This is relevant to when the group content is a secondary thing while the game is primarily solo-play, but the games that embed group play within the core of their gameplay, it's when it simply works.
It's a matter of MMO's to make the concept primary instead of secondary to gameplay.
Of course a game can be primarily or even entirely about group content. My introductory example assumed that group content is all that there is in a game. In particular, absolutely no solo content at all. My point is that even in that extreme case, it takes some pretty extreme measures to make sure that, at any given moment in time, there is a lot of group content available, and it is realistically possible to get a group for all of it.
????????? I think you need to edit this post, or perhaps rewrite it entirely. I think you said something, and I think I might agree with you. But I am completely confused by the syntax.
<scratches ear>
I think I was more about perm norm when you play on MMO, that massive layer of gameplay and progression is you solo-play through it. Then they give you one "optional" layer of taking things as a group.
The thing when solo-play is the primary concept is then they just throw in group content as a secondary optional thing. So was on about, make the primary concept the group content and balance the game from there.
Just because a developer can't make a proper grouping game does not mean the idea is bad,it means the developer is bad.
The analogy used of "100 group dungeons" points directly at crappy game design,WHO says group content has to be in dungeons? The game SHOULD never be in instances,it is suppose to be a living world with real players not some 1980\s single player game with no internet. Tough content should never be relegated to dungeons,it should be open world content and yes players should be able to help each other if they so wish.If a game has the odd plausible dungeon then so be it,but the should not be instances created to handle the tough bosses and best loot,the idea of that design just makes me laugh and smells of amateur hour .
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There are a number of things you can do to increase the number of different instances played. Some good, some boring.
Have each instance drop items for a single slot only: primary weapon, secondary weapon, ears, fingers etc.
Have a secondary currency that can be saved up to spend on upgrades.
Institute a timed lockout on completion, 7 days, 14 days etc.
Have a 'daily double' and a 'weekly special' quest that give extra rewards for completion that day or for completing three or more specific instances that week.
Have a 'bonus boss' that spawns at random in one of a group of instances with an external clue for which group of instances is 'hot' today or this week.
Have an achievement system with rewards for completing ten different instances in one week.
Lots of other possibilities limited only by the developers imagination.
I think developers need to get away from this idea that all the content they create it equal and they should make sure everyone is seeing all of it all the time. They should simply make a giant sandbox world with a BUNCH of content and let the players choose how they want to consume that content how they wish.
More to the point i agree with many of your premises. Especially the "doing things you could do solo, together, is not grouping".
Grouping and group content should REQUIRE interplay of the classes and abilities, timing of each others abilities, etc. Think like Dota 2. If you have 3 people with stuns, all of you dumping stuns on the person as exactly the same time, is stupid and wasting stuns. You stack the stuns, which requires each person on the team to know the other persons class and adjust their play accordingly.
WoW style "gogogogogogo" faceroll "group" content is not grouping.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Of course a game can be primarily or even entirely about group content. My introductory example assumed that group content is all that there is in a game. In particular, absolutely no solo content at all. My point is that even in that extreme case, it takes some pretty extreme measures to make sure that, at any given moment in time, there is a lot of group content available, and it is realistically possible to get a group for all of it.
Yeah that's what MMO's are weak on, we are always playing on this massive game worlds with thousands of players, yet are most of the time, solo.
If it gets to the point someone will make group play a primary concept, focus their design and balance for it, and then add solo upon one alternative to it, that's when I see it would work out.
So it's totally on the hands of the developers to make that work, though they are not very willing to move away from the proven formula and concept of solo-play.
Of course a game can be primarily or even entirely about group content. My introductory example assumed that group content is all that there is in a game. In particular, absolutely no solo content at all. My point is that even in that extreme case, it takes some pretty extreme measures to make sure that, at any given moment in time, there is a lot of group content available, and it is realistically possible to get a group for all of it.
Yeah that's what MMO's are weak on, we are always playing on this massive game worlds with thousands of players, yet are most of the time, solo.
If it gets to the point someone will make group play a primary concept, focus their design and balance for it, and then add solo upon one alternative to it, that's when I see it would work out.
This thread is not about soloing versus grouping.
Rather, the thread is about, if you have a lot of group content, it is essential to get a lot of players to do all of the group content in order to have a critical mass of players that makes all of the group content viable. If players are only willing to do half of your group content, then the other half is impossible to get a group for. Whether the game is purely grouping or mostly solo with occasional group content is irrelevant.
Just because a developer can't make a proper grouping game does not mean the idea is bad,it means the developer is bad.
The analogy used of "100 group dungeons" points directly at crappy game design,WHO says group content has to be in dungeons? The game SHOULD never be in instances,it is suppose to be a living world with real players not some 1980\s single player game with no internet. Tough content should never be relegated to dungeons,it should be open world content and yes players should be able to help each other if they so wish.If a game has the odd plausible dungeon then so be it,but the should not be instances created to handle the tough bosses and best loot,the idea of that design just makes me laugh and smells of amateur hour .
This thread is not about instanced dungeons versus open world content. You can think of the game as being pure open world with no instancing whatsoever. As I've already stated, nearly the same analysis applies, with only the exception that content being too popular implicitly reduces its rewards due to kill stealing or whatever you want to call the group version of that.
Rather, the thread is about, if you have a lot of group content, it is essential to get a lot of players to do all of the group content in order to have a critical mass of players that makes all of the group content viable. If players are only willing to do half of your group content, then the other half is impossible to get a group for. Whether the game is purely grouping or mostly solo with occasional group content is irrelevant.
It's fine, I just poked on changing the concepts because I see that's where they could drive a game with a LOT of group content, to be a game with group content as its primary concept instead.
The nature of how it works currently is indeed that, per norm it's solo-focused so the group content the game offer might just (and many times is) be left out and ignored, that's why indeed a lot of group content isn't good, causing a problem to make it viable.
It isn't all on the developer to make it so that every piece of content is desirable to do by any random grouping of people. I can't count the number of times, when I was in good guilds, that we went back and did stuff for reasons other than it being the most efficient use of our time.
What @Aelious posted earlier here is very true. If you want to run around pugging everything, your going to get stuck doing the majority rule. If you want to do anything else, you either need enough room in the game mechanics such that you can overpower the content and solo, or you need a community of friends to draw from.
There are a number of things you can do to increase the number of different instances played. Some good, some boring.
Have each instance drop items for a single slot only: primary weapon, secondary weapon, ears, fingers etc.
Have a secondary currency that can be saved up to spend on upgrades.
Institute a timed lockout on completion, 7 days, 14 days etc.
Have a 'daily double' and a 'weekly special' quest that give extra rewards for completion that day or for completing three or more specific instances that week.
Have a 'bonus boss' that spawns at random in one of a group of instances with an external clue for which group of instances is 'hot' today or this week.
Have an achievement system with rewards for completing ten different instances in one week.
Lots of other possibilities limited only by the developers imagination.
Some of those are at best partial fixes unless a game doesn't have very much group content. For example, if you have ten gear slots and every dungeon only drops gear for one slot, that will ensure that at least 10 dungeons are played regularly. If there are only ten dungeons in the game, you've solved the problem. But what if you wanted to have 50 dungeons? Then what?
That said, partial fixes are better than no fixes. And it also helps to think of segregating the playerbase by level as another partial fix here.
Even so, my point is not that the problem is completely intractable. But it is that you'd better do something to get a wide variety of content played or else your game isn't going to have very much viable group content.
I think developers need to get away from this idea that all the content they create it equal and they should make sure everyone is seeing all of it all the time. They should simply make a giant sandbox world with a BUNCH of content and let the players choose how they want to consume that content how they wish.
It isn't necessary to make sure that every player must do all of a game's content. But I do think that a player who wants to do all of a game's content should be able to do so. For solo content, that's pretty trivial. But for group content, while it doesn't require every player to do every dungeon, it does require every dungeon to be done by a lot of players.
There are a number of things you can do to increase the number of different instances played. Some good, some boring.
Have each instance drop items for a single slot only: primary weapon, secondary weapon, ears, fingers etc.
Have a secondary currency that can be saved up to spend on upgrades.
Institute a timed lockout on completion, 7 days, 14 days etc.
Have a 'daily double' and a 'weekly special' quest that give extra rewards for completion that day or for completing three or more specific instances that week.
Have a 'bonus boss' that spawns at random in one of a group of instances with an external clue for which group of instances is 'hot' today or this week.
Have an achievement system with rewards for completing ten different instances in one week.
Lots of other possibilities limited only by the developers imagination.
Some of those are at best partial fixes unless a game doesn't have very much group content. For example, if you have ten gear slots and every dungeon only drops gear for one slot, that will ensure that at least 10 dungeons are played regularly. If there are only ten dungeons in the game, you've solved the problem. But what if you wanted to have 50 dungeons? Then what?
That said, partial fixes are better than no fixes. And it also helps to think of segregating the playerbase by level as another partial fix here.
Even so, my point is not that the problem is completely intractable. But it is that you'd better do something to get a wide variety of content played or else your game isn't going to have very much viable group content.
It is only 'completely intractable' if you impose an arbitrary large number of instances, limit the number of types of loot and then refuse to accept solutions that don't meet your perfect standard.
The problem is solvable, and in fact has been solved with varying degrees of success in a number of games.
There are a number of things you can do to increase the number of different instances played. Some good, some boring.
Have each instance drop items for a single slot only: primary weapon, secondary weapon, ears, fingers etc.
Have a secondary currency that can be saved up to spend on upgrades.
Institute a timed lockout on completion, 7 days, 14 days etc.
Have a 'daily double' and a 'weekly special' quest that give extra rewards for completion that day or for completing three or more specific instances that week.
Have a 'bonus boss' that spawns at random in one of a group of instances with an external clue for which group of instances is 'hot' today or this week.
Have an achievement system with rewards for completing ten different instances in one week.
Lots of other possibilities limited only by the developers imagination.
Some of those are at best partial fixes unless a game doesn't have very much group content. For example, if you have ten gear slots and every dungeon only drops gear for one slot, that will ensure that at least 10 dungeons are played regularly. If there are only ten dungeons in the game, you've solved the problem. But what if you wanted to have 50 dungeons? Then what?
That said, partial fixes are better than no fixes. And it also helps to think of segregating the playerbase by level as another partial fix here.
Even so, my point is not that the problem is completely intractable. But it is that you'd better do something to get a wide variety of content played or else your game isn't going to have very much viable group content.
It is only 'completely intractable' if you impose an arbitrary large number of instances, limit the number of types of loot and then refuse to accept solutions that don't meet your perfect standard.
The problem is solvable, and in fact has been solved with varying degrees of success in a number of games.
Most MMORPGs are mostly solo games that don't have very much group content. And yes, some of them have solved it for their own game by, as the thread title says, not having very much group content.
Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
Another possibility is completion bonuses. If you've done ten distinct dungeons, you get a bonus. Do twenty distinct dungeons and get another bonus. And so forth. Make the completion bonuses big enough that doing every dungeon exactly once gives clearly better rewards than any other combination of dungeon completion with the same amount of time and you get players to do everything. Eventually. But you'd better make the completion bonuses repeatable, or otherwise, once most of the playerbase has done the completion bonus once, you get the same problem as before.
Some games already do this (GW2 for example).
I think that dungeons/content needs to be fun and give unique rewards/achievements/be a requirement for something (in GW2 it ties in with ;egendary crafting).
I'm enjoying what GW2 is doing concerning the viability of several area wide meta events maps - there are atm 10 of these maps and Dry Top aside, all of them always havea bunch of players doing stuff in them.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
You could randomise rewards, not sure if that's been mentioned.
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
This is relevant to when the group content is a secondary thing while the game is primarily solo-play, but the games that embed group play within the core of their gameplay, it's when it simply works.
It's a matter of MMO's to make the concept primary instead of secondary to gameplay.
Of course a game can be primarily or even entirely about group content. My introductory example assumed that group content is all that there is in a game. In particular, absolutely no solo content at all. My point is that even in that extreme case, it takes some pretty extreme measures to make sure that, at any given moment in time, there is a lot of group content available, and it is realistically possible to get a group for all of it.
DDO was pretty much totally group focused at launch, big reason why I didn't last the first 30 days.
Started doing more research on games I was thinking of playing after that.
But I can't recall if that title struggled with keeping every dungeon relevant, probably so.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It is only 'completely intractable' if you impose an arbitrary large number of instances, limit the number of types of loot and then refuse to accept solutions that don't meet your perfect standard.
The problem is solvable, and in fact has been solved with varying degrees of success in a number of games.
Most MMORPGs are mostly solo games that don't have very much group content. And yes, some of them have solved it for their own game by, as the thread title says, not having very much group content.
You will have to explain what you define as group content, as in my experience most MMO's have had plenty of group content, even highly solo oriented games like SWTOR. As every planet has heroic quests, bosses, etc.. There are also flash points, as well as just about every side quest has group based dialogue with a randomized system which dictates who gets to choose the outcome of a conversation. Another example would be ESO, while it's highly soloable, it has plenty of of group content of all kinds dotting it's many maps. Few MMORPGs that I've played were not like that.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
Oh, I've played Vanguard all right. When I went to do a level 15 dungeon, I checked and there were only 5 players online server-wide in the entire 10-20 level range. Pretty much no chance of getting a group on such a thoroughly dead game as that, with perhaps the exception of long-time players clustered at the level cap. I quit shortly after that.
But "extremely low player population" would be a problem for any MMORPG. Stop trying to derail the thread by pushing it off into completely unrelated topics that have been heavily debated before. Open world versus instanced doesn't affect the problem.
Another possibility is completion bonuses. If you've done ten distinct dungeons, you get a bonus. Do twenty distinct dungeons and get another bonus. And so forth. Make the completion bonuses big enough that doing every dungeon exactly once gives clearly better rewards than any other combination of dungeon completion with the same amount of time and you get players to do everything. Eventually. But you'd better make the completion bonuses repeatable, or otherwise, once most of the playerbase has done the completion bonus once, you get the same problem as before.
Some games already do this (GW2 for example).
I think that dungeons/content needs to be fun and give unique rewards/achievements/be a requirement for something (in GW2 it ties in with ;egendary crafting).
I'm enjoying what GW2 is doing concerning the viability of several area wide meta events maps - there are atm 10 of these maps and Dry Top aside, all of them always havea bunch of players doing stuff in them.
The problem I'm highlighting becomes far bigger if you want to have a lot of group content. Guild Wars 2 was a mostly soloing game with a handful of group content. There was little enough group content that you could get a group for all of the instanced dungeons.
On the other hand, getting a group for the public quest events that basically weren't soloable was often impractical. That's not an open world versus instanced dungeon issue. It's that the public quest events were only infrequently up and gave minimal rewards, so people wouldn't gather around to do them. Instead, a lot of the people who were willing to group for it were off in Queensdale staying there basically forever.
You could randomise rewards, not sure if that's been mentioned.
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
If you randomize rewards so that all dungeons give equivalent loot, players will figure out which dungeon is the shortest and/or easiest and loop that one endlessly.
Procedurally generated group content in which groups don't get to pick their fixed dungeon and can't recognize that they rolled the "wrong" dungeon and reroll would work. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is actually good. Some games have had modest success with having a bunch of custom-made components and chaining them together randomly.
Now try to imagine an open world game with FFA PvP and without instanced dungeons
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
Oh, I've played Vanguard all right. When I went to do a level 15 dungeon, I checked and there were only 5 players online server-wide in the entire 10-20 level range. Pretty much no chance of getting a group on such a thoroughly dead game as that, with perhaps the exception of long-time players clustered at the level cap. I quit shortly after that.
But "extremely low player population" would be a problem for any MMORPG. Stop trying to derail the thread by pushing it off into completely unrelated topics that have been heavily debated before. Open world versus instanced doesn't affect the problem.
Lol, Wtf are you babling on about, having an opinion is not derailing a thread. As for your experience in Vanguard, well that's your experience not everyone else's
Comments
The thing when solo-play is the primary concept is then they just throw in group content as a secondary optional thing. So was on about, make the primary concept the group content and balance the game from there.
The analogy used of "100 group dungeons" points directly at crappy game design,WHO says group content has to be in dungeons?
The game SHOULD never be in instances,it is suppose to be a living world with real players not some 1980\s single player game with no internet.
Tough content should never be relegated to dungeons,it should be open world content and yes players should be able to help each other if they so wish.If a game has the odd plausible dungeon then so be it,but the should not be instances created to handle the tough bosses and best loot,the idea of that design just makes me laugh and smells of amateur hour .
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
- Have each instance drop items for a single slot only: primary weapon, secondary weapon, ears, fingers etc.
- Have a secondary currency that can be saved up to spend on upgrades.
- Institute a timed lockout on completion, 7 days, 14 days etc.
- Have a 'daily double' and a 'weekly special' quest that give extra rewards for completion that day or for completing three or more specific instances that week.
- Have a 'bonus boss' that spawns at random in one of a group of instances with an external clue for which group of instances is 'hot' today or this week.
- Have an achievement system with rewards for completing ten different instances in one week.
Lots of other possibilities limited only by the developers imagination.More to the point i agree with many of your premises. Especially the "doing things you could do solo, together, is not grouping".
Grouping and group content should REQUIRE interplay of the classes and abilities, timing of each others abilities, etc. Think like Dota 2. If you have 3 people with stuns, all of you dumping stuns on the person as exactly the same time, is stupid and wasting stuns. You stack the stuns, which requires each person on the team to know the other persons class and adjust their play accordingly.
WoW style "gogogogogogo" faceroll "group" content is not grouping.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
If it gets to the point someone will make group play a primary concept, focus their design and balance for it, and then add solo upon one alternative to it, that's when I see it would work out.
So it's totally on the hands of the developers to make that work, though they are not very willing to move away from the proven formula and concept of solo-play.
Rather, the thread is about, if you have a lot of group content, it is essential to get a lot of players to do all of the group content in order to have a critical mass of players that makes all of the group content viable. If players are only willing to do half of your group content, then the other half is impossible to get a group for. Whether the game is purely grouping or mostly solo with occasional group content is irrelevant.
The nature of how it works currently is indeed that, per norm it's solo-focused so the group content the game offer might just (and many times is) be left out and ignored, that's why indeed a lot of group content isn't good, causing a problem to make it viable.
#2 Help friends do what they want/need to do
#3 Ask friends to help you do the content you want to do
#4 Return to step 1
It isn't all on the developer to make it so that every piece of content is desirable to do by any random grouping of people. I can't count the number of times, when I was in good guilds, that we went back and did stuff for reasons other than it being the most efficient use of our time.
What @Aelious posted earlier here is very true. If you want to run around pugging everything, your going to get stuck doing the majority rule. If you want to do anything else, you either need enough room in the game mechanics such that you can overpower the content and solo, or you need a community of friends to draw from.
That said, partial fixes are better than no fixes. And it also helps to think of segregating the playerbase by level as another partial fix here.
Even so, my point is not that the problem is completely intractable. But it is that you'd better do something to get a wide variety of content played or else your game isn't going to have very much viable group content.
The problem is solvable, and in fact has been solved with varying degrees of success in a number of games.
Or Vanguard an open world PVE mmo that had no instanced dungeons, over 100 dungeons most of them vast. Some so vast that they took days to complete and spanned multiple levels, dungeons within dungeons.
These were group dungeons that in some mmo would be considered raid dungeons.
The Op obviously hasn't played an mmo like that.
One such dungeon was an open air overland dungeon called Ruins Of Trengal Keep.
I think that dungeons/content needs to be fun and give unique rewards/achievements/be a requirement for something (in GW2 it ties in with ;egendary crafting).
I'm enjoying what GW2 is doing concerning the viability of several area wide meta events maps - there are atm 10 of these maps and Dry Top aside, all of them always havea bunch of players doing stuff in them.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
How about procedurally generated "dungeons" mini-zones for players to group in where they can see other groups doing their quests? Some of the tech for this may be a bit beyond us, but I would hazard that is because so much development has gone into graphics and so little into systems.
Started doing more research on games I was thinking of playing after that.
But I can't recall if that title struggled with keeping every dungeon relevant, probably so.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
But "extremely low player population" would be a problem for any MMORPG. Stop trying to derail the thread by pushing it off into completely unrelated topics that have been heavily debated before. Open world versus instanced doesn't affect the problem.
On the other hand, getting a group for the public quest events that basically weren't soloable was often impractical. That's not an open world versus instanced dungeon issue. It's that the public quest events were only infrequently up and gave minimal rewards, so people wouldn't gather around to do them. Instead, a lot of the people who were willing to group for it were off in Queensdale staying there basically forever.
Procedurally generated group content in which groups don't get to pick their fixed dungeon and can't recognize that they rolled the "wrong" dungeon and reroll would work. The problem is how to make procedurally generated content that is actually good. Some games have had modest success with having a bunch of custom-made components and chaining them together randomly.
Lol, Wtf are you babling on about, having an opinion is not derailing a thread. As for your experience in Vanguard, well that's your experience not everyone else's