Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
I think what the OP is asking is were everyone of those 100 dungeons equally relevant to every player?
What typically happens is players gravitate to a handful of them, either because the rewards from them are perceived as superior or are more efficiently or easily run than others.
Most players don't look at 100 dungeons (especially ones that take days to run) as an opportunity for adventure, rather they want to know whats in it for them to make running any of them worthwhile.
I've seen it in several MMOs, certain content for some reason is stupidly more efficient than the rest of the game and players flock to it in droves to almost total exclusion of everything else.
So the question being asked is can you make all 100 dungeons relevant?
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
Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
I think what the OP is asking is were everyone of those 100 dungeons equally relevant to every player?
What typically happens is players gravitate to a handful of them, either because the rewards from them are perceived as superior or are more efficiently or easily run than others.
Most players don't look at 100 dungeons (especially ones that take days to run) as an opportunity for adventure, rather they want to know whats in it for them to make running any of them worthwhile.
I've seen it in several MMOs, certain content for some reason is stupidly more efficient than the rest of the game and players flock to it in droves to almost total exclusion of everything else.
So the question being asked is can you make all 100 dungeons relevant?
Ah fair enough, I get ya.
Don't think you will ever get every dungeon relevant but each one of those dungeons in vanguard were relevant to those areas and part of a quest chain.
Obviously there were those dungeons that did take days were pretty important for the type of gear on each continent.
Many of those dungeons wouldn't of actually effected your progression. Some you really needed to do.
Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
I think what the OP is asking is were everyone of those 100 dungeons equally relevant to every player?
What typically happens is players gravitate to a handful of them, either because the rewards from them are perceived as superior or are more efficiently or easily run than others.
Most players don't look at 100 dungeons (especially ones that take days to run) as an opportunity for adventure, rather they want to know whats in it for them to make running any of them worthwhile.
I've seen it in several MMOs, certain content for some reason is stupidly more efficient than the rest of the game and players flock to it in droves to almost total exclusion of everything else.
So the question being asked is can you make all 100 dungeons relevant?
Ah fair enough, I get ya.
Don't think you will ever get every dungeon relevant but each one of those dungeons in vanguard were relevant to those areas and part of a quest chain.
Obviously there were those dungeons that did take days were pretty important for the type of gear on each continent.
Many of those dungeons wouldn't of actually effected your progression. Some you really needed to do.
You need filler group content.
My basic thesis is, if it's impractical to get a group for a dungeon, then that dungeon isn't relevant to the game. It might as well not even exist. Being part of a quest chain or having essential loot does nothing to change this in itself, if it's not possible to get a group for it.
I would generally propose that, whatever is the main focus of a game, the game needs to make it good if the game itself is going to be any good. Part of group content being good is making it possible to get a group for it. If a game hopes to have a lot of different group content as a draw, then it needs to be possible to get a group for a lot of different group content.
"If you have a good system, it's very easy to make rewards from group content desirable."
This seems to be the point that a lot of people don't grasp. What's missing from MMO's are good systems, things designed with the psychology of fun in mind.
Most people tend to have a sort of WoW-induced tunnelvision when they think of game design, where the only thing to do is loot scrounge with the specific purpose of bashing their heads against other players whether in PvP gankfests or PvE bragging matches.
That's certainly one type of game, but it isn't the only type. If people could broaden their view a whole world opens up.
You could randomise rewards, not sure if that's been mentioned.
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
If you randomize rewards so that all dungeons give equivalent loot, players will figure out which dungeon is the shortest and/or easiest and loop that one endlessly.
Procedurally generated group content in which groups don't get to pick their fixed dungeon and can't recognize that they rolled the "wrong" dungeon and reroll would work. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is actually good. Some games have had modest success with having a bunch of custom-made components and chaining them together randomly.
What about entirely PG content, though? I mean I view dungeons as an extension of the story. So IF we're talking about 100 dungeons then there is either a lot of story outside those dungeons or the dungeons themselves are just gear grinders.
HOWEVER, we know a couple things. First, we know there is a relatively finite number of boss skills and mechanics. Maybe we could just have one dungeon, catered to your level, which is entirely PG. So everything from the layout, to the trash mobs, to the bosses would be PG. I actually remember the time I played this game on XBox called Metal Dungeon, where everything was PG every time you entered. It was an interesting concept. Apply this to an MMO Dungeon, with bosses, would be challenging, but we're talking about always-fresh content that isn't predictable. People will hate it!
So, I disagree that a game can't have very much group content available at any time: I believe it is entirely possible to design a game in which there is a lot of group content and all that content gets played.
However, I do agree that, over time, players naturally gravitate towards a narrower selection, usually based on difficulty and rewards (easiest difficulty for highest rewards). That is human nature and I don't think we should fight it, you'll just fail. If you're designing 100 dungeons, it is literally impossible to make all 100 unique AND equally interesting / playable.
What is possible is to ensure that each of your 100 dungeons is considered worthwhile to a large enough portion of the playerbase that finding groups isn't an issue. If you've got this much group content, the only way to do this is via horizontal progression. As soon as you go vertical progression, it instantly means that content lower down the ladder is quickly forgotten about and the majority of your playerbase will eventually end up at a similar power level doing the same small subset of content.
So, for the purposes of the next few paragraphs, I'm going to assume that this vast array of group content is accessible by 100% of your playerbase.
From there, I think it just needs to be an iterative process to find the right balance for your community. We're talking about group content here, so the community is the key to uptake. If you have built a combat-focused MMO, you don't want 50% of your group content focused on puzzle solving and 50% on combat, as naturally the combat content will be more popular.
So, things to balance around:
1) Fun
This should be the first priority for any designer. Is my content fun? What makes it fun? Is the fun available different to other content? Players will be more willing to take part in group content if it is fun, regardless of rewards or not.
2) Exploration / Aesthetics
Whilst the content itself should be really fun, the aesthetics should also be a key driver. Players should come across group content and want to do it, just to see what is there! Aesthetics play a big part in this, maybe not in getting people to repeat content, but in getting them to do it in the first place. The players should be excited to see new and interesting creatures, meet famous NPCs, see beautiful vistas, get scared in dark dungeons etc.
3) Rewards
Repetition eventually removes all the fun and wonder from life. Swimming with dolphins may be a great experience, but swimming with them every day for years and eventually you'll get bored (unless you really love dolphins, but we're talking general community).
So, once the content itself has stopped being rewarding through the gameplay itself, it comes down to physical (um, digital...) rewards like loot, coin, titles etc. People in this thread have already discussed various ways to use loot as a motivator to participate in all content. There are loads of ways to do it, it is worth using a bit of all methods. Spread class-specific stuff around the content. Give rewards for consuming diverse content. Put random loot in all content. Put more loot in the least favourite content.
4) Penalties
This should be a last resort as people respond much better to positive reinforcement, but there are some people who require punishment. Things like a debuff that reduces your loot by 10% each time you repeat content in a day. Or, physically lock them out of content for 12 hours upon completion. Maybe enforce a player title of "carebear" if you repeat the same content too much.
Between these 4 balancing mechanisms, I'm certain you can keep all content active over a long period of time. The first step, as mentioned, is just ensuring that the population is large enough for the content. If you're building a group-focused game, that means community is the heart of your design philosophy, which means no mega-servers and no cross-server stuff.
So, from there you start experimenting with maths to come up with acceptable solutions. Lets assume group size of 5 and 100 dungeons. Lets assume peak concurrent users = 20% of server playerbase.
Lets then start plugging in numbers. Lets say at any given moment during peak hours, 90% of your players are busy and 10% are looking for groups. For now, lets assume everyone is happy to do all content.
So, minimum server size is:
5 (grp size) x 5 (only 20% online) x 10 (90% already busy) = 250
Thats obviously a small number, but in this scenario you still need 250 people in order to form 1 group.
Lets say that people naturally gravitate towards just 5 dungeons each and this spread is equal.
Now, your minimum population becomes 5 x 5 x 10 x (100/5) = 5000. Again, this is only to guarantee that you can form a single group for any given dungeon at peak time.
If one of your dungeons was really unpopular (only 0.5% of the population regularly played it), but you wanted to guaruntee easy group formation, that means a population fo 5 x 5 x 10 x (100 / 0.5) = 50,000.
Just from these simple calculations, you can quickly see that adding anything to your game that reduces the viable population for a dungeon dramatically increases the required population of a server, but if you get too big a server the technology either falls over (bad) or you have to employ phasing / megaserver tech (also bad if you are focused on community).
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You could randomise rewards, not sure if that's been mentioned.
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
If you randomize rewards so that all dungeons give equivalent loot, players will figure out which dungeon is the shortest and/or easiest and loop that one endlessly.
Procedurally generated group content in which groups don't get to pick their fixed dungeon and can't recognize that they rolled the "wrong" dungeon and reroll would work. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is actually good. Some games have had modest success with having a bunch of custom-made components and chaining them together randomly.
What about entirely PG content, though? I mean I view dungeons as an extension of the story. So IF we're talking about 100 dungeons then there is either a lot of story outside those dungeons or the dungeons themselves are just gear grinders.
HOWEVER, we know a couple things. First, we know there is a relatively finite number of boss skills and mechanics. Maybe we could just have one dungeon, catered to your level, which is entirely PG. So everything from the layout, to the trash mobs, to the bosses would be PG. I actually remember the time I played this game on XBox called Metal Dungeon, where everything was PG every time you entered. It was an interesting concept. Apply this to an MMO Dungeon, with bosses, would be challenging, but we're talking about always-fresh content that isn't predictable. People will hate it!
A game that consists entirely of procedurally generated content that is good would fix a whole lot of problems, not just assembling groups. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is good. It's easy to make procedurally generated content that is only slightly randomized and feels extremely repetitive. Try to get avoid that and you're likely to end up with some serious play balance problems.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I think that a game that does procedurally generated content well could be tremendously successful. But it's hard to do.
"If you have a good system, it's very easy to make rewards from group content desirable."
This seems to be the point that a lot of people don't grasp. What's missing from MMO's are good systems, things designed with the psychology of fun in mind.
Most people tend to have a sort of WoW-induced tunnelvision when they think of game design, where the only thing to do is loot scrounge with the specific purpose of bashing their heads against other players whether in PvP gankfests or PvE bragging matches.
That's certainly one type of game, but it isn't the only type. If people could broaden their view a whole world opens up.
It's easy to say that if only games did it right, it would work. But the question is, how do you do it right? In a game where levels and gear makes you markedly stronger, players can't really ignore that even if they'd like to. Abolish progression entirely, or make it an EVE-like time since account creation, and you fix that problem, but that opens a whole other can of worms.
Looking at the whole picture I would think mobs would determine which dungeons are played, their placement, density, strengths and weaknesses, as well as the time it takes to complete the dungeon. Assuming the dungeons aren't copy/paste. Some groups of players my prefer easier dungeons that allow you to do speed runs that yield more rewards in a shorter period of time than a long complicated dungeon that yields the best rewards.
Also player classes, skills and playstyle. Their will always be the most efficient player who picks the most efficient class to play and efficiently grinds through the most productive dungeons and only with the optimal classes for such dungeon runs in their groups. There will be players who pick a class just because they like to play it and mostly for the fun element in gaming which may mean avoiding content which is not considered fun.
Also new players vs veteran players. Will some dungeons cater more to new players or veterans?
Will grouping dynamics be set in stone, random, flexible, or depend on the dungeon?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You could randomise rewards, not sure if that's been mentioned.
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
If you randomize rewards so that all dungeons give equivalent loot, players will figure out which dungeon is the shortest and/or easiest and loop that one endlessly.
Procedurally generated group content in which groups don't get to pick their fixed dungeon and can't recognize that they rolled the "wrong" dungeon and reroll would work. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is actually good. Some games have had modest success with having a bunch of custom-made components and chaining them together randomly.
What about entirely PG content, though? I mean I view dungeons as an extension of the story. So IF we're talking about 100 dungeons then there is either a lot of story outside those dungeons or the dungeons themselves are just gear grinders.
HOWEVER, we know a couple things. First, we know there is a relatively finite number of boss skills and mechanics. Maybe we could just have one dungeon, catered to your level, which is entirely PG. So everything from the layout, to the trash mobs, to the bosses would be PG. I actually remember the time I played this game on XBox called Metal Dungeon, where everything was PG every time you entered. It was an interesting concept. Apply this to an MMO Dungeon, with bosses, would be challenging, but we're talking about always-fresh content that isn't predictable. People will hate it!
A game that consists entirely of procedurally generated content that is good would fix a whole lot of problems, not just assembling groups. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is good. It's easy to make procedurally generated content that is only slightly randomized and feels extremely repetitive. Try to get avoid that and you're likely to end up with some serious play balance problems.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I think that a game that does procedurally generated content well could be tremendously successful. But it's hard to do.
Totally agree. Hence why Metal Dungeon got a 44% on metacritic, lol. It's very...... metaly.
Could you please to change the tittle of topic to "a game can't have very much FORCED group content available at a time" ?
forced group content is group content , but group content isn't all about forced group .
What sort of group content doesn't actually require a group? You'll have to elaborate on that one.
That would be a dynamic event or open world event in which people would have to work together as a group but actual grouping is optional. Like world bosses, public dungeons, open world events that take people through several zones to complete.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You said this lol , play according to the rules . well said . Forced is rule . same , free to chose one of the option also a rule.
Most people are friendly and social and likely to chit chat with strangers in right environment . Human's natural is social animal , but depend on the environment they behavior my change .
Seems you do not understand. You play the game as it is made to be played. The free choice is delusion. It is even more delusional that in a game where the main action is fight, the players should be friendly. As for the fishing, if someone sits next to you, that does not mean you play together. You may chat, but you do not play. In BDO for example there are groups for hunting of whales and monsters. This is a multiplayer gameplay.
I've long thought that most games are meant to teach people not to stand out. To just operate as one of the herd. Anyone who comes up with a build that clearly places them above the rest is quickly reduced as not to be OP. Players who die a lot have death penalties reduced, and some skills increased to bring them more in line with the average norm of the game. Efficient cookie cutter builds are altered to be less efficient so players have a greater variety within what's considered the norm.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I feel like your OP would have worked better if you list out things you are already assuming or rules to basing your discussion on.
Like for me, I'd prefer to exclude XP/loot as the focus for playing each dungeon but does factor into long term play. I'd opt for a normalized group format of, say always 5 players, and any kind of possible class composition to be plausible, and no 1, 2, or 3 best compositions. (this kind of means no pure roles and many hybrids) Low power growth or growth giving players options rather than a 2x advantage across all stats. If purely group focused, avoid waiting in queues, period. (in the least have a combat lobby that speeds up progressing through a dungeon when the group is ready).
I'd say that the lack of difference in kind is going to be a significant bane with a purely group dungeon game. If people get tired of only running dungeons they will quit. In the least the dungeons themselves have to vary quite a lot and offer many play styles and visual differences.
Why does it have to be the player selecting a single dungeon, does that, then starts up a different dungeon or the same dungeon? Maybe players don't get to choose their favorite/most rewarding dungeons to run daily. Instead they run a sequence of dungeons and only get to choose 1 of the 3. While not just the one dungeon presenting it's own challenge but instead the combination or transition between the different kinds of dungeons would be another layer.
Devs probably aren't going to make 100 dungeons if they are very detailed. Maybe 100, only if they were highly modularly built or generated with automatic challenge and reward distribution either on level construction or in real-time depending upon group composition. I'd much prefer a more automated process for handling balancing nightmares (dungeon level's length, items, mobs, difficulty, hazards, etc). Probably not completely though since some do need a specific reward. It's less impossible (in a cynical view) to go the procedural route for some things(like Skyrim) or many things than manual everything, which would neverachieve balance nor ever be finished.
Example: Player1 and Player2 start a group and LFM but choose to begin while waiting. They both fight through hordes for a few minutes as P3, P4, and P5 join. With a full group they decide to select dungeon D3.8 (of the 12 available) because 3 class is an ice world and 8 subclass has a chance for 2 way splits. The level loads and adds on D6.0 and D9.1 to the end of the dungeon along with generating encounters and so on.
At some point you have to just decide on something. There will always be a pro and con to some implementation. There aren't that many straight up better-in-all-circumstances designs beyond the most obvious ones. So just because of some unpredictable outcome may occur doesn't mean that it shouldn't be explored. Trying(and failing or not) is the difference between an actual developer and an armchair idea designer.
I feel like your OP would have worked better if you list out things you are already assuming or rules to basing your discussion on.
A game has N pieces of content that require a group of several players. Only K of those pieces of content are available at a time. A player should be able to pick any one of the K pieces of content and get an appropriate group of players for his chosen piece of content within a reasonable amount of time. You may not require the player to schedule his life around the game. You may not rely heavily on getting other players to come along as a special favor to the player, as this isn't sustainable beyond once in a great while. You may not rely on getting a player massively too powerful for the content so that the rest of the group doesn't matter--including empty spots.
The requirement is that the player must be able to pick any arbitrary piece of content out of the N and be able to get a group for it reasonably often. The goal is to make N as large as possible, with as few systems as possible that have strongly undesirable side-effects. What constitutes undesirable is fairly negotiable, but you have to reasonably expect that whatever you do won't wreck the game for most of the players who would otherwise have enjoyed it.
Obviously, we must have K <= N. You can choose K = N or K very small compared to N or whatever you want. Too small of a value of K (e.g., K = 1) may perhaps qualify as an undesirable side effect that we are trying to avoid. K can be a fixed value or it can vary based on whatever you like.
I don't assume a particular way of making only K of the N dungeons available. It can be segregated by level, or dungeons only open on particular days, or all dungeons nominally open with rewards that vary, or whatever. The key is that, for any one of the N dungeons, it must be clearly possible to get a group for that dungeon reasonably often.
I don't assume a fixed group size. You can assume a fixed group size of 4 or 6 or 10 or whatever you like, or assume that the dungeons scale with group size within some range. That range must not go all the way down to solo.
I don't assume anything about instanced versus open world. You can pick whatever you want there, from a dungeon lobby game to pure open world or some mix of dungeon and open world content.
I don't assume anything about server structure. You can go with the old segregating players by server, or cross-server grouping, or megaserver, or whatever else you want.
I don't assume anything about the classes available. You can pick anything from strict trinity combat to all classes being interchangeable or whatever else you want. You can go with a "skill-based" as opposed to class based if you prefer. Your system better ensure that players can get a group that is viable for the content at hand, not just, say, an all-DPS group in a game that heavily relies on dedicated healers. However, no matter which class a player chooses, getting a group must be possible.
I don't assume anything about grouping mechanics. It can be an auto-grouping queue, or an area that players can visit to find other players looking for a group, or whatever else you want. It does need to be practical for players to find a group, however.
I don't assume anything about rewards such as gear, materials, or experience. You may need to fill that in in some particular way to make your system work, but should feel free to do so. You can have vertical progression, horizontal progression, no progression, or whatever other system you can come up with.
I don't assume anything about non group content. The game can have an enormous crafting system or no crafting at all. It can be a mostly solo game or pure group or anything in between. Only group content counts toward the N value that we are trying to maximize, however.
I don't assume anything about content scaling. You can have content scale to the player's or group's power or vice versa, or you can have content explicitly not scale. If players level past content, then they must be able to group for the content in their level range reasonably quickly and before they level past it.
You cannot rely on developers to do an impossibly good job of balancing everything. At any given time, some dungeons are going to be harder than others, and some are going to give more widely desired rewards than others. You can rely on balancing mechanisms that either automatically or manually adjust content difficulty or rewards as time passes if you like.
You cannot assume that players will do things that players traditionally don't do. For example, you cannot assume that players will magically distribute themselves evenly among all pieces of content available unless you have some very strong mechanics to force players to distribute themselves that way. It's better to assume that you will make exploitable mistakes and players will find and exploit them.
Fill in the missing assumptions however you like, but make the game have a lot of group content and make all of the group content practical to actually get a group for. My thesis is that it is impossible to make K large, and you'll have to install some very strong mechanics that push players around in order to make N large.
So what you are saying is you still have some assumptions of how said dungeons are constructed and populated.
I don't know if you got to reading the rest of my post. There is a difference if K is only what you can choose or what is available. In my example (I admit not as thorough as yours), only 12 can be chosen but all of N is available. K = N, and both are large, 100 = 100
The problem I saw with 100 available options was- far too many choices, thus no meaningful choice. Also with giving what can be chosen now a constraint you can do more to manage popularity, rewards, and replay value.
To say a large game with a large N or K will need strong mechanics is reasonable.
So what you are saying is you still have some assumptions of how said dungeons are constructed and populated.
I don't know if you got to reading the rest of my post. There is a difference if K is only what you can choose or what is available. In my example (I admit not as thorough as yours), only 12 can be chosen but all of N is available. K = N, and both are large, 100 = 100
The problem I saw with 100 available options was- far too many choices, thus no meaningful choice. Also with giving what can be chosen now a constraint you can do more to manage popularity, rewards, and replay value.
To say a large game with a large N or K will need strong mechanics is reasonable.
My point here is, if there are only 12 pieces of group content that you can get a suitable group for, then there are only those 12 pieces of group content available to you. It doesn't matter if it's server code closing off other content or merely letting you try except that it's impossible to get a group. The latter could arguably be worse, as it leads to people wasting a lot of time failing to get a group.
That's very different from solo content, as a game can have thousands of solo quests and it works fine. If much of the time, you're the only one in the entire playerbase doing some quest, that's fine if it's soloable. Spreading out the playerbase very thinly can completely break group content, but is not a problem for solo content. Theme parks need a lot of content to keep players interested, and that might well be why we've seen the trend toward mostly solo games with only a little bit of group content.
And yes, I read your whole post that I quoted. I only replied to the start of it, but I did read the whole thing.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
If you like doing group content, then the idea is to make it actually practical to do a lot of group content. Hopefully that will be fun, or at least more fun than spending half of your gaming time searching for a group and failing to find one to do the content you want.
I think the real problem the OP is talking about is; what drives players more reward or journey. My guess is there are some players who will only do content that is the absolute most rewarding. Some players will actually want care more about what dungeon is more fun to do.
My guess is that games draw in certain types of players with their basic mechanics. I do not agree that a game cannot have a multiple dungeons that all get used frequently. If the game has fun game play and good mechanics with less emphasis on loot it very well might bring in players who have less emphasizes on loot and more on game play. They may disperse to the dungeons based on personal preference and if we assume the dungeons are equally fun the population may break down equally among all of them with a lot of crossover.
I used to play WOW and had many alts. I would park alts at different levels so I could run my favorite dungeons when I saw someone advertising a group, obviously before dungeon finder. It allowed me to get into dungeons quickly because I had multiple characters that I could run a dungeon with, I could also usually fill multiple roles.
Now if on the other hand the game is designed around grind and loot, I think you are correct people will naturally gravitate towards the quickest reward.
the core dynamics and target market will determine to some extend what gets used and what does not.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
Using exactly the same logic I could say a game can't have very much solo content available at a time. Because most solo players play in the instances with best rewards.
No, my point is that this is very explicitly not the case. In Uncharted Waters Online, there were probably some quests that I did that I was the only one on the entire server to do the quest that week. It's almost certainly the case that there were quite a few that I was the only one on the server to do the quest that day. But they were soloable, so I could do them and it was fine. The content was available and I could do it and did do it. I didn't need a critical mass of other players doing the same content at the same time.
If you like doing group content, then the idea is to make it actually practical to do a lot of group content. Hopefully that will be fun, or at least more fun than spending half of your gaming time searching for a group and failing to find one to do the content you want.
This seems to be a running theme in your posts. I am not sure that I agree with your assessment.
let's say that group content x takes 45 minutes to finish.
Solo content y takes 15 minutes to finish.
And finding a group takes 30 minutes. So to complete group content x it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes (5 times solo content y).
If you are purely playing for "loot" the question would be is group content x 5 times more rewarding as solo content y? If yes the time is worth it, if no.....back to solo mode. In this case since we are using the extreme of only playing for loot; therefore, it does not matter to the player.
Since I think there are few players who play to that extreme my guess is that we should look at it differently.
the first questions should be, why would someone want to play group content over solo content. For some it would be more fun, others more challenging, others the social aspect, others better loot, and probably in many cases some combination of all of them.
So we can go back to our old group content x and solo content y. Where x takes 5 times as long as y. the question each person has to ask is when playing the game is group content x 5 times more valuable, given my list of priorities, than solo y.
I think that people do that, without even really thinking about it.
In reality if something is more valuable in an MMO one should anticipate it will take more time. That is kind of the way MMOs have been build from the beginning. Group content in some games has a time sink of building a group. It is
another gate. Gated content is very common place in MMOs. Inherently, that is part of the design. Time sinks are prevalent in games and MMOs. In some games that sink will be building a group. It very well might have been designed that way. So that the cost/benefit (time/loot) is balanced. In some cases the developers may be attempting to reward players who stick together and play together as they have build in groups, less time making groups/more reward for game play time.
Now if a person never has time for group content x (1 hour and 15 minute blocks) and they really want to play group content, then they should choose a different game. If the design of the game is that it takes 75 minutes, it takes 75 minutes. No one should expect the game to change to satisfy them. The other option is the person decides to schedule long enough blocks of game play sessions, because that is what they choose to spend their time on.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
All the talk about group contents remind me about old time with Priston tale . Over 10 years ago , i remember it slogan was "let's party" .
That's why i said you should change tittle to "forced group" . OP
In that game you can solo 100% of contents even bosses . Most of game is about grind level . Even though you can solo , most people at that time prefer party / group with other cause it make the grind become easier less ks . So with 100% solo contents there are also 100% group contents . Because the gameplay reward people who group with other . And the contents non instance so it limited that's why if high contents is full , people move to lower contents . Since the reward is "EXP" instead of gears all contents reward is nearly as value as other
It's old and not perfect game but the idea is right .
If you like doing group content, then the idea is to make it actually practical to do a lot of group content. Hopefully that will be fun, or at least more fun than spending half of your gaming time searching for a group and failing to find one to do the content you want.
This seems to be a running theme in your posts. I am not sure that I agree with your assessment.
let's say that group content x takes 45 minutes to finish.
Solo content y takes 15 minutes to finish.
And finding a group takes 30 minutes. So to complete group content x it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes (5 times solo content y).
My big objection there is that finding a group takes 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes of my free time that I'm doing something boring. That's why many players just solo regardless of rewards and ignore all group content.
If the group content gives no rewards but people commonly do it anyway, that's fine with me. The problem is that most MMORPG players don't play that way. If a game is going to have a considerable emphasis on group content, it has to get players to do it. Rewards seems to be the only thing that the industry has found that actually works.
As for taking 75 minute blocks, that's pushing the upper limit of what I'm willing to accept, though different people have different standards there. But part of the problem is that you don't know up front that it's going to take 30 minutes to get a group. If it takes 30 minutes on average, then sometimes it's going to take two hours. And that's a big problem.
If you like doing group content, then the idea is to make it actually practical to do a lot of group content. Hopefully that will be fun, or at least more fun than spending half of your gaming time searching for a group and failing to find one to do the content you want.
This seems to be a running theme in your posts. I am not sure that I agree with your assessment.
let's say that group content x takes 45 minutes to finish.
Solo content y takes 15 minutes to finish.
And finding a group takes 30 minutes. So to complete group content x it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes (5 times solo content y).
My big objection there is that finding a group takes 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes of my free time that I'm doing something boring. That's why many players just solo regardless of rewards and ignore all group content.
If the group content gives no rewards but people commonly do it anyway, that's fine with me. The problem is that most MMORPG players don't play that way. If a game is going to have a considerable emphasis on group content, it has to get players to do it. Rewards seems to be the only thing that the industry has found that actually works.
As for taking 75 minute blocks, that's pushing the upper limit of what I'm willing to accept, though different people have different standards there. But part of the problem is that you don't know up front that it's going to take 30 minutes to get a group. If it takes 30 minutes on average, then sometimes it's going to take two hours. And that's a big problem.
Thing is, you are trying to find a way to guarantee you'll never wait 30 minutes to find a group.
There are a number of practices and mechanics to minimize the occurrence of this scenario, but you will never eliminate it from ever happening.
For those days you craft, solo a bit, play an alt or even another game in the background.
What the hell, if really bored you can always post here on the forums.
You learn terrific coping mechanisms when married with children.
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
If you like doing group content, then the idea is to make it actually practical to do a lot of group content. Hopefully that will be fun, or at least more fun than spending half of your gaming time searching for a group and failing to find one to do the content you want.
This seems to be a running theme in your posts. I am not sure that I agree with your assessment.
let's say that group content x takes 45 minutes to finish.
Solo content y takes 15 minutes to finish.
And finding a group takes 30 minutes. So to complete group content x it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes (5 times solo content y).
My big objection there is that finding a group takes 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes of my free time that I'm doing something boring. That's why many players just solo regardless of rewards and ignore all group content.
If the group content gives no rewards but people commonly do it anyway, that's fine with me. The problem is that most MMORPG players don't play that way. If a game is going to have a considerable emphasis on group content, it has to get players to do it. Rewards seems to be the only thing that the industry has found that actually works.
As for taking 75 minute blocks, that's pushing the upper limit of what I'm willing to accept, though different people have different standards there. But part of the problem is that you don't know up front that it's going to take 30 minutes to get a group. If it takes 30 minutes on average, then sometimes it's going to take two hours. And that's a big problem.
Thing is, you are trying to find a way to guarantee you'll never wait 30 minutes to find a group.
There are a number of practices and mechanics to minimize the occurrence of this scenario, but you will never eliminate it from ever happening.
For those days you craft, solo a bit, play an alt or even another game in the background.
What the hell, if really bored you can always post here on the forums.
You learn terrific coping mechanisms when married with children.
It's all about how long and how often. Having to wait 30 minutes or longer to get a group 5% of the time is not at all similar to an average wait time of 30 minutes. If on average, it's five minutes to get a group, I'll take that regardless of the distribution unless the group content is very short.
Comments
What typically happens is players gravitate to a handful of them, either because the rewards from them are perceived as superior or are more efficiently or easily run than others.
Most players don't look at 100 dungeons (especially ones that take days to run) as an opportunity for adventure, rather they want to know whats in it for them to make running any of them worthwhile.
I've seen it in several MMOs, certain content for some reason is stupidly more efficient than the rest of the game and players flock to it in droves to almost total exclusion of everything else.
So the question being asked is can you make all 100 dungeons relevant?
"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
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
Ah fair enough, I get ya.
Don't think you will ever get every dungeon relevant but each one of those dungeons in vanguard were relevant to those areas and part of a quest chain.
Obviously there were those dungeons that did take days were pretty important for the type of gear on each continent.
Many of those dungeons wouldn't of actually effected your progression. Some you really needed to do.
You need filler group content.
I would generally propose that, whatever is the main focus of a game, the game needs to make it good if the game itself is going to be any good. Part of group content being good is making it possible to get a group for it. If a game hopes to have a lot of different group content as a draw, then it needs to be possible to get a group for a lot of different group content.
This seems to be the point that a lot of people don't grasp. What's missing from MMO's are good systems, things designed with the psychology of fun in mind.
Most people tend to have a sort of WoW-induced tunnelvision when they think of game design, where the only thing to do is loot scrounge with the specific purpose of bashing their heads against other players whether in PvP gankfests or PvE bragging matches.
That's certainly one type of game, but it isn't the only type. If people could broaden their view a whole world opens up.
What about entirely PG content, though? I mean I view dungeons as an extension of the story. So IF we're talking about 100 dungeons then there is either a lot of story outside those dungeons or the dungeons themselves are just gear grinders.
HOWEVER, we know a couple things. First, we know there is a relatively finite number of boss skills and mechanics. Maybe we could just have one dungeon, catered to your level, which is entirely PG. So everything from the layout, to the trash mobs, to the bosses would be PG. I actually remember the time I played this game on XBox called Metal Dungeon, where everything was PG every time you entered. It was an interesting concept. Apply this to an MMO Dungeon, with bosses, would be challenging, but we're talking about always-fresh content that isn't predictable. People will hate it!
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
However, I do agree that, over time, players naturally gravitate towards a narrower selection, usually based on difficulty and rewards (easiest difficulty for highest rewards). That is human nature and I don't think we should fight it, you'll just fail. If you're designing 100 dungeons, it is literally impossible to make all 100 unique AND equally interesting / playable.
What is possible is to ensure that each of your 100 dungeons is considered worthwhile to a large enough portion of the playerbase that finding groups isn't an issue. If you've got this much group content, the only way to do this is via horizontal progression. As soon as you go vertical progression, it instantly means that content lower down the ladder is quickly forgotten about and the majority of your playerbase will eventually end up at a similar power level doing the same small subset of content.
So, for the purposes of the next few paragraphs, I'm going to assume that this vast array of group content is accessible by 100% of your playerbase.
From there, I think it just needs to be an iterative process to find the right balance for your community. We're talking about group content here, so the community is the key to uptake. If you have built a combat-focused MMO, you don't want 50% of your group content focused on puzzle solving and 50% on combat, as naturally the combat content will be more popular.
So, things to balance around:
1) Fun
This should be the first priority for any designer. Is my content fun? What makes it fun? Is the fun available different to other content? Players will be more willing to take part in group content if it is fun, regardless of rewards or not.
2) Exploration / Aesthetics
Whilst the content itself should be really fun, the aesthetics should also be a key driver. Players should come across group content and want to do it, just to see what is there! Aesthetics play a big part in this, maybe not in getting people to repeat content, but in getting them to do it in the first place. The players should be excited to see new and interesting creatures, meet famous NPCs, see beautiful vistas, get scared in dark dungeons etc.
3) Rewards
Repetition eventually removes all the fun and wonder from life. Swimming with dolphins may be a great experience, but swimming with them every day for years and eventually you'll get bored (unless you really love dolphins, but we're talking general community).
So, once the content itself has stopped being rewarding through the gameplay itself, it comes down to physical (um, digital...) rewards like loot, coin, titles etc. People in this thread have already discussed various ways to use loot as a motivator to participate in all content. There are loads of ways to do it, it is worth using a bit of all methods. Spread class-specific stuff around the content. Give rewards for consuming diverse content. Put random loot in all content. Put more loot in the least favourite content.
4) Penalties
This should be a last resort as people respond much better to positive reinforcement, but there are some people who require punishment. Things like a debuff that reduces your loot by 10% each time you repeat content in a day. Or, physically lock them out of content for 12 hours upon completion. Maybe enforce a player title of "carebear" if you repeat the same content too much.
Between these 4 balancing mechanisms, I'm certain you can keep all content active over a long period of time. The first step, as mentioned, is just ensuring that the population is large enough for the content. If you're building a group-focused game, that means community is the heart of your design philosophy, which means no mega-servers and no cross-server stuff.
So, from there you start experimenting with maths to come up with acceptable solutions. Lets assume group size of 5 and 100 dungeons. Lets assume peak concurrent users = 20% of server playerbase.
Lets then start plugging in numbers. Lets say at any given moment during peak hours, 90% of your players are busy and 10% are looking for groups. For now, lets assume everyone is happy to do all content.
So, minimum server size is:
5 (grp size) x 5 (only 20% online) x 10 (90% already busy) = 250
Thats obviously a small number, but in this scenario you still need 250 people in order to form 1 group.
Lets say that people naturally gravitate towards just 5 dungeons each and this spread is equal.
Now, your minimum population becomes 5 x 5 x 10 x (100/5) = 5000. Again, this is only to guarantee that you can form a single group for any given dungeon at peak time.
If one of your dungeons was really unpopular (only 0.5% of the population regularly played it), but you wanted to guaruntee easy group formation, that means a population fo 5 x 5 x 10 x (100 / 0.5) = 50,000.
Just from these simple calculations, you can quickly see that adding anything to your game that reduces the viable population for a dungeon dramatically increases the required population of a server, but if you get too big a server the technology either falls over (bad) or you have to employ phasing / megaserver tech (also bad if you are focused on community).
I'm not saying it's impossible. I think that a game that does procedurally generated content well could be tremendously successful. But it's hard to do.
Also player classes, skills and playstyle. Their will always be the most efficient player who picks the most efficient class to play and efficiently grinds through the most productive dungeons and only with the optimal classes for such dungeon runs in their groups. There will be players who pick a class just because they like to play it and mostly for the fun element in gaming which may mean avoiding content which is not considered fun.
Also new players vs veteran players. Will some dungeons cater more to new players or veterans?
Will grouping dynamics be set in stone, random, flexible, or depend on the dungeon?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Totally agree. Hence why Metal Dungeon got a 44% on metacritic, lol. It's very...... metaly.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Like for me, I'd prefer to exclude XP/loot as the focus for playing each dungeon but does factor into long term play. I'd opt for a normalized group format of, say always 5 players, and any kind of possible class composition to be plausible, and no 1, 2, or 3 best compositions. (this kind of means no pure roles and many hybrids) Low power growth or growth giving players options rather than a 2x advantage across all stats. If purely group focused, avoid waiting in queues, period. (in the least have a combat lobby that speeds up progressing through a dungeon when the group is ready).
I'd say that the lack of difference in kind is going to be a significant bane with a purely group dungeon game. If people get tired of only running dungeons they will quit. In the least the dungeons themselves have to vary quite a lot and offer many play styles and visual differences.
Why does it have to be the player selecting a single dungeon, does that, then starts up a different dungeon or the same dungeon? Maybe players don't get to choose their favorite/most rewarding dungeons to run daily. Instead they run a sequence of dungeons and only get to choose 1 of the 3. While not just the one dungeon presenting it's own challenge but instead the combination or transition between the different kinds of dungeons would be another layer.
Devs probably aren't going to make 100 dungeons if they are very detailed. Maybe 100, only if they were highly modularly built or generated with automatic challenge and reward distribution either on level construction or in real-time depending upon group composition. I'd much prefer a more automated process for handling balancing nightmares (dungeon level's length, items, mobs, difficulty, hazards, etc). Probably not completely though since some do need a specific reward.
It's less impossible (in a cynical view) to go the procedural route for some things(like Skyrim) or many things than manual everything, which would never achieve balance nor ever be finished.
Example: Player1 and Player2 start a group and LFM but choose to begin while waiting. They both fight through hordes for a few minutes as P3, P4, and P5 join. With a full group they decide to select dungeon D3.8 (of the 12 available) because 3 class is an ice world and 8 subclass has a chance for 2 way splits. The level loads and adds on D6.0 and D9.1 to the end of the dungeon along with generating encounters and so on.
At some point you have to just decide on something. There will always be a pro and con to some implementation. There aren't that many straight up better-in-all-circumstances designs beyond the most obvious ones. So just because of some unpredictable outcome may occur doesn't mean that it shouldn't be explored. Trying(and failing or not) is the difference between an actual developer and an armchair idea designer.
edit:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/10/how-unexplored-generates-great-roguelike-dungeons/
This relevant to generated dungeons.
The requirement is that the player must be able to pick any arbitrary piece of content out of the N and be able to get a group for it reasonably often. The goal is to make N as large as possible, with as few systems as possible that have strongly undesirable side-effects. What constitutes undesirable is fairly negotiable, but you have to reasonably expect that whatever you do won't wreck the game for most of the players who would otherwise have enjoyed it.
Obviously, we must have K <= N. You can choose K = N or K very small compared to N or whatever you want. Too small of a value of K (e.g., K = 1) may perhaps qualify as an undesirable side effect that we are trying to avoid. K can be a fixed value or it can vary based on whatever you like.
I don't assume a particular way of making only K of the N dungeons available. It can be segregated by level, or dungeons only open on particular days, or all dungeons nominally open with rewards that vary, or whatever. The key is that, for any one of the N dungeons, it must be clearly possible to get a group for that dungeon reasonably often.
I don't assume a fixed group size. You can assume a fixed group size of 4 or 6 or 10 or whatever you like, or assume that the dungeons scale with group size within some range. That range must not go all the way down to solo.
I don't assume anything about instanced versus open world. You can pick whatever you want there, from a dungeon lobby game to pure open world or some mix of dungeon and open world content.
I don't assume anything about server structure. You can go with the old segregating players by server, or cross-server grouping, or megaserver, or whatever else you want.
I don't assume anything about the classes available. You can pick anything from strict trinity combat to all classes being interchangeable or whatever else you want. You can go with a "skill-based" as opposed to class based if you prefer. Your system better ensure that players can get a group that is viable for the content at hand, not just, say, an all-DPS group in a game that heavily relies on dedicated healers. However, no matter which class a player chooses, getting a group must be possible.
I don't assume anything about grouping mechanics. It can be an auto-grouping queue, or an area that players can visit to find other players looking for a group, or whatever else you want. It does need to be practical for players to find a group, however.
I don't assume anything about rewards such as gear, materials, or experience. You may need to fill that in in some particular way to make your system work, but should feel free to do so. You can have vertical progression, horizontal progression, no progression, or whatever other system you can come up with.
I don't assume anything about non group content. The game can have an enormous crafting system or no crafting at all. It can be a mostly solo game or pure group or anything in between. Only group content counts toward the N value that we are trying to maximize, however.
I don't assume anything about content scaling. You can have content scale to the player's or group's power or vice versa, or you can have content explicitly not scale. If players level past content, then they must be able to group for the content in their level range reasonably quickly and before they level past it.
You cannot rely on developers to do an impossibly good job of balancing everything. At any given time, some dungeons are going to be harder than others, and some are going to give more widely desired rewards than others. You can rely on balancing mechanisms that either automatically or manually adjust content difficulty or rewards as time passes if you like.
You cannot assume that players will do things that players traditionally don't do. For example, you cannot assume that players will magically distribute themselves evenly among all pieces of content available unless you have some very strong mechanics to force players to distribute themselves that way. It's better to assume that you will make exploitable mistakes and players will find and exploit them.
Fill in the missing assumptions however you like, but make the game have a lot of group content and make all of the group content practical to actually get a group for. My thesis is that it is impossible to make K large, and you'll have to install some very strong mechanics that push players around in order to make N large.
I don't know if you got to reading the rest of my post. There is a difference if K is only what you can choose or what is available. In my example (I admit not as thorough as yours), only 12 can be chosen but all of N is available.
K = N,
and both are large, 100 = 100
The problem I saw with 100 available options was- far too many choices, thus no meaningful choice. Also with giving what can be chosen now a constraint you can do more to manage popularity, rewards, and replay value.
To say a large game with a large N or K will need strong mechanics is reasonable.
That's very different from solo content, as a game can have thousands of solo quests and it works fine. If much of the time, you're the only one in the entire playerbase doing some quest, that's fine if it's soloable. Spreading out the playerbase very thinly can completely break group content, but is not a problem for solo content. Theme parks need a lot of content to keep players interested, and that might well be why we've seen the trend toward mostly solo games with only a little bit of group content.
And yes, I read your whole post that I quoted. I only replied to the start of it, but I did read the whole thing.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
My guess is that games draw in certain types of players with their basic mechanics. I do not agree that a game cannot have a multiple dungeons that all get used frequently. If the game has fun game play and good mechanics with less emphasis on loot it very well might bring in players who have less emphasizes on loot and more on game play. They may disperse to the dungeons based on personal preference and if we assume the dungeons are equally fun the population may break down equally among all of them with a lot of crossover.
I used to play WOW and had many alts. I would park alts at different levels so I could run my favorite dungeons when I saw someone advertising a group, obviously before dungeon finder. It allowed me to get into dungeons quickly because I had multiple characters that I could run a dungeon with, I could also usually fill multiple roles.
Now if on the other hand the game is designed around grind and loot, I think you are correct people will naturally gravitate towards the quickest reward.
the core dynamics and target market will determine to some extend what gets used and what does not.
--John Ruskin
let's say that group content x takes 45 minutes to finish.
Solo content y takes 15 minutes to finish.
And finding a group takes 30 minutes. So to complete group content x it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes (5 times solo content y).
If you are purely playing for "loot" the question would be is group content x 5 times more rewarding as solo content y? If yes the time is worth it, if no.....back to solo mode. In this case since we are using the extreme of only playing for loot; therefore, it does not matter to the player.
Since I think there are few players who play to that extreme my guess is that we should look at it differently.
the first questions should be, why would someone want to play group content over solo content. For some it would be more fun, others more challenging, others the social aspect, others better loot, and probably in many cases some combination of all of them.
So we can go back to our old group content x and solo content y. Where x takes 5 times as long as y. the question each person has to ask is when playing the game is group content x 5 times more valuable, given my list of priorities, than solo y.
I think that people do that, without even really thinking about it.
In reality if something is more valuable in an MMO one should anticipate it will take more time. That is kind of the way MMOs have been build from the beginning. Group content in some games has a time sink of building a group. It is another gate. Gated content is very common place in MMOs. Inherently, that is part of the design. Time sinks are prevalent in games and MMOs. In some games that sink will be building a group. It very well might have been designed that way. So that the cost/benefit (time/loot) is balanced. In some cases the developers may be attempting to reward players who stick together and play together as they have build in groups, less time making groups/more reward for game play time.
Now if a person never has time for group content x (1 hour and 15 minute blocks) and they really want to play group content, then they should choose a different game. If the design of the game is that it takes 75 minutes, it takes 75 minutes. No one should expect the game to change to satisfy them. The other option is the person decides to schedule long enough blocks of game play sessions, because that is what they choose to spend their time on.
--John Ruskin
That's why i said you should change tittle to "forced group" . OP
In that game you can solo 100% of contents even bosses . Most of game is about grind level . Even though you can solo , most people at that time prefer party / group with other cause it make the grind become easier less ks .
So with 100% solo contents there are also 100% group contents . Because the gameplay reward people who group with other .
And the contents non instance so it limited that's why if high contents is full , people move to lower contents . Since the reward is "EXP" instead of gears all contents reward is nearly as value as other
It's old and not perfect game but the idea is right .
If the group content gives no rewards but people commonly do it anyway, that's fine with me. The problem is that most MMORPG players don't play that way. If a game is going to have a considerable emphasis on group content, it has to get players to do it. Rewards seems to be the only thing that the industry has found that actually works.
As for taking 75 minute blocks, that's pushing the upper limit of what I'm willing to accept, though different people have different standards there. But part of the problem is that you don't know up front that it's going to take 30 minutes to get a group. If it takes 30 minutes on average, then sometimes it's going to take two hours. And that's a big problem.
There are a number of practices and mechanics to minimize the occurrence of this scenario, but you will never eliminate it from ever happening.
For those days you craft, solo a bit, play an alt or even another game in the background.
What the hell, if really bored you can always post here on the forums.
You learn terrific coping mechanisms when married with children.
"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
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