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November 29, 2022 4:10 PM Subscribe
You enter a bright new digital world, exited to explore and hyped just to enjoy the vibe. Ten months later you're yelling at someone for standing in fire. What changed? [84 min.]
I really enjoyed this and watched it twice. I played WoW the first few months after it released and enjoyed it. Then I swore off mmorpgs due to the time commitment.
It is amazing to see how the game has evolved over time. The analysis of how the documentation and tools that players use to play the game influences how the game is made is fascinating.
This was a great followup to his NFTs video and the Jon Bois style graphics in the video worked really nice.
posted by Hicksu at 5:40 PM on November 29, 2022
It is amazing to see how the game has evolved over time. The analysis of how the documentation and tools that players use to play the game influences how the game is made is fascinating.
This was a great followup to his NFTs video and the Jon Bois style graphics in the video worked really nice.
posted by Hicksu at 5:40 PM on November 29, 2022
For anyone who wonders, DPS is damage per second. DPS is also used to refer to a player role, that of the damage dealer, while the tank is there to soak up damage from the enemy and the healers keep their teammates alive.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:38 PM on November 29, 2022
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:38 PM on November 29, 2022
I am interested to watch this, because WoW has a reputation for a particularly toxic community compared to other MMOs, and I'm curious how much of it is based on WoW's flawed design*, and how much applies to other MMOs.
*WoW's combat model puts a lot of pressure on other players to succeed, whereas in other MMOs, you have more personal responsibility and tools to compensate. It also is much more of a timesink with its interlocking, constantly resetting systems that are required to keep up, compared to other MMOs that are more forgiving of casual play and playing other games for a while.
posted by Merus at 7:45 PM on November 29, 2022
*WoW's combat model puts a lot of pressure on other players to succeed, whereas in other MMOs, you have more personal responsibility and tools to compensate. It also is much more of a timesink with its interlocking, constantly resetting systems that are required to keep up, compared to other MMOs that are more forgiving of casual play and playing other games for a while.
posted by Merus at 7:45 PM on November 29, 2022
I am interested to watch this, because WoW has a reputation for a particularly toxic community compared to other MMOs, and I'm curious how much of it is based on WoW's flawed design*, and how much applies to other MMOs.
This is the flaw in the piece, because it actively ducks the question and in doing so undermines its thesis. For example, there's an early segment where they talk about the RNG based Great Vault system and how it engenders toxicity - without noting that not only does nobody else do this, but that their competition use systems that are the exact inverse of this, allowing players to build towards the gear they want. They literally point out that this is the inciting incident that made them make the video, and then promptly ignore the elephant in the room that this toxicity is being driven by intentional design decisions by the WoW dev team.
This undercuts their argument heavily, because it turns out that the devs can in fact drive the emergent play they talk about at a few levels, and that also needs to be discussed.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:08 PM on November 29, 2022
This is the flaw in the piece, because it actively ducks the question and in doing so undermines its thesis. For example, there's an early segment where they talk about the RNG based Great Vault system and how it engenders toxicity - without noting that not only does nobody else do this, but that their competition use systems that are the exact inverse of this, allowing players to build towards the gear they want. They literally point out that this is the inciting incident that made them make the video, and then promptly ignore the elephant in the room that this toxicity is being driven by intentional design decisions by the WoW dev team.
This undercuts their argument heavily, because it turns out that the devs can in fact drive the emergent play they talk about at a few levels, and that also needs to be discussed.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:08 PM on November 29, 2022
Played WoW for ages. Saw this post right at bed time, was going to watch it...wait...an hour and a half?! Ugh, being a responsible adult sucks. Will watch and comment tomorrow.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 9:07 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sharp pointy objects at 9:07 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've long thought that endgame MMO play looked like a miserable, bitter slog, and I don't know why I thought this video would have any impact on that impression.
Interesting stuff from a social history perspective though.
posted by entity447b at 12:04 AM on November 30, 2022
Interesting stuff from a social history perspective though.
posted by entity447b at 12:04 AM on November 30, 2022
Oh wow, this is pretty much my favourite topic. Raided WOW back for at least 5-6 years, a chunk of it as the 2nd best guild on the server, I nailed several server first kills as the main tank. The dedication required was intense.
But that is nothing compared to what happens today. Since then I've played numerous other MMORPGs, and lately I've gotten into a Korean MMO called Lost Ark which is published by Amazon on Steam, and if you thought WOW has negative dark patterns, this is one's off the chart! I was a raid leader and I was free-to-play (spending no money on the game) but one of my members was spending $1,000 per day - the absolute maximum amount of Steam credit you could load in a 24 hour period. He did that for 7 days in a row, spending $7,000, until Steam cut him off and blocked his account indefinitely from spending any more money.
Hugely interesting, especially in the cultural differences between what "Asians" like in games versus what "Westerners" like in games. I've seen a streamer drop $70,000 at once (through grey market sites) on the game and then whinge about another player getting top DPS in the raid instead of him.
I'll address the video as he presented it -
Instrumental Play.
Here he talks about how games can become overly goal oriented, in the case of MMORPGs, the pursuit of player power / skill / performance. I can't remember who said it, that players will repeatedly do something boring and tedious as long as it's the most efficient way to progress. If players find out that repeatedly camping a single elite monster that spawns every 30 seconds is the best way to level up, they WILL do it for hours on end, instead of actually "playing" the game - doing dungeons, completing story quests, etc. I am definitely guilty of this.
Lost Ark takes it a step further, in something I call the Financialization of the game. WOW at least, wisely, made player progression self earned, even if it directly caused issues - like repeatedly gambling on a 1% chance to get a specific item from the Great Vault. Asian MMOs like Lost Ark are happy to have a robust in-game economy - you can just buy that best-in-slot item with game currency... which is also tradeable for real money. It sounds great, maybe I get a bunch of drops I don't want, but I can sell them for gold, and then use gold to buy the one I want. So the impact of luck is lessened.
However, this puts a direct value on every hour you spend on the game in terms of how much game currency (gold) you can buy, which itself has a direct link to real cash. For example why would I help out a low level friend by giving him an item that is useful to him, or carrying him through a difficult dungeon? It would be more efficient to me (a high income player) to perform profitable activities and play high level dungeons, then give some gold to him. Or, worse, I could just buy $20 of in-game currency and give it to him.
You think this is toxic? Oh no, we're just at the surface. Every character you have can raid once a week, so right now, you can do Kakul Saydon, Vykas and Valtan... each raid taking 1 hour if it goes smoothly. You can earn more gold if you have more characters, so people could have as many as 6 characters. Personally I have 5 characters, so that's 5 characters x 3 raids per week = 15 hours raiding minimum.
The issue is that these raids aren't easy. Vykas Gate 3 for example, has 21 mechanics which every player needs to know how to react to - the guide is so long that when you start learning it, the only way to do it is learn 4-5 mechanics then play a bit until you commit it to muscle memory, then go back learn a few more mechanics. A single player making a mistake can kill the entire team, which means restarting from the beginning.
It's not just pattern memorization - it's the muscle memory of how to react to it. Then, on top of that, is the reflex time required.
My reaction time to the boss pattern this 5 second clip is 260ms, but this is not simple reaction time (1 stimulus = 1 response) - it's a choice reaction time, where you are presented with multiple options and have to pick the right one. The typical choice reaction time is 400ms (0.4 seconds), while for simple reaction time younger people can get below 200ms.
In this clip the damage warning indicator comes on at 2.22 seconds, I react with a teleport at 2.48 seconds, the teleport completes at 3.17 seconds, and damage lands at 3.31 seconds.
This damage instantly kills you, forcing a restart. Which means even with my reaction time of 0.26 seconds to identify and teleport to a safe spot, I only made it with 0.14 seconds to spare.
The actual game when played properly isn't actually that punishing, what I am doing is a "bus"... which is another rabbit hole caused by financialization.
There is a wide variance of player skill and knowledge. In any particular 8 person raid, you will find the best few players "carrying" the group - doing most of the damage, and shouldering the burden of the harder mechanics. In the end, what happens in Lost Ark is that good players generally run "busses" - 4 good players will charge 4 weak players to come into the raid with them, and the 4 good players will complete the raid on their own.
For mid-tier and low-tier raids, you can find busses outnumber actual raiding parties! If you're good at something, never do it for free, right? If you're weak, you will never get accepted into a "real" group to play the raid, while if you're strong, there's no reason to play in a "real" group and carry the weaklings, you just start a bus and charge for entry. Even if your friend is a weak player, it's more efficient for you to run a bus, earn money from it, then give money to him so he can buy his own bus...
Like, I get it. It improved the longevity and interest in the game significantly. After we were able to consistently clear the raid with 8 persons, it's natural to go look for something that is a more difficult challenge. But there are 3-4 months between content releases. In the meantime, we try to learn how to do the same raid with less players - first with just 4 players, then with just 2 players, and eventually it's possible to do it with just 1 player, charging the other 7 for the privilege of coming along.
It gets even more mind boggling when you realise that some people are paying me the equivalent of real money so they don't have to play the game. And this is another Asian thing, I think, where people sometimes just drop a few thousand dollars to have the best gear in the game but they don't actually play the game, they just want to play dress up with their character. There are players who just log in and buy busses to get up their character. I mean, I guess, it's democratic? It allows people with poor reaction times and poor skills to also get the best gear? Bizarre from a Western point of view... my Chinese friends have no issue spending thousands on the game.
But yes. If you actually play a raid, there's immense performance pressure on you to not fuck up, and there's huge social shame for anyone who does fuck up.
As the clip I linked shows, when I bus in Valtan I need to perform a choice-reaction response within 0.26 seconds and even that leaves me with just 0.14 seconds of breathing room or else I force a restart for the whole raid - even worse, because people are PAYING me to save them time to run the raid for them. If I fail too many times not only do I have to pay a refund, but everyone else running the bus with me has to pay out a refund even though they played flawlessly.
And this is why being "bad" at the game is rude, as the YouTube video puts it...
Why even play the game if I made it sound so miserable? The game mechanics are amazing, some of the best in the industry, and I enjoy the social aspect of it - teaching other players how to play, learning to overcome difficult challenges together.
(realised I never even got to part 2...)
posted by xdvesper at 1:35 AM on November 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
But that is nothing compared to what happens today. Since then I've played numerous other MMORPGs, and lately I've gotten into a Korean MMO called Lost Ark which is published by Amazon on Steam, and if you thought WOW has negative dark patterns, this is one's off the chart! I was a raid leader and I was free-to-play (spending no money on the game) but one of my members was spending $1,000 per day - the absolute maximum amount of Steam credit you could load in a 24 hour period. He did that for 7 days in a row, spending $7,000, until Steam cut him off and blocked his account indefinitely from spending any more money.
Hugely interesting, especially in the cultural differences between what "Asians" like in games versus what "Westerners" like in games. I've seen a streamer drop $70,000 at once (through grey market sites) on the game and then whinge about another player getting top DPS in the raid instead of him.
I'll address the video as he presented it -
Instrumental Play.
Here he talks about how games can become overly goal oriented, in the case of MMORPGs, the pursuit of player power / skill / performance. I can't remember who said it, that players will repeatedly do something boring and tedious as long as it's the most efficient way to progress. If players find out that repeatedly camping a single elite monster that spawns every 30 seconds is the best way to level up, they WILL do it for hours on end, instead of actually "playing" the game - doing dungeons, completing story quests, etc. I am definitely guilty of this.
Lost Ark takes it a step further, in something I call the Financialization of the game. WOW at least, wisely, made player progression self earned, even if it directly caused issues - like repeatedly gambling on a 1% chance to get a specific item from the Great Vault. Asian MMOs like Lost Ark are happy to have a robust in-game economy - you can just buy that best-in-slot item with game currency... which is also tradeable for real money. It sounds great, maybe I get a bunch of drops I don't want, but I can sell them for gold, and then use gold to buy the one I want. So the impact of luck is lessened.
However, this puts a direct value on every hour you spend on the game in terms of how much game currency (gold) you can buy, which itself has a direct link to real cash. For example why would I help out a low level friend by giving him an item that is useful to him, or carrying him through a difficult dungeon? It would be more efficient to me (a high income player) to perform profitable activities and play high level dungeons, then give some gold to him. Or, worse, I could just buy $20 of in-game currency and give it to him.
You think this is toxic? Oh no, we're just at the surface. Every character you have can raid once a week, so right now, you can do Kakul Saydon, Vykas and Valtan... each raid taking 1 hour if it goes smoothly. You can earn more gold if you have more characters, so people could have as many as 6 characters. Personally I have 5 characters, so that's 5 characters x 3 raids per week = 15 hours raiding minimum.
The issue is that these raids aren't easy. Vykas Gate 3 for example, has 21 mechanics which every player needs to know how to react to - the guide is so long that when you start learning it, the only way to do it is learn 4-5 mechanics then play a bit until you commit it to muscle memory, then go back learn a few more mechanics. A single player making a mistake can kill the entire team, which means restarting from the beginning.
It's not just pattern memorization - it's the muscle memory of how to react to it. Then, on top of that, is the reflex time required.
My reaction time to the boss pattern this 5 second clip is 260ms, but this is not simple reaction time (1 stimulus = 1 response) - it's a choice reaction time, where you are presented with multiple options and have to pick the right one. The typical choice reaction time is 400ms (0.4 seconds), while for simple reaction time younger people can get below 200ms.
In this clip the damage warning indicator comes on at 2.22 seconds, I react with a teleport at 2.48 seconds, the teleport completes at 3.17 seconds, and damage lands at 3.31 seconds.
This damage instantly kills you, forcing a restart. Which means even with my reaction time of 0.26 seconds to identify and teleport to a safe spot, I only made it with 0.14 seconds to spare.
The actual game when played properly isn't actually that punishing, what I am doing is a "bus"... which is another rabbit hole caused by financialization.
There is a wide variance of player skill and knowledge. In any particular 8 person raid, you will find the best few players "carrying" the group - doing most of the damage, and shouldering the burden of the harder mechanics. In the end, what happens in Lost Ark is that good players generally run "busses" - 4 good players will charge 4 weak players to come into the raid with them, and the 4 good players will complete the raid on their own.
For mid-tier and low-tier raids, you can find busses outnumber actual raiding parties! If you're good at something, never do it for free, right? If you're weak, you will never get accepted into a "real" group to play the raid, while if you're strong, there's no reason to play in a "real" group and carry the weaklings, you just start a bus and charge for entry. Even if your friend is a weak player, it's more efficient for you to run a bus, earn money from it, then give money to him so he can buy his own bus...
Like, I get it. It improved the longevity and interest in the game significantly. After we were able to consistently clear the raid with 8 persons, it's natural to go look for something that is a more difficult challenge. But there are 3-4 months between content releases. In the meantime, we try to learn how to do the same raid with less players - first with just 4 players, then with just 2 players, and eventually it's possible to do it with just 1 player, charging the other 7 for the privilege of coming along.
It gets even more mind boggling when you realise that some people are paying me the equivalent of real money so they don't have to play the game. And this is another Asian thing, I think, where people sometimes just drop a few thousand dollars to have the best gear in the game but they don't actually play the game, they just want to play dress up with their character. There are players who just log in and buy busses to get up their character. I mean, I guess, it's democratic? It allows people with poor reaction times and poor skills to also get the best gear? Bizarre from a Western point of view... my Chinese friends have no issue spending thousands on the game.
But yes. If you actually play a raid, there's immense performance pressure on you to not fuck up, and there's huge social shame for anyone who does fuck up.
As the clip I linked shows, when I bus in Valtan I need to perform a choice-reaction response within 0.26 seconds and even that leaves me with just 0.14 seconds of breathing room or else I force a restart for the whole raid - even worse, because people are PAYING me to save them time to run the raid for them. If I fail too many times not only do I have to pay a refund, but everyone else running the bus with me has to pay out a refund even though they played flawlessly.
And this is why being "bad" at the game is rude, as the YouTube video puts it...
Why even play the game if I made it sound so miserable? The game mechanics are amazing, some of the best in the industry, and I enjoy the social aspect of it - teaching other players how to play, learning to overcome difficult challenges together.
(realised I never even got to part 2...)
posted by xdvesper at 1:35 AM on November 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
I am interested to watch this, because WoW has a reputation for a particularly toxic community compared to other MMOs, and I'm curious how much of it is based on WoW's flawed design*, and how much applies to other MMOs.
I've played both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. The two MMOs are very similar in terms of game design (the project manager for FFXIV as it currently exists literally made his team play WoW), but FFXIV's community is just absurdly more friendly and welcoming.
I think there are some cultural reasons for the difference---FFXIV has a younger playerbase, and I think zoomers grew up with a "friendlier" Internet than genx/millennials; and I kind of suspect that the anime aesthetic attracts a more welcoming audience. (Might sound crazy, I know, but remember that there's massive overlap between LGBTQ and anime subcultures, especially with the youngins. And this game lets you play as a catgirl.)
But it's also worth mentioning that FFXIV has essentially no support for plugins. There are plugins, but they're not officially allowed, and they're more limited than what WoW has. The team basically looks the other way for most of them, but public discussion of certain kinds---including anything that would allow DPS tracking---is prohibited. Not to mention that any DPS-tracking mechanism that works with FFXIV is just plain cumbersome. It's trivially easy to install a DPS tracker in WoW, but I haven't even bothered in FFXIV because it seems like such a hassle.
posted by nosewings at 1:53 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've played both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. The two MMOs are very similar in terms of game design (the project manager for FFXIV as it currently exists literally made his team play WoW), but FFXIV's community is just absurdly more friendly and welcoming.
I think there are some cultural reasons for the difference---FFXIV has a younger playerbase, and I think zoomers grew up with a "friendlier" Internet than genx/millennials; and I kind of suspect that the anime aesthetic attracts a more welcoming audience. (Might sound crazy, I know, but remember that there's massive overlap between LGBTQ and anime subcultures, especially with the youngins. And this game lets you play as a catgirl.)
But it's also worth mentioning that FFXIV has essentially no support for plugins. There are plugins, but they're not officially allowed, and they're more limited than what WoW has. The team basically looks the other way for most of them, but public discussion of certain kinds---including anything that would allow DPS tracking---is prohibited. Not to mention that any DPS-tracking mechanism that works with FFXIV is just plain cumbersome. It's trivially easy to install a DPS tracker in WoW, but I haven't even bothered in FFXIV because it seems like such a hassle.
posted by nosewings at 1:53 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thinking about it more, there is a sarupod in the room that Olsen is avoiding in his discussion of emergent play - namely that World of Warcraft is a toxic mess full of abusive assholes because it is designed, built, and operated by toxic, abusive assholes. That, ultimately, is the core difference between WoW and its competitors, which bleeds through everything from design to community management.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:07 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:07 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't think WOW is so different from its competitors, considering almost every successful MMORPG literally has to start the design phase with "ok we all know WOW is successful, we have to copy it wholesale but then add just a tiny bit of difference to nibble away at the edge of their market share"
Sometimes, like New World, it starts with them going in a totally novel direction - some crazy survival game, permanent PVP mode where you can be ganked at any time, souls-like combat where getting hit interrupts your action, you need to aim at the enemy hitbox, you need to parry / block / dodge and wait for a good opening to unleash your attack, with stamina management, you lose all items on death, all items in the game are crafted by players so it's a 100% player driven economy from harvesting materials to refining them to crafting them, with all settlements and towns built and maintained by the players... and then realising, that 80% of players out there just want a to play a game like WOW, they don't want to play... whatever this is... so they ended up watering down their entire game and just remade WOW in Aeternum.
On a side note, outside of MMORPGs, I really like the social aspect of Genshin Impact or Honkai Impact. Genshin in particular has been earning well over $2 billion per year on mobile alone, not counting PC and console. Most games you check out their subreddit and there's fair number of complaints and criticisms, either bad luck because they have grinded the great vault for 20 weeks for a 1% per week of getting their best in slot trinket but never getting it, how could the developers be so retarded to create such a dumb system, or ranting at other players for being incompetent and ruining their game experience, or what not. Genshin, though, it's mostly all, here is some fan art I drew or cosplay I did of this character I love, and people are just upvoting it and being so supportive. Like, the game and community is generally based around love for the characters and story rather than based on competition and conquering / defeating enemies in the most efficient manner possible.
Reminds me of what Kojima said about Death Stranding: "The attacks and violence seen online these days are out of control. So I designed this for people to take a step back and by connecting, relearn how to be kind to others."
posted by xdvesper at 8:31 PM on November 30, 2022
Sometimes, like New World, it starts with them going in a totally novel direction - some crazy survival game, permanent PVP mode where you can be ganked at any time, souls-like combat where getting hit interrupts your action, you need to aim at the enemy hitbox, you need to parry / block / dodge and wait for a good opening to unleash your attack, with stamina management, you lose all items on death, all items in the game are crafted by players so it's a 100% player driven economy from harvesting materials to refining them to crafting them, with all settlements and towns built and maintained by the players... and then realising, that 80% of players out there just want a to play a game like WOW, they don't want to play... whatever this is... so they ended up watering down their entire game and just remade WOW in Aeternum.
On a side note, outside of MMORPGs, I really like the social aspect of Genshin Impact or Honkai Impact. Genshin in particular has been earning well over $2 billion per year on mobile alone, not counting PC and console. Most games you check out their subreddit and there's fair number of complaints and criticisms, either bad luck because they have grinded the great vault for 20 weeks for a 1% per week of getting their best in slot trinket but never getting it, how could the developers be so retarded to create such a dumb system, or ranting at other players for being incompetent and ruining their game experience, or what not. Genshin, though, it's mostly all, here is some fan art I drew or cosplay I did of this character I love, and people are just upvoting it and being so supportive. Like, the game and community is generally based around love for the characters and story rather than based on competition and conquering / defeating enemies in the most efficient manner possible.
Reminds me of what Kojima said about Death Stranding: "The attacks and violence seen online these days are out of control. So I designed this for people to take a step back and by connecting, relearn how to be kind to others."
posted by xdvesper at 8:31 PM on November 30, 2022
The thing is that sort of design isn't novel - it's a form of MMO design known as a "gankbox". And there are successful gankbox MMOs like Black Desert Online, which literally makes you set your PVP flag once you hit a certain point in progression. But the reality is that gankboxen aren't popular outside of their niche because they are centered around player conflict, which tends to put people off because losing hours of progress because you just happened to catch the attention of a max level player tends to feel bad to most players. Hence why Amazon changed tack - because that model was just not going to be attractive. And unsurprisingly, realm PVP is a routine source of toxicity in WoW, which is why games like FFXIV omit it. Which leads to...
I don't think WOW is so different from its competitors, considering almost every successful MMORPG literally has to start the design phase with "ok we all know WOW is successful, we have to copy it wholesale but then add just a tiny bit of difference to nibble away at the edge of their market share"
This is highly reductive and ignores how different these games actually are when you actually look at them. I've been an FFXIV player since 2.1 (so very near the restart), and the differences are vast:
* FFXIV corrals PVP within its own context, and completely eschews it beyond that. As such, this helps reshape player interaction as beyond a few specific contexts, players are fundamentally on the same "team".
* FFXIV players can play all jobs and roles on the same character - this has ramifications on desirability of alts as well as personal identification to one's character.
* The main story quest (MSQ) in FFXIV is a major driver of content, and results in a design where content doesn't become irrelevant in the same way it does in WoW - thus high level players routinely cycle into old content through a variety of systems, interacting with newer players.
* FFXIV has a number of "carrots" in its design to encourage positive interplayer interactions - a good example is the commendation system where players can give commendations to others after finishing instanced combat, with rewards tied to commendation totals.
* The FFXIV devs do not expect players to remain subscribed and playing regularly, and as such systems exist to allow players to "catch up" if they take a break.
*And many more differences besides.
It doesn't take long to realize how much WoW's design drives a lot of the toxicity in the game.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:41 AM on December 1, 2022
I don't think WOW is so different from its competitors, considering almost every successful MMORPG literally has to start the design phase with "ok we all know WOW is successful, we have to copy it wholesale but then add just a tiny bit of difference to nibble away at the edge of their market share"
This is highly reductive and ignores how different these games actually are when you actually look at them. I've been an FFXIV player since 2.1 (so very near the restart), and the differences are vast:
* FFXIV corrals PVP within its own context, and completely eschews it beyond that. As such, this helps reshape player interaction as beyond a few specific contexts, players are fundamentally on the same "team".
* FFXIV players can play all jobs and roles on the same character - this has ramifications on desirability of alts as well as personal identification to one's character.
* The main story quest (MSQ) in FFXIV is a major driver of content, and results in a design where content doesn't become irrelevant in the same way it does in WoW - thus high level players routinely cycle into old content through a variety of systems, interacting with newer players.
* FFXIV has a number of "carrots" in its design to encourage positive interplayer interactions - a good example is the commendation system where players can give commendations to others after finishing instanced combat, with rewards tied to commendation totals.
* The FFXIV devs do not expect players to remain subscribed and playing regularly, and as such systems exist to allow players to "catch up" if they take a break.
*And many more differences besides.
It doesn't take long to realize how much WoW's design drives a lot of the toxicity in the game.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:41 AM on December 1, 2022
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One of them described it as a sociology lecture about WoW, which is hard to argue with.
posted by Hamusutaa at 4:27 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]