Originally Posted by
Thirtyrock
I think the problem with Kokolums thesis is this: While an increased sense of community could be good for the game, it doesn't address the issues of content addressed in this thread. I was in a great guild of my old guildmates, people I'd played with from Wrath through MoP, at the beginning of Shadowlands. The guild fell apart after we got AOTC in Castle Nathria. Why? Because we were all primarily interested in raiding and the game design pushed us into A FEELING (I know it's a feeling and we technically could have downed the content without giving in, but that's not the point) of infinite grind. We all quit. The DF design brought us back. Unfortunately, a lot of people in this thread miss that infinite grind, because it gave them something to do on a daily basis that felt meaningful.
Nothing that Kokolums offers as a solution addresses that dichotomy/imbalance between content preferences.
Players have evolved and now want to play differently than in Vanilla. We want to be able to play at our own pace and that often means we don't have the patience required to show someone the ropes, especially if they're a stranger. If I queue up for a normal/heroic dungeon, I want to run the dungeon efficiently. I'm not opposed to giving pointers after a wipe or near wipe, but I'm not going to teach someone how to play their class in a random dungeon. If I queue up for a key, I want to time the key.
Now, I DON'T view GUILD groups the same way. I'm completely happy with teaching someone a dungeon or helping them with their class/rotation, assuming I'm familiar with it, and spend a lot of time with them BECAUSE I KNOW THEM. I'm personally willing to do this.
I anticipate that Kokolums would suggest that smaller servers, etc., would promote this sort of behavior, and they truly might incentivize me to do more of it, but that's because I'm already a fairly social player. Players who don't WANT to be social will either ignore the incentives or feel FORCED into those behaviors and types of groups despite their preferences. These players will most likely quit, because they didn't sign up for that type of gameplay in the first place. This is a situation where the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze, since you either overtune the rewards and players quit, or you spend a lot of effort designing helper/social systems that the majority of the player base ignore.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you could offer relatively minor incentives, like transmog, open-world and leveling buffs, helper-io scores, and the like and players would gradually opt in, because they find they enjoy the game more by being more social, but I doubt it. I think players who want that kind of social interaction can get it by joining active guilds that support that type of thing and players who DON'T want it opt out/only join guilds for the reduced hearthstone cooldown.