The SUWT podcast always provides interesting discussion and great viewpoints on issues that matter to MMO players. Episode #9 was no exception and provided some food for thought for me. In this episode one of the issues tackled concerned the social (and anti-social) nature of MMOs these days. The points raised struck home with me as I thought about the nature of solo vs. group play in MMOs today, and how “social” MMOs really are when people refuse to group (or are elitist about it).
Brent made a great point in that segment about WoW’s influence on how people perceive grouping and socializing in MMOs today. The influence has been so great he states, that it’s actually recalibrated players expectations when it comes to grouping (or not) in an MMO. When I think back to my two years in WoW, I certainly can see where Brent is coming from. WoW is arguably the most solo-friendly MMO out there. You can solo to max level without ever grouping if you so desire. The negative effect of this however is that you wind up with people that may not know how to group effectivly in that game, should they be asked to 5-man or raid. You also lose the element of helping others, sharing an experience, achieving a group goal and working as a team. If everyone is empowered to run off in different directions and solo to 70, why group at all?
Does there need to be some ability to solo in an MMO - absolutely. There are times when you don’t want to group for whatever reason, you may be time restricted, or you may need to go afk often or at a moment’s notice due to RL. So I don’t think soloers should be left out in the cold. But has the pendulum swung too far in favor of “solo friendly” play, to the point where grouping seems pointless? Obviously, if you want to raid on any level in WoW you’re going to have to group. But if people have solo’d to 70, never really interacting with and using their skills in a group or raid setting, chances are they may be pretty poor at it when the time comes. Generalization alert!
What’s lost when you have too much solo play? When people don’t group, don’t randomly help others, but just run off and do their own thing? The very spirit behind these games dies a little bit imo. As Brent recalled on the show, EQ was a game where you needed to group early and often to really even survive, much less progress, in the gameworld. Grouping was really almost required to get anywhere, and that forced you to learn, develop and use skillsets that were team focused. People randomly helped each other in EQ when they didn’t have too, veterans taught newbies, and you felt like you were part of a real community of players that interacted with each other. In addition, as Troy mentioned in the same segment, the internet spoiler sites that we have today really weren’t around in those early days. You couldn’t just ignore other players and go look up everything on the web. You had to actually talk to other players, ask questions, ask for help, and group up to go get things done. I can’t tell you how many great people I met through that game due to the sole fact that I pretty much had to group.
I think people are social in WoW - but it’s more of a glorified chat-room social as opposed to being social because of the game, and due to game mechanics. WoW, more than any other MMO I’ve played, suffers from the syndrome of “we’re all playing a massive multiplayer game, alone!”. I was fortunate to be in a great guild while I played WoW and did a lot of grouping and raiding, but I was aiming to have that experience. But in general, WoW is in stark contrast to older MMOs like EQ. It makes me wonder what will happen in future MMOs like TR, PoTBS, and even Warhammer. I just hope the next time I yell “LFG!!”, that someone will answer and join me.
Tags: Editorial, WoW
Entries (RSS)
September 18th, 2007 at 10:09 pm - Edit
There is no reason we shouldn’t be able to solo with other people. I think we can encourage the social element without forcing us to suffer the long LFGs and min-maxing that goes on with forced group mechanics.
For example, I’d like to see future MMOs focus more on coming up with zone-wide quests (such as building the griffon towers in EQ2) where different people playing different roles have to organize and interact to achieve a common goal (harvesters harvesting, crafters crafting, and adventurers defending them from monsters).
I do agree that to some degree there needs to be some forced grouping for a game to develop a decent community. I think the main problem right now is that the solo game is basically a carbon copy of the grouping game where you run around completing quests and killing monsters, except without other people. And that’s probably a mistake. The solo game should encourage other forms of player interaction.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:12 am - Edit
Here’s a possible idea… I’ll just shove it out of the nest and see if it flies or plummets.
We already have a couple instances of games with separate experience for PvE and PvP… how about solo vs. group XP? Might encourage people to group, and would obviously help identify those with grouping experience vs. those without… what are the drawbacks?
September 19th, 2007 at 12:27 pm - Edit
One issue is how much weight we give as individual players to “this is a game” versus “this is a virtual world.” It’s a game, of course, and the ultimate object is to have fun. They also require a huge investment of our personal time and whether or not most of consider ourselves to be “roleplaying” I do think a lot of us enjoy living vicariously through our avatars and exploring these worlds.
Sticking with the virtual worlds aspect, just as in our real world we have many types of individuals. Different genders, different cultures, different educational levels, different ideologies. Those same people are playing these games in these virtual worlds. It’s simply not realistic to expect someone who perhaps is completely introverted or anti-social in real life to suddenly be an extraverted virtual social dynamo. Me, for example: I’m a pretty normal guy and I have my moods. Sometimes I’m very social, out-going, etc. Other times I’m more withdrawn and value my “me time” alone more than being around people. That applies to these games too. Sometimes I’d just rather do my own thing. I can still be social in guild chat or OOC chat, whatever, I just don’t want to have to deal with being in virtual proximity any more than I want physical proximity at the time.
I hear the EQ vets pine away how they miss “the good old days” where you had to group to get anywhere. In fact, Kevin said exactly that in his post. I’m going to say it: grouping is NOT being social. In EQ you *had* to group, therefore you were only grouping based on your own selfish agenda to progress somewhere, where you’d do it again to progress, and so forth. The modern batch of games just give us the ability to choose whether we deal with others or not. I’ve seen very social gamers who solo exclusively. I’ve also grouped with some of the most selfish, anti-social, sorry excuses for humans I’ve ever had the displeasure of (virtually) meeting. Being social and grouping are not mutually exclusive; it is not a black and white issue.
In fact, I’d argue that by nature of it’s environment, EQ equated to “forced grouping” and you don’t have to search far to read angry lashbacks on that topic directed at the modern batch of MMO’s.
Moving on…j
Lars said the grouping game is a carbon copy of the solo game. He’s correct in that you’re doing the exact same quests or the exact same content, the only difference normally being it’s simply too difficult to accomplish solo. However, with most classes your actual role is vastly different making the switch from solo to groups. That has led to the negative perception of PUG’s *especially* since WoW hit the market and allows us to solo to level cap and never learning group dynamics and our roles in groups. So is the answer to have a vastly different game style for solo and grouping?
Damiano: I’m not opposed to that idea. I kinda liked that Vanguard gives different types of xp depending on what you’re doing, so I could easily see adding additional xp for grouping. There needs to be some legitimate incentive to grouping other than “because this quest is too hard solo.” Taking a LOTRO perspective, perhaps giving Titles or Deeds that can only be gained from groups? I also still like the basic gist of my Proximity Grouping idea I posted over on your blog somewhere, though I can’t say giving extra xp simply for being in proximity of other soloers is a good idea.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:12 pm - Edit
WoW was designed with the mindset that at any time a player should be able to progress either solo or in groups. Never needing to feel like they can’t progress while solo, is one of the reasons the game has remained so strong. People with no desire to group, or no patience, or simply no time, can still play and feel part of a world.
I do not think, it will ever be good for a game to go back to the idea of forced grouping (I know that’s now what you’re getting at here, but humor me). Instead, we’re seeing right now a big emphasis on solo-ing which is great… but it’s coming at the cost of grouping because in almost every MMO that allows solo-ing, it’s far more efficient to solo your way through the levels than to group.
The answer? Grouping Incentives. Like Damiano said, give people MORE xp for grouping. Give them bonuses of all different kinds for grouping. Give them titles for joining a certain number of groups, or completing a certain number of quests while grouped.
Also, away from grouping incentives, free up those chains somehow. Too many quests in today’s quest driven MMOs are chained. You do 3 quests, and want help on the 4th, but your friend needs to do the 1st 3 before he can get credit for the 4th, so you’re left to help him catch up 1st. Or worse, you don’t have a friend on, and finding someone to help you get a quest done becomes harder because there are so many different steps to a chain.
I’m not saying let people skip content by jumping in on a chain, but maybe create a “partial share” system, where the player on quest 4 could share the quest with someone’s who already done it, or someone a quest or two behind and that person would then receive partial XP (50%?) when player 1 finishes the quest as long as the two are still grouped.
I’m certain that’s not not about balancing the amounts of group content compared to solo-content. It’s about balancing the incentives for doing either. As a game designer, were someone to allow me to be one, I would never want to limit my players’ ability to accomplish the tasks I set before them. I would always want them to be able to do what they wish, even if I had to work harder at designing a way how. Yes, I’m talking even letting them raid onyxia or take part in epic boss fights without having to be in that uber guild.
Think WAR’s Public Quests and you have an idea where I’m headed. You should never limit your players’ ability to PLAY. Plain and simple. Doing so is just plain bad design. It shows your lack of ability to think of ways to entertain people. Instead, the focus should be on getting everyone involved in EVERYTHING. You as a designer should cater to your players, not the other way around.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go post this at my blog.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:58 pm - Edit
Here’s a concern with giving more xp for grouping though: do we want to *further* hasten an already fast leveling process? I’m still of the mind that levels are what caused this whole “end-game” mentality to begin with, but I won’t go there. The faster you get people to level cap, the faster you’re inviting them to leave the game. I’ve lost count of how many players in WoW who were of the mindset that level cap meant “game over.” In some cases, it was game over for that character and another was created and started over. In other cases, it was quite literally game over — the player canceled their account and either went to a different game or just left the MMO genre altogether. We vets who have been doing this for years or who know what to do with the almighty end-game might scoff at them for doing that but… are they wrong? They have their opinion, their way of playing the game. We have ours. If they felt they got all they wanted out of the game, that they felt fully satisfied and justified with the price of the box and subscription, then who are we to tell them they’re wrong simply because we don’t hold to those same beliefs?
Yes, I went on a tangent, that’s perfectly normal for me…
September 19th, 2007 at 5:49 pm - Edit
Can I say something potentially incendiary?
Grouping is dead. And good riddance too. Duoing is the new grouping. 5-mans are the new raids. Solo play - or a solid emphasis in solo play most of the time - will be the new modus operandi.
This has nothing to do with grouping in itself (which is nice), but a lot to do with the fact that so far no game has been able to deal with the problem of solving group logistics. Maybe it really has no solution, since I think to a large extent this is the old problem of getting 5 people to agree on a lunch time or place. There’s nothing inherently bad with grouping, but the game experience and ultimately the enjoyment players get from their session, has the potential of going to hell much faster via grouping than solo/duoing. What has been killing grouping all this time is logistics, not grouping itself.
Until we can solve from the design all the small little quirks and maladies that come attached with the act of grouping (and we all know what they are, because we’ve all been there), when a player instinctively runs the investment/fun equation in his head, soloing or duoing make much more sense from many perspectives. If to this we add that through the years we’ve been making games more and more solo friendly, things naturally balance to that side of things.
That’s just a long-winded way of saying that if you don’t go to the extremes of harcore grouper and soloer, and if you offer your average player the chance to group or solo for a comparable reward, we shouldn’t be surprised if you end up with a lot more people soloing than grouping.
Want it shorter even? 3 of 4 times grouping is not worth the associated hassle.
This has absolutely nothing with being or not being antisocial. Because grouping, while it is a very social activity, is not the only one. Your average soloer is guilded, has friends, posts in forums when he needs to, is more or less active in his guild community and may or may not help others. He simply (and again, instinctively almost sometimes) doesn’t like other players in the way/in control of his time, fun or both.
It’s perfectly possible to be social, and sociable, in a shared space without having to group to prove it. To say that grouping is in a way a requisite to be social is borderline saying that if I don’t take showers with my friends I’m not a friendly person. There’s a time and place for everything after all.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:46 pm - Edit
Julian - I think you make a good point with duoing. There were times when I was playing WoW, and even EQ2, when I would opt to play with one or two other friends for the evening instead of a full group. Most of the time it was because it wasn’t something that required a full group, but we still wanted to “hang out” together while we did the quests or farmed or whatever.
I’m not going to say I never solo, because I do at times, but mostly its when I’m farming or maybe just running a few quests. I guess my point was that when you group, it’s inherently a social process. You meet new people (potentially), connect with old friends, talk, and maybe even talk some smack and laugh a bit. If you solo to to max level, you’ll never really have those opportunties. Yes, you can chat to people in /tell or /guild, but that’s just chat. I think there is still something one misses in terms of sharing an adventure and experiecing the teamwork necessary to overcome an obstacle.
And yes it’s true that in EQ you definitely had to group earlier and often due to the game content. I guess I just have never seen that as a bad thing, but then again I’m much more likely to group with others and play for the evening than I am to log on and solo every night. I get bored to tears soloing to be honest (well, aside from the early levels of any game which most people solo).
Talyn - to your point about EQ grouping. I guess I just don’t see grouping with others to do the content of the game as a “selfish agenda to progress somewhere”. It’s selfish to want to play the game with other people?? So if I solo’d the same content, I’m less selfish? Maybe I’m missing your point, but that just seems counter-intuitive to me.
Solo play is here to stay, absolutely. And I agree players need to have options. Maybe I’m just an old student in a new school. I “grew up” so to speak grouping with others for the most part when playing these games. So maybe I’ve just developed a personal preference. But as I stated originally, I can’t help but wonder if we’re losing something from these games when everyone becomes an island unto themselves.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:59 pm - Edit
Oh also a note of thanks to everyone who replied here. This was a topic that I honestly thought wouldn’t get a comment, so I’m glad people felt strongly enough to have a conversation.
And I’m glad Bildo that you got a blog entry out of it!
September 19th, 2007 at 8:00 pm - Edit
No, my point is that so damn often I hear all the EQ vets and the “Group or Die!” crowd making it sound like the good old days of grouping in EQ was magical, created world peace, and cured all known diseases while angels sang from the heavens. In reality, everyone didn’t see the EQ box on the store shelf and think to themselves “this is great! I can login and group and get to know everyone in the world all day!” They logged in, got a direction or agenda (ie. “hey I want to go to this new zone,” or “hey, I need some more gold,” etc.) but in order to accomplish it, they had to get in a group. It had nothing whatsoever to do with “yay, I’m on the server now hello everyone let’s group yay!” Grouping was a means to an end and motivated by our own selfish desires to progress along whatever our personal agenda happened to be that day. Was it quite often a social process? Did we make good friends we’ve never met? Did we have experiences we’ll remember forever? Absolutely, there’s no denying that. But I stand by my opinion that every single old school EQ player was not a virtual socialite, was not grouped 100% of the time because it brought them the ultimate enjoyment or happiness out of the game, it was because it was a means to an end to get that enjoyment and happiness. I’m not using the term “selfish” implying “meh we’re all selfish jerks, etc.” but rather that *because* there was little alternative to grouping, which most likely is something we wouldn’t do otherwise, we had “selfish” ulterior motives for the grouping — perhaps in addition to enjoying the virtual company of others, perhaps not.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:58 pm - Edit
I have had so many bad experiences with grouping including me wiping our group because I had clue what I was doing. I felt like a jerk, they made sure I felt like a jerk, forever a negative experience.
Happened several times which made me swear off raiding. That was only with early instances like WC, RFC and DM. I cant imagine what kind of havoc I would have caused in MC and others.
I’ve had other instances where I went WAY WAY out of my way to help a guildie and the favor was never returned. That long day I spent grinding over in Westfall for my rogue mask. I didnt know about about the Horde repair guy in the busted up inn, all my gear was broken and I was fighting with a skinning knife. I was a level 16 rogue and my fiance had her 12 rogue tanking for me…god that was long. So a guildie comes on wants me to help him get his mask, I travel all the way back, help him get his mask.
I later needed help with the level 20 rogue quest. He finished it at 20 with someones help. I was 23 needing help, he refused. On my end I have just seen so much bad, but perhaps that will change.
Till then though, I solo. *shrugs* If I cant solo in a game, I get bored and leave. Its hard to trust others and again Im not saying Im right. Just sharing experiences and hoping, like I said they will change.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:58 pm - Edit
That was supposed to say “I had NO clue..” I didnt, I still dont *grins*
September 20th, 2007 at 7:27 am - Edit
Right, Kev. I don’t think what you’re saying has no value. I mean, the EQ experiences were real, happened and of course there probably is a case to be made that, just going by simple statistics, if you ‘force’ your players to group all the time, you’ll tend to end up with better groupers. That’s not in discussion.
What I am disputing is that grouping somehow “reflects the spirit of the genre better” or that grouping “makes people more social”. I think grouping in the vast majority of cases is a social element. What I’m contending is how it’s not the only one, and how it’s not even the most important one.
I think EQ Grouping reflects the spirit of EQ and that’s it. Not of the whole genre. I’m sure it wasn’t the intention, but it does sound a bit close to that other common talking point that I inevitably see thrown around in these discussions, the one that goes: “The ‘M’ there is for ‘Multiplayer’. If you don’t group, you’re not playing the game ‘right’”, or the ever popular, “If you don’t wanna group then go play Oblivion.”
I’ve always found those as silly as the old “It’s ‘World of *WAR*craft, so if you don’t PvP what are you doing here, dumbass?”
Sometimes we take one item, or one vein of any game and we assume it projects outwards, and encompasses everything, and all other activities somehow become of a lesser station compared to this one, and that item or vein is ‘The Way’(tm) - and I’m as guilty of this as any other neighborhood kid sometimes, so I ain’t pointing fingers. Just illustrating a phenomenon.
In a nutshell, what I think:
- Grouping is a social activity, but not the only one.
- Grouping has a lot of logistical problems that get in the way of a players fun, and haven’t been solved yet from the design.
- Given the choice to group or solo for a comparable reward, most people will go solo just out of a simple cost/benefit calculation.
- Not grouping does not equal not being social. It’s perfectly possible to be social and not want to group, just as it’s perfectly possible to like pizza, but not when it has pineapples on it.
- There isn’t (or there shouldn’t be, rather) one way which is ‘The Way’(tm). If there is one ‘The Way’(tm), you’re either forcing or funneling your players there for whatever reason (see WoW, level cap, raiding) or the rest of the other ways are so broken they’re not used.
And finally,
- The lessons of EQ are the lessons of EQ. I don’t think they should be made extensive to the whole genre, because some of those lessons are already almost 10 years old. The games have changed. The playerbase has changed. Collectively we don’t expect new EQs anymore, so why should we go by what EQ did or didn’t do? (not saying there’s nothing to gain or extract from EQ. it’s simply a quasi-philosophical point)
Maybe at some point some designer is gonna come up with a solution or an implementation that does away with all the junk that comes attached to grouping and will make it attractive to the masses again. I don’t know. Maybe it happens. Until then, soloing/duoing is where it’s at. Furthermore, it’s where it should be, I think.
Cheers!
September 20th, 2007 at 8:13 am - Edit
Going back to the forced grouping thing in EQ, there was one huge thing it that game that was the root of the game being more “social” - downtime. You really had nothing else to do while meding and looking at that spellbook but chat with your group.
You also had time while you were traveling to wherever it was you were going - that took some time. Of course on the flip side you had time while you were standing around waiting for that elusive spot that was camped 24/7
Maybe its because I’m older now however I find that a lot of the mmo’s I try these days are just full speed ahead - no time to sit and yak, no time to actually get to know the people your grouped with its just quest to quest to quest. Maybe thats what folks want nowadays or maybe thats what the gaming companies are telling us thats what we want
I dound that LotR was the worst for this - get a group and half the members leave after you’ve completed a quest that took all of 15min.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:13 am - Edit
Well the playerbase matured. How many of that first generation EQers 10 years ago are now married with kids and other obligations, and now find themselves with only being able to game in chunks of 2-3 hours instead of the marathon 10-12 hour sittings they used to put 10 years ago?
There was no discussion of ‘hardcore’ vs ‘casual’ in the heyday of EQ, and if there was it wasn’t such as sticking point as it is now. Games have changed in that regard because they had to change to accomodate that playing section that feels games just the same as they did 10 years, still love gaming as they did 10 years ago, still takes gaming as their primary hobby just as they did 10 years ago, but simply don’t have the time to sit down and put up with a design that’s still written for 10-12 hour marathon runners.
Games had to change to accomodate variable chunks of playtime, most of those shorter, because they had to. Otherwise, inevitably, those players would’ve left the game because they couldn’t get anything done in the available time they had. One of the things that changed was grouping - again, logistics rears its head. Considering the pretty much across the board utter failure of LFG solutions, coupled with the logistics of finding groups and getting together, if you tell someone that only has 2-3 hours to play that he may spend 1 hour just trying to find/put a group together, and you don’t give him any other thing to do in the meantime, you’re just asking for that player to eventually kick that game in the butt.
As a designer (particularly as an MMO designer
) you’re pretty much expected to piss off your playerbase every now and then…. but not too much, you know.
So, enter the focus on soloing. We already have one modern (as in way post EQ) of one game that failed utterly, amongst other things, because it was all about forced grouping. Not saying that forced group killed it, but it was cited as a major issue by a lot of the players.
It just doesn’t work anymore. We have changed. Games have changed. Soloing/duoing is where most of the playing time is, and if your games are not designed around that, you’re only designing for the 1% of the faithful hardcore. That ain’t good design, as much as it follows the spirit of old.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:11 pm - Edit
Julian - While I agree with what you say I also feel the the mmo market itself is changing. I think we are getting to the point that the tools and bandwidth are getting cheaper and we should see over the next while some smaller independants enter the mmo field to fill the needs of those “fringe” players. I think that the games that are coming now are apealing more to the mass market and they are leaving the real gamers behind. Companies still make products that appeal to the “hardcore” wargaming crowd and I hope we see some products that can fill that niche as it relates to the mmo world.
September 20th, 2007 at 3:33 pm - Edit
I’ve said before the so-called hardcore are only hardcore in forums and blogs. Case in point: Vanguard. McQuaid, former quasi-diety of the hardcore, went on and on about how “hardcore” his game would be. None of this “easy mode” WoW stuff (never mind that he claims to have never played WoW, so how would he know?). And his flock of loyal (yeah, right) vanboi’s cried “Yes! Yes! Give us more! We want no instances, we want challenge, (and my favorite:) we want meaningful travel again, no teleporting and griffons! Do this for us and we will worship you forever and sacrifice our first-born children in your name!”
Along came beta and ‘lo and behold, their diety gave them exactly what they asked for. The response? “WTF? This takes too long to group, can you speed this crap up a bit? You know, teleport us and fast travel?” Ah yes, hardcore indeed.
On the whole multiplayer vs. singleplayer “go play Oblivion” argument, I’ll put a slightly different spin on what I’ve been saying this whole thread. MM: massively multiplayer. Login to your favorite flavor of the month MMO and what do you see? Multiple players, right? Your typical “non-massively multiplayer” game supports 4-64 (typically 16-32) players, so you’re also witnessing “massively multiplayer” in action. Now, take another look around, and pay attention to the chats. You’re telling me you want to adventure with each and every one of them? Hardly. Life is the ultimate MMORPG and just like in our games, we have the choice whether to do our own thing or to do things with others, and the context and manner in which we do those things with others. There is no need to meet and become personally acquainted with every single human on the planet. Similarly, there is no need to acquaint yourself with every player.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:04 pm - Edit
Hamish: Yeah, by all means. Whether it comes from reduced development and maintenance costs or whatever other reason, let’s have 100 MMOs at any given time. Let’s have 1000. That can only be good.
I think there is room for the hardcore and the casual. Maybe not in the same game? Maybe we can’t design one thing that utterly satisfies both? Well, then no matter. Let’s design two things then, and let players fall where they want.
But on the other hand, we also know full well (not just from the McQuaid example above) that designing for the 1% is not really a very good idea the broader the design is. WoW bait and switched its playerbase with the switch at 60 to raids of ever-increasing logistical requirements, and that exists as it is. However, there’s no escaping the logic of simple facts: The more you design for the 1%, the less players you’re going to acquire/retain outside that 1%.
Maybe this is not about designing accessible games and to carebear everything up for its own sake or because it’s the post-WoW fad. Maybe it happens that we’re slowly realizing that keeping more players entertained is better than keeping less players entertained, at any given point, on any given game.
You want to design a game for the hardcore? Then by all means do so. Those games have a place and they need to exist, for the same reason flight sims, sub sims and old skool grognard war game fest games need to exist in gaming. But don’t mislead people. And by that I mean, don’t go around promising the amazing experience that caters to all when in reality you know full well you’re designing for the faithful hardcore, and you’re just hoping the rest invests enough time/energy/mindtime in the game that they have to think twice about quitting when they get to the point where they’re not satisfied.
And we all get to those points.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:39 pm - Edit
@DamianoV’s comment:
I don’t think this would plummet. If you took a lot of the abilites of the Captain in LOTRO and maybe instead gave those to players when they gained tiers of experience based on the amount of adventuring experience they gained while leading/participating in a group, i think you could have an alternate way to specialize your character and yet show to all that you have experience grouping with others.
@ Bildo’s comment:
I like this partial/shared XP idea. Sure, maybe you didn’t actually help the NPC from the start, but you were there when it really counted and why shouldn’t you get something from them for your time?
@ Julian
Damn, You have me torn on this. On one hand I agree with your assumptions about the playerbase choosing to spend their time soloing rather than grouping. On the other hand, when I look back, all of the times I can call great and fun when playing MMO’s were because I was grouped.
You are right in the aspect that the duo/small group is where its at. Vanguard based a majority of their content around this and when I was in a small (4 player) group, we went through a lot of it and I know there was even more. I don’t think it failed in this regard because when I did play I had plenty to do because I was always grouped.
In the end, I really think you nailed it in this comment.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:38 pm - Edit
Brackish:
Yeah, myself as well, if I were to look back… (who am I kidding, I’m always looking back )… I could also point to many, many fun memories that were in group.
And I’m not talking about cybering. Well, not necessarily at least.
However, I find myself immediately asking the question: Did that fun happen *while* I was in a group? Or *because* I was in a group? Subtle difference there. In other words, do we see the fun happening in groups because we’re putting the ‘meatier’ fun content in areas/quests only accessible in a group? Or is this fun originating from the group, or the act of grouping itself?
Ask around WoW players and I’m sure a few are going to quote one of their good moments when they finally got to Ragnaros after maybe months of sticking it in MC, and saw him coming out of the lava, bitch-slapping ‘Domo and the encounter itself. So, true… you needed a group to get there because it was designed that way. But that particular encounter? That minute or so of scripting, and graphics and audio and ambience and design… what was the group doing? Nothing. Standing around, watching everything unfold. Therefore, that fun existed separate from the raid. Element by element, there was no reason for a group to be a necessity for that fun except that MC was designed in that way.
I’m not knocking raiding. Or grouping for that matter. I raided, I grouped. Got many t-shirts. What I’m saying is that when we look back and we ask ourselves that question, many times the answer is that the group had nothing to do with the fun at that particular moment in time. The group was merely a necessity to access that separate fun, as mandated by the design.
If we designed encounters like Rag (or any other memorable encounter at the end of any raid) and we stuck them at the end of 5-mans, does it mean they’re no longer fun because there aren’t 35 other people watching the thing?
September 29th, 2007 at 2:18 pm - Edit
I think the problem is not that people can and do solo. That is pretty much a necessity because if you can’t solo, then you often can’t play due to scheduling conflicts etc.
But the problem as I see it is the whole gotta do everything with max efficiency. As that mentality sinks in the players spend less and less time communicating, making new friends, helping newbies etc. Because none of those things advances thier characters. This is what killed WOW for me.
Go to the forums Guilds are falling apart regularly over this. Once people have thier rep grinds etc done they for the most part don’t look back and the people coming up slowly are looked down on and ignored because they aren’t efficient enough to even be noticed. Thus they have to solo more. Thus you have more people soloing to endgame and sucking in groups. Thus less people Pug because grouping keeps getting worse.
There has to be some incentive to make grouping worth the effort of finding 5 or 10 and getting them together to see the content. Right now that’s not there in a lot of games.
I know a lot of people are perfectly happy with a solo game with a chat channel built in but I think the longevity of any game would be greatly enhanced if the rewards positively encouraged people to go through the effort of grouping. More people would make friends and as thier social circle grows they’ll be less likely to leave the game.
September 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm - Edit
Some of my favorite MMO memories involve groups of people (my guild mostly) but we were not “grouped” so does that count? We were accomplishing a task together but no need to be grouped to do it. Does that mean we were gang-soloing?
As for incentive, what if we took DDO’s concept of difficulty levels, which also affect the loot and xp tables, and auto-scale the content to the size of the group? Soloing and Duoing is pretty much the routine these days, with larger groups only occasionally. If it’s an instance we’re talking about, why not just auto-scale the instance difficulty to give more incentive to be grouped with more and more people? Note that once again, however, we’re grouping out of selfish motives. The more people I group with for this, the more xp I get; the better loot I get… There’s nothing intrinsically altruistic about MMO content, grouped or otherwise. It’s all about the people, and people are naturally selfish.