Some actually prefer to solo. Tho it sorta beats me why they come to a MMO in the first place, but so what.
Oh god, not this again! Look, MMOs have flourishing auction houses/bazaars, Holiday events, players/friends who craft things for you to specification, or gather resources you need or enchant things you need, a chat system to communicate with friends, GMs to help with issues and problems, a mail system to send stuff to friends/alts and vice versa - single-player games do not have all these features. Is that explicit enough for you?
For hopefully the last time - "Massively Multiplayer Online" does not mean "Players have to group". Accept it and stop plaintively wailing about it. No wonder I don't PUG any more!
I second that. Apparently some people think that when they go to the mall they're shopping "with" 2,000 other people, instead of shopping "at the same time as" 2,000 other people.
There are other reasons, too, and one of them is even more basic than what you point out: if I want to play a modern computer game in which I'm a superhero, right now I have to play CoH. There's no other venue, online or otherwise. available. If I want to play in a large persistent world based on D&D or LoTR, I have to play DDO or LoTRO.
PUGs are evil, pure evil. Would you grab the first five people who will say "yes" to have them work on your car? Repair your home? Cater your next party? I don't think so. In the words of Lex Luthor (The Kingdom, DC Comics): "I don't like working in groups. Everybody has an opinion." You'll hear the same opinion from Batman.
It takes a certain quality and strength of character to be able to solo. Some people just don't have it.
Well a game that forces grouping to accomplish anything is poor design, which is why raiding always sucks. Soloing should be an option yet a more difficult one. Being LFG for extended periods of time though is not the developers fault, rather it's your fault for lacking social skills.
I think its mostly because games force players into a role (class), and no other class can fill that spot in a group. This is a good way to design the game, but that is only if the population of classes can be kept fairly balanced. I think if games offered multiple areas for different mixes of parties to group then most "LFG" time will be kept at a minimum.
One of the two worst components to carry over to MMOs from their RPG roots was class restrictions. The elements that allowed classes to work in PnP campaigns simply aren't present in MMOs, specifically:
- all players starting at the same time
- all players within the same level range
- all players in the same group
- a dungeon master who could adjust gameplay on the fly to the level of challenge and difficulty the party find entertaining/engaging.
One way to remedy the problem is a skill-based system, be it character skill, player skill or both. The problem with that is a skill-based system inxreases the learning curve. Also, in order for the choices to have meaning, they need to be semi-permanent (limited or no respecing).
WAR took another approach to remedying it with their public quests. I'm really no fan of WAR, but when I played (left a few months ago) , I never once had to look harder than toward the guy next to me to complete a quest.
There's probably quite a few other ways to compensate for the inherent flaws of carrying over class restrictions to MMOs, and there's probably devs working on that such issue already.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Ok, after many years some memory gets blurry. Maybe CoH was better, I dont recall. But I DO recall for sure the EQ2 and post-CU-SWG waiting times were awful. Especially EQ2 I loved a game, but hated for the ENDLESS times I spent doing boring solo stuff alone. It was so depressing playing that game.
As for LOTRO, it has become worse in the higher levels. Its ok up to level 25/30, but with the higher level it gets awful, especially around 45+ when you have all that Angmar and Moria stuff coming. Spent weeks yelling for some quests I really wanted to do in Angmar and Eregion. Also, I never met a non-social community as in LOTRO. I mean, not that they are mean, but there just seems no lasting friendships resulting of this game at all! When you get a group, its everyone works silently and once the quest is done with a short "bye" everyone scatters into the four winds.
IMO it is basically the result of the WAY too fast levelling in LOTRO. People just rush through that game like there was no tomorrow. I like many aspects of LOTRO, but I never ever felt at home in that "community". I feel a lot like in a single player game where accidentally some players come in now and then. Where have the days of community building gone I recall from pre-cu SWG? Those were great days! Aww... crap. Now I am getting nostalgic again. Sometimes it seems to me all good of MMO-ing more and more exists in past antics. #__#
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
All the theme park linear task progression designed games have awful communities. Games like classic EQ and pre CU SWG were open worlds which fostered grouping because progression was centered around combat so people stayed together and hunted for long periods of time and thus bonded.
PUGs are evil, pure evil. Would you grab the first five people who will say "yes" to have them work on your car? Repair your home? Cater your next party? I don't think so. In the words of Lex Luthor (The Kingdom, DC Comics): "I don't like working in groups. Everybody has an opinion." You'll hear the same opinion from Batman.
You evidentally have played very few team games then I'm guessing. Why are people obsessed about grouping? Maybe because the original DnD was played around a table with a group of people?
It takes a certain quality and strength of character to be able to solo.
It's a symptom of the times. Nowadays the casuals rule the games, and it's made for them aka lots of solo stuff, which is a bloody disgrace. It's a mmo, not a singleplayer rpg for christs nonexistent sake.
There is a cure though if you don't want to solo all the time. It's called initiative. I realize its quite hard in some games, group quests coming to mind, but for the other stuff like instances, low-level raiding and the like, it's not that hard to make a group for it. Go out and send tells all over the place, not just be that shy one in the corner barely daring to open your mouth.
Another problem I see is that solo content is too rewarding. Sure, soloing should be an alternative but compared to grouping, it should be dwarfed. Grouping should give you way more money, xp and loot. I don't get that diminshing return thingie some mmo's got going. Yes, even the mighty WoW got that particular disease.
I just went back to CoV, I have yet to spend more than one minute looking for a group. I've played both leveled 1, 35, and 45 chars. Central time 4am, 10am, 5pm, 8pm.
CoX - still going strong, and the new improvements are great, having two builds for one char being my favorite.
CoH is my favorite mmorpg and while it is very easy to get groups I claim that this game is an exceptional situation. Most games are not so easy to get groups.
Originally posted by mrprogguy It takes a certain quality and strength of character to be able to solo. Some people just don't have it.
I agree with you 100%
But here the problem with your quality and strength is sbout 1/10 of my play. Do you even understand how hard is to balance the whole game based on just one person and try to balance it out with the rest of the player based?
Cant be done, you end up with a game full of idiot care bears.
You can balance out groups easier because I can play for two of your play quality skills. We can teach, guide and even carry your weight with in a group. And the max that I would like to see is 4 groups of six in each group.
PUGs are evil, pure evil. Would you grab the first five people who will say "yes" to have them work on your car? Repair your home? Cater your next party? I don't think so. In the words of Lex Luthor (The Kingdom, DC Comics): "I don't like working in groups. Everybody has an opinion." You'll hear the same opinion from Batman.
You evidentally have played very few team games then I'm guessing. Why are people obsessed about grouping? Maybe because the original DnD was played around a table with a group of people
D&D was generally played with people who were already your friends, around a table filled with snacks and drinks, and was thus quite a social and intimate event. Players in online MMOs are effectively just pixels representing people you've never met and never will - nothing like an actual face-to-face social event. I still have friends from the days of D&D, about 28 years ago, so I know wherof I speak!
A vast amount of MMO content can easily be soloed, and two people together can blaze through that content at a hell of a rate - if you can manage it that way, why would you need any more players than that? People who feel they MUST group are just inept.
We can teach, guide and even carry your weight with in a group.
After the umpteenth bitch-fest over rolling for loot or someone wiping the group, I eventually had enough, years ago, and I now only group with real-life friends and family - as do they. Even then, sometimes we just voice-chat as we pursue our separate goals, and socialize without grouping. Grouping or chatting with strangers just doesn't appeal to any more.
This is sign of times The lowest common denominator had spoken. Masses want to solo.
Is it that they want to solo, or that they've had it with the hassle of grouping? I think the vast majority of players enjoy an MMO a lot more, when they're able to play with others, but when it's at all possible to solo, they do so, because of all the issues related to grouping. Some think this means players should just be given all the solo content they could want - but this makes for soulless MMOs players just get bored of, because they never really feel connected to any of it. Others think it means grouping needs to be forced, either completely, or at least in part, with group quests and such that offer the best rewards - but that just frustrates the hell out of too many players, because all the hassles are still there, and now, unavoidable, too.
Now, I hated WAR, but it looks like this is the one thing Mythic's got right. It's all about making it easier for players to connect with eachother, and removing the hassles, as much as possible. I didn't play it enough to really know what I'm talking about here, but from what I've read, it sounds like they've at least taken some steps in that direction, unlike almost any other MMOs.
The simple answers are wrong, but that doesn't mean there are no answers. Just means devs have to get creative - but first, they've got to get a frakkin clue.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I want to say EQ2 was perfect in Beta all the players were great and we were all grouping and the content was so fun with unique quests and it was th emost amazing mmorpg experience. However after launch all of a sudden there was too many servers and it was hard to find anyone to group with and all the people were trying to solo. Then everyone left for WoW and frigging I dunno all them groups I was getting in beta just suddenly went and I found myself grinding alone. The final blow is when I used to spend all day and night grinding to level 20 in the CL and back then you could only take on one mob at a time solo and anything in a group of 3 was imposible. I got into my 20's and the grind got boring. Nek and TS and Antonica were some of the worst zones I've eever played in and they put everyone off playing.
I had quite the opposite experiance, for me the larger the group numerically the easier it was to kill (i.e. a group of 8 vvv mobs died way faster then one ^^ mob of the same level.) and I loved all the zones. Then they revamped the game and made everything "solo" friendly. For me this made gameplay trivial as I was already soloing the "group" content, and getting xp far more rapidly solo than I could in a group.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
D&D was generally played with people who were already your friends, around a table filled with snacks and drinks, and was thus quite a social and intimate event. Players in online MMOs are effectively just pixels representing people you've never met and never will - nothing like an actual face-to-face social event. I still have friends from the days of D&D, about 28 years ago, so I know wherof I speak!
So you acknowledge the routes of DnD weren't focused around soloing. You can also acknowledge therefore that some people will shock horror like grouping?
A vast amount of MMO content can easily be soloed, and two people together can blaze through that content at a hell of a rate - if you can manage it that way, why would you need any more players than that? People who feel they MUST group are just inept.
There are instances in WoW, what point your purpose of going on about 'the vast amount of mmo content' when we are talking about grouping for instance, in WoW, we are referring to instances most likely. So your accusation of ineptness is quite bizarre.
SInce FFXI introduced the Level Sync system it has made it much easier to find a group particularly for mid range players where the population is less.
It's pretty simple. If you have players at all different levels you can drop to a level decided by the party leader. You'll get XP as if you were at that level. It basically means that players of any level can play together if they wish.
You might still have to LFG, but there are more options available.
The answer is simple. Game after game stick with levels as a measurment of character development.
There has been a few exceptions. UO and SWG (pre-cu) to name a few.
M M O S S I N C E |1998| P L A Y I N G F A L L E N E A R T H T I M E I N V E S T E D |uo|swg|wow| B E T A T E S T E R |rz|gw|hz|tr|hgl|potbs|potc|gw|hz|wish|fe|wow|df|war|
Originally posted by spades07 A vast amount of MMO content can easily be soloed, and two people together can blaze through that content at a hell of a rate - if you can manage it that way, why would you need any more players than that? People who feel they MUST group are just inept.
There are instances in WoW, what point your purpose of going on about 'the vast amount of mmo content' when we are talking about grouping for instance, in WoW, we are referring to instances most likely. So your accusation of ineptness is quite bizarre.
I play WoW (amongst other MMOs) and you can trust me on this - with regards to the grouping aspect, the whiny "forced grouping" players aren't referring to grouping for Instances. Instances are specifically designed for several players of the appropriate level, and you have to be a fair way over that specific level to solo an Instance. Nope, nobody means "forced grouping for Instances", which - if you'd actually thought about it - would be blindingly obvious.
No, the whiny players actually want "forced grouping" for normal PvE content, which is hilarious, given that PvE content (particularly in WoW) is so easy that grouping is wasting time. Quests in WoW marked as being a 3-person quest can be soloed by ANY class, and with my DK I can solo WotLK quests that are supposed to be for a group of FIVE... yes, PvE in WoW is THAT easy. I've soloed virtually all the way to lvl 80, bar the times when I duo with a friend for a while, and if I can solo so easily I'm hardly going to drag along players who will be nothing more than a drain on my XP and who will be splitting my loot.
Because MMORPG Means MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME
If its a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER it will take some time to find willing and able geared players in this MASSIVE world to come do whatever MULTIPLAYER activity you want to do.
No, the whiny players actually want "forced grouping" for normal PvE content, which is hilarious, given that PvE content (particularly in WoW) is so easy that grouping is wasting time. Quests in WoW marked as being a 3-person quest can be soloed by ANY class, and with my DK I can solo WotLK quests that are supposed to be for a group of FIVE... yes, PvE in WoW is THAT easy. I've soloed virtually all the way to lvl 80, bar the times when I duo with a friend for a while, and if I can solo so easily I'm hardly going to drag along players who will be nothing more than a drain on my XP and who will be splitting my loot.
Er, I'm hardly one to promote forced grouping, but it usually means making the content too difficult to solo. That it's so easy is exactly the problem people who want forced grouping are usually complaining about.
Typically goes something like this; Any mob that'd be worth any half decent xp will be a close fight at best, one on one, but they almost always BAF. So you can sorta solo, but progress painfully slowly, and die a lot, constantly getting jumped 2-5 vs 1. You get so frustrated, you either join a group, or quit. The upside to this, aside from the game being more of a challenge, is that there are way more groups to be had.
As I'm trying to point out, though, the LFG frustration that comes with all that can be offset by giving players the tools to get around a lot of what makes it suck, and in so doing, just maybe it wouldn't even need to be forced afterall, so both sides of this issue could be relatively happy.
I'm also not usually one to promote trying to make both sides happy in MMOs, as it usually means watered down crap that doesn't appeal that much to either side, but in this case, you've also got the issue of all the players that want to be able to solo sometimes, but want to be able to group sometimes, too - only to give up trying to do so, if it means spamming global for hours.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Originally posted by Elder_CLOWN The answer is simple. Game after game stick with levels as a measurment of character development. There has been a few exceptions. UO and SWG (pre-cu) to name a few.
I agree. Levels are a horrible mechanic that split the player base up. Typically, once a game gets up their in age, most people are max level and the mid level areas are dead and desolate and therefore horrible.
The answer is simple. Game after game stick with levels as a measurment of character development. There has been a few exceptions. UO and SWG (pre-cu) to name a few.
1 Big level or a whole bunch of little levels grouped together. Doesn't solve anything. It just makes grouping even more convoluted. Before you say it doesn't, please say the group content in UO or SWG was superior to EQ or WOW and allow eveyrone to LOL. Level based MMOs basically all have better group content than all the skill based ones. The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly. Once you find out the uber skill template, group content gets trivialized. Happens every time.
Thats not saying it has to. But its pretty hard to make group content work when theres no measuring stick..IE class or level.
Short answer Because MMORPG Means MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME If its a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER it will take some time to find willing and able geared players in this MASSIVE world to come do whatever MULTIPLAYER activity you want to do.
Actually, that's "Massively-Multiplayer", as in "thousands of people interacting in the same venue". Geographically large and unstructured game worlds work against the players by spreading them out, and make it difficult for people to find each other - and to get to each other.
There are game designs that would permit players to easily find each other, not have to group, and still operate as a team. But they involve eliminating most personal rewards such as levels and loot. For example, current games that try to concentrate players require that the players who come together agree on who gets what personal rewards. In World of Warcraft, that is formalized as raids. In EverQuest, players were practically standing on top of each other in the available dungeons and it was generally agreed that they would respect other groups' claims on sets of monsters that they were farming.
If players didn't have to worry about who gets what, then there would be no need to have formal mechanisms to address that concern. Players could happily congregate and tackle the same problems. For example, show the player base a set of castles that need to be cleared and they'll just dive in and clear them. Make the goal of clearing the castle to free its prisoners. Every now and again, a prisoner is freed who can provide a new service to the player characters. Such as teach them a new crafting recipe, or a new combat skill, etc. The game changes for everyone as the content is worked through instead of that content being worked through by individual characters.
Once the castle is taken, move on to the next one. The entire player base moves along through the geography of the game, leaving the old content behind and moving on to new content. Just like a single player RPG, except that the entire player population fills the role of the single player.
If everything is so bad, why don't you come up with some suggestions on how to shorten downtime?
A) Make more mobs and quest needing a group. EQ2 had a great swing from group quests/mobs towards solo friendly mobs. When people need to group it is easier to find a group, because many solo just because they are too lazy. Some just need a little nudge to find the enjoyment of grouping.
Make quests with less complicated steps. EQ2 was a hell in this. It was almost impossible to find people for any of those dozens of subquests and steps of any quests with someone being on the exact same part. EQ2 quests are unbelievable complex, and streamlining can really help a lot.
C) Give rewards for mentoring and quest helping, so people not just help you out of charity!
D) Make the layout of quests and the world so that things overlap, so even when you are not all on the same quests, you still can run through dungeon X as example and everyone accomplishes something.
E) Make group dungeons/zones not SO difficult that the XP & loot income of grouping is lower than soloing. VG has many terrible places which are for groups, but the XP and loot output is so bad, because you just die dozens of times. (Try Kragnors End at Dwarf area if you dont believe me.)
F) Many helpful looking for group tools, maybe where people on the same quests are grouped together automatically, if they activate that feature as option. Hard to believe but SWG doesnt even have a regional or global channel! How is anyone to find a group there?? Warhammer has a great feature where a group can set itself as "open" and anyone can just join, which is a great idea.
G) Create central player hubs where people meet and greet, and have a reason to go to. Like centralized Auction Halls. Those player hubs must be large, visually attractive and reachable even by low level characters. VG totally failed in this, for instance, while WOW has implemented this very successful. You can just go to Ironforge or Ogrimar or what and meet people, and thats definitely strengthens the community feeling.
H) Give players mounts early, so travel and getting the group together isnt a bit issue wasting away hours.
Given more time I could think of plenty more suggestions.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
F) Many helpful looking for group tools, maybe where people on the same quests are grouped together automatically, if they activate that feature as option. Hard to believe but SWG doesnt even have a regional or global channel! How is anyone to find a group there?? Warhammer has a great feature where a group can set itself as "open" and anyone can just join, which is a great idea.
This is my favorite idea. I know some people wouldn't use it, would even scoff at the very idea of PUG being even less discriminating, but some of us just want to be social sometimes, work with others, without all the obsessing over optimal xp rates. I'd just hope they'd put some thought into it, like different ways players might want to keep it limitted, to have some optional controls over the basics, like level range, or class limits - max number of healers, or tanks, or maybe one healer per tank, etc. Could also be limited by faction or guild, or whatever social framework the game has set up, to encourage camaraderie - some "us vs them" can be a good thing, when it comes to bringing players together, when there's enough population for it.
I think there are tons of players who just want to jump in and play these games. The whole LFG thing not being built into the game just isn't intuitive enough at all. Like we're just tossed into the gameworld and expected to be social enough to work it out. Maybe in the old days, when groups looking for more were everywhere, but not now, where everyone's doing their own thing, or already wrapped up in their established circles.
Some players maybe aren't that social, some don't want to be that social, some can't be that social, but why should we really have to be? Social dynamics make for lots of grey area, and MMOs are usually more about the grey area than the black and white. How many of us fall somewhere between the antisocial and social butterfly, not one or the other.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Comments
Oh god, not this again! Look, MMOs have flourishing auction houses/bazaars, Holiday events, players/friends who craft things for you to specification, or gather resources you need or enchant things you need, a chat system to communicate with friends, GMs to help with issues and problems, a mail system to send stuff to friends/alts and vice versa - single-player games do not have all these features. Is that explicit enough for you?
For hopefully the last time - "Massively Multiplayer Online" does not mean "Players have to group". Accept it and stop plaintively wailing about it. No wonder I don't PUG any more!
I second that. Apparently some people think that when they go to the mall they're shopping "with" 2,000 other people, instead of shopping "at the same time as" 2,000 other people.
There are other reasons, too, and one of them is even more basic than what you point out: if I want to play a modern computer game in which I'm a superhero, right now I have to play CoH. There's no other venue, online or otherwise. available. If I want to play in a large persistent world based on D&D or LoTR, I have to play DDO or LoTRO.
PUGs are evil, pure evil. Would you grab the first five people who will say "yes" to have them work on your car? Repair your home? Cater your next party? I don't think so. In the words of Lex Luthor (The Kingdom, DC Comics): "I don't like working in groups. Everybody has an opinion." You'll hear the same opinion from Batman.
It takes a certain quality and strength of character to be able to solo. Some people just don't have it.
Arguing with me will not make you right.
Well a game that forces grouping to accomplish anything is poor design, which is why raiding always sucks. Soloing should be an option yet a more difficult one. Being LFG for extended periods of time though is not the developers fault, rather it's your fault for lacking social skills.
One of the two worst components to carry over to MMOs from their RPG roots was class restrictions. The elements that allowed classes to work in PnP campaigns simply aren't present in MMOs, specifically:
- all players starting at the same time
- all players within the same level range
- all players in the same group
- a dungeon master who could adjust gameplay on the fly to the level of challenge and difficulty the party find entertaining/engaging.
One way to remedy the problem is a skill-based system, be it character skill, player skill or both. The problem with that is a skill-based system inxreases the learning curve. Also, in order for the choices to have meaning, they need to be semi-permanent (limited or no respecing).
WAR took another approach to remedying it with their public quests. I'm really no fan of WAR, but when I played (left a few months ago) , I never once had to look harder than toward the guy next to me to complete a quest.
There's probably quite a few other ways to compensate for the inherent flaws of carrying over class restrictions to MMOs, and there's probably devs working on that such issue already.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Ok, after many years some memory gets blurry. Maybe CoH was better, I dont recall. But I DO recall for sure the EQ2 and post-CU-SWG waiting times were awful. Especially EQ2 I loved a game, but hated for the ENDLESS times I spent doing boring solo stuff alone. It was so depressing playing that game.
As for LOTRO, it has become worse in the higher levels. Its ok up to level 25/30, but with the higher level it gets awful, especially around 45+ when you have all that Angmar and Moria stuff coming. Spent weeks yelling for some quests I really wanted to do in Angmar and Eregion. Also, I never met a non-social community as in LOTRO. I mean, not that they are mean, but there just seems no lasting friendships resulting of this game at all! When you get a group, its everyone works silently and once the quest is done with a short "bye" everyone scatters into the four winds.
IMO it is basically the result of the WAY too fast levelling in LOTRO. People just rush through that game like there was no tomorrow. I like many aspects of LOTRO, but I never ever felt at home in that "community". I feel a lot like in a single player game where accidentally some players come in now and then. Where have the days of community building gone I recall from pre-cu SWG? Those were great days! Aww... crap. Now I am getting nostalgic again. Sometimes it seems to me all good of MMO-ing more and more exists in past antics. #__#
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
All the theme park linear task progression designed games have awful communities. Games like classic EQ and pre CU SWG were open worlds which fostered grouping because progression was centered around combat so people stayed together and hunted for long periods of time and thus bonded.
You evidentally have played very few team games then I'm guessing. Why are people obsessed about grouping? Maybe because the original DnD was played around a table with a group of people?
I call it being 'easily' entertained.
It's a symptom of the times. Nowadays the casuals rule the games, and it's made for them aka lots of solo stuff, which is a bloody disgrace. It's a mmo, not a singleplayer rpg for christs nonexistent sake.
There is a cure though if you don't want to solo all the time. It's called initiative. I realize its quite hard in some games, group quests coming to mind, but for the other stuff like instances, low-level raiding and the like, it's not that hard to make a group for it. Go out and send tells all over the place, not just be that shy one in the corner barely daring to open your mouth.
Another problem I see is that solo content is too rewarding. Sure, soloing should be an alternative but compared to grouping, it should be dwarfed. Grouping should give you way more money, xp and loot. I don't get that diminshing return thingie some mmo's got going. Yes, even the mighty WoW got that particular disease.
Edit:I'm my own grammar nazi...
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
CoH is my favorite mmorpg and while it is very easy to get groups I claim that this game is an exceptional situation. Most games are not so easy to get groups.
I agree with you 100%
But here the problem with your quality and strength is sbout 1/10 of my play.
Do you even understand how hard is to balance the whole game based on just one person and try to balance it out with the rest of the player based?
Cant be done, you end up with a game full of idiot care bears.
You can balance out groups easier because I can play for two of your play quality skills. We can teach, guide and even carry your weight with in a group.
And the max that I would like to see is 4 groups of six in each group.
You evidentally have played very few team games then I'm guessing. Why are people obsessed about grouping? Maybe because the original DnD was played around a table with a group of people
D&D was generally played with people who were already your friends, around a table filled with snacks and drinks, and was thus quite a social and intimate event. Players in online MMOs are effectively just pixels representing people you've never met and never will - nothing like an actual face-to-face social event. I still have friends from the days of D&D, about 28 years ago, so I know wherof I speak!
A vast amount of MMO content can easily be soloed, and two people together can blaze through that content at a hell of a rate - if you can manage it that way, why would you need any more players than that? People who feel they MUST group are just inept.
After the umpteenth bitch-fest over rolling for loot or someone wiping the group, I eventually had enough, years ago, and I now only group with real-life friends and family - as do they. Even then, sometimes we just voice-chat as we pursue our separate goals, and socialize without grouping. Grouping or chatting with strangers just doesn't appeal to any more.
Is it that they want to solo, or that they've had it with the hassle of grouping? I think the vast majority of players enjoy an MMO a lot more, when they're able to play with others, but when it's at all possible to solo, they do so, because of all the issues related to grouping. Some think this means players should just be given all the solo content they could want - but this makes for soulless MMOs players just get bored of, because they never really feel connected to any of it. Others think it means grouping needs to be forced, either completely, or at least in part, with group quests and such that offer the best rewards - but that just frustrates the hell out of too many players, because all the hassles are still there, and now, unavoidable, too.
Now, I hated WAR, but it looks like this is the one thing Mythic's got right. It's all about making it easier for players to connect with eachother, and removing the hassles, as much as possible. I didn't play it enough to really know what I'm talking about here, but from what I've read, it sounds like they've at least taken some steps in that direction, unlike almost any other MMOs.
The simple answers are wrong, but that doesn't mean there are no answers. Just means devs have to get creative - but first, they've got to get a frakkin clue.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I had quite the opposite experiance, for me the larger the group numerically the easier it was to kill (i.e. a group of 8 vvv mobs died way faster then one ^^ mob of the same level.) and I loved all the zones. Then they revamped the game and made everything "solo" friendly. For me this made gameplay trivial as I was already soloing the "group" content, and getting xp far more rapidly solo than I could in a group.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
There are instances in WoW, what point your purpose of going on about 'the vast amount of mmo content' when we are talking about grouping for instance, in WoW, we are referring to instances most likely. So your accusation of ineptness is quite bizarre.
If everything is so bad, why don't you come up with some suggestions on how to shorten downtime?
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan
SInce FFXI introduced the Level Sync system it has made it much easier to find a group particularly for mid range players where the population is less.
It's pretty simple. If you have players at all different levels you can drop to a level decided by the party leader. You'll get XP as if you were at that level. It basically means that players of any level can play together if they wish.
You might still have to LFG, but there are more options available.
The answer is simple. Game after game stick with levels as a measurment of character development.
There has been a few exceptions. UO and SWG (pre-cu) to name a few.
M M O S S I N C E |1998|
P L A Y I N G F A L L E N E A R T H
T I M E I N V E S T E D |uo|swg|wow|
B E T A T E S T E R |rz|gw|hz|tr|hgl|potbs|potc|gw|hz|wish|fe|wow|df|war|
There are instances in WoW, what point your purpose of going on about 'the vast amount of mmo content' when we are talking about grouping for instance, in WoW, we are referring to instances most likely. So your accusation of ineptness is quite bizarre.
I play WoW (amongst other MMOs) and you can trust me on this - with regards to the grouping aspect, the whiny "forced grouping" players aren't referring to grouping for Instances. Instances are specifically designed for several players of the appropriate level, and you have to be a fair way over that specific level to solo an Instance. Nope, nobody means "forced grouping for Instances", which - if you'd actually thought about it - would be blindingly obvious.
No, the whiny players actually want "forced grouping" for normal PvE content, which is hilarious, given that PvE content (particularly in WoW) is so easy that grouping is wasting time. Quests in WoW marked as being a 3-person quest can be soloed by ANY class, and with my DK I can solo WotLK quests that are supposed to be for a group of FIVE... yes, PvE in WoW is THAT easy. I've soloed virtually all the way to lvl 80, bar the times when I duo with a friend for a while, and if I can solo so easily I'm hardly going to drag along players who will be nothing more than a drain on my XP and who will be splitting my loot.
Short answer
Because MMORPG Means MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME
If its a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER it will take some time to find willing and able geared players in this MASSIVE world to come do whatever MULTIPLAYER activity you want to do.
Er, I'm hardly one to promote forced grouping, but it usually means making the content too difficult to solo. That it's so easy is exactly the problem people who want forced grouping are usually complaining about.
Typically goes something like this; Any mob that'd be worth any half decent xp will be a close fight at best, one on one, but they almost always BAF. So you can sorta solo, but progress painfully slowly, and die a lot, constantly getting jumped 2-5 vs 1. You get so frustrated, you either join a group, or quit. The upside to this, aside from the game being more of a challenge, is that there are way more groups to be had.
As I'm trying to point out, though, the LFG frustration that comes with all that can be offset by giving players the tools to get around a lot of what makes it suck, and in so doing, just maybe it wouldn't even need to be forced afterall, so both sides of this issue could be relatively happy.
I'm also not usually one to promote trying to make both sides happy in MMOs, as it usually means watered down crap that doesn't appeal that much to either side, but in this case, you've also got the issue of all the players that want to be able to solo sometimes, but want to be able to group sometimes, too - only to give up trying to do so, if it means spamming global for hours.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I agree. Levels are a horrible mechanic that split the player base up. Typically, once a game gets up their in age, most people are max level and the mid level areas are dead and desolate and therefore horrible.
1 Big level or a whole bunch of little levels grouped together. Doesn't solve anything. It just makes grouping even more convoluted. Before you say it doesn't, please say the group content in UO or SWG was superior to EQ or WOW and allow eveyrone to LOL. Level based MMOs basically all have better group content than all the skill based ones. The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly. Once you find out the uber skill template, group content gets trivialized. Happens every time.
Thats not saying it has to. But its pretty hard to make group content work when theres no measuring stick..IE class or level.
Actually, that's "Massively-Multiplayer", as in "thousands of people interacting in the same venue". Geographically large and unstructured game worlds work against the players by spreading them out, and make it difficult for people to find each other - and to get to each other.
There are game designs that would permit players to easily find each other, not have to group, and still operate as a team. But they involve eliminating most personal rewards such as levels and loot. For example, current games that try to concentrate players require that the players who come together agree on who gets what personal rewards. In World of Warcraft, that is formalized as raids. In EverQuest, players were practically standing on top of each other in the available dungeons and it was generally agreed that they would respect other groups' claims on sets of monsters that they were farming.
If players didn't have to worry about who gets what, then there would be no need to have formal mechanisms to address that concern. Players could happily congregate and tackle the same problems. For example, show the player base a set of castles that need to be cleared and they'll just dive in and clear them. Make the goal of clearing the castle to free its prisoners. Every now and again, a prisoner is freed who can provide a new service to the player characters. Such as teach them a new crafting recipe, or a new combat skill, etc. The game changes for everyone as the content is worked through instead of that content being worked through by individual characters.
Once the castle is taken, move on to the next one. The entire player base moves along through the geography of the game, leaving the old content behind and moving on to new content. Just like a single player RPG, except that the entire player population fills the role of the single player.
Believe it or not, that's the short answer.
A) Make more mobs and quest needing a group. EQ2 had a great swing from group quests/mobs towards solo friendly mobs. When people need to group it is easier to find a group, because many solo just because they are too lazy. Some just need a little nudge to find the enjoyment of grouping.
C) Give rewards for mentoring and quest helping, so people not just help you out of charity!
D) Make the layout of quests and the world so that things overlap, so even when you are not all on the same quests, you still can run through dungeon X as example and everyone accomplishes something.
E) Make group dungeons/zones not SO difficult that the XP & loot income of grouping is lower than soloing. VG has many terrible places which are for groups, but the XP and loot output is so bad, because you just die dozens of times. (Try Kragnors End at Dwarf area if you dont believe me.)
F) Many helpful looking for group tools, maybe where people on the same quests are grouped together automatically, if they activate that feature as option. Hard to believe but SWG doesnt even have a regional or global channel! How is anyone to find a group there?? Warhammer has a great feature where a group can set itself as "open" and anyone can just join, which is a great idea.
G) Create central player hubs where people meet and greet, and have a reason to go to. Like centralized Auction Halls. Those player hubs must be large, visually attractive and reachable even by low level characters. VG totally failed in this, for instance, while WOW has implemented this very successful. You can just go to Ironforge or Ogrimar or what and meet people, and thats definitely strengthens the community feeling.
H) Give players mounts early, so travel and getting the group together isnt a bit issue wasting away hours.
Given more time I could think of plenty more suggestions.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
This is my favorite idea. I know some people wouldn't use it, would even scoff at the very idea of PUG being even less discriminating, but some of us just want to be social sometimes, work with others, without all the obsessing over optimal xp rates. I'd just hope they'd put some thought into it, like different ways players might want to keep it limitted, to have some optional controls over the basics, like level range, or class limits - max number of healers, or tanks, or maybe one healer per tank, etc. Could also be limited by faction or guild, or whatever social framework the game has set up, to encourage camaraderie - some "us vs them" can be a good thing, when it comes to bringing players together, when there's enough population for it.
I think there are tons of players who just want to jump in and play these games. The whole LFG thing not being built into the game just isn't intuitive enough at all. Like we're just tossed into the gameworld and expected to be social enough to work it out. Maybe in the old days, when groups looking for more were everywhere, but not now, where everyone's doing their own thing, or already wrapped up in their established circles.
Some players maybe aren't that social, some don't want to be that social, some can't be that social, but why should we really have to be? Social dynamics make for lots of grey area, and MMOs are usually more about the grey area than the black and white. How many of us fall somewhere between the antisocial and social butterfly, not one or the other.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.