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Hoping that GW2 promotes a need to group
holifeet
Member Posts: 532
Though I don't want to get too dependent on a need, GW2 does represent my next best hope of a game worth paying for. Their work on changing the whole quest driven focus of MMOs makes that so.
Let's not have another solo driven path to the upper levels though.
For those that have been following this game closely then what hope do I have of seeing a NEED TO GROUP?
I've seen a few videos and it looks nice, but I thought that of Rift. It then became apparent that the game is more linear and solo quest-driven than anything that has come before it. Maybe getting rid of the quests will be enough for me.
There was one video of an elementalist taking on a big lizard that actually looked challenging. It gives me hope.
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Comments
I think the persistant coop areas will be very solo-friendly but you'll have dungeons where you'll have to group and mists where you'll want to group.
There shouldnt be any forced need though. If someone wants to reach top level solo; he should be able to.
I need more vespene gas.
GW2 is designed to be very solo friendly. Arenanet doesen't want to force you into a group where you don't want to be. You can see this in the design of the professions. They can all fill preety much any role, though some professions will be better at a particular role. They want to give the player the choise to play the game the way you wants to.
Personal Story is designed to be played solo. In Dynamic Events you naturally cooperate with the players around you, so you don't need to formally group(though you can if you want to). Dynamic Events also scale so they can be completed solo if there are no other players around. In Dungeons you will need to group. Max 5 players. In WvW I would guess it would be a good idea to group, if you don't want to be ganked. Finally there is structured pvp where you will need to group.
I think its this way. The game promote the feeling of beeing a group ! When you run into someone in the open world, the dymanic events will make you feel like a group simple because you take take part in the same event.
And if you feel like being a group , it will hopefull feel natural to join up.
thats sound in my book even better than promote a need.
If you have not already read this sticky it will help enormously
Everything We Know On GW2
Summary: Dynamic Events, Side-Kick System, Invite friends to your personal instance/storyline, Dungeons (1/10lvls) for 5-unit size groups & WvWvW, GvG: 5v5.
No info on Guilds but here's Colin Johanson :
MMORPG.com:
The industry has gotten a little dry lately and we often hear fans looking for a solid new game. Is there some part of the game you are really excited about for MMO fans in particular?
Colin:
Definitely the Dynamic Events system for me. For me it is a slightly different reason than Leah, although that is a great reason, for me it is about the community building tool that it serves. I think if you look at MMOs the really frustrating thing is that I am playing this game online with thousands of people and I don’t interact with hardly any of them. Maybe with the people on my friends list or in my guild and that’s it. In old school MMOs you didn’t want other players around you because they were kill stealing from you or they would get in the way of the stuff I was trying to do. That can drive a player nuts. I play these games to play with other people, why am I playing this game if I don’t want people near me? The events system just draws people naturally together and you feel this camaraderie with the people you are playing the game with. Whether you talk or not or form a group or not, our hope is that it will happen in events, but even if you don’t you still feel a strong sense of community with the people around you while doing the events and I just really love that.
MMORPG.com:
You talked a lot about camaraderie among players. Many MMOs have lost this on a wide level because of guild groups and smaller factions. How do you see players joining up on a large scale in Guild Wars 2?
Colin:
I think Dynamic Events is the thing that will do that. That is the glue in the bond that brings the players together. I think that will give you recognition when you start to build that sense of community. The other thing that I think is important and this is not a direct answer, but we have World vs. World PvP in Guild Wars 2. I think that will impact PvE as well. Which is your server shard matched up against two other servers in open world PvP. If you like Dark Age of Camelot, this is, in our minds the next evolution of that. It is something that really drove community and you care about what you are doing on a PVE and PvP side. You care about the people on the server. We think we will have those bonds because your server is matched up against two other servers. So it is just that much more important that you become friends and you bond with the players on your server. So the friends you make through PvE and Dynamic Events, those friends will carry over into World vs. World PvP. You may get out of World vs. World PvP and go back to early zones to do events with new people and help encourage them to join you in the fight for your server to take part in battles and beat the other two. We expect large strong communities on each server and I think PvP will end up affecting PvE because people will work together.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Yeah but I thought that would be the case with Rift's dynamic events, but there was little cooperation between players, if any.
I have a hope of GW2's dynamic events being a level ahead of Rifts though. So I'll have to see.
I hope the dungeons are at least better than Rifts attempt.
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Thank you Mumbo, that all sounds very intriguing.
I refuse to get hyped, after being burnt twice now, but I have at least some hope and I know my attention has turned from Rift.
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I can't get hyped about this. NCSoft has given me nothing but bad experiences. I know they are just the publisher, but the last GW wasn't my cup of tea, the art style, the abilities, etc... To each their own. I hope GW2 makes a big splash, the market needs diversity badly. Even games I don't want to play will conceive of features that may influence what I do like to play.
Here's to more MMO diversity in 2011 and onward!
Cheers!
It isn't the soloers that have killed the feeling of cooperative play, but rather the focus on guilds in these games. Guilds form clichs which have a tendency not to play outside of their guild box. They frown on and actively discourage pick up groups. Most of the grouping in today's games are inter-guild, with little cross guild grouping and virtually no pick up groups. You can easily group even in the most solo friendly games, because they all have group and or raid required content.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Yep, I despise NCSoft as well, which means no GW2 for me. They ripped me off in both Aion and City of Heroes, disabling my accounts and master account with no provocation, no explanation and no redress. They obviously don't believe in innocent until proven guilty, nor do they seem to care about responding to correspondence. I will never give that company another dime for as long as I am a gamer.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I'm still skeptical on the DE bringing people together.
Granted they might fight together, but if my years of MMO tell me anything this is generally how i feel it will go
You are warned of a problem in town
You run to the town and see it under attack.
You see 3 other people fightin in that town
You kill the monster, and continue until you complete the event.
Then everyone (if your lucky) thanks each other for the help, then run their seperate ways.
Not much of a group effort and certainly no more interaction then in normal circumstances. all it does is remove the group aspect. Which just makes it feel more solo/single player then a group would.
DE in my opinion do not support group play and will most likely have little interaction with each other. Least thats what i've seen from my experiences.
It's always been if i can solo it, i will. if i don't have to talk to others, i won't. This has been the case in nearly every mmo i've seen and i'm pretty sure it will be the same thing here. The instance dungeons will promote group play, which is nice but I don't see the DE promoting any sort of group play. Just everyone doing their thing to win the event.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I'm not sure if it will actually promote grouping, however it seems that it will promote player interaction a lot (which is sometimes like grouping without the strings of being in a group). I remember playing WoW and other games with my friends and always asking between us "hey I got this quest, do you have it?" Rather in this game you just dive in and just...do things or at least I hope so.
You guys are looking at this wrong. The Dynamic Events are NOT going to support grouping. GW2 is ANTI-GROUP. That's the whole point. The only time you'll ever need a group for anything is for those dungeons, which are supposed to be particularly challenging as compared to the rest of the game.
It's not about grouping in GW2, it's about ~community~. Those Events aren't going to promote grouping because rewards are split evenly between all players, because you don't need to be in the group to heal/ressurect someone, because you don't need to be in a group to participate. This is a ~good~ thing. It means you can help purely because you want to, and know you'lll still get a reward. There's nothing stopping you from helping that small group of adventurers during a dynamic event! You could be the 6th person coming in and you're still just as helpful, and just as rewarded, as that group of 5 people (which is the max allowed in a group). In any other game, you could have to sit on the sidelines until more people showed up because their group was full, and hope that the next people that come along have room for you. I don't understand how people consider that the fun way. *shrug*
GW2 is about bringing people together and getting rid of that retarded dynamic of static groups. It's meant to eliminate cliques and remove the concern over whether or not you get a group, while still promoting working together towards a common goal. That, to me, is a step forward.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
After having a pretty silly discussion on another thread about this very thing, I think i have the solution.. Something similar to the Rifts in Rift, however something like NEO Online.. Don't understand? NEO Online had this feature where after a certain amount of mobs were killed in a certain area, the area would turn into chaos making all the monsters stronger (they could still be soloed, but were indeed very tough to just run from one mob to the next, easier just to grab someone or two to help kill with you) but more rewarding for a set period of time.. it also made the area pvp-enabled as well, randomly placing every individual on 1 of 3 factions (basically forcing you into a group and flagging you for death if you chose to ignore your team).
This way, people can still solo, but the game can also become a group-friendly game for a little while with some great rewards to be had at the same time for grouping.
I like the direction Rift has taken, because while I am able to solo most quest mobs, it is very hard to solo an opened Rift.. Even if you are over the mobs level, they can and probably will still mop the floor with you.. Even Invasions require players to work together.. it was kinda funny at how many soloing players (including myself at the time) were running for the nearest outpost when the world event started(Massive invasion, pretty tough groups of mobs running all over the place).. Solo players were dying left and right, and eventually most of them swallowed their pride and help push back the invaders with a group of people..
Dynamic Events just are there to pull players closer together, the actual glue that sticks players together are things like cross-profession combos and scaling.
Nothing says, "WORK AS A GROUP" more than an elementalist and a ranger fighting a sub-boss monster that all the suddent gained resistance to all elements except fire, and the elementalist plopping down a fire wall for the ranger to shoot their arrows through.
Not all DEs will be "MUST WORK AS GROUP!!!", most in fact probably will not - but it will still be fun to save a guy getting lynched by 5 mobs in a DE. You saved him AND shared the exp/rewards.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
Not me. I hate being forced to group. But I loved Warhammer's solution of group events that didn't require an actual group invite. From everything we know so far, it looks like this is the route GW2 is taking, and I couldn't be happier.
This. Though I feel some important parts of groups will be missing, such as the communication, the direction, and the tactical advantages, I feel that the majority of the system will favor the community based aspect of seeing and being part of a force.
I have mixed feelings about it, because with the way the events scale, and the lack of necessity for grouping, I don't like the idea of someone walking in and doing poorly, but still walking out with all the rewards and acclaim, it just goes against my principles of winning and losing in a game, which essentially is what a game is all about.
On the other hand, its doubtful I'll be in an area and feel alone, nor will I ever have to worry that I won't be able to do something because a group isn't around. The game feels extremely casual friendly, and it really should feel that way for a game with no subscription. SO while I have mixed feelings about the system in regards to some of its aspects, I still feel they've made the right choice in the design decision.
Just like any other MMO out there you will need to group in order to complete group content like raids and dungeons. They will not be soloable according to the info we have thus far. Therefore, if you want to complete them you must group.
Steam: Neph
Have you ever even played GW 1?
GW1 brought us the Henchmen precisely so we could solo everything without the need for a group (except PvP ofc, this is obviously for groups). Why the hell would GW 2 be so different that it would bring the necessity to group?
Uh, they're removing henchman for GW2 and there will be 5 man dungeons and raids. You will have the need to group if you want to complete this content. I am sure this content will not be necessary to hit lvl cap, but then you're missing out on content which is another motivator to group.
Steam: Neph
Well, WoW has loads of dungeons adn raids and while ppl do them I dont think this brings some need to group, in fact some ppl only group for dungeons and act like they are alone since theres rarely any interest in communicate except for the random insult.
To promote grouping is to make the open world tuned for groups and to provide grouping and social activities. Let's wait to see what they are bringing
Dude are you sure you even know what you're talking about?
WAR didn't have all the extra bells and whistles that allow people not in a group to work together an not feel like they are being KSed or fighting other people for rewards. Not even Rift has it like GW2 seems to have it. If you want to hop into a group then you can, if you don't have a group, you're just as helpful as everyone with a group. Of course group players are going to be more coordinated but that doesn't mean that you should always find a group for every event.
This is not a game.
I would almost bet my life that GW2 will have totally optional teaming, just like every other mainstream MMO launched in the last five years. pretty sure the devs have already commented that you will be able to solo through all but the endgame content, although they will have incentives to help each other (which will be their take on public quests)
So my best guess is that it will have a PQ style system in some of the outdoor areas that people will solo, and maybe do small group stuff with a friend, or maybe, if it is made seemless (i.e. the game groups you up automatically) then there might be some teaming in such areas.
At a top level though I doubt a mainstream MMO will ever again cater to that type of playstyle you describe, even if part of me misses it too.
thought they were gonna have NPC characters for the story elements at least help out in dungeons?
I agree with both of the above posts. GW2 will not be the forced grouping game that some players here seek, I honestly don't see a game targeted for western audiences doing that anytime soon. The best thing I see about the dynamic event system is it fixes a problem I have always seen in MMOs- people sniping or KSing instead of grouping up to complete whatever quest or task they have.
It never helps a community when games pit players versus each other in PvE games- how many times have you been questing alone or with friends in an area and seen a solo DPS'er roll in and then it's a race to see who can get to the spawns first? There is nothing good about that scenario. Taking other players out of the role of being a threat or at the very least a burden is a big step in the right direction.