I played what we called 'Hardcore' in Classic Wow for the last 2 years. You delete your character on death. No grouping in open world. Can only group with other Hardcore players in dungeons. No auction house use and no trading unless in a duo (both delete if one dies). An entirely new meta opened up. Wow played like a real roleplaying game!
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
I'd prefer more ways to allow grouping in open world, especially against harder content, but this game play showed me how much was lost in mmo's over the years. Players simply do not understand what makes a game fun anymore. The very real fear over losing your characters changes how you see the game entirely.
I wouldn't enforce full character deletion in any real, default ruleset, but it shows why old school mmos were so much more fun: challenge makes rewards so much better.
Turning mmorpgs into a solo, casual experience killed the genre.
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
But it wasn't lost. You simply had to choose to play the game a different way and there it was, totally changing your experience regardless of Classic WoW remaining the same.
Games are largely what we choose to make of them. We don't have to be hostage to what they present us. We can take ownership of our experience. When you do it in concert with others the results can be remarkable.
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
But it wasn't lost. You simply had to choose to play the game a different way and there it was, totally changing your experience regardless of Classic WoW remaining the same.
Games are largely what we choose to make of them. We don't have to be hostage to what they present us. We can take ownership of our experience. When you do it in concert with others the results can be remarkable.
Maybe, but I still think intentionally throwing away progression is nuts and certainly wouldn't make a game more fun.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
But it wasn't lost. You simply had to choose to play the game a different way and there it was, totally changing your experience regardless of Classic WoW remaining the same.
Games are largely what we choose to make of them. We don't have to be hostage to what they present us. We can take ownership of our experience. When you do it in concert with others the results can be remarkable.
Maybe, but I still think intentionally throwing away progression is nuts and certainly wouldn't make a game more fun.
Here's a stack of money, let's set it on fire.
Yeah...no.
Time is money after all.
Might as well be doing this for "fun"
Just turn that cash into bitcoin, saves on the smoke and needing to clean up afterwards; and it is just as sound an investment.
I played what we called 'Hardcore' in Classic Wow for the last 2 years. You delete your character on death. No grouping in open world. Can only group with other Hardcore players in dungeons. No auction house use and no trading unless in a duo (both delete if one dies). An entirely new meta opened up. Wow played like a real roleplaying game!
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
I'd prefer more ways to allow grouping in open world, especially against harder content, but this game play showed me how much was lost in mmo's over the years. Players simply do not understand what makes a game fun anymore. The very real fear over losing your characters changes how you see the game entirely.
I wouldn't enforce full character deletion in any real, default ruleset, but it shows why old school mmos were so much more fun: challenge makes rewards so much better.
Turning mmorpgs into a solo, casual experience killed the genre.
There's a private classic server that implements this automatically, although it lets you group with any other hardcore player within 5 levels of you. the same restriction allows trades with other hardcore players. It's challenging in terms of how willing you are to just safely grind stuff.
I got bored and decided to attack an elite at level 49 and died. I was kind of glad because it had become VERY tedious to play that way. I avoid hardcore in my ARPGs as well.
My feelings towards grouping has changed drastically over the years. While I'm not a big fan of raid finders, dungeon finders are actually very appealing as long as they aren't cross server. Cross server group finders create tons of toxicity as you aren't likely to ever see those people again and so the selfish ones can be really nasty.
TBC Classic requiring an addon to filter the LFG channel spam is absurd. I may have stayed if they had a group finder that required you to get to the dungeon yourselves.
Retail WOW was a massive turnoff once I tried to find M+ groups. WOW has always had a massive shortage in tanks/heals and yet they refuse to rescale dungeons for larger groups to accommodate more DPS. 5 man dungeons just don't cut it at all.
I remember trying EQ2 a year after WOW launched and was quickly turned off by the difficulty in solo leveling. I just couldn't be bothered and unsubbed and never returned.
I see a difference between being able to perform any role with any character after some preparation for the situation at hand as being very different from being able to perform any and all roles simultaneously.
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:
The desire to attract as big a player base as possible to your game for obviou$ reasons.
And the difference in todays player base compared to the glory days 20 years ago.
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.
The group model works quite well for a new game, but as the game ages, the group model doesn't perform the same way. The basis of a group-oriented game is a large, diverse population functioning at the same level and playing at the same time.
EQ1 was the pinnacle of group-based games. In 1999, you really needed a full group to be successful for a long duration. Fortunately, there were lots of people around to build a group, all it took was initiative for one person to find others with similar interests. That was best done by going to the zone you were interested in and /ooc LFG.
The problem started arising as new expansions were introduced, and the population began to spread out. Now, the same population at any given level was spaced through the virtual environment, that simply going to a zone and advertising wasn't always a good strategy. The zone you wanted to adventure in might be empty, and some zones were constructed in such a way that they couldn't really support multiple groups. The advertising began to become more global, as the travel time really cut into session time.
LFG tools were introduced, but due to the ineffectiveness or inconvenience of these tools, people simply ignored them. The problem expanded with more places to go, but the playing population congregated near the max level leaving significant gaps. Searches like '/who all 10-20' might show no active players at any given time of the day.
The overall population was reasonably good, enough that Sony/Daybreak didn't close the server entirely, merely merged underpopulated servers to boost the population. Even with mergers, the population moved upwards towards the level cap.
Eventually, the low-level and mid-level portions of the game were barren except for alts and a bunch of diehards struggling to make their way solo in a group-oriented experience. Tools like mercenaries, fast regen, potions, and Defiant gear were introduced to help the catch-up process. Only these ideas subverted the concept of grouping, as it made most every character capable of soloing.
The problem with EQ1 is that effort (sometimes minimal effort) went into fixing the game mechanics to allow characters to succeed solo in content mostly designed for groups. New content became more focused on solo gaming rather than group gaming. Almost every new zone had one or more places where it was safe to solo. If this effort had gone instead to attracting new customers it would have bolstered the lower-middle levels with people, keeping the group-mentality alive, and making more money. How many times have you seen EQ1 advertised anywhere except in game magazines over the years? Mobile, you see almost daily on TV.
Ultimately, the game development companies 'broke' the need for groups in their games in an attempt to keep their current customers. They valued existing customers over acquiring new customers. We are left with empty games, where it is simply not possible to build a group.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
THis is the reason why I want Pantheon to launch....I want to see if a group based MMO can survive in 2021....Personally I think that ship has sailed and the reson why? The players themselves. They have been catered to solo for such a long time that I don't think many want to be forced to play in a group anymore.
EQ1 was the pinnacle of group-based games. In 1999, you really needed a full group to be successful for a long duration. Fortunately, there were lots of people around to build a group, all it took was initiative for one person to find others with similar interests. That was best done by going to the zone you were interested in and /ooc LFG.
The problem started arising as new expansions were introduced, and the population began to spread out. Now, the same population at any given level was spaced through the virtual environment, that simply going to a zone and advertising wasn't always a good strategy. The zone you wanted to adventure in might be empty, and some zones were constructed in such a way that they couldn't really support multiple groups. The advertising began to become more global, as the travel time really cut into session time.
LFG tools were introduced, but due to the ineffectiveness or inconvenience of these tools, people simply ignored them. The problem expanded with more places to go, but the playing population congregated near the max level leaving significant gaps. Searches like '/who all 10-20' might show no active players at any given time of the day.
The overall population was reasonably good, enough that Sony/Daybreak didn't close the server entirely, merely merged underpopulated servers to boost the population. Even with mergers, the population moved upwards towards the level cap.
Eventually, the low-level and mid-level portions of the game were barren except for alts and a bunch of diehards struggling to make their way solo in a group-oriented experience. Tools like mercenaries, fast regen, potions, and Defiant gear were introduced to help the catch-up process. Only these ideas subverted the concept of grouping, as it made most every character capable of soloing.
The problem with EQ1 is that effort (sometimes minimal effort) went into fixing the game mechanics to allow characters to succeed solo in content mostly designed for groups. New content became more focused on solo gaming rather than group gaming. Almost every new zone had one or more places where it was safe to solo. If this effort had gone instead to attracting new customers it would have bolstered the lower-middle levels with people, keeping the group-mentality alive, and making more money. How many times have you seen EQ1 advertised anywhere except in game magazines over the years? Mobile, you see almost daily on TV.
Ultimately, the game development companies 'broke' the need for groups in their games in an attempt to keep their current customers. They valued existing customers over acquiring new customers. We are left with empty games, where it is simply not possible to build a group.
How many new players do you think such marketing would have attracted? The vast majority would take one look at EQ1 and dismiss it
out of hand. They are wise to focus on those players they have rather than pursue new ones they likely won't get.
THis is the reason why I want Pantheon to launch....I want to see if a group based MMO can survive in 2021....Personally I think that ship has sailed and the reson why? The players themselves. They have been catered to solo for such a long time that I don't think many want to be forced to play in a group anymore.
I'm the other way around.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures and I firmly believe there is a huge potential market for group-based RPGs.
I just don't think that the traditional way of designing MMORPGs is a good way to promote group play. There are too many design decisions that make grouping hard work, so I totally understand why the players stopped enaging with group content, which then meant devs just stopped designing as much group content.
So a game like Pantheon I dont think will do well, not because there isn't a market for a group-focused mmorpg, but because a lot of the games design is based on old-school paradigms that we already know have significant problems.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
THis is the reason why I want Pantheon to launch....I want to see if a group based MMO can survive in 2021....Personally I think that ship has sailed and the reson why? The players themselves. They have been catered to solo for such a long time that I don't think many want to be forced to play in a group anymore.
I'm the other way around.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures and I firmly believe there is a huge potential market for group-based RPGs.
I just don't think that the traditional way of designing MMORPGs is a good way to promote group play. There are too many design decisions that make grouping hard work, so I totally understand why the players stopped enaging with group content, which then meant devs just stopped designing as much group content.
So a game like Pantheon I dont think will do well, not because there isn't a market for a group-focused mmorpg, but because a lot of the games design is based on old-school paradigms that we already know have significant problems.
I tend to agree. Making a group in a game is a chore, and not a pleasurable one. It can be a long and exhausting process. Existing LFG tools are pretty much useless, especially when people don't want to use it. The various automated dungeon and group finders can be helpful, but are also very erratic. Not being able to easily form a new group discourages grouping.
I'd like to see significant improvements in LFG tools. I'd start by having the game treat groups as entities, and anyone could see what groups are in existence, where they are, who's in them, the group's goal, group's needs (functionality), and the waiting list for that group. I'd also like the group to see all characters. The various ways to be 'invisible' or anonymous complicate the manual group building process.
Groups should also have benefits, like improved XP or loot drops (based on the number of people in the group), and special quests available that can only be obtained and accomplished in a group.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
Now those are rather extreme rules, but it was also the MOST FUN I've had playing Wow ... ever! The guild was friendly and supportive. The community was TIGHT! That is completely lost in mmos today.
I'd prefer more ways to allow grouping in open world, especially against harder content, but this game play showed me how much was lost in mmo's over the years. Players simply do not understand what makes a game fun anymore. The very real fear over losing your characters changes how you see the game entirely.
I wouldn't enforce full character deletion in any real, default ruleset, but it shows why old school mmos were so much more fun: challenge makes rewards so much better.
Turning mmorpgs into a solo, casual experience killed the genre.
You stay sassy!
Games are largely what we choose to make of them. We don't have to be hostage to what they present us. We can take ownership of our experience. When you do it in concert with others the results can be remarkable.
Here's a stack of money, let's set it on fire.
Yeah...no.
Time is money after all.
Might as well be doing this for "fun"
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I got bored and decided to attack an elite at level 49 and died. I was kind of glad because it had become VERY tedious to play that way. I avoid hardcore in my ARPGs as well.
It did create a good community though.
TBC Classic requiring an addon to filter the LFG channel spam is absurd. I may have stayed if they had a group finder that required you to get to the dungeon yourselves.
Retail WOW was a massive turnoff once I tried to find M+ groups. WOW has always had a massive shortage in tanks/heals and yet they refuse to rescale dungeons for larger groups to accommodate more DPS. 5 man dungeons just don't cut it at all.
I remember trying EQ2 a year after WOW launched and was quickly turned off by the difficulty in solo leveling. I just couldn't be bothered and unsubbed and never returned.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
How many new players do you think such marketing would have attracted? The vast majority would take one look at EQ1 and dismiss it out of hand. They are wise to focus on those players they have rather than pursue new ones they likely won't get.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
There are good benefits to always being grouped, even with total strangers and no drawbacks.
Now if only they would add more group based content things would be golden.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon