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Group Size
scorchshin
Member Posts: 41
I did a small search and haven't seen anything on group size. Is there a number yet? If not what size would you like to see?
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I say this because whatever the max is, that is what a lot of the PvE encounters will be designed for, naturally. When the max gets higher than 5-6, it quickly becomes harder and harder to group up and get going.
I do hope that there will be raid linking, mostly for the purposes of RvR, actually. In fact, I hope that each zone automatically groups you, in some sense, with all of your allies if only for the purpose of communication. I suppose this can be achieved by something as simpl as local defense channels like in WoW.
I SERIOUSLY dislike standing at one place spamming "Looking for group!". That was the reason I left EQ2 because of the EXTREME level differences which forced you to find people almost perfect to your level. And often that just didn't happen. So you simply cannot play the game.
I never understood levels. They ruin so much. And I love the TIER system in WAR that hopefully will close all the stupid level gaps everywhere. And I also find that whatever the case might be, except taking over cities or places, you don't need more than a handful of people (4-6). It simply makes it funnier because each person has to do MORE and each individual get out more of the entire situation when they have succeeded with it.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
It's not official yet, but the group size seems to be stable at 6 people - based on reports from gamer tours at the Mythic offices (such as the tour report at HRGamer). That's supported by February's press reports that Scenarios would be designed for teams from 6x6 to 36x36. (between 1 and 6 groups of 6). Since Beta's still ahead and group size is obviously something that can change pretty easily, it's probably best to adopt a "wait and see" attitude about it.
Edit: The public quest system should help with those looking for group issues - they've commented that part of the inspiration for the public quest system was finding a way to get people more "naturally" grouped - with the hope that people who are fighting together to complete a public quest will find it easy to switch into a formal group for continued activity.
I remember reading that some of the end-game instances (i.e. city capital raids) were 36 vs. 36, so it seems reasonable to infer from that that 6-person groups would be the norm (it wouldn't make sense to have 7 groups of 5 and one person stuck as solo)
Of course, I could have dreamed up that 36 vs. 36 number too.
I would prefer they go with the 8 man group limit that DAOC had.... but that doesn't seem to be the way to go.
Trouble with smaller groups like 5-6 is that if there are more classes than this some classes find themselves not on the "preferred" list. I remember in WOW, my Druid had a much harder time getting in a 5 man instance than my Priest did.... Heck, I stood around so much in IF LFG on my Druid I managed to make over 5 plat just playing the AH in a month's time...
Didn't get a whole lot of adventuring done though....
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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
That was in one of the February press reports. Sanya actually refuted that later - she said that while 36x36 was the current plan for large Scenarios, the city-siege instances would not fall into that category - they were considered a "special exception" to the rule. Here's the full statement, made when people got excited about those Scenario size estimates:
And then, there's 4 different playable "classes" for each race in WAR. Not like in the other games where every race and "team/side" can play any class the game has. So I really don't think comparing the grouping in WAR with WoW is such a good thing to do.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Seriously.
It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
As someone else mentioned, I do not think that "there must be certain classes in a group", will be an issue in this game. I can only see that being an issue in the beginning, when people from other games insist on playing WAR like their old games. And some old timers may insist on being in groups with a "healer". Otherwise, I think its a non issue.
You will get plenty of , " We did it this way in *insert game name here* ". All of those strategy's will almost certainly prove ineffective in WAR, since the game play will be vastly different.
I tend to dislike larger groups. It is harder to get a full group, most quest are based around the optimal group number, and you feel forced to fill out a group to get the best results. One of the many reasons WoW was so universally revered by reviewers, was because it had smaller group numbers, making it, in theory, easier to get a group.
I am really starting to wonder, though it is tangent to this thread, how healing is going to work. I of course understand Mythic's stance on it, and how healers are not just healers, yadda yadda, stuff we all knew many months ago.
However, thus far, I have not seen them mention the actual mechanics of heals in any great detail. I am curious to see if it will be the standard, 'select target, push heal, cast heal, target is healed' system prevalent in most MMORPGs, or if it will be something a bit more subtle/different.
Well, let me rephrase: I already know there will be different ways of healing, but I also wonder if there will be any standard healing at all. Thus far, there has been no indication that there will be.
My reason for wondering is I am interested how large PvE encounters will work without dedicated healers. It will be a bit of a departure to not have the typical setup of one tank soaking the damage, the healers keeping him healthy, with the rest of the people doing damage.
Take the Rune Priest, the 'healer' for the Dwarfs. He uses runes to heal, which sound like they must be 'carved' and applied to people before they have an effect, which weakens over time. That is to say, it sounds like their healing/buffing is more of a preparatory measure, leaving them free to fight, rather than a reactive measure. This leads me to believe their heals may be mostly HoTs (heals over time).
So, what if in the middle of a fight an ally is being beaten to a pulp? Can the Rune Priest step in and quickly heal or is he at the mercy of the rune system that, while cool, sounds like it might also be limiting.
If you need 2 healers, you might as well make it a larger group like 8.
given that there will be 4 classes per race, the group size should be 4.
there are a number of reason why , but here are the most compelling ones.
Evidence#1: Four players is " alot " easier to assemble than 5 or 6 or 8. Faster assembling=more groups being assembled. Think back and wonder where all the waiting is.. its in those 5 and 6 spots, and rarely in the first 4. I consider it the prime group number.
Evidence #2: The game is not set up to have specialist roles, and considers that everyone has to fight. This is really good, but remember that if this is true, a smaller group will be more fun combat wise since larger groups tend to "mow" mobs. Thus encounters will be more fun when they target a smaller group over a larger one simply because of the mob dps shift differential.
Evidence #3: If youve ever played daoc you know that when 8 goes against 8, one person usually dies instantly. The higher the group size the more players will use their combined dps to lopside the other group. This is a good tactic, unless your the class that always gets killed first. Smaller groups will ensure this is limited and players can survive longer in battle.
Evidence #4: has anyone else noticed that the trend in mmos is to only group when absolutely necessary? Its a simple truth, and i know why. There are to many variables and personalities to deal with. Keep groups small and tight and more players will be more likely to group more often. Dont fight the trend, embrace it.
Evidence #5: Most content is scaled for the largest group size. This means that usually the solo duo and trio content is not very useful for 6 man content. With a smaller group size more content is instantly made available to those who solo, duo and trio, since the highest the content will be geared for is 4. This means more overall content for everyone. More challenging, but not out of reach. No need for "elite" with smaller group sizes.
Evidence #6: Its never been done. Show me one mmo with a group size of 4? This ones perfect for it.
Evidence #7: you can link groups of 4 the same as groups of higher numbers, with the exception that groups of 4 units will be easier to assemble.
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The bottom line is that 4 is a critical mmo number. It is the point of the spear and the edge of the blade. The perfect balance to gameplay.
Groups of 6 sounds really nice though, not alot for epic battles (for numbers sake) but not too small so you can still build really nice bosses and dungeons.
If you cant 'rely' on a heal you won't become reliant on healers, and that I like a lot. I actually hope all heals are worked out in a manner similar to this. Otherwise one race and healer type will become VERY popular, especially if they can do directed and instant heals.
Players get very 'attached' to anything that they think helps them personally.
Healing should be more fun for alot of people (with the lack of healbotting) so maybe there will be more healers.
Who knows?
think about the critical numbers..
in a 6 man group the mobs your fighting are geared for 6 people and therefore do 6xdps.
in the 4 scenario the number is 4x..
thins inherently makes it less of a requirement to have a dedicated tank or healer. Not that one would be bad, just not so necessary.
remember how mobs ( and players) work.
If you have 6 people in a group you have x armor. mob does 6x dps.
if you have 4 people in a group you still have x armor. mob does 4x dps..
the only thing that does actually change is your requirement for specialization of healing and tanking.
thus 4=better.
Sure, I will grant that it is easier to get a 4-man pick-up group going, but I think accessibility is the only good point for a number that low.
Now, we do not have a very good idea as to what each role will mean in PvE, exactly, and how necessary it will be to have th classic tank/healer dynamic. Maybe groups will be able to exist without healers, maybe not, and maybe more people than tanks can fill in adequately in the damage-soaking role.
However, with 4 people, one runs the risk of having no wiggle room. The game may tend towards forcing certain group combinations, and even if it does not, I feel players will based on past games. So, right away, I think a lot of them will want a tank and healer. There goes 50% of the spots. Now, some strong damage plus perhaps some neat utility might be nice, so in comes some melee or ranged DPS.
Now we have 75% of the group's spots gone, with the last one probably being fairly open, as the core spots are filled. This does not sit right with me, as it seems to encourage more min/maxing than a 5-6 person group would.
Okay, but let's pretend Mythic makes it so almost any reasonable group combination works, so basically every spot is open (I actually hope this is not true, as I think it will water down the game a lot). What is wrong now?
I think it will feel too small, especially if one is in a guild or has a large group of friends. 4-man groups means more people get excluded, and I think it is at the point where balance is too far swing in the direction of pick-up groups. Furthermore, a 4-man group feels too much like playing PS3 at home to me, with 3 buddies.
In the end, I feel 6 is a good balance. I like that number. It is large enough to have more interesting group dynamics and more open spots in the group (tank/healer/damage + whatever), and it is large enough so as not to exclude as many people in guilds and such. I plan on running a guild and am very against 4-man groups for that reason, especially. I do not want to fragment the members that are online into many tiny groups, but would rather have just a few medium-sized ones for greater cohesion.
No, 4 probably wouldn't be a good idea. Yes, it would be easier to get 4 people together. And yes, content will be balanced to the full size of a group, no matter what that number happens to be. But you run the very real risk of people being unable to get invites to groups based on their Class. As much as it may suck, MMO players tend to prefer groups with all bases covered. 4 archetypes, 4 Classes per race, 4 slots in a group. Invariably, if a group of three is missing a tank, they're likely to wait a while longer looking for a tank, rather than pick you (who is not a tank).
With 5, you've got a spot for one more. Not much of an improvement, which is why I vote for 6. You also have to consider the math. Content made for 4 players means that the difficulty is divided by 4. If someone dies, your effectiveness is down a full 25%. If the content is made for 6 and someone dies, your effectiveness is cut by 17%. Your group's chances of surviving your brief absence is that much greater, leading to fewer wipes.
Of course, this is all talking about PvE. PvP is a much more complex challenge, and having a "cookie cutter" group isn't going to guarantee you success on the battlefield against living opponents.
Seriously.
It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
I have experience playing EQ, DAOC, eq2, and wow.
I agree that a 6 man group covers all the bases: healer, tank, melee dps, nuker and two spots to spare for substitutes. In theory this should be all that is necessary, right? in practice it proves it, right? But this is all logic thinking about the most effective group, what about the most effective way to have fun?
Essentially this is a PvE discussion I take it.
In DAOC (my favorite) you had the option for 8 person groups. Yes i said 8 was an option. I took 4 classes to 50, pre expansion (i quit when first exp hit the game), and never felt I "had" to have an 8 man team. a lot of the time groups were only 6 but it was nice to have the option that if a friend showed up online i could invite him/her in because I wasn’t limited to only 6.
In these other games i hated being limited to only 6 members in a group. It wasn’t an issue all the time, but in games like EQ and EQ2 it was as if you had to have the magic number of 6 always to be effective. I want less structure in my games,
I would like to use the abilities at hand to create tactics that would allow for smaller teams, AND content that would be more challenging and allow players to utilize full 8 man teams for additional reward (not so much raiding, just good challenging PvE content that gets the heart pumping at times).
I don’t think it should be forced into the mechanics that 8 members must be necessary to be effective. They could even allow for 8 while achieving optimal results from only 6. A system like that would please me the most.
Well, I think the problem will be in planned encounters in PvE instanced areas.
For sure, in general grinding, group size is largely irrelevant. You can have 2 or 10 people as it does not affect anything other than the rate of kills and the experience made per kill.
However, in instanced content, encounters must be tuned for a certain number of people, else they are either trivial or too hard. If an instance is meant for 5 people, 3 people would likely be slaughtered. However, 8 people would dominate it. Both cases are bad.
Thus, the best idea, I think, is to have a maximum, like 6, and then design every bit of instanced, goal-oriented PvE content around that. This is similar to how WoW balances its instances for 5 people, 20 people, 40 people, etc.
If the maximum was 8, you can bet that to avoid cheaping one's way through an instance for loot, Mythic would design instances for 8. This means that you would basically need 8 people for sure to get through, maybe 6 or 7 if geared well and skilled. My point is that there would not be much flexibility and you would be stuck with needing more people.
Anyway, I can see your point about wanting flexibility, but I do not think it will work out quite right in terms of content balance.
You are absolutely correct Sornin in terms of instancing... it would have to be optimized to a specific number and that number does make since to be about 6. Gosh I hate that.
Do you think Instancing will be the norm in this game or the exception?
I’ve never been a fan of instancing, I know it could work out to be more effective in some ways then traditional play in terms of population balance, I’m ok with that, I just hope it is kept to a minimal. I might be in the minority here.
They've said that the game will include three PvE dungeons, and the description they gave of the first included an instanced area only at the end, for the boss fight (possibly as a way of scaling the boss fight to the rank/size of the group; they were vague on that). Doesn't sound like we'll see much PvE instancing, and where we will, it may very well scale to the group size on the fly, so balancing group size for PvE instances may be irrelevant.
On the other hand, PvP instances (Scenarios) look to be relatively common - 2 or 3 in every zone. As we push forward toward the enemy capital, scenarios lock in controlled zones and open in the currently contested zone. With the massive skirmish areas and the battlefield objectives, it doesn't look like anyone will have to join the instanced fights if they don't want to - there should be more than enough to do in the persistent world.
i would argue with a 4 man group the challenge factor is that much greater per person because there is no room for slackers. Youll be needing all 4 players.
I really hope they investigate 4 because this is a pvp game, and small 4 man units will create a much more fun fighting environment than say 6 vs 6 will.
When i look at mmo's all i see is people wanting to solo. I ask why this is, and ive come to the conclusion that what you guys feel is "working fine" is not actually working fine. Why dont more players "want" to group? Players will do prety much anything in their power to avoid grouping to accomplish goals. If they just cant do it solo, they will get a group as a last resort.
My theory is that 6 man groups are not working as far as the average mmo player is concerned. Yes there are groups, but the trend is solo content. Players arent really interested in assembling 6 players.
so i would prefer to build a group size people will not think its wasting their time. The answer 4 because it maximized the interaction of all the variables.
the mmo will be ok with a 6 man scenario, but it will be much better with the 4 man scenario because overall it is a more efficient structure when compared to who will be playing this game.
Let's hope 5 - 6. More is just... not cool. The group gets too big to be fun in my opinion. (Do like raids though, but thats from another point of view).