I recently tried to explain to someone who 'didn't like grouping' or 'social games' that it perhaps didn't involve what they thought it did.
I spoke about a 'social game' not meaning you have to be an extrovert or even talk/type at all, but mostly meaning that interactions between *characters* is a big thing. Group combat synergies. Inter-class dependancies. Meaningful crafting-trading. Inter-craft dependancies. That kind of thing. Not necessarily interaction between *players*.
Anyway, the particular issue is beside the point. It got me thinking that maybe it would help with the potential popularity of Pantheon (and, yes, maybe attract more backers) if concepts like grouping are better explained, because there are people, even players of MMORPGs, who don't know what these concepts mean or how they may have changed. There are also old school players who *think* they know what these things mean, but have been shaped by particular implementations.
But then I thought maybe explaining things will definitely put people off that might otherwise try the game and find they like it!
And now I'm not sure, so I thought I'd see what you guys thought ;)
Either way, I suppose it could just be considered 'clarity' because the website tends to explain stuff in terms that it thinks MMORPG players already know.
So, what might be up for explaining?
Social gaming.
Grouping, soloing and, importantly, everything in between (duos, trios, non-optimal class combos, etc).
The quadernity (Tank, Healer, Crowd-Control and Damage/DPS).
Open world, shards and instancing.
Raids.
Guilds.
...
In terms of an in-game tutorial on grouping - we could do a lot worse than the FFXIV example of how to explain what a tank should do and not do, what a healer should do and not do and so forth.
In terms of marketing - explaining to potential backers and supporters what we are - I prefer the word "social" from what you said to the word "group".
Social is a broad term. It includes many core MMO elements from the popular MMOs. Chat. Forming guilds and working with guildmates. Buying from others and selling to others. Helping others and being helped by others. Yes - and also grouping. People often ask - why play a MMO and not group? The self-evident answer is because all of these other things are elements of MMOs but not of single player games.
Marketing to people that are not already supporters may not go well if the campaign is "play Pantheon and group your arse off". Sure it may come to that as people try us out and hopefully appreciate other things about the game. And as they do this - they see the benefits of grouping and that it really is not painful. But they are unlikely to try us out at all if they think of us as a game that is about *nothing* but grouping.