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All Together Now - Promoting Group In MMOs | MMORPG.com
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All Together Now - Promoting Group In MMOs | MMORPG.com
Niklas dives into the idea of grouping and how integral it is to online world design in MMOs, looking back on the genre's history, as well as some of the games that are defining its future.
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NOW players are only interested in rewards be it ranks or items and that is the sad state of the gamers mentality and who games are being catered to.
Even worse is that this superficial want by gamers is so bad developers know they can also sell cash shop items and make millions more.
In case of EQ2 they have been for years now focusing on the familiars to sell out of the cash shop and really irks me as the WRONG way to treat your customers.I want the developer to take my money and use it to make the game better or use some intelligence to make proper changes.
All the EQ franchise wants to do is sell cash shop items and expansions.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That ethos is dead, sacrificed on the alter of accessibility and simplicity, in other words solo and easy mode. Grouping requires time and an understanding of how to group, so it became seen as gameplay that had to come second to solo. After many years grouping is not even second, it just gets crumbs. The great irony is that while that happened FPS became more team based, co-op became a big genre and MOBA became huge. The only genre where people don't need to group is MMORPG's, it is tragic really.
You get posters on here talking about "forced grouping", outside of solo games in nearly every genre of multiplayer you group. Does anyone declare this is "forced grouping", no. But in MMOS we have players whom seem ready to tear their hair out if they need to group. Bonkers.
The first type is a feature of classless design and I don't see anything wrong with it - I like it actually since it enhances group play when any of the players in the group can switch roles if needed. The second type is a feature of solo-centric design and all modern MMOs are very much guilty of doing that for the sake of giving everyone more or less the same ability to consume the solo content which is the bulk of the game content.
Even games like WOW or ESO where everyone can be a healing mage tank for soloing have content carved out where that won't work. In the hardest group content you have very definite roles although it's just the 3 modern roles - tank, healer, dps - since the need for support is pretty well gone as something one or more group members do and the roots, mezzes, stuns and party buffs are doled out to tanks and healers or to everyone.
That group content that still exists in raids or very hard dungeons has become niche and instanced in almost all modern MMOs.
We could spend hours speculating about why things have become the way they have in MMOs but I personally think it boils down to two things:
I agree with your core point that MMOs should be group games but I was also there in those early days whereas the vast majority of modern MMO players never were.
If we're ever going to get back to MMOs being about groups IMO, it won't happen by trying to bring back the formula that worked in the past of encouraging (some would say force) players to group formally in ideal compositions.
What I think needs to happen that could be attractive to a 2021 player base is making an MMO built around informal, ad hoc grouping as has been already done in games like Rift, GW2 and to a lesser extent in both WOW and ESO. But it needs to be something more than a fun side attraction. It needs to be the main and best way to level, get loot and play the game.
These events are very popular in ESO. It's quite common to see for example, 50 or 60 players doing a Harrowstorm or Dragon casual group event or whatever the event is in the latest and greatest zone everyone is currently playing in. You can be grouped with you friends, in a small random group, in a raid-sized group or even solo in those events but you're still part of the 60 working to complete it and get the rewards which in ESO, do tend to be very good rewards.
More grouping in MMOs? Definitely yes. But it needs to be done in a way that appeals to 2021 MMO players who are very different from the 1999 players. I don't think the bulk of the new player base would tolerate needing to group in formal groups always or not being able to progress otherwise or only doing so with a huge handicap.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Same with console mmorpgs such as eso and ffxiv, where spending rl $ is much more fun than actually earning through playing.
FFXIV for example skipping all the content ok WTF, seriously? that's all the game has going for it, it's the bread and butter but you can totally pay to skip it all and just hang out in the cash shop where all the action is.
I know people hate wow and that's more than fine, i'm pro wow now becasue once i started to piece together all the pluses, it starter to add up fast.
PC ONLY - nuf said
HARD AF CONTENT - it can be hard af as it's PC only
NO CASH SHOP - (ofc we will get the "they sell mounts" yawn such an overused old weak rebuttable, yes, a tiny microscopic fraction of all the obtainable ones by EARNING.)
EARN - you have to earn by playing, playing with others, not by paying, as in most mmorpg's
POLISH - it shines so bright i gotta wear shades to play, it so f'ing solid
GRAPHICS - lets be real ff eso are blurry wash look; wow crisp clear sharp brilliant
RAIDS - which promote teamwork
People whine about how wow is for raiders only (i probably did along the way in there before bfa as well), but it's so not true as i solo'd SL for 4 months and had fun, i was entertained and engaged, more so in BFA tbh as a solo player though.
The thing is if you feel you're being forced to group, here's a little secret they don't care, you can go pay eso or ff and solo your brains out, caving to every cry baby doesn't help build such a strong following of dedicated loyal followers.
I mean look at me, hated the f outta wow for a decade+ becasue they destroyed EQ2 the hardest raiding ever all gone because EQ2 had to go hard core stupid level casual. Who has the hardest content now? I know, WoW, WTF right?
Wow understands the fundamental principle of mmorpg's GROUP, play with others, i mean if you're going to whine that you can't get whatever cause you don't like playing with others, well in most situations people turn to trash talking wow as alternative entertainment even though there are a plethora mmo's out there ready to welcome your wallet with open arms.
Also why are there so many podcasts for wow, so many youtube channels in where it ain't a side gig they make a living by having a youtube channel dedicated to wow not all games, only wow, and there are so many channels that are able to sustain a living?
Where i'm going with this is due to having hard af content you and your fellow players have to work together as a team, all be skilled, it forms communities, they are forged by beating these goals, by playing together, working together to achieve that goal, trust your team mates and they trust you too, for example when i came in to group from solo land i was still self healing during raid, using up my personals, i had to let go and trust my healers and yeah in the end that builds a huge loyal following of real relationships and far less paid for relationships (hoping at least one person gets what i did there lmao)
I've been saying it for years now, but the ONLY unique selling point of this genre is being massively multiplayer, yet most of the genre ignores the feature almost entirely.
As for how we reached this point, im sure we could blame accessability or the desire for more money, but I personally believe the problem comes from something more fundamental. I believe we've reached this point because the designers of mmorpgs mostly copied the designs of single player RPGs, but many of those designs don't work.
The article talks about the problem of soloing to cap, then having to learn how to group at endgame. But that's too late to learn to group, you've already trained most of your players to play solo. In the past, that wasnt the case, there was plenty of group content whilst you leveled up. LotRO at launch was great at that, loads of group content during the leveling process and it trained the community to play together. This is one of the primary reasons the community originally was so great.
The problem occurs due to linear progression routes combined with vertical progression, both taken directly from single player RPGs (where they work fine). These work to separate the community too much, but also ensure that most players end up at endgame. If you join the game late, you'll never find the groups you need during leveling.
Hence the switch to solo content. Why waste all that time and effort on group content in the leveling process when itll only get used for the first 6 months of the game? Much better to design content that can be used forever (i.e. solo).
The best solution, in my opinion, is to rethink the whole leveling process, design it from the ground up around being a massively multiplayer game.
EQ2 was designed from the core up to be played in groups. Unfortunately for EQ2 it could not compete with WoW. It never saw even a fraction of the success WoW had. They had to make changes but its massive world was designed and this includes the thousands of quests requiring a lot of grouping. It progressively became worse as the population dwindled you could not experience the game to enjoy all these quests, lore and world for that matter when you simply could not progress.
They introduced methods including mercenaries to help players do the content solo or with a merc or molo as they call it. Now if they had not done that the game would have died clear away. It was a graveyard as far as players went when you zoned into an area hoping to find another player and it says /who and just your name appears.
Yes it is absolutely awful that all this group content can now be moloed but there was no choice for the survival of the game.
We talk about the way games were and how grouping can be a wonderful thing. It is and all my best memories from Everquest were definitely in some dungeon in a full group. I have a great deal of difficulty believing that any game company that designs a game like EQ2 with so much dependent on grouping will achieve any real success. It might be a small game and it will remain that. It will not achieve real popularity because of how I have noticed gamers have evolved. Even if you can find a core group of players willing to play this type of game it will not be a popular thing.
Too many games are vying for our time and attention and any real hardship caused by the lack of players will result in players just dumping the game in favour of another.
Comparing games like FPS and games where players get together and group and play to destroy the other team isn't a metric for how MMORPGs work. A lot of the mmorpg is about working together and some of the time you spend like crafting alone. In MOBAs and FPS you don't spend any time alone. You jump in and out and you expect to find people to group when you play. That isn't how MMORPGs work. You log in and then you might spend it doing the stuff you can do alone like putting items up for sale or crafting or fishing or house decorating or whatever other activities the game has. Then you decide to do a dungeon and set about trying to get a group together. There is a significant portion of time you spend unlike an FPS or MOBA where you do other things besides the grouping. So when this part takes time and it will in a game where you do not log in with ready made groups in a lobby , it will frustrate people and they will leave. As more people leave the threshold to successfully do group content drops. The fate that EQ2 suffered will loom in the horizon.
The best way I like grouping is if there is a 'group finder' feature that you put your name and role into and wait for the game to match you up. We run the dungeon, then ba-bye. Every now and again I friend someone, but it's relatively rare. I also like grouping for things like killing the big snake at the beginning of Shadowbane (obscure I know). A bit less obscure, but the groups you could join in Warhammer were fun.
I do see the value in group content and definitely thing there needs to be that element, but unless it's in a fairly narrow range in what I like, I personally prefer to go my own way. This way, I can take 5 hours to go half a mile because I have to (I really do have to) get every resource on the way. I don't care how worthless it is... I need it! I don't have to worry about missing things like that because I'm grouped up and I have to take body blows to my soul because I'm missing things.
I self identify as a monkey.
You can't sell what people won't buy. Players played their part.
Accordingly, It's not hard in the least.
Iselin's suggestion of a game built around informal, ad hoc grouping is excellent, as it is proven to draw large groups to play together spontaneously in current times.
The players of today are more likely to embrace a greater focus on that than a requirement for structured groups in all aspects of play.
Nostalgia goggle paper over that small detail for most, but for those of us who are 15-20 years older than when we played those games, its difficult to devote as much time and effort to a game when RL keeps hopping in the way.
Not a popular opinion here, but the way modern games are designed is based on the input of users and information gathered from playing habits, not from a shadowy cabal of cooperate villains trying to ruin MMORPGs.
WoW, ESO, FF XIV, all have solo activities, but also have group stuff to do along the way. That way, if endgame grouping interests you, you can be ready for it. If you want to skip the group stuff, you can, but it limits you. If there were no way to solo a lot of these games, those players wouldn't be playing them.
If most players aren't playing group content now, they certainly won't start playing it if solo-able content starts drying up; they'll leave, instead. You can bet developers have data to back this up.
Seems to me the OP author seems to get this, they just haven't accepted it, yet. They talk about how unprepared the average player is for the group end game, which is absolutely true. But hey, there's group content throughout the leveling experience, and its rewards are generally much better than solo options. But those players still choose solo options, so they don't know how to play the group content effectively. They deliberately choose the less rewarding content.
So why do they do that? I'll throw out a couple reasons... I'd guess that they don't really care about having the most powerful gear. They don't care about "mastering" an hour long raid that in most cases has some arbitrary little assortment of gimmicks that makes it easier to win as opposed to requiring "real skill". And even in that, it's more about repeating the thing over and over again until it's committed to memory.
And another: once you're out of your college years, you're hardly ever in a position to give undivided attention to anything, let alone a 1-3 hour raid. I couldn't tell you the last time I ever grouped and DIDN'T end up spending more than 20 minutes during the session with various people calling for a break to deal with some RL issue. And I don't say that to criticize them. Stuff happens. But if you're solo, you can go at your own pace, and pause as needed for your own RL concerns without the guilt of holding up others.
And that's how we end up with the format that sadly is becoming the new normal, now; little 10 minute skirmishes of multiplayer pickup groups; no fuss, no muss. It's sad, but it's slave to reality. If we're lucky, we have that much undivided attention at a time in a row that we can spare. And if we don't, we solo, or don't play at all.
I understand wanting what was. At near 60 I'd rather the vast majority of things were what was. Almost every day a part of my world erodes away. But it's not coming back and that's all there is to it.
I don't see the MMORPG norm of the past any more likely to return on a grand scale. We are favoured in that a few of those yet remain available in some form. People that want that should enjoy what's left... while they can.
Some day they too will erode away and never return.
That's the MMORPG scene of today, and it will be only worse in the future, with watering down everything possible to the easier access and higher availability.
But almost all the other genre are pushing groups for more $
Seems a bit conflicted to me.
Oh man, I've played every MMO under the Sun and this statement is just plain wrong. Healers being highest skill? Give me a break please. Maybe you feel this way because spamming F1 and switching targets is too difficult for you?
In a holy trinity game, supports can be EASILY replaced by bots that do good enough job to replace a support person.
...
But then my girlfriend wouldn't have a role to play in my MMOs, so supports are cool, lol.
Honestly the hardest support was in games like Lineage 2 at like, mass PvPs and shit. You had to run and hide and spam your heals that GO THROUGH OBSTACLES like in EVERY OTHER MMO. Still spamming them heals and debuffs was relatively hard. But the other professions had it worse.
Overwatch you get placed in random groups and other FPS's work that way too I think because I don't play FPS they give me nausea from the first point of view. Too much for my senses to handle.
So you are saying games that place people randomly from the very start of the game session in a group is somehow now an example of increased grouping in games. Do you have a choice in those games to play alone, is that even viable. I certainly wanted to play alone in LOL more times than I can count.
You cannot use games that give no other option other than group play as many battle arena games and shooters as pointing to increased grouping in games. All it shows is that people enjoy different types of games but forcing people into random groups as soon as you log into a game world isn't the one size fits all for an MMORPG.
I liked how GW2 handled it where when a Champion was to be fought you are placed in groups automatically. That could be a solution and to some extent WoW's looking for dungeon is that. You get placed with randoms that from my personal experience as a healer have been one of the worst examples of building a community I can find. It build nothing except the increased conviction on my part that I dislike healing in PUGs.
I have no solutions but this idea of dragging other genres to point to increased grouping in them as opposed to the dearth in MMORPGs ignores the fundamental differences and problems between the genres.
The saddest part is a lot of these types of players go in expressly with the intent to tank multiplayer games, and once all of the fun and interesting parts of the game are systemically dismantled because, let's face it, single player gamers will always be in the VAST majority, they jump ship and the game dies, and then developers are just left shrugging their shoulders.
support is a separate group of classing than healer. Also, your sexism is bleeding through your edge there
EQ2 and SWG still have the best housing, but EQ2 is so much better overall.
It pains me to be white knighting wow now, but that's me, i end up where the content is the hardest, OG EQ2, SWL until top tier 10 became a cake walk for us with no new hard content, so here i am in wow now, unbelievable.
I mean OG EQ2 still blows current wow out of the water. They knee jerked reacted to wow success. Had they stuck to their ideology i still feel they would have fared much better in the long run instead of becoming an easy overly casual wow clone.
Wow is still highly popular and they have the hardest content? Must be more people out there looking for challenge than we would imagine. EQ2 should have stuck to their guns. You'd think with the always on EQ2 prog servers and how popular they are, cause they are the most challenging, you'd think they would get the picture.
So as much as i hate giving blizz credit and white knighting them, i have too for two reasons, one; they deserve it for staying true to hard af content, and second; i have too becasue i have nowhere else to go if i want hard challenging content to enjoy, lol.