This has been on my mind lately. In two of the games I've been most engrossed in, I notice one or more sides turn into toxic cesspools that hurt the gaming experience for others.
In the most recent game, based on Fallout: New Vegas, across three iterations, the Caesar's Legion faction, Brotherhood of Steel, Raider, and Enclave factions often turned into griefing, murderbone, or toxic via enslavement and points of contention for the other factions (NCR, Vault, Civilian, other), who often had to bend against them or fight them off on and on. One iteration of the game has basically played with the idea of scrapping a lot of factions just to make up for it.
In another game, far older, a Space MMO, there originally was one faction, the Alliance, which was much like the Federation of Star Trek. Everyone was either an Alliance Starfleet member or civilian. Then as the game went on, other factions were opened up, and that included a 'Klingon' faction (Imperial Lizards) and a 'Romulan' faction (Religious Space Elves) and then a breakaway faction related to the Alliance (angry space fish). The 'Romulans' didn't do much, to my knowledge, but the Klingons and Angry Space Fish wreaked absolute havoc on the Alliance, and the game's chemistry was so wonky that there were cases of prisoners being dropped on cryonic worlds - where they could never die but never awake - and being left there; outside the reach of rescue or knowledge. The Alliance was sapped of manpower and broken up to the point the game finally shuttered.
Is it due to the intrinsic and competitive nature of these factions? The Fallout game - Caesar's Legion are misogynic slavers, raiders are murderous drugged up criminals, the Enclave is a 'Pure-Human' supremacist group, the Brotherhood is elitist technological fetishists. The Space game had Lizard-Klingons, though the wrath of the Angry Space Fish, I could never discern. None of these people make for fair-competition good neighbors.
Both of games were very niche, maybe less than 2000 players ever overall. Does that factor into it? Or does it not happen in bigger games: say, like, Planetside or WoW with their factions?
Would more active moderation help/had helped?
Or am I just a big softy on the losing sides?
In the most recent game, based on Fallout: New Vegas, across three iterations, the Caesar's Legion faction, Brotherhood of Steel, Raider, and Enclave factions often turned into griefing, murderbone, or toxic via enslavement and points of contention for the other factions (NCR, Vault, Civilian, other), who often had to bend against them or fight them off on and on. One iteration of the game has basically played with the idea of scrapping a lot of factions just to make up for it.
In another game, far older, a Space MMO, there originally was one faction, the Alliance, which was much like the Federation of Star Trek. Everyone was either an Alliance Starfleet member or civilian. Then as the game went on, other factions were opened up, and that included a 'Klingon' faction (Imperial Lizards) and a 'Romulan' faction (Religious Space Elves) and then a breakaway faction related to the Alliance (angry space fish). The 'Romulans' didn't do much, to my knowledge, but the Klingons and Angry Space Fish wreaked absolute havoc on the Alliance, and the game's chemistry was so wonky that there were cases of prisoners being dropped on cryonic worlds - where they could never die but never awake - and being left there; outside the reach of rescue or knowledge. The Alliance was sapped of manpower and broken up to the point the game finally shuttered.
Is it due to the intrinsic and competitive nature of these factions? The Fallout game - Caesar's Legion are misogynic slavers, raiders are murderous drugged up criminals, the Enclave is a 'Pure-Human' supremacist group, the Brotherhood is elitist technological fetishists. The Space game had Lizard-Klingons, though the wrath of the Angry Space Fish, I could never discern. None of these people make for fair-competition good neighbors.
Both of games were very niche, maybe less than 2000 players ever overall. Does that factor into it? Or does it not happen in bigger games: say, like, Planetside or WoW with their factions?
Would more active moderation help/had helped?
Or am I just a big softy on the losing sides?
