MMOs should be games that "Grouping advantageous", what that means, is that, while it there is nothing wrong with playing solo, and it should be a viable way to play an MMO, it should always be to your advantage to group and have other people with you.
Think of it like this, no one likes being forced to play a specific way, they don't like being forced to group, or forced to solo, or whatever. But if you make it so they could solo, but it's to their advantage to group, the choice becomes theirs to make, as opposed to being thrust upon them.
Prefer solo play on questing/farming and skill challenges. 40 player raids (as a healer there's no shortage of someone to heal with that many people, unlike 10 player and one over geared healer sniping everything) for group content.
There's room in MMOs for both, as it's showing in WoW with something like pet battles (very popular solo content).
Thing is people want me time and group time in games. If a game is 100% only group play and their is no chill time with their favorite music and drink, they won't have anything to do. Add that players aren't getting any younger, we can't raid 12+hrs at a pop anymore, too.
After that stroke, if it wasn't for the WoD garrison and pet battles, I would not had anything to play in WoW. Group content was totally out. I used pet battles and the garrison to help me use my hand/arm and vision again. I still have problems with 3D space, so only venture in groups when necessary.
The first MMORPGers are in their late 40s/50s now. Yeah, content can't just be agility marathon matches anymore.
I really dislike playing with strangers. I guess I'm just really introverted. So if my friends or brothers are not, I generally solo. Perhaps I should get out more hehe.
MMOs should be games that "Grouping advantageous", what that means, is that, while it there is nothing wrong with playing solo, and it should be a viable way to play an MMO, it should always be to your advantage to group and have other people with you.
Think of it like this, no one likes being forced to play a specific way, they don't like being forced to group, or forced to solo, or whatever. But if you make it so they could solo, but it's to their advantage to group, the choice becomes theirs to make, as opposed to being thrust upon them.
People who like to group, think this is grand. Groups already have an advantage in being able to clear content far more quickly. This is just another way to force people to group by penalizing them for not grouping. What happens then is one of two things. 1) Soloers stop playing the game because it is so disadvantageous to them; 2) they group, but hate it and resent the game, and constantly agitate for parity.
There is nothing about MMOs that say "group is better". The reason grouping is no longer required for landscape content is precisely because people prefer to solo when questing. Designated group play (dungeons, raids) already give significant advantage to those who prefer those types of play.
MMOs should be games that "Grouping advantageous", what that means, is that, while it there is nothing wrong with playing solo, and it should be a viable way to play an MMO, it should always be to your advantage to group and have other people with you.
Think of it like this, no one likes being forced to play a specific way, they don't like being forced to group, or forced to solo, or whatever. But if you make it so they could solo, but it's to their advantage to group, the choice becomes theirs to make, as opposed to being thrust upon them.
People who like to group, think this is grand. Groups already have an advantage in being able to clear content far more quickly. This is just another way to force people to group by penalizing them for not grouping. What happens then is one of two things. 1) Soloers stop playing the game because it is so disadvantageous to them; 2) they group, but hate it and resent the game, and constantly agitate for parity.
There is nothing about MMOs that say "group is better". The reason grouping is no longer required for landscape content is precisely because people prefer to solo when questing. Designated group play (dungeons, raids) already give significant advantage to those who prefer those types of play.
If grouping clears content faster and earns more per unit time, that is just a result of grouping mixed with that content. If a game provides a bonus to grouping, that is a method of encouraging grouping. If someone sees either of those as penalizing non-grouping, they are just an entitled person and should be put on the pay no mind list.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
The way how mmo nowadays pushing people to group is a complete rubbish method. It's not natural and very forced. Clearing content is efficient with a good group, obviously; but using that as primary motive in designing a game doesn't really do any good for everyone. That's just shallow.
MMO need to make a world that naturally ask for player collaboration in every aspect of the game. If someone want the challenge of solo then let him do it. If he felt that he needs help then he have the choice. Artificially limiting content access by placing minimum player entry to content is lazy game design. Shouting LFG on the chat is immersion breaking, LFG interface is immersion breaking. These two are not natural methods of player interaction, and strikes the feeling of alienation in player preferring solo. PUG method in nowadays game is useless, it only creates more problem; jerk players, afk player, kill steal, item steal... It only makes player felt even more uncomfortable to group.
A comfortable method of grouping need to be made to allow solo player to gain help when they choose to be. A comfortable natural interaction method that solo player WILL use rather than "I don't care, I just stop playing, cuz I don't want to meet any random jerk players that gonna ruin my day".
@KnightFalz you are right at some point but i think in long term solo players quit the game earlier. The developers mostly having hard time balancing the game for solo and group players.
Solo players quit earlier because they quickly come to realize that the coding in these games is written by groupers, to solely benefit groupers. Everyone wants to achieve something, but when you realize you are gated to prevent you from doing so you move along to something else.
Unfortunately, for the developers, they continue to completely marginalize their largest sub group of players, and force them to go elsewhere. Money can still be made of course, but a virtual gold mine is waiting out there for whoever is willing to step outside their comfort zone, and code a game for those who play differently than they do.
I must be the only soloer who doesn't mind grouping, but prefers solo play. I don't like being forced to group and having to be *gasp* social when I play a game. I hate, even more, voice chat in games. I enjoy a fully solo, immersive experience without pressure from a bunch of "kiddies" outside my comfortable little solo bubble.
But I enjoy the social elements to the MMOs. I enjoy the general chats. I enjoy the player trades and crafting. I also enjoy grouping.... under my terms, how and when I want.
I don't like games that either force me into it, or put me at an artificial disadvantage if I choose to solo. Games should have X number of content, period, Whether you go through it solo, or as a group shouldn't matter either way, outside of the natural benefits to being in a group.
I watched a video about table top adventuring the other day. The DM talked about all the things you have to take into consideration when you design an adventure for just five or six people. Devs in MMO's are designing content for thousands. Not an easy task. I have a new found admiration for what they do now.
That said, not a lot of people try to mini-max an MMO and actually can say they have done 100% of a game's content. I prefer solo pve questing but have at times done groups, PvP, and crafting, and had a lot of fun doing it. It mostly depends on the game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I like challenging Solo Dungeons, if the PvP is somewhat balanced i like 1v1 aswell. I'm usually team player and i've played WoW for way too many years at this point so i have alot of experience playing together with people for anything in a MMORPG, but atm when i play BnS i enjoy myself alone alot and i still get to do some PvEing and 3v3s so it's nice.
I watched a video about table top adventuring the other day. The DM talked about all the things you have to take into consideration when you design an adventure for just five or six people. Devs in MMO's are designing content for thousands. Not an easy task. I have a new found admiration for what they do now.
That said, not a lot of people try to mini-max an MMO and actually can say they have done 100% of a game's content. I prefer solo pve questing but have at times done groups, PvP, and crafting, and had a lot of fun doing it. It mostly depends on the game.
You just need to admire then when they do good, a lot of any MMOs content is just crap like killing 10 rats in the moat.
Making good content for a P&P campaign is hard and it is as hard to make a good MMO dungeon (not counting the part of coding it and art), you need motives, the right amount of challenge and something that makes the dungeon interesting and standing out from the rest. Some MMOs have at least a few awesome dungeons, even games generally not so good can have a few that is really fun but the average MMO dungeon tend to be so-so.
The real issue with MMO content is not that it is harder to make but that you need so much of it, and finding enough talented people that can make varied and fun content is indeed very hard. Most MMO content is still done by 1-5 players even if there are raids and GW2 styled massive PvE bosses now and then.
The big difference between P&P and MMORPGs though is that P&P have an active DM that can modify the content on the fly, raising or lowering the difficulty to fit the group and make things as interesting as possible. If the players for an instance just start to win every fight with little work a DM would make mobs tougher without mentioning it to the players so all fights get interesting and the players need to use their abilities full out to win but not so hard that it stops being fun.
While it would be possible to create mechanics that changes the difficulty in a larger MMO dungeons/instance depending on how the players do that is hard work and without a real human behind it the players could exploit it by playing badly until they reach the endboss to get him weak. Scaling difficulties more or less require a human or a good AI to work and that is the part that is harder with MMOs, not really the number of players.
Making a dungeon that is fun for everyone no matter on skills is close to impossible, even if you let the players pick from several difficulties.
While I ain't a professional P&P creator I do have done a lot of P&P content for RPG conventions (the difference is that while I get food & admissions I never got paid), it is not easy but the difference is still that P&P games are far easier to get the right difficulty.
That is also the reason it is so hard to make a MMO that is fun for every type of player.
The following are numbers I am making up to rationalize and present an argument:
In regard to story and content:
The idea that one designs for millions of people is idiotic at best for the purpose that there is not a single MMORPG server that has one million people in population. If I made an MMORPG that had a million players, chances are its content would be around 1 million players split into twenty servers of 50,000 players each. The average session length is 3 hours. I am going to give you 6 hours and split the population into the four time zones.
Lets say that regardless of session length and time zone, Half the players do PvP and the other half do PvE. That means 25K are doing PvE. Lets say that out of those 25K half are doing raids/instances.
All of the instances are designed around the concept that the story is built around the Max Party Size. This means in one server we are doing 12,500 Instances/Raids (all that at least require 4 - 8 people) This means that while those 12,500 players own the game, you get around anywhere from 1500 - 3000 instanced raids at the same time (Hence why Queues exist). Along with a maximum number of instances that can exist (without a server crashing and to keep conditions in a server good.)
The only time an MMORPG is truly massively is when an entire map becomes a battleground and everyone in that map has to fight together. In short, those large events when all the strangers and their dog have to join forces to kill things in a map... and that only remains popular for a while.
The art of RPG story telling is telling a story that multiple people share together and are able to make the outcome of the story together...and even have a replay value to come out through a different way. MMORPGs just take that idea of a story and have many people instanced and experiencing it at the same time.
In short, MMOs have the story like a book and the players access the chapters of the book and read the pages at their whim.
From one of my campaigns:
"Upon the edge of this expanse lies our final gate between our ether world and our beloved breach. This entire area.... covered in moss, stone, and brushland... is what became of our ancient city. Towers, homes, now rocks and ruin. Everything shattered on that day! ..and kindness, in all its folly and wisdom doomed my kind to the void. Hear those echoes in the sky? The sparks! they speak to me, even when I don't want to hear.... -We must hurry! Quickly now! or lest lose ourselves to the abyss."
Rewards should be based on effort and difficulty regardless of the game mode.
Group content should not be more rewarding than solo. Bad players tend to get carried in groups, whereas solo players have nothing to rely on except their own skill and persistence. Yet the former get better rewards, causing poor players to focus on grouping instead of getting better at the game.
Dont rly have time to read what all of you respectful people have to say. but nevertheless, the fact is that there is no point to play MMOrpg if you try to pretend playing RPG. The end.
I have run into few games in which you have to group to get through pve content. GW2 made grouping mandatory for the very last quest of the main personal story which I always thought was odd.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
GW2 made grouping mandatory for the very last quest of the main personal story which I always thought was odd.
I don't remember that ever being the case, but then again, I joined late. In any case, I soloed it without problems. Wasn't noticeably harder than any of the previous missions.
GW2 made grouping mandatory for the very last quest of the main personal story which I always thought was odd.
I don't remember that ever being the case, but then again, I joined late. In any case, I soloed it without problems. Wasn't noticeably harder than any of the previous missions.
If I remember correctly this was a dungeon mission and you and another person had to stand on two separate triggers to open the entrance that allowed you to get into the event. It took a group to complete it.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Comments
Think of it like this, no one likes being forced to play a specific way, they don't like being forced to group, or forced to solo, or whatever. But if you make it so they could solo, but it's to their advantage to group, the choice becomes theirs to make, as opposed to being thrust upon them.
Let's Play Ragnarok Journey
Prefer solo play on questing/farming and skill challenges. 40 player raids (as a healer there's no shortage of someone to heal with that many people, unlike 10 player and one over geared healer sniping everything) for group content.
There's room in MMOs for both, as it's showing in WoW with something like pet battles (very popular solo content).
Thing is people want me time and group time in games. If a game is 100% only group play and their is no chill time with their favorite music and drink, they won't have anything to do. Add that players aren't getting any younger, we can't raid 12+hrs at a pop anymore, too.
After that stroke, if it wasn't for the WoD garrison and pet battles, I would not had anything to play in WoW. Group content was totally out. I used pet battles and the garrison to help me use my hand/arm and vision again. I still have problems with 3D space, so only venture in groups when necessary.
The first MMORPGers are in their late 40s/50s now. Yeah, content can't just be agility marathon matches anymore.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
People who like to group, think this is grand. Groups already have an advantage in being able to clear content far more quickly. This is just another way to force people to group by penalizing them for not grouping. What happens then is one of two things. 1) Soloers stop playing the game because it is so disadvantageous to them; 2) they group, but hate it and resent the game, and constantly agitate for parity.
There is nothing about MMOs that say "group is better". The reason grouping is no longer required for landscape content is precisely because people prefer to solo when questing. Designated group play (dungeons, raids) already give significant advantage to those who prefer those types of play.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Let's Play Ragnarok Journey
MMO need to make a world that naturally ask for player collaboration in every aspect of the game. If someone want the challenge of solo then let him do it. If he felt that he needs help then he have the choice. Artificially limiting content access by placing minimum player entry to content is lazy game design. Shouting LFG on the chat is immersion breaking, LFG interface is immersion breaking. These two are not natural methods of player interaction, and strikes the feeling of alienation in player preferring solo. PUG method in nowadays game is useless, it only creates more problem; jerk players, afk player, kill steal, item steal... It only makes player felt even more uncomfortable to group.
A comfortable method of grouping need to be made to allow solo player to gain help when they choose to be. A comfortable natural interaction method that solo player WILL use rather than "I don't care, I just stop playing, cuz I don't want to meet any random jerk players that gonna ruin my day".
Unfortunately, for the developers, they continue to completely marginalize their largest sub group of players, and force them to go elsewhere. Money can still be made of course, but a virtual gold mine is waiting out there for whoever is willing to step outside their comfort zone, and code a game for those who play differently than they do.
But I enjoy the social elements to the MMOs. I enjoy the general chats. I enjoy the player trades and crafting. I also enjoy grouping.... under my terms, how and when I want.
I don't like games that either force me into it, or put me at an artificial disadvantage if I choose to solo. Games should have X number of content, period, Whether you go through it solo, or as a group shouldn't matter either way, outside of the natural benefits to being in a group.
That said, not a lot of people try to mini-max an MMO and actually can say they have done 100% of a game's content. I prefer solo pve questing but have at times done groups, PvP, and crafting, and had a lot of fun doing it. It mostly depends on the game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Making good content for a P&P campaign is hard and it is as hard to make a good MMO dungeon (not counting the part of coding it and art), you need motives, the right amount of challenge and something that makes the dungeon interesting and standing out from the rest. Some MMOs have at least a few awesome dungeons, even games generally not so good can have a few that is really fun but the average MMO dungeon tend to be so-so.
The real issue with MMO content is not that it is harder to make but that you need so much of it, and finding enough talented people that can make varied and fun content is indeed very hard. Most MMO content is still done by 1-5 players even if there are raids and GW2 styled massive PvE bosses now and then.
The big difference between P&P and MMORPGs though is that P&P have an active DM that can modify the content on the fly, raising or lowering the difficulty to fit the group and make things as interesting as possible. If the players for an instance just start to win every fight with little work a DM would make mobs tougher without mentioning it to the players so all fights get interesting and the players need to use their abilities full out to win but not so hard that it stops being fun.
While it would be possible to create mechanics that changes the difficulty in a larger MMO dungeons/instance depending on how the players do that is hard work and without a real human behind it the players could exploit it by playing badly until they reach the endboss to get him weak. Scaling difficulties more or less require a human or a good AI to work and that is the part that is harder with MMOs, not really the number of players.
Making a dungeon that is fun for everyone no matter on skills is close to impossible, even if you let the players pick from several difficulties.
While I ain't a professional P&P creator I do have done a lot of P&P content for RPG conventions (the difference is that while I get food & admissions I never got paid), it is not easy but the difference is still that P&P games are far easier to get the right difficulty.
That is also the reason it is so hard to make a MMO that is fun for every type of player.
In regard to story and content:
The idea that one designs for millions of people is idiotic at best for the purpose that there is not a single MMORPG server that has one million people in population. If I made an MMORPG that had a million players, chances are its content would be around 1 million players split into twenty servers of 50,000 players each. The average session length is 3 hours. I am going to give you 6 hours and split the population into the four time zones.
Lets say that regardless of session length and time zone, Half the players do PvP and the other half do PvE. That means 25K are doing PvE. Lets say that out of those 25K half are doing raids/instances.
All of the instances are designed around the concept that the story is built around the Max Party Size. This means in one server we are doing 12,500 Instances/Raids (all that at least require 4 - 8 people) This means that while those 12,500 players own the game, you get around anywhere from 1500 - 3000 instanced raids at the same time (Hence why Queues exist). Along with a maximum number of instances that can exist (without a server crashing and to keep conditions in a server good.)
The only time an MMORPG is truly massively is when an entire map becomes a battleground and everyone in that map has to fight together. In short, those large events when all the strangers and their dog have to join forces to kill things in a map... and that only remains popular for a while.
The art of RPG story telling is telling a story that multiple people share together and are able to make the outcome of the story together...and even have a replay value to come out through a different way. MMORPGs just take that idea of a story and have many people instanced and experiencing it at the same time.
In short, MMOs have the story like a book and the players access the chapters of the book and read the pages at their whim.
From one of my campaigns:
"Upon the edge of this expanse lies our final gate between our ether world and our beloved breach. This entire area.... covered in moss, stone, and brushland... is what became of our ancient city. Towers, homes, now rocks and ruin. Everything shattered on that day! ..and kindness, in all its folly and wisdom doomed my kind to the void. Hear those echoes in the sky? The sparks! they speak to me, even when I don't want to hear.... -We must hurry! Quickly now! or lest lose ourselves to the abyss."
Group content should not be more rewarding than solo. Bad players tend to get carried in groups, whereas solo players have nothing to rely on except their own skill and persistence. Yet the former get better rewards, causing poor players to focus on grouping instead of getting better at the game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Looking around the web I see they have made it into a solo or group mission. Thanks for the update.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/03/31/guild-wars-2-tweaking-the-personal-story-to-allow-a-solo-finish/
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey