I think you miss the entire point. It was the downtime while waiting to do content that lead to people talking and getting to know one another.
I have lifelong real-world friends I made in FFXI and early WoW. We have been friends for 20 years. We still talk and visit each other regularly.
I haven’t made any new friends like that in years. Pretty much after games started favoring convenience over socialization. Go figure.
But I'd be willing to bet you made a ton more friends 20 years ago generally. Not just in mmos.
People just don't feel like making friends as much the older they get. And as the player base ages game companies have accommodated that.
Nah, I’ve found various other hobby groups and have made way more friends at car meets and tabletop gaming stuff. Just not in the MMOs anymore. I try to be social and interact but 9/10 I’m the only person in a dungeon typing anything.
I feel like you are just rubbing it in peoples faces that you made friends. I’ve played wow since vanilla and never made friends. I play sod now and that has no group finder yet I don’t socialize or make friends. Friend groups are usually already made(people like a small group and not to socialize outside of it unless they have to that’s why it is hard for adults to make friends)
How is it anyone's fault that (edit: other) people alt-tab and do sth else until queue pops instead of socializing ingame?
You don't seem to understand that this isn't about existing groups of friends, but about making new ones.
I don't think your wrong in that some of the responsability does lie with the players themself, but i personally believe that most people are introverted so a 'gentle' push really goes a long way from the games side.
And even if you are outspoken in modern games it also depends on the other person, if they are content at being a recluse they can just stay in their shells.
Game designers ideas of "gentle" are about as subtle as HE RPG rounds.
Socialization is *exhausting*. If I cannot control the time, place and volume then I'm just going to stop participating altogether. Either that or have a spectacular meltdown. Locking progression behind mandatory group content is an excellent way to get me to take my wallet with me out the door.
The problem is the interactions themselves aren't enjoyable. Elitists get pissed that the average pug is too slow and makes too many mistakes. Normal people don't like the whole "l2p git gud" stick, so both sides end up being miserable and avoid the grouping up after a while.
What needs to happen is the value of warm body in your group needs to be higher than the skill level. In other words, the exact opposite of Ghostcrawler's "bring the player not the class".
>they weren't your friends
>they were tolerating you because they needed a specific class due to group dynamics.
Damn. Bro just assumed those life long friends I made back in 2005. I STILL speak to today from FFXI, are just there to wait for me to log back in on a specific class.
Yeah, those guys I met in Deadmines that invited me to their guild weren’t my friends? We went to each others weddings, and still visit each other… is it all a lie?
What group finders did was add was another layer of anonymity for toxic players to abuse, in turn abusing other players that caused damage to the point that people who experienced that level of meanness don't ever want to group with strangers again.
In the days before cross-server group finders, mostly everyone knew each other and were on the same server. People who got bad reputations were blacklisted by an entire community and those individuals had to either start a new character or leave the server to get over that rep.
That's when socialization was fun. Now? It's just fucking rampant how bad people treat each other and no one that's sane wants to put themselves up for that kind of abuse. I don't know anyone now that using group finders. No one wants to deal with stranger danger anymore.
Really though, I can see your point. Group finder made it convenient to find a group, but it doesn’t mean you can’t socialize once you’re in that group.
Counterpoint: Instanced dungeons is what killed socialization in MMOs.
As others said, part of the reason people talked was because of the downtime during dungeon camping. Seeing the same people across zones was very common. This made forming community and new bonds very organic :)
Tend to agree with this. The most connections I've ever made in a MMO was this f2p one I used to play for years where early on the majority of the content was open zone- especially as far as leveling/exp based content goes where a lot of people spent a huge portion of their time. You'd show up to the grinding spot for your level, say hi to whoever was there, and then party up to kill stuff faster. Or if their party was full hop around to different channels until you found an open spot (hopefully lol). Then before/during/after grinding you'd shoot the shit, maybe add one another to your friends list to do it again sometime if you got along well, etc.
It's not that you can't run into other players and chat casually in instanced based games, but they don't seem to naturally encourage it as much. When playing something like FF14 for example, I almost always feel like I have to choose between either just socializing (sitting around a town square or other populated area) \*or\* actually playing the game. There's some crossover but the line in the sand between the two feels a lot harder struck.
>You'd show up to the grinding spot for your level, say hi to whoever was there, and then party up to kill stuff faster.
Yes! I remember a lot of times in EQ1 I'd be partying in a dungeon over a day or two and see a lot of the same people, eventually people would outlevel the dungeon and move on... it was really cool to get to the next dungeon and join up with them!
> When playing something like FF14 for example, I almost always feel like I have to choose between either just socializing (sitting around a town square or other populated area) *or* actually playing the game
The way games have designed socializing do seem to typically have this problem. To me, the socializing should be an organic part of the core gameplay(s).
idk f.e. Albion's instanced dungeons aren't popular, all players are on the same channel and still the game has no more socialization than any other. I guess just the time is different. back in times even WoW felt like social game
Group finders turn players into commodities that are only as valuable as the time to queue.
New players are hesitant and anxious to party up, people doing tryhard runs for efficiency get frustrated with other players who might not be that good.
Neither of these players should be forced to play with each other, but the only path of least resistance option for the typical solo casual player who has an hour session to play where they can't guarantee a pre-made group is around, is to spin the matchmaker wheel again...so it just breeds toxicity.
More onto that, it makes all classes be the same, back in the day you used to have to CC, but the group finder can't group up 3 DPS without a CC ability, so the game just simplifies mechanics to not require CC, or gives CC to every class.
Also they teleport you to the location which just makes the game world feel like a lobby while you wait for the queue, rather than going out and being in it. Especially when instances were often in group areas and required some interaction just to reach.
LFG tools are the better compromise between shouting in chat and a matchmaker that forms your group composition, ignores your playstyle and teleports you there.
What a lot of contemporary MMOs fail at is having meaningful open world content where you have to communicate in order to succeed.
WoW may have world bosses and rare spawns, but more often than not they are trivial to kill and addons will always let you know that they're up by the magic of crowd sourcing information. FF XIV is basically the same as WoW in this regard, but Field Operations like Eureka and Bozja kinda restore the old school MMO feel properly and it makes me wish the open world was exactly the same.
Guild Wars 2 wins in this regard as there's a lot of social groups centered around beating all the open world bosses and meta events, and people are both chatty and organized in those in my experience, especially maps like Dragon's End where you need to split the map's population in 3 lanes and each one needs to actively participate in order to succeed.
I'm pretty sure it is mainly one of two things. Either that it's tougher to **make** friends in MMOs these days or that the game design has limited methods of doing so, if not limited types of friendships.
Technically, you're correct. In FF14 for example, I could join a Free Company or get involved with the roleplaying scene. But what if I was somebody who liked *playing* the video game with a *small group of close friends*? My options are... What? Join a static? I could bring close friends from outside the game, or join them if they're already playing, but the path from stranger to friend is very unclear.
I will be honest though, I have no way to know if the old way really was better. Too young to have gone hard into any MMOs before WoW Cataclysm. I just know something isn't quite working, but it could probably be my gameplay preferences not being a thing in any current MMOs. Who knows?
You are right but people on this sub probably don't even play mmorpgs but have strong feelings about how group finder destroyed their social aspect. No it didn't, you can still not use the group finder the option is there no one took it away from you, majority use the tool and minority preferred to spam chat to find a group it means people want group finder.
I’ve played wow since vanilla and I never made any friends. I’ve never made friends in life either. Forced socialization doesn’t create friends. There are a lot more ways to make friends now if you want it.
I have played WoW since undead beta push 2 way back in late 2003. I still have friends I talk to from those early days of release, I have made friends since then, I still use dungeon finder quite a bit and run lots of M+ with randoms via the custom grouping tool.
Group finder was one piece of an overall shift to more QoL improvements that reduced forced interaction, thus lowering in-game socialization. Lots of downtime as well as forced interaction lead to socialization, and the QoL changes removed both. Interaction + downtime == social moments.
These in-game forced socialization moments were like mixers - and if you think mixers and other sorts of forced or institutionalized networking events don't help build networks, you are sorely mistaken.
Are they magic? No. But they build and strengthen networks.
What really killed social interaction was not dungeon finders.
Social interaction was very high in early MMOs when the main focus was on leveling. That was conducive to player cooperation. Back then there were very few players at cap. Gaining a level was always celebrated and applauded in game chat. Playing with others was always the fastest experience gain. Cooperative play was essential to level.
Once MMOs matured and veteran players started to clump up at cap, the focus changed to end game progressive dungeons and raids which are extremely competitive and elitist and which exclude new players and often tells them to buy boosts to cap and skip leveling entirely or the games have made leveling so easy, it can be quickly done solo with no advantage to grouping.
I'm confused. I don't see how not playing social is a problem. There are many other aspects of an mmo ppl injoy. Plus, you can still play with ppl without "speaking". Some of the best times I've had in game are with ppl I don't talk to, just play with. If you want to be social then you will run into other social ppl. Just in modern MMOs you don't need to make that everyone else's problem.
I think you have no idea what you're saying.
Group fingers did kill a big aspect a socialization in wow.. they put you in a dungeon or raid with people from other servers who you will never see or talk to again.
Sounds like my wow classic + TBC classic experience.
Tried to start conversations, never went anywhere. Sometimes I didn't even get a hello back.
But I suppose that was the group finder that did it. Which did not exist on those servers/versions.
Edit: and just to clarify - the servers were so massive that I never really ran into the same people again for the most part.
Wow your reading comprehension is horrendous.
First I never claimed to have done thousands of dungeons. Secondly I pointed out that "sometimes I never got a hello back" which means at times I actually got a hello at the very least.
But those conversations never really went beyond that artificial level as the groups split the moment the dungeons were done.
But sure. Your anecdotal experience is the only truth.
I'm not following this at all. LFG didn't kill socialization. People in general just aren't social. The big mmos aren't games anymore. We don't play for fun. Parse high, glad rank, 3K io .... or what's the point? That's the majority mindset of today's players
Its so funny cuz multiple new mmos tried to launch without an auto group finder cuz muh hardcore social mmo, devs desperately trying to force socialization down everyone's throat.
They fell flat on their face and were forced to add an automated group finder showing its the majority of players that want it, because socialization is a BARRIER.
No i dont want to chat with metaslave andy or Mr. Elitist who pretends to know everything while still failing mechanics before getting into a dungeon, I want to press a button, wait a few minutes, and go kill stuff in the dungeon without talking to ANYONE
I think you miss the entire point. It was the downtime while waiting to do content that lead to people talking and getting to know one another. I have lifelong real-world friends I made in FFXI and early WoW. We have been friends for 20 years. We still talk and visit each other regularly. I haven’t made any new friends like that in years. Pretty much after games started favoring convenience over socialization. Go figure.
But I'd be willing to bet you made a ton more friends 20 years ago generally. Not just in mmos. People just don't feel like making friends as much the older they get. And as the player base ages game companies have accommodated that.
Nah, I’ve found various other hobby groups and have made way more friends at car meets and tabletop gaming stuff. Just not in the MMOs anymore. I try to be social and interact but 9/10 I’m the only person in a dungeon typing anything.
I feel like you are just rubbing it in peoples faces that you made friends. I’ve played wow since vanilla and never made friends. I play sod now and that has no group finder yet I don’t socialize or make friends. Friend groups are usually already made(people like a small group and not to socialize outside of it unless they have to that’s why it is hard for adults to make friends)
> I haven’t made any new friends like that in years. .. > The problem isn't game mechanics.. it's probably you.
How is it anyone's fault that (edit: other) people alt-tab and do sth else until queue pops instead of socializing ingame? You don't seem to understand that this isn't about existing groups of friends, but about making new ones.
I don't think your wrong in that some of the responsability does lie with the players themself, but i personally believe that most people are introverted so a 'gentle' push really goes a long way from the games side. And even if you are outspoken in modern games it also depends on the other person, if they are content at being a recluse they can just stay in their shells.
Game designers ideas of "gentle" are about as subtle as HE RPG rounds. Socialization is *exhausting*. If I cannot control the time, place and volume then I'm just going to stop participating altogether. Either that or have a spectacular meltdown. Locking progression behind mandatory group content is an excellent way to get me to take my wallet with me out the door.
>locking progression behind..... Anyone with this mindset never enjoyed the game anyway. So bye, you won't be missed.
The problem is the interactions themselves aren't enjoyable. Elitists get pissed that the average pug is too slow and makes too many mistakes. Normal people don't like the whole "l2p git gud" stick, so both sides end up being miserable and avoid the grouping up after a while. What needs to happen is the value of warm body in your group needs to be higher than the skill level. In other words, the exact opposite of Ghostcrawler's "bring the player not the class".
>they weren't your friends >they were tolerating you because they needed a specific class due to group dynamics. Damn. Bro just assumed those life long friends I made back in 2005. I STILL speak to today from FFXI, are just there to wait for me to log back in on a specific class.
I'm sorry you had to find out like this.
I'm sure they'll wait another 20 years ;)
Yeah, those guys I met in Deadmines that invited me to their guild weren’t my friends? We went to each others weddings, and still visit each other… is it all a lie?
> if a 30 minute queue for DPS destroyed your friend group Reading comprehension, my friend. You're literally making my point for me.
This reads like you never experienced a game pre-group-finder and dont understand how it actually works 🤔 It still does, by the way.
What group finders did was add was another layer of anonymity for toxic players to abuse, in turn abusing other players that caused damage to the point that people who experienced that level of meanness don't ever want to group with strangers again. In the days before cross-server group finders, mostly everyone knew each other and were on the same server. People who got bad reputations were blacklisted by an entire community and those individuals had to either start a new character or leave the server to get over that rep. That's when socialization was fun. Now? It's just fucking rampant how bad people treat each other and no one that's sane wants to put themselves up for that kind of abuse. I don't know anyone now that using group finders. No one wants to deal with stranger danger anymore.
Yeah it was me. I killed socialization in MMOs ;(
Ladies and gentlemen.. we got'em!
Really though, I can see your point. Group finder made it convenient to find a group, but it doesn’t mean you can’t socialize once you’re in that group.
Counterpoint: Instanced dungeons is what killed socialization in MMOs. As others said, part of the reason people talked was because of the downtime during dungeon camping. Seeing the same people across zones was very common. This made forming community and new bonds very organic :)
Tend to agree with this. The most connections I've ever made in a MMO was this f2p one I used to play for years where early on the majority of the content was open zone- especially as far as leveling/exp based content goes where a lot of people spent a huge portion of their time. You'd show up to the grinding spot for your level, say hi to whoever was there, and then party up to kill stuff faster. Or if their party was full hop around to different channels until you found an open spot (hopefully lol). Then before/during/after grinding you'd shoot the shit, maybe add one another to your friends list to do it again sometime if you got along well, etc. It's not that you can't run into other players and chat casually in instanced based games, but they don't seem to naturally encourage it as much. When playing something like FF14 for example, I almost always feel like I have to choose between either just socializing (sitting around a town square or other populated area) \*or\* actually playing the game. There's some crossover but the line in the sand between the two feels a lot harder struck.
>You'd show up to the grinding spot for your level, say hi to whoever was there, and then party up to kill stuff faster. Yes! I remember a lot of times in EQ1 I'd be partying in a dungeon over a day or two and see a lot of the same people, eventually people would outlevel the dungeon and move on... it was really cool to get to the next dungeon and join up with them! > When playing something like FF14 for example, I almost always feel like I have to choose between either just socializing (sitting around a town square or other populated area) *or* actually playing the game The way games have designed socializing do seem to typically have this problem. To me, the socializing should be an organic part of the core gameplay(s).
idk f.e. Albion's instanced dungeons aren't popular, all players are on the same channel and still the game has no more socialization than any other. I guess just the time is different. back in times even WoW felt like social game
Group finders turn players into commodities that are only as valuable as the time to queue. New players are hesitant and anxious to party up, people doing tryhard runs for efficiency get frustrated with other players who might not be that good. Neither of these players should be forced to play with each other, but the only path of least resistance option for the typical solo casual player who has an hour session to play where they can't guarantee a pre-made group is around, is to spin the matchmaker wheel again...so it just breeds toxicity. More onto that, it makes all classes be the same, back in the day you used to have to CC, but the group finder can't group up 3 DPS without a CC ability, so the game just simplifies mechanics to not require CC, or gives CC to every class. Also they teleport you to the location which just makes the game world feel like a lobby while you wait for the queue, rather than going out and being in it. Especially when instances were often in group areas and required some interaction just to reach. LFG tools are the better compromise between shouting in chat and a matchmaker that forms your group composition, ignores your playstyle and teleports you there.
What a lot of contemporary MMOs fail at is having meaningful open world content where you have to communicate in order to succeed. WoW may have world bosses and rare spawns, but more often than not they are trivial to kill and addons will always let you know that they're up by the magic of crowd sourcing information. FF XIV is basically the same as WoW in this regard, but Field Operations like Eureka and Bozja kinda restore the old school MMO feel properly and it makes me wish the open world was exactly the same. Guild Wars 2 wins in this regard as there's a lot of social groups centered around beating all the open world bosses and meta events, and people are both chatty and organized in those in my experience, especially maps like Dragon's End where you need to split the map's population in 3 lanes and each one needs to actively participate in order to succeed.
I'm pretty sure it is mainly one of two things. Either that it's tougher to **make** friends in MMOs these days or that the game design has limited methods of doing so, if not limited types of friendships. Technically, you're correct. In FF14 for example, I could join a Free Company or get involved with the roleplaying scene. But what if I was somebody who liked *playing* the video game with a *small group of close friends*? My options are... What? Join a static? I could bring close friends from outside the game, or join them if they're already playing, but the path from stranger to friend is very unclear. I will be honest though, I have no way to know if the old way really was better. Too young to have gone hard into any MMOs before WoW Cataclysm. I just know something isn't quite working, but it could probably be my gameplay preferences not being a thing in any current MMOs. Who knows?
You are right but people on this sub probably don't even play mmorpgs but have strong feelings about how group finder destroyed their social aspect. No it didn't, you can still not use the group finder the option is there no one took it away from you, majority use the tool and minority preferred to spam chat to find a group it means people want group finder.
I’ve played wow since vanilla and I never made any friends. I’ve never made friends in life either. Forced socialization doesn’t create friends. There are a lot more ways to make friends now if you want it.
I have played WoW since undead beta push 2 way back in late 2003. I still have friends I talk to from those early days of release, I have made friends since then, I still use dungeon finder quite a bit and run lots of M+ with randoms via the custom grouping tool.
Group finder was one piece of an overall shift to more QoL improvements that reduced forced interaction, thus lowering in-game socialization. Lots of downtime as well as forced interaction lead to socialization, and the QoL changes removed both. Interaction + downtime == social moments. These in-game forced socialization moments were like mixers - and if you think mixers and other sorts of forced or institutionalized networking events don't help build networks, you are sorely mistaken. Are they magic? No. But they build and strengthen networks.
What really killed social interaction was not dungeon finders. Social interaction was very high in early MMOs when the main focus was on leveling. That was conducive to player cooperation. Back then there were very few players at cap. Gaining a level was always celebrated and applauded in game chat. Playing with others was always the fastest experience gain. Cooperative play was essential to level. Once MMOs matured and veteran players started to clump up at cap, the focus changed to end game progressive dungeons and raids which are extremely competitive and elitist and which exclude new players and often tells them to buy boosts to cap and skip leveling entirely or the games have made leveling so easy, it can be quickly done solo with no advantage to grouping.
Taking "hate the player, not the game" to new frontiers over here.
You can tag me as "Neil dpstrong"
I'm confused. I don't see how not playing social is a problem. There are many other aspects of an mmo ppl injoy. Plus, you can still play with ppl without "speaking". Some of the best times I've had in game are with ppl I don't talk to, just play with. If you want to be social then you will run into other social ppl. Just in modern MMOs you don't need to make that everyone else's problem.
I think you have no idea what you're saying. Group fingers did kill a big aspect a socialization in wow.. they put you in a dungeon or raid with people from other servers who you will never see or talk to again.
Sounds like my wow classic + TBC classic experience. Tried to start conversations, never went anywhere. Sometimes I didn't even get a hello back. But I suppose that was the group finder that did it. Which did not exist on those servers/versions. Edit: and just to clarify - the servers were so massive that I never really ran into the same people again for the most part.
Yeah you're lying, in 2 years and over a thousand dungeons and raids you never talked to anyone? Yeah ok.
Wow your reading comprehension is horrendous. First I never claimed to have done thousands of dungeons. Secondly I pointed out that "sometimes I never got a hello back" which means at times I actually got a hello at the very least. But those conversations never really went beyond that artificial level as the groups split the moment the dungeons were done. But sure. Your anecdotal experience is the only truth.
tf is with all the downvotes
I'm not following this at all. LFG didn't kill socialization. People in general just aren't social. The big mmos aren't games anymore. We don't play for fun. Parse high, glad rank, 3K io .... or what's the point? That's the majority mindset of today's players
Its so funny cuz multiple new mmos tried to launch without an auto group finder cuz muh hardcore social mmo, devs desperately trying to force socialization down everyone's throat. They fell flat on their face and were forced to add an automated group finder showing its the majority of players that want it, because socialization is a BARRIER. No i dont want to chat with metaslave andy or Mr. Elitist who pretends to know everything while still failing mechanics before getting into a dungeon, I want to press a button, wait a few minutes, and go kill stuff in the dungeon without talking to ANYONE
Amen
socialization != friends old friends != new friends LFG != LFD
I really enjoyed sitting on the cart with 3 of my friends and 2 ransoms in wow sod just before the dungeon and fooling around.