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What is fair to compensate players for taking time to group?
Ihmotepp
Member Posts: 14,495
When you group, it takes time. That's why solo players complain about "forced" grouping, they know how much time it takes and they say they are "casual" and don't have time to group.
When you group, you have to first find a group. Then, group members have to travel to you, or you travel to them. Sometimes you travel to find a group, and by the time you get there, the group has broken up. You have to spend time talking, to determine what each person will do in the group, where will you go, what quest should you do, etc. You have to wait for members that are link dead, Bio breaks, let the dog in, check on the kids, get another beer, etc. Other group members have to buy gear, repair, sell gear, learn spells, etc., etc.
So you can see, forming a group, and staying in a group is time consuming. All those things listed above can be skipped by the solo player. While the group is doing these things, the solo player is grinding away, either on mobs or quest grinding.
Unless the group is compensated for all the extra time it takes to group, they're being penalized for grouping.
So what do you think is fair to compensate grouping for the time involved? Nothing, 5%, 10% extra xp for a group? 50%? More?
I'm not going to do a poll, because there are to many options. Just say what you think is fair, anything from no xp bonus at all, to 100% xp bonus for grouping. If it were a skill system, then the skills would raise faster for grouping, or not depending on your decision.
Comments
I think, since there are more people when your in a group and you are killing faster/more, that it pretty much evens out and there should not be a bonus.
Nothing for me, as long as group XP is much better than solo XP. I like making groups, I enjoy it.
If you have to "compensate" players for grouping or else they won't do it, that means that players don't like grouping in your game. Therefore, they should not be pushed to group, as that deters them from having fun, and so should not be compensated for grouping at all.
If you want players to group in your game, then design your game such that it is fun for players to group. That should, in itself, be adequate to get them to group.
A critical part of this is making it easy to get a group. Don't put artificial restrictions in the way of players who might otherwise be inclined to group. Don't say, you can't group with each other because you're stuck on different servers, or because you're on opposite sides of the game world and it will take 15 minutes to fix that, or because you don't have a suitable class distribution, or the various other needless obstructions to grouping.
A common mistake that game designers make that is lethal to quality gameplay is to say simultaneously
1. You have to group, or are strongly encouraged by game mechanics to do so, and
2. You cannot group, because you cannot get people together to group with.
That combination basically says, you cannot play this game. That is a terrible thing to do from a game design perspective.
But you contradict yourself. If grouping gives far more experience than soloing, then that is in itself compensation for grouping, unless perhaps experience doesn't matter.
But you contradict yourself. If grouping gives far more experience than soloing, then that is in itself compensation for grouping, unless perhaps experience doesn't matter.
Yes of course and that's fine for me. I mean I don't want an additional bonus, just the normal XP bonus and higher killrate is fine. The act of just forming a group doesn't need a bonus for me.
The XP bonus should be 200-300% imo, depending on the content etc. But this all depends on the game and the killrate.
You are saying that you want grouping to give a really big experience bonus, and then saying that it don't want it to have a bonus at all. Make up your mind.
You are saying that you want grouping to give a really big experience bonus, and then saying that it don't want it to have a bonus at all. Make up your mind.
They're trying to say if there's no penalty for the group that you get the same exp from killing a mob as if you were solo killing that mob. Like that every player gets 100 exp in a group of 5 as apposed to it being split up and everyone getting 20 exp from one mob killed in a group of 5.
You are saying that you want grouping to give a really big experience bonus, and then saying that it don't want it to have a bonus at all. Make up your mind.
They're trying to say if there's no penalty for the group that you get the same exp from killing a mob as if you were solo killing that mob. Like that every player gets 100 exp in a group of 5 as apposed to it being split up and everyone getting 20 exp from one mob killed in a group of 5.
Thank you.
Well I think the first step would be to make grouping much easier, a good global LFG system where players can look up and join groups quickly, the ability to form open groups that people can just join, and enough fast travel to get to places quickly to join up.
As for conpensation I see no need to add any bonus, if grouping can be done easily and if there are fun things in the game that having a group would make easier, like PQs and dungeons then people will group. The inherent bonus a group gives the players are numbers and effeciency.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
You are saying that you want grouping to give a really big experience bonus, and then saying that it don't want it to have a bonus at all. Make up your mind.
They're trying to say if there's no penalty for the group that you get the same exp from killing a mob as if you were solo killing that mob. Like that every player gets 100 exp in a group of 5 as apposed to it being split up and everyone getting 20 exp from one mob killed in a group of 5.
Thank you.
No Problem.
lol Misunderstandings suck.
I personally don' t think raising xp at any Percentage would increase the desire to group more. You still have the same problems the op mentioned. Plus I think people would feel forced into grouping which would just turn people off of it.
I think the best way to encourage grouping is combination of things:
First the content should be challenging and rewarding for everyone in the group. Rewarding meaning everyone gets something from the bosses. Not just a luck of the draw.
Second. everyone should have skills or abilities that only unlock while grouped but don't work soloing. For example.
Fighters get abilities that would allow them to lock them selves in place so no or limited knockdowns or tosses, Abilities for extra hits that they can't use while soloing.
Rogues disarm or spot trap abilities while grouped that can't be used solo.
Bards. Actually sing songs that can charm creatures while grouped, but not solo.
Mage's that have abilities unlock arcane tomes which increase damage or power flow while grouped but not solo.
Healers that can summon mystic beings to give benefits to the group or do extra damage that can't be summoned solo.
These are just a couple of ideas I think would encourage grouping. I could probably come up with other abilities for classes or skills that could be used, but i"m tired, and the old think tank is out of gas.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Splitting a larger proportion of Experiance per kill works IE with two people you split 110% of the experiance, with 10 people you split 200% of the experiance. So it would be 55% to player or 20% per player per kill in that order.
It's actually not as big as an advantage as you'd think.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
This guy wins, hands down. lol
anything is fair. All of this is completely determined by what type of game you want to have. You will find that the more advantage grouping has in a game the less proclaimed "soloers" there are in your game. As much as they like to say they don't have time for groups the majority of people calling themselves soloers only solo because it is much faster. All the solo content in the Wow couldn't stop it from being a grouping game if there was an xp bonus for being in a group (there isnt). People will play whats easiest and fastest so the extra exp added to groups should be used to balance out how much grouping versus soloing you want in your game.
The wow example is why people misunderstand you when you say you dont want an advantage for grouping but want the extra exp. You think all games have extra exp for grouping when they don't just clearin that up a little more.
You would have to make it so you only got the xp if you were near the kill, or it would give rise to the "solo groups" of the old swg. Where you just grouped for the bonus xp, then went out and solo'ed. I actually grew to like it, you got all the benefits of grouping, without any waiting or making people wait. Unfortunately what we were soloing were basically kill 20 rat missions over and over. Probably why we wanted to solo them.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Why not take the problem and solve it head on like ArenaNet did with Guild Wars. No one else but you and maybe two other people need to do quest XYZ but you need at least two healers? No problem! Just load up either two AI-controlled healer henchmen that are customized for the campaign you're playing in or load up your own custom healer henchmen with handpicked skills and gear. That way, you're in town for maybe 5 minutes at most and can continue on with the atoryline rather than having to wait another 5,10,15 minutes or longer to find players using the professions that you need.
I will admit the downside to this is that after playing GW for 4 years, you get too used to it. Now when I try other MMO's and get into the parts where you need a party to continue, that's when I usually quit. 99.9% of the time, it's due to the frustration of "LFG!".
There are two common reasons why people who like grouping will object to that. The first is that a large fraction of players wants things skewed to favor the way they play. Usually they won't admit it, but any argument of the form "if this doesn't give good rewards, people won't do it" is an admission that that's what they're after. People who like group content typically want group content to be essential or at least greatly beneficial as a way to get stronger. The same statement applies if you replace "group" by "solo", "raid", "PvP", "crafting", or a variety of other things.
The more reasonable objection is that if players don't have to group for a game, then many--and likely most--won't. The reason this is a problem is that if 80% of the people with whom you could potentially group do not want to group with anyone, at all, ever, then they're not going to want to group with you. That makes it harder for people who want to group to actually find a group.
That said, there are a number of grouping innovations that Guild Wars did bring that I'd like to see repeated elsewhere, even without making it so that players can do everything with only AI party members.
1. Map travel. Once you find people that will group with you, then can warp to the mission in a few clicks. There's no need to sit and wait half an hour for someone to run there. It's possible to do this with something far shy of the full map travel system, of course; simply allowing one group member to warp to another would suffice.
2. No separate servers. If you want to do a mission, and someone else wants to do the same mission, then you can group with him. If the two of you don't speak a common language, it's probably not a good idea to group with him, but that's the only real barrier. It isn't a case of, you're on one server and he's on another, as with so many other games.
3. Clearly delineated missions. If you want to do Dzagonur Bastion and someone else also wants to do Dzagonur Bastion, then you both want to do the same thing. The only real separation could be if one person wants easy mode and another wants hard mode. It's not like with some other games where there might be five different quests in a dungeon, and one person wants to do one quest in one part of the dungeon, while a different person wants a different quest in a different part of the dungeon.
4. Insignificant level and gear differences. In Guild Wars, nearly everyone is level 20 with essentially perfect gear, which is the appropriate level for nearly all of the content. In many other games, if you want to group with someone who is 20 levels different from you, you really can't. It is possible to mitigate this in some games, but it does require someone to step away from doing the content appropriate to his level, and likely stop leveling his character as normal.
5. Short time requirements. If you've got an hour left to play and someone offers you a spot in a three hour raid, you probably have to turn it down rather than bailing an hour in. In Guild Wars, one hour is enough to do just about any mission in the game, with Riverside Province hard mode as the only real exception.
6. Henchmen and heroes. This doesn't have to turn into a solo game the way that Guild Wars can. Limiting players to one henchman/hero per player would mean that you still need at least four genuine players for a group, while retaining the advantage that you can fill in whatever classes are missing with heroes.
On this last point, some other games in development have alternative ways to get around the bad class distribution problem. In The Chronicles of Spellborn, every class is a hybrid. Without the whole healer/tank/damage dealer partition, every possible class distribution should theoretically be viable. DC Universe Online is apparently going to let players use stances that let a given player switch between being a healer, tank, or damage dealer on a given character. Thus, if you need six players for a mission, you can get six arbitrary people, and then work out among yourselves who will heal, who will tank, and so forth.
Players don't need compensation for the grouping mechanism, but they do need the ability to do something productive while they are waiting for their group. Most games move grouping opportunities further and further away from the city or safe zones as the game progresses, but the game mechanics do not allow players do either do or prepare for solo play near the group.
What you get is players waiting near the grouping places doing nothing, because if they brought something to do it would hinder their group. On the other hand, there are players sitting in near the safe zones or cities doing something productive and waiting for a group, but this makes the grouping process take longer because they must then travel to the grouping area.
I think the extra experience or loot is enough, but make sure that the game allows players to do something productive while they wait.
Like others have said, I think that a small experience boost would be appropiate and as always, the phat lootz.
In the context of what I played in City of Heroes, that was, in the past at least, another thing that puts me off grouping. One reason I mainly soloed (there are several) is that in CoH you do get more XP for grouping, since you get more and higher level mobs in missions. Since I want to play as many missions as possible before I pass their level, I didn't want to go up levels too quickly. Thankfully these days it's possible to go back and play missions of lower levels, which solves this to an extent.
Granted, I haven't played other MMO's where the missions were as interesting to me as in CoH, in terms of story, so more XP may be an okay compensation. Still, if fast levelling is good it means the game isn't great fun for soloers in the first place, assuming the end game is mostly for groups.
BTW, I may be unusual in this respect. A lot of people do want to go up quickly.
Personally I could care less. No amount of xp bonus or loot bonus is going to compensate me for my time. The only reward one can hope for is the possibility of meeting new friends and the occasional piece of "phat lewt".
I'm sorry if I missed someone else saying it but...
Asheron's Call I believe since released has had an xp sharing system when you're grouped with people that offers bonuses based on how many people are in your group.
I can't find specific charts right now but it was something like.
1 Person = 100% xp
2 People = 50% xp each
3 People = 40% xp each
from there is keeps giving extra percents in relation to people to the point of having a full group of 9 people awarded something like 25% xp of each mob killed to each person.
This doesn't really sound like a lot, but in Asheron's Call you could have 9 people spread thoughtout one dungoen each killing on their own adding massive amounts of xp to the pool.
Group was the only way to go in that game if you wanted to level fast.
Well said.
I can't say that I would expect anything nor would I really want anything extra for grouping. I'm not sure why a player would need to feel like they need to be compensated for playing a game even if it requires waiting around for a bit to put together a group? MMO's are social games and not every minute of an MMO is designed to be 'go go go'.
Maybe I just read the OP wrong and took it the wrong way so I apologize in advance. (not trolling)
https://www.youtube.com/user/NemsGaming
Sorry but in this Solo era of MMOs you have to give a bonus to grouping ... a nice bonus or else we will continue the trend to Massive solo online games. its either that or make where people would want to group do it like back in the day where regaining your health/power wouldn't be extremely quick. Maybe not like EQ where you sat for 15 minutes but like DAOC where it could take you a minute or two to regain your health after ONE fight.
this way grouping is actually faster at gaining exp than soloing. thats why people grouped back in the day not because of some silly bonus. in daoc if you were lucky you could kill an even con mob and get ok exp. the draw back was the mob took you down to 25% health or so and to get back to full health it took a while. So people grouped up to fight higher con mobs. these mobs didnt have a bonus, they were about the same exp that you would get from an orange con mob. but you could kill them faster and you had no downtime.
Do you soloers want them to add downtime to the games again? if not xp/loot bonuses are the way to go .
solo = 100%
duo = 70%
trio = 60%
and so on and so forth.
oh and also dont give me this BS that because groups kill faster the exp is equal. that would work if there was an endless supply of grouped mobs with no respawn timers. Solo kills one mobs a group has to kill 6, not bad but a soloer kills 10 mobs (easily attainable) a group of 6 has to chain kill 60 mobs (not that easy to find).
I think that compensation doesn't really solve the problem. Someone who plays short sessions and waiting for a group means a wasted session will gain nothing from a added XP to grouping.
The problem should be solved from the root. Provide mechanisms to move the player to the group's location, to suspend solo instances and resume them after the group mission is finished, that kind of thing. I don't think there's a magic solution that will work for everything, but reducing some of the problems associated with grouping should help.