Balancing an MMO Ecosystem - Getting a Mix of Player Types - Extra Credits
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Dr. Richard Bartle's Taxonomy provides rough guidelines for understanding the types of motivations that players have. It also allows us to appeal to those players in broad groups, for example, providing easter eggs to lure in Explorer type players.
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That's super interesting how each group influences another. Reminds me of a time I played Rust. Instead of trying to mass a fortress and conquer territory, I just ran around nude and collected blueprints. Then I stood around and crafted stuff for people who didn't have that particular blueprint. No cost, just give me the materials and I'll make it for you. It took a little while but pretty soon people started figuring out that killing me was pointless, nothing more than a waste of their bullets. Then the effect started to swing in reverse, suddenly I had about 3 guys in regular intervals guarding me. For no reason other than they thought I was a cool guy and didn't want me to get shot. It was a super fun time.
I like your story, you got anymore?
you sir,are a legond.
I like this
Awesome sharing, man! thanks!
Yea, when you are doing a weird stuff in games its awesome how meny weird things can happen.
I would assume RP servers would increase socializers while PVP servers would increase killers
+Quibli and PvE servers are for Achievers and Explorers.
+Lillu700 Its probably one of the reasons they are usually some of the lower pop servers. Killers and Socializers interacting means that you need a very distinct kind of Socializer whom does not care too much about being killed, or has a bit of a Killer in them, because Killers will decrease the number of standard Socializers.
Standard being EC's/Bartle's description.
Yeah, but it would split the Community
+Quibli But Killers seem more predatory than competitive. In this episode they mentioned that Killers do NOT like Explorers because they put up a good fight when attacked. So I'm not sure Killer would actually be attracted to a devoted PvP server
+Quibli PVP servers are not that connected to killer population directly according to the video. They are saying that PVP servers would only attract killers if PVP servers attracted _achievers_ most of all (I don't imagine they attract many socializers). So, if playing PVP is less benefecial stat-wise than other types of play, achievers will shun them and killers too.
In WoW, I'm an Explorer (and collector, but treasure hunting goes with Explorer, I guess) but I also PvP because I want one of the mounts (Warsaber is perfect for nelf feel). That brings me to this story:
So I'm in a questing area and I just take the flight path to the hub. It's there I'm met with an orc (a Killer) who tried to gank me. I see his health go up a bit because his gear is scaling up and he's doing some decent damage. So I pop a defensive cooldown, stun him, push him with my Typhoon, and run to get out of combat. I keep going until his damage over time abilities fade away, then I go into stealth and equip my PvP gear.
Like a wild cat in the jungle (because that's exactly what I was, being a feral druid), I ambush him when he comes up the road. I stun him and he uses his trinket. So then I stun him again. He pops his defensive cooldowns and I keep applying pressure. As soon as his defenses went down, I popped my offensive cooldown and dropped him. The fight didn't even last ten seconds. I was pretty close to full heath. He never stood a chance.
The moral of the story is that, if you're a Killer, don't write a check your ass can't cash.
Uno reverse card.exe
Holy Shit, I was looking for information on game design and your channel has absolutely blown my expectations out of the water. I have to say you are geniuses and I rarely meet people that I feel are smarter than I am (I know im cool right?) but you guys/girls have taught me so much in such a small amount of time.
An amazingly entertaining and informative series, i cannot believe how advanced you all are in this field.
Killer- and achiever population in an MMO seem to follow the Lotka-Volterra-equation, which also applies to bunny and fox population in a forest! Nice to get reminded of old biology lessons in video game theory! :D
2:04 Wow! I can't remember ever seen a moving animation in Extra Credits before!
4:48 Wow! Black James. That took me off guard.
I think Trove is a very well established game with a player built economy, a non pay to win market (real Cash), and a friendly environment that people have fun with.
I agree, but they try to promote unboxing without steam market transactions, which is a little contradictory.
k1tt3hk4t, Destroyer of Fish In a dev stream they explained it as a form of rewarding the player further for their time in the game. Such as the Miner's Trove (Extra Mineable items) or the Shadow boxes from Dungeons (Glim, Flux, Etc.) all just to encourage people to play the game more and more everyday.
outsideclock
Exactly. It's what RIFT and Archeage could've and should've been.
+Rapey Raptor | CS:GO | Highlights Checkout Gw2 then.It seems to be a hard focus on trying to balance out all of this and just recently went f2p (though as someone who bought it on preorder for 60$, it was well worth the price tag it's just more available to grow now)
+Rapey Raptor | CS:GO | Highlights i played that game for a few hours with friends but after that it became the same do a dungeon, access loot, do shit with you house (build, garden, whatever) sure you can say that about all MMO's but thats the bone of it other MMO's have some meat on it even if its small details while trove was just bland (if i think back about my time playing i cant pinpoint anything its all just like a grey memory)
gotta love the Dayz addition
So in a game liek Smash Bros., which was designed to be player-versus-player but you have a lot of people goofing around instead, does it mean the Socializers have driven out the Killers?
+Overhazard I think you might occasionally be getting explorers as well, just seeing what silly or awesome things they can do. The stage with Wii U comments (the name escapes me) once kept me and a friend from fighting each other for a good long while because we were busy laughing at the comments. (He was playing Bowser, let's leave it at that)
+Robyn Carlisle Miiverse
Ta
Robyn Carlisle np
+Robyn Carlisle I think the Explorers in Smash would be the people discovering every True Combo, every advanced technique, the percents every move KOs at, etc. Basically, the ones who yank out all the secrets of the games that are then used for the Achievers to go big in pro play.
:/ I went on unreal tournament and called myself "noob and what" I came across hard core players with super fast reactions, so I laid traps, led them round corners, let a strong player into another one, then blew them both up with a rocket launcher while they fought eachother... because I couldn't take out either of them in a strait fight...... I guess it's fair to say I'm an explorer. Probably why I spent so much time on mortal kombat deception and searching LBP for materials.
Dark souls fits this with covenants, darkwraiths/dark moons are achievers, the orange soapstone, and way of white is explorers, sun bro's are socializers and forest hunters are killers.
You want to see this balance done wrong? Check out Fallen Sword. The few explorers are those at the level cap, so they're also the achievers, though most achievers in the game aren't explorers. The rest of the game is either socializers (in guilds) or killers (in PvP). The problem is that the exploration is 95% over, there's very little left for achievers, and the killers vastly outnumber the socializers.
Well obviously the avatar, master of all 4 playstyles comes in to balance the game.
Don't think I didn't catch that Harold you slipped in.
I've actually never encountered any MMOs where the socialization aspect overtook the game in general. Of course, this could just be due to my repertoire of games. I'm sure they exist out there, but in general, i've personally never seen an MMO where there's "too much socialization", so I *personally* can't really see that as a 'bad' thing.
Just helped me understand GTA5 better.
This episode felt a bit too abstract to me. It was still interesting as always. But I don't think this theory is applicable in the kind of mathematical, cause-and-effect way that is suggested in the video. Most importantly because many players embody a combination of different player types.
So what type of game would it be if you removed the "killers" aspect entirely? Has such a thing been made?
I think browser games like Travian and Tribal Wars, should be taken as fully fledged MMO's, they are essentially MMORTS's.
To make an acknowledgement to the video, I'll do an analysis on the groups of player's that play these games.
A good player has to be a hybrid of a socializer and an achiever, a full out socializer can enjoy talking to people but he won't be admitted to a serious guild/alliance/howEverYouWantToCallIt, because he would drag the group down, on the other hand a full-blown achiever could get very good at the game but if would pose to much of a problem to other players the conjoined attack of a group can bring them under control.
These games are "free", I did put quotation marks there but it's not like with "other F2P games", even though they're free you can buy stuff with premium currency, and this one of the thing a good browser game differs from a bad one, I'd group the thing you can buy with it into two categories, boosts and user comfort upgrades.
Let's talk about the latter first, these upgrades are usually called Premium Accounts or something like that, and the content they bring might shock you, it's things like additional statistics, a job queue, automated trading between your cities...
But hold on these are things every strategy game should have from the get-go, you need to pay periodically to fully enjoy the game it's like a paid MMO! And you're right, but we to keep in mind 4 things, first it's their only source of income and second it's a browser game and therefore it's bizarrely cheap, like 5 USD a month to get a premium account, third only good players need this, only good players will benefit from these features, noobs can don't have to spend a penny for the entirety of their existence and still enjoy the game, and fourth amazing players can do all these thing without a premium account, just with a lot of tedious work, these people are held in high regard inside the community.
The second category are boosts, these do as the say, they temporarily boost you production, the are a cheap way to bring cash, I agree, but all games with a goal (where a group can win the server), disallow boosts in end-game critical areas like the Natar zone in Travian.
I feel like you usually don't won't as many killers as other types.
4:53 I recognize that chin. This old man is an internet superstar by now. I wonder if he still models for stock photos.
Classic Harold
Dude, can you stop stabbing me? I'm trying to have a conversation. Honestly, that is just so rude.
Webber!
basicly 2b2t
2b2t says hi
Britain
you dont HATE when you a having a good conversation and someone puts a dagger in you throat?
+Gutemberg Camilo I actually consider a dagger to the throat a pretty decent outcome of a conversation.
+Wymar Sane Who's throat are we talking about touhg?
+Gutemberg Camilo Alliance scumbags do that rather often.
+Juan Moreno whoever start being annoying.
***** No I mean, does Wymar Sane mean he considers a dagger to his own throat or the other persons to be a decent outcome for a conversation, just curious
I really like how you drew the socialiser's reaction to the killer
"Madam, could you please stop stabbing my spine, it is getting annoying."
Murder is a bit mean
someone should make a webcomic or something based on these four as the main characters, I feel like we could get some interesting stories and jokes out of that
+johannes nordeng One could argue that this is Homestuck. The first four kids are each a player type. John is the social, Rose is the explorer, Dave is the killer, and Jade is the achiever, although my assessment may be wrong. I saw a post about it on tumblr a while back.
+johannes nordeng It's been in teenage culture for ages.
Killer: bully
Achiever: the jock/nerd
Explorer: the stoner/artist
Socializer: the rest.
See how many sitcoms and movies use these...
+thatthinker I'd argue that John - explorer, Rose - killer, Dave - achiever, Jade - socializer fits a lot better.
Okay but what about the fact that Rose was the one that destroyed a ton of her world and wrote that huge strategy guide? Doesn't seem like a killer's behavior to me.
ever heard of tome ?
You don't generally need to thin out the socializers. There's no harm in having lots of them, as they don't actually push away other player types. In fact, if anything, they will draw in more of the other types. It is the game supporting socializers, and not the socializers themselves, that lead to the game being dominated by socializers. So keep your socializers happy, and focus content on drawing in the other types, and you can maintain a good population.
In some cases, socializers may even be the only ones to carry players between expansions in MMORPGs. The time when most achievers, killers and explorers have lost interest.
Yes! When the content goes sour after the investors pull out early and all the explorers and achievers ragequit. The killers leave and the socializers gradually thin out. Then the company pulls itself together and releases some good content on a low budget, but they have no money to advertise it, and they need people to know about it.
The socializers may be the only way to bridge the gap. They are the ones who will upload the new gameplay to RUclips and talk about it. That's how everyone will find out about the new content.
There's also the socializer focused on being a social killer... What can we do to reduce toxicity like that?
Of course! The socializers like playing with friends to hang out, and giving a few safe zones or making low levels have a shield can draw them in
What is wrong with you. Socializes are BORING
Makes me think of the Souls games. Killers tend to min/max and wear the same "optimal" armor and use the same "optimal" weapons, and do invasions or fish for invasions. Explorers will do PvP too, but use different weapons or spells to try to find hidden gems or small nuances in the combat system that the rest of the community hasn't caught onto yet. Socalizers typically do co-op, either with strangers or with their friends. And Achievers will try to do special runs of the game, like speedruns, min level runs, no shield runs, no death runs, etc.
All these types of players have their own niche. Killers can play with each other, challenge the explorers and harass the socalizers (as well as the achievers if they're playing online). The explorers can always find new people to test their ideas against. Socalizers will always be able to find people in need of a hand (both because of the difficulty of the games and the prevalence of killers/explorers), and lastly the achievers can try tons of different challenges just due to the protean nature of the game.
It's not an MMO, but every type of player mentioned can find something about the game they like, and it helps keep the online going.
+Miyamoto Fan The Souls games tend to be a good example of a lot of things EC talks about. :p
I'm definitely on the explorer front here. Managing to defeat an enemy or another player with a really unusual build or strategy is the most rewarding thing.
+Miyamoto Fan i played dark souls 2 resently and i ran into way to many killers.
+Miyamoto Fan FASHION SOULS OR GO HOME
+Dynam3 Then you are perfectly fine. It is extremely rare to find someone who only exhibits one behavioral pattern since humans are inherently one dimensional. Say for instance you like exploring new areas, when you discover something that would fall into achievement on a personal level. A lot of cardgames have people who are both killer/achiever and explorer since they always have to be aware of sudden shifts in the meta.
By having an interest in several aspects that just means that you as a person are just that much more interesting.
+Miyamoto Fan Idk, I think socializers and exspecially explorers dont really fit in there. I think the souls games are great, but since they are kinda "brutal" to beginners, some players dont even try to explore the pvp due to negative experience. And the community mostly is ok with that, since you have "git gud" to play dark souls or be a whiny bitch. I made it through the game, explored and had some frustrating but good experience. But I played it offline knowing that I dont want to be an asshole or to get killed by assholes. I think pvp is made for killers, nobody else.
I'm afraid we are going to have to use the biggest weapon of all:
Math!
+William John Goodwater Game design overall requires a shitload of math in every stage of development.
+S. I. V.
no math = no computers = no players
+S. I. V. A more precise answer: You COULD just have a loose understanding of math and pay attention to macro cosmos effects.
When you see these killers are getting off too much and not only shrinking the pb and limiting everyone else? Nerf the killers.
Now, its not that simple.
What are you going to nerf? Why? How much damage per second are they doing with this skill used in a certain way? How many times can they use this skill because of certain gear?
Not doing your math properly will make a HUGE mess out of things and fault the design.
Calculating numbers to the second and the trends of equipment for these numbers that are causing your game to lose subscribers after that last month? Is important. That is why Mobas are successful with the playerbase. They intentionally keep a few easy to play champs OP for the newbies and the more seasoned players will ban them on the spot in ranked play.
+William John Goodwater
M.A.T.H.
Mental
Abuse
To
Humans
+William John Goodwater
That's exactly what I was thinking!
This looks just like the Lotka-Volterra model! (just in four dimensions and things skewed just a wee bit)
This was literally one of the most fascinating videos on game design I've ever seen. Really cool stuff to think about. Gets me thinking about what kind of gamer I am and what sort of experience I'm really looking for from a game. Great job as always :)
Why tf is there a giant music note beside your name
It’s like a little ecosystem
Successful MMOs need more than gameplay balance - they also need to attract a mix of player types. #ExtraCredits
+Extra Credits One day can we see a drawing tutorial on how you do your artwork? It looks simple yet always shows everything we need to see!
+anion cation thats alison shes the artist
+Extra Credits !MOER! ;)
+Extra Credits Still waiting on that follow up hearthstone video, cause your arguments have been countered a bit by grim patron decks suddenly being broken, by none other than a nerf.
+Matthew Eisenhour Alison left EC a couple years ago because she got a new job. She still guests on the show once in a while though
In WoW I would say that interaction isn't accurate. The achievers were the ones doing raids getting the best gear so the pvpers were actually afraid of them, not the explorers. The explorers were the easy pickings that just wandered around reading plaques and talking to npcs to learn the lore. They actually hated getting ganked because it wasted their time. Socializers were sitting in safe towns so they weren't bothered by anyone, but most people hated them since they just sat in town instead of actually playing the game.
I feel like this is a much more accurate summary than the video had to offer
@@jackblevins1201 I think the better lesson to take away from this is that World of Warcraft isn't the best example of a basic MMO economy. Perhaps Runescape or Everquest would make the point better. Even EVE Online fits the "standard" mould better than World of Warcraft does.
I know killers aren't always of the teabagging bully variety, but as presented here, I wouldn't want them in my game community. The kinds of people that spawn camp on TF2 or kill new players in WoW. Maybe that makes me a kind of reverse killer, but I almost get euphoric highs when I utterly humiliate one of the aforementioned killer types.
"Not so tough, against someone who can actually fight back, huh asshole?!"
reverse killer is my new favorite archetype
I'm a more of a "okay, f*** this, I'm going Rambo" type of player.
If you kill me 5 times while I killed you -1 time (i.e. I accidentally killed myself trying to kill you), than I'm focusing you till next movember
@@burningmagyk4986
Freaking friendly killers.
You Sir, are a Knight.
No! Y No take sandwich. I pootis bird. No end life!
In other words, killers ruin every game.
No.And not all Killers are spawncamping douchebags.
Yes, killers ruin every MMO game, for everyone else who is not one of them, because that is the POINT of killers, they want to ruin other people's fun. Let them have their own games, or their isolated PvP arenas, and they can leave everyone else alone.
They can also motivate other types though. For example, strengthen the bond between socialisers or being a challenge for achievers. And everyone (including killers) will love to make them suffer a bit.
I would have thought killers would have some sort of relationship between themselves, either through the rivalry that comes with constantly trying to one up each other on killing or skill or just hating that being killed is getting in the way of the killing.
+cameron wood I thought of the killer type more so as the griefer concept. Someone who wants to piss you off/ ruin your day rather than actual combat oriented.
+cameron wood I've seen socializer/killers who like to work together and then laugh about their kills. And killer/socializers who like trolling. I get the impression that lone wolf killers tend to spread out and find their own hunting grounds.
+cameron wood I know this is a bit late, but Killers do influence each other. Killers like to hunt pretty much anyone weaker than themselves, which can include newer killers. Of course killers don't like being killed (because they want to feel more powerful than others), so too many killers will actually discourage new killers. As a result, the killer population tends to be the slowest to grow of the 4 and will naturally cap out.
Usually though, killers avoid each other (outside of pre-arranged combat arena-like places).
+cameron wood I would say the FGC is mainly composed of killers trying to perfect their craft, with achievers and explorers actually driving up the killer count by investigating all the cool things you can do with the game.
+cameron wood They do, but it's not pointed out because they are still just one group, and it can lose it's buzz more quickly than finding Achievers or Socializers to... defeat.
my gut reaction to the description of the 4 groups is that games should do everything possible to make killers mrisable and make them go away and or ban them
Honestly I’d say a system that’s based on improving the power of explorers (like something that increases the max HP based one how many you get, with new ones being added and removed on a weekly basis) is probably the best balance there. I’d definitely force the explorers to work together though and put some cool stuff in really hard to reach places.
What if a player falls into multiple categories, like if people are both explorers and socializes, they seem pretty cross compatible.
pop1040 Then mission accomplished
Actually, I think you'll find that no one will be dead centur. I like some pvp, and enjoy searching for little neuances in the game. (god knows ive fallen into way to many lava pits looking for secrets) I enjoy playing with groups every once and awhile, but when it comes down too it, I'm an achiver, through and through. Pay attention, you might find you focus to one group. Maybe not heavily, but mostly.
Generally I think of the "Killer" archetype more in terms of PvP players rather than jerks who camp people 20+ levels under them, but it reminds me of a WoW story from a cousin.
He is a definite Achiever type and part of a big guild, but one day when he was leveling a lower level character a Rouge killed and camped him.
He told his guild, and for reasons I cannot understand a squad of them decided it would be fun to camp the camper for literal hours...but at least that camping was justified.
I would say you have a 5th group. The "Do-Nothingers" these players tend to stick alone. Fishing, Building houses, Farming, generally boring things to the average player in MMO RPG. Everyone wants to be in the action, but Do-Nothingers dont care about the games plot. They only care about small mechanics that are ment to fill in a large game to make it feel less hollow.
I’d imagine that they’re just a different type of explorer, finding new ways to interact with the world.
Killers don't seem to be desirable in any game tbh. (not talking about pvp people/ competitive scene of a game). No one likes assholes.
+Knight Loltrec "Oh no, too many good people are taking over the game" - no one ever
+Knight Loltrec Although I agree, it IS a legit way of playing a game. Being hated or not, they have fun and are a large playerbase. And they need somewhere to go. If the game devs can't figure how to properly fit them into the community, they'll either leave the game or break it :|
+Knight Loltrec I just used to look at them as part of the challenge/fun when going through an area or dungeon when I played Ultima Online. There were pretty harsh penalties to being a murderer in that game, though. The "killers" often put just as much on the line as the other groups when going out to do their thing.
+Knight Loltrec Killers can actually be great for a game and enhance the social aspect, but they skilled right past this. Being a killer doesn't specifically mean a PKer, but someone who wants to impose themselves on others. This means that a game with a lot of more healthy killers, those who don't want to hurt others, but still impose themselves, will have really driven Guild Leaders and supporters, like healers.
+Knight Loltrec This is why I think WoW succeeded. While there are gankers and jerks in WoW, the lack of a serious penalty for player killing undermines the joy that killers get. There are still there, but their population is a lot smaller than in other mmos. Killers make everyones lives more miserable and nobody likes them.
So what happens when socializers get out of control? Is that necessarily a bad thing?
+Fiaura The Tank Girl
Because nobody really cares about or is playing the game as much. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can be.
Sanford Bassett
I mean it is a curious question? If they are all just there socializing but not playing the game or invested in the game mechanics, do the players eventually find other ways to socialize and leave? or what exactly goes on long term there?
+Fiaura The Tank Girl They're the ones who typically shout the loudest when there's something they don't like even though they don't really play the game for the game. I've watched socializers ruin games by being the loudest complainers.
*****
Animal Jam is a game dominated by socializers (mainly young/teenage girls).
Animal Jam is not a good image of what most MMOs want to be.
+Fiaura The Tank Girl I kind of imagine it like an experience I had on S4league. I went to a match (unknowingly) that was full of people who were socializers. They were literally just standing there talking in the chat. No battle no nothing going on. When I tried to change that I got rekt since they just so happened to be pros as well but what I mean is that literally noone was playing the game. just standing there----talking. of course I just switched to a different match and went on with murder but if the entire game was just that, man that would be a shit game
erm... why do we need Killers again?
We don't.
2.20
@@jessicalee333 yeah, exactly
For the simple reason that we need the most players we can get and excluding a major category of players reduces the game as a whole. They're also an important requirement for balancing classes, skills, equipment and builds against each other. They are, in short, a necessary evil to be held in limited quantities or in specialized areas or game modes.
@angel eyes
They might be unavoidable, but I don't see how they're necessary.
Their are too many killer types out there that thrive on the tears of those they destroy. Both in RL as well as in game.
For example I saw a father and son create a beautiful igloo together out of the snow in the public field. As soon as they turned their back some other kids kicked it down. I've seen the same attitude on line in games like eve. Why do we as a species take pleasure in destroying other peoples work and hurting them. I could destroy a certain company with a press of a button. Think of the high I would get in causing millions worth of damage and forcing thousands of people into unemployment. I would get no monetary reward and I would get away with it and with the high of doing it. I won't do such a thing because of exactly all these reasons. I don't want to put thousands of people out of work
We haven't bred out or cured psychopathy/sociopathy/narcissism (or other disorders of the lack-of-empathy spectrum). We know the cause now, an underdeveloped part of the brain where empathy is normally processed, and there have been some experiments with stimulating growth in that part of the brain, so maybe there will be a cure eventually...
There must be some kind of way to create a healthy mmo social economic without the killers.
Because fuck gankers man.
Spoken like a man with too much sodium in his diet that doesn't value forms of fun others than his own
LegendaryO34
They can find their fun somewhere else. I have no patience for griefers.
Paul Staker Then you would probably add a lot to an MMO. If you agonize that much over them, you probably keep dozens of them entertained. Every dev team out there must want some of your misery to grace their game.
+Paul Staker Their analysis of killers isn't entirely accurate. All griefers are killers, but not all killers are griefers. Some Killers simply like the aspect of domination or challenge in succeeding over their fellow human rather than their 'targets' misery.
A killer might make you miserable if they defeat you, but not all of the killers are motivated by your rage (grief). Some of them are just happy that they outsmarted you (challenge) or exercised power over you (domination).
+Warp Scanner I know a Killer (a friend of mine) who back in the day spent all his time scamming people in the grand market in Runescape. He was happiest when he walked away with all of someone's hard-won riches without them even noticing they'd been tricked. He's a good example of what you're talking about. He could make millions of gold each day this way.
He did the same thing in Puzzle Pirates, too, tricking people into giving him their ships and winning in-game money through gambling. He was banned for life repeatedly and kept switching accounts and IP addresses.
In Rust, he built a house with a window you could climb to, so people would try to hop in and rob him. The window was on the equivalent of the fourth floor, and there were no floors, so people would die from falling damage and he'd loot them.
1:00
As much as I love the game, that pretty much describes Warframe.
+Aimela Huh...yeah, that's unfortunately true. Personally, I play Warframe with a few of my friends though.
+Aimela
but but i have to have all the prime parts
27,000 player in steam alone... not counting non steam users and console
yea dead as can be
+Aimela As someone who is more non PvP Killer and build Explorer focused, Warframe feels like it offers nothing to me at this point.
+outsideclock The game is not dying at all. It is actually gaining players very consistently. Controls can be changed, and major mechanics constantly get improvements in a developing game like Warframe. Your decision to not play it is completely fine, but the game is doing just fine.
I really can't think of a person i've met in real life that was of the killer archetype and wasn't an asshole, at least when it comes to games and hanging out and doing shit.
I would consider myself a split between achiever and killer, slightly more towards killer, but I recognize when things are getting out of hand, so I don't start bragging all over my friends and making them feel bad. There's a difference between having fun and just making someone feel bad. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop killing them, but what's the point of killing noobs and bad players.
I think its worth noting that a player also can change between the differnt kind of player types. They might have one dominant, but their mood etc. will change their playertype
+Lars Tornbjerg yeah i don't think your average player is just one type but a mix of types.
(delete)
It's pretty important to look at the strengths and weaknesses of a given theory. In this case, it might be a way to narrow view at player types to say they only have one dominant type. Might be a good starting point though
Groups are made up of individuel people ;) Dividing people into groups is fine, as long as you acknowledge that people might be in different groups at different times. Which is one of the weakness of Bartels theory im trying to highlight.
Lars Tornbjerg I don't see it as a weakness from the designer's stand point. The taxonomy is a great tool I've been using for years.
The point of the tool is not to put labels on individual people. We're not interested if player Steve Jones is an achiever or an explorer today. It's way more dynamic and higher level than that.
tl;dr
Killers are adorable menaces that want their senpais to notice them
Achievers work hard to earn the in game money to impress their kohai-crush
Explorers are senpai and you better hope they notice your game
and Socializers? Socializers are just there.
...adorable?
now that i think about it, EVE is an excellent example of a rough equilibrium. of course there is a steep learning curve that will weed out people naturally, but the constant back and forth of achievers (people who make billions of isk and love to min-max the system) and killers (pirates) is nearly perfect. this conflict drives group behavior, where socializers thrive, hence the huge alliances made up of thousands of people. Explorers, of course, are naturally drawn to the game, but they're existence is often unseen by killers (because of the wide spread availability of cloaking devices, yet explorers are a huge asset to achievers and socializers as scouts and informants that assist in group activity.
+MrJethroha However equally the rough balance Eve has managed to achieve has all so stagnated the game especially when it comes to the wider Nullsec Meta
+CptMidlands The nullsec Meta has become stagnant not due to the balance, but the ever increasing escalation. The massive destruction involved in the Halloween war depleted resources on a massive scale, giving the goons dominance over the political scene via bigger army diplomacy. Since then no one has been able to build back up to that level and that the goons have played their cards wisely, it will remain stagnant-ish with mainly regional conflict.
Nathan Hawks Nah, you just have to know how to avoid killers. Good explorers, who are conscious about cloaking and paying attention to d-scan are the safest people in Eve, safer than even traders that do nothing but haul cargo around high sec. Granted, most explorers in Eve are also part time Killers.
+Nathan Hawks Explorers are the Killer's weapons in EvE, not their target. It's easy to think as "explorers" as literal wilderness/space explorers, but in the game's mechanical context, they're actually the players who spend most of their time in the Eve fitting tool and in the test server creating the next setup meta and counter-setups than in the game per se.
+Nathan Hawks
Are you kidding? Our explorers saw a new star form in the sky and in under a week not only extrapolated the location of the new star, but also deduced it's true nature: That of a star actually going Nova at FTL speeds.
Also only a small portion of our population is pure killer. The largest section of EVE is achievers in High-sec space running missions and setting up elaborate construction projects. Seriously, the creation of a null-sec empire, or a super entrenched wormhole, is the pinnacle of being an achiever.
Then we have our socializers: Our diplos, brokers, and trusted third party services, the guys who go on fleets to joke around and have a beer. Seriously the game is way more laid back than you think.
you want an example of a killer-run game?
look up mortal online
one of the most toxic communities out there, holy crap
+Kwyjibo O_o Great observation. I wanted to get into DayZ but was prevented from socializing, achieving or exploring, thanks to Killers.
achiever - instagram
explorer - reddit
socialite - tumblr
killer - 4chan
You should do one with how casual, moderate, and hard-core players effect each-other, it seems similar to this to a degree.
Casual: Basic playing just for fun.
Moderate: Dedicated to the game and like exploring most if not all aspects.
Hard-Core: Stereotypical basement dweller who dedicates all free time to the game to be the best at everything.
Say, Extra Credits, did you ever make the episode on why Hearthstone and other card games can't just easily reprint the card with different stats/effects? >.>
It matches the latest update where Warsong Commander got changed.
Also, when are you going to talk about Undertale?!
+Dice12K What is there to say about Undertale? I mean yeah it's good but the question is what to say in the context of their show which is teaching game design? Sure Undertale is very well made and has a lot of good content, but by itself I don't think there's an episode for them. Mentioning it maybe but just Undertale?
+lokun489 There is a LOT to talk about when it concerns Undertale.
While Extra Creditz gave a lot of praise to TWD from TellTale (which I don't agree with even more now that Undertale is released) I feel that they can talk about what Undertale did right in terms of moral choices and other narrative-affecting gameplay interactions.
Buut, there's also a problem where it's impossible to talk about all that without spoiling the entire game.
+1 for that Harold stock image
oh god, dayz...
that chick that pretended she got ptsd from tumblr should go a month playing that game.
+Døde Brø Or Rust?
+Døde Brø Does that game have any warriors of justice among its player base? The kind who go around hunting people they catch being dicks to other people? It sounds like a fun idea. Is it feasible in a game like DayZ?
+sageoftruth it's quite feasible, although you'd have to find a very specific server to do that in. speaking of justice in terrible communities, I once read an article about a player (I forget his anme) in a game(I forget the title) who wound up in a no rules server that was absolutely dominated by the "Evil" faction (Basically a whole lot of killers). he was too low level to be killed in PVP, but he didn't need to fight; all he had to do was run, and run he did. he went out and attracted one of the biggest enemies in the game, and eventually got a conga line of them going. he then went into enemy territory, and just ran through any group that tried to do ill will. and when the server moderators finally stepped in amidst a wave of salty gamers. and asked him to stop, he did so gladly, because they were the only ones to show any respect, or civility the entire time.
+The7Purplekirbies
www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves-in-online-gaming-history_p4/
Ryan Sample that's the one, good ol fansy.
Killers seem pretty pointless in an MMO. Just limit them to PvP arenas and everyone is happy.
+nextpkfr That's something I've realized in this video. It talks about what happens if you have too many of a type of player, but what happens if you had no killers? No achievers?
+Winchestro
You completely failed to understand the point of this. Thing is: We do have more than enough data to conclude that this theory is, in fact, a theory, not a hypothesis.
You can of course keep being butthurt about it, but reality doesn't care about your feeble feelings.
+AkaiAzul
No killers/achievers either leads to a game dying if it lacks social appeal, or being almost entirely about socializing and using the game as a glorified chatroom (which can save it for a while). Explorers tend to move on quickly if there's no new material to explore or the interactions of other people don't lead to new things being useful.
Because then Killers would only kill Killers, which isn't as fun for many of them as killing Achievers. You want Killers to have fun too, man. You gotta make efforts to provide fun for everyone if you want a super massive MMO.
+nextpkfr PvP arena are more archievers, than killers and you have to realize, that nobody is a pure player of any kind. Achievers play the meta build in a fair arena pvp. Many achievers need to be explorers of combat mechanics to stay on top. Killers need to be explorers of envoriment to be the distrubtive force, they want to be. Maybe a Killer wants to be the top trader and the monopoly on some kind of ressource to anger other players. This Killer will socialize to a degree to get his goals completeted. Another time a killer creates a twink charakter to prey on new players, while a socializer creates a counter-twink to prey on Killers and help new players. Killers are like salt. You want some salt, but you don't want pure salt.
Fen Y Well, like this: without killers, achievers hit the peak and move on, explorers find things and leave, socializers stick around until the rest leave or you're left with only socializers. Adding killers to the mix keep achievers on their toes / delay them from reaching new heights which may have them call on explorers to find new ways of dealing with them leaving socializers to spread news all around.
After over a year, I realized this.
Achiever - Gryffindor
Killer - Slytherin
Explorer - Ravenclaw
Socialiser - Hufflepuff
And Hufflepuff - Socialisers.
which probably means that this also applies to book series with massive world building populations.
side note: now i can see what that hat meant when he said Mr potter would do well in slytherin o-o;
Because he was a tyrant - he wanted to beat them all XD killer + achiever in one person
Dunno, to me Ravenclaw feels more like Achievers (they are the ones that care the most about grades and whatnot) and Gryffindor feels more like they're the Explorers (most of them are more carefree, and they're kind of the best foil for Slytherins)
I think there'S quite acontroversy for the placement oof achievers or explorers here.
While Ravenclaw are the guys having the best marks, and caring the most about them, they're still usually creative or excentric. I mean one of the students tried to build a fortune telling method using eggs.
If that's not explorer like nothing is.
On the other hand we have the Gryffindors who are the most likely to break the rules and do dumb shit.
So, both of them could be a mix of achievers and explorers, with regards to where they're exploring, and what they're achieving.
And Slytherins might not be only killers. While they had quite a number of evil guys coming out of that house, they often share achievers traits, as their straight up striving for greatness and power. which could be regarded as achievements of an achiever, or doesn't it?
But wouldn't socializers only socialize in safe-zones? How could tweaking the killer population decrease the socializers?
+Tartar Because more and more of the community starts demeaning the socializers, taunting them and calling them casual scrubs and such, causing socializers to leave due to that bad community.
+Tartar Socializers don't just sit around talking, they also spend a lot of time in group content, they just don't approach that content with the mindset, "I need to beat this asap." If you've ever been in a group with mainly socializers it's a fun laid back experience, dying or failing is never much of an issue and the whole experience is treated in a comical fun way. Conversely being in a group with mainly achievers is a challenging push to improve and clear content as efficiently as possible.
To each their own but socializers don't just stand around doing nothing but talking.
Have you ever played a game where the only people that talk are at spawn? When I played wow most of the socializers were at the raids or Pvp Zones
+Tartar Good example: Eve Online. When I was a diplomat for an alliance I spent all my time talking to others in the most dangerous pvp areas rather than fighting or anything. The game itself was open enough so that the player base was able to create the role that did not exist within the games mechanics. So while it has a large number of killers in the game, it tends to lend itself towards socalizers far more.
Minngarm Halnhammer Wow, that's amazing. Did you get paid by your cooperation for doing it? Wasn't there a huge risk involved with doing things like that?
The only MMO I (kinda) play is Old School RuneScape, and they really messed up this whole philosophy.
The majority of the community is full of achievers and a sizable yet smaller number are killers. The game is so very similar to the original iterations (it's based off a 2007 build that was archived) that there really is nothing to explore, and the amount of socializers is nearly zero.
The killers are generally happy with the game and the achievers get the majority of the developer backing, since they're the largest group by far. Almost every update the game gets is tied into new bosses or skilling abilities because the achievers have grinded so hard that they've already accomplished just about everything - the majority of the game's content is over a decade old and now even lower skill players can achieve due to the strategies developed in the last ten or more years.
+Matt Cooke Well, keep in mind: at the end of the day, Old School RS is predominately played by RS players old and new, whether they play both RS3 and OSRS, or are disgruntled players who were turned off by the flawed implementation of EoC and quit until OSRS' release. As such, the community of OSRS is, unfortunately, much the same community as RS3: loads and loads of achievers, some killers, almost no explorers, and the vestiges of a long since run-off socializer community.
It really is unfortunate. Runescape used to be a very casual game, with a very casual audience. Plenty to do for achievers with skills, PK'ing was popular, the game was relaxed enough (and populated enough) that you could talk to anyone, even while slaying, and since updates were able to cater to all players and not only the top 1%, anyone could "explore" the new content and get enjoyment out of it. But EoC really did change all of that. The twitchy-reflex gameplay drove off the casual community, leaving behind only the hardcore grindy community, which in turn killed off any form of socializing community (due to the need to constantly focus on combat, instead of clicking and relaxing), lower level community, etc. This in turn meant that content, in order to be useful or playable, had to be catered to the community which was all high level, which meant there was little wiggle room for explorers and lower levels, and EoC still isn't that polished of a system for player killing.
In just a single unpolished update (it has since had help with all these bonus exp events, which pushed players to train harder, faster, with no talking or anything), Jagex purged nearly every type of player they had except for one: overly zealous "achievers," a-la the "no xp waste" mentality of today.
It's kind of depressing really.
PaperFlare It is. I remember playing back in middle school when OSRS was just RS and it's a shame to know most new players won't be able to experience what made it so popular in the first place.
And this is why DayZ died before it left alpha. The killer population got out of control and drove away every other demographic then they turned on themselves and drove all but the most vicious of killers away, and then they lost interest and moved onto other games, leaving behind a barren wasteland of a game that has next to no players.
For some reason, this episode felt a bit... light. I'm not sure... I'll leave this comment here and respond when I can pin it down....
+Akiva Daphydd
I really liked it.
+Akiva Daphydd I know the main reason (I think): They didn't really explain HOW you increase/decrease the number of each group.
He means that he didn't explain the process involved in altering the amount of different player types.
+Akiva Daphydd Because there's no coverage of how to actually affect the number of different player types. Picture your MMO getting say 'killer' heavy - apparently the solution to this is to increase the number of Explorers. So, if we apply the theory covered in this video, that implies that the solution to too many Killers is to add more things to discover in the game, whether it's more build variation or easter eggs or hidden areas.
In practise, do you think including those features after a population has already developed will change anything? I doubt it.
The theory in this video is a gross oversimplification that doesn't seem to hold up to simple scrutiny when you consider it in practise. Of course, the real point might be that you have to take this stuff into account when first building the game, to affect what sort of culture builds around your game. Once that culture is established, though, I imagine it's a lot harder to change.
Turbovolver
Of course. Just because it's difficult to alter your playerbase doesn't make it impossible, however.
So there's this Minecraft server I play on called snap.viper.works, and I can clearly see the player types you mentioned here. It's a hacking-friendly, completely vanilla survival server. The terrain is amplified, meaning it's hard to travel, and it's hard mode, so monsters are a lot more dangerous. It's mainly dominated by killers, with a bunch of explorers. The amount of killers means the server is very small, and noobs often leave immediately, so the gameplay is interesting if you like being around competent players.
Almost everybody is a bit of a socializer because the server is so small, and everybody knows everybody, so often even the killers will get caught up in a casual conversation. Everybody is really friendly there. The only exception is noobs. Many of the noobs complain about being spawnkilled, and start calling the killers names and swearing at them, which only makes them get spawnkilled even more until they leave the server and never come back.
I think the only reason I got accepted into the server community is because I wasn't a total dick when the killers spawnkilled me repeatedly. It was just a minor annoyance, since I hadn't even started yet and I had nothing to lose. So eventually they got bored of killing me and left me alone.
Dude, thank you SO MUCH for showing me this server. It's so hard to find a bare-bones vanilla survival server that's public.
Yeah, though you could always just look at 2b2t for that. All the explorers you need. Because you can't find anyone to kill, they're all hiding.
Im a social player in Day Z :(
+Aristede R me too
+ashley beaumont Rol servers are the solution :D
rpg servers don't like me usualy because i roleplay a "friendly" cannibal
+ashley beaumont Well... at least is something
+Aristede R
killer player: mmmh food.... XD
Would applying this theory to Call of Duty really be fair? This theory is only designed to explain player behaviour in an MMO. And, sure, it is an online multiplayer game, but it's got no real world to explore, per say, so of course it can't attract explorers and socialisers. Hell, in Bartle's lecture, he spoke for a while about when people apply these theories to places they aren't supposed to be.
+DiscoClam I think explorer also meant explorer of strange mechanics / gear combos - not the easiest thing to make interesting, but it can work.
+DiscoClam While Call of Duty is not the best example, TF2 provides better examples for a game with all four player types. Killers tend to be the six snipers, spies, and demoknights on your team, not helping with the objective in the slightest, but going out of their way to kill in the quickest way possible. Achievers are the medics, soldiers, heavies, and engineers trying to get better at the game and get the highest score in each match. Sociallizers tend to be the ones having the funny conversation in the chat or encouraging massive conga lines of dance. Explorers are rarer, but you still have people rocket jumping around the maps trying to find every little exploit and fastest possible route from point A to point B.
Again, though, that also restricts itself to this theory that, as Bertle says in his lecture (which I recommend if you have an hour to spare), this theory can only apply to MMOs. Maybe if there was a similar theory on player types in an online competitive game (or even one that already exists and I just don't know about) then it might explain it, but really it only explains the people playing. What if there's other players that fit into other categories and who aren't playing this game?
Also, let's be real, when there's a conga line, everyone becomes a socialiser.
+DiscoClam It was _originally_ meant to explain only MUDs, BUT, 20 years down the line and we still see evidence everywhere that it applies to _all_ games (not even only multiplayer)!
+DiscoClam Actually i think that's why it s a perfect example. MMO merely means Mass Multiplayer Online; it does not need to have anykind of overworld in order to fit that definition. Call of Duty is essentially what you get when you take an MMORPG(what we traditionally think of when we think mmo) and suck out nearly all of exploration elements(the overworld and the wide variety of gaming mechanics).
Harold @ 4:55
So for Killers, "fun" is a finite resource, and the only way for them to have any is if they take it away from someone else? Why should any MMO dev team cater to this type of player at all, if it comes at the expense of the other three types? Shouldn't the focus be on keeping Killer-type players OUT of the game?
Thank you for making these. As an aspiring game developer - these are a joy to watch. :)
I think a non mmo that balances really well is team fortress 2. I see myself more as a Explorer, playing around with various item combinations.
Collectors are mostly found on trade servers, stockpiling Australiums and unusuals.
The killers are found everywhere to, because it's a shooter after all. Mostly soldier tryhards.
And socialisers.. Well.. They kinda fall into two groups.
On one side, you can scroll down the server browser a bit for some crazy messed up maps, where they usually goof around and well... Talk.
The other group is usually found on pubs, playing as hoovies or congaring around.
This is why I have a love hate relationship with Splatoon. I can't explore, I can't socialize, and only 50% of the players in a match win.
EVE's reputation : ALL killers
EVE's reality: Pretty balanced (but still chock full of killers)
I don't really get the explorer/killer interaction they describe. Wouldn't killers be just as embarrassed at being killed by an achiever or socializer? Why don't explorers mind dying? The cost of getting reset to a spawn point doesn't seem that different than whatever numerical penalties come from being killed. For that matter, what makes dying especially frustrating to an achiever when compared to an explorer or socializer?
+castlewise It doesn't really make sense does it. I'd imagine the explorer would be more annoyed at dieing because they want to explore (see new things) but now have to go over old content from the respawn point before they can get to the new things, but if the new stuff they need to be not killed.
Also how they said an explorer could kill a "killer" confuses me.
+castlewise I think it boils down to the statistics- Achievers care more about the statistics of their account/characters more than the explorers. If you're playing for a very specific goal- say, a no death run, or a speed run, or anything else that takes time and preparation into very specific objectives, having all that progress be interrupted and or lost when you're killed can be super frustrating. Explorers on the other hand don't care so much about their character's statistics, and about the only thing they lose out on that they care about when dying to killers is distance traveled. But if they didn't have a particular destination in mind, and don't care about the resources or statistics spent to get there, it doesn't sting as much as it does for achievers. And if they die they can simply choose to go wandering in a different direction without having to deviate from their goals of experiencing the world, whereas achievers have to go back to the place they were killed in order to start over.
+Chris M Where does a raider fit? I'm guessing it's a toned down version of achiever but to me it seems more like a killer/achiever hybrid.
Why would an explorer, who doesn't care about stats, be able to kill a killer, who cares only about stats and is likely experienced at taking people on 1v1?
You have to remember that explorers aren't just interested in literally exploring the game world. They're interested in exploring the mechanics, items, etc., and PvP experience allows them to test hypotheses. Getting killed is just further evidence that their strategy or build path isn't working as is, and gives them greater understanding of what makes the game tick.
+Biggkenny And as for explorers killing killers- by EC's logic, Explorers are the guys who figure out new strategies and equipment combinations first. Killers won't necessarily have seen those strategies yet and be caught off guard- kind of like the Drunken Boxing fighting style. The killer doesn't know how to react to the things the explorer is doing, giving the explorer a distinct edge.
In my experience, explorers get the short end of the stick in almost every MMO.
killers sound like a very dangerous group to keep around. they could potentially ruin your game with one fell swoop.
Then there is town of salem: everyone pretends to be a socializer until through exploration you find out everyone is a killer and get a great sense of achivement when you come out of the situation alive
So would you say that a theory-crafting player is an explorer? Someone who loves the strategy and the metagame and sticks around just to try and master that?
+Philip Rau I would certainly say so. Exploring systems is just as much Explorer as exploring terrain.
If these theory-crafters gather on a forum to refine their spreadsheets, they have some Socializer in them. If they use their grasp of game systems to down raid bosses, that indicates a leaning toward Achiever. If they use them to dominate in PVP, that indicates a bent towards Killer. But the drive to understand--that's Explorer at its core.
Then that's definitely me! I don't care too much about easter eggs, but I do enjoy the exploration part of open world games with particularly lovely scenery, like Witcher 3 or even Assassins Creed to some extent. I also play story games for the same thing... the joy of a new story.
How would you categorize someone who plays MMOs simply for escapism? Would that be a socializer probably? (because someone playing for escapism might choose a single-player story-driven game instead rather than an MMO?)
I think any of the types can be escapist. Escapism is more about what you're getting away from than what drives you forward.
Played in an escapist way, a Socializer might play an MMO because he doesn't get enough social contact offline, an Achiever because he's not satisfied with his accomplishments, an Explorer because he feels stuck in a rut or trapped by his surroundings, or a Killer because he wants to see the world burn. (Or something. I don't understand Killers very well.)
What's your most common type, James?
I'd say 40% Explorer, 30% Achiever, 20% Socializer, 10% Killer. I grew up on the Myst games, and for me they still represent what I love most about video games: a deep world to explore with an interesting history and its own set of rules, where victory comes through understanding. But I've learned to enjoy the satisfaction of earning something cool, building a community, or scoring a pentakill.
I've been saying this stuff for a really long time. A good MMO has ALL these players because certain players depend on these other types to create what feels like a true MMO community. This is why ESO failed so badly in my eyes.
The "Killers" or Pvpers, were all required to go to Cyrodil to pvp, and if you had just played Skyrim and just came from another MMO with MUCH more free pvp like WoW, where you can kill people ANYWHERE except for very small sanctuary areas, it was a real disappointment.
A GOOD MMO takes measures to MIX the types of gamers together, not separate them into their own pens. MMO's like this, more commonly referred to as a "Themepark", I call A "Zoo". Everyone was in their own little pen and never have to deal with their natural predators. Wayyyy too much game oversight when it came to controlling game flow.
The opposite of this system would be MMO's with little to no restriction Gameplay wise. Games like when people host very large MInecraft servers. These I refer to as "The Wild". Where players of all types are running around doing their own thing, and the balance is held together by simple coincidence, or more like the rules of nature.
What MMO's should be aiming for is a "Safari" styled game, where the gameplay resembles the "Wild" where all the player types are interacting and mixing with each other, but the balance is still maintained Artifically.
The thing is a game that is completely equal doesn't tend to do very well. It confused people as to what they are supposed to get out of the game and rather they should play it or not.
Killers are scumbags and I'd be happy to NEVER play with them for a second. If they can be herded into their own little zone where they can wank off killing each other all day and hurling racial slurs at each other (instead of in GLOBAL chat - which is invariably a cesspool in MMOs and is a terrible feature), that would suit me and ALL the other player types just FINE, thank you very much. I don't play games to experience the grief of social darwinist horse shit, or get a whiff of 13 year olds' raging rage-hormones, I play them to have FUN.
The "rules of nature" don't include spellcasters, and superpowers, and levels (besides infancy to adulthood), and animals with more time on their hands grinding to get more powerful than all the other animals. Nature is NOT a metaphor for MMOs.
The rules of communities of human beings generally include killers being PUT AWAY where they actually CAN'T have any fun and more importantly can't bother anybody else, for as long as humanely possible. There is no NEED for a population of killers to "balance" the others, because no one else ruins the game for anybody else. Only killers do that, in fact they LOVE doing that. Balance between the number of achievers, explorers, and socializers, is not really a big problem. The problem is ALWAYS controlling the killers - just like in a real society.
There is also no need to cater to the primal lusts of killers either, because they SHOULD be taught at every opportunity that that behavior is not acceptable in ANY society of humans, even a virtual one, and that it's not healthy to indulge in. "Venting" is actually really bad for you, and turns people into rage addicts - because acting out your rage makes you feel GOOD, so your brain associates raging with good feelings, then it becomes a cycle of addiction. The best thing to do, and in fact what they teach people in anger management classes, is to NOT EVER "vent", but to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and try and let it go.
Failing that, killers should be herded onto their own server, far from everyone else. Players who don't respect other people's boundaries (or delight in violating other people's boundaries) aren't very likely to be good customers for a business anyway.
Hello! I think these videos are very informative and I think that personally a video on full loss multiplayer games might be cool. I mean games where you put all your items and gear on the line when ever you pvp. I've always loved these games but I fell like I haven't seen many games like them (I'm thinking of games like rust and minecraft)
I think TF2 is a great example of this and if you play it you know why ;)
What I like about killers is that they more than anyone affects the world and community, MMOs feels more like a theme park rather than a fully functioning world, but then you read about the guys who kidnapped a flight master, for a couple of hours they created something new that affected anyone, rather than just going into cues and doing the old laid out road.
explorer=gryffindor
achiever=ravenclaw
socializer=hufflepuff
killer=slytherin
perfect.
I would also think that Killers have their own internal feedback loop. Killers to want to assert dominance over other players and who better to do that to then someone with a similar goal?
However saying Killers only want to ruin other people's fun isn't a good interpretation; that can be true but really they want to prove themselves to be better then other players through a mechanics related metric. This can be any role where the can compare themselves in a relatively direct way to other players; for example in Overwatch I play supports like Mercy, Ana and Zen because I feel really impactful when I play them and get a lot of joy from being better then other supports mains. Ofc DPS would be better but that role is virtually never empty and support heroes scratch the same itch sufficiently enough.
4:52 HAROLD!!!!!
+Wwald He's everywhere!!!!
Any recommendations for explorer game?
I used to be a space explorer in eve. While it is a great way to earn money, you have to zero security systems for good loot.
This puts you in more risk because more you explore, more you are likely to face a killer and oh boy, killers will love to kill explorers if they somehow catch them. Explorer ships are slippy but fragile and when you kill them you got some low volume, precious cargo that can buy you 1 month game time.
While EvE is really good, it is mainly for social killers and I don't like space games. Any recommendations for an explorer who loves PvP?
All i get from this is PVP sucks. Remove killers, get better games. :s
+duo1666 And that's how you know you're a Socializer/Achiever. :3
Besides, we're surrounded by those kinds of people every day of our life. Why not design a way to engage in something together for fun? :D
***** You can engage in things together for fun without having killers ruining games :P
+duo1666 You know, the lack of PvP is the main reason I stick with DDO. There is tavern brawls, and they even tried to made pvp arenas, but the player's numbers and the monster's numbers aren't equal. Think of it like any Final Fantasy, where when you are dealing 9999 damage, non-boss monsters rarely hit for more than 2000~4000.
Alvaro Junior PvE games often still have "PvP" with loot/mob spawn competition though. FFXI is my favorite mmorpg.... but it had MASSIVE issues by having mobs that spawned once a day/week forcing the entire server population to compete over those mobs.... which made RMT rampant.
Killers kill MMOs.
+duo1666 yep, I know. Not a problem in DDO. Every chest has personal loot for every member of the party, XP is mainly awarded via quests that award the same value to everyone in the party, and there is no shared pve environment, all quests and Explorer zones are instanced for each party.
Thank you for validating my thoughts on why Killers ruin MMO's.
1:35 From what I have heard, this sounds like the Overwatch play space right now, please correct me if I'm wrong.
I SAW YOU HAROLD DON'T THINK I DIDN'T
I really have trouble trying to imagine how accommodating players whose primary means of fun is frustrating and taking fun away from other players makes the experience better. I could be misunderstanding something, but they way I heard it explained here, the modern term for players like that is nothing else but trolls!
That was amazing. Just putting that image into my head. Someone joins the game, "Lets see what this game has to offer" (Instantaneously exploded). That made me chuckle for some time.
Every time I think EC is running out of things to talk about, they come out with an episode like this. Wow.
Hide the Pain Harold detected at 4:52! You may be able to hide your pain, but you can't hide your face, Harold!
what happens when socializers are the only group left in a game:
VRChat
In the case of VRChat, socializing IS the core gameplay mechanic. XD
There is no need to balance FOR killers. Their fun is about ruining other people's fun, they will ALWAYS show up where other people are - and they have a negative effect on all other groups, and eventually kill entire game communities by ruining everybody else's fun (that's pretty much what kills MMOs, as far player-type balance). There's no "challenge" lost by excluding or herding those players away from the others, there is only the satisfaction of playing a game for fun without someone ACTIVELY trying to stop you from doing exactly that - what you paid for, what you came to do. There is NOTHING MISSING from a game with no killers, just like there is nothing missing from a real human society with no killers. People who only want to hurt others, only make the world WORSE, whether that is a virtual world or the real world. That is just a fact.
Someday, there will be a cure for the fundamental lack of empathy psychopaths have (because of an underdeveloped portion of the brain that has now been identified - and experiments have shown promise with stimulating growth in that part of the brain, which could eventually relieve us of psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and anyone else on the spectrum of lack-of-empathy disorders). But until then, I'd rather play games without them, or where they are herded into one area everyone else can easily avoid (i.e. prison).
I love exploring new worlds, but I'm HORRIBLY socially awkward. I don't like causing other people grief, but I DO like beating up the big bad monsters and seeing what I can get for it. So maybe I'm an Explorer with a small side of Achiever?
For an MMO, wouldn't a good balance be a small minority of killers, because they have an effect on multiple players per 'life' so to speak, which means 25% would vastly influence your game, so about 10% to keep you on your toes, a bigger amount of socializers, so if you're bored, or want someone to do a random raid with they're there, at about 30-35%, and 25% discoverers, (and this includes moderate dscoverers who just want to find all te cool shit that spells do), and the 15% are Achievers, but the rest are somewhere in the middle, people who want to experience all that the MMO has to offer. I personally am a discoverer, the gameplay of MMOs doesn't interest me most, it's what all the spells and abilities do, and the lore, and imagining myself being a nationalist leader of a race.
I would put Rust in the category of a game made for Killers. With no real goals in the game, many players just kill everyone they see, spawncamp anyone they find with a base, and generally make life hell for any new player they find. That combined with the developers really only seeming to add in stuff aimed at them (Looking through updates, almost all of the changes were to weapons, weapon mods, adding new weapon mods. Nothing to fix animal pathfinding so people stop getting dropkicked by NinjaBears, no optimization so people without a $2000 graphics card can get the game looking better than Super Mario 64) pretty much seems to lead to a playerbase that revolves around people making other's lives as miserable as possible for the sake of it. Seems like the definition of a Killer's game to me. No place for socializers since you literally cant trust anyone, explorers wont make it more than a few feet before getting shot and starting over, and achievers, aside from the ones that have large groups of friends, pretty much cant get anywhere because again, you die within minutes of spawning.
This explains so much. I now know I'm one of the explorer types, which explains why in this one game I used to play, which was absolutely dominated by killer types, everyone hated me, it's because I wasn't raging hard enough whenever they ganked me. In fact, at some point, while searching for exploits, I needed them to kill me over and over again, thousands of times, just to push a "worthless/bad" stat into ridiculously high numbers. Once this stat got high enough, some mechanics not taken into account by other players allowed for me to get to places that were off limits to everyone else.
This also explains why my game play experience suffers when I try to play like an achiever.
I don't think you guys really did a good job at defining killers at all, really. All you guys did was make them sound like greifers, or scammers. Neither of which are desirable for a game. I could easily walk away from this video saying a balanced game would be 33% achievers, socializers, and explorers, and 0% killers.
Now that I think about it, in Elsword, the MMO I play, successful guilds are usually led by explorers. They give good tips for achievers and killers on how to achieve stuffs and kill other players efficiently, and they also tend to always have a good topic to discuss with socializers. It's rare for me to see achievers, killers or socializers to lead a guild that could rival one that's led by an explorer in Elsword.
1:50 Bullshit. Why would a large number of socializers be suboptimal? It means there'll always be a constant player base and it doesn't hinder the few other players from actually playing the game. Maybe killers wouldn't like such an environment, but not having any jerks on a server doesn't seem like a negative thing.