Well the point of an MMO is to either play with someone, or kick someones ass, they add solo play so if you dont have friends that play with you, you can go it alone until you make some, or so you can get some stuff done while they are not on. An mmo with both has potential, an mmo with 1 of the 2 wont likely make it.
Says who? Who died and made you the arbiter of what MMOs are supposed to be?
This is essentially what GW2 is doing. Seemless flow between "grouping" (e.g. working together) and soloing where grouping is not punished by the mechanics in any way and working together is encouraged. Looks like good stuff to me. Conflict is relegated to PvP areas.
If it works the same way as Public Quests in Warhammer Online then it's not going to appeal to me. I always felt disjointed from the action when doing those quests, there was no cohesion between the people involved, we all just did our own thing until we either won or lost. Speaking for myself, I like to group so I can be a part of a team and interact with the people involved - just being in the same area doing the same thing doesn't feel even remotely the same.
It doesn't work that way. It scales with the number of players and everyone gets rewards based on their level of participation (and people that don't participate don't make the content scale up) for starters. That encourages everyone to try their best, unlike Warhammer's system. Also, this isn't meant to be the really challenging group content (though some of it is harder than others), though you can certainly form groups and do this content with old friends or make new friends on your way. The GW2 system provides a pretty seemless transition between running across someone and helping them out and grouping with someone. After you get one done you can even follow up on the DE chain.
Further, GW2's combat system will make it so you are interacting with other people. Cross-profession combos are not something you need a group to set up, but starting one off is something others can and will participate in (which essentially creates another massive difference between GW2 and Warhammer). This makes teamwork between non-grouped people easy to do and immediately rewarding.
This is essentially what GW2 is doing. Seemless flow between "grouping" (e.g. working together) and soloing where grouping is not punished by the mechanics in any way and working together is encouraged. Looks like good stuff to me. Conflict is relegated to PvP areas.
If it works the same way as Public Quests in Warhammer Online then it's not going to appeal to me. I always felt disjointed from the action when doing those quests, there was no cohesion between the people involved, we all just did our own thing until we either won or lost. Speaking for myself, I like to group so I can be a part of a team and interact with the people involved - just being in the same area doing the same thing doesn't feel even remotely the same.
And that's from a pro-grouper.
For me, in the pro-soloing crowd, it doesn't work either. When soloing, I do not want my success or failure to be dependent upon others. In a situation like the one described, I could do absolutely no wrong and still fail. For the times I do choose to group, I like to do so out of desire and hate to do so out of necessity or, as in the example, forced mechanics.
If you really want to just solo, then in GW2 you can go do your personal storyline stuff. You could also take your chances going to a zone without many people and sticking to an area off the beaten track.
This is essentially what GW2 is doing. Seemless flow between "grouping" (e.g. working together) and soloing where grouping is not punished by the mechanics in any way and working together is encouraged. Looks like good stuff to me. Conflict is relegated to PvP areas.
If it works the same way as Public Quests in Warhammer Online then it's not going to appeal to me. I always felt disjointed from the action when doing those quests, there was no cohesion between the people involved, we all just did our own thing until we either won or lost. Speaking for myself, I like to group so I can be a part of a team and interact with the people involved - just being in the same area doing the same thing doesn't feel even remotely the same.
It doesn't work that way. It scales with the number of players and everyone gets rewards based on their level of participation (and people that don't participate don't make the content scale up) for starters. That encourages everyone to try their best, unlike Warhammer's system. Also, this isn't meant to be the really challenging group content (though some of it is harder than others), though you can certainly form groups and do this content with old friends or make new friends on your way. The GW2 system provides a pretty seemless transition between running across someone and helping them out and grouping with someone. After you get one done you can even follow up on the DE chain.
Further, GW2's combat system will make it so you are interacting with other people. Cross-profession combos are not something you need a group to set up, but starting one off is something others can and will participate in (which essentially creates another massive difference between GW2 and Warhammer). This makes teamwork between non-grouped people easy to do and immediately rewarding.
Oh goodie. No there's no point in grouping at all, since the interaction with other players is done automatically for you. Nice... Nice design plan.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
This is essentially what GW2 is doing. Seemless flow between "grouping" (e.g. working together) and soloing where grouping is not punished by the mechanics in any way and working together is encouraged. Looks like good stuff to me. Conflict is relegated to PvP areas.
If it works the same way as Public Quests in Warhammer Online then it's not going to appeal to me. I always felt disjointed from the action when doing those quests, there was no cohesion between the people involved, we all just did our own thing until we either won or lost. Speaking for myself, I like to group so I can be a part of a team and interact with the people involved - just being in the same area doing the same thing doesn't feel even remotely the same.
It doesn't work that way. It scales with the number of players and everyone gets rewards based on their level of participation (and people that don't participate don't make the content scale up) for starters. That encourages everyone to try their best, unlike Warhammer's system. Also, this isn't meant to be the really challenging group content (though some of it is harder than others), though you can certainly form groups and do this content with old friends or make new friends on your way. The GW2 system provides a pretty seemless transition between running across someone and helping them out and grouping with someone. After you get one done you can even follow up on the DE chain.
Further, GW2's combat system will make it so you are interacting with other people. Cross-profession combos are not something you need a group to set up, but starting one off is something others can and will participate in (which essentially creates another massive difference between GW2 and Warhammer). This makes teamwork between non-grouped people easy to do and immediately rewarding.
Oh goodie. No there's no point in grouping at all, since the interaction with other players is done automatically for you. Nice... Nice design plan.
Sure there is. Grouping lets you keep track of where your groupmates are, talk to them easier, make decisions on what to do together, etc. Beyond dungeons of course, which are group-only naturally.
And of course, just because skills work together, doesn't mean no thinking about others will be involved. A elementalist wanting to provide a wall of fire so Rangers and the like shoot fire arrows, will want to think about placement.
Perhaps tens or maybe a hundred thousand or so played Castle Wolfenstein. How many millions play Call of Duty? It's much, much more successful than Wolfenstein ever dreamed of being. MMOs are far more successful than MUDs ever were. They are the way they are because they have been made more accessible to the general public instead of catering solely to a tiny minority of people.
You seem to forget the fact that games like Wolfenstein and MUD's were around when PC's were not a household item. Not so many people had computers back then. The difference between the amount of people playing Wolfenstein and Call of Duty isn't due to the games catering to a minority, it's because people simply didn't have the hardware.
PC's are everywhere now, some homes have more than one as well as personal laptops, of course there are going to be more people playing Call of Duty. It has nothing to do with who the game is aimed at. Same can be said for group based games - EverQuest was around in the late 90's. Look at the amount of PC's in homes now and you'll see why there are so many people playing WoW compared to early EQ.
Perhaps tens or maybe a hundred thousand or so played Castle Wolfenstein. How many millions play Call of Duty? It's much, much more successful than Wolfenstein ever dreamed of being. MMOs are far more successful than MUDs ever were. They are the way they are because they have been made more accessible to the general public instead of catering solely to a tiny minority of people.
You seem to forget the fact that games like Wolfenstein and MUD's were around when PC's were not a household item. Not so many people had computers back then. The difference between the amount of people playing Wolfenstein and Call of Duty isn't due to the games catering to a minority, it's because people simply didn't have the hardware.
PC's are everywhere now, some homes have more than one as well as personal laptops, of course there are going to be more people playing Call of Duty. It has nothing to do with who the game is aimed at. Same can be said for group based games - EverQuest was around in the late 90's. Look at the amount of PC's in homes now and you'll see why there are so many people playing WoW compared to early EQ.
That doesn't change the fact that COD and MMOs are a much, much more successful product than Wolfenstein and MUDs ever dreamed of being. Even today, which is more successful? MUDs or MMOs? Obviously, more people play MMOs than play MUDs, even though both are still in existence.
What you fail to recognize is that Wolfenstein and MUDs also catered to the widest possible audience at the time they came out. I've mentioned many times that those people who owned computers and had access to Internet connections back in the early 90s were, for all intents and purposes, geeks and nerds. Therefore, businesses targetted that kind of person in their products. Today, when just about everyone has a computer and an Internet connection, businesses are targetting a much wider audience and the geek and nerd market is quite small indeed, it just doesn't have the financial strength to be viable as a target audience for most games.
It's all about the money. It always has been, it always will be.
I find it rewarding when you can accomplish a lot just in solo play. When I think back to the older mmo's like EQ and AO those were some of the fondest memories wondering off in the middle of nowhere getting into trouble. There was a high sense of danger with those older games cause the penalties were massive when you died.
I remember in eq, jumping off the boat, not really knowing what was out there, under the water or other but I was truly freaked out to do it and i did for the rush. I had a blast killing sirens, knowing, i'm pretty much sol out her. I did alot of camping gear in eq as well I found it rewarding.
The newer games you just cant do that...well I suppose now we have the gold and gear farmers, that could be part of why you don't see it anymore. I love the solo mmo's but I don't think getting the best gear in the game should be obtained solo.
I remember in eq, jumping off the boat, not really knowing what was out there, under the water or other but I was truly freaked out to do it and i did for the rush. I had a blast killing sirens, knowing, i'm pretty much sol out her. I did alot of camping gear in eq as well I found it rewarding.
The newer games you just cant do that...well I suppose now we have the gold and gear farmers, that could be part of why you don't see it anymore. I love the solo mmo's but I don't think getting the best gear in the game should be obtained solo.
I'm not sure what games you've played in which that's the case. In the two most soloable games I can think of, WoW and LotRO, all the best gear, by far, is in raids; either by random drop, or by token rewards.
That doesn't change the fact that COD and MMOs are a much, much more successful product than Wolfenstein and MUDs ever dreamed of being. Even today, which is more successful? MUDs or MMOs? Obviously, more people play MMOs than play MUDs, even though both are still in existence.
That's a silly comparison though, it's like saying which is more successful today? The DX2-66 or the Quad Core 2.4GHz. One is way older and the other much more advanced, so of course the new one is going to be more successful. When you've just bought a graphics card worth over $500 I really don't think people are going to want to play MUD's, do you?
Originally posted by Cephus404
Today, when just about everyone has a computer and an Internet connection, businesses are targetting a much wider audience and the geek and nerd market is quite small indeed, it just doesn't have the financial strength to be viable as a target audience for most games.
Of course games are targetting a wider audience, the audience has got bigger so.. yeah, that sort of makes it a 'wider audience' by definition. That doesn't mean that a game like EverQuest couldn't be successful now, it's just companies are making games simpler to appeal to Grandma and Johnny 8 Year Old. If the audience is larger then that only means there are a larger portion with similar interests. You can't throw 1,000,000 people into a room and declare them all anti-grouping just because games have all been developed pro-soloing. People have many and varied tastes, so until something is released that tests the water, we'll never really know for sure.
Today, when just about everyone has a computer and an Internet connection, businesses are targetting a much wider audience and the geek and nerd market is quite small indeed, it just doesn't have the financial strength to be viable as a target audience for most games.
Of course games are targetting a wider audience, the audience has got bigger so.. yeah, that sort of makes it a 'wider audience' by definition. That doesn't mean that a game like EverQuest couldn't be successful now, it's just companies are making games simpler to appeal to Grandma and Johnny 8 Year Old. If the audience is larger then that only means there are a larger portion with similar interests. You can't throw 1,000,000 people into a room and declare them all anti-grouping just because games have all been developed pro-soloing. People have many and varied tastes, so until something is released that tests the water, we'll never really know for sure.
The population of people that played PC games 12 years ago and the one that plays them today are different in makeup as well as size. Just because the population owning PCs has increased doesn't mean that the "geeks and nerds" owning them is significantly different. Using your reasoning one would conclude that pretty much everyone has a cellphone for business since that was the dominating reason people had them early on.
Beyond that, Everquest is waaaay too grindy a game to be successful in the current market. It would also be hurt a lot by being even more finicky about group makeup than games like WoW and LotRO. Anyhow, anyone who thinks there are tons and tons of players that want to camp spawn points for days and spend forever getting a group of the right classes together is kidding themselves. A game like that would not do well on the current market. It would certainly do worse than the original Everquest given the competition out there now.
I'm not sure why some people on these forums (which is not represenitive of the gaming community of course), are so in favor of grouping systems that require people to spend a bunch of time preparing to have fun. Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, not a hurdle you have to jump over to enjoy the game.
Sadly most mmos today are catering to the soloists of the mmo world. Today just about every mmo and even new up and coming mmos will be almost 100% soloable. The days of group play and social intereaction are on the edge of extinction. I get more group play and social interaction Xbox Live.
Sadly most mmos today are catering to the soloists of the mmo world. Today just about every mmo and even new up and coming mmos will be almost 100% soloable. The days of group play and social intereaction are on the edge of extinction. I get more group play and social interaction Xbox Live.
You're blowing things tremendously out of proportion. Heck, even WoW has a lot of group play in it (not that I think the system is remotely perfect).
A lot of people act like you have to force people to play with others, and this really isn't the case. We're social creatures and will play with other people naturally without any coersion. The problem is MMOs have put up lots of barriers to grouping. You might have to get the exact right group, which takes a long time. You might get less experience or less challenge (which is less fun) if you are leveling with others. Sometimes quests become far more of a grind when done with others. There are many ways MMOs making grouping or otherwise doing things with others unnattractive.
The proper way to handle this problem isn't by trying to make soloing completely impossible -- soloing as a main activity for most in an MMO only becomes attractive when grouping is a headache. What needs to be done is the various barriers to working with others and grouping need to be done away.
This is one reason why I think GW2 has such a great model. If you do something with someone else, you don't suffer for it. It's a barrier-less entry into grouping. In most MMOs I've played, you meet people via wandering around, running into them, then grouping up and talking. This is a natural and fluid way to meet people while playing the game. Far better than a game like FFXI is/was where you spent half an hour to hours trying to form a group before you could do anything. However, even with this because of the punishment even during leveling, the game becomes a joke, boring, and many quests become megagrinds. This hurts how willing people are to group and loot mechanics make people more anti-social when others are nearby. By getting rid of all of these negative factors, doing things with others loses all the hindrances common in other MMOs.
More MMO makers need to really examine how they set up barriers to grouping and playing with others. Far too few devs really look at it seriously. Similarly, far too many players assume grouping either has to be heavy-handed or non-existent, with very little room inbetween when in fact there are other dimensions to consider.
The population of people that played PC games 12 years ago and the one that plays them today are different in makeup as well as size. Just because the population owning PCs has increased doesn't mean that the "geeks and nerds" owning them is significantly different. Using your reasoning one would conclude that pretty much everyone has a cellphone for business since that was the dominating reason people had them early on.
This is similar to Cehpus' comments and one I find quite odd. Why do you consider a group based game to be catering to 'geeks and nerds'? Why can't a game be made with a focus on grouping that can appeal to a vast majority of people? Sure, older games were aimed more at that crowd mainly because that crowd were the only ones with PC's, but now there are so many people with so many different personalities, to call them geeks or nerds for preferring a style of play is, I find, quite insulting. Not to me. I'm a geek and proud of it! But to the people who have bought a PC, found a game they like and have been labelled for no other reason than their preference differs to yours.
Originally posted by Drachasor
Beyond that, Everquest is waaaay too grindy a game to be successful in the current market. It would also be hurt a lot by being even more finicky about group makeup than games like WoW and LotRO. Anyhow, anyone who thinks there are tons and tons of players that want to camp spawn points for days and spend forever getting a group of the right classes together is kidding themselves. A game like that would not do well on the current market. It would certainly do worse than the original Everquest given the competition out there now.
Much like Cephus' posts, this is your own personal opinion. There are lot of different people out there now, millions in fact if you look at the World of Warcraft figures. Who are you to say that they wouldn't enjoy a certain style of game when they've never been given the option to experience it?
Originally posted by Drachasor
I'm not sure why some people on these forums (which is not represenitive of the gaming community of course), are so in favor of grouping systems that require people to spend a bunch of time preparing to have fun. Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, not a hurdle you have to jump over to enjoy the game.
Completely agree with you on this point. I have played games where grouping is really easy and that's the best type of game. The type where you global, "Monk LFG..", and instantly get half a dozen invites or /tells. Honestly can't remember what games they were, which is a shame, but I definitely remember it happening in something I've played. *scratches head*
Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, absolutely, soloing should be the thing that's difficult. A character alone facing hordes of orcs, trying to battle their way through dungeons full of dangerous creatures. Soloing should be HARD, not the common routine that's plagueing modern MMO's.
Completely agree with you on this point. I have played games where grouping is really easy and that's the best type of game. The type where you global, "Monk LFG..", and instantly get half a dozen invites or /tells. Honestly can't remember what games they were, which is a shame, but I definitely remember it happening in something I've played. *scratches head*
In my experience, the game in why I found this situation the most consistently, is CoX. With the combination of sidekicking, quick porting/travel powers, and scaling instances, it's the most group accomodating game out there, IMO.
Any MMO that focuses too much on single player gameplay will ultimately fail. Its the group mechanics that create a community, complexity, and put the MM in MMO.
Solo gameplay is essentialy a single player RPG with a huge chattroom.
Any MMO that focuses too much on single player gameplay will ultimately fail. Its the group mechanics that create a community, complexity, and put the MM in MMO.
Solo gameplay is essentialy a single player RPG with a huge chattroom.
Funny, those are the games that are the most financially successful. You lose.
That's a silly comparison though, it's like saying which is more successful today? The DX2-66 or the Quad Core 2.4GHz. One is way older and the other much more advanced, so of course the new one is going to be more successful. When you've just bought a graphics card worth over $500 I really don't think people are going to want to play MUD's, do you?
It's not silly at all. By pretty much any metric you want to measure, modern games are much more successful than older games, be it in playerbase, financially, size, etc. The same can be said of modern movies, which while I'd say they are much, much more shallow than many movies made in the past, 17 out of the top 20 most successful movies of all time were made in the past 10 years, even adjusted for monetary value.
Besides, if there were any good MUDs out there, I'd play them. They're just ghost towns and most of the people that still play them are asshats, that's why I stopped playing them to begin with.
Of course games are targetting a wider audience, the audience has got bigger so.. yeah, that sort of makes it a 'wider audience' by definition. That doesn't mean that a game like EverQuest couldn't be successful now, it's just companies are making games simpler to appeal to Grandma and Johnny 8 Year Old. If the audience is larger then that only means there are a larger portion with similar interests. You can't throw 1,000,000 people into a room and declare them all anti-grouping just because games have all been developed pro-soloing. People have many and varied tastes, so until something is released that tests the water, we'll never really know for sure.
EverQuest isn't successful now, why would a game "like" EQ be? The fact is, there are games that do cater to groupers and those games are dead in the water. However, the onus of proof is on you and people like you to prove to developers that there is a significant market for a pro-group game. They already know that there's a huge market for a pro-solo game, where's your evidence that pro-group games can bring in just as much money as a pro-solo game? They're not going to do it based on your say-so, these games cost many millions of dollars and many years to develop. If you want one, you need to prove to them that there's a lot of people, probably around a million or so at least, who would jump in and play the game for an extended period of time. Most MMOs start strong and then drop off dramatically, you have to take that into account which is why I threw in the million number. A million starting will probably result in 500k playing beyond the first couple of months.
So, you got a million groupers on your side? Prove it.
Sadly most mmos today are catering to the soloists of the mmo world. Today just about every mmo and even new up and coming mmos will be almost 100% soloable. The days of group play and social intereaction are on the edge of extinction. I get more group play and social interaction Xbox Live.
Why is that sad? The majority of people who play MMOs are soloists, why wouldn't they be the ones to get catered to? They pay the bills!
It's not silly at all. By pretty much any metric you want to measure, modern games are much more successful than older games, be it in playerbase, financially, size, etc. The same can be said of modern movies, which while I'd say they are much, much more shallow than many movies made in the past, 17 out of the top 20 most successful movies of all time were made in the past 10 years, even adjusted for monetary value.
Of course it's silly. Everything in the past is dated compared to the present. You can do a comparison to pretty much everything in life. Why aren't people riding Penny Farthing's instead of Mountain Bikes? Why don't we wear the clothes from the 60's? You can't compare something from completely different generations.
Originally posted by Cephus404
EverQuest isn't successful now, why would a game "like" EQ be? The fact is, there are games that do cater to groupers and those games are dead in the water. However, the onus of proof is on you and people like you to prove to developers that there is a significant market for a pro-group game. They already know that there's a huge market for a pro-solo game, where's your evidence that pro-group games can bring in just as much money as a pro-solo game? They're not going to do it based on your say-so, these games cost many millions of dollars and many years to develop. If you want one, you need to prove to them that there's a lot of people, probably around a million or so at least, who would jump in and play the game for an extended period of time. Most MMOs start strong and then drop off dramatically, you have to take that into account which is why I threw in the million number. A million starting will probably result in 500k playing beyond the first couple of months.
So, you got a million groupers on your side? Prove it.
You seem to like this argument. Firstly, as stated earlier, EverQuest isn't successful now because it's dated and looks it, people don't want to play it, on top of that the game has half a million expansions and everyone is at max level constantly raiding so groups aren't easy to find. As well as that, they've added mercenaries so grouping isn't even required anymore as you can simply grab a mercenary and solo to your hearts content. You want anymore reasons?
The only reason there's a large market for pro-solo games is because single player games sell so well. You want a lot of people to play an MMO? Make it like a single player game. The game might suck but at least the console kiddies will buy into it. And that there is the single reason why you don't see many, if any, group games being made. It has nothing to do with what people want, it's the developers taking the safe route to profit. Groupers don't have to prove anything to anyone, we don't need to get a million of us and make a demonstration outside EA Games or whatever. That doesn't happen and will never happen, so why you keep bringing that up I don't know.
You seem like an intelligent person but this 'prove to the developers' line just isn't working. We're consumers, we take what is placed in front of us, we have no sway in what games people make, what food they produce, what music they write, what books they scribe, or anything else in life. We consume. That's it. They place a product in front of us and we either buy it or we don't.
Sadly most mmos today are catering to the soloists of the mmo world. Today just about every mmo and even new up and coming mmos will be almost 100% soloable. The days of group play and social intereaction are on the edge of extinction. I get more group play and social interaction Xbox Live.
Why is that sad? The majority of people who play MMOs are soloists, why wouldn't they be the ones to get catered to? They pay the bills!
Other than the persistent world fact I see no real difference between a mmo and a single player rpg today. What is the point of a persistent world if everyone wants to solo. I guess it is really one's perception of what a mmo should be.
The population of people that played PC games 12 years ago and the one that plays them today are different in makeup as well as size. Just because the population owning PCs has increased doesn't mean that the "geeks and nerds" owning them is significantly different. Using your reasoning one would conclude that pretty much everyone has a cellphone for business since that was the dominating reason people had them early on.
This is similar to Cehpus' comments and one I find quite odd. Why do you consider a group based game to be catering to 'geeks and nerds'? Why can't a game be made with a focus on grouping that can appeal to a vast majority of people? Sure, older games were aimed more at that crowd mainly because that crowd were the only ones with PC's, but now there are so many people with so many different personalities, to call them geeks or nerds for preferring a style of play is, I find, quite insulting. Not to me. I'm a geek and proud of it! But to the people who have bought a PC, found a game they like and have been labelled for no other reason than their preference differs to yours.
I don't consider a group-based game catering to geeks and nerds. I see a grind-based game catering to people who generally don't have anything to do besides playing games (which is not the same as geeks and nerds). Early adopters are enthusiasts who compose a very different kind of a population compared to later adopters. Especially with something like a computer, which was much more expensive back then, they'd be more willing to spend a lot of time doing things on it. When you consider the people who play computer games as a whole now, I don't think you have nearly the same sort of willingness to grind for hours upon hours or the like. This is to say nothing of how games have evolved in gameplay.
Originally posted by UsualSuspect
Originally posted by Drachasor
Beyond that, Everquest is waaaay too grindy a game to be successful in the current market. It would also be hurt a lot by being even more finicky about group makeup than games like WoW and LotRO. Anyhow, anyone who thinks there are tons and tons of players that want to camp spawn points for days and spend forever getting a group of the right classes together is kidding themselves. A game like that would not do well on the current market. It would certainly do worse than the original Everquest given the competition out there now.
Much like Cephus' posts, this is your own personal opinion. There are lot of different people out there now, millions in fact if you look at the World of Warcraft figures. Who are you to say that they wouldn't enjoy a certain style of game when they've never been given the option to experience it?
A game that requires you schedule your life around it and devote massive amounts of time to it is going to have very limited popularity. That's just a fact. It was easier for a game like that to work 10-some years ago when there wasn't a lot of options among MMOs, but anything like that now would never grow that large. MMOs have gotten casual friendly for very good reasons. This is why grind-tastic MMOs that are made today do not do well.
Originally posted by UsualSuspect
Originally posted by Drachasor
I'm not sure why some people on these forums (which is not represenitive of the gaming community of course), are so in favor of grouping systems that require people to spend a bunch of time preparing to have fun. Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, not a hurdle you have to jump over to enjoy the game.
Completely agree with you on this point. I have played games where grouping is really easy and that's the best type of game. The type where you global, "Monk LFG..", and instantly get half a dozen invites or /tells. Honestly can't remember what games they were, which is a shame, but I definitely remember it happening in something I've played. *scratches head* Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, absolutely, soloing should be the thing that's difficult. A character alone facing hordes of orcs, trying to battle their way through dungeons full of dangerous creatures. Soloing should be HARD, not the common routine that's plagueing modern MMO's.
I don't think soloing needs to be difficult. Make grouping fun and as exciting as soloing and people will group. Even in punishing games like WoW leveling, spontaneous grouping happened. Remove the punishments and it will happen even more. You don't have to try to force people to do stuff they want to do anyway...just don't shoot them in the foot when they do it (and maybe toss in some light incentives). Part of the reason grouping is hard is the Holy Trinity though. It makes far too harsh requirements on group composition (and then makes group gameplay stale unless a fight has some gimmick). Superspecialization like you see in HT really needs to stop. I think going with group combos (like FFXI's fusions or heck, those group-based Marvel universe games on consoles) is generally a better way to have people work together (it's easy and allows a lot of depth). This isn't to say everyone should be the same of course, D&D has much softer specializations than the Holy Trinity and the dynamic there works pretty well. I think it is important to have a system where you don't have to tell a friend to go do something else because they had the audacity to pick a class they enjoy playing -- this happens all too often in HT games.
I don't consider a group-based game catering to geeks and nerds. I see a grind-based game catering to people who generally don't have anything to do besides playing games (which is not the same as geeks and nerds). Early adopters are enthusiasts who compose a very different kind of a population compared to later adopters. Especially with something like a computer, which was much more expensive back then, they'd be more willing to spend a lot of time doing things on it. When you consider the people who play computer games as a whole now, I don't think you have nearly the same sort of willingness to grind for hours upon hours or the like. This is to say nothing of how games have evolved in gameplay.
Not a lot of that post I wanted to comment on except the mention of grind-based gaming. Are you saying that a group-based game is a grind-based game? Because it sounds like it. I really don't see how grouping equates to grinding. If you're saying that's how older games such as EverQuest used to be then sure, but that's the past. Things have moved on since then. There's no reason why you can't have a fantastic game that focuses on people teaming together to face powerful adversaries.
Of course it's silly. Everything in the past is dated compared to the present. You can do a comparison to pretty much everything in life. Why aren't people riding Penny Farthing's instead of Mountain Bikes? Why don't we wear the clothes from the 60's? You can't compare something from completely different generations.
The fact is, nobody has made another EQ-type game that's been nearly as successful as a WoW-type game. Nobody has gone running back to EQ in droves because it offers a pro-grouping feel. There simply is no evidence for developers that a pro-grouping game is financially viable.
You seem to like this argument. Firstly, as stated earlier, EverQuest isn't successful now because it's dated and looks it, people don't want to play it, on top of that the game has half a million expansions and everyone is at max level constantly raiding so groups aren't easy to find. As well as that, they've added mercenaries so grouping isn't even required anymore as you can simply grab a mercenary and solo to your hearts content. You want anymore reasons?
It's not just EQ, it's *ANY* game that's primarily a grouping game that has failed. If there were so many people who just wanted to group, you're the one holding EQ up as the standard, but apparently, nobody wants to go back to EQ to play. You're just making excuses why nobody plays EQ when you seem to think it was so wonderful.
The only reason there's a large market for pro-solo games is because single player games sell so well. You want a lot of people to play an MMO? Make it like a single player game. The game might suck but at least the console kiddies will buy into it. And that there is the single reason why you don't see many, if any, group games being made. It has nothing to do with what people want, it's the developers taking the safe route to profit. Groupers don't have to prove anything to anyone, we don't need to get a million of us and make a demonstration outside EA Games or whatever. That doesn't happen and will never happen, so why you keep bringing that up I don't know.
Wow, you get it! Yes, people make pro-solo games because they MAKE MONEY! The overwhelming majority of players want to play them! OF course developers aren't going to take an absurd financial risk on a game that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to back it up. There are no pro-grouping games out there that are as financially successful as pro-solo games. You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a pro-grouping game will make money, so why should anyone make one? On the ridiculously off-chance that it might? Investors aren't that stupid.
You seem like an intelligent person but this 'prove to the developers' line just isn't working. We're consumers, we take what is placed in front of us, we have no sway in what games people make, what food they produce, what music they write, what books they scribe, or anything else in life. We consume. That's it. They place a product in front of us and we either buy it or we don't.
Yes, and if millions of MMO players stopped buying MMOs and demanded a grouping game instead, you'd better believe the developers would take notice. Unfortunately, you get MMO-zombies who keep buying whatever crap comes out whether they like it or not. What do you expect the developers to make? They're going to make what demonstrably sells. Don't like what they make? STOP BUYING IT! The consumer ultimately has all of the power because the consumer has the money. If a product doesn't sell, producers stop making it and do something else. You have a choice in what you consume, but there are far too many people who act like they'll go into convulsions if they don't play an MMO for 30 seconds. Don't like it, don't buy it. Tell them why. Then go spend your money somewhere else until they come out with something you actually want to play. If they never do it, never play another MMO again as long as you live.
Other than the persistent world fact I see no real difference between a mmo and a single player rpg today. What is the point of a persistent world if everyone wants to solo. I guess it is really one's perception of what a mmo should be.
You make that choice with your purchase dollars. Don't like what they're calling MMOs these days? Stop buying them and go do something else.
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Says who? Who died and made you the arbiter of what MMOs are supposed to be?
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It doesn't work that way. It scales with the number of players and everyone gets rewards based on their level of participation (and people that don't participate don't make the content scale up) for starters. That encourages everyone to try their best, unlike Warhammer's system. Also, this isn't meant to be the really challenging group content (though some of it is harder than others), though you can certainly form groups and do this content with old friends or make new friends on your way. The GW2 system provides a pretty seemless transition between running across someone and helping them out and grouping with someone. After you get one done you can even follow up on the DE chain.
Further, GW2's combat system will make it so you are interacting with other people. Cross-profession combos are not something you need a group to set up, but starting one off is something others can and will participate in (which essentially creates another massive difference between GW2 and Warhammer). This makes teamwork between non-grouped people easy to do and immediately rewarding.
If you really want to just solo, then in GW2 you can go do your personal storyline stuff. You could also take your chances going to a zone without many people and sticking to an area off the beaten track.
Oh goodie. No there's no point in grouping at all, since the interaction with other players is done automatically for you. Nice... Nice design plan.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
Sure there is. Grouping lets you keep track of where your groupmates are, talk to them easier, make decisions on what to do together, etc. Beyond dungeons of course, which are group-only naturally.
And of course, just because skills work together, doesn't mean no thinking about others will be involved. A elementalist wanting to provide a wall of fire so Rangers and the like shoot fire arrows, will want to think about placement.
You seem to forget the fact that games like Wolfenstein and MUD's were around when PC's were not a household item. Not so many people had computers back then. The difference between the amount of people playing Wolfenstein and Call of Duty isn't due to the games catering to a minority, it's because people simply didn't have the hardware.
PC's are everywhere now, some homes have more than one as well as personal laptops, of course there are going to be more people playing Call of Duty. It has nothing to do with who the game is aimed at. Same can be said for group based games - EverQuest was around in the late 90's. Look at the amount of PC's in homes now and you'll see why there are so many people playing WoW compared to early EQ.
That doesn't change the fact that COD and MMOs are a much, much more successful product than Wolfenstein and MUDs ever dreamed of being. Even today, which is more successful? MUDs or MMOs? Obviously, more people play MMOs than play MUDs, even though both are still in existence.
What you fail to recognize is that Wolfenstein and MUDs also catered to the widest possible audience at the time they came out. I've mentioned many times that those people who owned computers and had access to Internet connections back in the early 90s were, for all intents and purposes, geeks and nerds. Therefore, businesses targetted that kind of person in their products. Today, when just about everyone has a computer and an Internet connection, businesses are targetting a much wider audience and the geek and nerd market is quite small indeed, it just doesn't have the financial strength to be viable as a target audience for most games.
It's all about the money. It always has been, it always will be.
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I find it rewarding when you can accomplish a lot just in solo play. When I think back to the older mmo's like EQ and AO those were some of the fondest memories wondering off in the middle of nowhere getting into trouble. There was a high sense of danger with those older games cause the penalties were massive when you died.
I remember in eq, jumping off the boat, not really knowing what was out there, under the water or other but I was truly freaked out to do it and i did for the rush. I had a blast killing sirens, knowing, i'm pretty much sol out her. I did alot of camping gear in eq as well I found it rewarding.
The newer games you just cant do that...well I suppose now we have the gold and gear farmers, that could be part of why you don't see it anymore. I love the solo mmo's but I don't think getting the best gear in the game should be obtained solo.
I'm not sure what games you've played in which that's the case. In the two most soloable games I can think of, WoW and LotRO, all the best gear, by far, is in raids; either by random drop, or by token rewards.
That's a silly comparison though, it's like saying which is more successful today? The DX2-66 or the Quad Core 2.4GHz. One is way older and the other much more advanced, so of course the new one is going to be more successful. When you've just bought a graphics card worth over $500 I really don't think people are going to want to play MUD's, do you?
Of course games are targetting a wider audience, the audience has got bigger so.. yeah, that sort of makes it a 'wider audience' by definition. That doesn't mean that a game like EverQuest couldn't be successful now, it's just companies are making games simpler to appeal to Grandma and Johnny 8 Year Old. If the audience is larger then that only means there are a larger portion with similar interests. You can't throw 1,000,000 people into a room and declare them all anti-grouping just because games have all been developed pro-soloing. People have many and varied tastes, so until something is released that tests the water, we'll never really know for sure.
The population of people that played PC games 12 years ago and the one that plays them today are different in makeup as well as size. Just because the population owning PCs has increased doesn't mean that the "geeks and nerds" owning them is significantly different. Using your reasoning one would conclude that pretty much everyone has a cellphone for business since that was the dominating reason people had them early on.
Beyond that, Everquest is waaaay too grindy a game to be successful in the current market. It would also be hurt a lot by being even more finicky about group makeup than games like WoW and LotRO. Anyhow, anyone who thinks there are tons and tons of players that want to camp spawn points for days and spend forever getting a group of the right classes together is kidding themselves. A game like that would not do well on the current market. It would certainly do worse than the original Everquest given the competition out there now.
I'm not sure why some people on these forums (which is not represenitive of the gaming community of course), are so in favor of grouping systems that require people to spend a bunch of time preparing to have fun. Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, not a hurdle you have to jump over to enjoy the game.
Sadly most mmos today are catering to the soloists of the mmo world. Today just about every mmo and even new up and coming mmos will be almost 100% soloable. The days of group play and social intereaction are on the edge of extinction. I get more group play and social interaction Xbox Live.
You're blowing things tremendously out of proportion. Heck, even WoW has a lot of group play in it (not that I think the system is remotely perfect).
A lot of people act like you have to force people to play with others, and this really isn't the case. We're social creatures and will play with other people naturally without any coersion. The problem is MMOs have put up lots of barriers to grouping. You might have to get the exact right group, which takes a long time. You might get less experience or less challenge (which is less fun) if you are leveling with others. Sometimes quests become far more of a grind when done with others. There are many ways MMOs making grouping or otherwise doing things with others unnattractive.
The proper way to handle this problem isn't by trying to make soloing completely impossible -- soloing as a main activity for most in an MMO only becomes attractive when grouping is a headache. What needs to be done is the various barriers to working with others and grouping need to be done away.
This is one reason why I think GW2 has such a great model. If you do something with someone else, you don't suffer for it. It's a barrier-less entry into grouping. In most MMOs I've played, you meet people via wandering around, running into them, then grouping up and talking. This is a natural and fluid way to meet people while playing the game. Far better than a game like FFXI is/was where you spent half an hour to hours trying to form a group before you could do anything. However, even with this because of the punishment even during leveling, the game becomes a joke, boring, and many quests become megagrinds. This hurts how willing people are to group and loot mechanics make people more anti-social when others are nearby. By getting rid of all of these negative factors, doing things with others loses all the hindrances common in other MMOs.
More MMO makers need to really examine how they set up barriers to grouping and playing with others. Far too few devs really look at it seriously. Similarly, far too many players assume grouping either has to be heavy-handed or non-existent, with very little room inbetween when in fact there are other dimensions to consider.
This is similar to Cehpus' comments and one I find quite odd. Why do you consider a group based game to be catering to 'geeks and nerds'? Why can't a game be made with a focus on grouping that can appeal to a vast majority of people? Sure, older games were aimed more at that crowd mainly because that crowd were the only ones with PC's, but now there are so many people with so many different personalities, to call them geeks or nerds for preferring a style of play is, I find, quite insulting. Not to me. I'm a geek and proud of it! But to the people who have bought a PC, found a game they like and have been labelled for no other reason than their preference differs to yours.
Much like Cephus' posts, this is your own personal opinion. There are lot of different people out there now, millions in fact if you look at the World of Warcraft figures. Who are you to say that they wouldn't enjoy a certain style of game when they've never been given the option to experience it?
Completely agree with you on this point. I have played games where grouping is really easy and that's the best type of game. The type where you global, "Monk LFG..", and instantly get half a dozen invites or /tells. Honestly can't remember what games they were, which is a shame, but I definitely remember it happening in something I've played. *scratches head*
Grouping should be something that's easy to get into, absolutely, soloing should be the thing that's difficult. A character alone facing hordes of orcs, trying to battle their way through dungeons full of dangerous creatures. Soloing should be HARD, not the common routine that's plagueing modern MMO's.
In my experience, the game in why I found this situation the most consistently, is CoX. With the combination of sidekicking, quick porting/travel powers, and scaling instances, it's the most group accomodating game out there, IMO.
Any MMO that focuses too much on single player gameplay will ultimately fail. Its the group mechanics that create a community, complexity, and put the MM in MMO.
Solo gameplay is essentialy a single player RPG with a huge chattroom.
Funny, those are the games that are the most financially successful. You lose.
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Why is that sad? The majority of people who play MMOs are soloists, why wouldn't they be the ones to get catered to? They pay the bills!
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Of course it's silly. Everything in the past is dated compared to the present. You can do a comparison to pretty much everything in life. Why aren't people riding Penny Farthing's instead of Mountain Bikes? Why don't we wear the clothes from the 60's? You can't compare something from completely different generations.
You seem to like this argument. Firstly, as stated earlier, EverQuest isn't successful now because it's dated and looks it, people don't want to play it, on top of that the game has half a million expansions and everyone is at max level constantly raiding so groups aren't easy to find. As well as that, they've added mercenaries so grouping isn't even required anymore as you can simply grab a mercenary and solo to your hearts content. You want anymore reasons?
The only reason there's a large market for pro-solo games is because single player games sell so well. You want a lot of people to play an MMO? Make it like a single player game. The game might suck but at least the console kiddies will buy into it. And that there is the single reason why you don't see many, if any, group games being made. It has nothing to do with what people want, it's the developers taking the safe route to profit. Groupers don't have to prove anything to anyone, we don't need to get a million of us and make a demonstration outside EA Games or whatever. That doesn't happen and will never happen, so why you keep bringing that up I don't know.
You seem like an intelligent person but this 'prove to the developers' line just isn't working. We're consumers, we take what is placed in front of us, we have no sway in what games people make, what food they produce, what music they write, what books they scribe, or anything else in life. We consume. That's it. They place a product in front of us and we either buy it or we don't.
Other than the persistent world fact I see no real difference between a mmo and a single player rpg today. What is the point of a persistent world if everyone wants to solo. I guess it is really one's perception of what a mmo should be.
I don't consider a group-based game catering to geeks and nerds. I see a grind-based game catering to people who generally don't have anything to do besides playing games (which is not the same as geeks and nerds). Early adopters are enthusiasts who compose a very different kind of a population compared to later adopters. Especially with something like a computer, which was much more expensive back then, they'd be more willing to spend a lot of time doing things on it. When you consider the people who play computer games as a whole now, I don't think you have nearly the same sort of willingness to grind for hours upon hours or the like. This is to say nothing of how games have evolved in gameplay.
A game that requires you schedule your life around it and devote massive amounts of time to it is going to have very limited popularity. That's just a fact. It was easier for a game like that to work 10-some years ago when there wasn't a lot of options among MMOs, but anything like that now would never grow that large. MMOs have gotten casual friendly for very good reasons. This is why grind-tastic MMOs that are made today do not do well.
I don't think soloing needs to be difficult. Make grouping fun and as exciting as soloing and people will group. Even in punishing games like WoW leveling, spontaneous grouping happened. Remove the punishments and it will happen even more. You don't have to try to force people to do stuff they want to do anyway...just don't shoot them in the foot when they do it (and maybe toss in some light incentives).Part of the reason grouping is hard is the Holy Trinity though. It makes far too harsh requirements on group composition (and then makes group gameplay stale unless a fight has some gimmick). Superspecialization like you see in HT really needs to stop. I think going with group combos (like FFXI's fusions or heck, those group-based Marvel universe games on consoles) is generally a better way to have people work together (it's easy and allows a lot of depth). This isn't to say everyone should be the same of course, D&D has much softer specializations than the Holy Trinity and the dynamic there works pretty well. I think it is important to have a system where you don't have to tell a friend to go do something else because they had the audacity to pick a class they enjoy playing -- this happens all too often in HT games.
Not a lot of that post I wanted to comment on except the mention of grind-based gaming. Are you saying that a group-based game is a grind-based game? Because it sounds like it. I really don't see how grouping equates to grinding. If you're saying that's how older games such as EverQuest used to be then sure, but that's the past. Things have moved on since then. There's no reason why you can't have a fantastic game that focuses on people teaming together to face powerful adversaries.
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You make that choice with your purchase dollars. Don't like what they're calling MMOs these days? Stop buying them and go do something else.
Problem solved.
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