That "Open Group" idea sounds good, as long as people would actually use it. I boggle when I'm playing WoW and I end up in a zone where two or even three players are repeatedly saying "LFG" in the General Channel. I'm thinking "Err, why don't you lot do the sensible thing and GROUP!" What do they want - a golden ticket and a red carpet?
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.
The problem here is you are stuck on 'group content'. That then leads to the necessity of a certain group to complete it. You feel there is no 'measuring stick' because you aren't looking beyond 'grouping' and 'levels'.
"The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly."
Actually, quite the opposite. Skill-based systems allow for devising tactics and strategies based on the group's strengths and weaknesses. It also means, in PvP situations, that players now have the added dynamic of discerning the enemy's strategy and working towards countering that. It's a more engaging game play than getting a healer, a tank and damage dealer together and repeating the same tasks in the same fashion over and over again from level 10 to cap.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
That "Open Group" idea sounds good, as long as people would actually use it. I boggle when I'm playing WoW and I end up in a zone where two or even three players are repeatedly saying "LFG" in the General Channel. I'm thinking "Err, why don't you lot do the sensible thing and GROUP!" What do they want - a golden ticket and a red carpet?
people are funny. if you build something into a game, so that it's pretty much automatic, sure, they'd use it. make it optional, like actually communicating with eachother, and they'll err on the side of avoiding it.
I don't like solo games played online. If you get rid of the need for a group, that's what you get, ala WoW before raiding, CoH, WAR, and others.
So take your pick. A solo game played online with other people, or a good grouping game.
Devs should make both for players that like each sort of game, but it is not possible to put both in the same game.
A game where you NEED to group, is called "forced grouping". A game where you CAN group if you want to but dont' have to for anything, is a solo game played online with other people. Again, take your pick.
That "Open Group" idea sounds good, as long as people would actually use it. I boggle when I'm playing WoW and I end up in a zone where two or even three players are repeatedly saying "LFG" in the General Channel. I'm thinking "Err, why don't you lot do the sensible thing and GROUP!" What do they want - a golden ticket and a red carpet?
Why group if you dont' really need to? You just waste the time required to group, with no reward for your effort. No one needs to group in WoW until you get to raiding.
Devs should make both for players that like each sort of game, but it is not possible to put both in the same game.
If you have ever been soloing and found yourself helping another player do something without grouping with them, then you have seen why it is possible for a game to have both soloing and grouping - because grouping as a formal activity should be abolished.
The problem here is you are stuck on 'group content'. That then leads to the necessity of a certain group to complete it. You feel there is no 'measuring stick' because you aren't looking beyond 'grouping' and 'levels'. "The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly." Actually, quite the opposite. Skill-based systems allow for devising tactics and strategies based on the group's strengths and weaknesses. It also means, in PvP situations, that players now have the added dynamic of discerning the enemy's strategy and working towards countering that. It's a more engaging game play than getting a healer, a tank and damage dealer together and repeating the same tasks in the same fashion over and over again from level 10 to cap.
The problem is the Power Level of an encounter. If any three random players can beat an encounter then a team of three people whose skills complement each other will trivialize the encounter.
The reason why the tank/healer/DPS model is so popular is because it is great synergy. The three character types shore up each other's weaknesses and thus massively increase the power level of the party. A properly structured group will be at least a magnitude more powerfull then a group of thre characters lacking synergy.
So any staticly structured encounter will have a minimal Power Level requirement. If a simple aggregate of the Power Level of the group members is below that (ie can't just DPS spam yourself to victory) then you have to leverage the group synergies to boost th group's Power Level. At this point you get into the usual min/maxing thing where people try to figure out what is the minimal and optimal group setup needed to beat the encounter. If the encounter is difficult enough certain skillset combinations wil not be able to beat it no matter how good the players are.
The problem here is you are stuck on 'group content'. That then leads to the necessity of a certain group to complete it. You feel there is no 'measuring stick' because you aren't looking beyond 'grouping' and 'levels'. "The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly." Actually, quite the opposite. Skill-based systems allow for devising tactics and strategies based on the group's strengths and weaknesses. It also means, in PvP situations, that players now have the added dynamic of discerning the enemy's strategy and working towards countering that. It's a more engaging game play than getting a healer, a tank and damage dealer together and repeating the same tasks in the same fashion over and over again from level 10 to cap.
The problem is the Power Level of an encounter. If any three random players can beat an encounter then a team of three people whose skills complement each other will trivialize the encounter.
The reason why the tank/healer/DPS model is so popular is because it is great synergy. The three character types shore up each other's weaknesses and thus massively increase the power level of the party. A properly structured group will be at least a magnitude more powerfull then a group of thre characters lacking synergy.
So any staticly structured encounter will have a minimal Power Level requirement. If a simple aggregate of the Power Level of the group members is below that (ie can't just DPS spam yourself to victory) then you have to leverage the group synergies to boost th group's Power Level. At this point you get into the usual min/maxing thing where people try to figure out what is the minimal and optimal group setup needed to beat the encounter. If the encounter is difficult enough certain skillset combinations wil not be able to beat it no matter how good the players are.
You're still thinking in terms of game design wrapped around the class-restricted/level-based game play. You're also focusing on group meaning x amount of people tethered together inside of a party system. You see the two options as either the Holy Trintiy or "any three random players" as opposed to the other alternative which simply does not and cannot exist in class-restricted MMOs - creating a group based on character skill and player strengths of the group members.
You'll notice that spawns are designed differently in skill-based MMOs than in class-restricted MMOs - it's actually radically different because you don't have a game design that has to insure the viability of set groups.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
You're still thinking in terms of game design wrapped around the class-restricted/level-based game play. You're also focusing on group meaning x amount of people tethered together inside of a party system. You see the two options as either the Holy Trintiy or "any three random players" as opposed to the other alternative which simply does not and cannot exist in class-restricted MMOs - creating a group based on character skill and player strengths of the group members. You'll notice that spawns are designed differently in skill-based MMOs than in class-restricted MMOs - it's actually radically different because you don't have a game design that has to insure the viability of set groups.
I prefer to look it as a 'right tool for the job' model. If you need to break down a door you bring a sledgehammer and not a scalpel. However, if you need to perform surgery a sledgehammer is not what you want. As such certain encounters will be easier done if you have a certain skill set and will be much harder if you lack a certain skill set. So if you know ahead of time what skillsets a particular fight requires you will bring characters that have those skillsets and avoid characters with skillsets that do not help the group beat the encounter. In this skill-based vs class-based games really do not differ that much.
examples
-if a fight causes a lot of AoE damage to the entire group then you will prefer to bring someone with grooup healing skills.
-if the fight requires a lot of crowd control then characters without crowd control skills are not gonna be as in demand for it.
I've played both skill-based and class-based MMOs and I really did not notice a significant difference in mob design between them. Could you give me a better example of what you are talking about?
I prefer to look it as a 'right tool for the job' model. If you need to break down a door you bring a sledgehammer and not a scalpel. However, if you need to perform surgery a sledgehammer is not what you want. I've played both skill-based and class-based MMOs and I really did not notice a significant difference in mob design between them. Could you give me a better example of what you are talking about?
That's a perfect example. In almost all class-restricted MMOs, there is only one way to complete a task. To continue your comparison: You can only smash the door. You cannot pick the lock, you can not use a key, and you most certainly cannot simply torch the building. The encounters, spawning and AI in class-restricted MMOs must be designed to stand against the min-max'd trinity. Worse, they must be designed so that players feel the trinity works. For example, it is not hard to code a mob to just take out the paper cannons. It is not hard to code mobs that don't march in a set pattern on rails. It especially isn't hard to code them to spawn randomly and in random numbers. However, the rest of the game design is stats over strategy. It is gear over tactics. The mob stats, spawn and surrounding systems have to be designed to match the class-restricted gear-dependent game they are in.
Now, let's look at a familiar skill-based MMO - Ultima Online. The mobs spawn at random locations. The mobs wander - not on rails and not within an invisible fence. They don't return to some silly 'home base' if you lead them off too far. Sit, pull, fight, sit, pull, fight is not common and often not effective in skill-based MMOs, but is almost mandatory in class-restricted MMOs.
There's also the tie in with the loot system. This difference was clearly shown in the Age of Shadows expansion when they added artifacts, UO's equivalent of 'epic' items. In order to put that crap in a game - and turn it into a zero-strategy gear-dependent combat experience - you have to put that stuff in the most ridiculously hard place to get it, which means only a limited few people have access to it. As a result of injecting a flawed design into UO, the first LFG cries were ever heard in Britannia. They spent years trying to fix a problem that would have never happened had they realized that epics were a horrible byproduct of level-based class-restricted design, desirable due to necessity, and not really a design feature anyone with any forethought would have ever created.
A skill-based MMO is designed very differently from a class-restricted MMO in almost every area of the game. To the player, the design difference is transparent. You go smack a mob, get loot, buy stuff. On the design side, the game is built very differently.
You've played both types of MMO, so my question is: What games were they, and did you notice any difference in the amount of LFG spam occurring in either?
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
The LFG has been a problem for quite a few years now.......I think this is why WoW went with the ability to solo to max level and many others have followed suit.......Like many of you, I had major problems finding groups in games like LoTRO, EQ2, and many others...... Then I read other players saying they never waited more than 5 minutes for a group in any game (which I find hard to believe)........
I think the faction of people believing that "group" gameplay should not be something planned, but something that just happens, believe that there is some miracle solution that will make people not go the path of least resistance and least effort.
There is no such solution, as no game has ever solved this problem without simply cutting out content that was designed with a somewhat specifically built group in mind. There are a lot of MMOs out there where there is no content that isnt basically an automatic win. It is a bit like Diabo 2: Unless you ridiculously overdo it, you will always win, the question becomes, how much can you win per hour. In such a setting, grouping means more people working towards the goal of winning more/hour. It never really is the question whether you can win at all.
From that angle, formal grouping looks useless, because from the start, you do not consider the concept of content that tries to challenge you to the point of maybe not being able to do it. As an example, I ll take the very old Meridian 59. It was a first-person MMORPG, about the same age as UO. You never grouped there, as anyone with a decently built character could just stand at a choke point and chainkill mobs, occasionally having to rest when hitpoints ran out if he had no access to healing magic. The game had a community, it had bosses, it had player interaction, but at the core of it was a gameplay that was basically autowin if your character could mathematically beat the mob. You didnt have to play well, you didnt have to build a group, because in the end, as soon as you tried at least a little bit to do something, you succeeded.
Its a concept often used in F2P games, and the modern Questgrinders.... every mob is an easy win, there are no fights in which the outcome is unclear, the only way how something becomes difficult is through being swarmed by mobs due to a bad pull or similar. You never have to group if you are capable of playing half-decent, and grouping just makes easy things even safer and easier.
The problem is longevity. And grouping, ultimately, is one of the very few mass-audience compatible ways of making a game last. If you minimalize grouping into something optional, people will not do it. The hassle of communicating, or meeting up, why do that if you can just read up on the website how to do it, and do it yourself? In theory, thats great, I mean, people would never do stuff that isnt fun to them, would they?
Yes, they will. People are funny... they will take the shortest road to their goals more often than not, especially in MMOs, and especially in competitive environments.... and they will tell themselves "Its good, I want that, I am having fun, dont I?". But continuosly soloing silently for stuff that everyone else has, stuff that everyone will attain, and with a minimum of "life" in the game does not work for long. Its a very short-sighted view on games.
Groups and Raids are one of the best mechanics to make it possible to create interesting content, challenging content, that does not just go down easily to big numbers. While I agree that recent games have made it a bit too stringent how many of X you need to bring, there is no miracle replacement for this concept.
Its just basic logic of the concept of a team. And thats as old as humanity... the guy who can carry a lot carries the deer that the guy who can throw the spear the furthest killed, and they both eat at the end of the day.
As long as you have different classes or builds, you have synergies. The other way would be a Shooter, where its solely up to the individual skill. I dare say that MMORPGs with a large skill and a small character development factor arent going to be all that popular.
I think the faction of people believing that "group" gameplay should not be something planned, but something that just happens, believe that there is some miracle solution that will make people not go the path of least resistance and least effort. There is no such solution, as no game has ever solved this problem without simply cutting out content that was designed with a somewhat specifically built group in mind.
The volume of assumptions there is staggering.
The best example that I can offer of a game that is in the ballpark of a 'miracle solution' is Unreal Tournament 2004 Onslaught. You might see 30 players cooperating spontaneously to progress through the goals of a game. That's because they share the same goals, their rewards only come if they succeed in reaching those goals, and the rewards are available to the entire community, not just an individual. Five guys building a node, two driving a vehicle with a third chasing it on foot and pumping heals into it, a bunch of players getting rides, etc. The whole thing is very fluid; players cooperate or solo as they see fit, but cooperation is the key to success.
The recipe of community goals and community rewards is the essential element of this 'miracle solution'. I'm sure there are other ways to solve the problem.
Now create a game that puts 5,000 players into an environment where there are 10 such community goals waiting to be tackled. As those are dealt with by the players, introduce new ones, always keeping the players busy on community tasks. For those who want to contribute solo, provide other tasks that still reward the community, but do so as a result of a bunch of solo players tackling a problem independently.
Community goals that produce spontaneous grouping is building stuff or destroying stuff. On a large scale, of course. Rescue the prisoner, build the bridge, storm the castle, etc. Hundreds of players cooperating.
Community goals that involve lots of solo players is finding stuff. Scouting the enemy, locating new resources, etc. Hundreds of players soloing after the same goals.
Note that the solo player is not doing any of those things for himself. He gets no reward for himself. But the community gains as a result of every discovery, and the game morphs and changes as those discoveries are made. A solo player might find an NPC that is willing to teach the instructor NPCs a new combat move. He won't teach it to the player, but he'll teach it to the teachers that everyone uses. Community reward.
well.. first off I will gladly take "LFG downtime" over turning an MMO into a solo game......
however:
There is no reason to have downtime in WoW currently... there is always something you can do while looking for a group, whether it be questing, rep grinding, crafting, playing the AH, or PvP'ing....
You can just leave the nifty LFG interface running... and if you want to be proactive send the occasional message in the LFG channel.
Grymm MMO addict in recovery! EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH, Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
@JB: You are describing a short-timed Shooter or Action-Game. What you propose to be working in an MMORPG, you ll end up with multiple problems:
1.) You have to assume hundreds of hours of gameplay by thousands of people being poured into that Game. For a FPS it works, a few minutes, maybe an hour or two for each match or tournament, and its over. For a MMORPG with monthly subs and everything, we are talking about 24/7 gameplay. Dont buy into the myth of the super casual gamers, there have been long and exhausting studies a year ago which puts more than 2/3s of the playerbase of the top 5 subscriber number MMOs in the western market into the 20h+ per week, and still a hefty 40% into the 30h+. So, do you have community goals along a progression scale that motivate people for a full year of such an amount of numbers? If yes.... the individuals contribution will be miniscule. The feeling of achievement for the community does not work. Its communism in essence, and that doesnt really work with human motivation for a long time.
2.) Due to the above, you have to have personal progression in the game.Levels, Skills, Money, Power, whatever. Something that people can progress on for themselves, which rewards however much effort they pour in, because otherwise its not motivating. Playing for "the Hive" where your own contribution is almost zero does not work. Hell, in WAR, where you got a ton of personal progression and all, the concept of helping your own side in the war already doesnt have enough pull. However, as soon as you have personal progression, people start rather working for their own progression than for their realm. No biggie, you say, I just give everyone personal AND realm progression points for doing the community goals. Well, and at that point we have the grind. People try to advance, by "accident" advance the community as well, but they will start maximizing it. Within a short time, such is the nature of these games, a few people will form optimized groups trying to maximize progression gain per time. People will create their LFG problem on their own, because, to pick up your example, in current MMO mindsets if driving the vehicle while being skilled to drive vehicles works best, people will look for a skilled driver (skilled as in the character is specialized for it) and not take the random guy they dont know who hasnt.
3.) Doing away with classes and ways to differentiate your character in terms of gameplay, in order to avoid creating situations where you can only take, for example, a healer, or a tank, or whatever else, means everyone plays similar or the same, just like in an action game or shooter (and even there class-based games are popular). This reduces the replay value a lot, plus people LIKE classes. Classes WORK. Why? Because people do not readily connect the LFG problem to the availability of vastly differring classes. They just see "wtf, there is just one class? But I wanna play a rogue!" and drop your game.
The problem is not coming up with a miracle solution in general. The problem is coming up with a solution for the MMORPG-Genre, which is among others defined by its customers... and avoiding the LFG problem by turning the MMORPG into MMO-Shooters or MMO-Arcade-Actioners or whatever else wont work. People want MMORPG Gameplay, AND have no LFG.
Its like shooting a fly with a cannon. Yeah the fly is dead, but its expensive, totally overdone, and the collateral damage ruined what you tried to save from the fly in the first place.
I think the best way of solving the LFG problem is to do the following:
Implement AT RELEASE a system for looking for groups, including a global channel, the "Open Party" system of Warhammer, and a decent search tool. Include an explanation and demonstration of the Tool into the tutorial, make it mandatory to at least operate it once.
And then, to top things off: Make Healers and Tanks, or whatever important but rare core classes you have, fun and interesting to play. Do not give all the luxury skills, the utility, the runspeed, teleport, soloability and comfort to the classes that fill the least important role. The biggest contributor to the lack of groups is the lack of , usually, healers, and that is because almost all healing classes are made to be vastly inferior, uninteresting, stressful and more uncomfortable to play than the popular DPS classes, which usually get absolutely pampered and spoon-fed their success.
Look at the Hunter in WoW or LotRO, look at the Sorc/BW in WAR, playing a DPS class for soloing gets rewarded (and thus they are overplayed) insanely.
Groups and Raids are one of the best mechanics to make it possible to create interesting content, challenging content, that does not just go down easily to big numbers. While I agree that recent games have made it a bit too stringent how many of X you need to bring, there is no miracle replacement for this concept. Its just basic logic of the concept of a team. And thats as old as humanity... the guy who can carry a lot carries the deer that the guy who can throw the spear the furthest killed, and they both eat at the end of the day. As long as you have different classes or builds, you have synergies. The other way would be a Shooter, where its solely up to the individual skill. I dare say that MMORPGs with a large skill and a small character development factor arent going to be all that popular.
I won't even start on the many false assumptions throughout your post, but this section.... wow.
It's either classes and raids or it's a 'shooter'? Really?
You're a raider. Hopefully, you're not a developer.
"I think the faction of people believing that "group" gameplay should not be something planned, but something that just happens, believe that there is some miracle solution that will make people not go the path of least resistance and least effort.
There is no such solution, as no game has ever solved this problem without simply cutting out content that was designed with a somewhat specifically built group in mind."
As I've stated before, that's backwards thinking. Content built for a specific group is the byproduct of a class-based system.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
You'll notice that I was discussing emergent teamwork and used a well-known FPS as an example of how that can happen. It can work in any game that focuses on the design traits that I described: group goals and group rewards.
Originally posted by Khaunshar For a MMORPG with monthly subs and everything, we are talking about 24/7 gameplay.
I disagree. 24/7 is not an obligatory element of MMORPG operation. In fact, when I play with design ideas, one of the changes that I fool with is having a staff serving as the opposition for the players. Such a game would not staff up 24/7, so the game would have specific hours of operation. Not unlike a physical theme park.
Originally posted by Khaunshar So, do you have community goals along a progression scale that motivate people for a full year of such an amount of numbers?
Yes.
Originally posted by Khaunshar If yes.... the individuals contribution will be miniscule.
How's that?
Originally posted by Khaunshar 2.) Due to the above, you have to have personal progression in the game.Levels, Skills, Money, Power, whatever. Something that people can progress on for themselves, which rewards however much effort they pour in, because otherwise its not motivating.
If they're not motivated by such a game recipe, then that's great. They'll go away. I'd rather have the commies as customers than the guys who insist on pursuing their private agendas.
Originally posted by Khaunshar in WAR, where you got a ton of personal progression and all, the concept of helping your own side in the war already doesnt have enough pull. However, as soon as you have personal progression, people start rather working for their own progression than for their realm.
That's the exact conundrum that led me to thinking like a commie. As long as the players have personal rewards to drive them, they'll pursue personal rewards. So I dumped them. Mostly. I want to retain personal rewards, but never such that they compete with the appeal of community/commie rewards. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much.
Wouldn't it be nice if players considered playing the game all the reward that they wanted?
Originally posted by Khaunshar 3.) Doing away with classes and ways to differentiate your character in terms of gameplay, in order to avoid creating situations where you can only take, for example, a healer, or a tank, or whatever else, means everyone plays similar or the same, just like in an action game or shooter (and even there class-based games are popular).
Do away with the static nature of classes, while retaining the notion that not all characters can do all things. Characters acquire abilities to varying degrees by the equipment that they carry. Equipment is free for the taking. So configure your character the way you want it, then use it. If there are restrictions necessary to avoid all characters being identical, rationalize that through the gear. Metal interferes with magic. Lots of metal interferes with stealth. And so on.
Once a character is configured for the abilities it will have access to, it then becomes an issue of player skill to determine how effective it will be. That means that each piece of gear should have player skill involved with its use.
This also permits very dynamic characters. As fast as you can change your equipment, you can change your character's abilities.
Originally posted by Khaunshar Why? Because people do not readily connect the LFG problem to the availability of vastly differring classes. They just see "wtf, there is just one class? But I wanna play a rogue!" and drop your game.
Clearly, without static classes there is no way to permit players to click on a "Rogue" button.
P.S. For those interested: to break up a quote, switch the "Mode" dropdown to "BBML (all browsers)" and then use the forum-standard square-bracket notion.
Do away with the static nature of classes, while retaining the notion that not all characters can do all things. Characters acquire abilities to varying degrees by the equipment that they carry. Equipment is free for the taking. So configure your character the way you want it, then use it. If there are restrictions necessary to avoid all characters being identical, rationalize that through the gear. Metal interferes with magic. Lots of metal interferes with stealth. And so on.
Once a character is configured for the abilities it will have access to, it then becomes an issue of player skill to determine how effective it will be. That means that each piece of gear should have player skill involved with its use.
This also permits very dynamic characters. As fast as you can change your equipment, you can change your character's abilities.
I like the way you think.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I usually only group with my guild or rl friends. I don't mind soloing or grouping as I like to have options though I will admit I find raiding to be the must vile experience ever created in gaming at least in wow.
Comments
That "Open Group" idea sounds good, as long as people would actually use it. I boggle when I'm playing WoW and I end up in a zone where two or even three players are repeatedly saying "LFG" in the General Channel. I'm thinking "Err, why don't you lot do the sensible thing and GROUP!" What do they want - a golden ticket and a red carpet?
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.
The problem here is you are stuck on 'group content'. That then leads to the necessity of a certain group to complete it. You feel there is no 'measuring stick' because you aren't looking beyond 'grouping' and 'levels'.
"The reason is that skill based MMOs have far too many factors per character to try to balance anything properly."
Actually, quite the opposite. Skill-based systems allow for devising tactics and strategies based on the group's strengths and weaknesses. It also means, in PvP situations, that players now have the added dynamic of discerning the enemy's strategy and working towards countering that. It's a more engaging game play than getting a healer, a tank and damage dealer together and repeating the same tasks in the same fashion over and over again from level 10 to cap.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
people are funny. if you build something into a game, so that it's pretty much automatic, sure, they'd use it. make it optional, like actually communicating with eachother, and they'll err on the side of avoiding it.
I don't like solo games played online. If you get rid of the need for a group, that's what you get, ala WoW before raiding, CoH, WAR, and others.
So take your pick. A solo game played online with other people, or a good grouping game.
Devs should make both for players that like each sort of game, but it is not possible to put both in the same game.
A game where you NEED to group, is called "forced grouping". A game where you CAN group if you want to but dont' have to for anything, is a solo game played online with other people. Again, take your pick.
Why group if you dont' really need to? You just waste the time required to group, with no reward for your effort. No one needs to group in WoW until you get to raiding.
If you have ever been soloing and found yourself helping another player do something without grouping with them, then you have seen why it is possible for a game to have both soloing and grouping - because grouping as a formal activity should be abolished.
The problem is the Power Level of an encounter. If any three random players can beat an encounter then a team of three people whose skills complement each other will trivialize the encounter.
The reason why the tank/healer/DPS model is so popular is because it is great synergy. The three character types shore up each other's weaknesses and thus massively increase the power level of the party. A properly structured group will be at least a magnitude more powerfull then a group of thre characters lacking synergy.
So any staticly structured encounter will have a minimal Power Level requirement. If a simple aggregate of the Power Level of the group members is below that (ie can't just DPS spam yourself to victory) then you have to leverage the group synergies to boost th group's Power Level. At this point you get into the usual min/maxing thing where people try to figure out what is the minimal and optimal group setup needed to beat the encounter. If the encounter is difficult enough certain skillset combinations wil not be able to beat it no matter how good the players are.
The problem is the Power Level of an encounter. If any three random players can beat an encounter then a team of three people whose skills complement each other will trivialize the encounter.
The reason why the tank/healer/DPS model is so popular is because it is great synergy. The three character types shore up each other's weaknesses and thus massively increase the power level of the party. A properly structured group will be at least a magnitude more powerfull then a group of thre characters lacking synergy.
So any staticly structured encounter will have a minimal Power Level requirement. If a simple aggregate of the Power Level of the group members is below that (ie can't just DPS spam yourself to victory) then you have to leverage the group synergies to boost th group's Power Level. At this point you get into the usual min/maxing thing where people try to figure out what is the minimal and optimal group setup needed to beat the encounter. If the encounter is difficult enough certain skillset combinations wil not be able to beat it no matter how good the players are.
You're still thinking in terms of game design wrapped around the class-restricted/level-based game play. You're also focusing on group meaning x amount of people tethered together inside of a party system. You see the two options as either the Holy Trintiy or "any three random players" as opposed to the other alternative which simply does not and cannot exist in class-restricted MMOs - creating a group based on character skill and player strengths of the group members.
You'll notice that spawns are designed differently in skill-based MMOs than in class-restricted MMOs - it's actually radically different because you don't have a game design that has to insure the viability of set groups.
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I prefer to look it as a 'right tool for the job' model. If you need to break down a door you bring a sledgehammer and not a scalpel. However, if you need to perform surgery a sledgehammer is not what you want. As such certain encounters will be easier done if you have a certain skill set and will be much harder if you lack a certain skill set. So if you know ahead of time what skillsets a particular fight requires you will bring characters that have those skillsets and avoid characters with skillsets that do not help the group beat the encounter. In this skill-based vs class-based games really do not differ that much.
examples
-if a fight causes a lot of AoE damage to the entire group then you will prefer to bring someone with grooup healing skills.
-if the fight requires a lot of crowd control then characters without crowd control skills are not gonna be as in demand for it.
I've played both skill-based and class-based MMOs and I really did not notice a significant difference in mob design between them. Could you give me a better example of what you are talking about?
Try WoW, you can spend 80 levels not looking for a group and level 80 wishing you hadn't.
That's a perfect example. In almost all class-restricted MMOs, there is only one way to complete a task. To continue your comparison: You can only smash the door. You cannot pick the lock, you can not use a key, and you most certainly cannot simply torch the building. The encounters, spawning and AI in class-restricted MMOs must be designed to stand against the min-max'd trinity. Worse, they must be designed so that players feel the trinity works. For example, it is not hard to code a mob to just take out the paper cannons. It is not hard to code mobs that don't march in a set pattern on rails. It especially isn't hard to code them to spawn randomly and in random numbers. However, the rest of the game design is stats over strategy. It is gear over tactics. The mob stats, spawn and surrounding systems have to be designed to match the class-restricted gear-dependent game they are in.
Now, let's look at a familiar skill-based MMO - Ultima Online. The mobs spawn at random locations. The mobs wander - not on rails and not within an invisible fence. They don't return to some silly 'home base' if you lead them off too far. Sit, pull, fight, sit, pull, fight is not common and often not effective in skill-based MMOs, but is almost mandatory in class-restricted MMOs.
There's also the tie in with the loot system. This difference was clearly shown in the Age of Shadows expansion when they added artifacts, UO's equivalent of 'epic' items. In order to put that crap in a game - and turn it into a zero-strategy gear-dependent combat experience - you have to put that stuff in the most ridiculously hard place to get it, which means only a limited few people have access to it. As a result of injecting a flawed design into UO, the first LFG cries were ever heard in Britannia. They spent years trying to fix a problem that would have never happened had they realized that epics were a horrible byproduct of level-based class-restricted design, desirable due to necessity, and not really a design feature anyone with any forethought would have ever created.
A skill-based MMO is designed very differently from a class-restricted MMO in almost every area of the game. To the player, the design difference is transparent. You go smack a mob, get loot, buy stuff. On the design side, the game is built very differently.
You've played both types of MMO, so my question is: What games were they, and did you notice any difference in the amount of LFG spam occurring in either?
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Classic.
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The LFG has been a problem for quite a few years now.......I think this is why WoW went with the ability to solo to max level and many others have followed suit.......Like many of you, I had major problems finding groups in games like LoTRO, EQ2, and many others...... Then I read other players saying they never waited more than 5 minutes for a group in any game (which I find hard to believe)........
I think the faction of people believing that "group" gameplay should not be something planned, but something that just happens, believe that there is some miracle solution that will make people not go the path of least resistance and least effort.
There is no such solution, as no game has ever solved this problem without simply cutting out content that was designed with a somewhat specifically built group in mind. There are a lot of MMOs out there where there is no content that isnt basically an automatic win. It is a bit like Diabo 2: Unless you ridiculously overdo it, you will always win, the question becomes, how much can you win per hour. In such a setting, grouping means more people working towards the goal of winning more/hour. It never really is the question whether you can win at all.
From that angle, formal grouping looks useless, because from the start, you do not consider the concept of content that tries to challenge you to the point of maybe not being able to do it. As an example, I ll take the very old Meridian 59. It was a first-person MMORPG, about the same age as UO. You never grouped there, as anyone with a decently built character could just stand at a choke point and chainkill mobs, occasionally having to rest when hitpoints ran out if he had no access to healing magic. The game had a community, it had bosses, it had player interaction, but at the core of it was a gameplay that was basically autowin if your character could mathematically beat the mob. You didnt have to play well, you didnt have to build a group, because in the end, as soon as you tried at least a little bit to do something, you succeeded.
Its a concept often used in F2P games, and the modern Questgrinders.... every mob is an easy win, there are no fights in which the outcome is unclear, the only way how something becomes difficult is through being swarmed by mobs due to a bad pull or similar. You never have to group if you are capable of playing half-decent, and grouping just makes easy things even safer and easier.
The problem is longevity. And grouping, ultimately, is one of the very few mass-audience compatible ways of making a game last. If you minimalize grouping into something optional, people will not do it. The hassle of communicating, or meeting up, why do that if you can just read up on the website how to do it, and do it yourself? In theory, thats great, I mean, people would never do stuff that isnt fun to them, would they?
Yes, they will. People are funny... they will take the shortest road to their goals more often than not, especially in MMOs, and especially in competitive environments.... and they will tell themselves "Its good, I want that, I am having fun, dont I?". But continuosly soloing silently for stuff that everyone else has, stuff that everyone will attain, and with a minimum of "life" in the game does not work for long. Its a very short-sighted view on games.
Groups and Raids are one of the best mechanics to make it possible to create interesting content, challenging content, that does not just go down easily to big numbers. While I agree that recent games have made it a bit too stringent how many of X you need to bring, there is no miracle replacement for this concept.
Its just basic logic of the concept of a team. And thats as old as humanity... the guy who can carry a lot carries the deer that the guy who can throw the spear the furthest killed, and they both eat at the end of the day.
As long as you have different classes or builds, you have synergies. The other way would be a Shooter, where its solely up to the individual skill. I dare say that MMORPGs with a large skill and a small character development factor arent going to be all that popular.
The volume of assumptions there is staggering.
The best example that I can offer of a game that is in the ballpark of a 'miracle solution' is Unreal Tournament 2004 Onslaught. You might see 30 players cooperating spontaneously to progress through the goals of a game. That's because they share the same goals, their rewards only come if they succeed in reaching those goals, and the rewards are available to the entire community, not just an individual. Five guys building a node, two driving a vehicle with a third chasing it on foot and pumping heals into it, a bunch of players getting rides, etc. The whole thing is very fluid; players cooperate or solo as they see fit, but cooperation is the key to success.
The recipe of community goals and community rewards is the essential element of this 'miracle solution'. I'm sure there are other ways to solve the problem.
Now create a game that puts 5,000 players into an environment where there are 10 such community goals waiting to be tackled. As those are dealt with by the players, introduce new ones, always keeping the players busy on community tasks. For those who want to contribute solo, provide other tasks that still reward the community, but do so as a result of a bunch of solo players tackling a problem independently.
Community goals that produce spontaneous grouping is building stuff or destroying stuff. On a large scale, of course. Rescue the prisoner, build the bridge, storm the castle, etc. Hundreds of players cooperating.
Community goals that involve lots of solo players is finding stuff. Scouting the enemy, locating new resources, etc. Hundreds of players soloing after the same goals.
Note that the solo player is not doing any of those things for himself. He gets no reward for himself. But the community gains as a result of every discovery, and the game morphs and changes as those discoveries are made. A solo player might find an NPC that is willing to teach the instructor NPCs a new combat move. He won't teach it to the player, but he'll teach it to the teachers that everyone uses. Community reward.
well.. first off I will gladly take "LFG downtime" over turning an MMO into a solo game......
however:
There is no reason to have downtime in WoW currently... there is always something you can do while looking for a group, whether it be questing, rep grinding, crafting, playing the AH, or PvP'ing....
You can just leave the nifty LFG interface running... and if you want to be proactive send the occasional message in the LFG channel.
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@JB: You are describing a short-timed Shooter or Action-Game. What you propose to be working in an MMORPG, you ll end up with multiple problems:
1.) You have to assume hundreds of hours of gameplay by thousands of people being poured into that Game. For a FPS it works, a few minutes, maybe an hour or two for each match or tournament, and its over. For a MMORPG with monthly subs and everything, we are talking about 24/7 gameplay. Dont buy into the myth of the super casual gamers, there have been long and exhausting studies a year ago which puts more than 2/3s of the playerbase of the top 5 subscriber number MMOs in the western market into the 20h+ per week, and still a hefty 40% into the 30h+. So, do you have community goals along a progression scale that motivate people for a full year of such an amount of numbers? If yes.... the individuals contribution will be miniscule. The feeling of achievement for the community does not work. Its communism in essence, and that doesnt really work with human motivation for a long time.
2.) Due to the above, you have to have personal progression in the game.Levels, Skills, Money, Power, whatever. Something that people can progress on for themselves, which rewards however much effort they pour in, because otherwise its not motivating. Playing for "the Hive" where your own contribution is almost zero does not work. Hell, in WAR, where you got a ton of personal progression and all, the concept of helping your own side in the war already doesnt have enough pull. However, as soon as you have personal progression, people start rather working for their own progression than for their realm. No biggie, you say, I just give everyone personal AND realm progression points for doing the community goals. Well, and at that point we have the grind. People try to advance, by "accident" advance the community as well, but they will start maximizing it. Within a short time, such is the nature of these games, a few people will form optimized groups trying to maximize progression gain per time. People will create their LFG problem on their own, because, to pick up your example, in current MMO mindsets if driving the vehicle while being skilled to drive vehicles works best, people will look for a skilled driver (skilled as in the character is specialized for it) and not take the random guy they dont know who hasnt.
3.) Doing away with classes and ways to differentiate your character in terms of gameplay, in order to avoid creating situations where you can only take, for example, a healer, or a tank, or whatever else, means everyone plays similar or the same, just like in an action game or shooter (and even there class-based games are popular). This reduces the replay value a lot, plus people LIKE classes. Classes WORK. Why? Because people do not readily connect the LFG problem to the availability of vastly differring classes. They just see "wtf, there is just one class? But I wanna play a rogue!" and drop your game.
The problem is not coming up with a miracle solution in general. The problem is coming up with a solution for the MMORPG-Genre, which is among others defined by its customers... and avoiding the LFG problem by turning the MMORPG into MMO-Shooters or MMO-Arcade-Actioners or whatever else wont work. People want MMORPG Gameplay, AND have no LFG.
Its like shooting a fly with a cannon. Yeah the fly is dead, but its expensive, totally overdone, and the collateral damage ruined what you tried to save from the fly in the first place.
I think the best way of solving the LFG problem is to do the following:
Implement AT RELEASE a system for looking for groups, including a global channel, the "Open Party" system of Warhammer, and a decent search tool. Include an explanation and demonstration of the Tool into the tutorial, make it mandatory to at least operate it once.
And then, to top things off: Make Healers and Tanks, or whatever important but rare core classes you have, fun and interesting to play. Do not give all the luxury skills, the utility, the runspeed, teleport, soloability and comfort to the classes that fill the least important role. The biggest contributor to the lack of groups is the lack of , usually, healers, and that is because almost all healing classes are made to be vastly inferior, uninteresting, stressful and more uncomfortable to play than the popular DPS classes, which usually get absolutely pampered and spoon-fed their success.
Look at the Hunter in WoW or LotRO, look at the Sorc/BW in WAR, playing a DPS class for soloing gets rewarded (and thus they are overplayed) insanely.
I won't even start on the many false assumptions throughout your post, but this section.... wow.
It's either classes and raids or it's a 'shooter'? Really?
You're a raider. Hopefully, you're not a developer.
"I think the faction of people believing that "group" gameplay should not be something planned, but something that just happens, believe that there is some miracle solution that will make people not go the path of least resistance and least effort.
There is no such solution, as no game has ever solved this problem without simply cutting out content that was designed with a somewhat specifically built group in mind."
As I've stated before, that's backwards thinking. Content built for a specific group is the byproduct of a class-based system.
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You'll notice that I was discussing emergent teamwork and used a well-known FPS as an example of how that can happen. It can work in any game that focuses on the design traits that I described: group goals and group rewards.
I disagree. 24/7 is not an obligatory element of MMORPG operation. In fact, when I play with design ideas, one of the changes that I fool with is having a staff serving as the opposition for the players. Such a game would not staff up 24/7, so the game would have specific hours of operation. Not unlike a physical theme park.
Yes.
How's that?
If they're not motivated by such a game recipe, then that's great. They'll go away. I'd rather have the commies as customers than the guys who insist on pursuing their private agendas.
That's the exact conundrum that led me to thinking like a commie. As long as the players have personal rewards to drive them, they'll pursue personal rewards. So I dumped them. Mostly. I want to retain personal rewards, but never such that they compete with the appeal of community/commie rewards. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much.
Wouldn't it be nice if players considered playing the game all the reward that they wanted?
Do away with the static nature of classes, while retaining the notion that not all characters can do all things. Characters acquire abilities to varying degrees by the equipment that they carry. Equipment is free for the taking. So configure your character the way you want it, then use it. If there are restrictions necessary to avoid all characters being identical, rationalize that through the gear. Metal interferes with magic. Lots of metal interferes with stealth. And so on.
Once a character is configured for the abilities it will have access to, it then becomes an issue of player skill to determine how effective it will be. That means that each piece of gear should have player skill involved with its use.
This also permits very dynamic characters. As fast as you can change your equipment, you can change your character's abilities.
Clearly, without static classes there is no way to permit players to click on a "Rogue" button.
P.S. For those interested: to break up a quote, switch the "Mode" dropdown to "BBML (all browsers)" and then use the forum-standard square-bracket notion.
I like the way you think.
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Eliminate forced grouping, and you take this problem completely out of the equation.
I usually only group with my guild or rl friends. I don't mind soloing or grouping as I like to have options though I will admit I find raiding to be the must vile experience ever created in gaming at least in wow.