Game Design: Engaging Players through Group Contests and Social Identity Theory
If you aren’t reading The Psychology of Video Games blog yet you are missing out. Between that site and a few other blog posts I’ve read recently (like Wolfshead’s lament about WoW’s Growing Immersion Deficit) I was motivated to write an article about designing group contest events in MMOs. This is just a small part of my general belief that MMO developers right now focus entirely too much on static content and not enough on all the potential fun things that can happen in a virtual world or an online community.
Engaging Players – Desgining Group Contests for your MMO Players
Read, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.
Very cool idea(s)! Interestingly I see nothing like that at all in our contemporary MMOS, but rather an increasing focus on instanced content. Maybe Blizzard is coming up with something like that for guilds in Cataclysm, who knows. But right now the focus is all about individual progress and reward. Even STO’s “Fleet Actions” and loot system is very simply based on won fact, who did the most damage gets the spoils. They are very cool and the “open grouping” is also very nice, but if all working together towards a common goal, the competition among this group for the personal reward/loot is a real design flaw.
Yesterday for example a player was fighting for his virtual life, he brought an enemy warship almost down by himself but he was about to die. I noticed 2 others nearby who rather decided to attack another warship way behind this one than finish this one off. Why? Because they know the system, they know they would not get any loot but the guy they would save from getting shot down. I must admit I also considered attacking another ship on my own as long as the “mobs” (it feels odd to call spaceships mobs…^^) focused on the poor guy, the perfect opportunity for me to gain loot.
This time I helped the other player. But I also often went for my personal profit instead and let other players go down, especially when I noticed they could potentially outdamage me and reap the final reward for the most damage done at the end of the Fleet Action.
People are often very helpful and not dicks, but it is a pity that everyone who helps another player gets exactly zero reward from it besides Jesus and the other guy being happy. The opposite is true, he misses out on personal gain.
Battlegrounds in WoW and other games (they are popular and get copied because of this) on the other hand reward faction and well, the victory, to the whole team. That is good. The system is flawed again when individual quests and achievements focus on personal gain. For example one of these achievements told me to carry the flag to the flagstand in Warsong Gulch. A task that a tank or druid could have done so much better than my Warlock, but my personal gain was much more important to me than the victory of my team.
You pointed out the reasons why group content is so scarce and often limited to +1 new dungeon, I also notice that game designers seem to tackle group content with a single player mentality. This is also apparent when it comes to loot distribution. I am a fan of the chest where every member of the group can draw one item randomly. The really good stuff is of course on a very low % to get. But what do we have after the boss is defeated in our usual dungeon? Fewer items than players are in the party drop, in fact most will not get anything. Leading to DKP system and other loot distribution systems and quarrels because the supposed group content is all about personal progress and gain, you just need a group to do it.
I will stop it here, before it gets too long.
P.S.: You really recycled all of the racy pics of 2009 in this article, and even added some new ones.
Great points about how focusing so much on individual rewards can create player behaviors that are pretty negative from a community standpoint.
Part of me is glad other MMO developers have totally abandoned the idea of dev run (or started) events, and in particular group events. This gives me a way to differentiate my games from theirs.
Glad you like the pics!
Muckbeast:
Good article and well thought out, I agree that group competitive events can be a huge boost to an MMO style game. However I do think there’s more complications to said events then you mentioned.
Playerbase:
People in general don’t like losing to begin with. Old school MMO players are more competitive and used to a harsher environment/competition generally speaking then people who play now. Having group vs group competitions with high stakes probably isnt’ a good idea on a game like WOW where the main underlying premise is making players feel “special”.
I beleive Threshold for example still has full loot drop on death IMO this alone means you have a playerbase with a far higher tolerance for losing then average for an MMO. This in turn probably means on a whole the players are likely to react better to group competition in general.
Cheating/Exploiting/Macroing ect:
Group competitions with serious rewards can bring out the worst in players in terms of the above behaviours. The best counter to this problem is probably a good game community, something Threshold has but most large MMOs don’t.
Individual vs Group Rewards:
I think individual rewards done right are essential for group competitions to suceed. Key thing being there needs to be rewards for all roles/playstyles, and those rewards should encourage better team play where possible. Rewarding healing, defending flag carriers ect is good. The problem comes with “glory hound” rewards and achievements like carrying a flag in solo.
You could reward the group for losing, but this really doesn’t do anything to encourage players improve their skill and tends to lead to the AFK honor grind syndrome. Only rewarding the winning team is an option, but this will probably discourage the vast majority of players after they are crushed by an organized clan/group.