All this talk about community...

[Billie21]

[...]

I kinda agree with the problem you are raising, although I disagree with your analysis.

I don't believe that interactions should be forced, and I believe that the game in its current state already has possibilities for people to interact, as far as content and mechanism go.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the game prevents people to interact as they should.


- You cannot do quests with other people. Scratch that, you cannot even stay in a group to solo your quests. As soon as an instance comes up, you have to disband. The fact that you have to deteam to do it is antithesis to what a MMORPG is supposed to be. I've never seen this in any of the MMOs I've played before, and it blows my mind.
When you see other games doing the exact opposite, like GW2, in which you can not only invite other people into your personal quest, but they get rewarded for it (they get some karma, which can be used to purchase some gear). It doesn't have to be powerful gear, even some vanity or gadget or achievement or title would be enough.

- You cannot even communicate with people while you are in a dungeon or in a quest instance. WTH? Communication is the base of a multiplayer game. No communication, no bound possible. To restrict it is, again, antithesis to what a MMO is supposed to be.
Again, I've never seen this before, and again, other games not only allow you to sent tells and messages to people anytime anywhere, but you can even do this with people from other servers (how many people would have liked to keep in touch with players they met in DF and maybe play again together another time?).

- The lack of big pre-made activities. Many FCs were very disapointed when CT came out and didn't held up its promises for 24 man content. The game currently offers no activities for big groups to do together, except stuff like Odin, as OP pointed out.
It doesn't have to be dungeons (though that would be nice), anything would be an improvement, like some dangerous zones in open world, where some rare nodes can be found for miners, and having friends go with you make it easier to harvest. Just an example from the top of my head, there are many possibilities.
On this point, I agree with OP that some open world content is needed too.

- The Coil lockouts forcing people into statics. Again, people are prevented from doing stuff together. They have to limit the number of people they are interacting with, in order to play part of the content. How is that helping people be social and interact with each others?


In short:
You don't have to force people to interact. Start with taking off the current restrictions put on player interaction, and give the players stuff to do together, and there will be more bonding and socializing.

My first MMO was T4C, where there was litterally no group content, no FC gameplay (people formed "guilds" by creating linkshells and renaming their char to add a tag at the end), yet it did have a strong sense of community.
This is why I am convinced that it is not necessary to *force* people to interact, you only need to give them the possibility, and some incentive.