Filtering player temperament through game design
-
@Roadspike Agreed. In my experience, I’ve witnessed plenty of people get competitive over who gets to resolve the big plots and stuff, and get just as toxic as direct PVP can get. Some people live in a permanent state of “If I’m not winning, I’m not having fun, and if I’m not having fun, nobody else can.”
Main character syndrome.
-
Yep. Main character syndrome all the way.
-
But you’re very right that designing away from PvP and toward PvE will limit some of the toxic aspects of PvP and competitiveness.
Yeah, it’s true that you can’t prevent people from being competitive, but discouraging it works pretty well.
-
Fighting main character syndrome seems like another kettle of fish entirely – one that cannot be solved by limiting competition. People like that will indeed find something to compete over because that’s what they’re looking for, and to hell with what anyone else thinks.
Any pronouns. Come to Chincoteague. We have ponies. http://keys.aresmush.com
-
@L.-B.-Heuschkel Is there a way to filter these people out purely through game design or community design, or is it a case of finding them and plucking them out like stray hairs with the tweezers of fuckoffitude?
-
I think the “I need to be winning” mindset isn’t discouraged by PvE at all, tbh.
There are toxic reasons why some players prefer PvP, but I also think there are toxic reasons why some players prefer PvE. Like, is it because they want to collaborate with other players? Or is it because their persistently obnoxious behaviour tends to invite challenge, and they’d prefer an environment where they won’t be, and the person doing that is the bad guy?
The type of toxic player I see on a PvP game is someone who needs to prove they can take out other players.
The type of toxic player I see on PvE games is a self-insert power fantasy who acts like if you don’t agree with everything their character says/does, and stroke their ego, you’re being rude.
The chill type of player I see on a PvP game is someone who separates themselves from their character, intentionally wrote in flaws and exploitable secrets, and looks forward to other players using those pressure points to drive the story forward.
The chill type of player I see on a PvE game is someone who enjoys being part of an ensemble cast working together to solve the main story’s problem.
But I just don’t really buy into the idea that PvP/PvE inherently inspires a higher calibre of players.
-
But I just don’t really buy into the idea that PvP/PvE inherently inspires a higher calibre of players.
I wouldn’t say it inspires a higher calibre of players, but it absolutely creates a different type of drama. I personally would much rather deal with some nitwit who gets pissy because someone else got a medal / got promoted / got more “kills” in the last battle / etc. than deal with players trying to directly kill / ruin / impose their will upon other PCs.
-
People will 100% try to impose their will on others even on places where they can’t be killed for doing so. I doubt there’s any meaningful difference.
-
People will 100% try to impose their will on others even on places where they can’t be killed for doing so. I doubt there’s any meaningful difference.
I’ve played on PVP games and I’ve played on PVE games and I’ve absolutely seen a meaningful difference in the levels of cooperation and antagonization between players depending on the type of game. YMMV obviously.
-
For me, I never really gave much thought to community curation or community building. I always sort of went with “this seems fun” and it either drew people who wanted to play or it didn’t.
Darkwater was my first and at a time most popular game I ran. I started it with a secret backstory I don’t think the players ever discovered. However, in the long term running of the game I made a lot of mistakes and a lot of toxicity began to seep into the community.
I would have probably called it the most successful game I ran, at one point. But now I don’t. Again, while it was popular— there were times when the players had no faith in me. And, frankly, times where I resented the players.
A lot because I wasn’t really thinking of it as community effort. I wanted to run a game telling stories, but I didn’t sit down and think about what kind of community I wanted. I allowed anyone in, and shouldn’t have.
I think if I ever dust off another project, I’ll need to sit down and consider the theme a bit more. What kind of community do I want to engage in? How can the systems I put in place draw those types of people? How can I ensure that theme drift doesn’t lead to community drift.
Tl;dr: Never in the past, but absolutely in the future.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login