Players of the first wave of MMO's (EQ1, DAOC etc) recall fondly the grouping nature of the games we played (there were painful sides to it of course) and wonder what changed with the more modern games.
Quest based character advancement is the root of all evil and to a lesser extent, levels. I'll use early DAOC (per TOA) as my example.
All it took to advance your character was first find 8 players close in level to your own (within 3 was preferable), make sure you had a primary/secondary healer, main/off tank, and crowd control. (the last e slots could be filled with DPS, extra CC or whatever, didn't really matter.) Once assembled (and I'll grant, not always easy find the right mix) you could head out to a level appropriate camp of npc's and kill until you leveled past them.
Everyone did not need to be well geared, play their classes extraordinarily well, (you could make allowances to train less experienced players) have have some supreme knowledge of how to complete the encounter.
This system worked well. Depending on their current level, players would find themselves in the open world or in one of the many level appropriate dungeons found around the land. Pick up groups were the norm, not the exception, and while a good guild group might be a little better, a good PUG could accomplish the same goals and everyone was more or less happy.
Enough with the past.
So along comes WOW (they weren't the first) and they made quest based character advancement their core design. Now you added a new variable to the grouping equation, you not only had to find level/ckass appropriate players like in DAOC, they had to be on the same quest as you or they got little or no reward.
Well this destroyed grouping completely, especially when any soloer could level up much faster than any group when completing open world quests. Sure, they threw in a some dungeons that could only be accomplished with a group, but who doesn't remember long stretches of going it alone in WOW?
Sure, WOW is making raiding mroe PUG friendly, but I don't see where the game mechanics have changed at all to make grouping up to do core leveling the best option.
As long as soloing is more efficient, and has equvivalent rewards, people will not be encouraged to group, unless of course they are very social individuals.
In the early games i met and made many friends from the PUGS I was part of. I received guild invites due to my excellent healing and crowd control skills (I always played support classes) heck, I was even able to tank on a Paladin, something I've never really mastered in the more raid centric combat of later games.
No doubt, there were many issues back then, esp finding healers some times, but still, overall for me what we gained from solo questing in terms of always being efficient in our play time is far overshadowed by what we lost from a solid grouping mechanic.
I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sure, WOW is making raiding mroe PUG friendly, but I don't see where the game mechanics have changed at all to make grouping up to do core leveling the best option.
It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
Making PUG friendly is raelly not aimed at making grouping easier but aimed at getting more people into raiding.
I agree that quest-based leveling does cause real problems with grouping. Those damned quest chains are hell on grouping in particular. As fun as they are to solo, they are painful to group for.
I personally like the PQ system in Warhammer for group leveling. It has fallen prey to diminishing numbers, but when the game was new, a PQ tour was quite a bit of fun. I think PQs are a very good mechanic, and hope to see them in other games.
Being grouped, but only to grind the same mobs sounds like a worse problem than solo questing, frankly.
One of the other issues with grouping is the level effects in dungeons. Lowbies can't tag along and contribute to the cause, they will do no good and likely draw mobs from miles away. The area aggro mechanic in WoW (and other games) should be removed, and the tight effective range limits loosened. This is another area which Warhammer covered well. There is a wider range of levels in which characters can be useful versus a certain level mob. It is even more evident in PvP where a group of T1 characters CAN swarm down a T2 character. That can't happen in WoW. More than a 5 level inferiority means you might as well not be there at all.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Originally posted by Kyleran I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
That makes no sense. There is no MMORPG wehre you cannot solo to the cap. The definition of "Forced Grouping" means it's more convenient to group than solo.
It would be easy to make a game which greatly favours grouping. While it would result in more grouping, it would also result in fewer total players (meaning less money), as many players don't want to group - or grow tired with the hassle of grouping. The "MM" is optional for many players.
I have played WoW (off and on) since '05, and way too much of that time has been soloing. Not because I want to, but because grouping is awkward and inconvenient. My usual experience is to make friends with people, and gradually lose touch with them as they outlevel me.
I think that (in time) games will be made which greatly favour grouping, but the devs have got to get the 'must be everything to everyone' mentality out of their heads.
I'm guessing neither of you ever played, saw, or heard of FFXI?
Reading into this thread, this does look like more of an LOTRO problem, but sure it can be seen elsewhere. That said, I think in many cases people play all lone-wolf, then get upset that all they did is solo. It all boils down to your goals in these games. If you're racing to max level, you're skipping much group content along the way. If you're a bit selfish, and like your drops/exp/money to yourself, then there's no excuse.
On the other hand, I absolutely understand why grouping is avoided much of the time. It's rather absurd that grouping generally means slower exp, and trivialized fights to the point that it's not even fun. I'd rather sit in a ventrilo, talking with friends while I accomplish my goals far more quickly and with a lot less complication than spending far more time ensuring that myself and my group members are all in the same page, and that's just the sad fact for most games out there.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
Originally posted by Kyleran I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sure, WOW is making raiding mroe PUG friendly, but I don't see where the game mechanics have changed at all to make grouping up to do core leveling the best option.
It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
Making PUG friendly is raelly not aimed at making grouping easier but aimed at getting more people into raiding.
in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
Exactly. It's the socializing that kept me playing DAOC for years. That was the last game I play that wasn't quest oriented, and the last game I played where finding a group was just a normal part of gameplay. 've always hated how all MMOs are full of quests now a days. They're not interesting like storylines in single-player games. They're boring and repetitive and I'd rather be chatting with real people while dungeon camping.
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 Kyleran I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
Isn't that raiding?
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
Isn't that raiding?
Maybe if raiding could be done in small groups. I think another thing that inhibits socializing is raid-sized groups, where there are too many people to have any sort of persistent casual conversation, without devolving into chaos.
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 Kyleran I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
I cannot agree with you. I am simply not wired to consider that to be fun for an extended period. I don't mind doing simlar things for an extended period as long as there is enough of a variety in those tasks. As soon as those tasks become too alike, I get bored within 15-30 minutes. So camping the same spawn or type of spawn for an extended period puts me to sleep. I'll do it in spurts and then go do something else till I get 'unbored'.
The thing about the 'endless quests' is that there is usually enough variety in them to keep me interested for a much longer time. A new area will present a new challenge, there is a new twist to a quest formula, the mobs have new abilities I have to learn, etc.
One thing I really like about MMOs is that I can socialize with other people while still doing things on my own. AS such I do not see the logic in doing a boring task simply to socialize while I can socialize with the same people while doing something I enjoy. Now, if those people do not want to keep socializing with me once we are not doign the same task then it was just filler socializing and all they wanted to do was socialize with someone rather than me in particualar.
The idea that you need to convince people to do unfun, boring activities just so they can socaialized is to me ludicrous and backwards. The solution is for the game designers to add in more ways where socializing enhances a fun game experience rather than replacing it.
Solo content doesn't cause a decline in community.
The problem is that most new MMOs are heavily weighted towards PvE combat.
Crafting is gimpy or overlooked.
Player-driven economies are shallow or broken.
Housing is absent or so limited as to be pointless.
PvP is meaningless and imbalanced.
Loot is the only way to progress your character.
In a level/class based game, the only "group content" that exists is trying to cobble together a functional group while being restricted by differences in level and trammeled by the rigidity of class roles.
Trying to build a community on such flimsy and impermanent interaction is just not gonna happen. If a game is going to have a decent community, then it needs to provide that community with more in-depth interaction that just "let's go kill mobs for epix, k?".
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Solo content doesn't cause a decline in community. The problem is that most new MMOs are heavily weighted towards PvE combat. Crafting is gimpy or overlooked.
Player-driven economies are shallow or broken.
Housing is absent or so limited as to be pointless.
PvP is meaningless and imbalanced.
Loot is the only way to progress your character.
In a level/class based game, the only "group content" that exists is trying to cobble together a functional group while being restricted by differences in level and trammeled by the rigidity of class roles. Trying to build a community on such flimsy and impermanent interaction is just not gonna happen. If a game is going to have a decent community, then it needs to provide that community with more in-depth interaction that just "let's go kill mobs for epix, k?".
Originally posted by Kyleran I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
I cannot agree with you. I am simply not wired to consider that to be fun for an extended period. I don't mind doing simlar things for an extended period as long as there is enough of a variety in those tasks. As soon as those tasks become too alike, I get bored within 15-30 minutes. So camping the same spawn or type of spawn for an extended period puts me to sleep. I'll do it in spurts and then go do something else till I get 'unbored'.
The thing about the 'endless quests' is that there is usually enough variety in them to keep me interested for a much longer time. A new area will present a new challenge, there is a new twist to a quest formula, the mobs have new abilities I have to learn, etc.
One thing I really like about MMOs is that I can socialize with other people while still doing things on my own. AS such I do not see the logic in doing a boring task simply to socialize while I can socialize with the same people while doing something I enjoy. Now, if those people do not want to keep socializing with me once we are not doign the same task then it was just filler socializing and all they wanted to do was socialize with someone rather than me in particualar.
The idea that you need to convince people to do unfun, boring activities just so they can socaialized is to me ludicrous and backwards. The solution is for the game designers to add in more ways where socializing enhances a fun game experience rather than replacing it.
But see, I find most MMO activities unfun for the most part unless there is some social interaction to it. The issue goes beyond simply the fact you do a quests. People fail to realize the "benefit" the timesinks of the old games gave players from a social perspective.
Taking 3-5 minutes to rest up between fights, or long travel times with not a lot of actual manic acitvity gave players a lot of time to chat and enjoy themselves.
Its hard to explain, but in the end it was lots more fun than I ever realized and I guess I'm just an anchronistic dinosaur since I enjoyed them.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
In order to make PUGing worth while you have to filter out the idiots... but then the idiots would have no group. Its a double edged blade.
Except, at least in my experience, there are far more idiots than there are good team players. If you filter out the idiots, it'll be even harder to find a team than it is today and most people will say the hell with it and solo.
I start this with a confession: of all the "modern" MMOs (meaning post-WOW published) IMVPO the game LOTRO is the best. But, saying that is like the often quite one-eyed who is king among the blind. I can name many good things about LOTRO, like the good combat pacing, many interesting quests, fascinating story, beautfiul world, but thats not important. Important is, going back to LOTRO I came to realized that prolly MMORPGs are indeed doomed. Not that they will die out. People will buy and play them. But the MMOs as we knew them are really dying. Someone here recently wrote about his experience with EQ1 and how he met people and how they grouped with you, just so, and that is the crux of it all.
On the one hand you can solo LOTRO all the way up. It has many solo quests and most of them are fairly good. IMO. As good as quests in a MMO can be. But... whenever I come back to LOTRO I have this overwhelming feeling of loneliness, that aloneness which is worse than being alone in a room: being alone in a crowd. My attempts to join guilds all were futile in different ways. Either it were tiny family style guilds, nice people no doubt, but mostly circles of RL friends with some sort of invisible barrier I could not really penetrate. Or huge guilds, guilds where you are a number, and which at best are better chat channels. More often not, because Teamspeak has drained chat in the last years. As a sidenote, I am a VIVID, PASSIONATE hater of Teamspeak and Ventrilo and the like. I use the word HATE well chosen in connection to TEAMSPEAK. It is IMVPO a pestilence, a pox, a BLIGHT in the virtue of MMO gaming, deepening the already existing rift. TS focusses you on those you know, your friends, your small circle and it strengthens the trend that make those "meeting new people" even less likely.
Now while it sure is nice that you CAN solo all the way in LOTRO, what happens there is a symptom of most MMOs today. There is a certain percentage of NOT soloable content, namely if you want to hunt more than bats, rats or boars and confront something BIG, you have to ger items with radiance, which you get only with reglar, organized gaming in a big guild. You CANT make it with pickup groups, because if you are geared with solo gear nobody takes you along. Even some of the lv 50+ skills for my Guardian were fomally soloable but in fact all grouped. With lv 60 I still had not accomplished ANY of the lv 50 Guardian quests, because none wanted to tag along some unknown, unguilded person.
On the one hand I can see the comfort and freedom that you dont have to bind yourself to a guild to daily schedules and practice a MMO like work to accomplish anything, on the other hand the really good stuff is still for e-sports like gamers who plan their days and weeks around their MMO. Now with more and more content soloable, the result is, no one groups with randoms anything but trivial quests and all too often I found myself yelling for Book quests or radiance runs or difficult group quests days and days until I had just levelled past them. For MMOs it is a no-win situation. People ask for more solo content and the community goes down the drain. Gone are the times when people grouped with you even when they didnt have the same quest, just for the sake of people helpful or killing mobs. Today, to get a group and to get ANYTHING remotely valuable done, you need guilds and regular schedules. So while the simple content has become easy to do for anyone, in a strange twist it has become way more difficult to get the worthwhile stuff done, so the rift between casual and elitarian gamers has widened.
In time past it was easy even to get invited to demanding quests as an unknown person. Today in the days of minmax gaming you dont get a chance, or you have to seek very, very long and daily. The result is the death of communities and the gamers are split in low-geared nobodies and super high end geared gamers with e-sports mentality and there is little in between or to bridge those two. sides. Teamspeak has added to this, because it focusses gamers even more to stay with those handful people you know. In the end the MMOs are now full of low geared people stuck with solo stuff and people who play their MMO like a 2nd job, and the spirit of community where people just group and take another along is killed by the very mechanics of today. And while I am all for making games comfortable and that wheel will never be turned back, it has in the same way destroyed the community spirit which made mediocre games like SWG into GREAT, MEMORABLE experiences. I don't see any remedy or any change. But my recent LOTRO experiences where despite 1000s of people logged in, most of the time it was impossible to find a group save for the most popular trivial-tasks has left me deeply disappointed in how this entire genre has developed.
I'm not good with words and putting up a post like yours but you covered everything better then I could ever done, I got the same opinions and I totally agree.
You're grouping with idiots because idiots can succeed in your world. If the world were more demanding and players were required to rely on each other, than an idiot would quickly get a bad reputation and would not succeed. Reputation does not exist in a soloable world. In EQ I could recruit total strangers who were willing to volunteer a few hours of their time to help me with my epic quest, why? Well luckily for me I don't have to speculate now, I asked them. Some of them were looking for a shot at a drop or a chance to see a boss, but most of them said they knew that one day they would too require help with their epic, and wanted me to remember their generosity.
Reputation doesn't exist in any sizeable world. Other than the worst of the worst, the chances you've ever heard of anyone you're likely to be in a PUG with is slim to none. You've never seen these people before, you'll never see them again, you're just together to do a certain thing an that's all.
When you have 100k+ players, each with multiple characters, reputation is meaningless.
Originally posted by MMO_Doubter It would be easy to make a game which greatly favours grouping. While it would result in more grouping, it would also result in fewer total players (meaning less money), as many players don't want to group - or grow tired with the hassle of grouping. The "MM" is optional for many players.
No, it's just incredibly misunderstood by grouping-advocates. It means MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER, which is satisfied by having lots of players around. We are not playing MGRPGs, no one has yet come up with a MASSIVELY GROUPING game because it would be a complete failure.
Like it or not, MMOs are not grouping-specific, they never have been and they never will be. Stop trying to pretend they ought to be something that they clearly never have been.
It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
Yet WoW or any other game doesn't discourage it either. You *CAN* group the whole way to max cap if you want to, nothing is stopping you. What you're complaining about is that EVERYONE ELSE isn't forced to play YOUR way.
There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
Personally I never truly enjoyed playing a mmorpg where I could solo(play by my self) until to the top, because it seemed like an easy way to kill time rather than to enjoy a game with other players. I think its kind of strange that a gamers mentality would evolve in such a way to ignore a player for not being known, its not as if the player was able to build him self a bad reputation by not interacting with people.
Further more, I honestly believe solo content builds the foundation to a selfish gaming community, because solo content eliminates the need to persue social interaction to progress in the game. Social interaction is achieved by being active and communicating with other players, where if social interaction is at the bare minumum, then it means the players never been pressured to explore what other players have to offer, because they are to busy soloing.
The whole current mmorpg system seems to be contradictory, because,
1. A game designed for multiple people centered around playing by your self,
2. the games builds a play-by-your-self mind set to end with playing with other people in non-solo content.
Its no surprise to me why so many MMORPG's fail to make the cut today. To me the Ideal MMORPG is game that forces you in content that requires a group effort, and ends with content that requires a group.
Yet WoW or any other game doesn't discourage it either. You *CAN* group the whole way to max cap if you want to, nothing is stopping you. What you're complaining about is that EVERYONE ELSE isn't forced to play YOUR way.
There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
Solo content discourages players from grouping. Encouraging a player to play by him self is the same as discouraging a player from grouping just like adding in raid content that requires grouping is encouraging a player to group for it and discouraging soloing the raid content, because it cant be done solo. Its a rudimentary style of programming, but highly effective.
You're grouping with idiots because idiots can succeed in your world. If the world were more demanding and players were required to rely on each other, than an idiot would quickly get a bad reputation and would not succeed. Reputation does not exist in a soloable world. In EQ I could recruit total strangers who were willing to volunteer a few hours of their time to help me with my epic quest, why? Well luckily for me I don't have to speculate now, I asked them. Some of them were looking for a shot at a drop or a chance to see a boss, but most of them said they knew that one day they would too require help with their epic, and wanted me to remember their generosity.
Reputation doesn't exist in any sizeable world. Other than the worst of the worst, the chances you've ever heard of anyone you're likely to be in a PUG with is slim to none. You've never seen these people before, you'll never see them again, you're just together to do a certain thing an that's all.
When you have 100k+ players, each with multiple characters, reputation is meaningless.
By your own words, "you're just together to do a certain thing and that's all." you have proven my point. When you don't rely on others except only for certain things, then of course you likely wouldn't have heard of many players.
I don't care how many players there are. As long as you're not able to "beat the game" in 2 days or less, and you're forced to rely on others, there WILL be reputations.
I can't even count the number of times I've heard: "XXX is LFG, invite. I played with him before and he's pretty good." in group games like EQ / AO / DAoC etc. You've seriously never heard this? Oh yea, your a lone wolf soloer, of course you haven't.
It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
Yet WoW or any other game doesn't discourage it either. You *CAN* group the whole way to max cap if you want to, nothing is stopping you. What you're complaining about is that EVERYONE ELSE isn't forced to play YOUR way.
There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
It's not that simple, people tend to take the path of least resistance. That is what is stopping people, there is no make believe about it.
Sure I can group in a solo friendly game, but it would be more difficult overall. It would take longer to find players or find a group, you might have to deal with idiots (see my other post), maybe you just don't have time to commit, and maybe you just don't want to hassle with other people. And so some people who would normally rather group would wind up just soloing so they could move on and not waste any more time LFG. Eventually people just aren't going to group if they can accomplish the same goals solo.
WoW doesn't discourage grouping? I'm sorry that you're so blind, but they more than discourage it, they make it difficult.
That was a very insightful post and I agree witih you. I would like to point some things out about older games that were much more group dependent and social. Particularly Everquest and the differences in today's games.
I think the biggest difference is the questing. This to me is the biggest problem with modern MMO's lack of grouping. If you recall in Everquest, ironically, there really weren't many quests. The quests they did have were massive month+ long "epic" quests. For instance, when you wanted to find a group in Everquest you would go anywhere, because that game was all based on grinds and static cash camps. There was no quest reason to be there usually. In that game you a much wider range of players to party with.
In a story driven quest game, you will always have the problem that out of 2000 or so quests you will need to find a group of people who are on the same exact quests. That creates quite a bottleneck. I don't really know a solution to this problem, on the one hand it seems to me to be regressive to go back to a grind/static cash camp game with little story elements behind it. But yet it seems the only working model for a story driven quest game is to make the majority of content soloable in order to avoid the the huge spread of players trying to complete different content when very few other players are also on the same quests. So we see that only the end game of the story driven quest games (WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, Lotro etc...) have any real group experience and most of them are a rush to the end. Or people just choose to expereience them as solo RPGs.
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Players of the first wave of MMO's (EQ1, DAOC etc) recall fondly the grouping nature of the games we played (there were painful sides to it of course) and wonder what changed with the more modern games.
Quest based character advancement is the root of all evil and to a lesser extent, levels. I'll use early DAOC (per TOA) as my example.
All it took to advance your character was first find 8 players close in level to your own (within 3 was preferable), make sure you had a primary/secondary healer, main/off tank, and crowd control. (the last e slots could be filled with DPS, extra CC or whatever, didn't really matter.) Once assembled (and I'll grant, not always easy find the right mix) you could head out to a level appropriate camp of npc's and kill until you leveled past them.
Everyone did not need to be well geared, play their classes extraordinarily well, (you could make allowances to train less experienced players) have have some supreme knowledge of how to complete the encounter.
This system worked well. Depending on their current level, players would find themselves in the open world or in one of the many level appropriate dungeons found around the land. Pick up groups were the norm, not the exception, and while a good guild group might be a little better, a good PUG could accomplish the same goals and everyone was more or less happy.
Enough with the past.
So along comes WOW (they weren't the first) and they made quest based character advancement their core design. Now you added a new variable to the grouping equation, you not only had to find level/ckass appropriate players like in DAOC, they had to be on the same quest as you or they got little or no reward.
Well this destroyed grouping completely, especially when any soloer could level up much faster than any group when completing open world quests. Sure, they threw in a some dungeons that could only be accomplished with a group, but who doesn't remember long stretches of going it alone in WOW?
Sure, WOW is making raiding mroe PUG friendly, but I don't see where the game mechanics have changed at all to make grouping up to do core leveling the best option.
As long as soloing is more efficient, and has equvivalent rewards, people will not be encouraged to group, unless of course they are very social individuals.
In the early games i met and made many friends from the PUGS I was part of. I received guild invites due to my excellent healing and crowd control skills (I always played support classes) heck, I was even able to tank on a Paladin, something I've never really mastered in the more raid centric combat of later games.
No doubt, there were many issues back then, esp finding healers some times, but still, overall for me what we gained from solo questing in terms of always being efficient in our play time is far overshadowed by what we lost from a solid grouping mechanic.
I've often thought what could be done with quest based content to make it more condusive to group dynamics, but really can't come up with anything substantial.
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It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
Making PUG friendly is raelly not aimed at making grouping easier but aimed at getting more people into raiding.
I agree that quest-based leveling does cause real problems with grouping. Those damned quest chains are hell on grouping in particular. As fun as they are to solo, they are painful to group for.
I personally like the PQ system in Warhammer for group leveling. It has fallen prey to diminishing numbers, but when the game was new, a PQ tour was quite a bit of fun. I think PQs are a very good mechanic, and hope to see them in other games.
Being grouped, but only to grind the same mobs sounds like a worse problem than solo questing, frankly.
One of the other issues with grouping is the level effects in dungeons. Lowbies can't tag along and contribute to the cause, they will do no good and likely draw mobs from miles away. The area aggro mechanic in WoW (and other games) should be removed, and the tight effective range limits loosened. This is another area which Warhammer covered well. There is a wider range of levels in which characters can be useful versus a certain level mob. It is even more evident in PvP where a group of T1 characters CAN swarm down a T2 character. That can't happen in WoW. More than a 5 level inferiority means you might as well not be there at all.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
It would be easy to make a game which greatly favours grouping. While it would result in more grouping, it would also result in fewer total players (meaning less money), as many players don't want to group - or grow tired with the hassle of grouping. The "MM" is optional for many players.
I have played WoW (off and on) since '05, and way too much of that time has been soloing. Not because I want to, but because grouping is awkward and inconvenient. My usual experience is to make friends with people, and gradually lose touch with them as they outlevel me.
I think that (in time) games will be made which greatly favour grouping, but the devs have got to get the 'must be everything to everyone' mentality out of their heads.
I'm guessing neither of you ever played, saw, or heard of FFXI?
Reading into this thread, this does look like more of an LOTRO problem, but sure it can be seen elsewhere. That said, I think in many cases people play all lone-wolf, then get upset that all they did is solo. It all boils down to your goals in these games. If you're racing to max level, you're skipping much group content along the way. If you're a bit selfish, and like your drops/exp/money to yourself, then there's no excuse.
On the other hand, I absolutely understand why grouping is avoided much of the time. It's rather absurd that grouping generally means slower exp, and trivialized fights to the point that it's not even fun. I'd rather sit in a ventrilo, talking with friends while I accomplish my goals far more quickly and with a lot less complication than spending far more time ensuring that myself and my group members are all in the same page, and that's just the sad fact for most games out there.
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You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It does not need to. There is nothing wrong with a solo-friendly leveling part of the game. There are also group quests in the open world that you need to group up to do. Usually those reward blue items.
Making PUG friendly is raelly not aimed at making grouping easier but aimed at getting more people into raiding.
in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Exactly. It's the socializing that kept me playing DAOC for years. That was the last game I play that wasn't quest oriented, and the last game I played where finding a group was just a normal part of gameplay. 've always hated how all MMOs are full of quests now a days. They're not interesting like storylines in single-player games. They're boring and repetitive and I'd rather be chatting with real people while dungeon camping.
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.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
Isn't that raiding?
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Isn't that raiding?
Maybe if raiding could be done in small groups. I think another thing that inhibits socializing is raid-sized groups, where there are too many people to have any sort of persistent casual conversation, without devolving into chaos.
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.
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
I cannot agree with you. I am simply not wired to consider that to be fun for an extended period. I don't mind doing simlar things for an extended period as long as there is enough of a variety in those tasks. As soon as those tasks become too alike, I get bored within 15-30 minutes. So camping the same spawn or type of spawn for an extended period puts me to sleep. I'll do it in spurts and then go do something else till I get 'unbored'.
The thing about the 'endless quests' is that there is usually enough variety in them to keep me interested for a much longer time. A new area will present a new challenge, there is a new twist to a quest formula, the mobs have new abilities I have to learn, etc.
One thing I really like about MMOs is that I can socialize with other people while still doing things on my own. AS such I do not see the logic in doing a boring task simply to socialize while I can socialize with the same people while doing something I enjoy. Now, if those people do not want to keep socializing with me once we are not doign the same task then it was just filler socializing and all they wanted to do was socialize with someone rather than me in particualar.
The idea that you need to convince people to do unfun, boring activities just so they can socaialized is to me ludicrous and backwards. The solution is for the game designers to add in more ways where socializing enhances a fun game experience rather than replacing it.
Solo content doesn't cause a decline in community.
The problem is that most new MMOs are heavily weighted towards PvE combat.
Crafting is gimpy or overlooked.
Player-driven economies are shallow or broken.
Housing is absent or so limited as to be pointless.
PvP is meaningless and imbalanced.
Loot is the only way to progress your character.
In a level/class based game, the only "group content" that exists is trying to cobble together a functional group while being restricted by differences in level and trammeled by the rigidity of class roles.
Trying to build a community on such flimsy and impermanent interaction is just not gonna happen. If a game is going to have a decent community, then it needs to provide that community with more in-depth interaction that just "let's go kill mobs for epix, k?".
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Yes it does.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
You could make quests as repetetive and dull as group grinding is. If all the quests in the zone require you to kill the same boars then people will group together to do it faster since noone cares which quest you are on.
Less choice forces people together while more choice spreads them out. People engaged in boring tasks will tend to socialize to relieve the boredom.
Which strangely enough, makes the game more fun at the same time, since in the end, running endless quests turns out to be just as repetitive and boring after a while, except you find yourself alone instead.
But I like the thought of making quests repetitive, perhaps imparting different bonuses for each pass through, or earning points towards some reward, so that players would be encouraged to repeat them with others. (maybe not an infinitum, but to a set number0
I cannot agree with you. I am simply not wired to consider that to be fun for an extended period. I don't mind doing simlar things for an extended period as long as there is enough of a variety in those tasks. As soon as those tasks become too alike, I get bored within 15-30 minutes. So camping the same spawn or type of spawn for an extended period puts me to sleep. I'll do it in spurts and then go do something else till I get 'unbored'.
The thing about the 'endless quests' is that there is usually enough variety in them to keep me interested for a much longer time. A new area will present a new challenge, there is a new twist to a quest formula, the mobs have new abilities I have to learn, etc.
One thing I really like about MMOs is that I can socialize with other people while still doing things on my own. AS such I do not see the logic in doing a boring task simply to socialize while I can socialize with the same people while doing something I enjoy. Now, if those people do not want to keep socializing with me once we are not doign the same task then it was just filler socializing and all they wanted to do was socialize with someone rather than me in particualar.
The idea that you need to convince people to do unfun, boring activities just so they can socaialized is to me ludicrous and backwards. The solution is for the game designers to add in more ways where socializing enhances a fun game experience rather than replacing it.
But see, I find most MMO activities unfun for the most part unless there is some social interaction to it. The issue goes beyond simply the fact you do a quests. People fail to realize the "benefit" the timesinks of the old games gave players from a social perspective.
Taking 3-5 minutes to rest up between fights, or long travel times with not a lot of actual manic acitvity gave players a lot of time to chat and enjoy themselves.
Its hard to explain, but in the end it was lots more fun than I ever realized and I guess I'm just an anchronistic dinosaur since I enjoyed them.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No, it doesn't.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Except, at least in my experience, there are far more idiots than there are good team players. If you filter out the idiots, it'll be even harder to find a team than it is today and most people will say the hell with it and solo.
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I'm not good with words and putting up a post like yours but you covered everything better then I could ever done, I got the same opinions and I totally agree.
Reputation doesn't exist in any sizeable world. Other than the worst of the worst, the chances you've ever heard of anyone you're likely to be in a PUG with is slim to none. You've never seen these people before, you'll never see them again, you're just together to do a certain thing an that's all.
When you have 100k+ players, each with multiple characters, reputation is meaningless.
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No, it's just incredibly misunderstood by grouping-advocates. It means MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER, which is satisfied by having lots of players around. We are not playing MGRPGs, no one has yet come up with a MASSIVELY GROUPING game because it would be a complete failure.
Like it or not, MMOs are not grouping-specific, they never have been and they never will be. Stop trying to pretend they ought to be something that they clearly never have been.
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in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
Yet WoW or any other game doesn't discourage it either. You *CAN* group the whole way to max cap if you want to, nothing is stopping you. What you're complaining about is that EVERYONE ELSE isn't forced to play YOUR way.
There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
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Personally I never truly enjoyed playing a mmorpg where I could solo(play by my self) until to the top, because it seemed like an easy way to kill time rather than to enjoy a game with other players. I think its kind of strange that a gamers mentality would evolve in such a way to ignore a player for not being known, its not as if the player was able to build him self a bad reputation by not interacting with people.
Further more, I honestly believe solo content builds the foundation to a selfish gaming community, because solo content eliminates the need to persue social interaction to progress in the game. Social interaction is achieved by being active and communicating with other players, where if social interaction is at the bare minumum, then it means the players never been pressured to explore what other players have to offer, because they are to busy soloing.
The whole current mmorpg system seems to be contradictory, because,
1. A game designed for multiple people centered around playing by your self,
2. the games builds a play-by-your-self mind set to end with playing with other people in non-solo content.
Its no surprise to me why so many MMORPG's fail to make the cut today. To me the Ideal MMORPG is game that forces you in content that requires a group effort, and ends with content that requires a group.
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There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
Solo content discourages players from grouping. Encouraging a player to play by him self is the same as discouraging a player from grouping just like adding in raid content that requires grouping is encouraging a player to group for it and discouraging soloing the raid content, because it cant be done solo. Its a rudimentary style of programming, but highly effective.
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Reputation doesn't exist in any sizeable world. Other than the worst of the worst, the chances you've ever heard of anyone you're likely to be in a PUG with is slim to none. You've never seen these people before, you'll never see them again, you're just together to do a certain thing an that's all.
When you have 100k+ players, each with multiple characters, reputation is meaningless.
By your own words, "you're just together to do a certain thing and that's all." you have proven my point. When you don't rely on others except only for certain things, then of course you likely wouldn't have heard of many players.
I don't care how many players there are. As long as you're not able to "beat the game" in 2 days or less, and you're forced to rely on others, there WILL be reputations.
I can't even count the number of times I've heard: "XXX is LFG, invite. I played with him before and he's pretty good." in group games like EQ / AO / DAoC etc. You've seriously never heard this? Oh yea, your a lone wolf soloer, of course you haven't.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
in your opinion. But some folks would prefer to have a group based game the entire way up the leveling curve, and WOW certainly does not encourage that.
I agree, the PUG friendly part was just to encourage raiding, I'm suggesting you could improve the system to make grouping up the entire way more viable, perhaps through repeatable quests as I've mentioned above.
Yet WoW or any other game doesn't discourage it either. You *CAN* group the whole way to max cap if you want to, nothing is stopping you. What you're complaining about is that EVERYONE ELSE isn't forced to play YOUR way.
There's nothing whatsoever stopping you from finding a group of people who likewise want to group and playing as a group through any content in the game. Stop pretending there is.
It's not that simple, people tend to take the path of least resistance. That is what is stopping people, there is no make believe about it.
Sure I can group in a solo friendly game, but it would be more difficult overall. It would take longer to find players or find a group, you might have to deal with idiots (see my other post), maybe you just don't have time to commit, and maybe you just don't want to hassle with other people. And so some people who would normally rather group would wind up just soloing so they could move on and not waste any more time LFG. Eventually people just aren't going to group if they can accomplish the same goals solo.
WoW doesn't discourage grouping? I'm sorry that you're so blind, but they more than discourage it, they make it difficult.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
@ OP
That was a very insightful post and I agree witih you. I would like to point some things out about older games that were much more group dependent and social. Particularly Everquest and the differences in today's games.
I think the biggest difference is the questing. This to me is the biggest problem with modern MMO's lack of grouping. If you recall in Everquest, ironically, there really weren't many quests. The quests they did have were massive month+ long "epic" quests. For instance, when you wanted to find a group in Everquest you would go anywhere, because that game was all based on grinds and static cash camps. There was no quest reason to be there usually. In that game you a much wider range of players to party with.
In a story driven quest game, you will always have the problem that out of 2000 or so quests you will need to find a group of people who are on the same exact quests. That creates quite a bottleneck. I don't really know a solution to this problem, on the one hand it seems to me to be regressive to go back to a grind/static cash camp game with little story elements behind it. But yet it seems the only working model for a story driven quest game is to make the majority of content soloable in order to avoid the the huge spread of players trying to complete different content when very few other players are also on the same quests. So we see that only the end game of the story driven quest games (WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, Lotro etc...) have any real group experience and most of them are a rush to the end. Or people just choose to expereience them as solo RPGs.