Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Dependencies
Bigmamajama
Member Posts: 198
Why are developers so scared these days to create scenarios where one player needs to rely on another player? Why do players insist on wanting to play online games with character combat that does not benefit from the abilities of another player, other than to pile on a little more DPS?
Remember how cool it can be playing a squishy high DPS class that relied on pot swigging and resting between fights only to have a healer ride by and heal you to full and buff the hell out of you, or save you with a well timed heal when you were soloing a hard mob?
Remember how cool it can be as a healer fighting a mob, your health bar barely dropping but its taking you a while to kill a mob and that squishy guy you healed comes up and two shots the mob to help you out?
We could envy the abilities of another classes but be happy with our own strengths because they were so strong compared to other classes?
Part of class choice was making a decision, a compromise in one thing for being strong in another and then letting other players close the circle with their abilities.
Remember when classes had real diversity and you were dependent on other players to accomplish a goal?
So many games these days are just offering different flavors of DPS and everyone has a heal. Its just a matter of choosing what flavor of OP DPS you want to play to faceroll through the content.
I've been playing a bit of FF14 this weekend and its just nice to have someone drive by and toss some heals on me and cruise off. Just confirms my belief in that player dependency is the most important element of an MMO.
Seems Developers and players are drifting farther and farther from this model and moving towards a pure solo class experience. Seems a shame to me to waste the most important game feature in Online gaming.
Needing and working with other people.
Comments
What I dislike, though, is the fact that you have to play through a bunch of boring solo content before you get to the group content.
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
The problem is in waiting for a group.
Since there is almost always a class that is not popular and people need to wait for it to show up. It can take even hour in some games like Tera for example. And people don't want to wait.
You can easily notice, that grouping itself is not a problem for people, since so many play LoL. There is no problem with waiting in League of Legends for example, but it is different type of game.
If there was a mmorpg, that is group dependant, but finding group is as convenient as in LoL, then it would be the answer.
Just for the record I like forced grouping and I don't mind waiting, I just think that this is what puts of other players, might be wrong.
You can have a largely solo combat game and still have interdepencies. They just don't exist in the typical shallow themeparks hub quest games. If you have no reason to group in combat, you have littel reason to interact with other players period.
If the sandbox trends actually come to light there may be more games that force you to work together even if it's not combat.
Do you feel they are moving away from what most MMO gamers want or moving toward what most MMO gamers want?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I'd rather someone made another MMO that did what City of Heroes did than force you to rely on other people. You happily solo in that game and even min-max for most of it's life that way, but they made it so that it was just so much more enjoyable logging in and playing in an 8 man group no matter whether you were level 1 or 50.
It wasn't a perfect game by any means but they had that aspect down to a tee. I haven't played a game since where i've wanted to play with 7 other people in group every single time, no matter what i was doing in game.
Developers are gamers. And just like most gamers today we care about our time. I think this is why the Free to Play model is successful, because you are not dedicated to paying and can play the game when you want. And looking back at old MMOs where soloing was not for the faint of heart and groups were superior for the grind. It is just not as fun to be playing a class that cannot solo and having to wait, sometimes, hours for a group (though LFG system implemented today are a lot better for finding groups). I am not saying make every class a jack of all trades. That would take away from having classes at all. Classes do need to be unique, but they should have the ability to solo (and I am not saying dungeons or raids).
Looking to my (old) EQ 1 days for insight. For those who did not experience the game at the time here is a brief list of what leveling could be like. When you die, you lose all your gear and have to run back naked to your corpse that is (usually) surrounded by mobs unless you died near the zone line. You also lost experience and at sometimes de-leveled. There were hell levels (levels that took an extraordinarily amount of exp and time) from 30-50. There was a "puller" role in the group that was more needed then the average game today, if the puller screwed up the whole group could die. Sometimes dying mobs would run away for help, or run away into other mobs. Spells and effects like blind/charm/fear really made you lose control of your character and you may end up stuck right in the middle of horde. Also, creatures were hard. (Good times, good times).
Now I am not saying that these mechanics are bad by any means. In fact I love these challenging mechanics. This is besides the point though. There were superior classes at soloing. They either had pets, feign death, could kite the mobs (run around and dps the mob til they died), or had a specialty against a mob (holy vs undead, etc). For the player who did not play any of these classes. Chances are you either died a lot or spent a lot of time looking for group. (Unless this character was an alt that you geared, "twinked", up). And for that player, is not fun having to spend your time waiting to play the game you are already logged into. I remember watching a warrior who was level 30 spending about 3 hours working on his bind wound ability because he never leveled it up. He would get beaten to a pulp every 1 on 1 fight and there was too much down time between fights for him.
I believe that there is a balancing act, between making a game fun and challenging while having areas where the player can solo. Classes should be unique and have the abilities that other classes do not. Having a druid run by and cast SoW (movement buff) on me as a newb was one of the greatest moments to first happen. And I would love to experience that type of story and community again in another game...without having to depend on another person though to allow my character to play.
Not scared. But learned from the past. Players prefer to be independent (hence solo-able).
Personally i don't want to depend on other players for my fun.
And i don't know why MMOs don't just take a page from ARPGs. Different classes. Very different play-style but little dependencies. You don't need a tank in D3, TL2, or PoE.