I think more devs need to look at how CoH did this. Despite being repetitive with dungeons (buildings/caves) combat was fun. People loved playing tanks and healers and cc and dps, there were tonnes of them. Tanks loved herding, cc loved locking up a half dozen mobs, healers loved their mass heals/radiation/kinetic bursts... it was just fun.
But a key was that any group was viable, whether you had a tank or not, or a cc or not, it was so well keyed that quite literally any group combination would work effectively to take down mobs (still some worked better than others). So no tank, who cares, we can still work. No healer, who cares, we are good. NO cc, fine we can pull..... and they all did enough damage so who cares if no dps.
This works for games like UO where players would kill stuff like Champion spawns where 20+ people would just show up and kill stuff then kill the champion. It does not work though for games with instances.
The KEY to fixing Grouping with instances is to stop making them part of the end game treadmill and make it it's own set of progression. AND the only way to do that is bring in CC no more AOE tanking and no LFG tools. Now a group Finder tool where I could list myself looking for a group and people contact me. But no random match making. Random Match Making is a core problem to grouping today. Random Match making is great for mash button instances just to see the instance. It is not good for anything that requires Teamwork. Teamwork is the core to any group activity.
So Trinity is NEEDED. The key with Trinity is 2 fold. First Encourage Premades and Encourage them to play together vs jumping ship. Next thing make classes different from each other but still make instances doable with any mix of Tank, Healer, or DPS/Support classes. For example one of my BRD runs we had a Ret Pali who Off Tanked for me, I tanked, my wife healed, my friend James was the mage who also CCed and my other friend played a Rogue. Another group I ran with I healed, my friend Tim Tanked, Rick DPSed on a Lock which also gave us CC, My wife did Balance, and James again was our Mage. We could manage with any mixture of the trinity. Why? Because the groups were not so hard that it took a strict Trinity group to have equal CCs, with a tank and healer. We could OT sometimes, we could CC more others. We had short and long CCs.
Done right, like Vanilla WOW and TBC did (This is coming from someone who already played 4 other MMOs before WOW came around AND was in MMOs 6 years before WOW) Grouping and Trinity works. You dont need Pre-WOW stuff and you dont need Whack a mole content like we have today. BALANCE is the key and what well got right. Ya 40 mans were hell but hard raids with around 10 people its doable. That could offset the 40 man stuff. Or Scale raids to allow us to bring more than 10 people. Or make a raid a hard 10 core players trinity base then the others could be what ever they wanted.
Vengeance - Coh had probably more instances than almost any other mmo before or since. It works very very well for instances or world.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Vengeance - Coh had probably more instances than almost any other mmo before or since. It works very very well for instances or world.
While it worked in older games, they were really different than today's MMOs. I am going to respectfully disagree because if the game is properly balanced like Pre-WOTLK WOW was Trinity and grouping could be done right.
I also want to mention as well that group oriented game play encourages a better community. In Everquest, even though it was forced grouping, it inspired a community. A community in which you knew who were good players, the best tanks, the best healers, the best healers, as well as who were the worst players that complained, ninja looted or overall was terrible at their class. A group oriented game created a server reputation for everyone. For instance, everyone wanted to be in my groups because I made the best groups. I think being accountable for you as a player is what the industry needs.
Ah yes, a community of elitists.
While I dont fully agree with what Eronakis said. I do understand where he is coming from. When I played on Khadgar back in my 4 year hay day of WOW. I know a lot about my server, good players, poor players and it helped the couple of guilds I was in or ran keep away from these players. Thats where a guy named Demondruidz who got run off Khadgar because he was an ass, he ninja looted, he would change from a healer to dps to wannnabe tank inside a fight. So there is some validity to what he is saying. The problem is no these arcane methods that keep coming up in kickstarters will just not work.
I keep going back to what WOW got right was Balance in effect with soloing grouping and all that. What they lost was accountability on the part of players. For example its my job as a player if I want to raid and get into that content to step up to that level. Its not the job of developers to make easy mode content to the point its all done in a matter of days. That is unsustainable and you see that in WOW now. They are trying to make Challenge mode Dungeons in WOW now to get that challenge back with legion. The problem is you know people will bitch its too hard and will blizzard just give in and nerf it all.
I think more devs need to look at how CoH did this. Despite being repetitive with dungeons (buildings/caves) combat was fun. People loved playing tanks and healers and cc and dps, there were tonnes of them. Tanks loved herding, cc loved locking up a half dozen mobs, healers loved their mass heals/radiation/kinetic bursts... it was just fun.
Not to mention CoH featured the best /LFG implementation anywhere. If only Blizzard had studied it, instead of those craptastic meeting stones, followed by the draconian dungeon finder overcorrection.
Again What you state here is CLEARLY why WOW is failing as well as many other MMOs. While I will say there is a SPACE for Mainstream heavily group based MMO because there is. The problem is every publisher is trying to get WOW 12 Million Sub numbers by catering to people like you who dont play MMOs, you more play just an Online RPG.
The problem is, there is unlikely anything but your bias to back up those claims. nariusseldon is right there.
You are in some sort of denial state...
lol .. WOW is failing? The most successful MMORPG (classical classification) ever made if failing?
Just let him keep his head in the sand. If he is right, he would be playing that "mainstream heavily group based MMO" instead of complaining devs should be making that. I fail to see how he would fail to see that logic.
But hey, this forum is clearly not built on facts nor logic.
Comments
I keep going back to what WOW got right was Balance in effect with soloing grouping and all that. What they lost was accountability on the part of players. For example its my job as a player if I want to raid and get into that content to step up to that level. Its not the job of developers to make easy mode content to the point its all done in a matter of days. That is unsustainable and you see that in WOW now. They are trying to make Challenge mode Dungeons in WOW now to get that challenge back with legion. The problem is you know people will bitch its too hard and will blizzard just give in and nerf it all.
Just let him keep his head in the sand. If he is right, he would be playing that "mainstream heavily group based MMO" instead of complaining devs should be making that. I fail to see how he would fail to see that logic.
But hey, this forum is clearly not built on facts nor logic.