I know what you're talking about and agree it's a problem for pro-groupers but I don't think it's laziness I think it's people not wanting to be the leader. One thing I'd do if I was designing some kind of LFG tool is have a check box saying "are you prepared to be the leader?". Some method to try and get round that bit of human psychology. The example of WAR where 90% of people are soloing the PvE and instantly turning into groupers for the RvR is partly down to the open warband system imo as it gets round that shyness factor. The reality is that leadership in a team pretty much consists of clicking on someone and hitting RECRUIT. That's it. If people can't handle that... something is wrong. Seriously, are the pro-groupers supposed to be the "social" ones? Now you're trying to tell us that they're too shy to actually make a team? That's true in terms of individual mob difficulty - if dungeons are designed around solo questing with single spawn mobs in a neat grid i can choose to go fight higher level single spawn mobs in a neat grid in the next zone. But that's still mind-numbing compared to dungeons like Unrest, Crushbone etc where there were plenty of individual mobs that were easy to solo as individual mobs but the challenge was in how the mobs were laid out plus their social radius, aggro radius and the number of wanderers. Basically if you've got an MMORPG where pulling isn't an art form then it's too easy (imo). I don't have to pull most of the time, I just root them in place and pick them off one at a time. It doesn't matter what the particular dungeon dynamics are, I still get to fight them as dictated by my particular class build. There's definitely two seperate arguments going on. The pre-endgame pro-grouper argument is that if solo quest grinding is the easiest path then the 80% of people who group or solo based on cost-benefit will solo and then the groupers won't have a big enough pool of people to group with. There's also an endgame gear-related argument... which i'm ignoring because of the associated nerd-rage. I don't argue endgame mechanics because I don't give a damn about the endgame, I simply do not participate in it. However, the pre-endgame argument doesn't hold water. The solo path will never be the easiest path if you are concerned about getting there faster. That's where grouping really matters. If you can get your uber loot 10 levels sooner in your team than the guy who is doing it solo, anyone who wants that loot right this second is going to jump into a team. But apparently, it's only a tiny minority who even cares about getting it right now, so long as they can EVER get it... they're happy to wait because teaming is generally a giant pain in the ass.
Make the pro-groupers better people to be around and maybe more people will want to. Yes, defo true. A game that encourages grouping but doesn't force it would take a lot more design effort to get right than either a forced group game or a solo quester game. I think it would need to work (like EQ1 did early on) through steering players towards certain zones (using cost-benefit) so the zone was well populated and then making those zones challenging enough so that 60-70% of players grouped up naturally. I think if you have that sort of percentage grouped (without forcing them) then it's a sign you've got the difficulty level about right. Only so long as you maintain a huge playerbase and limit the size of the world so that lots of people want to do a small number of things. Once either of those elements change, you're back to square one. The problem is... most people want to have a huge, constantly expanding world and if they don't get it, they leave. I don't see how you can get both of them together over the long haul.
So, looking at today, are players subbing to a game for 1-3 years at a time, or are they picking up a game trying it for 1-3 months maybe 6 if you're lucky and then jumping ship? If companies, want to recoup their investments and keep their playerbase solid in order to make money for as long as they can, they not only need to look at what gamers are doing today, but what is missing from yesterday. Why aren't players subbing to games for longer periods of time. Is it just the amount of competition, game design, classes, loot, social ties, end game, pvp, pve .......... To ignore history is ignorant whether it's games, dating, politics, sports, etc. HIstory is a tool that should be used to learn from. If you ignore the history of gamer attitudes, you will not be able to put your finger on where they changed and why they changed.
A lot of gamers do jump ship after a couple of months, or they jump back and forth between games hoping to find something that's actually fun to do. In the past, there wasn't the kind of choice in games that we have today so you really can't look at how things worked then compared to now. You couldn't jump over to a similar game 10 years ago because for most genres, there simply weren't more than 1-2 in existence. Today, there are dozens. If you stop having fun in one game, you can go and easily find 10 that are close enough and play those instead.
If you really want to know my take on why players aren't staying subbed for a long time, it's because almost all games out there currently do not get the players emotionally attached to what's going on. A character on one game is pretty much exactly like a character on the next, jumping between one and the next doesn't matter because there's nothing to the one you're leaving, any more than there is to the one you're going to. That has nothing whatsoever to do with competition, game design, classes, loot, PvP, PvE or anything else. Social ties might be the closest thing in your list.
It's one thing to understand history, it's something entirely different to try to apply history in non-historical contexts. You have to look at the larger picture, see if history can be applied in any sense, then try to figure out how the modern situation, with all the modern complexities, can be best handled. Saying "they did this 10 years ago so it must work!" is ludicrous. If it worked then that game would still be extremely successful. It invariably isn't.
There will at some point, just because of natural economic forces, be a return of the niche MMORPG game. Great, you make sure you let us know when that happens. I'm not saying it might not happen, I'm saying it's foolish to take already existing games and complain that they're not something that they're clearly not. MMORPGs won't function differently than any other market. You can make a product with mass appeal, and ignore the niche market, until the mass appeal market is completely saturated. Which hasn't happened and I doubt will happen any time soon. The explosion of MMOs has happened mostly because of the coming of widespread high-speed connections and the widespread use of personal computers. That's still a growing market, more markets open all the time as more countries get their first access. It may be another 15-20 years before that kind of growth is exhausted.
The reality is that leadership in a team pretty much consists of clicking on someone and hitting RECRUIT. That's it. If people can't handle that... something is wrong. Seriously, are the pro-groupers supposed to be the "social" ones? Now you're trying to tell us that they're too shy to actually make a team?
There's three sets of people - groupers, soloers and those in the middle. I was talking about those in the middle.
I don't have to pull most of the time, I just root them in place and pick them off one at a time. It doesn't matter what the particular dungeon dynamics are, I still get to fight them as dictated by my particular class build.
You're making my point for me.
The solo path will never be the easiest path if you are concerned about getting there faster.
This is technically true otherwise there'd be no power leveling for the truly desperate but if we're talking about the average player then if you can kill a mob in 6 seconds then the benefit of killing it in 4 seconds is pretty minimal. Getting bored repeating this but the simple fact is games built around a solo questing conveyor belt have to be designed around the least soloable class. It's why if you pick the best soloing class for that game you go through the levels like a rocket with zero challenge (see previous point above).
There's a cost to grouping in terms of the extra hassle. If the game's level of difficulty is set very low then the average player won't group because the benefit of grouping is also very low and that benefit doesn't outweigh the extra hassle. Those people who particularly enjoy grouping get a higher benefit from it and for them that does outweigh the extra hassle but they have a harder time finding groups because the middle-ground people don't want to.
What pro-groupers need (imo) is not a game that forces grouping and prevents soloing but a game with a higher level of threat. if the PvE game had a higher level of threat then the middle-ground players would automatically start looking to group up. This is proved by games like WAR and WoW where all the middle ground players will 90% solo the PvE but the same players will instantly group for RvR.
Only so long as you maintain a huge playerbase and limit the size of the world so that lots of people want to do a small number of things. Once either of those elements change, you're back to square one. The problem is... most people want to have a huge, constantly expanding world and if they don't get it, they leave. I don't see how you can get both of them together over the long haul.
This is true. If you want to design a game that encourages grouping but doesn't force it then there's a neccessary correlation between the total size of the playerbase and the number of prime grouping spots. You'd have to avoid spreading players out too much but at the same time you need to keep updating the game and providing variety.
I'm not sure most people want a huge and constantly expanding world though. I think they want a huge world that constantly changes over time which is not quite the same thing e.g you could have a dungeon on top of a glacier in an ice zone that was reached by climbing up a glacier ramp. In the summer the ramp melted and that dungeon couldn't be reached but the melting also uncovers the entrance to a different dungeon buried inside the glacier. Two dungeons, same zone, same level range but only one open at a time - the first one in place from the beginning of the game, the second added in an expansion.
On the fundamental question: "Why can't they balance solo play with group play?". My answer, they can, and all games do. Now, is everyone happy with that balance in any given game? No. It is impossible to make everyone happy, we are too different!
In my opinion, there are two separate issues. The first has to do with developing a character's skills, armor, weapons, and other tools. If the game has levels and I can get to the top level solo and get decent gear (albeit not uber) via quests, crafting or purchase, I am pretty happy. If the very best items require completion of grouped content, I can live with it.
The other issue is experiential. I want to explore and do adventures. This issue is more important to me than getting loot. If too many areas are instances that require a group to survive, then I get bummed. What constitutes "too many"? That is hard for me to say. WoW probably had too many for me, LOTRO started out with just a few and I was happy to group to experience them, but the Moria expansion had a lot more (and they were clearly gear-loot oriented).
I prefer going into a group area that offers exploratory fun, and/or quests with rewards for everyone. I am not so hot on group areas that offer limited number of boss loots that require competitive dice rolls. That just seems to be an exploitive way to get people to do content over and over to drag out your subscription. But hey, that may just be me.
So, given my preference to solo, why do I play mmos instead of single player games? I don't know exactly why I do. I like socializing in public areas, doing light roleplaying. I like occational grouping, particularly with friends to experience a new area. But most of all, I like the expansiveness and open-endedness of an mmo. Single player games are not as immersive to me, although some are pretty darn good.
The reality is that leadership in a team pretty much consists of clicking on someone and hitting RECRUIT. That's it. If people can't handle that... something is wrong. Seriously, are the pro-groupers supposed to be the "social" ones? Now you're trying to tell us that they're too shy to actually make a team? There's three sets of people - groupers, soloers and those in the middle. I was talking about those in the middle. But the people who can both group and solo, which represents the overwhelming majority of all players, aren't the ones causing the trouble. It's the people who want everyone to group, only group and do nothing but group who are the issue. I don't have to pull most of the time, I just root them in place and pick them off one at a time. It doesn't matter what the particular dungeon dynamics are, I still get to fight them as dictated by my particular class build. You're making my point for me. I fail to see how, since I'm saying that the game dynamics allow me to take on group-designed dungeons and still defeat them. The dungeons aren't made solo-easy, I'm just making use of standard gameplay mechanics. You might not like those mechanics, but they're pretty much standard in any game that has snares, roots and calms. The solo path will never be the easiest path if you are concerned about getting there faster. This is technically true otherwise there'd be no power leveling for the truly desperate but if we're talking about the average player then if you can kill a mob in 6 seconds then the benefit of killing it in 4 seconds is pretty minimal. Getting bored repeating this but the simple fact is games built around a solo questing conveyor belt have to be designed around the least soloable class. It's why if you pick the best soloing class for that game you go through the levels like a rocket with zero challenge (see previous point above). But we're not talking about people killing a mob in 4 vs. 6 seconds, we're talking about people killing mobs at vastly different levels. If your level 10 team can go through a dungeon and clear it, but it takes until level 15 for a soloer to do the same, that's not 4 vs. 6 seconds, that's 5 entire levels, by which time the teams have moved elsewhere and don't care about the dungeon anyhow. There's a cost to grouping in terms of the extra hassle. If the game's level of difficulty is set very low then the average player won't group because the benefit of grouping is also very low and that benefit doesn't outweigh the extra hassle. Those people who particularly enjoy grouping get a higher benefit from it and for them that does outweigh the extra hassle but they have a harder time finding groups because the middle-ground people don't want to. And a lot of people don't think the hassle is worth it, especially people with limited time to play anyhow. What good does it do to jump on a game with 30 minutes to play if it takes you 25 minutes to get a team? What pro-groupers need (imo) is not a game that forces grouping and prevents soloing but a game with a higher level of threat. if the PvE game had a higher level of threat then the middle-ground players would automatically start looking to group up. This is proved by games like WAR and WoW where all the middle ground players will 90% solo the PvE but the same players will instantly group for RvR. But that'll just drive away a massive number of players who don't have time for teaming all the time. Most people can only play a limited amount of time. I might get on for an hour or so during the day and another hour or two at night if I'm lucky. Assuming I want to team, finding a team is almost always difficult, I've spent upwards of an hour, even after putting a team together, to get everyone in the same place so we can play, mostly because people put their names on the LFT list and then go off and do other things. In the end, it doesn't change the situation, nor does it make it any more likely that devs are going to drive away their cash cow, the casual gamer with limited time. Only so long as you maintain a huge playerbase and limit the size of the world so that lots of people want to do a small number of things. Once either of those elements change, you're back to square one. The problem is... most people want to have a huge, constantly expanding world and if they don't get it, they leave. I don't see how you can get both of them together over the long haul. This is true. If you want to design a game that encourages grouping but doesn't force it then there's a neccessary correlation between the total size of the playerbase and the number of prime grouping spots. You'd have to avoid spreading players out too much but at the same time you need to keep updating the game and providing variety. I'm not sure most people want a huge and constantly expanding world though. I think they want a huge world that constantly changes over time which is not quite the same thing e.g you could have a dungeon on top of a glacier in an ice zone that was reached by climbing up a glacier ramp. In the summer the ramp melted and that dungeon couldn't be reached but the melting also uncovers the entrance to a different dungeon buried inside the glacier. Two dungeons, same zone, same level range but only one open at a time - the first one in place from the beginning of the game, the second added in an expansion. It would be tricky though. If you have a huge world, you've already got problems. You need a large playerbase and a small world in order to make it easy to get teams of the right level, where you want them and when you want them. I don't see how it can be done any other way. Even with your expansion idea, you're still increasing the size of the "world" because instead of having 1 dungeon in a particular zone, you've now doubled the amount of content people will want to go through, thus thinning out the potential team members available. Do that in a dozen zones, even one at a time, and you're going to run out of players very quickly.
It's not tricky, I don't think it's mathematically possible.
But the people who can both group and solo, which represents the overwhelming majority of all players, aren't the ones causing the trouble. It's the people who want everyone to group, only group and do nothing but group who are the issue. There are some people like this it's true. They seem to think that most people will only group if they have no choice. My experience is most players will instantly start to group as soon as their chance of dying solo goes above a fairly low number. In the newer games designed around a solo quest conveyor belt from 1 to max level the chance of your char dying if you follow the conveyor belt is pretty much zero so most people don't group. We're not talking about people killing a mob in 4 vs. 6 seconds, we're talking about people killing mobs at vastly different levels. If your level 10 team can go through a dungeon and clear it, but it takes until level 15 for a soloer to do the same, that's not 4 vs. 6 seconds, that's 5 entire levels, by which time the teams have moved elsewhere and don't care about the dungeon anyhow. We are talking about that though because most of the newer games (at least the ones I've tried) are designed around around leveling along a solo quest conveyor belt and the conveyor belt almost entirely involves killing a long succesion of easy single mobs very quickly. The main exception is games where there's an endless mob grind but just as *only* solo questing ends up too easy, *only* mob grinding gets too dull without other things, like solo quests, for variety. And a lot of people don't think the hassle is worth it, especially people with limited time to play anyhow. What good does it do to jump on a game with 30 minutes to play if it takes you 25 minutes to get a team? I agree. The worst possible combo would be a forced grouping game where grouping was always a major hassle. All I'd say to that is a lot of the early EQ1 dungeons had 30-40 people in them with 2/3 grouped and 1/3 solo and people LFG in chat seemed to find groups pretty easily. So it's possible to do if the game is designed for it. But that'll just drive away a massive number of players who don't have time for teaming all the time. Most people can only play a limited amount of time. I might get on for an hour or so during the day and another hour or two at night if I'm lucky. Assuming I want to team, finding a team is almost always difficult, I've spent upwards of an hour, even after putting a team together, to get everyone in the same place so we can play, mostly because people put their names on the LFT list and then go off and do other things. In the end, it doesn't change the situation, nor does it make it any more likely that devs are going to drive away their cash cow, the casual gamer with limited time. True again. grouping games need to be designed around drawing players to particular spots and the group bit happening *after* you've got them there. Examples: EQ1 - level mostly through mob grinding, XP bonus in the open dungeons so players gathered in the open dungeons, plus it was possible to solo easily near the entrance so players knew they wouldn't end up doing nothing if they were LFG for a while - once you get players gathered in a dangerous dungeon then 2/3 of them will group automatically. WAR / RvR - players gather in the RvR zones for the RvR rewards - once they're there 2/3 (actually more than 2/3 in group PvP) will automatically group for safety in numbers. If you have a huge world, you've already got problems. You need a large playerbase and a small world in order to make it easy to get teams of the right level, where you want them and when you want them. I don't see how it can be done any other way. Even with your expansion idea, you're still increasing the size of the "world" because instead of having 1 dungeon in a particular zone, you've now doubled the amount of content people will want to go through, thus thinning out the potential team members available. Do that in a dozen zones, even one at a time, and you're going to run out of players very quickly.
It's not tricky, I don't think it's mathematically possible. Disagree. EQ1 proved it could be done for a long while and I think it could have been done for a lot longer using various finite state engine type ideas. I think EQ1 messed it up through getting obsessed with the endgame treadmill and not being careful enough with their core game. Examples: 1) 12 mobs drop a < level 20 sword. 12 quests with a < level 20 sword as a reward. New expansion adds a five minute level one quest that adds a sword better than all the other 24 so one bit of added content messes up 24 old bits of content. 2) One EQ1 expansion added a bunch of instanced dungeons which were pretty cool but what they did was add the entrances in under-used zones so eventually what you're encouraging is maybe 3 players in an old dungeon LFG for more players for the hard bit of the dungeon and another three players in the instance zone LFG for more players to do the instance. This sort of thing leads to the sort of grouping problems you mention. What they should have done was put the entrances to the instanced dungeons in the open dungeons. If the instance was level 20-24 then put the entrance behind a level 20-24 bit of the open dungeon. Both sets of players head to the same place and LFG with double the chance of filling the group. EQ1 kept doing stuff like that gradually annoying players one by one. I think other games will mostly all follow the same route. My guess to the cause is the game company gets obsessed with endgame.
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Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
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A lot of gamers do jump ship after a couple of months, or they jump back and forth between games hoping to find something that's actually fun to do. In the past, there wasn't the kind of choice in games that we have today so you really can't look at how things worked then compared to now. You couldn't jump over to a similar game 10 years ago because for most genres, there simply weren't more than 1-2 in existence. Today, there are dozens. If you stop having fun in one game, you can go and easily find 10 that are close enough and play those instead.
If you really want to know my take on why players aren't staying subbed for a long time, it's because almost all games out there currently do not get the players emotionally attached to what's going on. A character on one game is pretty much exactly like a character on the next, jumping between one and the next doesn't matter because there's nothing to the one you're leaving, any more than there is to the one you're going to. That has nothing whatsoever to do with competition, game design, classes, loot, PvP, PvE or anything else. Social ties might be the closest thing in your list.
It's one thing to understand history, it's something entirely different to try to apply history in non-historical contexts. You have to look at the larger picture, see if history can be applied in any sense, then try to figure out how the modern situation, with all the modern complexities, can be best handled. Saying "they did this 10 years ago so it must work!" is ludicrous. If it worked then that game would still be extremely successful. It invariably isn't.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
On the fundamental question: "Why can't they balance solo play with group play?". My answer, they can, and all games do. Now, is everyone happy with that balance in any given game? No. It is impossible to make everyone happy, we are too different!
In my opinion, there are two separate issues. The first has to do with developing a character's skills, armor, weapons, and other tools. If the game has levels and I can get to the top level solo and get decent gear (albeit not uber) via quests, crafting or purchase, I am pretty happy. If the very best items require completion of grouped content, I can live with it.
The other issue is experiential. I want to explore and do adventures. This issue is more important to me than getting loot. If too many areas are instances that require a group to survive, then I get bummed. What constitutes "too many"? That is hard for me to say. WoW probably had too many for me, LOTRO started out with just a few and I was happy to group to experience them, but the Moria expansion had a lot more (and they were clearly gear-loot oriented).
I prefer going into a group area that offers exploratory fun, and/or quests with rewards for everyone. I am not so hot on group areas that offer limited number of boss loots that require competitive dice rolls. That just seems to be an exploitive way to get people to do content over and over to drag out your subscription. But hey, that may just be me.
So, given my preference to solo, why do I play mmos instead of single player games? I don't know exactly why I do. I like socializing in public areas, doing light roleplaying. I like occational grouping, particularly with friends to experience a new area. But most of all, I like the expansiveness and open-endedness of an mmo. Single player games are not as immersive to me, although some are pretty darn good.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None