[MUD-Dev] On grouping, thoughts

[Jeff Freeman]

 On Grouping, thoughts.

There is a basic assumption that newbies – true newbies – login to
the game world for the first time /and they don't have any friends/.

"Come for the game, stay for the people" being the mantra of MMO
development, it falls upon the developers to ensure that lone newbie
finds some pals a.s.a.p. Not just acquaintances, either – they need
to be fast friends in order for that newbie to /stick/.

'Course, it seems like an incorrect assumption, and a bit of a
conceit, to think that people appear in your game from nowhere,
knowing no one. I think it used to be true more often /longlong ago
in the beforetime/ than it is now: these days people join games
/with/ their friends, and families, and maybe even people who used
to be mere acquaintances in other games, but certainly aren't any
longer.

The impact this has on game design is that we cannot focus on the
development of 'firm, fast friendships' in the game world, because
these groups are immune to it. The /husband, wife and kids/-team has
membership requirements that no random player could ever hope to
meet (barring the creepy, which I'm sure happens, but who wants to
aim for fostering wife-swapping among the player base?). The buddies
from the fire-station aren't letting you into /their/ guild unless
you move to their town and become a fireman. That gang of Marines
won't let you in their squad even if you /enlist/.

One thing I've noticed is that big groups don't merge with other big
groups. Soloists will team-up with other soloists and form little
groups; small groups will merge with soloists and other small groups
to form large groups. But a large group will rarely merge with
another group of any size. They won't often even let a soloist
join-in.

Many people join the game with a partner: a good friend, spouse,
sibling, child, parent, etc. If they join with /many/ partners (and
by "partner" I mean, a person with whom they have a very strong
social tie), then they are unlikely to form new partnerships
in-game. This is because they rarely group with 'strangers' (the
bigger the group, the less frequently they merge with other groups),
and so make fewer acquaintances, reinforce weak social ties less
frequently and so they (less frequently) form new partnerships.

If they join with few partners, then the opportunity exists for them
to group with others, outside of their group (else, "big groups
don't group"-applies, so they don't, or cannot).

Different games have different 'optimal group sizes'. It's what the
content is balanced for, in most cases it's whatever the game
defines as a 'full group'. Could be 5, 6 or 8…whatever the designers
have chosen, probably driven more by UI requirements than any sort
of rational thought. Somewhere between 5 and 10, though, and that's
pretty much it.

The optimal strategy is to join /with/ a group – which saves some
time looking for a group – but /not/ a group too large. Because if
the group is too large, you'll have trouble filling-it-out to the
optimal group size.

You might think joining the game with a partnership-size that is the
optimal group size – you'll always have a full group. But in
practice, this is actually detrimental due to the intrusions of real
life: Your eight pals won't always show up at the same time, same
level, etc. leaving you with a group too small to be just the right
size, and too large to merge with anything but soloists.

You might manage anyway – throw in some random soloist or other –
but because you aren't grouping with those soloists frequently and
repeatedly enough for weak social ties to form, and to become strong
ties, they migrate off and find more regular partners with which to
play.

The optimal partnership-size is just two or three. You can play with
a friend or two, consume solo content with ease (but not with so
much ease that the game becomes a bore), group with others on an
as-needed basis easily (more easily than with four or five
partners), and repeatedly. The winning strategy is to have a small
partnership and a larger group of friends.

Players form into guilds too, and not just for 'guild-raid
content'. Guilds also form to maintain social ties (via guild chat,
the guild website, guild message boards, etc.) so that when
partnerships or friendships need an extra member, there's a pool of
talent (non-Strangers) from which to pull. In which case the players
still aren't meeting new people and developing strong-social ties:
they're relying on and reinforcing the ties they've already
got. Small guilds are "groups of friends" which serve to shield the
members from playing with mere acquaintances. Larger guilds serve
the same purpose for acquaintances vs. strangers.

So here are my informal observations:

    * People meet Strangers in-game.
    * Repeated contact with Strangers forms Acquaintances.
    * Through repeated contact, Acquaintances become Friends.
    * Sometimes Friends become Partners.
    * The more Partners a person has, the fewer new Partners he will
      make (which is why two-partner teams are more common than
      three-partner teams)
    * Four-partner teams are nigh impossible due to the above reason,
      and also because this group-size makes it /more/ difficult to
      merge with other groups to achieve optimal group-size, when the
      need arises.
    * Likewise, the more Partners a person has, the fewer /others/ he
      will play with, which means fewer Strangers becoming
      Acquaintances, fewer Acquaintances becoming Friends, fewer Friends
      becoming Partners.
    * Players utilize systems in-game and out to fortify the shores of
      their social networks, to keep the 'them' out of the 'us'.



More and more frequently, Friends and Partners join the game
together, so the game system itself doesn't need to do anything to
cause these relationships to form. The focus should instead be on
preventing them from weakening. We should not punish players for
working together to the point they stop doing it, nor block players
from playing together /from day one/ by making the starting areas of
the game inaccessible to one another.

Friends and partners – especially partners – also /leave/ the game
together.

"Come for the game, stay for the people" doesn't mean that if we
focus on encouraging strong friendships, "partnerships", to form,
then we're /golden/.

"The people" are only in the game if most of them are enjoying
it. If /most/ of them are enjoying it, then you can get the handful
of burnouts to stick around a while longer, because their friends
are still playing. "Come for the game, stay for the people" doesn't
mean you can make a game that forces large in-game communities to
form strong social ties, in spite of any amount of damage to the
"fun factor".

It only means that as long as you have a game which entertains many
people, then you can have many people /and their friends/ playing
it. If it fails to entertain many people, then you lose many people
/and their
friends/.
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