Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Just do scalable raids where you can have as many or as little people you want which kind of defeats the purpose of actual raiding but solves the problem.
I have to praise a game which takes things differently here. It's a great game, unfortunately ran by an EXTREMELY greedy company with an highly unfair cash shop: Atlantica Online.
The game is ran by the economy. If you got gold, you can get everything. The most common goal is to be able to solo hard content, as it provides you with a high amount of gold. In order to be able to do that, you either solo easier (former "tier") content for a long time, or group for the current tier of content sharing the gold rewards (grouping gets you there faster than soloing former tier content). Instead of getting let's say 3 gold if you go solo, you get 1 gold if you go with other 2 people. To simplify things, let's say that you can only do each "instance" once per week. When you are good enough to solo the current tier, you aim for the next tier. I found it to be a great system, considering that the game has many other things to spend time on (lots of guild and nation content, pvp, housing and others) unfortunately i feel that i am "forced" to spend there (you need about 30 bucks per month for some mandatory items - fast travel and you do 50% more damage, taking 10% less - yea, lol) and i strongly dislike that.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
"Ruin item progression" by "rewarding" solo play? Really? So what if they made solo content that was HARDER than the group content to accomplish? If all your concerned about in this entire discussion is "item progression" than you really don't care that much about how the game turns out are you?
Any new game where the the focus and carrot on a stick at the end of the game is item progression chances are the game is going to stink regardless of if it's solo, group, raid, orange or purple.
You guys have to remember how different gaming is in 2001 and now.. Social media and popularity has completely changed the gaming world.
A lot of people have grown up -- is Everquest really a game targeted for teenagers? I'd guess the average of a player on EQN is 18 -- I'll give that there will be hype that many types of people will try the game.
A lot of people 21+ have obligations outside the game -- Some have families. Then combine job + family, it's impossible to play, look for a group, and have to leave after 30-45 minutes and essentially get nothing done.
i think they will have a way to solo competently. It has to. If they are banking their future on Everquest Next (Which they said they are) then you have to please the casual who wants to play for an hour and leave.
Well if EQnext is truly a Sandbox and as they stated changing what a MMO is then the argument is pointless. Meaning you can do both seamlessly and not even care or understand you are doing either. A sandbox is build, do, play anyway you like period.
If they do pull it off then all our way of thinking of how to play a MMO is meaningless and we will need to all relearn from the ground up.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
There is nothing communistic in wanting your play style to be catered to just as much as any other. Rather its good game design to be fair and rather bad game design to do the oppisite. If you handicap one group over another it's just encouraging that group not to play. A core aspect of game design is fair and equal play. It's way we hate pay to win. It seems unfair. How silly would it be for me call criticism of pay to win, communistic?
It's why I maintain that EQ was a poorly designed game. The design was fantastic for the time rich EPeen worshipers but I truely believe that style of gameplay is vampiric and toxic to the community. I have no doubts that you disagree.
I think there should be equal rewards for time invested in the game, whether grouping or soloing.
I find a lot of hypocrisy in people who claim to love to group but who want the group rewards to be much better than soloing rewards. If you love grouping so much, then THAT is your reward...you get to play in the game mode you like best. You shouldn't get better drops. If you need better drops as an incentive to group, then you didn't really like grouping that much, did you?
In summary: Both grouping and soloing should give equivalent rewards for the amount of time invested in the game. Anything else amounts to the game saying "well, you can do that other thing, but I will punish you for it..."
So what's the incentive to go through the hassle of putting a group together if the reward isn't better? People are going to take the path of least resistance so if the rewards are the same for soloing and grouping there aren't going to be many that will put in the time to get a group together. In order to create a community, there has to be the need to put one together.
The incentive is presumably that you like grouping. If " People are going to take the path of least resistance so if the rewards are the same for soloing and grouping there aren't going to be many that will put in the time to get a group together," then people didn't really like grouping, did they? They disliked it but did it because of an artificial reward system tacked on to the core gameplay. If you like grouping, then group.
I think that for a game system really to be good for both people who solo and who group, the rewards need to have similar value for time invested (regardless of if it is time spent soloing or grouping.) If the rewards per unit of time are better for grouping, then you are saying that the person soloing is 2nd class.
If you truly love grouping so much, you will do it. I'm perfectly fine if there are, for example, separate end-game dungeons...one for soloers and one for groupers. And the grouping one can be more difficult so that the whole group isn't bored. But the rewards should be the same if the devs really want to say they value both types of players.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
It has nothing to do with the genre and everything to do with trying to make equal what isn't equal.
"Ruin item progression" by "rewarding" solo play? Really?
Really? Have trouble reading? I said ruin item progression by rewarding solo playEQUALLY.
So what if they made solo content that was HARDER than the group content to accomplish? If all your concerned about in this entire discussion is "item progression" than you really don't care that much about how the game turns out are you?
Since when is progression irrelevant to how a game turns out. How a game handles progression is arguably the most important factor. Are you daft?
Any new game where the the focus and carrot on a stick at the end of the game is item progression chances are the game is going to stink regardless of if it's solo, group, raid, orange or purple.
Apparently you didn't play Everquest, because character progression played an enormous part, and was the best MMORPG I've ever had the opportunity to play.
A real sense of community needs to return to MMORPGs and grouping is a must if you really want to return to the good ol days where you had to group to overcome, prevail and gather riches and good items otherwise you experienced many a corpse run and rightly so...
True, I remember in UO we used to... oh, wait.
Well, in AC we would... nvm.
I guess it was in Puzzle Pirates that... no... hmmm...
Anarchy Online?
The Realm? Furcadia? Shattered Galaxy? Graal? Tibia? Hmmm... not those.
You might want to reconsider your stance that EQ is the end-all be-all of That Which Should Be simply because it never really was.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Theres no question that soloing should take a back seat to group play in terms of rewards. Anyone that played EQ classic knows that the community made the game, and the limited solo play encouraged grouping and created the community.
Community makes an MMO come alive, and thats one of the major elements thats been missing from MMOs since Everquest.
This.
Early in EQ, soloers such as soloing Necros and even multi-boxers were seen as greedy, selfish and anti-social players. The group was everything. Helping randoms was common. Driveby buffing/healing was common. Travelling an entire continent to corpse summon/corpse drag and res friends was common. This built strong ties.
The slower pace of gameplay matched perfectly with the grouping mechanic. Even in combat you had time to talk shit, joke around and generally just socialise.
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
But there are levels in Darkfall. Skill levels and stat levels determine everything, just like all other MMOs that boast "no levels." A reasonable Horizontal leveling system may come about one day with Camelot Unchained, but until then theres a level system somewhere that determines character strength and usefulness.
Its pretty simple, without levels, there is no progression. Without progression, you are just playing a virtual chat room like the Sims or Hello Kitty Online.
Even in Age of Wushu, a game boldly (lies) boasts itself as levelless, you have "internal skill" levels which completely determine your characters health, energy and stats. Its false advertising at its worst.
I don't think anyone expects Everquest Next to be bold enough to return us to a system where grouping is necessary, but suggesting solo play to be as rewarding as grouping is the ideology that got this genre into the mess its in.
The biggest problem with games that have no levels (or try not to anyway) is progression. You get max level so much faster. For instance, in The Secret World, I was able to complete all content and get multiple class setups and everything and still only have 1/4 of the skill tree unlocked(you can get all skills, but only choose so many at a time) I did all of this in less than a month. I also PVPed and got some decent PVP gear. I am not a hardcore player, the game was just way too fast. I miss a high level character actually meaning something. Now, a max level character is pathetically easy to get, and people treat the leveling process as a time sink to get there instead of the exploring and accomplishment process that it should be. I want to explore new dungeons, experience all of the content. I do not however want to complete 10 quests, return to quest hub, turn in 10 quests, get 5 pieces of armor that are upgrades because the entire game is on rails.
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
But there are levels in Darkfall. Skill levels and stat levels determine everything, just like all other MMOs that boast "no levels." A reasonable Horizontal leveling system may come about one day with Camelot Unchained, but until then theres a level system somewhere that determines character strength and usefulness.
Except the progression in Darkfall is almost entirely horizontal progression. There is nothing stopping a newbie character from joining up with, and seriously contributing to fights with higher level players. In old EQ, there was. They'd get hit once by a mob that they can't even hit, and then die.
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
But there are levels in Darkfall. Skill levels and stat levels determine everything, just like all other MMOs that boast "no levels." A reasonable Horizontal leveling system may come about one day with Camelot Unchained, but until then theres a level system somewhere that determines character strength and usefulness.
Except the progression in Darkfall is almost entirely horizontal progression. There is nothing stopping a newbie character from joining up with, and seriously contributing to fights with higher level players. In old EQ, there was. They'd get hit once by a mob that they can't even hit, and then die.
Darkfall has a very abrupt vertical progression, not horizontal. Your levels can be counted in prowess points. The difference between a new players and one thats played for a month or two is night and day. Booster stats alone and abilities bought with prowess give you a sizable advantage over a new guy, but on the flip side, it doesn't take long to catch up. Which is why I enjoyed Everquest for tens of thousands of hours, and though I followed Darkfall since 2004 drooling over every dev journal entry, could only stomach a few hundred hours before I was bored to death by the complete and utter lack of progression and meaningful content. Dont get me wrong, early on in DF1 there were some really epic wars, but the novelty wears off quickly when you realize your keep is fully pimped, and theres nothing left to fight over. Just fighting for the sake of epeen.
Solution is simple, have both solo levelling content and group levelling content. Vanguard does this well. Its far more efficient to level in a group, but if you cant find one you can do it alone, albeit slower.
You are right though, you cant not have solo pathways, because if the population isn't there or you are playing at odd times, its impossible to progress, and that's not fun for anyone.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
It has nothing to do with the genre and everything to do with trying to make equal what isn't equal.
No, it was and continues to be a terrible example. Communism was all about the benefit of the state...how does that have anything to do with this? It doesn't plain and simple and you are just trying to be a drama queen.
"Ruin item progression" by "rewarding" solo play? Really?
Really? Have trouble reading? I said ruin item progression by rewarding solo playEQUALLY.
Again, another bad example. So if a person plays solo 20 hours a week but a player groups for 5, in your world the group player should be rewarded more....VERY interesting concept, good luck with that.
So what if they made solo content that was HARDER than the group content to accomplish? If all your concerned about in this entire discussion is "item progression" than you really don't care that much about how the game turns out are you?
Since when is progression irrelevant to how a game turns out. How a game handles progression is arguably the most important factor. Are you daft?
Ahh I see you forgot the magic word here...you left out the word ITEM..which again seems to be all you care about since it's what you bring up the most. There are different types of progression in a game that all have next to nothing to do with item progression, most of which can be done outside of groups and, in a good game outside, of combat.
Any new game where the the focus and carrot on a stick at the end of the game is item progression chances are the game is going to stink regardless of if it's solo, group, raid, orange or purple.
Apparently you didn't play Everquest, because character progression played an enormous part, and was the best MMORPG I've ever had the opportunity to play.
See above because you seem...actually you are...missing the point.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
It has nothing to do with the genre and everything to do with trying to make equal what isn't equal.
No, it was and continues to be a terrible example. Communism was all about the benefit of the state...how does that have anything to do with this? It doesn't plain and simple and you are just trying to be a drama queen.
Get an education so you can understand the analogy, then come back and correct my MMO ideology.
edit:
I'll even throw this in for free because I feel bad for you.
"According to Marx, communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people [solo players]; the obstacles are class divisions [solo vs group], economic inequalities, unequal life-chances [solo rewards vs group rewards] and false consciousness["evil grouping capitalists!"]; and the goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product. [that they didn't earn, they cried about inequality to Devs instead of grouping like everyone else]"
Taken straight from wikipedia's entry on communism - brackets mine
This of course assumes you have the sense to read between the lines of communist doctrine to understand "fair share" means stealing whats not rightfully yours. No doubt you missed that, as they don't teach it in public school.
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
It has nothing to do with the genre and everything to do with trying to make equal what isn't equal.
No, it was and continues to be a terrible example. Communism was all about the benefit of the state...how does that have anything to do with this? It doesn't plain and simple and you are just trying to be a drama queen.
Get an education so you can understand the analogy, then come back and correct my MMO ideology.
edit:
I'll even throw this in for free because I feel bad for you.
"According to Marx, communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people [players]; the obstacles are class divisions [solo vs group], economic inequalities, unequal life-chances [solo rewards vs group rewards] and false consciousness["evil grouping capitalists!"]; and the goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product. [that they didn't earn, they cried about inequality to Devs instead of grouping like everyone else]"
Taken straight from wikipedia's entry on communism - brackets mine
This of course assumes you have the sense to read between the lines of communist doctrine to understand "fair share" means stealing whats not rightfully yours. No doubt you missed that, as they don't teach it in public school.
Someone quoting wikipedia asking about someone getting an education? That's even more amusing than your terrible analogy. Look, bottom line is your analogy is a terrible one please move on. Yes we get it. your one of those "leet" group only give me my shiny and don't let anyone less "hardcore" than me get anything...I get it. People like you have been around since the early days of MUDS and when UO first came online. You're type is in every MMO game ever made and are a very small percent of the demographic.
It's frankly the reason WoW became so popular and say what you want about it (and I'm not a fan), the reason it put MMO's on the map for the majority of people. It made solo play viable and rewarding. Any game that's wants to even attempt to be that popular it today's market...has to design accordingly or risk becoming a niche game that cators to a small % of the small % that play MMO's. You dont get successful designing anything to such a demographic.
But please...let's not try and pretend this is in any way shape or form like communism (it's not IN ANY WAY)...because all you're doing is creating a parody of what people think people who play MMO's sound like and to be honest, it's hard enough not sounding like a nerd as it is.
Most people in this thread who claim do like grouping, do not in fact like grouping. Instead, what like they is a game where grouping is disproportionately rewarded.
Let me give an example: Suppose you are at breakfast at a restaurant and your waitress asks you:
(a) Do you want coffee?
or
(b) Do you want tea?
where the price of each is the same. Here, which you choose is probably going closely to coincide with which one you like more, coffee or tea.
But let's do a different situation. You are at a restaurant and your waitress asks you:
(a) Do you want coffee PLUS they will waive your bill at the restaurant?
or
(b) Do you want tea but your bill will be as usual?
Then your choice is not really getting at which you like more, coffee or tea. It is answering some other, weighted question.
Similarly, if in an MMO you have the choice to:
(a) Solo but get an amount of x reward per hour
or
(b) Team but get an amount of x reward per hour
then we are actually testing which you prefer more, soloing or teaming.
But if instead you have a choice of
(a) Soloing but getting x/10 (x divided by 10) reward per hour
or
(b) Teaming and getting x reward per hour
Then we are not really testing which you prefer, soloing or teaming.
Most people in this thread do not actually prefer to team, it seams to me. If you really did, you would do it provide everything else (i.e., rewards, etc) were equal. But that is not what you are saying. You only want to team with rewards placed disproportionately in favor of teaming.
It is my firm belief that rewards shouldn't make people do things which are not fun. This creates a profound dissonance which only gets worse with time. You need to apportion rewards so that high rewards follow what people would naturally do anyway in a game, so that they are rewarded and feel good for doing this. If instead you reward people for behaving unnaturally, they will often follow your reward scheme and do that unnatural thing (because they are little lab rats trained to push a lever for sugar water) but in the back of their minds resistance will slowly build until they become frustrated and quit, because fundamentally they do not want to do something which they do not want to do.
Most people in this thread who claim do like grouping, do not in fact like grouping. Instead, what like they is a game where grouping is disproportionately rewarded.
Most people in this thread do not actually prefer to team, it seams to me. If you really did, you would do it provide everything else (i.e., rewards, etc) were equal. But that is not what you are saying. You only want to team with rewards placed disproportionately in favor of teaming.
It is my firm belief that rewards shouldn't make people do things which are not fun. This creates a profound dissonance which only gets worse with time. You need to apportion rewards so that high rewards follow what people would naturally do anyway in a game, so that they are rewarded and feel good for doing this. If instead you reward people for behaving unnaturally, they will often follow your reward scheme and do that unnatural thing (because they are little lab rats trained to push a lever for sugar water) but in the back of their minds resistance will slowly build until they become frustrated and quit, because fundamentally they do not want to do something which they do not want to do.
I think close but not quite there. My take is that the people who like grouping often find it difficult to get a full group together. Therefore they want to distort the reward system to encourage (make) people who are indifferent about grouping take part.
In this it is rather like the "Trade Runs" in Archeage, provide a motivation for non-PvP players to freely put themselves in harms way so that PvP players have someone easy to kill.
Most people in this thread who claim do like grouping, do not in fact like grouping. Instead, what like they is a game where grouping is disproportionately rewarded.
Most people in this thread do not actually prefer to team, it seams to me. If you really did, you would do it provide everything else (i.e., rewards, etc) were equal. But that is not what you are saying. You only want to team with rewards placed disproportionately in favor of teaming.
It is my firm belief that rewards shouldn't make people do things which are not fun. This creates a profound dissonance which only gets worse with time. You need to apportion rewards so that high rewards follow what people would naturally do anyway in a game, so that they are rewarded and feel good for doing this. If instead you reward people for behaving unnaturally, they will often follow your reward scheme and do that unnatural thing (because they are little lab rats trained to push a lever for sugar water) but in the back of their minds resistance will slowly build until they become frustrated and quit, because fundamentally they do not want to do something which they do not want to do.
I think close but not quite there. My take is that the people who like grouping often find it difficult to get a full group together. Therefore they want to distort the reward system to encourage (make) people who are indifferent about grouping take part.
In this it is rather like the "Trade Runs" in Archeage, provide a motivation for non-PvP players to freely put themselves in harms way so that PvP players have someone easy to kill.
People are completely missing the rationale for a group dependent system.
Its not that we just "like grouping" and its certainly not that we want to control the way other players have fun. Its the innate, underlying problems with modern systems as a whole when they trivialize content, and thus 90% of the game world, in order for players to solo in a game originally intended to require multiple (MMO) players. It ruins the atmosphere of the entire game, destroys the elements of imminent danger, the desire for exploration, the novelty of accomplishments, and immersion in general.
The issues regarding item progression are just common sense to a nutless monkey, harder mobs > require more people > yield better rewards. Games that don't follow that principle have no business making games (not that I have an opinion).
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
But there are levels in Darkfall. Skill levels and stat levels determine everything, just like all other MMOs that boast "no levels." A reasonable Horizontal leveling system may come about one day with Camelot Unchained, but until then theres a level system somewhere that determines character strength and usefulness.
Except the progression in Darkfall is almost entirely horizontal progression. There is nothing stopping a newbie character from joining up with, and seriously contributing to fights with higher level players. In old EQ, there was. They'd get hit once by a mob that they can't even hit, and then die.
Darkfall has a very abrupt vertical progression, not horizontal. Your levels can be counted in prowess points. The difference between a new players and one thats played for a month or two is night and day.
A character will cap out in terms of vertical progression in about a week. After that, the progression is all horizontal. First, in the number of abilities you have access too, and then in the number of classes you have points in (but can only use one class at a time).
Comments
How many people really play one way all the time?
Don't think I've ever met a player who groups up for every minute of his playtime. And though I've heard rumors of asocial wretches who solo exclusively, I don't believe I've ever met one.
I'm one of the most social dudes you're ever likely to meet in a game; I feel naked without a guild, and a pretty steady (sometimes more than one) leveling partner.
But that doesn't mean those voices and people can't drive me crazy once in a while, and it's time to go walkabout.
I can't imagine any one player still playing with exactly the same play style he first adopted ~y2k.
Most of this "yer fer us or yer agin us" stuff is just forum illusion.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I have to praise a game which takes things differently here. It's a great game, unfortunately ran by an EXTREMELY greedy company with an highly unfair cash shop: Atlantica Online.
The game is ran by the economy. If you got gold, you can get everything. The most common goal is to be able to solo hard content, as it provides you with a high amount of gold. In order to be able to do that, you either solo easier (former "tier") content for a long time, or group for the current tier of content sharing the gold rewards (grouping gets you there faster than soloing former tier content). Instead of getting let's say 3 gold if you go solo, you get 1 gold if you go with other 2 people. To simplify things, let's say that you can only do each "instance" once per week. When you are good enough to solo the current tier, you aim for the next tier. I found it to be a great system, considering that the game has many other things to spend time on (lots of guild and nation content, pvp, housing and others) unfortunately i feel that i am "forced" to spend there (you need about 30 bucks per month for some mandatory items - fast travel and you do 50% more damage, taking 10% less - yea, lol) and i strongly dislike that.
Wanting content you can accomplish solo is one thing. Wanting content you can accomplish solo to rival that which requires groups or raids is asinine. There is going to be so much for individuals to do in a sandbox world if they fill it with meaningful content, theres no excuse to ruin item progression by rewarding solo play equally.
Being for a system that rewards players equally for content that isn't equal is against the spirit of Everquest. Frankly, it wreaks of communism and it ruins games just like it ruins economies.
Comparing Communism with the MMO genre is funny, amusing and sad all at the same time and all for the wrong reasons.
"Ruin item progression" by "rewarding" solo play? Really? So what if they made solo content that was HARDER than the group content to accomplish? If all your concerned about in this entire discussion is "item progression" than you really don't care that much about how the game turns out are you?
Any new game where the the focus and carrot on a stick at the end of the game is item progression chances are the game is going to stink regardless of if it's solo, group, raid, orange or purple.
You guys have to remember how different gaming is in 2001 and now.. Social media and popularity has completely changed the gaming world.
A lot of people have grown up -- is Everquest really a game targeted for teenagers? I'd guess the average of a player on EQN is 18 -- I'll give that there will be hype that many types of people will try the game.
A lot of people 21+ have obligations outside the game -- Some have families. Then combine job + family, it's impossible to play, look for a group, and have to leave after 30-45 minutes and essentially get nothing done.
i think they will have a way to solo competently. It has to. If they are banking their future on Everquest Next (Which they said they are) then you have to please the casual who wants to play for an hour and leave.
Well if EQnext is truly a Sandbox and as they stated changing what a MMO is then the argument is pointless. Meaning you can do both seamlessly and not even care or understand you are doing either. A sandbox is build, do, play anyway you like period.
If they do pull it off then all our way of thinking of how to play a MMO is meaningless and we will need to all relearn from the ground up.
There is nothing communistic in wanting your play style to be catered to just as much as any other. Rather its good game design to be fair and rather bad game design to do the oppisite. If you handicap one group over another it's just encouraging that group not to play. A core aspect of game design is fair and equal play. It's way we hate pay to win. It seems unfair. How silly would it be for me call criticism of pay to win, communistic?
It's why I maintain that EQ was a poorly designed game. The design was fantastic for the time rich EPeen worshipers but I truely believe that style of gameplay is vampiric and toxic to the community. I have no doubts that you disagree.
The incentive is presumably that you like grouping. If " People are going to take the path of least resistance so if the rewards are the same for soloing and grouping there aren't going to be many that will put in the time to get a group together," then people didn't really like grouping, did they? They disliked it but did it because of an artificial reward system tacked on to the core gameplay. If you like grouping, then group.
I think that for a game system really to be good for both people who solo and who group, the rewards need to have similar value for time invested (regardless of if it is time spent soloing or grouping.) If the rewards per unit of time are better for grouping, then you are saying that the person soloing is 2nd class.
If you truly love grouping so much, you will do it. I'm perfectly fine if there are, for example, separate end-game dungeons...one for soloers and one for groupers. And the grouping one can be more difficult so that the whole group isn't bored. But the rewards should be the same if the devs really want to say they value both types of players.
True, I remember in UO we used to... oh, wait.
Well, in AC we would... nvm.
I guess it was in Puzzle Pirates that... no... hmmm...
Anarchy Online?
The Realm? Furcadia? Shattered Galaxy? Graal? Tibia? Hmmm... not those.
You might want to reconsider your stance that EQ is the end-all be-all of That Which Should Be simply because it never really was.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
This.
Early in EQ, soloers such as soloing Necros and even multi-boxers were seen as greedy, selfish and anti-social players. The group was everything. Helping randoms was common. Driveby buffing/healing was common. Travelling an entire continent to corpse summon/corpse drag and res friends was common. This built strong ties.
The slower pace of gameplay matched perfectly with the grouping mechanic. Even in combat you had time to talk shit, joke around and generally just socialise.
The golden age MMOs I played didn't force you to group. They just rewarded you for doing so. Soloing was fine in DAoC, just slower, as it should be.
The issue of zones becoming ghost towns and no one wanting to start over can be solved with good game design. Make a better scaling system for lowbies or high level players to join each other. Side kicking and whatnot. Or, scale things to the low so players can play together. Or, NOT HAVE LEVELS IN THE GAME! I can play with high level players in Darkfall because there are no levels! I'm useful, just not a ton.
Grouping should be encouraged, or no one will do it, no matter how social they are. We need to avoid the pitfalls of EQ1 design that became WoW design that became all MMO design. Avoid linear gear and level treadmills that spread people out and force designers to instance the game and churn out dungeon content.
But there are levels in Darkfall. Skill levels and stat levels determine everything, just like all other MMOs that boast "no levels." A reasonable Horizontal leveling system may come about one day with Camelot Unchained, but until then theres a level system somewhere that determines character strength and usefulness.
Its pretty simple, without levels, there is no progression. Without progression, you are just playing a virtual chat room like the Sims or Hello Kitty Online.
Even in Age of Wushu, a game boldly (lies) boasts itself as levelless, you have "internal skill" levels which completely determine your characters health, energy and stats. Its false advertising at its worst.
I don't think anyone expects Everquest Next to be bold enough to return us to a system where grouping is necessary, but suggesting solo play to be as rewarding as grouping is the ideology that got this genre into the mess its in.
The biggest problem with games that have no levels (or try not to anyway) is progression. You get max level so much faster. For instance, in The Secret World, I was able to complete all content and get multiple class setups and everything and still only have 1/4 of the skill tree unlocked(you can get all skills, but only choose so many at a time) I did all of this in less than a month. I also PVPed and got some decent PVP gear. I am not a hardcore player, the game was just way too fast. I miss a high level character actually meaning something. Now, a max level character is pathetically easy to get, and people treat the leveling process as a time sink to get there instead of the exploring and accomplishment process that it should be. I want to explore new dungeons, experience all of the content. I do not however want to complete 10 quests, return to quest hub, turn in 10 quests, get 5 pieces of armor that are upgrades because the entire game is on rails.
I want good gear to be rare.
I want the game to be dangerous.
I want there to be XP loss for dieing.
Except the progression in Darkfall is almost entirely horizontal progression. There is nothing stopping a newbie character from joining up with, and seriously contributing to fights with higher level players. In old EQ, there was. They'd get hit once by a mob that they can't even hit, and then die.
Darkfall has a very abrupt vertical progression, not horizontal. Your levels can be counted in prowess points. The difference between a new players and one thats played for a month or two is night and day. Booster stats alone and abilities bought with prowess give you a sizable advantage over a new guy, but on the flip side, it doesn't take long to catch up. Which is why I enjoyed Everquest for tens of thousands of hours, and though I followed Darkfall since 2004 drooling over every dev journal entry, could only stomach a few hundred hours before I was bored to death by the complete and utter lack of progression and meaningful content. Dont get me wrong, early on in DF1 there were some really epic wars, but the novelty wears off quickly when you realize your keep is fully pimped, and theres nothing left to fight over. Just fighting for the sake of epeen.
Solution is simple, have both solo levelling content and group levelling content. Vanguard does this well. Its far more efficient to level in a group, but if you cant find one you can do it alone, albeit slower.
You are right though, you cant not have solo pathways, because if the population isn't there or you are playing at odd times, its impossible to progress, and that's not fun for anyone.
Get an education so you can understand the analogy, then come back and correct my MMO ideology.
edit:
I'll even throw this in for free because I feel bad for you.
"According to Marx, communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people [solo players]; the obstacles are class divisions [solo vs group], economic inequalities, unequal life-chances [solo rewards vs group rewards] and false consciousness["evil grouping capitalists!"]; and the goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product. [that they didn't earn, they cried about inequality to Devs instead of grouping like everyone else]"
Taken straight from wikipedia's entry on communism - brackets mine
This of course assumes you have the sense to read between the lines of communist doctrine to understand "fair share" means stealing whats not rightfully yours. No doubt you missed that, as they don't teach it in public school.
Someone quoting wikipedia asking about someone getting an education? That's even more amusing than your terrible analogy. Look, bottom line is your analogy is a terrible one please move on. Yes we get it. your one of those "leet" group only give me my shiny and don't let anyone less "hardcore" than me get anything...I get it. People like you have been around since the early days of MUDS and when UO first came online. You're type is in every MMO game ever made and are a very small percent of the demographic.
It's frankly the reason WoW became so popular and say what you want about it (and I'm not a fan), the reason it put MMO's on the map for the majority of people. It made solo play viable and rewarding. Any game that's wants to even attempt to be that popular it today's market...has to design accordingly or risk becoming a niche game that cators to a small % of the small % that play MMO's. You dont get successful designing anything to such a demographic.
But please...let's not try and pretend this is in any way shape or form like communism (it's not IN ANY WAY)...because all you're doing is creating a parody of what people think people who play MMO's sound like and to be honest, it's hard enough not sounding like a nerd as it is.
Most people in this thread who claim do like grouping, do not in fact like grouping. Instead, what like they is a game where grouping is disproportionately rewarded.
Let me give an example: Suppose you are at breakfast at a restaurant and your waitress asks you:
(a) Do you want coffee?
or
(b) Do you want tea?
where the price of each is the same. Here, which you choose is probably going closely to coincide with which one you like more, coffee or tea.
But let's do a different situation. You are at a restaurant and your waitress asks you:
(a) Do you want coffee PLUS they will waive your bill at the restaurant?
or
(b) Do you want tea but your bill will be as usual?
Then your choice is not really getting at which you like more, coffee or tea. It is answering some other, weighted question.
Similarly, if in an MMO you have the choice to:
(a) Solo but get an amount of x reward per hour
or
(b) Team but get an amount of x reward per hour
then we are actually testing which you prefer more, soloing or teaming.
But if instead you have a choice of
(a) Soloing but getting x/10 (x divided by 10) reward per hour
or
(b) Teaming and getting x reward per hour
Then we are not really testing which you prefer, soloing or teaming.
Most people in this thread do not actually prefer to team, it seams to me. If you really did, you would do it provide everything else (i.e., rewards, etc) were equal. But that is not what you are saying. You only want to team with rewards placed disproportionately in favor of teaming.
It is my firm belief that rewards shouldn't make people do things which are not fun. This creates a profound dissonance which only gets worse with time. You need to apportion rewards so that high rewards follow what people would naturally do anyway in a game, so that they are rewarded and feel good for doing this. If instead you reward people for behaving unnaturally, they will often follow your reward scheme and do that unnatural thing (because they are little lab rats trained to push a lever for sugar water) but in the back of their minds resistance will slowly build until they become frustrated and quit, because fundamentally they do not want to do something which they do not want to do.
I think close but not quite there. My take is that the people who like grouping often find it difficult to get a full group together. Therefore they want to distort the reward system to encourage (make) people who are indifferent about grouping take part.
In this it is rather like the "Trade Runs" in Archeage, provide a motivation for non-PvP players to freely put themselves in harms way so that PvP players have someone easy to kill.
People are completely missing the rationale for a group dependent system.
Its not that we just "like grouping" and its certainly not that we want to control the way other players have fun. Its the innate, underlying problems with modern systems as a whole when they trivialize content, and thus 90% of the game world, in order for players to solo in a game originally intended to require multiple (MMO) players. It ruins the atmosphere of the entire game, destroys the elements of imminent danger, the desire for exploration, the novelty of accomplishments, and immersion in general.
The issues regarding item progression are just common sense to a nutless monkey, harder mobs > require more people > yield better rewards. Games that don't follow that principle have no business making games (not that I have an opinion).
A character will cap out in terms of vertical progression in about a week. After that, the progression is all horizontal. First, in the number of abilities you have access too, and then in the number of classes you have points in (but can only use one class at a time).