102564-social-tools

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In before "you're a social tool."
 
So, for me the single largest factor in whether I enjoy an MMO or not is the guild I'm in; how friendly the people are, how active it is and if they run the kind of content I'm interested in as guild groups. Running a battleground for example is (again, for me) much more fun if I'm running it with guildies and we're having a laugh in vent at the same time.
 
The thing is, finding a guild is something all the MMOs I've ever played pretty much leave entirely up to you. If you get lucky, you'll happen across some nice people in a dungeon or BG, and they'll say, "hey that was fun, why don't you join our guild?" and you do, and it's great, and everything works out. But for most people it doesn't happen that way. Instead you have to go rooting around on realm forums, trying to figure out which guilds are actually active and which are like three people who don't really know each other and will all stop playing next month. And if you get it wrong it's disappointment and time wasted, and meh, maybe I'll play something else for a while.
 
And for guildleaders too, it's a bit of a nightmare. For most kinds of guilds, you have to always be recruiting in order to survive. For 101 reasons, people drift in and out of games and if you don't replace them and keep the roster active, pretty soon you're going to be in trouble. So how do you recruit? You can make a thread on the realm forum and bump it now and again for the small percentage of players who ever actually visit the realm forums. Or you can make a macro and paste in in trade periodically until enough people tell you to stfu that you stop caring, like when Willy Wonka had that look on his face like he was considering drowning himself in his own chocolate river because kids were so ungrateful and annoying.
 
There's a statistic floating around MMO forums lately that a majority of players are solo players, but on it's own I'm not sure that tells the whole story. Are they solo players because they don't really like group content, or talking to other people? Or are they solo players because that's how most of us start out in a new MMO, and finding a guild to call home is actually not that easy?
 
And here's the most confusing part for me: MMO developers know that, as a single-player experience, their games are pretty lacklustre. Greg Street is on record as saying that World of Warcraft, as a solo game, doesn't compare well to the many genuinely good single-player games out there competing for gamers' time and money. And he's right. And I like WoW! And I like WildStar too, but playing it alone gets pretty boring, pretty fast. So why don't these devs build in better tools to help people find guilds and circles and whatnot to hang in? I suspect one reason may be that if you work on the game yourself, or even if you're just in the industry, you probably already have a steady guild, or at least a lot of in-game friends, so the problem never really presents itself to the people who could be doing something about it.
 
My theory, and it's just a theory, and of course I may be completely wrong (hello forum regulars who are already quoting that and trying to formulate a snappy remark to post underneath it), is that many of the things people complain about, from 'boring' questing, to difficult or unrewarding dungeons, to spammy or unbalanced PvP or whatever it is, are often not only relatively trivial issues, but also the same criticisms that could be leveled at pretty much any MMO. The difference between this game though, and another that they might like better, or have fond memories of, is that in the other game(s) they had more friends, or a nice guild to hang with, and in those circumstances its easier to overlook little things that bother you. Whereas if you're on your own it's more like, "why am I putting up with this shit when I could be watching Netflix?" Or tl;dr: even dull questing is fun when you're doing it with guildies on vent.
 
Am I way off base here, or is anyone else out there still looking for a home on Nexus and think a good Guild Finder tool or something like that might really help them out?	
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I not only agree but I tried to construct the same request in a more formal way here:
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/95937-constructive-criticism-suggestions-patch-109/ (Social Systems section towards the middle)	
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I not only agree but I tried to construct the same request in a more formal way here:
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/95937-constructive-criticism-suggestions-patch-109/ (Social Systems section towards the middle)
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I was told I use the game as a Hug Box instead of playing as a raider.
 
So I made a circle <HugBox> and give free hugs at CX vendor.	
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Hug Box
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I'm not entirely certain what this is, but I suddenly find myself in the market for one.
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My suggestion to guild leaders and officers is to run PUGs.  Don't listen to the people telling you to only run in guild because all of this hard content is meant for guild only wins... Run them pugs and meet good people there.  People nowadays are even willing to switch servers and stuff.  In the end running and getting involved in the community... that's how you build your own community.
 
In TERA we had guilds and alliances put up events.  On PVP servers there were guilds that went to defend newblet areas and they got lots of fans and recruits that way.  And the other guilds that wanted to gank also found people going around the lowbie areas... some people want to be the ones ganking later on :).  On PVE servers they did silly events in the newblet and endgame areas in town ... or were spamming endgame area to PUG the lame excuse of a raid and open world boss... not because they couldn't finish with 6 capable people, but it was an occasion to meet people.  People also leveled alts, guild leaders and officers alike and met people in the leveling dungeons.
 
In DDO guilds would often put up raid PUGs and group PUGs (depending on what kind of guild it was) where it'd be mostly guildies but 1-2 spots for randoms... on top of which a lot of raiders actually raided with full PUGs on their alts or even their mains.  That's how they met capable people.  Harder to find capable tanks, of course, but usually you only need 1-2 of those, it's mostly DPS or healers you're always in the market for.  We had circles that spread by word of mouth.
However, DDO had a better PUG tool in a way that made it easier to find like-minded people.
 
There are ways, but not if every guild thinks like Lethality (hope I spelled right) and only runs with guildies only... you do not build server community that way and you do not keep a healthy dose of incoming people that way.  Of course, there are some who have success with forums and website but they usually advertise in other ways (world first, videos of raids etc).	
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My suggestion to guild leaders and officers is to run PUGs.  Don't listen to the people telling you to only run in guild because all of this hard content is meant for guild only wins... Run them pugs and meet good people there.  People nowadays are even willing to switch servers and stuff.  In the end running and getting involved in the community... that's how you build your own community.
 
In TERA we had guilds and alliances put up events.  On PVP servers there were guilds that went to defend newblet areas and they got lots of fans and recruits that way.  And the other guilds that wanted to gank also found people going around the lowbie areas... some people want to be the ones ganking later on :).  On PVE servers they did silly events in the newblet and endgame areas in town ... or were spamming endgame area to PUG the lame excuse of a raid and open world boss... not because they couldn't finish with 6 capable people, but it was an occasion to meet people.  People also leveled alts, guild leaders and officers alike and met people in the leveling dungeons.
 
In DDO guilds would often put up raid PUGs and group PUGs (depending on what kind of guild it was) where it'd be mostly guildies but 1-2 spots for randoms... on top of which a lot of raiders actually raided with full PUGs on their alts or even their mains.  That's how they met capable people.  Harder to find capable tanks, of course, but usually you only need 1-2 of those, it's mostly DPS or healers you're always in the market for.  We had circles that spread by word of mouth.
However, DDO had a better PUG tool in a way that made it easier to find like-minded people.
 
There are ways, but not if every guild thinks like Lethality (hope I spelled right) and only runs with guildies only... you do not build server community that way and you do not keep a healthy dose of incoming people that way.  Of course, there are some who have success with forums and website but they usually advertise in other ways (world first, videos of raids etc).
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So what you're saying is make a community? Get to know people on your server? Stop being elitist douche-nozzles who think you're better than other players?
 
That's not #hardcore. :P
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A real elite knows that winning with a PUG is real skill.  Winning with the same dudes you've done the content with 20-30 times in vent is NOT hard or hardcore.
Best tanks on server still came to tank pugs and those with no skill did it once and went crying to their raiding guild.  Because that's hard.
 
I was lucky.  My raid leader believed in skill and real skill especially in support was playing with PUGs, was playing with reckless people.... 
His test for a new healer that thought they were "Ready" was to get on his suicidal build, play like a complete arse, and make you heal him through the whole elite dungeon full of mobs.  It was HARDDDDDDDDD and like a gauntlet that you worked towards every weekend "hey, can I try again", LOL.  It felt good to get through that whole thing and NO pug, NO raid, nothing ever seemed hard to heal after that.  It taught you resource management, what to prioritize, what spells are better in some situations than others... it taught you to be quick and pay attention at everything at once.
You know what we called people who only healed the guild?  Bad healers.  LOL.  When we did new content, we got those people to bring their DPS... because you need real healers and tanks that can react to everything going to the shitter, not people who just stick to a rotation and our perfectly organized runs.
 
So yeah, get out of your little elitist bubble people and get involved.  
 
LOL You got me going on a rant :P.
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OP, I couldn't agree with you more. And to the folks suggesting PUG runs when looking for new guild members, you're awesome (yet rare).
 
I was a huge fan of WoW for years until my guild died, and I was left with an expensive excuse for a single player game. I've puttered around in many MMOs since then, and always ended up solo, bored, and eventually quitting. I can only speak for myself here, but if I was comfortable being friendly and social with unfamiliar people, I probably never would have gotten into video games in the first place. HELP ME, game devs! Help me make friends and I will repay you by continuing to subscribe to the game we enjoy together!
 
But don't go the "guild finder" route, please. WoW threw one of those in and it was pretty useless. You'd see listing for the two or three mega-guilds on the server with several hundred people each (not really a better situation than being guildless, socially) and a few dozen guilds with maybe three people and their alts. I'd love to propose a perfect solution instead of just complaining, but if I had one, I'd be rich, successful, popular... or at least in a guild already.	
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OP, I couldn't agree with you more. And to the folks suggesting PUG runs when looking for new guild members, you're awesome (yet rare).
 
I was a huge fan of WoW for years until my guild died, and I was left with an expensive excuse for a single player game. I've puttered around in many MMOs since then, and always ended up solo, bored, and eventually quitting. I can only speak for myself here, but if I was comfortable being friendly and social with unfamiliar people, I probably never would have gotten into video games in the first place. HELP ME, game devs! Help me make friends and I will repay you by continuing to subscribe to the game we enjoy together!
 
But don't go the "guild finder" route, please. WoW threw one of those in and it was pretty useless. You'd see listing for the two or three mega-guilds on the server with several hundred people each (not really a better situation than being guildless, socially) and a few dozen guilds with maybe three people and their alts. I'd love to propose a perfect solution instead of just complaining, but if I had one, I'd be rich, successful, popular... or at least in a guild already.
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			Hey Lori, you an me can get a little.. social if you send me a PM	
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So what you're saying is make a community? Get to know people on your server? Stop being elitist douche-nozzles who think you're better than other players?
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There obviously are ways to find guilds, circles, make friends etc. right now, but there could be more and better ways if the systems were there to support more social interaction, rather than doing what basically all MMOs do and just leave it up to the players. No other major area of the game gets such little attention. And I mean not just dungeons and battlegrounds, but housing, crafting, daily quests, these things all have teams dedicated to building and improving their systems. Does Carbine have a social systems team? If so, who are they? What are they working on?
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A thought occurred to me, I do know ONE thing they're doing that's sort of working: group quests.
 
When I have a group quest, I start talking in zone chat to round folks up and get it done. Granted, there's not always anyone around, or if there is, they aren't always interested. Also, once the target is down, we all typically go our separate ways. But it's a start, right? Something to build on. If a group quest will get folks to start interacting, what can be done to keep that interaction going (besides just hoping)?	
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			I just want more stuff to buy with Renown, yeah yeah its not the point of grouping up  but still more loot and more shinies ( no i am not a Lopp)	
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Group quests are okay, but even then they could be supported by interesting systems. What if there was an icon next to a group quest in your tracker that you could click, and send out a custom communicator message to other players in the zone who also have that quest. They answer the call, your avatar and message pops up and an arrow pointing the direction of the quest flashes on your minimap.
 
Alright, I know that's kinda rough around the edges, but it would make interactions cooler and more memorable at least, and maybe more people would do group quests rather than skipping them.	
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Group quests are okay, but even then they could be supported by interesting systems. What if there was an icon next to a group quest in your tracker that you could click, and send out a custom communicator message to other players in the zone who also have that quest. They answer the call, your avatar and message pops up and an arrow pointing the direction of the quest flashes on your minimap.
 
Alright, I know that's kinda rough around the edges, but it would make interactions cooler and more memorable at least, and maybe more people would do group quests rather than skipping them.
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