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General: The Daily Quest - How often do you group up?
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
MMOs are inherently about being online in a world or at least a zone with other people playing simultaneously. But just because they're around, doesn't mean you need to always be playing with someone else. At least, that's what the MMOs of the modern era have become. So today's quest, should you choose to accept, is to answer "How often do you group up?"
For me personally, it's all about the kind of content I'm looking to partake in. Today's MMOs (and namely those without open FFA PVP) allow players a lot of leeway to pursue whatever course they deem fit for their game time. This freedom comes with drawbacks and problems to overall gameplay archs that we've discussed many times here in editorials about any number of MMORPGs.
But the fact remains: player freedom and choice to group for content is a feature that most MMO gamers want to see continue. I dare say however that those same players want to see grouping more focused, incentivized, and rewarded.
Too often, grouping with someone for anything other than group-specific content seems to detract from the overall experience. So what you wind up with is players running around doing the same content in a shared space, but doing it separately.
So let's hear it from you. How often do you group up? And how would you like to see group content, both in instances and out in the open, enhanced in future games?
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Comments
I used to group up instantly once i logged into Everquest.
Back in the day you had a reputation among players. So if you did not suck, you got an invite as soon as you logged in.
THAT is how i like my grouping. Rewarding, challenging and i like the possibility to die and screw up. I like being able to LEARN and improve apart from leveling up. Like really getting better by playing, not by gearing up.
I also like the idea of being able to solo, but not being able to solo any meaningful content. Give player a REASON to group up. Make people remember you, because you rocked as class xy. Make that possible again.
Nowadays soloing is more often then not more rewarding. For leveling it is almost 100% the case. How often did you say to yourself "nah, don't want to group, i want to level up!".... how stupid is that? Grouping should ALWAYS be superior.
Make grouping meaningful again and i will group up 100% of the time again. If i wanted to solo id play a single player RPG. Actually... i do. Exclusivly. No MMO as of today can provide fun grouping for me. So i might as well solo in a solo RPG. Singple player RPGs are far superior to MMOs, simply because MMOs can never provide the rich story.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Depends who I am grouping with.
I prefer grouping with friends or guildies in a game. Just random grouping with someone I don't really know, doesn't really appeal to me.
Hence I am not a fan of forced grouping.
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almost never unless I need something.
Honestly most games now have great solo content or are designed smartly to allow the resources to be shared so people aren't able to grief anymore or they group you for events like Rifts does automaticlaly.
I love that actually it makes for easier gameplay it's more like a console team system then it is a standard stuckinthepast mmo out there.
Up until BC launched in WOW, I would have said I grouped up regularly, either with my raiding guilds, or even just with PUG's and I had a long history of grouping in Lineage 1/2, Shadowbane and DAOC before then.
But the market started changing, speed runs became the norm, the players infesting MMO's really did become mostly asshats, either due to game mechanics or just due to the rising popularity.
So I've withdrawn now, I only group up with friends, won't consider playing support characters to pug with outside my guild, and now don't really have any interest in modern MMORPG's, because I don't want to group with most of those folks anymore.
That said, in the one MMO I do play I do and am looking forward to doing more group content, both PVP and PVE but it's the lone exception.
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I often want to do my own thing while chatting, so I don't group up with anyone but I'm socially active with guildies and players in other channels. Other days I'm up for hours of group activity - raiding, dungeons, puzzles, etc.
Just depends on the day.
Not much intentionally anymore. My play time is late at night and limited so personally I don't do many raids and dungeons.
Playing GW2 right now so the global events are cool, I don't think that's the "grouping" we're talking about here.
When I was in FFXIV I did use the dungeon finder queue, of course that game kind of forced it on you.
It is a loaded question because games do NOT require you to group up.Example you get a set amount of xp for a quest,grouping does nothing to make the experience any better.If anything when games are designed to solo,grouping only makes it that much easier to where why even bother if the challenge is like a 1/10?
SO the REAL question should be ,how often does a game promote grouping,REAL grouping,not fake AUTO TAG grouping,you know where a player or players start up a group and seek out like minded players.
It was pretty sad that one of the first aside from Asian games of long past but Wow promoted solo play then instance grouping.However even inside of that push i watched many players solo those instances with multiple accounts ,Justine TV had a section just for that.There is no way that should even be possible,proving a real lack of grouping design.
There is not one single game left that promotes grouping,none,even my FFXI went the way of soloing until end game and it was the last of the true mmo+rpg's.
As to how i would like to see it is rather simple.
Return to the ROLE system,after all,you are going to call your game a ROLE PLAYING game it should ACT like it.Remove the peed leveling ,it only makes the entire game meaningless then nobody cares about the game,only end game.
REMOVE END GAME and put all your efforts into THE GAME which being a RPG should not have an END game unless you officially die then it would be the end.
One last thing,you cannot have pvp with pve unless two different game designs on two different servers,they do not mix EVER.
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I have done the group thing, the raid thing, the hermit character thing, and the crafting thing. I actually solo where it is viable. I prefer raids to grouping -- I mean if you are going to make it so you can't drop out for 5 or 10 minutes on short notice, you might as well be raiding. The whole solo group thing like they had in Warhammer and Rift are fine. The no commitment cooperative is an interesting concept. I mean you had that back in asheron's call with the exp groups in dungeons.
Warhammer was a game I enjoyed. It is too bad they had enough critical errors in how it was designed to make it fail. The ability to jump into scenarios, the large scale rvr, the soloable content for decent rewards -- it had a good mix. (One of the errors it had was the time gated group content for advancement in RVR due to wards)
I am usually grouped but 95% of the time it is just with some guildies that happens to be online. I might play alone or together with a friend or more but it is more fun together with others...
It isn't easy to reward people for grouping without penalizing the soloers at the same time. I think group content should have better rewards.
Increase the difficulty of the open world content is the easiest way to get people to group more but it also tend to get more whining.
I think having servers with increased difficulty and better loot to compensate would work, once regular open world mobs actually take an effort to defeat more people will group and people who only want to solo can always play on the regular servers. Another benefit is that more group friendly players will roll on those servers.
Same here.
Speed runs really killed a good part of my enjoyment of instances in wow. My favorite PVP AV was ruined when they changed it and it lead to speed runs. Ick.
I haven't grouped up since I left the guild. The instance queue mechanism took care of it and most of the content is too easy today...
Kyleran, are you playing any MMORPG right now? I was looking forward to 40k EC but I think the f2p crowd is affecting the development too much.
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Hi
I rarely group with anyone except my personal friends.
We talk on Skype while we play and avoid having to type.
I'm really glad that most modern MMOs don't require a lot of grouping.
I usually quit playing when I reach max level and look for something new.
Right now I'm waiting for The Elder Scrolls Online to go free to play then both my friends and I are going to go back to it and start over with new characters.
The game was actually hard to group in before the new updates we'll see what it's like now.
We also play The Secret World, there always seems to be something new to come back to if you have been away for a while.
Mike
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