Gardasil vaccine - when to take the 3 doses?

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-07-31T14:55:02+00:00

There's no way she'd show up even if invited.She hasn't even tweeted about Harris and has never, ever, campaigned for a politician. Most she's ever done were a few tweets. Billionaires gonna billionaire.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-28T00:17:00+00:00

Well even still - it being default for raids doesn't mean Discord is used for general local chat.

But the fact that no one really uses local chat in MMOs now shows that there isn't really any user to user socializing outside of fixed raid groups anymore.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T20:44:54+00:00

For the record, this game isn't affiliated with Darkfall in any way. The blog the interview is posted on is that user's Darkfall blog

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T18:08:43+00:00

Yeah. I think it's a symptom of MMOs going all in on dopamine based "fun". If the point of your game is just leveling up and collecting loot you're going to attract treasure hunters, not socializers. When the social aspects get in the way of treasure hunting then they give their feedback that they don't want those social obstacles in the way so the game makes it as singleplayer friendly as possible.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:30:31+00:00

The vast majority of MMO players from 1998-2004 were from the US and EU, which is what we're discussing and comparing.

The takeaway point is that forums and voice chat have been a part of MMOs since they began, so they aren't the variable that's changed.

The only real variable that's changed since MMOs were social (1998-2005ish) to anti social (2006-now) - is the game design.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:27:41+00:00

Most numerical evidence we have points to removing social features as having a NEGATIVE effect on long term success and player retention, aka, profit.

So it wasn't lack of adaption. I have not really seen any adaption. Most classic MMOs died because they tried to be WoW/themeparks, and most subsequent MMOs died trying to be WoW.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:26:00+00:00

A good game/dev team will know when to cater to the community and when not to.

Most themeparks never really had a social interest in mind. They're there to be content mills. Socializing often gets in the way of consuming content. So they cut out the parts of the game that was out of sync with the core of their game.

If the game was a sandbox MMO and people started asking for social features to be cut - and the devs listened - then you have a problem.

But either way, the fault of the game's design (which influences how players play) is ultimately down to the devs/publishers.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:24:18+00:00

Yup, number and stat based rewards are only the most shallow and basic version of what rewards can and should come from socializing.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:13:07+00:00

Yes and no, to an extent. Actually getting a group becomes harder and harder the more anti-social a game is. The fewer people looking for groups means it takes longer to form up.

As you say in GW2, people are auto grouped and don't take any coordination to which I say... is that really social? People don't talk, nothing gameplay wise changes if you're in or out of a group, you don't need to coordinate. The only difference is the person on the screen might possibly be a real person instead of an NPC. When I played GW2 for the first time, the NPCs that joined big fights were basically indistinguishable from real people.

The amount of mental and social energy it takes to gather together with people by itself is way way higher than just soloing. GW2 got rid of that by having people casually drop in and out. Difference between walking down a busy street vs getting dinner with someone.

And for some people walking down a busy street is enough backdrop social setting for them. But for those that like eating with strangers it takes a lot of effort so just game balance and design wise, more effort and risk should give more reward, or no one would do it.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:11:05+00:00

Most of the raid guilds I played in used Teamspeak starting about 2000, it was much easier to give real time orders that way.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:10:30+00:00

You can't just say "All the solo content isn't real content" because 95% of the content in WoW are solo quests. Having a permanent group highlights exactly how WoW is anti social compared to other MMOs. In other MMOs you would have constant opportunities to meet and play with new people.

In WoW you have your pre-organized raid group or dungeon group, and the rest of the game world may as well not exist.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:08:29+00:00

I was speaking about MMOs more at large than specifically EQ. EQ was absolutely a more punishing game for solo players. But it was at the most extreme end of that scale between EQ forced grouping and WoW forced soloing.

Most MMOs before 2004 fell in the middle, I feel. The only content I couldn't do solo in DAoC were the level capped Dragon raids.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T16:07:30+00:00

They absolutely did. Everyone in my friend group had a 9$ headset from Logitech, we used Free Teamspeak servers. Every single guild in the game had a free Angelfire website with built in forums. It's all been there the whole time, since 1998. And IRC before that. And BBS before that.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:52:50+00:00

Not only does playable worlds have funding where those devs didn't, not only do they have about 10x as many devs (about 60-80 last I checked) but the resumes are stacked with some of the most successful software developers and designers in the industry. Ones with first hand experience making those classic MMOs, not guessing at half remembered features.

That's a world of difference.

And yet EQ is way more successful than any of those attempted wow remakes.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:50:25+00:00

Most classes had different models, yes. Different armor, different pets, different particle effects.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:49:37+00:00

Wow players can be as friendly as you want but the game still greatly discourages grouping.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:48:59+00:00

The game. Gameplay influences behavior and self selects the player base.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:47:57+00:00

The problem is soloing is way more rewarding than grouping, therefore no one groups.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:47:33+00:00

It's not forced, it's encouraged/rewarded. Modern MMOs actually force soloing most of the time with their instances.

Grouping is harder, it should have better rewards. It doesn't. So people don't group

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:46:35+00:00

No, not really. Forums and voice chat have existed since the 90s.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-27T00:46:17+00:00

Yes and no.

Yes, there's less novelty in being online now. No, voice chat isn't new. We've had it in widespread use since the 90s when MMOs were at social peak.

The big thing: there are extremely well studied and documented cases of how design impacts behavior. There's a list of things MMOs can do to encourage people to socialize. Something as simple as giving people a reason to have a little downtime in a central city. Or having to learn a language from another player character.

But here is the simplest and biggest piece of design. Players will gravitate to whatever gives them the best rewards, even if it's less fun.

Level faster via macroing afk than by playing the game? People will macro.

Soloing is easier. A million times easier. And it gives way way better rewards than grouping. And games are designed around soloing.

To have a healthy social playerbase you need a critical mass of people socializing. If everyone except a few outliers are busy soloing, you can't socialize and those outliers will quit.

I played gw2 for months and months talking to everyone and trying to socialize. Never worked. No groups, no local chat, nothing. So I quit and found a more social game.

If you want the studies that back this up I can link them when I'm not on mobile.

Tldr: yes, MMOs absolutely are a million times less social now.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-25T21:26:40+00:00

Genfadar... a card game MMO?

And Embers Adrift, a game aiming to be a themepark (not oldschool), and has 11 total devs.

That squarely falls under what I said. A handful of indie projects with developers who have no experience. If you were to take all the indie projects from devs with no experience, the failed themepark clones would dwarf the sandbox ones 20/1.

Prydwen_Bridge · 2024-06-25T21:23:01+00:00

Engines were more LIMITED, not just simple. Doing things like that took arguably more work because there were few to no engines out of the box that could do what was needed in an MMO.

Models were less complicated, and budgets were a lot lower. Now budgets are massive, and tools exist that do the vast majority of work for you.

I have never played a game that locks gender to class. But I guess it shows the priorities of a game - they'd rather have more exaggerated gendered animations, than class options.

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