I’ve had random people whisper me to compliment my character’s hat and ask where did I get the cosmetic in Elder Scrolls Online. To be fair, it was a pretty silly hat.
If they look like there just roaming around, emoting, roll-playing, playing with random items/spells or generally fucking around; there likely feeling social and may respond but each MMO has a different vibe to it. Look for people loudly drawing attention in cites. Wow players tend to group up but not say anything, There is mechanical communication(IE: everyone is in perfect sync in a group activity) but that has a good chance of breaking down at the first sign of trouble. I can’t say much A lot of it is bar level interaction, you hang out for 30 minutes, do your dungeon and move on. If you get along with some one during an activity, send a friend request and they may accept or ignore it, sometime they may sit on it for a bit.
There is a lot of toxicity or other people you will just not , block and move on if its a problem to you, report if it’s still a problem after that. You will never win an argument on the internet. Being a weirdo is normal, and awkward interactions will be common, as that guy has a good chance of being from some country you cant find on the map(or your government may have literally bombed there family yesterday). Noting more honest than 2 randos finding out there at war with each other after spending 2 hours having fun.
a lot of toxicity or other people you I think that’s probably the biggest barrier to being social. not wanting to deal with toxic players is a huge thing from what I have read (Lemmy, Reddit, etc.)
thank you for this, simple but sounds effective. i’ll have to go find the player in T&L that was running around as turkey and asked they pulled that off 🤣
As with nearly everything in astronomic optics, it’s named after people associated with its creation. Robert Jones and Thomas Bird are the two in this case. Here’s a thread on Cloudy nights with good info.
my fav from that thread (and i propose to make this a copy pasta):
My entire gripe around these scopes is the instruments being offered today, the sub-aperture lens arrangement is not doing any corrections. The lens is a straight up Barlow, nothing more.
If you look at the Bird-Jones design, the design is very specific in the design of both the primary & correcting lens. This means that both elements need to be not only matched but also well manufactured in order to work as designed. When you then look at the few true Bird-Jones instruments that were manufactured, such as the Tasco 8V (which was manufactured by Vixen), the Celestron G8-N and one other (escapes my mind right now but I’ll add it when I remember), these scopes were not cheap but pushing flagship status for these brands & supplied with swish mounts. And none of these scopes can be readily collimated by the end user as the alignment of the optics is so precise it is done in-factory. The 8V alone still maintains almost cult status.
The Bird-Jones design is not without its own shortcomings. It is not perfect without aberration. It is important to remember the ideas behind its design, to provide a short tube OTA option with what was able to be readily manufactured at the time, that being good spherical mirrors.
What is made today is a far cry from what a Bird-Jones offers performance wise. Made cheap with a poor spherical primary & that they are totally collimateable by the end user shows these are not a precision scope. Add to this that not a single Bird-Jones instrument is to be found anywhere else besides these cheap things. Doesn’t this say something?
These cheap instruments, really all cheap instruments are a double edge sword. They make astro more accessible, yes, but their poor quality ends up killing off more people’s enthusiasm for astro than firing it up. Add to this that for many novices if the mount is not a complicated equatorial one then it isn’t an astronomical instrument, & the difficult manner of using a wobble-tron mount & tripod with the mental gymnastics required just too much for most people who buy these and just give up way too soon.
Yes, there will be a few people who will be able to make these scopes work, being all they can afford, and all power to them. I will support such persons. But these are very few compared to the overwhelming number of people who just give up after the poor experience they get from these instruments. Too them astro is just all too hard, and mainly because of a poor instrument.
Call these cheap instruments what they are, a barlowed Newtonian.
Tak, był w jakimś paradokumencie, z dekadę temu, chyba na TVNie, nie pamiętam, czy “Dlaczego ja?”, ale może tak – skłoting pokazany z patologicznej strony.
im not social but once I got my chats under control I would joke and clown around on them. Well as well as give advice or do actualy game related talk. To me its sorta like a party and I was more likely to engage socially when I was just hanging for one reason or another and more likely to talk business when the action took place. Like champions had these whole zone super enemies called cosmics that popped every four hours and if you came last minute you would likely get locked out of the full zone and they were impossible to beat below a certain threshold of players. so like you would hang out ten or twenty minutes before and screw around. talk and emotes and whatnot.
when you say got my chats under control does that mean the different types: party vs. world. vs whispers, etc.? that is an area that’s still a little confusing. plus i need to get better at using a controller to chat. thanks for the comments around not being a last minute type player for big events, i’ll keep that in mind.
when i see others doing missions (especially in TFD), i usualy get right in an start helping, even if i did the mission already. i figure worst case, it’s just more practice for me 😀
I’ve played WoW basically since it ever came out like 19/20 years ago, just after Guild Wars 1 and among many other MMOs for shorter times. And communication in MMORPGs has definitely been a lot better back in the days, or at least felt more engaged than it does now. Now it’s often been difficult to get people to talk, even after like a good dungeon run people will often just leave without having said an entire word the entire dungeon. It’s not as chatty as it used to be back in the days, and a lot of people are the toxic type that only respond when something goes wrong.
I think your best bet would be to join guilds in these games. I used to be in great guilds as well, where everyone could talk to each other in guild chat, but it kinda devolved into an alternative looking-for-group chat over the years since most guilds just invite anyone to get the guild bonusses and have easier access to people wanting to do raids and dungeons and stuff.
Guilds often don’t feel like the band of friends they used to be, and more like a collection of people doing the same type of content. It’s like most players just treat MMO games like a second job, they log in, do their chores, and log off again. But you can get lucky and run into a great guild that’s more casual, it heavily depends on the game and servers though.
In the past years I found that local chat is mostly used by roleplayers, WoW has a few servers where a lot of roleplayers flock to, and it really helped make the world feel alive as well. As for everyday non-RP chat, it just feels like most MMO games turned into a singleplayer game where you run around doing your own thing, with a lot of other people that are also playing their own game.
I do think that free-to-play games are worse when it comes to communication though, since anyone can hop in, and it often attracts the most toxic entitled people. The paywall with games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy Online definitely help filter out the majority of them though.
On a side note, I often play shooters as well. And I really hated voice chat in basically all of them, since most of them were just kids screaming vile things about mothers and what not, so I just ended up turning it off. Eventually I started playing Squad, which is a more serious Battlefield type of game with voice chat that attracts a more mature audience. At first I was a bit hesitant to use voice chat at all, but now I absolutely love talking with random players and couldn’t imagine the game without voice chat, most fun I’ve had with complete strangers in any game.
Sometimes it’s just a step to get over, and it gets easier. It’s worth giving it a shot in the games you play, but I would say it’s more likely to have a better experience outside of free-to-play games since there’s a lower chance of running into toxic players ruining the vibe.
MMO games turned into a singleplayer game sort of the vibe i get now but, your other advice makes sense. again, i think the guild thing is interesting but, didn’t want it to turn into a job. the free vs. played is an interesting comment. as i progress, i’ll see how that turns out.
the thing with voice chat, TBH, is i’m not sure if i’m hearing people or if it’s “in game stuff”. in TFD the other night i hear “i need help” but i had no way of knowing if it was a person saying it or some in game thing. i’ll have to pay more attention to that.
appreciate your perspective as a long time MMORGP player, this was helpful.
For FFXIV, specifically, if you are looking to add some friends I’d say start by hanging out one of the three starting cities (Gridania, Limsa, Ul’Dah) near the Aetherytes. Often people are just hanging and chatting some there. Limsa, on my server at least, seems to just be filled with people all the time hanging out. And you may even see some open calls for people to join Free Companies (Guilds). Those people are actively looking for new blood, so you could start up a discussion with them and see if their group is something you’d like to join. By doing so you may be able to get several friends pretty quick that way. Just remember that you owe nothing to those folks, and if the free company vibe doesn’t feel right once you get in, then bounce.
But commenting on someone’s look is fine, too! People work hard to collect or craft certain pieces of gear and dye them to make their character the way they want so if you notice something cool chances are they will be happy to talk about it.
There was one time last year during a Live Letter (this is a live streamed event the producers of the game do a few times a year) I went to Limsa and said to anyone who could hear it that I’d be “over by [a specific bench] to discuss the Live Letter” and lots of people I didn’t know gathered around and we all had a fun chat about the event as it streamed.
Or even if you have questions, say them out loud in a crowded space and chances are someone will help. FF14 is notorious for people NOT being trash, so most often you’ll find helpers before finding jerks.
And I promise that you can’t out-weirdo the weirdos that run around pretty much any game, so try to not worry about that.
appreciate the advice on getting conversations started. i think i’ll work up the nerve to give that a try in the near future. also, thank you for you can’t out-weirdo… that makes it easier to handle 😀
I am an ultimate raider in FFXIV. If I am traveling around, ask away. One of the greatest things about our community is there a bunch of people that love to help and teach. But you have to be honest about where you are at. If you don’t know, say something. But if you pretend to be further ahead and people are expecting to beat something, it will be awkward. But that’s raiding. The rest is just finding what you like about it. There are usually tons of discord channels that helps you find what you are interested in.
It’s just a basic courtesy. You will get far more people willing to help by saying “I don’t know this, how do I [enter whatever you need to know]” good luck out there!
Give all of those things a try. None of them are “wrong”. Experiment and see what works best with the type of people you want to spend time with. Just don’t get discouraged if your success rate is low (some people just won’t be interested) and respect people’s decisions if they choose to ignore you.
You should take a look at this YouTube documentary by Folding Ideas which addresses the shift in behaviours regarding MMORPGs: youtu.be/BKP1I7IocYU?si=ed6-L2QZf40GbEwA
thank you for the link! i will set aside some time tonight to check it out. i can only imagine the number of different mindsets / attitudes and such in a single game, let alone different games.
edit 2024/11/17 - watched this last night and it was great! I don’t know a lot about WoW, but it was interesting all the same. i was struck by how much research was done against the game. also, how the player influencing the game and vice versa happened over time. the comments on how players reacted to those less skilled was interesting. for me it gives a different perspective on interactions. again, thank you!!
Nexus mods isn’t shady, they inform user regarding data breach. They provide mods and have been serving mods ever since pre 2010 I believe (registered myself on that site back in 2014 ish).
Maybe slightly off-topic, I recommend to use Viva New Vegas guide as based on my testing the game is more stable and suitable base for modding up your New Vegas install, however also check out every mods you are going to install especially older mods pre-2018 (for me) as they sometime aren’t optimized which may makes unstable issue with the game. Hope you enjoy the New Vegas!
bin.pol.social
Aktywne