Because they did the research and found that most people have the easiest time with 5 man groups?
The earliest games had 6 man groups not 5. But it wasn´t because of research but because of the average pen and paper RPG groups is 4-6 players and they wanted to simulate that in the game.
That is in fact the reason they invented the trinity system from the start, to make group dynamics as good and simple as possible for 6 players. If dungeons would be made for 3 players they would have invented a rather different system.
5 players became more popular because Wow decided for it, proabably because Blizz wanted a bit smaller dungeons than Everquests and similar games. Whatever Wow had made standard since.
But I doubt there is any research whatsoever in it. It is just easier to get a P&P group that size, if you get more you never can assemble all players for any session, if you have less the group can easily wipe because one player have a little bad luck and the story becomes less interesting. It was just something that happened naturally and the earliest MMOs were made by P&P players.
Why not 1 man groups ? They are definitely easier to find than 3 man groups. This cannot be argued.
I raise the stakes: half a man instances. Dungeons designed so that a single person must run two of them at the same time. Top that. (yeah , i know, one third of a man instances...)
Because they did the research and found that most people have the easiest time with 5 man groups?
The earliest games had 6 man groups not 5. But it wasn´t because of research but because of the average pen and paper RPG groups is 4-6 players and they wanted to simulate that in the game.
That is in fact the reason they invented the trinity system from the start, to make group dynamics as good and simple as possible for 6 players. If dungeons would be made for 3 players they would have invented a rather different system.
5 players became more popular because Wow decided for it, proabably because Blizz wanted a bit smaller dungeons than Everquests and similar games. Whatever Wow had made standard since.
But I doubt there is any research whatsoever in it. It is just easier to get a P&P group that size, if you get more you never can assemble all players for any session, if you have less the group can easily wipe because one player have a little bad luck and the story becomes less interesting. It was just something that happened naturally and the earliest MMOs were made by P&P players.
you have to think of the player and class implications of the 3 maqn group also.
for instance if you wanted to use the trinity you could, but all classes would have 2 primary skills and a secondary skill. For instance you would have a paladin who is a tank and healer, and would have secondary crowd control ( i dont consider dps as part of the trinity, tank/heal/crowd control...everyone dpses..)
so if you had 9 classes 6 of them could tank well, 6 of them could heal well, and 6 of them could cc well..all would be expected to dps, and of course how each one does that role could be completely different.
if you dont use dps in your equation, you are not bound by it. Under this system any 3 players would be able to do the content with a little teamwork.
The secret is to remove any sort of static number group content or group limits. Throw balance out of the window. So your topic is starting from the wrong premise.
Just put people in the world, give them tools and situations and let their human factor play.
Just like if they were in some sort of Jurassic Park or catastroph, apocalypse, survival scenario.
Put the odds against people situationally randomly
Socialization has to be designed to occur naturally, it has to be incidental, emergent. Not hard scripted. Not artificially. Not as a requisite.
Let people free to fail, to boycot others, to help themselves. Thats a general principle.
Personally I'd like to see content that scales. In other words, if I want to solo a dungeon I can. The difficulty will be lowered, but there will be less loot. On the other hand, the more people you have in your group, the harder it is and the more loot you get.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed: And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!" ~Lord George Gordon Byron
Because of the word MMO Massively Multiplayer Online. Granted 6 man grps is not massively either but people wnat to play an MMO not a CoOp game. SWTOR did have 2 or 4 man groups and persoanlly found it very bland and took out a lot of the MMO part of the game.
Nah ... people want to play a co-op game. That is why MMOs are turning in that direction. Small group content, instances, LFD/LFR are not here by random.
Diablo 3 is selling a lot despite all the server problems .. also another data point that people like co-op small group gaming.
Personally, i think 3-man dungeon is a great idea. Make the LFD wait for 5-man goes down.
Personally I'd like to see content that scales. In other words, if I want to solo a dungeon I can. The difficulty will be lowered, but there will be less loot. On the other hand, the more people you have in your group, the harder it is and the more loot you get.
Hard to scale if you want to make the dungeon interesting with scripting and special abilities. Things like the valkyrie in the Lich King fight is tuned to the number of players. It is not simply by upping or downing hp & damage numbers. I would much prefer fixed group size to get better content.
you have to think of the player and class implications of the 3 maqn group also.
for instance if you wanted to use the trinity you could, but all classes would have 2 primary skills and a secondary skill. For instance you would have a paladin who is a tank and healer, and would have secondary crowd control ( i dont consider dps as part of the trinity, tank/heal/crowd control...everyone dpses..)
so if you had 9 classes 6 of them could tank well, 6 of them could heal well, and 6 of them could cc well..all would be expected to dps, and of course how each one does that role could be completely different.
if you dont use dps in your equation, you are not bound by it. Under this system any 3 players would be able to do the content with a little teamwork.
If you don't consider dps part of the trinity, you're not talking about the trinity. If you don't use dps in your equation, your party makeup will be inferior compared to those who do.
What you're suggesting would only work in a game where CC is Required with a capital R. Meaning that a party without CC will be just as dead as a party without a healer. I don't know of any games like that... especially when you consider that CC can mean either something that takes adds out of combat (like sleep/mezz) or something that debuffs the mob you're fighting. I can't think of a way that either kind of CC could be required in a way that couldn't be replaced by an offtank or an additional healer.
Personally I'd like to see content that scales. In other words, if I want to solo a dungeon I can. The difficulty will be lowered, but there will be less loot. On the other hand, the more people you have in your group, the harder it is and the more loot you get.
Hard to scale if you want to make the dungeon interesting with scripting and special abilities. Things like the valkyrie in the Lich King fight is tuned to the number of players. It is not simply by upping or downing hp & damage numbers. I would much prefer fixed group size to get better content.
Wholeheartedly agree. Scaling hp and damage up or down to accomodate the party's size, levels, or makeup guarantees a reduction in the quality of the content.
It seems odd to me that it is globally thought that more people means more difficulty and should by default be rewarded more highly. If anything a 6 person group has more leeway than a 2 person group or a soloist. With the advent of ventrillo and other voice things hunting in a full group is almost by definition easier than hunting solo or in a small group. You only need one competent person in a vent group and 5 people able to take orders.
Personally I think there can be HARD solo and small group content that is just as hard as hard 6 person content. I mean initially the whole reasons given for better results in a group was because it took a long time to get a group together so they gave a bonus for the time lost. This really isnt the case today. At the very least any difference between 2 player groups and 6 with regard to logistics has been minimalized in recent games.
I think the paradigm of you needing the greatest number of people to get good loot needs to go away.
[In the old but not old old days of the 72 person raids in everquest, a lot of the way the raids were balanced was that only 1 or 2 items dropped for an hours worth of work for 72 people -- fewer items per hour per person meant the higher valued items... That same thing can be done just by having good smaller group items appear more rarely. EQ1 also did that sort of thing at least in the earlier versions of the game with rare monsters -- some so very rare you could go months in a zone without seeing it spawn.]
What I would like to see is dynamic contant that scales from very small to very large. It's just as bad to have 7 people wanting to do a 6 man instance as it is for 4 people wanting to do that same zone and can't because they don't have enough.
What I would like to see is dynamic contant that scales from very small to very large. It's just as bad to have 7 people wanting to do a 6 man instance as it is for 4 people wanting to do that same zone and can't because they don't have enough.
That works very well with some stuff, GW2 is using it a lot in the open world.
It works excellent in Diablo styled half random dungeons, and even better if the dungeon is full of traps that are hard no matter how many players you are. I think traps really is the aspect of a dungeon where MMOs never gotten close to pen and paper and could improve a lot.
However, scaling does not work everywhere, it is almost impossible for the really hard stuff since 1 player more or less can change the challenge a lot one direction or the other and the time it would take to fully playtest and balance something like that is immense.
But for some parts of a game it is a nice feature.
I don't see a problem with wanting to complete content with less people. If OP has two friends he enjoys playing with, and only has fun playing with those people, then why would anyone want to force him to find randoms to fill out the rest of his group?
From the a few of the replies to this post, I'm starting to think some of you think MMOs should facilitate forced socialization. That isn't what the goal of an MMO should be. An MMO should be a massive, living world with many and varied options to socialize with other players, but never as a requirement to experience the game or the world.
The best suggestions I've heard in this thread are for scaling content to the group size. I believe that's the way future MMOs should be designed.
I agree content that would scale according to group size in dungeons would be great. I would be fine with it even if the larger group got increased loot chance. I want to see the content I have no need to flex an eppen by showing off raid gear. Not saying 3 people should be able to kill Onyxia for example but the normal dungeons should all scale to smaller groups. I hate raids but to me it just would feel right if 3 or 5 people could take down a dragon.
I agree content that would scale according to group size in dungeons would be great. I would be fine with it even if the larger group got increased loot chance. I want to see the content I have no need to flex an eppen by showing off raid gear. Not saying 3 people should be able to kill Onyxia for example but the normal dungeons should all scale to smaller groups. I hate raids but to me it just would feel right if 3 or 5 people could take down a dragon.
From the context I think you meant it wouldn'tfeel right, but if I'm wrong please correct me.
I think smaller groups taking out epic content feels more natural. In all the legends, in all the movies, in all the novels it's a just a few characters who end up confronting the big bad monster. It's more heroic: Beowulf, Bilbo & Gandalf, Wulfgar/Drizzt/Cattiebrie. These stories aren't as compelling or memorable if there are between 8 and 19 other characters who are just as important.
In fact I'm pretty sure the only reason that raiding with large groups ever became a thing is because when Everquest came out there was no technology to create different instances of the same monster on one server. So all of the top end raids were just heavy powered open world dungeons. If someone went in and killed the big bad, it was an empty dungeon for a week for everyone.
Now that open world raids and dungeons are thing of the past, anyone should be able to access the content at any time, and I'd like to see a return to the more classic heroic idea of the few versus the mighty.
When I saw the 4 man 'groups' In SWTOR, I laughed. Grouping in MMO's is getting smaller and smaller, the OP won't have long to wait for hi wish.
In the world of EzMMO's how long before one man is a group, thats what I want to know?
Are you implying group size has anything remotely to do with challenge?
I mean it indirectly does, but in the opposite way you're implying:
In a 40-man group, my contribution isn't too important and if I'm terrible I can be carried through content (sometimes without being noticed how bad I am.)
Solo, I'm either skilled enough or not. Nobody's going to carry me.
Smaller groups is fine as long as the grouping is well-designed. It wasn't in TOR, so it fell flat. In fact I think the lack of a dungeon finder is the primary reason I'm going to cancel TSW shortly too because I want to group but I don't want the unnecessary obstacles to grouping. Will probably go back to RIFT over the weekend.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Rygard49 you are right that is what I meant. Now that you mentioned Drizzit and the gang I have changed my mind. What is epci about having a army to down a dragon when it could be a small band of heroes.
There is a different feel to a huge group fight, I love that, but yes you individually contribute less. So I am not advocating huge groups for entry level grouping.
What I am getting at is the reason for making the groups smaller, is it to do with making group dynamics more flexible or is it to do with ezMMOde? I am afraid it is the later, in smaller groups spots are easier to fill. The hallmark of the way MMO’s are developing is everything must be quick, instant even, no room for patience when you are appealing to joystick gamers.
Group finders or dungeons which throw together people from different servers are all about the same thing, ‘I must play now!’ Developing a network of friends, working in a guild to form dungeon groups, that’s not for a console boy. And they are the demographic MMO companies are pandering too.
There is a different feel to a huge group fight, I love that, but yes you individually contribute less. So I am not advocating huge groups for entry level grouping.
What I am getting at is the reason for making the groups smaller, is it to do with making group dynamics more flexible or is it to do with ezMMOde? I am afraid it is the later, in smaller groups spots are easier to fill. The hallmark of the way MMO’s are developing is everything must be quick, instant even, no room for patience when you are appealing to joystick gamers.
Group finders or dungeons which throw together people from different servers are all about the same thing, ‘I must play now!’ Developing a network of friends, working in a guild to form dungeon groups, that’s not for a console boy. And they are the demographic MMO companies are pandering too.
I dont think thats the case really. I just think that 3 is a far more personable number. Every player counts for alot, you dont have to pick up random player x to fill the ranks, and you can make 3 man challenges that are still somwhat useful for those who duo and solo. I would call it an undiscovered sweet spot.
Obviously your game would have to be tailored to a three man experience, which would in effect make all players more well rounded, but i see that as a really good thing.
im really interested in how the lotro 3 man instances worked out? Was it just a more personable experience?
There is a different feel to a huge group fight, I love that, but yes you individually contribute less. So I am not advocating huge groups for entry level grouping.
What I am getting at is the reason for making the groups smaller, is it to do with making group dynamics more flexible or is it to do with ezMMOde? I am afraid it is the later, in smaller groups spots are easier to fill. The hallmark of the way MMO’s are developing is everything must be quick, instant even, no room for patience when you are appealing to joystick gamers.
Group finders or dungeons which throw together people from different servers are all about the same thing, ‘I must play now!’ Developing a network of friends, working in a guild to form dungeon groups, that’s not for a console boy. And they are the demographic MMO companies are pandering too.
Making it difficult to form or join groups achieves no desirable design goal.
Forming a group should be ultra convenient.
Getting to the group should be ultra convenient.
Getting to the part where you're playing the game should be ultra convenient.
Challenge should exist in the content itself. There's no game depth to making it inconvenient to form a group, but there's tons of potential game depth to have group PVE challenges which demand a lot of skill and teamwork.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
The earliest games had 6 man groups not 5. But it wasn´t because of research but because of the average pen and paper RPG groups is 4-6 players and they wanted to simulate that in the game.
That is in fact the reason they invented the trinity system from the start, to make group dynamics as good and simple as possible for 6 players. If dungeons would be made for 3 players they would have invented a rather different system.
5 players became more popular because Wow decided for it, proabably because Blizz wanted a bit smaller dungeons than Everquests and similar games. Whatever Wow had made standard since.
But I doubt there is any research whatsoever in it. It is just easier to get a P&P group that size, if you get more you never can assemble all players for any session, if you have less the group can easily wipe because one player have a little bad luck and the story becomes less interesting. It was just something that happened naturally and the earliest MMOs were made by P&P players.
LotRO has dungeons designed for three people.
Lol fun read in this thread, several of you people says 3 man dosent work beacuse of this or that and bla bla bla.
Yet several people in this thread keep say LOTROs 3-man dungeons are fun and in some cases feels better than 6-man ect.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Why not 1 man groups ? They are definitely easier to find than 3 man groups. This cannot be argued.
I raise the stakes: half a man instances. Dungeons designed so that a single person must run two of them at the same time. Top that. (yeah , i know, one third of a man instances...)
you have to think of the player and class implications of the 3 maqn group also.
for instance if you wanted to use the trinity you could, but all classes would have 2 primary skills and a secondary skill. For instance you would have a paladin who is a tank and healer, and would have secondary crowd control ( i dont consider dps as part of the trinity, tank/heal/crowd control...everyone dpses..)
so if you had 9 classes 6 of them could tank well, 6 of them could heal well, and 6 of them could cc well..all would be expected to dps, and of course how each one does that role could be completely different.
if you dont use dps in your equation, you are not bound by it. Under this system any 3 players would be able to do the content with a little teamwork.
The irony in your sarcasm is that this is actually a fantastic and successful idea when used in MMORPGs, partially for the reason you give.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The secret is to remove any sort of static number group content or group limits. Throw balance out of the window. So your topic is starting from the wrong premise.
Just put people in the world, give them tools and situations and let their human factor play.
Just like if they were in some sort of Jurassic Park or catastroph, apocalypse, survival scenario.
Put the odds against people situationally randomly
Socialization has to be designed to occur naturally, it has to be incidental, emergent. Not hard scripted. Not artificially. Not as a requisite.
Let people free to fail, to boycot others, to help themselves. Thats a general principle.
Then you have a game.
Personally I'd like to see content that scales. In other words, if I want to solo a dungeon I can. The difficulty will be lowered, but there will be less loot. On the other hand, the more people you have in your group, the harder it is and the more loot you get.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
Nah ... people want to play a co-op game. That is why MMOs are turning in that direction. Small group content, instances, LFD/LFR are not here by random.
Diablo 3 is selling a lot despite all the server problems .. also another data point that people like co-op small group gaming.
Personally, i think 3-man dungeon is a great idea. Make the LFD wait for 5-man goes down.
Hard to scale if you want to make the dungeon interesting with scripting and special abilities. Things like the valkyrie in the Lich King fight is tuned to the number of players. It is not simply by upping or downing hp & damage numbers. I would much prefer fixed group size to get better content.
If you don't consider dps part of the trinity, you're not talking about the trinity. If you don't use dps in your equation, your party makeup will be inferior compared to those who do.
What you're suggesting would only work in a game where CC is Required with a capital R. Meaning that a party without CC will be just as dead as a party without a healer. I don't know of any games like that... especially when you consider that CC can mean either something that takes adds out of combat (like sleep/mezz) or something that debuffs the mob you're fighting. I can't think of a way that either kind of CC could be required in a way that couldn't be replaced by an offtank or an additional healer.
Wholeheartedly agree. Scaling hp and damage up or down to accomodate the party's size, levels, or makeup guarantees a reduction in the quality of the content.
It seems odd to me that it is globally thought that more people means more difficulty and should by default be rewarded more highly. If anything a 6 person group has more leeway than a 2 person group or a soloist. With the advent of ventrillo and other voice things hunting in a full group is almost by definition easier than hunting solo or in a small group. You only need one competent person in a vent group and 5 people able to take orders.
Personally I think there can be HARD solo and small group content that is just as hard as hard 6 person content. I mean initially the whole reasons given for better results in a group was because it took a long time to get a group together so they gave a bonus for the time lost. This really isnt the case today. At the very least any difference between 2 player groups and 6 with regard to logistics has been minimalized in recent games.
I think the paradigm of you needing the greatest number of people to get good loot needs to go away.
[In the old but not old old days of the 72 person raids in everquest, a lot of the way the raids were balanced was that only 1 or 2 items dropped for an hours worth of work for 72 people -- fewer items per hour per person meant the higher valued items... That same thing can be done just by having good smaller group items appear more rarely. EQ1 also did that sort of thing at least in the earlier versions of the game with rare monsters -- some so very rare you could go months in a zone without seeing it spawn.]
When I saw the 4 man 'groups' In SWTOR, I laughed. Grouping in MMO's is getting smaller and smaller, the OP won't have long to wait for hi wish.
In the world of EzMMO's how long before one man is a group, thats what I want to know?
What I would like to see is dynamic contant that scales from very small to very large. It's just as bad to have 7 people wanting to do a 6 man instance as it is for 4 people wanting to do that same zone and can't because they don't have enough.
That works very well with some stuff, GW2 is using it a lot in the open world.
It works excellent in Diablo styled half random dungeons, and even better if the dungeon is full of traps that are hard no matter how many players you are. I think traps really is the aspect of a dungeon where MMOs never gotten close to pen and paper and could improve a lot.
However, scaling does not work everywhere, it is almost impossible for the really hard stuff since 1 player more or less can change the challenge a lot one direction or the other and the time it would take to fully playtest and balance something like that is immense.
But for some parts of a game it is a nice feature.
I don't see a problem with wanting to complete content with less people. If OP has two friends he enjoys playing with, and only has fun playing with those people, then why would anyone want to force him to find randoms to fill out the rest of his group?
From the a few of the replies to this post, I'm starting to think some of you think MMOs should facilitate forced socialization. That isn't what the goal of an MMO should be. An MMO should be a massive, living world with many and varied options to socialize with other players, but never as a requirement to experience the game or the world.
The best suggestions I've heard in this thread are for scaling content to the group size. I believe that's the way future MMOs should be designed.
I agree content that would scale according to group size in dungeons would be great. I would be fine with it even if the larger group got increased loot chance. I want to see the content I have no need to flex an eppen by showing off raid gear. Not saying 3 people should be able to kill Onyxia for example but the normal dungeons should all scale to smaller groups. I hate raids but to me it just would feel right if 3 or 5 people could take down a dragon.
From the context I think you meant it wouldn't feel right, but if I'm wrong please correct me.
I think smaller groups taking out epic content feels more natural. In all the legends, in all the movies, in all the novels it's a just a few characters who end up confronting the big bad monster. It's more heroic: Beowulf, Bilbo & Gandalf, Wulfgar/Drizzt/Cattiebrie. These stories aren't as compelling or memorable if there are between 8 and 19 other characters who are just as important.
In fact I'm pretty sure the only reason that raiding with large groups ever became a thing is because when Everquest came out there was no technology to create different instances of the same monster on one server. So all of the top end raids were just heavy powered open world dungeons. If someone went in and killed the big bad, it was an empty dungeon for a week for everyone.
Now that open world raids and dungeons are thing of the past, anyone should be able to access the content at any time, and I'd like to see a return to the more classic heroic idea of the few versus the mighty.
Are you implying group size has anything remotely to do with challenge?
I mean it indirectly does, but in the opposite way you're implying:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Rygard49 you are right that is what I meant. Now that you mentioned Drizzit and the gang I have changed my mind. What is epci about having a army to down a dragon when it could be a small band of heroes.
I dont think thats the case really. I just think that 3 is a far more personable number. Every player counts for alot, you dont have to pick up random player x to fill the ranks, and you can make 3 man challenges that are still somwhat useful for those who duo and solo. I would call it an undiscovered sweet spot.
Obviously your game would have to be tailored to a three man experience, which would in effect make all players more well rounded, but i see that as a really good thing.
im really interested in how the lotro 3 man instances worked out? Was it just a more personable experience?
Making it difficult to form or join groups achieves no desirable design goal.
Challenge should exist in the content itself. There's no game depth to making it inconvenient to form a group, but there's tons of potential game depth to have group PVE challenges which demand a lot of skill and teamwork.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver