Solo and 4-member groups.
I love to interact with others, however 50% of the time I would like to just immerse myself and enjoy the Game, Lore, Story lines, and be in a little world all by myself. I eventaully emerge and get back to grouping, but need that "alone time". :-)
Groups should remain smaller;
- easier to fill, thus more abundant to quickly find as well.
Think a balance of all three is important.
Solo content is good to keep you logging in every day and giving you a way to progress in short gaming sessions. It doesn't have to be solo experience, but something you can do alone to feel like you are progressing.
Group content is the meat and potatoes, this is what forms friendships, two-way communication, and what a majority of in-game time will most likely be.
I think people are forgetting how boring even the best single group content can be day after day. Without raids to work towards single group content can get stale because it's not only how you get to where you want to be, but also what you do when your character has progressed. Raiding mixes things up and encourages you to help gear up guildies that you may not normally group with (multiples of the same class). Instead of competeing for a group slot, you work together for a raid force. I think this is very important for a social game to have a unified multi-player goal.
3-6 person dungeons.
Reason,
So that dungeon crawling is a very common thing to do, and something that you can do often with friends. I know at least when playing P99, most people are like hey, lets go do some GuK or Velks, SeB. No one says hey lets go hang out in this field in South Karana for example.
Soloers are often found in the wide open spaces, Thus I suspect there will be plenty of content for the soloer. And there is a fair bit of soloing that can take place in a dungeon should you become skilled enough to do so.
Raids, while very fun and rewarding just take too many people to make it worth creating a huge amount of initial content for them. They should be highly rewarding if succesful, but having more of them initially anyway, will not be useful to most people.
That said dungeons and raids could co-exist in the same area's, such as having raid level content within sections of the dungeon. Think Nagafens Lair. Sebilis - Lots of people go to these places to get XP/Loot and dungeon crawl but once in a while you see a raid force work its way to the end and kill the boss.
In the end, I think the most used content will be those 3-6 person dungeons. Not in the sense that we have become used to where we have the whole dungeon to ourselves, but more of community dungeons like you have been showing in the streams.
They should be challenging and rewarding and essentially training for how to work well in a group or raid.
-Az
24+ that rewards everyone a lil bit and about 25% of the raid force getting 1 really nice drop is the ideal for a weekly event, with nice group content for the day to day.
Pantheons tenants encourage the group play as the basic element of the game and should be the norm, not the challenge to strive for.
I don't think content should ever be designed to be solo - which is different than saying I don't think anyone should ever be able to solo. My reasoning is simple... content that is not specificially designed to be solo can be solo'd at some point... and typically in MMO's that point (outside of raid content you eventually manage to solo) still yields exp. Solo content is ONLY viable if you are solo - never if you are in a group. To me, it creates more problem than it solves.
For example, what do you get more exp for, killing a mob that is designed to be a solo mob, or killing a mob that isn't, but that is, at the time you kill it, roughly equivilant in difficulty to that solo mob? Does that solo content live collectively in some region of the game space or is it scattered in amongst not solo content? If it's conglomerated in areas, did that area of the world just become less dangerous? If it's interspersed with non-solo content, is the content being soloable a moot point if people have to deal with the non-solo content anyway?
I will likely spend some time taking on content solo that is challenging and rewarding (either in exp or in the thrill of the kill) - but I'd still prefer that content not be specifically designed as solo.
As for other stuff.. at the very top of the community will be a small(er) group of people who raid more than 3 nights a week... but a larger segment of the community will raid 3 or less nights a week. In that light, I think a heavier investment should be made on group based content (however many people ultimately comprise a group in the game), and less on raid content. Although I will likely want to be one of those 3 (or maybe 4) night a week raiders (I always tend to gravitate toward guilds that aren't "quite" top end... but also aren't "we're just a happy go lucky bunch of people"), that will still be a few hours those nights... and the bulk of my time will be spent in groups.
I really loved the 5-6 person dungeon crawls (but not instanced.) Chardock especially used to feel so dangerous and exciting back in the day. It wasn't sitting in one place camping, you were constantly moving deeper and deeper...would love more of that in particular. Although, the places where you did sit in one place camping (Karnors etc) is probably where we spent the most time actually conversing with one another in groups and I would say that's important too. I'd like to see more solo content then original EQ, but it should always be less rewarding than grouping. (More something to do while waiting on a group.)
I think Pantheon is about the community and the grouping experience, so I don't see the point of asking for solo content.
VG had the "dot" system for /con, single dot mobs were intended for soloers, three dot mobs for duo/small groups, and 5/6 dots for groups. But three dot mobs were usually soloable by most classes. IMO Pantheon could improve this, and instead of offering "solo" content, offer much more duo/small group strength mobs. This should be the case for most overland mobs. Dungeons (and of course raid areas too) should not have "small-groupable" content.
Solo, or 3-4 group content.
That being said, I'm very much of the same opinion as Wandidar. I don't think it's necessary to set out to intentionally build solo content of any great scale. Creating a gameworld that makes sense naturally creates this kind of content as a bi-product.
3-6 dungeons > 24+ > solo.
Small group content aligns better with VR's mantra of community and socializing. As a casual gamer who still enjoys challenging content I don't have alot of time to dedicate to 24+ raids, but will spend a majority of my time in 2-3 hour sessions which seems a good fit for group dungeon delves.
3-6 > 24+ (48ish would be by preferred raid size) > Solo
I want to see group content be very challenging in some places as opposed to just a stepping stone to raiding. Mechanics heavy, challenging group dungeons that give rewards that are on par with raid content. For example, best in slot runes/augmentations that can be slotted into your raid gear as a reward from group content would be great. Items with cool clickable effects that have utility in raids. Lots of room to explore to make group content relevant at all levels of play.
As for raids, 24 is far too small imo. It worked well in EQ2, but I would personally rather see as many as 48-54 people in raids. Why? Realistically, 24 is just too small from a social perspective imo, and roster management can be a huge pain with such a small size.
Solo content is at the bottom of the list because I'll probably be trying to solo group content more than anything else, anyway. Content designed specifically to solo doesn't make me feel accomplished. Soloing things designed for a group is a rush.
Group content is the bread and butter of the game but I feel this games success will be based on the raid content.
Getting together and grouping up will account for the main day to day activities but without enough raid content to have that 3 day a week log in for guilds to clear some big raid zones the longevity of people like me sticking around won't be as much.
I have no interest in poopsocking raidmobs and without big raid zones that allow players to set up scheduled raids we could see most of the player base just not bothering. Like on p99 where only 1 or 2 guilds even tried racing.
I remember when Plane of Hate and Plane of Fear launched in EQ...It brought people together in a new way that had never been done before. Instead of just groups we were a guild and it mattered. This guild comeraderie was important to my enjoyment and long term replayability. These zones were so hard that in some cases even other guilds would have to come and help with corpse recoveries and this created alliances especially on Rallos Zek where pvp was a daily affair.
It's my hope that VR can make challenging content that brings us together as not only a guild but as a whole server. It only starts with a 6 person group...
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
3-6 person dungeons. Meaningful, exciting, and engaging content, as long as there is the ability to allow players to join and leave groups without having to run gauntlets or suffer a corpse drag. Solo content should be class specific quests to unlock abilities or specializations. Open world soloing should be a matter of opportunity and ability, not generally something that is designed for the single player. 24+ raids should really start when guild activity and class specialization starts, and quest to raid rewards become significant. Unlocking raids should be a process/quest, and built so as to not really need to "farm" for loot. Min-raids and mini-bosses that are 2-3 group encounters are also something I'm hoping to see quite a few of in dungeons.
-Akhy
Out of the options offered, my opinion is more 3-6 dungeon content, even though that would appear to be the focus for the game anyway. It would actually prefer more 3-6 player "overland" content as that was the bread and butter of my favorite mmorpg, EQOA. It isn't required, but it would definitely warm my heart and remind of some good old times sitting at a static camp once in a while.
Group > Raid > Solo
The world should be built from the ground up with challenging group content in mind. I'm not a big fan of content "designed for solo" because when risk vs reward is properly adhered to, this content is basically useless to me. It could serve as filler content when absolutely nothing else is available, but that's about it. Similar to what Liav said, the "fun solo play" for me is when a single player manages to take down content designed for a small group. As far as raid content goes, I would love to see it balanced around 48+. 24 man raid content could never compete with 48+ ... and it's not even close. I could probably write a novel on why bigger is better when it comes to raids, especially when you're considering that Terminus is supposed to be a highly social game. If I have to bench my first paladin or second monk/warrior for the sake of raid efficiency or meta composition, this game will have failed me in a really bad way.
I understand not everybody will agree with my assessment on raid size and that's fine, it's just my personal preference. I know it can be difficult to manage a large group of people but I have learned that your community feels way more engaged and rewarding when you don't have a scrawny hard-cap implemented. Oh, your brother decided to pick up the game? Sorry, we don't have space for him. Oh, you had a blast playing with that ranger from earlier? He wants to join the guild?? Sorry, we don't have room for him. Football teams get 53 men on their roster to play with a ball for a few hours -- it would be a damn shame if the ceiling for football operations is higher than what can be achieved in raiding. The idea that a band of adventurers would pass up on bringing a new qualified candidate into their ranks because of an imposed hard-cap is one of the most immersion breaking things I have ever seen in an MMO.
My vote would be for more solo/smallgroup encounters. I know they say solo will be possible to an extent but it should be available through the entire game. maybe have expgiven to solo players in line with group players. In other words if a group gets 1000 points per kill for Sir Bad Guy then the solo layer will get 1000 points for him as well. The group players wil always level faster than the solo player just due to the amount of mobs they can interact with.
A lot of people-actually most people will solo at some time or another. And a lot of people group with thier spouse,etc. It should be feasable to gain ground at an exceptional pace,not crawl along like they are a different class of people. The amunt of time a solo player will need to recover so he/she will be able to have another encounter is punishment itself, but not unfair as it is compairable to other players time to recover the same health/mana pools.
Solo and small groups should not be punished due to the style they wish to use.
I also go with the 3-6 dungeons > 24+ > solo.
I am also concerned with finishing stuff.
I do not know how dynamic this world is going to be, but finishing a thing that requires group or raid content could become a problem for players that really want to get something done.
So though I would like group and higher content, I would also like long (not necessarily hard) solo content (or quest which this may rather apply too) that would bring the same or similar results.
Aside that
I presume that 24+ could mean minimum 24 raid content up to ... max, or 24+ scaled (in all aspects ofcourse)
I'm always in favor of group content. More dungeons means more choice of what to do today.
Creating content with the idea of it being solo content will just encourage people to go solo and not bother with grouping.
24+ preson raids? 24 does seem a bit small. Maybe something 36 - 42 range. 54 isn't bad, but a little smaller might be nice. Also it forces guilds to build a stronger core.
