From what I've read I think Bioware fully understand the solo player, as well as the players that love to group. There are many different kinds of solo players, and what interested me is that they are putting together what sounds like a very scalable game that doesn't focus on a single playstyle but moreso it has something for everyone.
We have yet to actually see all the content and how the missions scale, but they've said their design is to make the players always feel challenged nomatter the size of the group.
Well, that was an answer that would have been better to hear from Bioware in my opinion. Also what I was expecting. But, can you see my concern with solo players uniting under the official label now? Again, Im sure they have it under control, hopefully it works out better than in the past. Im also one that believes in solo content to all rewards. Probably more pro-solo than most. Thanks for the reasonable reply. Bioware sure has some fans.
I may be off my rocker but this is what I was referring to, these quotes
"if you want to do solo play that's something that you can do as well. It's a goal of ours to make sure that we cater to all those play styles. It someone is like, "I don't wanna group, I wanna play a BioWare game. I wanna go through the story and do things on my own." you can do that. You're gonna see other people running around the world, as you would in any other MMO. On the other hand, if you want to group you're gonna be able to go through the game that way as well"
"Q:You mentioned earlier that you don't want players to need to go out and recruit a bunch of other players to take down one monster. How do you balance an MMO so that you're still able to be a bad ass in single player but also have that sort of multiplayer experience that so many MMOs provide?
James: One of the things we've been doing is that we're making sure that when we're building content we have different representatives of the different play styles. Whenever we're doing design discussions or implementing a system, we have the different player types involved. There's the solo player type that hates other players and is very anti-social..
It's funny, because there are a bunch of players like this in WoW where they don't like to hang around with other players but love to show off all the cool stuff that they have.
Then there are the players that like to adventure with their buddies. They have their own group of friends, and they just like to adventure with those players all the time.
Then there are players that like to join guilds and are social butterflies and like to adventure with people from their guild. They like to be part of these big huge groups that go out and play in major events like raids.
We want to take all those players and make sure that each of those player types has fun in our game. I can't go into details about all the systems, but we have made sure that those player types are thought about when we're building the game. "
Thats what gave me the notion that they understand the different solo players as well as those that like to group.. I mean I felt pretty spot on when he was talking about the different types of players...
Edit:
A little after the fact in the same article.. regarding being outnumbered. :
"One thing that we don't want to have happen in our game is the situation where you get a bunch of players together to beat up one guy. That's just not very heroic and it's something that we don't want to have happen in our game. We're looking for much more heroic battles where you're the group that's outnumbered. If you think about the movies, the heroes are the ones that are heroic because they're fighting against the odds. "
There was also something about the way missions scale but I'm having a hard time tracking it down.. supposedly it was something on how the missions will scale depending on how many you have in your party, and that when one drops the missions will rescale themselves or something of that nature... .... I'll keep looking, if I find it I'll post it.
www.gamespot.com/news/6228707.html It seems BioWare understand Solo players, but would also like to encourage (not force) them into grouping.
Which is exactly how it should be. So long as I'm not forced to group to enjoy the game I'll be happy. From what I've seen, nothing will stop the groupers from enjoying the game their way. Everyone with the exception of the "everything should be my way or nothing" crowd should be happy.
This statement shows a fundamental failure to understand what many group players want in a game.
They don't want to "be able to group". This is where you are making a HUGE mistake in stating what group players want. The groupers also don't want to "force you to group". They absolutely do not want you to even play the game, much less group.
What groupers generally want is content that requires and rewards team play.
If you see a team of any kind, do you think they want to kidnap you and make you play on the team? Of course not.
Reward has to equal effort. No one does double the effort for the same reward when they don't have to, and feels satisfied.
I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars.
Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
"Being able to group" does not make a good grouping game. However, being "able to solo" does make a good solo game.
So in the end, you are saying, I want a good solo game, and screw the groupers if they don't like it, and THEN saying, they should like it because they are "able to group" which is not what most group players want at all.
It's like me saying, you will get 1/10th of an experience point for each quest you do, while groups get 1,000,000 points. There, you are ABLE to solo, so you should be happy.
www.gamespot.com/news/6228707.html It seems BioWare understand Solo players, but would also like to encourage (not force) them into grouping.
Which is exactly how it should be. So long as I'm not forced to group to enjoy the game I'll be happy. From what I've seen, nothing will stop the groupers from enjoying the game their way. Everyone with the exception of the "everything should be my way or nothing" crowd should be happy.
This statement shows a fundamental failure to understand what many group players want in a game.
They don't want to "be able to group". This is where you are making a HUGE mistake in stating what group players want. The groupers also don't want to "force you to group". They absolutely do not want you to even play the game, much less group.
What groupers generally want is content that requires and rewards team play.
If you see a team of any kind, do you think they want to kidnap you and make you play on the team? Of course not.
Reward has to equal effort. No one does double the effort for the same reward when they don't have to, and feels satisfied.
I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars.
Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
"Being able to group" does not make a good grouping game. However, being "able to solo" does make a good solo game.
So in the end, you are saying, I want a good solo game, and screw the groupers if they don't like it, and THEN saying, they should like it because they are "able to group" which is not what most group players want at all.
It's like me saying, you will get 1/10th of an experience point for each quest you do, while groups get 1,000,000 points. There, you are ABLE to solo, so you should be happy.
You got all that from that one post? You took offense, the only reason you should be offended is if you landed in the "everything should me my way" crowd. So what exactly did he fail to understand? The game is solo friendly, he then went on to say but groupers will be happy as well, since it will cater to groupers. But there is always those few groupers that ask solo players why they even play MMOs, you know, the ones that think MMOs are all about grouping? Hence the "my way" crowd.
the reason a lot of solo players like to play in a mmo alone is usually because they cant stand the community and they like being in a living persistent world.
some people just cant stand all the morons in the more popular games. it also can be quite stressful being in a group with people you do not know or even with people you do know.
sometimes people just want to play at their own pace, relax, and enjoy the game they are playing.
some don't want to join a group where the other group members think they are bad asses and pull mobs faster than they can actually handle them (for example), especially if you are a healer type class.
personally, as long as there is a lot of solo and group content i am fine. i wouldn't mind forced group content if the community was friendly and non "elitist" but that just wont happen anymore unfortunately, unless you play a less than popular game that the kiddies and elitist's don't like.
Originally posted by Ihmotepp I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars. Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
that isn't the greatest analogy but you do make a good point with the message. a better analogy would be to have to share that 100 dollars with the people helping you do the same job, which would get done faster with more people.
you don't have to do more work by grouping and taking on solo content but a lot of people will want the better xp and better loot if they are having to organize and maintain a group to tackle the more challenging content.
to me grouping is only fun when its challenging, grouping to steamroll solo content isnt fun and if the group content is more challenging than solo (as it should be) it only makes sense that the reward should be better, whether its better XP, better loot, or both.
Originally posted by Ihmotepp I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars. Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
that isn't the greatest analogy but you do make a good point with the message. a better analogy would be to have to share that 100 dollars with the people helping you do the same job, which would get done faster with more people.
you don't have to do more work by grouping and taking on solo content but a lot of people will want the better xp and better loot if they are having to organize and maintain a group to tackle the more challenging content.
to me grouping is only fun when its challenging, grouping to steamroll solo content isnt fun and if the group content is more challenging than solo (as it should be) it only makes sense that the reward should be better, whether its better XP, better loot, or both.
That's a good way to describe it.
Group content is fun when it requires the group to cooperate and work together as a team to overcome the mobs and complete the objective.
Getting together in a group to smack down a bunch of solo content isn't fun at all, since cooperation and coordination is simply not required, just numbers.
AND this is why the two are always somewhat mutually exclusive.
If you design the content so it's challenging to a group, the solo player can't do it, and cries "forced grouping". Design the content so it's easy for the solo player, you just took away all the challenge for the group player. The group player isn't trying to "force" the solo player to join a group, he just wants some challenging content.
The solo players says, well this is no problem design TWO encounters that give the same reward. One for the group, one for the solo players.
But the challenge is again absent if the reward doesn't match the effort. It is ALWAYS more effort to form a group than to do everything solo (otherwise solo players wouldnt' complain about grouping), so same reward for group content and solo content means it's more rewarding to solo.
If you bump up the reward so the group players feel sufficiently compensated for the extra effort it takes to group, again the solo players cries "forced grouping".
To gain a more thorough understanding of what solo players desire in this genre, one must first drink in this gem from Frances Wright: "Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it."
But there is no equality between a Pomegranate and a fish sandwich.
It can still be fun even if it is at heart a solo game, sort of like Diablo.
You could solo the entire game of Diablo. But it wasn't that much fun doing the dungeon by yourself, so you would do the instance with other players because it was more fun than solo, although many just did the dungeon by themselves over and over again.
That didn't make it a good grouping game, but still a fun game.
To gain a more thorough understanding of what solo players desire in this genre, one must first drink in this gem from Frances Wright: "Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it."
God made all men equal. Sam Colt makes sure they stay that way.
To gain a more thorough understanding of what solo players desire in this genre, one must first drink in this gem from Frances Wright: "Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it."
God made all men equal. Sam Colt makes sure they stay that way.
if you don't want to group with other players then go play one of the million boring single player rpgs on the market tor is claiming to be an mmo that means you should group up to go out and do things in game
Says the "SWG Vet", I would say almost 90% of SWG was soloable now and was in pre-cu. We don't mind grouping, we just don't wanna be forced to do it. Did you actually play pre-cu? One of the most important things to have learned is forcing something on somebody is never the right idea, or did the NGE have a vote where most players voted "yes" to it? Didn't think so, now shut the hell up kid. Your ignorance is giving me nutt cancer.
I also fail to see the fun in standing around barking out "LFG" just so I can do something in game. If he likes forced grouping then he should start his own guild of groupers with a rule that nothing is done in game without everyone playing together. Leave your playstyle to yourself, don't force me to play your style when I don't want to and we'll get along fine. Why is this concept so hard to understand?
The problem with trying to please everybody is that you effectively please no one.
I'd liken it to sports. Some people prefer tennis. Some people prefer baseball. There is no possible way to make the risk vs rewards of group play match that of a solo'er.
Let's just use the end boss of a story-line quest that is both solo-able and group-able.
The solo boss MUST be designed in such a way as to; 1) do a small amount of damage for the blaster and dps types, 2) have low hitpoints for the tanks, 3) Be easy to hit for the healers. Failure to follow these rules means that for a particular player type, the quest becomes an impossibility. I.E. if you're a blaster and the boss deals more damage than you have in a shot, even though a tank could take it ... you can't finish the quest.
The group boss is designed in the exact opposite way. It has huge hitpoints to fend off the dps, it does huge damage because the tank can take it and it's hard to hit (because the healer should be healing and not fighting).
According to what I've read, people want these two to offer the same rewards. And even though BioWare has thrown around 'scalable', does that also apply to the rewards? So even though the group boss is harder, everyone gets the same rewards or are the groups rewards better? If the group rewards are better, are the solo players going to keep their mouths shut? Does everyone in the group get a drop, effectively making the items less rare? Is everything going to be bind on pick up? Is a group's XP halved or quartered for fighting a tougher boss, effectively cutting in half or 1/4th the XP/time ratio?
Maybe baseball and tennis was a bad example. Maybe it'd be more accurate to use basketball. Solo'ers want the Championship Playoffs to be open to 1-on-1 players ... NOT to team up to take on the best ... but to make four of the team sit down and play 1-on-1 for the money, the fame and the ring.
It's impossible to create a situation where the group people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of team play AND the solo people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of going it alone. Throw some PvP 'balance' into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster. This game's forums are going to be one giant 'Woe is me' and the game is going to suffer for it.
The problem with trying to please everybody is that you effectively please no one. I'd liken it to sports. Some people prefer tennis. Some people prefer baseball. There is no possible way to make the risk vs rewards of group play match that of a solo'er. Let's just use the end boss of a story-line quest that is both solo-able and group-able. The solo boss MUST be designed in such a way as to; 1) do a small amount of damage for the blaster and dps types, 2) have low hitpoints for the tanks, 3) Be easy to hit for the healers. Failure to follow these rules means that for a particular player type, the quest becomes an impossibility. I.E. if you're a blaster and the boss deals more damage than you have in a shot, even though a tank could take it ... you can't finish the quest. The group boss is designed in the exact opposite way. It has huge hitpoints to fend off the dps, it does huge damage because the tank can take it and it's hard to hit (because the healer should be healing and not fighting). According to what I've read, people want these two to offer the same rewards. And even though BioWare has thrown around 'scalable', does that also apply to the rewards? So even though the group boss is harder, everyone gets the same rewards or are the groups rewards better? If the group rewards are better, are the solo players going to keep their mouths shut? Does everyone in the group get a drop, effectively making the items less rare? Is everything going to be bind on pick up? Is a group's XP halved or quartered for fighting a tougher boss, effectively cutting in half or 1/4th the XP/time ratio? Maybe baseball and tennis was a bad example. Maybe it'd be more accurate to use basketball. Solo'ers want the Championship Playoffs to be open to 1-on-1 players ... NOT to team up to take on the best ... but to make four of the team sit down and play 1-on-1 for the money, the fame and the ring. It's impossible to create a situation where the group people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of team play AND the solo people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of going it alone. Throw some PvP 'balance' into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster. This game's forums are going to be one giant 'Woe is me' and the game is going to suffer for it.
Those highlighted are very good questions.. and ones I will try to find the answer to. This isn't going to be a holy trinity type game though.. I don't see this game as having very strong designated roles for each player. I have yet to see what happens in scalable missions... For all we know a scalable missions could yield enemies that you don't even see on solo missions that have different drops entirely. I just don't know.
You can however have a game that effectively balances solo and group play. Its not the difference between black and white, actually doing scalable missions correctly could do the trick. At this time, we just don't have enough information to assume they will do it correctly or poorly.
I think they are on the right track. Invest heavily in the solo experience and make sure that is fun in itself. Why? Because the identification of different types of players, and why they like to solo, was thorough and even clever. Most of those players wouldn't dream of posting on boards like these so you wont hear from them confirming this, but certainly they will appreciate being thought of. Secondly, because as much as I like the challenge and satisfactions of working with others, there are days I just want to do my own thing and be alone and solo. There are days my friends are not online. There are days I am "recovering" from a particularly BAD experience grouping with strangers.
I concede there are likely players who ONLY solo, or ONLY group, but they are the exceptions. Most of us, I imagine, are doing both.
Finally, I have to say I do not understand why others do not understand why playing alone in an MMO is some sort of misunderstanding of "multiplayer" and lacks validity. It isn't at all. Read the article again and try to think outside your own preferences and outside your own self confidence with grouping. I guess some people are just very bad at empathy.
As a fan of both solo and group play, I hope this game caters for both. With most games at the end game you need to group up against the boss mobs to get that great loot, but in the run up to that you should be able to solo.
DAoC did scalable instances years ago. For a first bash at them they did pretty good. The instance scaled depending on how many players entered and the levels of said players. They did it on the fly as well .. so if your buddy logged on half way through a run you could just invite him and the instance would scale up. Have an LD and the instance scaled down.
Loot was a non-issue in there since it was all coin (Which yup scaled up and down) but there was no real loot items.
From what I read it seems that Bioware will scale instances on the players going in. Say your solo ... kill the boss and you get a chest drop. If your in a group I'd wager that one chest will drop for each party member. How can you have issue with this? Each person gets thier "loot".
I also seen some crap about scaling bosses .. err why? Bioware has already indicated that it wants the battles to be "EPIC" with the players outnumbered. Use some common sense here and instead of scaling the bosses to make them harder you get ... adding more foes? Not a hard leap to reach huh? One player enters and you'll get the one boss and his 3 henchmen .. 3 players and you'll no doubt see 3 or 4 "boss-flagged" Mobs and thier 6-9 henchmen. Makes the fight "epic" as per the design breif and still allows it to be challanging to the players. This is exactly what Bioware have hinted at ... they stated point blank that they dont want a situation where 3-4 players are beating on the "uber-boss" mob ... I take that to mean that instead of bosses consisting of 1 mob it will actually be more a situation of multiple NPCs making up the "boss encounter" which can be scaled by adding MORE NPCs to ramp the difficulty.
I also seen someone mention about bosses having to be "easy" for solo play. Cant have too many HP or it hurts tanks, cant have to much DPS or it hurts casters etc etc. Rubbish. It can be done. The way to make boss fights interesting and balanced in solo play if to have a good grasp on balance between classes. Balanced classes should be able to take on the same mobs just in different ways. If class balance is good (and it seems that Bioware is steering clear of the unholy trinity) then an encounter can be made challanging for all players without a need to "tweak" it based on the class fighing it.
I'll be keeping an eye on this game now. SCI-FI aint usually my thing .. but a good game that I can play as I want and how I want would be welcome. I usually play with static groups so the ability to progress even when they are not around suits me .. and the ability for us all to group up and still be challanged ... sign me up !
They dont understand in my opinion. Seems they will make the same mistake, and have the same problems as the other MMO's. Hard to tell. Seems like they still havent figured out what makes Warcraft go, and are just using statistics and ROI to design the game. That's never been done before huh? There should most definately be things to do by yourself. And you should be able to progress by yourself. But if you're alone.. Does anyone who plays WOW feel alone? Does Blizzard have anything to do with that, or is the playerbase the ones deserving credit? Blizzard just didnt interfere? We'll see i guess.
Very rare any of you post a intelligent post , but the above is a exception.
I think they are on the right track. Invest heavily in the solo experience and make sure that is fun in itself. Why? Because the identification of different types of players, and why they like to solo, was thorough and even clever. Most of those players wouldn't dream of posting on boards like these so you wont hear from them confirming this, but certainly they will appreciate being thought of. Secondly, because as much as I like the challenge and satisfactions of working with others, there are days I just want to do my own thing and be alone and solo. There are days my friends are not online. There are days I am "recovering" from a particularly BAD experience grouping with strangers.
I concede there are likely players who ONLY solo, or ONLY group, but they are the exceptions. Most of us, I imagine, are doing both.
Finally, I have to say I do not understand why others do not understand why playing alone in an MMO is some sort of misunderstanding of "multiplayer" and lacks validity. It isn't at all. Read the article again and try to think outside your own preferences and outside your own self confidence with grouping. I guess some people are just very bad at empathy.
My preference would be that for the times you can't find a group you still progress at about 1/2 the rate you would in a group.
No "forced grouping," you never have to group at all, but groups are rewarded for the time and effort involved in grouping and using team work to overcome a challenge.
Soloing and Grouping shouldn't be that hard to balance out, yet developers can't seem to get it right.
Here's a few things that I think are needed to make a nice, balanced game:
1) There should be group only, and solo only content.
2) Grouping should offer the progression advantage as the extra effort required to establish, prepare, and execute the group should be given extra rewards. For the love of god eliminate XP sharing.
3) There most certainly must be solo things to do to continue play even when not grouped.
The pure soloist won't be happy unless they can achieve and defeat everything in the game by themselves. The pure grouper won't be happy until kill a level 1 boar takes a full raid. If you plan to make a game that caters to the most people, you must forget about these two types of players.
There must be content for both crowds, but groupers must get the progressive advantage, because if they don't, like electricity people will take the path of least resistance and forming a group is the resistance they will avoid. If grouping and soloing offer the same rewards, no one will go through the hassle of forming a group if they can achieve it by themselves, even the groupers. Give XP BONUSES for being in a group, not penalties or sharing. Make the XP available so that soloers can definitely progress on their own, but grouping is faster, which isn't the case in most MMOs today.
Offer rewards only available through soloing, and other rewards only available through grouping.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
While it is definitely important to have some solo content, Bioware should understand the heart of what makes MMOs fun long term: interacting with other players.
Whether it be trade, PvP, PvE, or politics, it's the intricate player interaction which can't be recreated in any other game that really make MMOs a unique gaming experience.
While there should be solo content, Bioware should be doing everything they can to get players interacting with each other: players in guilds tend to stay subscribed longer.
While it is definitely important to have some solo content, Bioware should understand the heart of what makes MMOs fun long term: interacting with other players. Whether it be trade, PvP, PvE, or politics, it's the intricate player interaction which can't be recreated in any other game that really make MMOs a unique gaming experience. While there should be solo content, Bioware should be doing everything they can to get players interacting with each other: players in guilds tend to stay subscribed longer.
I think you're missing the point of the article. As he said, there is still a very large percentage of players in MMOs who, no matter how many interactive and social systems the game promotes, will always go their own way no matter what, but they like to know that other people are in the world with them. The only difference between this and other MMOs is the quality of the massive story arcs and quests will be on par with their single player RPGs, which will make those specific long-term soloists engaged for a very long time - especially with interactive companion NPCs able to travel with them, too. For them, it will be like playing KOTOR, except seeing other real players moving around the worlds, which is the type of player the Bioware person was describing.
None of that means this game isn't going to have a massive guild system, social hubs, trading, raids or large-scale PVP, all of which they've stressed will be ingame.
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV
Comments
Well, that was an answer that would have been better to hear from Bioware in my opinion. Also what I was expecting. But, can you see my concern with solo players uniting under the official label now? Again, Im sure they have it under control, hopefully it works out better than in the past. Im also one that believes in solo content to all rewards. Probably more pro-solo than most. Thanks for the reasonable reply. Bioware sure has some fans.
I may be off my rocker but this is what I was referring to, these quotes
"if you want to do solo play that's something that you can do as well. It's a goal of ours to make sure that we cater to all those play styles. It someone is like, "I don't wanna group, I wanna play a BioWare game. I wanna go through the story and do things on my own." you can do that. You're gonna see other people running around the world, as you would in any other MMO. On the other hand, if you want to group you're gonna be able to go through the game that way as well"
http://www.massively.com/2009/09/07/pax-2009-massively-interviews-bioware-and-lucasarts-on-swtor/
and
"Q:You mentioned earlier that you don't want players to need to go out and recruit a bunch of other players to take down one monster. How do you balance an MMO so that you're still able to be a bad ass in single player but also have that sort of multiplayer experience that so many MMOs provide?
James: One of the things we've been doing is that we're making sure that when we're building content we have different representatives of the different play styles. Whenever we're doing design discussions or implementing a system, we have the different player types involved. There's the solo player type that hates other players and is very anti-social..
It's funny, because there are a bunch of players like this in WoW where they don't like to hang around with other players but love to show off all the cool stuff that they have.
Then there are the players that like to adventure with their buddies. They have their own group of friends, and they just like to adventure with those players all the time.
Then there are players that like to join guilds and are social butterflies and like to adventure with people from their guild. They like to be part of these big huge groups that go out and play in major events like raids.
We want to take all those players and make sure that each of those player types has fun in our game. I can't go into details about all the systems, but we have made sure that those player types are thought about when we're building the game. "
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/47133
Thats what gave me the notion that they understand the different solo players as well as those that like to group.. I mean I felt pretty spot on when he was talking about the different types of players...
Edit:
A little after the fact in the same article.. regarding being outnumbered. :
"One thing that we don't want to have happen in our game is the situation where you get a bunch of players together to beat up one guy. That's just not very heroic and it's something that we don't want to have happen in our game. We're looking for much more heroic battles where you're the group that's outnumbered. If you think about the movies, the heroes are the ones that are heroic because they're fighting against the odds. "
There was also something about the way missions scale but I'm having a hard time tracking it down.. supposedly it was something on how the missions will scale depending on how many you have in your party, and that when one drops the missions will rescale themselves or something of that nature... .... I'll keep looking, if I find it I'll post it.
Which is exactly how it should be. So long as I'm not forced to group to enjoy the game I'll be happy. From what I've seen, nothing will stop the groupers from enjoying the game their way. Everyone with the exception of the "everything should be my way or nothing" crowd should be happy.
This statement shows a fundamental failure to understand what many group players want in a game.
They don't want to "be able to group". This is where you are making a HUGE mistake in stating what group players want. The groupers also don't want to "force you to group". They absolutely do not want you to even play the game, much less group.
What groupers generally want is content that requires and rewards team play.
If you see a team of any kind, do you think they want to kidnap you and make you play on the team? Of course not.
Reward has to equal effort. No one does double the effort for the same reward when they don't have to, and feels satisfied.
I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars.
Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
"Being able to group" does not make a good grouping game. However, being "able to solo" does make a good solo game.
So in the end, you are saying, I want a good solo game, and screw the groupers if they don't like it, and THEN saying, they should like it because they are "able to group" which is not what most group players want at all.
It's like me saying, you will get 1/10th of an experience point for each quest you do, while groups get 1,000,000 points. There, you are ABLE to solo, so you should be happy.
Which is exactly how it should be. So long as I'm not forced to group to enjoy the game I'll be happy. From what I've seen, nothing will stop the groupers from enjoying the game their way. Everyone with the exception of the "everything should be my way or nothing" crowd should be happy.
This statement shows a fundamental failure to understand what many group players want in a game.
They don't want to "be able to group". This is where you are making a HUGE mistake in stating what group players want. The groupers also don't want to "force you to group". They absolutely do not want you to even play the game, much less group.
What groupers generally want is content that requires and rewards team play.
If you see a team of any kind, do you think they want to kidnap you and make you play on the team? Of course not.
Reward has to equal effort. No one does double the effort for the same reward when they don't have to, and feels satisfied.
I will give you 100 dollars to paint my kitchen. But if you WANT to, you can paint the entire house, and I'll still give you 100 dollars.
Who's going to paint the entire house? No one.
"Being able to group" does not make a good grouping game. However, being "able to solo" does make a good solo game.
So in the end, you are saying, I want a good solo game, and screw the groupers if they don't like it, and THEN saying, they should like it because they are "able to group" which is not what most group players want at all.
It's like me saying, you will get 1/10th of an experience point for each quest you do, while groups get 1,000,000 points. There, you are ABLE to solo, so you should be happy.
You got all that from that one post? You took offense, the only reason you should be offended is if you landed in the "everything should me my way" crowd. So what exactly did he fail to understand? The game is solo friendly, he then went on to say but groupers will be happy as well, since it will cater to groupers. But there is always those few groupers that ask solo players why they even play MMOs, you know, the ones that think MMOs are all about grouping? Hence the "my way" crowd.
the reason a lot of solo players like to play in a mmo alone is usually because they cant stand the community and they like being in a living persistent world.
some people just cant stand all the morons in the more popular games. it also can be quite stressful being in a group with people you do not know or even with people you do know.
sometimes people just want to play at their own pace, relax, and enjoy the game they are playing.
some don't want to join a group where the other group members think they are bad asses and pull mobs faster than they can actually handle them (for example), especially if you are a healer type class.
personally, as long as there is a lot of solo and group content i am fine. i wouldn't mind forced group content if the community was friendly and non "elitist" but that just wont happen anymore unfortunately, unless you play a less than popular game that the kiddies and elitist's don't like.
that isn't the greatest analogy but you do make a good point with the message. a better analogy would be to have to share that 100 dollars with the people helping you do the same job, which would get done faster with more people.
you don't have to do more work by grouping and taking on solo content but a lot of people will want the better xp and better loot if they are having to organize and maintain a group to tackle the more challenging content.
to me grouping is only fun when its challenging, grouping to steamroll solo content isnt fun and if the group content is more challenging than solo (as it should be) it only makes sense that the reward should be better, whether its better XP, better loot, or both.
To gain a more thorough understanding of what solo players desire in this genre, one must first drink in this gem from Frances Wright:
"Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it."
that isn't the greatest analogy but you do make a good point with the message. a better analogy would be to have to share that 100 dollars with the people helping you do the same job, which would get done faster with more people.
you don't have to do more work by grouping and taking on solo content but a lot of people will want the better xp and better loot if they are having to organize and maintain a group to tackle the more challenging content.
to me grouping is only fun when its challenging, grouping to steamroll solo content isnt fun and if the group content is more challenging than solo (as it should be) it only makes sense that the reward should be better, whether its better XP, better loot, or both.
That's a good way to describe it.
Group content is fun when it requires the group to cooperate and work together as a team to overcome the mobs and complete the objective.
Getting together in a group to smack down a bunch of solo content isn't fun at all, since cooperation and coordination is simply not required, just numbers.
AND this is why the two are always somewhat mutually exclusive.
If you design the content so it's challenging to a group, the solo player can't do it, and cries "forced grouping". Design the content so it's easy for the solo player, you just took away all the challenge for the group player. The group player isn't trying to "force" the solo player to join a group, he just wants some challenging content.
The solo players says, well this is no problem design TWO encounters that give the same reward. One for the group, one for the solo players.
But the challenge is again absent if the reward doesn't match the effort. It is ALWAYS more effort to form a group than to do everything solo (otherwise solo players wouldnt' complain about grouping), so same reward for group content and solo content means it's more rewarding to solo.
If you bump up the reward so the group players feel sufficiently compensated for the extra effort it takes to group, again the solo players cries "forced grouping".
But there is no equality between a Pomegranate and a fish sandwich.
The republic will support solo'ers...i'm shocked...this came completely out of left field
/sarcasm off
All they really needed to do was say solo content was in and we can pretty much guess at how well made the content will be.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
It can still be fun even if it is at heart a solo game, sort of like Diablo.
You could solo the entire game of Diablo. But it wasn't that much fun doing the dungeon by yourself, so you would do the instance with other players because it was more fun than solo, although many just did the dungeon by themselves over and over again.
That didn't make it a good grouping game, but still a fun game.
And I think Bioware has the right idea here
God made all men equal. Sam Colt makes sure they stay that way.
God made all men equal. Sam Colt makes sure they stay that way.
/thumbs up
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Says the "SWG Vet", I would say almost 90% of SWG was soloable now and was in pre-cu. We don't mind grouping, we just don't wanna be forced to do it. Did you actually play pre-cu? One of the most important things to have learned is forcing something on somebody is never the right idea, or did the NGE have a vote where most players voted "yes" to it? Didn't think so, now shut the hell up kid. Your ignorance is giving me nutt cancer.
I also fail to see the fun in standing around barking out "LFG" just so I can do something in game. If he likes forced grouping then he should start his own guild of groupers with a rule that nothing is done in game without everyone playing together. Leave your playstyle to yourself, don't force me to play your style when I don't want to and we'll get along fine. Why is this concept so hard to understand?
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
The problem with trying to please everybody is that you effectively please no one.
I'd liken it to sports. Some people prefer tennis. Some people prefer baseball. There is no possible way to make the risk vs rewards of group play match that of a solo'er.
Let's just use the end boss of a story-line quest that is both solo-able and group-able.
The solo boss MUST be designed in such a way as to; 1) do a small amount of damage for the blaster and dps types, 2) have low hitpoints for the tanks, 3) Be easy to hit for the healers. Failure to follow these rules means that for a particular player type, the quest becomes an impossibility. I.E. if you're a blaster and the boss deals more damage than you have in a shot, even though a tank could take it ... you can't finish the quest.
The group boss is designed in the exact opposite way. It has huge hitpoints to fend off the dps, it does huge damage because the tank can take it and it's hard to hit (because the healer should be healing and not fighting).
According to what I've read, people want these two to offer the same rewards. And even though BioWare has thrown around 'scalable', does that also apply to the rewards? So even though the group boss is harder, everyone gets the same rewards or are the groups rewards better? If the group rewards are better, are the solo players going to keep their mouths shut? Does everyone in the group get a drop, effectively making the items less rare? Is everything going to be bind on pick up? Is a group's XP halved or quartered for fighting a tougher boss, effectively cutting in half or 1/4th the XP/time ratio?
Maybe baseball and tennis was a bad example. Maybe it'd be more accurate to use basketball. Solo'ers want the Championship Playoffs to be open to 1-on-1 players ... NOT to team up to take on the best ... but to make four of the team sit down and play 1-on-1 for the money, the fame and the ring.
It's impossible to create a situation where the group people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of team play AND the solo people feel like they are earning what they deserve for the extra difficulty of going it alone. Throw some PvP 'balance' into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster. This game's forums are going to be one giant 'Woe is me' and the game is going to suffer for it.
Those highlighted are very good questions.. and ones I will try to find the answer to. This isn't going to be a holy trinity type game though.. I don't see this game as having very strong designated roles for each player. I have yet to see what happens in scalable missions... For all we know a scalable missions could yield enemies that you don't even see on solo missions that have different drops entirely. I just don't know.
You can however have a game that effectively balances solo and group play. Its not the difference between black and white, actually doing scalable missions correctly could do the trick. At this time, we just don't have enough information to assume they will do it correctly or poorly.
I think they are on the right track. Invest heavily in the solo experience and make sure that is fun in itself. Why? Because the identification of different types of players, and why they like to solo, was thorough and even clever. Most of those players wouldn't dream of posting on boards like these so you wont hear from them confirming this, but certainly they will appreciate being thought of. Secondly, because as much as I like the challenge and satisfactions of working with others, there are days I just want to do my own thing and be alone and solo. There are days my friends are not online. There are days I am "recovering" from a particularly BAD experience grouping with strangers.
I concede there are likely players who ONLY solo, or ONLY group, but they are the exceptions. Most of us, I imagine, are doing both.
Finally, I have to say I do not understand why others do not understand why playing alone in an MMO is some sort of misunderstanding of "multiplayer" and lacks validity. It isn't at all. Read the article again and try to think outside your own preferences and outside your own self confidence with grouping. I guess some people are just very bad at empathy.
As a fan of both solo and group play, I hope this game caters for both. With most games at the end game you need to group up against the boss mobs to get that great loot, but in the run up to that you should be able to solo.
People need to start thinking outside of the box.
DAoC did scalable instances years ago. For a first bash at them they did pretty good. The instance scaled depending on how many players entered and the levels of said players. They did it on the fly as well .. so if your buddy logged on half way through a run you could just invite him and the instance would scale up. Have an LD and the instance scaled down.
Loot was a non-issue in there since it was all coin (Which yup scaled up and down) but there was no real loot items.
From what I read it seems that Bioware will scale instances on the players going in. Say your solo ... kill the boss and you get a chest drop. If your in a group I'd wager that one chest will drop for each party member. How can you have issue with this? Each person gets thier "loot".
I also seen some crap about scaling bosses .. err why? Bioware has already indicated that it wants the battles to be "EPIC" with the players outnumbered. Use some common sense here and instead of scaling the bosses to make them harder you get ... adding more foes? Not a hard leap to reach huh? One player enters and you'll get the one boss and his 3 henchmen .. 3 players and you'll no doubt see 3 or 4 "boss-flagged" Mobs and thier 6-9 henchmen. Makes the fight "epic" as per the design breif and still allows it to be challanging to the players. This is exactly what Bioware have hinted at ... they stated point blank that they dont want a situation where 3-4 players are beating on the "uber-boss" mob ... I take that to mean that instead of bosses consisting of 1 mob it will actually be more a situation of multiple NPCs making up the "boss encounter" which can be scaled by adding MORE NPCs to ramp the difficulty.
I also seen someone mention about bosses having to be "easy" for solo play. Cant have too many HP or it hurts tanks, cant have to much DPS or it hurts casters etc etc. Rubbish. It can be done. The way to make boss fights interesting and balanced in solo play if to have a good grasp on balance between classes. Balanced classes should be able to take on the same mobs just in different ways. If class balance is good (and it seems that Bioware is steering clear of the unholy trinity) then an encounter can be made challanging for all players without a need to "tweak" it based on the class fighing it.
I'll be keeping an eye on this game now. SCI-FI aint usually my thing .. but a good game that I can play as I want and how I want would be welcome. I usually play with static groups so the ability to progress even when they are not around suits me .. and the ability for us all to group up and still be challanged ... sign me up !
Very rare any of you post a intelligent post , but the above is a exception.
My preference would be that for the times you can't find a group you still progress at about 1/2 the rate you would in a group.
No "forced grouping," you never have to group at all, but groups are rewarded for the time and effort involved in grouping and using team work to overcome a challenge.
Soloing and Grouping shouldn't be that hard to balance out, yet developers can't seem to get it right.
Here's a few things that I think are needed to make a nice, balanced game:
1) There should be group only, and solo only content.
2) Grouping should offer the progression advantage as the extra effort required to establish, prepare, and execute the group should be given extra rewards. For the love of god eliminate XP sharing.
3) There most certainly must be solo things to do to continue play even when not grouped.
The pure soloist won't be happy unless they can achieve and defeat everything in the game by themselves. The pure grouper won't be happy until kill a level 1 boar takes a full raid. If you plan to make a game that caters to the most people, you must forget about these two types of players.
There must be content for both crowds, but groupers must get the progressive advantage, because if they don't, like electricity people will take the path of least resistance and forming a group is the resistance they will avoid. If grouping and soloing offer the same rewards, no one will go through the hassle of forming a group if they can achieve it by themselves, even the groupers. Give XP BONUSES for being in a group, not penalties or sharing. Make the XP available so that soloers can definitely progress on their own, but grouping is faster, which isn't the case in most MMOs today.
Offer rewards only available through soloing, and other rewards only available through grouping.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
While it is definitely important to have some solo content, Bioware should understand the heart of what makes MMOs fun long term: interacting with other players.
Whether it be trade, PvP, PvE, or politics, it's the intricate player interaction which can't be recreated in any other game that really make MMOs a unique gaming experience.
While there should be solo content, Bioware should be doing everything they can to get players interacting with each other: players in guilds tend to stay subscribed longer.
I think you're missing the point of the article. As he said, there is still a very large percentage of players in MMOs who, no matter how many interactive and social systems the game promotes, will always go their own way no matter what, but they like to know that other people are in the world with them. The only difference between this and other MMOs is the quality of the massive story arcs and quests will be on par with their single player RPGs, which will make those specific long-term soloists engaged for a very long time - especially with interactive companion NPCs able to travel with them, too. For them, it will be like playing KOTOR, except seeing other real players moving around the worlds, which is the type of player the Bioware person was describing.
None of that means this game isn't going to have a massive guild system, social hubs, trading, raids or large-scale PVP, all of which they've stressed will be ingame.
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV