Free to Play Cast: More CCGs, Toxic Game Communities, and Atlas Reactor Ep 190

On this week's show we are totally confused by the direction Atlas Reactor is taking, we debate the CCG genre's future, and we chime in on how you can help make a game's community just a little less toxic All that and more on this week's Free to Play Cast!

Discussion Timestamps:

01:45 Trion Worlds and Atlas Reactor
15:46 Are CCGs a Bubble Ready to Burst?
26:42 How to Handle Toxic Game Communities?
38:17 Weekly Bombs (DA-Bomb / A-Bomb)
47:13 Questions and Answers of the Week

If you have submissions for the show's Weekly Bombs, have questions for the panel (nothing is off limits!), or just ideas for what you want covered you can now send them to magicman@mmobomb.com. You can also be a guest in the show, just send us why you want to host, and what topic or game you would like to cover.

Free-To-Play Cast is the official podcast (and videocast) of MMOBomb.com about free to play multiplayer online games. Free-To-Play Cast takes on the week's biggest news with plenty of opinion, weekly bombs, community feedback, guests, laughs thrown in for good measure and much more. Have fun and expect a new episode next week!

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Discussion (7)

KaiLuvsChu 7 years ago
Why do I play World of Warcraft?
Innovation
Why do I play HoTS?
Innovation
Why do I play Overwatch?
Innovation
Why would I have played the original DOTA if I was old enough to play games when it was released?
Innovation
Why do I play Hearthstone?
Innovation
Why do I not use play bullshit MMOS that have copied everything and changed nothing of like 1 or 2 things?
I don't even need to answer that.

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Hellsworth 7 years ago
Every time and I mean EVERY time i've seen competitive gaming no matter where it is, toxicity is generated, it's part of who we are. The ONLY time where i've seen something competitive not generate toxicity is when some OVERWHELMING objective is to be achieved in a "community" as a whole. So when you "pit" players vs players in an arena with no greater objective than a 20m gaming session, you're screwed (I personally nowadays call them "Heartburn Games"). But as a rule of thumb there are a few pointers you should watch that in general work well:

#1 - Don't let them WRITE/SPEAK!
Hearthstone and other CCGs don't allow it and you just have those general emotes. You can adapt that to your moba/arena shooter by doing the same and with help of map pings and with general emotes, tactics can be given at a surprising speed and efectiveness even boosting player's atention to the game instead of the rants in chat.

#2 - Don't be "punisher" be a "promoter"!
Hate generates more hate, even if you're constantly punishing someone, he knows he's going to be punished for doing so and he'll go "EFF IT I DON'T CARE!!!" and will continue to do the same because in a way people in that state of mind are entitled with reason from a certain perspective. The obvious way to deal with this is not to punish bad behavior but instead to promote good behavior (much like for example an alchoolic's 30 day badge) you can offer bigger and bigger rewards for it.

#3 "You're getting my money!"
When you are getting payed to do something people always believe that they have the right to rant about what's wrong with the service you're giving them and up to a point they are right but NEVER forget its your game (it's your house) and this balance between what you want as a dev and what people want as community MUST be achieved for it to all to work out well (yes it means to think REALLY well how will community management work), otherwise you'll either come across a nazi or your game will be total anarchy.

There you have it 3 basic rules I believe should work to atone some toxicity.

PS.: I don't think yellow/red cards work all too well or even community juri style either because ONCE you have someone "on the stand" with a little bit of flare or success ( be it a twitcher or a youtuber or even a sucessful known player) people will band up together and make a "show" out of baning/punishing that person just for the views, dispite the fact that he's inocent or guilty and I'm not even going to focus on recurring players and the feeling of "Oh it's this guy again => instaban!".

ElusiveXTreasure 7 years ago
So much to comment on.... Trion... *sigh*... I thought our corporate was bad... like monkeys with a dart board of decisions. Seriously, what was so wrong with keeping it Free to Play and just giving the box fee option for all freelancers plus like a few goodies?
__
On the CCG thing, I'm with you Magicman, I played some pretty religiously when my PC went down and all I had was my old laptop, but that's partly because that was all it could handle. Physical CCGs can house a larger group, and there's something about the excitement of getting new cards... somehow it's just not the same in digital form. Sadly I have to rebuild my Magi Nation collection due to a flood in my garage. A-bomb to flooding, at least my hyren deck was safe.
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To clarify, in Archeage, when someone steals something or kills someone, they leave behind a blood pool or footprints accordingly which can then be clicked on to report the player, with a box to describe the offense. Once someone gets enough reports, they are ported to the courtroom where there are a jury of players who can read over the offenses and cast their vote. Depending on the result, the player is either let go, or sent to ban jail for x amount of time based on the offenses. And no, they can't just log out to circumvent it. I actually really like this idea, I don't know how effective it really is, but it is a lot of fun. Additionally, the new silence system implemented in HoTS and WoW has a lot of potential to be good, but that depends on if they actually review the reports.

Deathloche 7 years ago
QotW: first offense a week ban, second two weeks ban and third offense ban for a month and I will make those players queue times super long.
A good card game that I liked was Eye of Judgement on the ps3. it used the PS Eye to scan the card and even had animations on screen for said card you used. I think it was ahead of its time as far and CCGs go. That's the gaming community for though, always screaming for something new and "innovative", yet the moment a company does that the game gets shitted on.

ASA 7 years ago
I like what archeage does by having a jury of random players to judge the player who broke the games rules and the judge gives the sentence but the judge should either be an official staff or NPC or a really high level with really good standings because a judge shouldn't be breaking the games rules. I also like how you gotta spend some time in prison if you break the rules and if you break out you get a huge debuff and anyone can try to apprehend you and the person who apprehends you and returns you to the prison gets a reward of some currency or boost the good influence. I think a prison and court jury should be implemented into more MMOS in the future. But alot of the MMO communities are terrible I was even doing good trying to help some players kill a monster in a fantasy MMO and they were getting mad at me because I wasn't using the strongest attacks I was just saving up my mana and trying to use healing skills so we wouldn't die. I also got one more idea to help the communities be less toxic. When your being a jerk you get a warning and a small debuff for 30 days and trapped in a jail for 15 days and if you break the rules again within the 15 days you get trapped in a jail for 30 days and not just a few hours and if you break out you get a huge debuff and a red flag by your name and everyone can attack you and try to catch you and return you to the jail for a bounty.

StrangeLove 7 years ago
On part CCG Magicman is talking that all CCG games are the same, yeah the core gameplay is the same. it is like for example shooters, basic movment on pc is always WASD + left mouse click to shoot but the game is totally different from another.
So if we look CCG yeah all CCG games have base mechanics, spending resources to play card, but the way it plays, cards, strategy's are very different.
I think that CCG games are going to be future, cause you dont have to spend alot of time to enjoy all point of the game.


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