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A compromise for loot rewards.
Veridic
Member Posts: 72
I know the topic has been discussed many times- but it usually comes down to sheer opinion and personal feeling and usually voids any logical arguement in one direction or the other. I have tried to look at it from both perspectives (pro grouping) (solo) and I come to the conclusion that both should be viable to achieve the same end- but the time taken to do either must be augmented.
When thinking of loot there must be a base line for comparison, and for simplicities sake we will say a solo mob can be killed by any class and provides loot with a value of 1.
Mob A takes 1 competent person to kill
- (This mob is scaled to 1, 1 person should be able to kill it and receives loot with a value of 1...)
Mob B takes 2 competent people to kill
- (This mob is scaled to 2... by adding hit points and/or skills to increase an avg dps making the mob require more dps or larger survivability than mob A. This mob should then drop 2 items with the value of 1 or 1 item with the value of 2)
This scale just increases- the greater number of people needed, the greater the value of the piece that drops because each of those people solo, should then each receive an item with the value of 1. We do not find this to be the case- instead we find 1 item with the value equal to the number of people needed to take it down (this value is also increased in magnitude depending on the level of said boss). And that has become the standard.
Feeling that you should be able to get the same loot in one fight solo as the loot that took 25 to achieve is a selfish unfounded feeling that should be quashed.
However- I cannot argue against being able to put in 25x the am ount of work to be able to achieve whattook those 25 people say 30 minutes to get for 1 person- aka you should have to spend close to 12 and a half hours working towards a specific piece of gear that would take 25 people to get in 30 minutes. I would be ok with this- even though in a 25 man raid you have a 1/25 chance to get that value 25 piece of gear... There have been nights where I've gotten full sets... and other nights when I get nothing. I feel the solo work that would lead to the same gear should longer to achieve either way. Whether it be through chain quests or solo work for pieces to forge said gear- it should be a viable option that scales with the task at hand.
I personally hate having to get together with a bunch of helmet wearing short busers to get that piece of gear I want- but I know I am not entitled to said gear without paying my dues of head banging- I would honestly be willing to do an epic quest of sorts to get said gear. I know my logic may be flawed, but it makes sense to me... any compromise from the J00 MUST RAID FOR PHAT GEARZ commitee?
Whatcha think?
ALL YOUR PLAYER BASE ARE BELONG TO KITTY!
Comments
If you can solo the whole game up to level cap, why can't you solo anymore after that? In a solo game, soloers should be able to get the best loot available.
Few things to consider:
- You should not be able to obtain all loot you want, or it should be very hard in order to keep you playing
- Loot needs to be uncommon, if it is common it loses it's value
- Team/Group play should be promoted in MMOs
You do write from WoW experience albeit do not mention it directly, but it is hard to miss. I am not sure, but it seems like you did not play vanilla WoW, which had a better balance handing out rewards in my opinion. I think you would have hated it.
I feel the solo work that would lead to the same gear should longer to achieve either way. Whether it be through chain quests or solo work for pieces to forge said gear- it should be a viable option that scales with the task at hand.
Isn't Blizzard already changing the game so that you can get emblems from Heroic dungeons that can be used to get 25-man raid gear? I am sure it is not far that you can get emblems from more quests, like with Sunwell.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
IN the end, the difficulty and rarity of a piece of equipment or weapon increases our thrill when it is obtained.
If its too easy, no one cares.
Its a tough middle road that game designers must tread which is even m ore difficult when you take into account that every player's definition of 'too hard' and 'too easy' is different.
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I do indirectly reference WoW- only because it has become the standard for a basis of comparison when referring to MMO's.
I did play Vanilla WoW and I was thrilled when I hit Warlord... never got to HWL but damn it was fun trying- my roots however are from Everquest.
I am merely trying to find a median that would satisfy the solo style and still provide reason and meaning in grouping.
I loved epic quests in EQ- you could solo a good portion of it (though it was tough) and could come together with your guild to or friends to get the pieces you couldn't get on your own... I think grouping is an intricate part of an MMO but should be much less mandatory to achieve in game glory ^ ^. (Hence why I loved the old title system).
I think it is something that can be achieved by a game and has been before- but pandering to either side too much yields a lop sided whimper of nostalgia from people who liked it how it was. (I know I fit in to this category).
I have spent numerous hours raiding to get the best gear in many games- but I sympathize with those who wish to solo to achieve great things as well... it can't be overly complicated for such a system to exist.
ALL YOUR PLAYER BASE ARE BELONG TO KITTY!
The solution for fixing solo/group is to make everything soloable. However by soloing you're only going to be able to to kill say 1 maybe 2 of the bosses in the dungeon before you tire out. In a group of four you'd be able to 5 to 7of the bosses. So grouping does have a "quantity" advantage and a speed one, but it's not the only way.
It's also worth noting that during the encounter your health/mana/energy does not "passively" recover, and healing items are very limited in the amount you can carry. Likewise you're probably going to need to change how loot works.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
All that token stuff is meaningless to a soloer. I still have to group to get the damn tokens, so Wow still = no endgame for soloers. Pre-WOTLK I had 6 70s, and I felt none of them had anything worthwhile to do, unless I was going to group. So long, Wow. Solo friendly my ass.
I am fully in support of a game that lets everyone have a shot at every piece of loot in the game without ever once being forced to group.
However, the group game still must be there, and it must be encouraged and easy to find teams. For encouragement, you can offer things like exp bonuses but since we're talking about loot here, it should be easier or at the very least much shorter. So a team of say, six, could get through several bosses and acquire several shinies in a few hours.
Each of those shinies should be obtainable by a much, much longer method solo.
The groupers often say "If people can get it solo, they will only get it that way". I disagree. If the difference in effort/time is great enough, people will group to get it done.
Three things:
1. For some groupers, no matter if the equivalent solo path was a hundred times longer, they will resent that the item can be obtained without a group, as they feel it diminishes their accomplishment.
2. For some soloers, they feel that if the solo method is more than a little longer than the group one, it's unfair.
3. You can't please all the people, all the time.
One solution would be to make two separate games: one for soloers, and one for groupers. However, I think that any MMO that already decides to cut off one group or the other is severely limiting it's potential customer base and therefore is understandably reluctant to do so.
A few random points:
- Diablo2 never required grouping and yet people did it all the time.
- If a game announces itself as heavily one way or the other, it will automatically steer away some customers. (For myself, i won't set foot in any FF game because of their heavy grouping focus). Many companies know this, and thus advertise themselves as being very accessible to both playstyles.
- There is no "correct" way, each of us knows what we like. However, I would love to see game developers be more honest in where their game's focus is. If the game lets you solo to the end and then forces you to group, fine. But say so up front. I would hope that both sides can at least agree on that last point.
Reguarding the tokens in WoW, the top rated plate chestpiece for protection pallys (Unbreakable Chestguard) has: 2348 armor, 105 strength, 159 stamina, + 60 defense, + 51 shield block, + 77 block value of shield. That of course is completely out of the question for solo players, but say you're willing to accept something in the bottom of the top 50 plate (Heroes' Redemption Breastplate), the stats are: 2241 armor, 89 strength, 111 stamina, + 38 defense, + 47 shield block, + 59 block value of shield.
Surely while raiders are wearing the former they wouldn't begrudge solo players the considerably inferior latter item....well, let's see what a solo player has to do to get the Heroes' Redemption Breastplate:
A quick check shows it's sold by plate armor merchant Griselda Hunderland in Dalaran in exhange for one Chestguard of the Lost Conqueror, which is in turn sold by one of two emblem of heroism quartermasters, Arcanist Ivrenne or Magistrix Lambriesse, again in Dalaran for 80 Emblem of Heroism. Simple enough so far, now lets see the so called easy mode path soloers have to get those emblems:
All they have to do is kill any combination of Anub'arak, Cyanigosa, Gal'darah, Herald Volazj, Ingvar the Plunderer, Keristrasza, King Ymiron, Ley-Guardian Eregos, Loken, Mal'Ganis, Sjonnir The Ironshaper, or The Prophet Tharon'ja 40 times in daily heroics to get the 80 emblems needed.
So, my question to people who are still playing WoW is can you honestly say that task is an acheivable one for solo players?
You missed my point. Emblems were added to daily quests in TBC when Sunwell came out. So you could get them through solo questing very easily. I am pretty sure that Blizzard will add them to WoTLK as well.
Plus, I still think that promoting solo player path with in a massively multiplayer game is self-defeating. But of course there have to be solo tasks that people can perform.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
You missed my point. Emblems were added to daily quests in TBC when Sunwell came out. So you could get them through solo questing very easily. I am pretty sure that Blizzard will add them to WoTLK as well.
They'll add them just before the next expansion comes out, whereupon they will be as worthless as the Sunwell ones now.
You might be right, but people still go after them like a pack of hungry wolves. Blizzard is very good at keeping people addicted on loot. They learned the lesson all too well from Diablo 2 and now have refined it for the masses.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I just want each major playstyle (raiding/grouping/PVP/solo) to have a viable means of progression.
They should offer nearly-equivalent loot (but specialized to the playstyle they come from; like how PVP has resilience and is specialized to PVP.)
And it's also important to vary the difficulty/duration to create balanced challenges between the playstyles. Solo content either needs to be harder, take longer, or some combination of longer/harder. But the outputs of that progression should be vaguely equal to the other playstyles.
MMO appeal is optimized when players can choose whatever playstyle they enjoy in order to progress their character. Personally I'm a small-group guy. Give me Tier 0.5-style dungeon progression quests where the challenge is high but the rewards are equivalent to raid gear and I'll be happy -- because I won't have 24 teammates constantly preventing me from progressing.
For WOW specifically, these suggestions would require a few important things to be true:
1. Obviously current solo content is neither long nor difficult, so it doesn't meet the longer/harder requirements I mentioned above.
2. Serv3er population would have to be tweaked. Currently it can be difficult to get a mere 5-ma together...and this is before soloing is a viable playstyle. If solo becomes viable with no other changes, it siphons players away from the grouping pool and complicates this issue. So something like cross-server instancing would have to become a reality to make a solo progresison work.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
From what I have seen thus far- no one disputes that giving the solo player an option to achieve comperative end game gear would be a good idea. And that an implementation of such wouldn't be too hard overall- as long as the time/difficulty matched the reward.
It made sense to me, but the reason I was pondering in the first place is that it is only logical- why hasn't it been done in a major MMO? Is it that big of a leap? Does it actually involve any risk minus making outcast the elitist of the hardcore (which in a game like WoW compose what, .5%?)...
Thanks for the great replies guys- it is nice to know that others have similar feelings on this.
One more thing- I find it quite amusing when people say they deserve the better loot for doing something with more people... you rely so much on other people... how is that more of an accomplishment than doing something yourself? Unless your the leader of said party/raid ... you managed to follow simple directions... grats MONKAY!
ALL YOUR PLAYER BASE ARE BELONG TO KITTY!
You might be right, but people still go after them like a pack of hungry wolves. Blizzard is very good at keeping people addicted on loot. They learned the lesson all too well from Diablo 2 and now have refined it for the masses.
The problem is solo players have no other option at the moment if they want to play a decent MMO, so they bite their tongues and accept second class citizenship rather than do what I did and vote with their wallets. They have to learn that the short term pain of refusing to compromise their playstyle is the only path towards equality available to them.