Filtering player temperament through game design
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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.
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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
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@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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@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 strongly suspect it’s a combination of game attitude (i.e. the atmosphere you create as staff) and generous appliance of tweezers. I mean, you can’t stop people from wanting to be best/biggest/most known – and it isn’t always toxic, either. Want to have written the most words or have the largest scene count? Good, that creates activity for others on the game. Want to have fucked the most women? Not quite so great, that might just mean you’re a sex pest.
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@Kestrel said:
But I just don’t really buy into the idea that PvP/PvE inherently inspires a higher calibre of players.Higher? No. There’s nothing wrong with being competitive. Preferring PvP does not make you a lesser class of player.
Toxicity happens in any flavour of player. Some environments attract toxic people more than others, but that doesn’t mean they’re somehow less viable. It probably means they need more active moderation.
Any pronouns. Come to Chincoteague. We have ponies. http://keys.aresmush.com
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I don’t think that liking PvP in a creative writing game is necessarily about being competitive. At least for me it never has been. It’s about wanting tension and conflict to drive the narrative.
E.g., I play a witch, you play a witch-hunter. The goal here isn’t to “win”, it’s to use our characters’ different ideologies about magic/religion/sin to tell a story. I might enjoy being captured/interrogated/blackmailed or put on trial IC just as much as I’d enjoy getting away with it and winding up your religious character, so the goal is obviously not competitive so long as we both have a clear understanding that we are not our characters, and this is all just pretendy-fun-times.
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@Kestrel Competitiveness is not the only reason people might prefer a PvP game, no. But then, as long as people are not being toxic jerkasses, does it matter, from a game design point of view? It’s not the people who play nice with others that we need to worry about as admins.
Personally, I’m pretty competitive. I prefer a PvE environment, but I am unable to stop myself from looking at word counts and whatnot. And because I have a strong competitive streak, I stay the hell away from environments where I might not be able to keep it under control – for example, despite being an equestrian in real life, I have never started in a competition. Wouldn’t be fair to the horse or anyone else, having to listen to me bitch about not winning.
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I don’t think that liking PvP in a creative writing game is necessarily about being competitive.
It doesn’t have to be, but for a great many people it is.
Couple that with the extreme amounts of OOC bleed in this community and you get a very explosive brew.
Does that mean those people are bad players, or that PVE players are in some way superior? No.
But it does mean that, for me, allowing PVP in an open game with Internet Strangers is just not worth the headaches.
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