Forgive me I am a little new to the forums. This may have been hashed out a few times but I read a ways back and hadn't seen it mentioned.
What I am concerned about is will the developers consider making solo gameplay more prevelant than they are leading on? Don't get me wrong, nobody loves a good grind in a group more than me. I used to sit in front of the computer for hours on end grinding mindlessly on mobs in EQ working AA's or levels. That being said my life has changed drastically with the addition of a wife and kids. I don't get the same amount of time to play like I used to.
I currently play on the p99 server, and I love being a Wizard, Druid, or necro. A class that is able to kite then med. It gives me a chance to still be a part of the game and enjoy it without having to spend time LFG or putting together a group and working my way down in a dungeon only to have my daughter tell me she wants to go to the park or watch a movie. I almost feel bad joining groups just because sometimes I am a shell of myself as a player or I have to go afk a lot. When I could just log on my wizard kite for 3 minutes med up for 10 and go again.
I guess what I'm trying to say is will there be a place in this game for the casual soloer? I don't want it to be easy. I just want it to be there if I need it. I realize the goal for Pantheon is to be group centric and focus more on a large interaction rather than a solo one. And I'm happy about that, it's very important. But I feel like the kiting aspect kept a lot of people playing EQ that normally wouldn't have if they didn't have this to fall back on when needed.
Yes.
From the FAQ:
1.4 Will you be able to solo in Pantheon?
Yes. While most content will be designed for groups, there will typically also be content that is soloable. Some classes may solo better than other classes.
Also, check out this statement from the devs in the last stream:
00:40:31 - Soloing
Yup, they said soloing would be very challenging, but not impossible.
I think it's very important, in a RPG, that soloing is possible, just because, some players want to roleplay a lone wolf druid, or a misanthrope necromancer, or any character that, for roleplay reasons, would avoid having contact with other people.
The difficult thing will be to balance classes in that regard... if a class ends up being good at solo and also very wanted in groups, the game could get swarmed by everyone playing that class.
bobwinner said:Yup, they said soloing would be very challenging, but not impossible.
I think it's very important, in a RPG, that soloing is possible, just because, some players want to roleplay a lone wolf druid, or a misanthrope necromancer, or any character that, for roleplay reasons, would avoid having contact with other people.
The difficult thing will be to balance classes in that regard... if a class ends up being good at solo and also very wanted in groups, the game could get swarmed by everyone playing that class.
The real key is making sure soloing is clearly less efficient exp wise than grouping.
In early EQ Enchanters were uncool - at first. You didn't get Breeze until, what? lvl 19? And until then you weren't much help in young groups and I very often was the odd kid not picked for groups. I HAD to learn how to solo or give up. So I did it. I learned and I got pretty damned good at it. I was killing mobs that most characters my level wouldn't consider. It's all about the CC - even if the first C is just the one mob your fighting. Root means you can damage your target with only a slight chance of them breaking root - they don't get to hit you but you get to hit them. We had enough stuns/mezzes to lock a mob down asap if root did break. Our damage spells were probably the weakest among the mage classes, but most of them were really fast firing and cheaper to cast. Later we got pets and charms. And you learned to keep drops to equip your new pets etc. Can't tell you how many times I farmed Woe and Envy for my pets! The point is that I learned very early to solo and to keep trying. Then one day I leveled up and got my first mana spell. i don't think I was ever forced to solo again. I ALWAYS had a group. Hell, more than once I was practically ridiculed into stop solo'ing (for quest purposes) and join a group! On the other hand, learning to charm solo was amazing. As for groups? I learned how to pull - as a chanter. People didn't think it was possible but it was - and it was easy, and WAY more effective. But in reality, the solo game for an enchanter was way different than for a group. Folks became less and less interested in my DPS and more and more interested in just how many mobs could I locl down for a half hour and how much mana could I dump into everyone as fast as possible. You would get people inspecting you and trying to figure out why you would have a spec gear set for solo and one for grouping... it was two different games.
When EQ 2 was released it pretty much ruined Illusionists. No one wanted to CC anymore. I showed new groups time and again how easy it was to do a group with CC but all they wanted was max DPS, no CC, good heals, shut up and mana battery. I mostly solo'd for EQ2.
Iksar said:The real key is making sure soloing is clearly less efficient exp wise than grouping.
If I remember correctly, in EQ there was bonus xp scaling with the number of people in the group.
For instance, if a mob give 100 xp solo, in a party of 5 it would give 100+50(10% per member) = 150 xp shared among 5 people = 30 xp per member, which is less than solo kill, but taking it down with 5 people is much faster and with less (0 in a balanced group) downtime, which make the grouping much more efficient over time.
I expect something similar, it was kinda balanced, as players could solo if they wanted, while grouping was still best (except for loot maybe).
bobwinner said:Iksar said:The real key is making sure soloing is clearly less efficient exp wise than grouping.If I remember correctly, in EQ there was bonus xp scaling with the number of people in the group.
For instance, if a mob give 100 xp solo, in a party of 5 it would give 100+50(10% per member) = 150 xp shared among 5 people = 30 xp per member, which is less than solo kill, but taking it down with 5 people is much faster and with less (0 in a balanced group) downtime, which make the grouping much more efficient over time.
I expect something similar, it was kinda balanced, as players could solo if they wanted, while grouping was still best (except for loot maybe).
Not quite how it worked out in classic EQ (Vanilla -> Velious). Solo classes ALWAYS leveled faster when soloing. Add in the fact that at least originally racial and class exp penalties took away from the entire groups exp pool per kill.
January 14th, 2001
Grouping Bonus
We've always been the first to say that EverQuest is designed to promote grouping. Those who prefer to solo should be able to do so with some restrictions, but probably will not be able to go everywhere and do everything like a well-oiled, or like multiple well-oiled groups. This is a main foundation of EverQuest, and is what drove our decision to implement a class-based system where classes have strengths and weaknesses that complement each other.
Aside from making it so that the best gear requires groups, either to get quest items or get the best gear directly, our goal was to make it so that groups could advance faster than a solo player. One way we tried to reach this goal was by putting experience bonuses in dungeons, so our changes mentioned above should certainly help in that area. Another way we tried to reach that goal was by giving a per-kill experience bonus based on the size of the group.
One thing that has been confirmed by many of our high level players, both inside and outside the company, is that the "best" groups can already advance faster in a grouping situation than by any one member camping a single spawn. However, it has been pointed out that not everyone has the opportunity to get in the "best group". This led to many players choosing to "camp the single spawn" because they then do not have to worry about someone else getting their character killed. This in turn exacerbated the problem, as many players chose to "camp the single spawn" from creation to old age, and are just beginning to experience grouping and learn group-skills at about the time that dungeons become the most unforgiving. The inevitable result is that the level 50 "dungeon newbies" contribute to the fact that the group isn't the "best group".
Our goal is to get people grouping earlier, and provide them enough of a bonus where they do not feel that they are losing ground during the learning process. We feel we can do this by doubling the grouping experience bonus and by scaling it up based on the size of the group. Currently, the bonus is an additional 2% experience per group member, not counting the first one, leading to a maximum bonus of 10%. Following the next patch, the bonus will be as follows:
2 person group - 2% total bonus.
3 person group - 6% total bonus.
4 person group - 10% total bonus.
5 person group - 14% total bonus.
6 person group - 20% total bonus.
This bonus is applied to the total experience reward for killing a creature prior to distributing it to the group.
Bazgrim said:Yes.
From the FAQ:
1.4 Will you be able to solo in Pantheon?
Yes. While most content will be designed for groups, there will typically also be content that is soloable. Some classes may solo better than other classes.
Also, check out this statement from the devs in the last stream:
00:40:31 - Soloing
Thank you Baz :)
As Baz kindly pointed out, we answer this in our FAQ and there are multiple threads already discussing it, so for that reason, I will need to close this one.