks to blaze on through. But that was a problem in the 2.x days as well.

 

I did indeed accept a couple of random guild invites on my DvL toons and haven't bothered looking for a better fit. I did this because I'm not planning on staying for very long. In retrospect I should have made them on EH where my Wildstar guild has a chapter. Regardless, without new raids, there's no longevity here, so why put in the effort?

[gabigool]

The idea that the studio has no responsibility here is difficult for me to understand.

 

Listen, I understand many people don't want to group. That's great. I'm truly happy for them this game has so much for them to do. I think this game has very, very little for players of that mindset to complain about.

 

But there was a pretty strong raid community in this game at one point too. And had the studio respected it enough to try to understand it, it would still be here. But the studio chose to not care that we were here. So almost all those guilds are gone. All those players, gone.

 

You guys can think all you want that they left to go play MOBAs or they left because they didn't have time to commit to a couple hours per week. But reality is they're paying some other game company right now. And when I look at things like TEC and the Pack Opening Experience, I can't help but wonder why even solo players are OK with this, because there's quite a bit of money that would be going in swtor's coffers right now had this studio cared one bit about the Operations community.

[HuaRya]

Great threads in this post. I like the types of tiers in the guild description and the other post talking about the game being more guild orientated in the first 3 years of SWTOR. From experiences are similar.

 

In my favorite guilds height we all did story mode 16 man raids. It was hilarious mumble banter where the conversations were just as fun as the operation. The low point was when it boiled down to serious punch in your time card to be in a HM 8 man progression group that raided on set times during the week. Rock bottom for the guild now is mainly due to people having 15+ alts and dipping into the guild for 5 minutes and logging out. They are off on other alts doing DvL.

[Andryah]

You know what I hate? I hate "book club." I love reading books. I enjoy discussing books. I like drinking wine. You might think I'd love "book club" ... but no, I hate it.

 

The first rule of "book club" is to NOT talk about "book club".

[Chessack]

It would be more accurate for me to say that GenChat is pretty active on several planets. Although in January, it is fully plausible that the spam you experienced was because fewer people were talking about stuff and trying out the 4.0 changes instead.

 

I just want to correct something.

 

I shouldn't have used the word 'spam.' I did not mean to imply that in January, General Chat on the various planets was full of gold spammers or that kind of thing (though certainly there were some of those). I meant that it was spammy in the sense of very active, text scrolling a lot on my screen, lots of people chatting back and forth. I saw that in Jan, Feb, March... and since then it has dramatically petered out. To the point that General chat on most planets is dead silent for hours at a time, at least on my server at my play times (what it's like otherwise I cannot, of course, say).

[ChainLighning]

Guilds rally around 3 things. Raids, PvP, and RP.

 

Small group content will never sustain a guild despite that truly hard group content make ANY raid look like a walk in the park. No, we haven't had that kind of group content in TOR exept for when the rackgoul fps were first released and then nerfed a week later. Ironically due in large part to whining from raiders!

 

Raids are boring to me personally (too damn much standing around waiting) and for the majority of modern gamers (go look at the statistics, YOU my dear reader may not fit this but you are a minority) anything over an hour is too long, and even an hour can become too long for a single uninteruptible time block. People have lives and families and need to get up and move away from the computer. The old raid styles are dead and gone, some games still try but the "wing" method is far more embraced as you can plan half hour-45 min blocks for a wing then do another wing another night. Raids themselves are dying simply because people are sick of waiting on that 'one' person who is always late, or always gets up in the middle of a run, etc. Raiders tend to brign out elitist snobs that demand the best of everything, from the game's community (raiders deserve 224, the rest of the community should be fine with 208) and from even within their own guilds (I need that upgrade, I do more than you).

 

PvP itself breaks down into two paths. Deathmatchers and objective players. This is in ANY game btw with instanced PvP (and non instanced PvP games typically still have objectives). Deathmatch guilds form and die out constantly. This kind of playstyle gets old fast and tends to breed the most toxic of communities and the guilds tend to implode quickly. The objective guilds tend to survive for as long as the PvP is fun. It need not be rewarding, simply fun and enjoyable. The toxicity here tends to come from people sick of yelling at guildmates that get target fixation or deathmatch and not focusing on objectives.

 

RP guilds are made, die, merge, break, fracture, last... they tend to be havens for PvErs that can RP a small bit but otherwise just sorta tag along. RPers themselves tend to not be very demanding, give them tools to look how they want, simple interaction with the world, and they will be off and running. They do, however, bring all kinds of people and playstyles which don't always mesh well.

 

Basically, every time you bring a group of people together you will have drama, and people gravitate then fall apart in an endless loop. This expectation of a dev to create a reason for people to socialize is a fallacy. Don't be a git, actually talk to strangers like normal everyday people...and you will find others even in a solo focused story focused game. I always find people to chat with, in random FPs I constantly chatter if the people aren't sticks in the mud. The only thing that can make a game anti-social is you by not being social in the first place.

 

I would like to ask you a sincere question here, and please note, in no way I am trying to troll or disrespect your or anyone else's opinion. I ask this in all sincerity....

 

If this is what you think/feel towards these activities why did you make the choice to play an MMO? Is it because of the Star Wars brand so to speak? What drove you to pick up the game and give it a go given these view points? Why not play some of the other games that offer game design for solo play, with better story and better a better all around experience?

 

I see your points, really do, and in some ways could agree but why play this game if this is your core view on MMOs? Or did I misunderstand?

[Nempo]

Great threads in this post. I like the types of tiers in the guild description and the other post talking about the game being more guild orientated in the first 3 years of SWTOR. From experiences are similar.

 

In my favorite guilds height we all did story mode 16 man raids. It was hilarious mumble banter where the conversations were just as fun as the operation. The low point was when it boiled down to serious punch in your time card to be in a HM 8 man progression group that raided on set times during the week. Rock bottom for the guild now is mainly due to people having 15+ alts and dipping into the guild for 5 minutes and logging out. They are off on other alts doing DvL.

 

if they have made DvL characters why aren't they int he guild? You can still run together, chat together, enjoy the game together. If they ignore the guild now...they were never invested into it in the first place.

[Rolodome]

If they were wanting to create an antisocial community, that would not be the way. The way to create an antisocial community might be to do something like make your flagship content exclusively solo.

 

He said, sticking out his tongue and grinning from ear to ear.

[NakodaTheJedi]

If they were wanting to create an antisocial community, that would not be the way. The way to create an antisocial community might be to do something like make your flagship content exclusively solo.

 

He said, sticking out his tongue and grinning from ear to ear.

 

yet its a pain in the butt to do the flag ship stuff because you need a big guild to do so and a committed guild at that and to have a committed guild it coincides with being social so...

[NakodaTheJedi]

Not really sure its the game developers that created an atmosphere that creates an anti-social gaming experience, as much as it is really probably more along the lines of they just do not care about guilds in the game. The general approach to guilds from the very start was one of, meh it's an MMO so yeah we will have guilds. After that point, it was just an after thought.

 

Now I will say that they saw that guilds were and need to be part of any healthy MMO gaming experience. And while can easily just play the game without a guild or join a guild and never participate, they did attempt to add in guild conquest. This was their attempt at guild content. Ultimately it was an utter flop and while it was a step in the right direction, yet again it is content they added in broken and unfinished and now just forgotten about. Typical BW content development and deployment.

 

So really it comes down to this, the original developers just did not care, the ones hired on after did not care and have moved on and now the last of the developers left just do not care or just are incompetent and do not see that it would create a healthier game in the long run to implement meaningful and helpful guild changes and improvements.

 

they sure didn't help not create the atmosphere now did they?

[CorellianWannabe]

yet its a pain in the butt to do the flag ship stuff because you need a big guild to do so and a committed guild at that and to have a committed guild it coincides with being social so...

 

I assumed by 'flagship' they meant the 'most noticed' or 'most talked about' content. Right now that would be the solo story of Fallen Empire.

[OlBuzzard]

By adding xp bonuses to guilds and making heroics and flashpoints soloable you have created an antisocial community. Why even join a guild which is meant to be social and to make friends to play with people? (The xp bonus in my opinion is stupid its already easy to lvl up without it)

 

IMHO: someone pass the bread, the bologna has already been around !!