Being able to group with friends to tackle strong enemies is great in theory, but devs have to take into consideration that many people hate other people and have no friends in game and never will.
(me)
Everything in the open world, excluding world bossses or group quest enemies, should be soloable.
Dungeons and raids shoudl not be soloable until you greatly out level them, soloing old content is relly fun.
Whats devs must not confuse is difficulty with dps sponges, if every enemy takes a group of 5 like 10 minutes to kill because its health is so high, isnt fun, its boring.
Anyone who has played secret world legends knows what i mean....super long and super boring boss fights, no challenge just masive health pools.
Zazazuu said:I hope not so! This is a group based game and if u expect, that everything in the open world should be soloable, it's maybe the wrong game for you!
Honestly, the group finding problem is most of the time a selfmade problem. And honestly, I don't expect 24/7 a full group. If I dont have/find a group, I'll do other stuff like
- harvesting
- clearing up my bankspace / bags
- checking brokers
- checking out my questlog, if there is any step I can do solo
- helping gildies
- go crafting
What I wanna try to say is, that there are always so many options, which are time consuming until I find a group. In more than 15 years online gaming I never had a "permanently problem with finding a group". The key is to be flexibel! We are all older, most of the players have family. That means u have to plan your play-time! Dont wait, until u receiving an invite. Do something else!
This is a group based game and I am so excited about it! There will be overland solo content, as Brad already stated. But as he said, the solo content is restricted!
I'm sorry you hate people so much that you can't stand to play a co-operative game with others. This game may not be something that is really for you. The Devs have stated many times over the years that this will be a group-oriented, community driven game. Solo play will be available, but we have yet to see how viable it will be (if at all) for reliable leveling to max. Sure, you may eventually be able to solo that level 10 - 15 dungeon... at level 40. But how is that fun? Slaughtering light blue/gray cons who won't give you much (if any) experience or loot doesn't sound like anything I'd want to do unless I was really bored.
We are mostly just speculating for now, because most of us don't have any in-game information on how the solo play currently is or what their ultimate plans for it are.
Zazazuu said:Honestly, the group finding problem is most of the time a selfmade problem. And honestly, I don't expect 24/7 a full group. If I dont have/find a group, I'll do other stuff like
- harvesting
- clearing up my bankspace / bags
- checking brokers
- checking out my questlog, if there is any step I can do solo
- helping gildies
- go crafting
This is a good point by Zazazuu. There will be plenty of other things in the world to do if you can't find a group on a particular day. Great thing about Pantheon is it seems like the journey to leveling up IS the game, rather than getting to "end game" quickly like most other games I've played lately. That journey includes all the things Zaz lists above and I'm sure more.
When I played FFXI, years ago, one of my favorite things was just helping Linkshell mates... No reward or compensation required, just helping them and having a good time.
If that slower paced journey process does not seem like your kind of thing then perhaps this is not the game for you.
Grimseethe said:Being able to group with friends to tackle strong enemies is great in theory, but devs have to take into consideration that many people hate other people and have no friends in game and never will.
(me)
Everything in the open world, excluding world bossses or group quest enemies, should be soloable.
Dungeons and raids shoudl not be soloable until you greatly out level them, soloing old content is relly fun.
Whats devs must not confuse is difficulty with dps sponges, if every enemy takes a group of 5 like 10 minutes to kill because its health is so high, isnt fun, its boring.Anyone who has played secret world legends knows what i mean....super long and super boring boss fights, no challenge just masive health pools.
This is where MMOs lost their way - by catering for people who don't want to play with others. The open world should not be one big solofest, every MMO out there has gone and done this, so if you are someone who wants to do everything alone there are a crazy number of games out there to play.
The whole reason I am looking to Pantheon is because I want a game that requires teamwork, I want to group with strangers, I want to group with friends...I want to do things with people, that is why I play an MMO in the first place!
WIll there be mobs you can kill alone? Some, usually ones you have out lvled. Will there me mobs to kill with just a small group? Of course, even in EQ1 you could get from lvl 1-max with a group of just 3. It was much harder, but even dungeons like Guk and Tower of Frozen Shadows could be carefully managed by a small group. So it is easy to get started and as time goes on people turn up LFG and your group gets bigger. You do not have to wait until you find 5 other players before you can go do something.
I do agree with the mobs though, simply making the mob the same as what a solo mob would be in another game and then just giving him a bunch of hp is a fairly meaningless change. I want fights to be challenging, not just longer.
Two things are all it will take to have areas that are good for soloing, good for small groups, good for full groups, good for two groups and good for raids.
1st Mobs are linked in groups based on their encounter target: one for solo, 2 for small group, 4-6 for full group based on challenges, 4-8 of higher strength for 2 groups and similar but scaled for raids. Different areas will have higher concentrations of one type of group or another.
2nd Linked mobs respawn and path together. Rather than respawning one by one the entire group respawns at the same exact time so that it can only be handled as a complete pull, splitting is not possible only adequate CC. Agro dump abilities should only be for life saving not game breaking.
You compensate for this raised difficulty by giving group kill bonuses for killing the last mob in a group.
VR has said that although one objective of Pantheon is to encourage grouping and much of the content will require groups, there will also be content for those that prefer to go solo. That content just won't be as productive as group content so people looking to level faster or get better gear will have an incentive to group.
If the OP means that a player should be able to enjoy the world and slowly make progress to maximum level even purely on his or her own I agree. Encouraging grouping isn't the same thing as forcing it.
If the OP means that it should be just as fast or faster to advance playing solo as in a group I disagree. I would happily play an "old school" game with all of Pantheon's likely features even if it didn't encourage grouping. A group focus is just *one* of Pantheon's distinguishing features. But it is one that shouldn't be abandoned - it is core to the game's design and likely marketing.
Abandoning corpse runs and putting in rapid transit portals would probably drive fewer of us away than making solo content give just as good experience and loot as group content. I frequently argue that we need enough solo content to make solo play viable. I just as frequently point out solo play should be an inferior way to progress not "separate but equal".
Iksar said:Why doesn't it answer the question? Raid bosses were red to level 50 players and intended to be taken on by multiple groups, of course they fall outside of the group con since EQ wasn't built with raiding in mind as raiding didn't really exist as a thing yet.
As for higher levels fighting lower "level" npcs, sure sometimes that happened but it was more for efficiency than necessity as high level groups could still take on yellows and occasional reds (depending on the group/skill). White = a challenge, yellow = greater challenge, red = ???? challenge.
Making enemies scale like players would make things far more confusing. It's much easier to be level 20 knowing you should be hunting "level" 20 creatures than it is to try to figure out if you should be hunting level 25 or 30 or 35 creatures.
The higher level you go, the lower level the mobs are relative to yours that you are fighting. If what you guys were saying is true then at all level ranges groups of players would fight even con mobs. But that's simply not what happens. What happens is the mob con level drifts down so that at higher player levels groups are fighting mobs that are usually several con levels lower than players. If taking on lower level mobs was about efficiency, why would they only do that at high player levels?
Additionally, you could still have a level 50 player and true level 50 mob be the same power wise, but con differently/lower. Say you were a level 50 player with 500 HP and a level 50 mob with 500HP could con green, because in a group it would be easy to kill. You could have a true level 60 or 70 mob con even with a player if that was the target mob that a group of level 50 players should be fighting.
The argument I’m making here is that I can take what you say is happening, and flip it 180, have the exact same result. But for some reason developers never do that, they always go the other way where it’s lower level mobs. A fix to it would be that the con of the mob changes based on whether you are in a group or not.
Grimseethe said:Being able to group with friends to tackle strong enemies is great in theory, but devs have to take into consideration that many people hate other people and have no friends in game and never will.
(me)
Everything in the open world, excluding world bossses or group quest enemies, should be soloable.
Dungeons and raids shoudl not be soloable until you greatly out level them, soloing old content is relly fun.
Whats devs must not confuse is difficulty with dps sponges, if every enemy takes a group of 5 like 10 minutes to kill because its health is so high, isnt fun, its boring.Anyone who has played secret world legends knows what i mean....super long and super boring boss fights, no challenge just masive health pools.
VR has stated there will be soloable content/classes, but it won't be nearly as much as the group oriented content. I would not expect to enjoy a game where a core tenet is a social game focused on grouping.
I am as introverted as they come especially in real life. But if you put me in a game i would prefer a group. I was able to solo in eq1, didnt like it. I preferred company even if it was 1 other friend. If a game is designed to group, you will find groups. Even at odd hours of the day or night i can predict emphatically that you will find groups. Don't be so pessimistic that you wont find groups. When a game is designed around specific tenants such as grouping you will find random PUG's at 3am player specific time. Trust in Pantheon.
The streams are typically showcasing group based content, their dungeons. That's the core of the game that they want to show off. They're also typically in pretty basic gear from what we've seen. If anything I felt that this content was a bit too easy still, the difficulty could stand to be increased.
I have no doubt that there will be ways to solo in this game, it just may not be (shouldn't be) as efficient and rewarding as grouping. Keep in mind that most peope that we're watching play in PA are still very much learning how classes play out, and how the game functions overall. We haven't seen anyone attempt to kite a mob, or step outside of the six man group scheme at all yet. It could very well be that the mobs we're currently viewing could be solo'd by a few classes. It's still very early, many tweaks and adjustments will be made along the way.
