MischiefSC, on 27 January 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:
I appreciate that you're concerned. I'd point you to the link at the top of my post called 'confirmation bias'. If you VOIP, almost everyone you know voips. Here are where I got the associated statistics:
First, there's the fact that group drops (which would be the only ones to use teamspeak) can't even fill servers to play with each other they are such a small percentage of players. That's probably the easiest and clearest indication of a lack of VOIP use.
Second, there's the
actual population breakdown of gamers. Only a tiny percentage play multiplayer games (social interaction games) at all.
Ok first off, your using statistics from an article that includes statistics from console, hand held, PC, et al types of gaming, so really, your premise is flawed from the beginning. More to follow, don't get impatient.
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As anecdotal evidence, even games designed for MP and sold as MP find that few players actually want MP at all.
Call of Duty, surprisingly enough.
Diablo 3 as well.
Again, you're using statistics and assumptions made from two OTHER video games. CoD and D3 respectively started as primarily single player games with some limited multiplayer capability. This causes your premise again to be flawed.
MWO, at its root and in spite of various digital iterations over the past 30 years, was a table top game you played with a community. I will admit to assuming that the vast majority of players in this game are somewhere near 40 years of age and beyond, and have history playing this game, interacting with other people, but that assumption is based off the various conversations I've had on the various team speak servers (there's PLENTY of them out there), and just perusing the various public TS servers listed in use by various MWO users, and seeing the member counts of the various MERC groups out there with their own private TS, Vent, and C3 servers, the nightly VOIP user base well into the multiple thousands.
Not knowing how much the user base of this game grew after it went "open BETA", but judging by how the number of, and size of merc groups has grown, I can only guess that the use of VOIP also grew by the same factor.
That's what leads me to believe that in fact the majority, well over 50% of the users playing this game are in fact, using VOIP and that it's only the recalcitrant anti-social few that refuse to do so, not including that small percentage of merc group members who are just pugging to grind some exp, try out a new customization, or waiting for a few more of their friends to come on line.
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It's not an opinion but a statistical fact that most people who play games only about 16% play social games with any frequency at all (more than a couple hours a week). This translates directly into how many people want to play the social aspect of games like MWO. Again, reference back to the lack of group drops to fill servers.
I'm sorry, point it out again, the links you listed, none of them had any server statistics for MWO that I could see. You see, I don't see MWO as equivelant to CoD, TF2, or D3. To me MWO will be more along the lines of EQ, WoW, GuildWars, where once complete will be designed around community play. Yes, absolutely it's possible to play all of these games as single, lone wolf, player BUT to get the full experience you're going to need to be part of a group as there will end up being content that you just can't access.
In your example games, CoD and D3, there's no such 'community' requirement to access all the content. If you don't need the cooperation of 70 other people to accomplish an 'epic level' raid, why go through the effort? Working and getting along with others requires effort. It's not always easy to cooperate and it's definitely not easy to effectively communicate to others.
In my opinion some of the laziest players are those that are the Lone Wolves. They become so embittered by their inability to get into a group they stop trying and start demonizing those that CAN and DO cooperate and play well with others.
Now, when it comes to MWO most of us have that original experience, sitting around the table with our friends, moving figurines about a map, rolling dice, all intently waiting for the day that we could play this game on our computers, and then when we got those, we wanted to play them with our friends together. Consider that the first iterations of online BattleTech are, at the earlies, GEnie Net's version derived from Activision Mechwarrior (circa 1990?), and then later, again by Activision NetMech (circa 1992, sold in 8 player packs, for use with Mechwarrior 2), and again you can see the COMMUNITY being built as far back as then, AND STILL the group of hardcore players playing table top either in their homes or the local comic stores.
Your first article, and the CoD and D3 links really don't factor in, or consider pre-existing gaming communities and they won't because that requires a lot more effort to ferret out.
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I'd love to see some hard specifics released by PGI on how many people drop in groups vs pugging but it's not a hard metric to estimate. Given that less than half the time even in peak hours do even one of the two sides in a match have a group drop that's a generous estimate. In off-peak hours it's almost exclusively pugs. Unless you're saying that pugs are somehow organizing on teamspeak?
First off that's an assumption you're making. Generally EVERY drop I have has at least one, if not 2 pre-made groups dropping. I've been in drops where there's been 2 different 4 man teams, 1 3 man team, and 2 2 man teams.
It's the afore mentioned demonizing of the group player that has silenced a lot of people from admitting to it.
I know that when I'm dropping with my merc group and I'm in a 4 man team, I'll announce it. When I do, THEN I'll see responses from other pre-mades indicating their own merc group. However, a few times those nights, there will be some loud mouth who gets angry about the 'spam', and starts spouting off. Annoying, but anyone wanting to avoid the 'drama' invoked by pug trolls will typically stay silent about their pre-made status.
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This response is exactly why I posted the links to confirmation bias, false consensus and cognitive bias at the begining of my post as it implies all three. I don't disagree at all that teamspeak is a great tool for those who want to use it and can use it. That's utterly irrelevant to who will use it or want to use it.
I just wish your links were relevant. They're not. One is taking statistics that are too broad and generalized to be of any use, and the others are specific to games that have ZERO history of actual player community prior to their being published, and are out of genre anyway. D3 and CoD are decidedly NOT MMORPG with an aspect of COMMUNITY warfare.
In this game if we're to believe the marketing there will be persistance in the activity so that it's quite possible for those claiming Davion affiliation to coordinate efforts to take over the rest of the galaxy (re: Guildwars). Neither D3, and CoD as far as I can recall have any sort of persistance. What you 'accomplish' in those games, as soon as you log off, is undone by the game mechanism itself. In MWO, from what I understand it will be if your House team or merc group takes over a planet, unless some other House team or merc group comes in, it's still yours, and even if they do take it, you will be able to attempt to take it back.
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Given that, once again, group drops can't even fill enough matches to play with each other without pugs are you saying that everyone who doesn't choose to do so just shouldn't play? If that's your perception then why not just have groups (which are, again, the only people who would use teamspeak) drop in matches with other groups? Because my understanding is that they are such a small percentage of the player population that, again, they can't actually fill matches with each other.
Can you get more specific about what you mean about "group drops can't even fill enough matches to play with each other without pugs"? I don't see that. Trust me, if PGI enabled a play mode where you could select 'pre-made group only' (other than the incompletely implemented 8 man group mode) vs. single player pug only mode, I'm sure you'd see things very different.
Keep in mind, this game has NEVER (before the 8 man group mode) ever had as part of its mechanic a means to ensure that pre-mades only dropped with pre-mades. The match-maker did its best to find balance the mech classes between to 8 man groups and that was it.
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In terms of reading for comprehension, I'd politely ask you to re-read my post and the links I posted. Given the clear bias of your position you most likely play in groups with teamspeak and thus both
A) assume that most other people do as well
and
B ) assume that if everyone else just say things as you did or did things like you did everyone would feel about it like you do.
No it's based on anecdotal evidence of actually visiting public VOIP servers, seeing the significant number of merc groups, and in game experience. I don't read non-existant facts into articles that aren't even specific to the game we're talking about. I could do the same sort of absurd logical leap and suggest that because people all own cell phones, OF COURSE, all people will be using VOIP because it's just like using a cell phone, and because they still own cell phones while playing games they must also be using VOIP while playing those game.
I won't, I'm not like you, taking 2 and 2, putting them together and somehow saying it equals avacado.
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If that were true than the world would be a different place. Political parties, religions, sects within individual religions, flavors of ice cream and an endless list of other examples show that people like and enjoy different things and enjoy things in different ways. Teamspeak, dropping with a group, playing socially, these are all examples.
If your attitude is that people who don't want to use teamspeak or drop with a group shouldn't play and should be discouraged from playing if they refuse to do so then, well, you're back to the original issue -
Why not just have groups drop with groups? Not enough of them to actually fill regular games.
My issue is that an obvious minority, definitely loud, but nonetheless a minority is trying to enforce its wants and needs over the majority, demanding that THEY be catered to because they have rights, and really EVERYONE else is actually just like them just not saying so. No actually the reality is you're in the minority, but to shut you up a bit we'll try and give in on this one thing. The problem is that's rewarding the minority for bad behavior so they only increase their volume and antics trying to get more.
It's better to just enforce a 'shut the **** up' with a symbolic hard slap to the face and let them know that this is how it is and they can either get with a group and learn to use a VOIP program, or shut up about pre-mades and VOIP, and live with the difficulties.
Edited by Dimento Graven, 28 January 2013 - 02:25 PM.
7
what I see is....
It only takes 2 together to change the outcome and the experience of the game for you.
