If I have to group in an mmo, rest assured, I have no interest in communicating with you. To me .. you are a statball. Hopefully you don't suck so bad that i'll have to kick you, but I wont hesitate if you show any weakness at all. Random pugs are always a dice roll, and it's not a problem to roll those dice again. Grouping is great, when I want to play with my friends, but they aren't always on, and I still want to progress. So while you may be a necessity for the moment, you might as well be an npc.
You must be a real peach to group with. One mistake and you have a hissy fit like a child. I strive to avoid players like you.
It will be similar to EQ and VG soloing, definitely possible in a lot of areas but dungeons, bosses/named will all require at the minimum a small group. Class will also play a part, some classes are naturally better equipped to solo than others so if you roll a squishy class and pick the wrong area/mobs then you're going to have a bad day but half the fun if figuring that out
What I'd like to see is your team make grouping up with one or two others easy, viable, and still practically rewarding. In my opinion a lot of solo time comes because people don't want to waste their time trying to find all the right people to fill the slots and then all that entails. Some people do enjoy tackling a lot of "daily adventuring" with a smaller group.
The issue isn't so simple and binary as "always grouped" and "always solo". One of the most frustrating things in mmos is the logistics it takes to group up and engage in content. Fix that and this issue won't be the mountain it appears to be.
I really don't see a good way to fix the logistics without it being a huge detriment to community development. Making players easily replaceable makes players treat others as completely expendable tools.
I think it would be a better use of the developers time to focus on making the group content rewarding enough to warrant it, as opposed to focusing primarily on eliminating logistics.
You can help with the logistics in indirect ways, such as the waypoint system used in GW2. You can't teleport directly to any point you want, but they have enough waypoints spread throughout the world that you won't spend 10 minutes running to your friends. This, coupled with a good LFG finder that players can use to advertise their desire to participate in group activities, seems enough mitigation of the logistics of finding other players.
If I have to group in an mmo, rest assured, I have no interest in communicating with you. To me .. you are a statball. Hopefully you don't suck so bad that i'll have to kick you, but I wont hesitate if you show any weakness at all. Random pugs are always a dice roll, and it's not a problem to roll those dice again. Grouping is great, when I want to play with my friends, but they aren't always on, and I still want to progress. So while you may be a necessity for the moment, you might as well be an npc.
You must be a real peach to group with. One mistake and you have a hissy fit like a child. I strive to avoid players like you.
Maybe he is only kidding to make a point ?..... I hope so.
However back several years ago, several of my friends from work were playing Vanilla WoW.
This AssHat decided to join us. Sure enough his real personality showed when he played just like this guy. He made a Hunter with a pet. Now Hunters were a strong solo class, so he always decided to take charge always ignoring tanks and healers...... Zoom, their goes his pet. He would always send that pet in first.
He was also vary nasty in voice chat. Screaming " learn how to play ".
I've been in 5-7 day a week top 50 world raiding guilds from EQ to WoW, and to this day, the most rewarding and fun raid/group experience I ever had was the first successful PUG raid on Rallos Zek for Elemental Planes flagging. Was back on Saryrn, when guild competition and prestige was so high that it was sort of like jobs, where even for entree level positions GMs wanted years of experience or in this case flagging that could only be done with guilds, so you were screwed out of a top guild if you didn't somehow grind gear to apply to a good guild, or in this case successfully clear the minor planes with a PUG raid. God that PUG raid... People failed for months or even years (you have to remember this was back when PUGs first started, where raids were 70+ people and required a lot more team work etc). I still remember half the raid wiping but clearing him, so his astral projection was up in the bottom of the pit, along with all 100 spawns, so people were levitating just swarming the projection to try to hail the ghost of Zek to get flagged for the planes....so amazing...don't underestimate this team's ability to create layers of progression or PUG necessity. This will be a hard game, which will separate the good players from the bad, leaving the weaker players to find pug groups and raids like mercenaries. I hope it plays out that way again in Pantheon. I see no reason whatsoever that it shouldn't, given the current direction of the game.
Comments
I think it would be a better use of the developers time to focus on making the group content rewarding enough to warrant it, as opposed to focusing primarily on eliminating logistics.
You can help with the logistics in indirect ways, such as the waypoint system used in GW2. You can't teleport directly to any point you want, but they have enough waypoints spread throughout the world that you won't spend 10 minutes running to your friends. This, coupled with a good LFG finder that players can use to advertise their desire to participate in group activities, seems enough mitigation of the logistics of finding other players.
Maybe he is only kidding to make a point ?..... I hope so.
However back several years ago, several of my friends from work were playing Vanilla WoW.
This AssHat decided to join us. Sure enough his real personality showed when he played just like this guy. He made a Hunter with a pet. Now Hunters were a strong solo class, so he always decided to take charge always ignoring tanks and healers...... Zoom, their goes his pet. He would always send that pet in first.
He was also vary nasty in voice chat. Screaming " learn how to play ".
MMO's do show peoples real personalities.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.