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How would you devise an MMORPG to hypothetically maximize for the most rewarding and positive social interactions and bonding? Some thoughts:
You want to make untrustworthy, treacherous, "defect-opting" player behavior as easy as possible. This is paradoxical, but knowing that players always have the option to backstab you (and be greatly rewarded for it) means that players are encouraged to form deeper than surface bonds. It wouldn’t be enough that a player has the correct stat or checks the OK box, you need to know him personally to trust him and to cooperate. The calculus would be that cooperation is only the best option in the longterm, whereas defection is the best option in the short-term (and abundantly so) and with no legible reputation-meter to check a person’s prior defections (easy name / face changes).
Similar to the above, add select highly-scarce player rewards that can only be obtained through longterm social trust. Dungeons in games like WoW do not require this level of trust, because they lacks the heavy punitive cost of trusting the wrong person, as Ninja Looting isn’t as simple as the olden days.
Cooperative questing where verbal call-outs are essential. This is something FPS games do pretty well, because the encounters are always unique so verbal call-outs are the only way to defeat enemies. In modern WoW it’s mostly following a pre-determined sequence of buttons.
More team mechanisms which show on-screen that the characters are benefitting each other. An animation for giving another player where you see something handed, with a happy rewarding jingle and expressions of kindness, an ornate healing animation, an animation for repairing, animations for rescuing, animations for pulling wounded teammates… this is a trivial way for hack our primate brains to sense greater bonds.
A group singing animation for buffs. Again, very primal, and very trivial to implement (keystrokes for notes).
Un-googleable (un-AIable) quest items, where you must find a limited amount of real players with the item and bargain with them to receive it by helping them with something. An algorithm can determine which player would be most aided by your particular class / race / profession.
Quest plotlines which articulate & extol brotherhood and camaraderie. Just a clever way to make us feel stronger bonds with other players (eg while questing with them, the quest plotlines themselves are showing great cooperations etc).
This was a fun aspect of vanilla WoW which afaik has died out in modern games. It’s a fun thought experiment.
Oversimplifying the question, it really does have to be "great long term rewards are completely contingent on cooperating with others repeatedly."
Some mechanic like "if you successfully complete one dungeon with a given team, you can all choose to roll the rewards from the win into an 'investment' in the next dungeon run that will increase overall payout for the next success, and you can keep rolling those wins over until certain special items/top tier loot are available."
And then defection has to have a decent chance of severe and lasting punishment.
There is the paradox, though, when you have PvP games with Factions, the players want to fight other players, other factions, so you can't make your game too utopic or the fights won't happen, at least not as often as you'd like.
And on that note, the whole issue is that a game is (supposedly) optimizing for 'fun' for the players (and money for the devs) and players will have divergent ideas of what they find 'fun.' Many will find griefing others fun, some will find it fun to play a lone wolf, some just want to kill things. I don't know if its 'possible' to design the game from the ground up such that cooperation is consistently the most fun thing a player can do most of the time.
I've sometimes thought about game design where the factions aren't just different aesthetically or with different perks, weapons, powers, etc., but they are also different ideologically, in a way that is enforced by the game's code.
You can have the Capitalist faction where players are free to trade with their fellow players, enter contracts determining how to split loot in advance, and accumulate unlimited amounts of resources to yourself.
The Communists where there's an 'equality of outcome' mechanic so that everyone gets rewards divided up "according to their need" to equalize everyone's capabilities and wealth, and presumably a HARD cap (voted on by players) to the max wealth any one person can ever get.
Monarchists where all rewards belong to the 'King' and he bestows them as he prefers (unless deposed by an underling, I guess).
Fascists who can each control their own wealth but the wealth can be seized or a player 'executed' for the good of the faction.
Pure Democracy where every player gets a vote on every decision, and none are allowed to opt-out.
Gerontocracy where the most 'senior' players get to have outsized political and economic power.
Technocracy where players with the highest skills points in certain areas get to make all decisions regarding those areas.
Hell, have a Degenerate Gamblocracy where all loot and rewards are divided solely by games of chance.
I feel like there's probably a Minecraft mod out there that does something like this.
I would like to see this so we can measure which system is best for resource acquisition, development, and player enjoyment
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