Sevens said:Well in a game that I was sold as being group centric I expect group content
Go designing solo content and thats exactly what you are going to have....people soloing
Really not liking some of the "just general internet questions meant for fun" and "We have ideas for tools to bring people together, that may seem to be counter intuitive to our tennants but trust us we arent doing things we said we wouldnt do" post that keep popping up. Sadly I must say I am having bad feelings about where this game is heading
I'm all for group centric personally, I'd say I'm 80% group, 19% solo, and 1% raid on rare special occasions, but I'm also hoping there are plenty of things to turn to on those down days in which I have 2-3 hrs and simply cannot find a group until my last 30 minutes online. People tend to take the path of least resistance, we've seen that, so soloing being too rewarding for minimal work could be dangerous, but when the stars align and I pull of something amazing while waiting for a group (taking down a group named with creative planning over 20-30 minutes by myslef -maybe after a few deaths, is fairly rewarding). Also, we've all heard ' Why play a social MMO if you're going to solo?!', my only real ansewer to that is that I think very few people *always* solo - it's never my 1st choice, and even when solo I'm still able to interact (trade, sell, buff, communicate) with the other members of the world - even if we're not grouped for combat at the time. That has value.
This game was sold to the community saying it was going to be a cooperative gave. 18 years has been going since Everquest1 and all other games is cattered about Soloing.
Can this game be 100% focused on cooperation (Grouping/Raiding).
Soloing should be extremely limited ie some factionning // farming crafting mats.
Shroud of the Avatar lied blightly to their community saying they would make a spiritual successor to Ultima Online. Which ended up to be a piece of garbage game.
Please please please do not succomb to the curse of trying to make another game for everyone.
I wanted to add a thought about group sizes and raid sizes... so, I guess, expanding on my earlier post.
First, I feel that Pantheon needs to be group-centric, in order to drive social interaction. But there's multiple components to that.
- There should always be some soloable things, because sometimes people just need something to do when they can't group (or on those terrible days when you really just want to be left alone by everyone else while you mercilessly slaughter some virtual monsters - we all have those days, it's ok)
- There needs to be content for small groups (2-4 people), because sometimes that's all you have. Sometimes, you just want to go out with your closest friends and accomplish something with just them. Locking people into 6-person groups for that all the time can be a downer.
- Most of the content (I'm not naming a percentage, but a fair majority) needs to be for full groups - because if the game is about bringing players together, we need shared objectives that push us to go meet and work with other players. Full groups are the best way to do that for the vast majority of people. That's not to say there aren't other key ingredients in the recipe (like having a strong crafting system and economy, providing places and methods for non-combat social interaction, insuring that there's enough downtime built in that people stop to actually talk to each other, keeping progression rates slow enough that people can keep up with their friends even if they don't play all the time, and so on)... but having things to go group FOR is a hugely important piece of the puzzle.
- Raids are important because they give purpose to larger communties/guilds. So multi-group content needs to exist. I'll go a step further and say that it needs to exist not just at the maximum level but at the intermediate levels as well. Likewise, multi-group content doesn't mean everything should take 48 players to do, but there should be a variety. If all your guild can field is 12-18 people, there should be raids you can still go do as a guild. If your guild can field 60-70 people, there should be raids that let you take most/all of your guild to go do. This means that while raids should not be the primary focus, there should ultimatley be enough raiding that people fee like their guilds matter. And for the record - I don't feel that raids should be the only thing that makes guilds meaningful - there should be other things that guilds can work towards and on that don't require mass combat. But I do feel like raiding is an important, and natural component of the "guild" game, and thus there should be enough of it, at all sizes, to be accessible to guilds large and small.
I love 24+ Raids and want enough of those that are challenging to make enjoy that kind of play. But I feel that the group content should be much more abundant because, frankly, one can't raid 24/7 and if there is no group content worth doing one just waits for the next raid. And it is better for the health of the gaming community as a whole to have lots of group content.
Kilsin said:If you could choose between having more solo content, 3-6 person dungeons or 24+ person raids in an MMORPG, what would it be and why? #PRF
Raiding content is nice in the long run, but I'll always want a heavier focus on group (6-player) content. That will be the core of this game and if you falter even a little in that department by not having enough interesting and engaging group content it could be detrimental.
As for the why, we're all here because we want a challenging, group-focused game with an old school feel for the new era of gaming.Grouping is the central core of that. It's where the core gamers will fall and it is the thing that made EverQuest great. Even the newer games get this to some degree, though they rely heavily on instancing for it. Given that Pantheon does not, there will need to be a lot of interesting places to go, things to do, and group challenges to be faced to keep the populace engaged and happy.
While I'm all for additional raid content, you might also want to consider some random world PQ type invasion events. This was something that Guild Wars 2 and RIFT did quite well. Just random lrge scale events that players could quickly join together and defeat. It was less organized but also fun.
I'm pretty flexible with any group size. It really depends on the content, imo. Perhaps have more 3-6 person content, for open world and dungeons and possibly even raids. It would be nice if there was 24+ person content in the game, especially for a really big bad we need to bring down. Could have that for events as well during ingame festivals.
Kyridel said:Sevens said:Well in a game that I was sold as being group centric I expect group content
Go designing solo content and thats exactly what you are going to have....people soloing
Really not liking some of the "just general internet questions meant for fun" and "We have ideas for tools to bring people together, that may seem to be counter intuitive to our tennants but trust us we arent doing things we said we wouldnt do" post that keep popping up. Sadly I must say I am having bad feelings about where this game is heading
I'm all for group centric personally, I'd say I'm 80% group, 19% solo, and 1% raid on rare special occasions, but I'm also hoping there are plenty of things to turn to on those down days in which I have 2-3 hrs and simply cannot find a group until my last 30 minutes online. People tend to take the path of least resistance, we've seen that, so soloing being too rewarding for minimal work could be dangerous, but when the stars align and I pull of something amazing while waiting for a group (taking down a group named with creative planning over 20-30 minutes by myslef -maybe after a few deaths, is fairly rewarding). Also, we've all heard ' Why play a social MMO if you're going to solo?!', my only real ansewer to that is that I think very few people *always* solo - it's never my 1st choice, and even when solo I'm still able to interact (trade, sell, buff, communicate) with the other members of the world - even if we're not grouped for combat at the time. That has value.
Im sure youre familiar with the pharase "Path of least resistance"? If you have 20% solo designed content then you will have the vast majority of players running only that 20% of content. Why go through the headache of finding a group, waiting on your team mates to arrive, waiting for the group to gel into a cohesive unit when all you have to do is log in, solo for the night and then log off? I mean seriously just look at 99% of the MMOs out there and that is exactly what they are, a solo fest. "Well the best gear will be from grouping / raiding" you might say, to which I would respond "VR has already stated that the vast majority of items will be tradeable, they want to use the no drop tag as little as possible" allowing the soloers to just purchase the items. So once again, why group if you can just solo? Not one single percent of this game should be designed as "solo", not one. Now, if a player figures out how to use his skills and abilities given to him by the game, to then solo stuff that is DESIGNED to be a group encounter, thats great...Its called emergent gameplay. Not everyone or every class will be able to do it, therefore it is NOT "the path of least resistance" and not everyone will flock to it. The recent post from the Kilsin and blog post from Brad have really got me nerveous, and yeah Im sure I will just be labeled as a debbie downer and dismissed and I hope that I am just being an alarmist, but I really dont think I am.
Edit: When I am discussing Solo vs Group content I am of course refering to xp gaining....Tradeskills and other things should, of course, be solo (Except that I hope all the tradeskills are interdependant.)
The Game has been touted to us as a GROUP centric game, If i wanted to play Solo id go play Skyrim or wow or some.
There are a plethora of games out there that cater to the Solo croud, and virtually none that cater to the group centric, hard, slow leveling classic mmo croud.
This is why Most if us are interested in Pantheon, We are looking for a New home, Not just a new game to play for a little, but a new home where we will spend many years.
Many of us have pledged money to the development of this game for the very reason that it was touted as a Hardcore, Group centric, classic style mmorpg, please dont water it down and ruin the game by adding solo content, there are way to many games for the Soloer, Let us have this one mmo to call home!!!
Group 85% Raid 14% Solo 1%
>So once again, why group if you can just solo? Not one single percent of this game should be designed as "solo", not one.<
Fortunately for the survival of the game they have already said that they will not force everyone to play the same way 24/7 and Pantheon will accomodate soloing as well as grouping.
You are partly correct - if soloing and grouping give comparable rewards many people will solo. But many will not in this MMO designed to encourage (not mandate) grouping and sold with a heavy emphasis on grouping.
It is essential to have significant solo content (1) to attract a wider variety of players whose subscriptions will help pay the bills and who may well wind up learning to like grouping as most of us do - all without sacrificing Pantheon's emphasis on social interaction and a *large* amount of content being for groups; (2) For the non-crafters among us that want something productive to do that lets their characters make progress when they don't have time to group - remember that in a slow moving game without a lot of rapid transportation or groupfinder teleports you need to have a fairly large block of time available without interruption to group; (3) for those times when even the most dedicated groupie just feels like doing something on his or her own.
For the reasons you mention it is also essential that solo content give significantly slower experience per minute than you can get in a decent group and inferior gear and coin.
I too have seen a type of Gresham's law at work in MMOs - where soloing is quick and easy almost no one groups other than with friends and guildmates and often not with guildmates. We all have seen that. My argument isn't that soloing should be as rewarding as grouping in Pantheon - my argument is that it should be viable all the way to level cap for those that are willing to accept *distinctly* inferior rewards of coin, gear and experience but are unwilling to group or unable due to lack of time, frequent afks, poor internet connections and the like.
There doesn't have to be a lot of effort put into solo type content.
I imagine the majority of time spent laying out mobs will be in dungeons and areas where you would typically group, simply due to the size of the zones and density of the mobs.
Soloing is going to happen with overworld and wandering mobs which I assume takes significantly less time to plan than dungeon layouts. You pop down some spawn points and let the soloers run around waiting for wandering bears to pop.
When people think "Solo content" they are probably thinking about quest driven solo golden paths like WoW and many other MMOs have. Yeah, that stuff takes time, but Pantheon won't have that.
Just wanted to add I think it'd be innovative and enjoyable to design some 2 group content. This has never been done and has a lot of inherent advantages over leaping from 1 group content all the way up to 4 group raiding with no inbetween. Two group content would offer a really fresh break from the 1 group content we'll be frequented with, offers more challenge/reward than single group, and is also really accessible (PUGs will fire off pretty quickly/easily no matter what time of day if it's only 2 groups needed). I think this would be a really happy medium and easy to assimilate/scale with the other local, group content in a given zone.
If you implemented a lot of the 2 group content in areas with existing 1 group content, then random groups clearing/exp camping the same areas could then come together quite easily as they pass one another during clearing or do a simple /who in the zone or lfg call. And if it's really early/late, your group could just camp an area and grind until another group comes along, to which you can offer to combine groups to take down some 2 group content (also a great way to meet new people and socialize). Beyond 2 groups, it becomes (mathematically) logistically or even exponentially harder to accomplish such easy combining of groups to take down advanced content (when class roles and their respective frequencies are broken down on paper).
3-6 person, 1 group content - 75% (some small % of this will innately be soloable regrdless of design intent in addition to the random neutral animals that will be soloable, so I didn't include a solo value)
2 group content - 15%
4-7 group content- 9%
large scale 70ish man content with a sleeper-esque script - 1%
Liav said:The path of least resistance is definitely not soloing by default.
Grouping is generally faster xp, better drops, and provides a social aspect that soloing does not.
If content is designed to be solo content then yes, it is most definitely the path of least resistance. Logging in and doing solo (designed) content is completly different than soloing group content.
And as I said in my post, if you solo you can just buy all the drops that the group player can get
So yeah, Path of least resistance
You're making way too many assumptions.
What leads you to believe that groups drops will necessarily all be tradeable? What about group-oriented quest lines that you can't solo? What about the massively superior XP rate available from grouping?
There are many incentives to group. If the small amount of available solo content is actually hard, grouping may even be easier in some situations.
dorotea said:>So once again, why group if you can just solo? Not one single percent of this game should be designed as "solo", not one.<
Fortunately for the survival of the game they have already said that they will not force everyone to play the same way 24/7 and Pantheon will accomodate soloing as well as grouping.
You are partly correct - if soloing and grouping give comparable rewards many people will solo. But many will not in this MMO designed to encourage (not mandate) grouping and sold with a heavy emphasis on grouping.
It is essential to have significant solo content (1) to attract a wider variety of players whose subscriptions will help pay the bills and who may well wind up learning to like grouping as most of us do - all without sacrificing Pantheon's emphasis on social interaction and a *large* amount of content being for groups; (2) For the non-crafters among us that want something productive to do that lets their characters make progress when they don't have time to group - remember that in a slow moving game without a lot of rapid transportation or groupfinder teleports you need to have a fairly large block of time available without interruption to group; (3) for those times when even the most dedicated groupie just feels like doing something on his or her own.
For the reasons you mention it is also essential that solo content give significantly slower experience per minute than you can get in a decent group and inferior gear and coin.
I too have seen a type of Gresham's law at work in MMOs - where soloing is quick and easy almost no one groups other than with friends and guildmates and often not with guildmates. We all have seen that. My argument isn't that soloing should be as rewarding as grouping in Pantheon - my argument is that it should be viable all the way to level cap for those that are willing to accept *distinctly* inferior rewards of coin, gear and experience but are unwilling to group or unable due to lack of time, frequent afks, poor internet connections and the like.
Let me make this clear...I am NOT against soloing. I believe it should be a viable part of the game. What I am against is content DESIGNED to be solo content. Make the game as promised, i.e. Group centric and class interdependance..then if players figure out how to solo an encounter then thats fine (unless of course it is some how game breaking...DoTing mobs while being in the water so the mobs cant hit you etc etc). And this game was sold to us as a "Niche" game, not concerned with attracting a "wider" audiance. There are a million and one run of the mill (solo friendly) mmos out there, this wasnt suppose to be one of them. And as far as the " No group finder or rapid transportation" the blog post that Brad made sure has me concerned with statements such as "while some of these features may seem to be in contrast to our stated tennents" I guess only time will tell
Edit: Again, some of this stuff, especially on the surface, is going to appear, at least initially, as inconsistent, even incompatible.... both incompatible in terms of gameplay and experiencing the game pre-launch but also incompatible, at least on the surface, with some of our tenets, the FAQ, etc. this is one of the quotes from Brads blog post that caused me concern.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/blogs/151/183/matchmaking-systems-what-we-re-up-to-and-why-part-1 Here is the link for the entire blog post
Liav said:You're making way too many assumptions.
What leads you to believe that groups drops will necessarily all be tradeable? What about group-oriented quest lines that you can't solo? What about the massively superior XP rate available from grouping?
There are many incentives to group. If the small amount of available solo content is actually hard, grouping may even be easier in some situations.
All we have are assumptions, and as I said I really hope that I am reading this wrong but I have seen too many MMOs start off promising one thing then slowly caving it to this group or that group and losing sight of what they wanted to make. As for what leads me to think that most group drops will be tradeable is the many quotes of Brad and others stating flat out that they want a community driven econemy and therefore MOST ( excepting Epics ) items will be tradeable, its been stated many many times all over these forums. As far as Group required quest thats simple, you group up long enough to do the quest, then drop group...the same as you do in every other mmo out there
As said above i am Not against soloing group content, if you can manage to solo mobs designed for groups then more power to ya, what i AM againt is Solo Designed mobs/content.. Why Bother doing group content if you can just solo to end game? Most people will take the Easy route, Just look at wow for one of the Many examples.
This Game was Touted as a Group centric game, and as such many of us pledged with this in mind, If VR are going to change this and start Adding Solo Designed content, Can we have a refund of our Pledge? since it will no longer be the product that we pledged to support..
Liav said:You're making way too many assumptions.
What leads you to believe that groups drops will necessarily all be tradeable? What about group-oriented quest lines that you can't solo? What about the massively superior XP rate available from grouping?
There are many incentives to group. If the small amount of available solo content is actually hard, grouping may even be easier in some situations.
To an extent, path of least resistance if solo content exists depends upon the player. Am I someone who doesn't socialize enough to readily get groups? Is there solo content? Then solo content is the path of least resistance because while I might get less EXP from killing stuff, overall I get more than from (in my mind) sitting around waiting for a group to happen. On the other hand, am I someone that never seems to have a problem finding a group? Then most of the time grouping with its increased EXP/increased chances at drops is the path of least resistance.
That grouping is always the path of least resistance assumes that everyone feels succesful in usually getting groups, etc... and some of that is player dependent, not game dependent.
The FAQ has always clearly stated that there would be some solo content, at least since I have been following the game. There is nothing wrong with having solo content guys. This isn't going to be WoW where you move from quest hub to quest hub that is stacked with solo quests. If solo XP is inferior to grouping (it should be) then the true path of least resistance will be through grouping. Having some solo content in the game isn't going to hurt anything ... it could actually help encourage grouping! If people realize that playing solo is nowhere near as efficient as grouping, then they will start to team up. It all comes down to how VR implements the content. If the solo content is limited, it should only be able to support a fraction of the player base. Nobody in their right mind would compete for solo mob respawns when they could very easily get a group going to conquer another part of the world with less competition. Additionally, I think it would be great if there were certain quests that were designed for solo. Not your dumb monotonous quests of collecting X of this, delivering that, etc. A true test that is designed to be challenging for your specific class. The Rites of Passage come to mind.
To respond to some of the comments in favor of having NO content designed to be soloable (though they don't object if some classes can beat the system and solo it anyway).
1. This is a game focused on socialization and grouping - 100% agreed.
2. Modern MMos make it far too easy to get good gear and reach level cap solo - 100% agreed.
3. This is intended as a niche game not something that appeals to everyone - 100% agreed.
4. If you can suceeed readily by soloing many people will do so, and it will be harder for those of us that want a group game and pledged because this was to be a group game to actually get groups. 100% agreed.
There - killed a bunch of strawman arguments. Solod them. But that is OK I got no experience or gear for my efforts.
In case I wasn't clear enough - I want a group-centered game where going solo is a distinctly inferior way to get experience or gear. My only difference of opinion with the people disagreeing with my comments is that I want a safety valve - something we can do when we are unable or unwilling to group - that will give inferior experience and inferior coin/gear. But on the basic purpose and thrust of Pantheon I think we are all in general agreement.
