I always viewed multiplayer RPG games as "cmon town grab your pitchforks, torches, and shovels were going to kill the ogre and his minions!"....Monsters should be strong and take players working together to kill them....Once they decided we can solo just about anything it really ruined the genre to an extent.
There always comes along a player that asks in the forums, "Can this game be played solo?" No Publisher wants that answer to be, No. So they answer that if the content is out leveled then it could be done solo with Best In Slot (BIS) gear. During development six pieces of BIS armour and a BIS weapon cost 7 gold (1 gold each). Upon release the same gear now costs 7.000 gold.
So it is no longer soloable, and the solo players complain. Result, nerf the mobs, make the content soloable patch. The real problem are speculators inflating the player economy, real solution treat these players as detrimental to the game.
Solo combat is fine. But even combatants should need other players in some way. For gear, repairs and etc.
Forget the lame stuff like gear and repairs. Rock-paper-scissors balance already achieves this.
Nah you should be able to adventure when you have to alone. There should be place where you can't but enforced grouping all the time is bad design.
How about some AI controlled henchmen?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
MMos are supposed to be just like the Pen and Paper RPGs they come from. You should be able to solo adventure if you like but if you're a thief, you are only going to be good at thief missions and quests, if you're a fighter your only going to be good at the fighting stuff. But there are larger quests designed for multiple people and groups, not because it said so but because it kind of requires thieving at some parts, fighting at other and magic at others. Every class type gets to shine. If you make every quest a combat mission and every class a different form or aspect of combat, you essentially made diablo not an RPG MMO.
I always viewed multiplayer RPG games as "cmon town grab your pitchforks, torches, and shovels were going to kill the ogre and his minions!"....Monsters should be strong and take players working together to kill them....Once they decided we can solo just about anything it really ruined the genre to an extent.
There always comes along a player that asks in the forums, "Can this game be played solo?" No Publisher wants that answer to be, No. So they answer that if the content is out leveled then it could be done solo with Best In Slot (BIS) gear. During development six pieces of BIS armour and a BIS weapon cost 7 gold (1 gold each). Upon release the same gear now costs 7.000 gold.
So it is no longer soloable, and the solo players complain. Result, nerf the mobs, make the content soloable patch. The real problem are speculators inflating the player economy, real solution treat these players as detrimental to the game.
Solo combat is fine. But even combatants should need other players in some way. For gear, repairs and etc.
Forget the lame stuff like gear and repairs. Rock-paper-scissors balance already achieves this.
Nah you should be able to adventure when you have to alone. There should be place where you can't but enforced grouping all the time is bad design.
How about some AI controlled henchmen?
We've seen some examples of that before in various forms of hirelings, champions, or sidekicks in games.
It could be called an effective option really since you can build a game around the notion of a persistent party setup, and then you're just subbing members out between NPC or player. People playing solo would just be running with an NPC group and directing them as they prefer, and can swap the NPCs out to live players as they choose to group-up.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I always viewed multiplayer RPG games as "cmon town grab your pitchforks, torches, and shovels were going to kill the ogre and his minions!"....Monsters should be strong and take players working together to kill them....Once they decided we can solo just about anything it really ruined the genre to an extent.
There always comes along a player that asks in the forums, "Can this game be played solo?" No Publisher wants that answer to be, No. So they answer that if the content is out leveled then it could be done solo with Best In Slot (BIS) gear. During development six pieces of BIS armour and a BIS weapon cost 7 gold (1 gold each). Upon release the same gear now costs 7.000 gold.
So it is no longer soloable, and the solo players complain. Result, nerf the mobs, make the content soloable patch. The real problem are speculators inflating the player economy, real solution treat these players as detrimental to the game.
Solo combat is fine. But even combatants should need other players in some way. For gear, repairs and etc.
Forget the lame stuff like gear and repairs. Rock-paper-scissors balance already achieves this.
Nah you should be able to adventure when you have to alone. There should be place where you can't but enforced grouping all the time is bad design.
How about some AI controlled henchmen?
We've seen some examples of that before in various forms of hirelings, champions, or sidekicks in games.
It could be called an effective option really since you can build a game around the notion of a persistent party setup, and then you're just subbing members out between NPC or player. People playing solo would just be running with an NPC group and directing them as they prefer, and can swap the NPCs out to live players as they choose to group-up.
Not seen a better AI for minions and mobs than I found in CoH. The way the mobs would react to attacks and the way your minions would react was very clever.
I'll focus on 2 specific examples of grouping-done-right (mechanics wise, not entire game)
1) SWG - Scalable Quests
So, SWG didn't have the normal sort of quests (stories / quest chains). It's quests were randomly generated from mission terminals and were basically just exterminate quests. Go to a location and destroy a beasts' nest, or small base.
But, the quests scaled, both to you as an individual and as a group. So, solo newbies would get quests to kill easy trash (few hundred health points) whilst fully buffed, armoured and templated vets would get quests to kill 30k+ hp mobs like rancors.
It was the sort of game where you could win by overwhelming numbers, so even if a mob was massively "superior" to you, you could at least still hit it and do damage, even if it was minimal. This resulted in grouping being the fastest way to level and with scalable quests, it was also the most rewarding for xp and money. So, in early days of SWG, the main hubs in game would be full of leveling groups - random people getting together to gain the benefit of better quests, then heading out into the desert / forest / plains for an hour to grind out 20-40 quests.
Now, as all quests were mindless killing, it made it straight forwards to complete (no stress) so hardly any dropouts or reasons to kick people. With the combat system it had, you could queue up attacks and thus have time to chat. The fatigue / battle wounds system meant stopping every 60minutes or so to recover, providing another social break. All in all, it was a great social experience.
2) LotRO - In game voice chat / lots of grouping
There were two things I think LotRO got spot on at launch when it comes to grouping: in game voice chat and introducing group content early. Both go hand-in-hand.
Firstly, lots of group content. My first group quest occured about 15 minutes after starting the game - kill a big spider in the tunnels below a hobbit farm. The group quests then continued all the way through to endgame. First instance was maybe lvl15ish (great barrows). This meant that the community was used to grouping up right from launch. It set player expectations early, not only getting people used to grouping but also highlighting some of the excellent content for groups. World group quests were usually mindless killing - i.e. easy - whilst instances were usually more challenging. By the time a player hit endgame, the majority had done a lot of grouping and knew how to play their class.
This was then backed up by in game voice chat. Once enabled, you could use voice-comms to chat to your group or raid. This dramatically aided pugs. Leaders would almost always insist on turning voice chat on, then walking the group through the instance. Success rates in LotRO were so much higher than SW:TOR, despite the game being much harder, precisely due to voice chat. Hell, we had pugs completing raids before some established raiding guilds had done so! Voice chat was particularly effective in PvP. By nature, almost all groups in pvp were pugs, but rather than the usual zerg pvp, leaders would organise proper tactics, scouts, decoys, flanking manuvers etc. Kept PvP interesting for a long time.
There are plenty of other things that can be done, but almost all things are a double-edged sword. For example, have tons of group quests during the leveling process is great.......at launch........but once the main bulk of people have leveled to cap, finding groups becomes a pain. This is why so many games are solo - not because the devs want to be solo, but because group quests put off new players. This is why I'm more in favour of scalable quests.
Same sort of thing with deep inter-group skills. Again, LotRO had tons of intergroup skills on all classes, as well as fellowship manuevers. This made playing in a group extremely satisfying for me, doubly-so when everyone in the group knew how to play well. But, things fell apart when they soloed the leveling process. Before, players would reach the cap with a lot of grouping experience, starting from easy zerg-style at early levels to more complex stuff at endgame. The game built in a learning-curve through group play.
Once they solo-ified the leveling process, that learning curve was removed. Players would reach endgame with no knowledge of grouping, then expect to jump into finely tuned difficult instances. They would fail. So, Turbine have continued to nerf pretty much all endgame content.
This is part of the reason why action-combat has been on the ascendency. The learning curve is about 5 minutes long - its ridiculously easy to learn classes / skills / encounters, making it easier for people to complete group content. Skills learnt solo (how to aim / block / dodge) are just as applicable in group content. This, of course, comes at the expense of combat depth, resulting in higher churn rate of hardcore players.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
MMos are supposed to be just like the Pen and Paper RPGs they come from. You should be able to solo adventure if you like but if you're a thief, you are only going to be good at thief missions and quests, if you're a fighter your only going to be good at the fighting stuff. But there are larger quests designed for multiple people and groups, not because it said so but because it kind of requires thieving at some parts, fighting at other and magic at others. Every class type gets to shine. If you make every quest a combat mission and every class a different form or aspect of combat, you essentially made diablo not an RPG MMO.
to be one of the major pillars of pen and paper in my mind has been the Dunegon Master. I have played only one computer RPG that got that part right, Neverinter nights 1 and 2 (and no not the single player campagin).
just a side note
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
The person behind the computer has to want to participate in the multiplayer part.
Some people want to talk and socialize while playing WITH others.
Some people want to play solo, but share the same space WITH others.
For me EQ did it the best. You could solo, but grouping was faster. Those static camps the new blood hate, they were an important part of the social game. If you joined a group, and acted like a tool. Word got around and people wouldn't get invites till they smartened up. Your game experience reflected how you treated people.
With the new norm of transient 5 minute game play, the experience can only be shallow no matter how you look at it.
You don't need other people to have a deep game. Lots of single player games are deep (like Deus Ex). Just make MMOs more like them.
First of all nice post.I think if i just describe some situations of the games i played the last years is an example how games kinda ''forced'' in a good way to communicate and cooperate with others. The obvious is some hard to do dungeons with mechanics that is almost impossible to do them without communication,open world pvp in sandbox game like archeage is a huge force that will force u to cooperate with others, trading and fishing can become a very unique experience with enemy faction,pkers and pirates. Another one that i dont see in most of the new games are world bosses.The difficulty to kill them,the value of drops and the possibility to get attacked from the enemy faction makes whole guilds to cooperate together for a single goal.Guess are lot more...
Comments
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
It could be called an effective option really since you can build a game around the notion of a persistent party setup, and then you're just subbing members out between NPC or player. People playing solo would just be running with an NPC group and directing them as they prefer, and can swap the NPCs out to live players as they choose to group-up.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Not seen a better AI for minions and mobs than I found in CoH. The way the mobs would react to attacks and the way your minions would react was very clever.
1) SWG - Scalable Quests
So, SWG didn't have the normal sort of quests (stories / quest chains). It's quests were randomly generated from mission terminals and were basically just exterminate quests. Go to a location and destroy a beasts' nest, or small base.
But, the quests scaled, both to you as an individual and as a group. So, solo newbies would get quests to kill easy trash (few hundred health points) whilst fully buffed, armoured and templated vets would get quests to kill 30k+ hp mobs like rancors.
It was the sort of game where you could win by overwhelming numbers, so even if a mob was massively "superior" to you, you could at least still hit it and do damage, even if it was minimal. This resulted in grouping being the fastest way to level and with scalable quests, it was also the most rewarding for xp and money. So, in early days of SWG, the main hubs in game would be full of leveling groups - random people getting together to gain the benefit of better quests, then heading out into the desert / forest / plains for an hour to grind out 20-40 quests.
Now, as all quests were mindless killing, it made it straight forwards to complete (no stress) so hardly any dropouts or reasons to kick people. With the combat system it had, you could queue up attacks and thus have time to chat. The fatigue / battle wounds system meant stopping every 60minutes or so to recover, providing another social break. All in all, it was a great social experience.
2) LotRO - In game voice chat / lots of grouping
There were two things I think LotRO got spot on at launch when it comes to grouping: in game voice chat and introducing group content early. Both go hand-in-hand.
Firstly, lots of group content. My first group quest occured about 15 minutes after starting the game - kill a big spider in the tunnels below a hobbit farm. The group quests then continued all the way through to endgame. First instance was maybe lvl15ish (great barrows). This meant that the community was used to grouping up right from launch. It set player expectations early, not only getting people used to grouping but also highlighting some of the excellent content for groups. World group quests were usually mindless killing - i.e. easy - whilst instances were usually more challenging. By the time a player hit endgame, the majority had done a lot of grouping and knew how to play their class.
This was then backed up by in game voice chat. Once enabled, you could use voice-comms to chat to your group or raid. This dramatically aided pugs. Leaders would almost always insist on turning voice chat on, then walking the group through the instance. Success rates in LotRO were so much higher than SW:TOR, despite the game being much harder, precisely due to voice chat. Hell, we had pugs completing raids before some established raiding guilds had done so! Voice chat was particularly effective in PvP. By nature, almost all groups in pvp were pugs, but rather than the usual zerg pvp, leaders would organise proper tactics, scouts, decoys, flanking manuvers etc. Kept PvP interesting for a long time.
There are plenty of other things that can be done, but almost all things are a double-edged sword. For example, have tons of group quests during the leveling process is great.......at launch........but once the main bulk of people have leveled to cap, finding groups becomes a pain. This is why so many games are solo - not because the devs want to be solo, but because group quests put off new players. This is why I'm more in favour of scalable quests.
Same sort of thing with deep inter-group skills. Again, LotRO had tons of intergroup skills on all classes, as well as fellowship manuevers. This made playing in a group extremely satisfying for me, doubly-so when everyone in the group knew how to play well. But, things fell apart when they soloed the leveling process. Before, players would reach the cap with a lot of grouping experience, starting from easy zerg-style at early levels to more complex stuff at endgame. The game built in a learning-curve through group play.
Once they solo-ified the leveling process, that learning curve was removed. Players would reach endgame with no knowledge of grouping, then expect to jump into finely tuned difficult instances. They would fail. So, Turbine have continued to nerf pretty much all endgame content.
This is part of the reason why action-combat has been on the ascendency. The learning curve is about 5 minutes long - its ridiculously easy to learn classes / skills / encounters, making it easier for people to complete group content. Skills learnt solo (how to aim / block / dodge) are just as applicable in group content. This, of course, comes at the expense of combat depth, resulting in higher churn rate of hardcore players.
just a side note
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I have played D&D .... and I have yet to play a session with more than 5 people. Don't tell me that that is "massively multiplayer".
Or may be you are in the camp who think that a few playing together is enough for a MMO, just like this site, and superdata?
The obvious is some hard to do dungeons with mechanics that is almost impossible to do them without communication,open world pvp in sandbox game like archeage is a huge force that will force u to cooperate with others, trading and fishing can become a very unique experience with enemy faction,pkers and pirates.
Another one that i dont see in most of the new games are world bosses.The difficulty to kill them,the value of drops and the possibility to get attacked from the enemy faction makes whole guilds to cooperate together for a single goal.Guess are lot more...