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If anything, this is definitely a Pub, General Discussion worthy thread which should stay here.
What do you think of forced grouping?
I like the idea, because it encourages community. Everquest 1 had forced grouping. Ultima Online did too. Although you could solo in either, it was nothing but beneficial to group in EQ1 and always safer to group in Ultima Online.
Do you consider EQ1 and UO forced grouping?
What about a game similar to those which provided nothing but advantages to grouping, and no advantages to Soloing? Where XP gained is NOT split in a group, but instead always full 100% regardless if Solo or in a group of 6? Is that forced grouping?
Can you solo even in a game which forces grouping? Vanguard was suppose to force grouping...did it?
DISCUSS!
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
Comments
If the game takes a few months to lvl, forced grouping is cool.
But most new MMO are zerged in a few weeks, so forced grouping is pretty pointless, everyone groups in their little clique.
So why not let solo players solo.
Collector's editions are scams.
Er, its sort of already covered in this sticky thread, and countless others on this forum
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/263753/The-Group-Play-vs-Solo-Play-in-an-MMO-Thread.html
Remember, there are no new ideas....
Oh, and BTW, I'm for forced/encouraged grouping.
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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
The inherant problem with forced grouping is that its very hard to get groups in most m most. Before wow put in there dungeon finder that matches people up for us it would take anywhere from 30mins to an hr to get a group.
Also once the majority of players have left a certain zone u have less and less players filtering trhough an area at any given time making grouping even harder.
Wow found this out and ended up changing alot of group quests to solo quests because of this very fact.
So no i dont like forced grouping there is a reason a game like wow which is solo freindly has so many people in it. Not everyone wants to group with others . I play wow with my gf and we level together so i am always playign with someone.
While ill agree games with forced grouping and no easy dungeon finders have better communities as a whole due to fact that being a troll and a complete and utter tard will make it impossible to get groups in the future those games also tend to have much smaller communities.
I think some of the issues with wows community isnt because its so solo freindly but when u have 12 mil people u figure if even 5 pct of population are complete tards and trolls thats 600 k players that are complete trolls and tards. Where as most of wows competition doesnt even hit that mark in subs.
WoW has a bad community for dozens of reasons, but they all boil down to the fact Blizzard Devs don't think fostering a good community is a Design issue when it actually is. Hence there is basically nothing that encourages good behavior to strangers and a lot that encourages or doesn't punish bad behavior. Extreme anonymity is one aspect of WoW that makes things bad, and things like the cross-server Dungeon Finder is one of the many things that allows bad behavior and doesn't encourage good behavior. There are lots of others. It most certainly is NOT a size issue, as WoW has tons of servers to make up for the game's population, whereas other games with fewer subs have correspondingly fewer servers.
Forced grouping is ONE possible system to encourage good behavior and punish bad, but it is an extremely forced solution. I think there are better and more subtle ways to go that still can be solo friendly, as long as you think about the game design from a community perspective. Add in things that reward people for being nice and punish people for being jerks. Make sure GMs are around to monitor public chat (this is seperate from reward/punish systems). Don't do it in a ham-fisted manner, because that isn't necessary. We're pretty social creatures, so making that work for a game isn't THAT hard.
In games that have leveling where most needs grouping in order to do it at a resonabble pace i say yes.
Better than being a noobie healer with no friends waiting hours for a pitty grouping!
And yes this is what put me off themepark mmo's [among other reasons].
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
WoW aside.. for fuck's sake- life's more fun when you pick the least easy target
I think grouping shold be a BIGGER part for MMOs than it is currently. Forced shouldn't even be used in the sentence. Mandatory cooperation with your fellow players should be the status quo, that's how the game is played, end of the line, DUH obviously.
It's massive, multiplayer, and online.
Your toon should interact with the virtual world and it's inhabitants in a way other than 'this is my toon, i haz gear, basiclly i r big trophy'.
Few MMOs offer a proper reward for a group effort tho'. And guild leveling is hardly an incentive for such a gameplay device.
Yes, solo pve is the standard; but Super Mario Bros 1 does a superior job at making such game play a rewarding experience SO much greater than any MMORPG that's been created to this date.
1 player solo friendly game SMB > any MMORPG.
The content of MMOs from exploring, to crafting, to fighting, to getting that loot should always require the effort of more than 1 human in all capacities. Games suck now because developers pander to the wrong crowd for the genre.
I know of a game where they encourage LDP (long distance party). If you are in an LDP you get bonus experience and if the party is full the bonus experience is also bigger. I like it that way where you don't need to battle monsters together yet you can still benefit from them.
I think forced grouping is ok for some mmorpgs but I don't want every mmorpg to be forced grouping. The market is big and diverse and different groups should be catered to by different games. So the presence of some games that force grouping is fine.
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
I despise both extremes: Excessively Solo-Friendly or Forced Grouping.
I prefer something in the middle. I'll use Pre-CU/NGE SWG as an example.
Solo wise, the game let you venture through most of the worlds, provided your character was skilled enough and suitably equipped, and you knew what you were doing. You didn't need to be kitted with the highest end gear. But there were certain areas that venturing there
Group wise? The game had subtle encouragements to group. There was a small XP bonus. Also, missions taken from the different mission terminals will provide higher Credit / monetary rewards when grouped. Even Faction Points gained were increased, provided the group was from the same faction.
The end result in old school SWG was a game that let me, as a player, venture the majority of the area solo, but the gameplay greatly encouraged groups. It never felt forced unless you were going into a high-end area. Grouping was frequent and belonging in one felt natural.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
You are not allowed to discuss this in the open forum.
All discussions on this issue must be buried in a thousand page sticky that no one will ever have the time to wade through, or make a coherent argument in.
Forced grouping, well my opinion is that force grouping is great, it makes people come together to accomplish things they otherwise couldnt, and to reach content that they couldnt alone, now, the only catch is, this is only workable in a game that requires intellegent mature people to play, otherwise your getting force grouped with idiots constantly who ruin your gameplay and make you not want to waste your time carrying everyone.
Mess with the best, Die like the rest
Forced anything is completely bogus.
Doesn't matter what it is if its not optional it usually pisses me off.
Wanna make Group focused content? fine but give me a way to get around it if noone is online or willing to group.
Same goes for pvp and pve progressions, make everything optional.
Once you start forcing things on people that they dont want they will leave.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
What is the point of an mmorpg if you can solo it.
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Living in a game world with other players.
Noone said mmos had to force players to group for them to be considered mmorpgs.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Pretty much this answer.
That question keeps getting asked and this answer keeps getting stated.
This answerneeds to be stickied somewhere in life.
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What exactly is forced grouping? Is that like, when you log in you're automatically in some group and you cna only leave it to join another group?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Problem is not many MMOs (specially theme parks) feel like a living world.
Living in a game world with other players.
Noone said mmos had to force players to group for them to be considered mmorpgs.
Problem is not many MMOs (specially theme parks) feel like a living world.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
What exactly is forced grouping? Is that like, when you log in you're automatically in some group and you cna only leave it to join another group?
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Life is like an MMO, and you can solo that.
It`s about choices.
Played WOW (5 years), AOC, AO, EQ2,AC2, Horizons, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, CO, STO(Beta),ROM, Allods, and many other F2P titles. Asl been in beta for many of the main titles and played countless SP games. I have been gaming for 15+ years!
I'm for forced grouping. Playing alone, watching other players passing by is not so much exiting anyway. it's not really multiplayer. You can always replace players with bots and not feel the difference.
yeah right lol. Robinson Crusoe tried soloing life and he almost went crazy after 4 years :P
Games that try in the present climate to force grouping ultimately change their mind. Look at LotRO when it launched and how much group content they had. When they began to lose people they changed it. These days I doubt you can be successful if you do not cater to soloing although I myself am an old EQ player that sat around High Keep for literally hours waiting for a group to let me in. Playing a wizard guaranteed I had to wait.
Although I do have some fond memories waiting for hours yet again for a group outside Karnor Castle and having to get my corpse from the infamous trains there because I had the audacity to run to the loo.
In a game, forced (almost) anything is a bad idea.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
That's not the feeling I get, unfortunately. Certain games just don't give me an illusion of a world; they don't allow me to turn off the notion that I'm playing a game. That's not a bad thing though, it's just different. Some times I feel like playing a game, some other times I feel like living in an alternate world.