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.
I can't speak to what is boring and what is not boring for you or anyone else. I just think that in some games grouping has a time cost. There are games where the time cost is very low. A MOBA for instance. Other games have a much higher cost.
I don't necessarily agree that you can't make very educated guess on how long it will take to find a group. Part of that though is expanding your friends and opening yourself up to different types of play. The more rigid one is, the more likely they have a hard time in an MMO.
I don't know anything about Uncharted Waters Online or how stringent the game is. I do know that it is not the only game out there and other games have different dynamics.
Developers have ways to make grouping easier and harder. I think your overarching premise about groups is focused to sharply through your prism of experience. I think a lot of people have had a different experience.
“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.”
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.
You reminded me of the good times of playing Legends of Norrath while waiting for a raid to form up, thanks for that.
Ah, so the root of this discussion really isn't so much about content and it's quantity but simply is that your audience and total population can handicap the game. The population that relies on it will also eventually be the death of it.
As long as your name starts with Bliz and ends with zard you never have to worry about how sad your players will be waiting in a queue very often or for very long.
Comments
I don't necessarily agree that you can't make very educated guess on how long it will take to find a group. Part of that though is expanding your friends and opening yourself up to different types of play. The more rigid one is, the more likely they have a hard time in an MMO.
I don't know anything about Uncharted Waters Online or how stringent the game is. I do know that it is not the only game out there and other games have different dynamics.
Developers have ways to make grouping easier and harder. I think your overarching premise about groups is focused to sharply through your prism of experience. I think a lot of people have had a different experience.
--John Ruskin
Ah, so the root of this discussion really isn't so much about content and it's quantity but simply is that your audience and total population can handicap the game. The population that relies on it will also eventually be the death of it.
As long as your name starts with Bliz and ends with zard you never have to worry about how sad your players will be waiting in a queue very often or for very long.