How long do you think it will be before WoW has NPC tanks and healers for all the DPS that are tired of waiting over thirty minutes for a group using the Dungeon Finder tool?
You may laugh but I'd be seriously all over that. EQ has the mercs and I love them.
Venge
edit - maybe thats just me but I have very limited time and really am not the most patient person. I hate being delayed by people or things when IMO there reallyl is no good reason for the dely. No that is not an instant gratification syndrome. I work damn hard for what I have and I put in the time.
But
I don't want to have to wait for someone else to get their slow rear into gear before I can start doing the things I want to do, or need to do.
The biggest flaw of the dungeon finder is not that it kills community, but rather it makes the game diminish into a lobby in which you stand there doing nothing, chatting away the time, while you wait for the queue to pop. The world outside the main city walls becomes an empty place reserved solely for those first few weeks when you're leveling up. Couple that with flying mounts, and the world outside city walls suddenly becomes a barren place.
Dungeon-finder is the product of developers figuring out what is ´fun´about the game. It is the dungeon encounters.
Social - For people that say DF kills the social aspect of the game, what happened before DF? A lot of players would sit in town an spam public channels looking for a group. is this social? typing ´/2 ranged dps lfg for heroic´. and then repeating that same line 3 hours until you find a group? That is not social. DF is actually an improvement because now you can queue for a dungeona and LEAVE the city to do daily quests or some mining etc. In the past, you had to sit where the public chat was and constantly spam. But the really important part of the DF is that it is for casual and solo players. Guilds still do dungeons by themselves... the DF doesn´t affect their social behavior in any way. The DF allows solo players to see the ´fun´part of the game without constantly having to spam public chat channels.
Fun - I hear all this stuff about ´lobby´. And again, it is backwards. Like I said, having a LFD tool for solo players frees them from having to sit in town. The other part is travel. People say it makes the world ´smaller´ if a DF tool ports you into a dungeon. Wow, so taking a 5 minute flight path while you afk to the bathroom is better? How about those fun dungeons that were far from the city where you were spamming /trade to find your group. So you spend an hour spamming trade, you finally found 5 people to group with you.. now comes the 20 minute ordeal of figuring out which people are going to actually take the afk flightpath across the continent to the dungeon.... and hope someone in the group doesn´t decide to quit the group becasue that means you have to port back to the city to spam to find a replacement.
Fun is beating bosses. Fun is using your combat abiltiies to kill mobs. Fun is not spamming trade chat looking for a group, or taking 20 minute flightpaths while you eat lunch.
There will NEVER be another game that backtracks on a DF tool. I promise you NO game will require you to spam a public channel to find a group and then travel with that group to a dungeon. The future is now, players don´t want to have to play 3 hours to complete a 30 minute dungeons. They also don´t want 3 hour dungeons at all.
WOW definitely has issues, but the DF is not the problem. But again, it is hard to argue that point on a forum about MMORPGs. because all of us are so far away from being the áverage´player that our views are jadded.
Well if they had NPC's that would fill in groups so you can do dungeons and raids that would make it a life saver however the raids could be interesting i mean would npc's know how to react in a raid and for that matter how would loot roles go with players vs npcs in a group/raid ? lol
NPC loot ninjas??? LOL...
Hilarious Made me wonder how long before our entire party can be NPCs? No more worrying about other players at all.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
The biggest flaw of the dungeon finder is not that it kills community, but rather it makes the game diminish into a lobby in which you stand there doing nothing, chatting away the time, while you wait for the queue to pop. The world outside the main city walls becomes an empty place reserved solely for those first few weeks when you're leveling up. Couple that with flying mounts, and the world outside city walls suddenly becomes a barren place.
And people complains about no down-time to chat? Waiting for the dungeon to pop is the perfect time to chat.
And what is wrong with a lobby game? Diablo is a lobby game and it is 100x more fun than most games out there.
And i dont complain about the world being too empty. Just the other day, a guy stole the titanium node i was trying to mine. I wont complain if he wasn't there.
Well if they had NPC's that would fill in groups so you can do dungeons and raids that would make it a life saver however the raids could be interesting i mean would npc's know how to react in a raid and for that matter how would loot roles go with players vs npcs in a group/raid ? lol
NPCs are probably more competent than some of the tank/healers out there.
If a tank/healer can't get through the first trash pull, i am quiting.
Dungeon Finder is just a symptom of the real underlying problem.
The problem is that players whine for more and more and more until there's nothing left to ask for. Then one day, after everything has been handed to the gamers by the developers who want to please their customer base because of dollar signs, everyone turns around and wonders why the MMOs of today are broken and boring.
The moral of the story? Be careful of what you whine for.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
If I put a loaded gun on the table and you pick it up and start shooting people, is the loaded gun the problem or you? Dungeon Finder is not the problem. Anyone who thinks so is ignorant.
Dungeon finder is a good way of allowing players to complete group content quickly, but it has sort of divorced a lot of the social aspect of MMOs. It can be used as a diagnostic tool to understand what's going on though. Part of the problem is the reward system encouraging dungeon finder behaviors that are not the most ideal. If should not have to feel like a chore to have to pug your random, so it's not so much the dungeon finder that's the problem , but rather the concepts of dungeons themselves and both the reason for running them and the people that do.
Dungeon Finder really isn't the problem, or a symptom, but rather a megaphone. Any problems become amplified by it, and any benefits become amplified as well. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly spotlights many bad things.
Currently Watching: TSW. << Very Eager for a Beta invite. Have experience with Beta Testing. Not personally a big fan of raiding or current pve endgame mmo philosophy. Nothing wrong with it, I just sort of burnt out on it. Hardcore raider in wow from Launch to.. about 7 months ago. Currently Playing: Champions Online.
It's just a symptom of Modern MMO's. Content is designed to be soloed except for the dungeons which need a group. People spend their entire time soloing so don't need or talk to other people. When they need to enter a dungeon they have no friends to ask for help, they lack the social ability to ask over chat channels for help, plus they've been playing solo the entire time so really don't want to be bothered with grouping anyway.
And so to help these no-friend skill-less idiots out, they put in a Dungeon Finder to allow the soloers to effectively summon a bunch of people to help them solo through a dungeon.
To be honest, it's really pathetic the way MMO's have gone since their glory days.
It's just a symptom of Modern MMO's. Content is designed to be soloed except for the dungeons which need a group. People spend their entire time soloing so don't need or talk to other people. When they need to enter a dungeon they have no friends to ask for help, they lack the social ability to ask over chat channels for help, plus they've been playing solo the entire time so really don't want to be bothered with grouping anyway.
And so to help these no-friend skill-less idiots out, they put in a Dungeon Finder to allow the soloers to effectively summon a bunch of people to help them solo through a dungeon.
To be honest, it's really pathetic the way MMO's have gone since their glory days.
I wouldn't call it a symptom but more of a 'control/power' type design.
If your game forces grouping before the level-cap, you are effectively limiting the growth of your playerbase as eventually the existing playerbase levels beyond the grouping content. This leaves any new players at the mercy of existing player's 'goodwill'.
You can kinda of mitigate via mentoring/reward system but at the end of the day, the game developer has now lost control of the growth of the playerbase. This is probably not acceptable for a lot of companies (esp publicly listed ones).
If your game has grouping as optional than the vast majority of the playerbase will not group and solo it through.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Dungeon finder is a good solution for all the wrong reasons.
The real problem underlying games like WoW is that they're poorly designed. Players want to experience game content and have fun with their friends, but the leveling mechanic makes this difficult. People level at different rates, and the power differential alienates individuals that may have started playing together, as one can no longer keep up with the other. Players power through to the level cap, because of a prevailing misconception that the game starts at the end, and so the leveling curve is getting increasingly shorter. To facilitate this, and to help new players who can't find other players to experience low-level content, the Dungeon Finder was created. However, it's been co-opted by the same mentality that the game doesn't start until the end, and so again, you get players running dungeon after dungeon just to get to max level, max badges etc. It's all part of the same treadmill that PVE games create: you run dungeons to power-level, then you run more dungeons to get better gear, so you can run more dungeons to get even better gear ad infinitum.
It's the commercialisation of virtual space. MMOs started off as virtual worlds where people could escape and live out a fantasy. As they've evolved, they've become more and more commercial, and more and more sinister. What's the difference between a perpetually growing economy in which people have to keep spending on items that break, to fuel a chain of consumption, and a system in which the only goal is to get gear, so you can kill higher-level monsters, to get better gear? I'll tell you what they both have in common: they generate huge amounts of money at the cost of the individual, and they're both unsustainable in the long run. In terms of an economy, resources will eventually run out. In terms of a game, the demands on the developer, and the extraordinary cost and complexity of churning out expansion after expansion, ultimately undermine the whole point of the exercise. Even now, the WoW playerbase is consuming content so fast that Blizzard has stated they will decrease the time between expansions, but there's a finite limit to the speed at which a quality product can be produced.
The solution to all of this is to remove levels altogether. There are other game models out there that are far more robust in the long run. Hell, UO is still going after all this time, and it looks like something I drew in 2nd grade. Even MUDs are still going strong, and they have no graphics to speak of. The real problem is that creating games like this is risky, and the outlay on a modern triple A title is massive, with no guarantee of return. There's a solution to that as well; use older, proven technology, tone down graphics, stylise art direction, and rely on fun, simple mechanics. Create player freedom, and give them control over they way they move in the gamespace. There's a lot to be said for things like gliding in Aion, or being able to run up walls and bounce off objects. Make gear disposable, and have a variety of pastimes that are part of the internal architecture; e.g. chocobo racing, poker, gambling, fishing, flying/gliding, etc. Finally, make a game that you think will be fun to play, not a game that you think will sell well.
Dungeon finder is a good solution for all the wrong reasons.
The real problem underlying games like WoW is that they're poorly designed. Players want to experience game content and have fun with their friends, but the leveling mechanic makes this difficult. People level at different rates, and the power differential alienates individuals that may have started playing together, as one can no longer keep up with the other. Players power through to the level cap, because of a prevailing misconception that the game starts at the end, and so the leveling curve is getting increasingly shorter. To facilitate this, and to help new players who can't find other players to experience low-level content, the Dungeon Finder was created. However, it's been co-opted by the same mentality that the game doesn't start until the end, and so again, you get players running dungeon after dungeon just to get to max level, max badges etc. It's all part of the same treadmill that PVE games create: you run dungeons to power-level, then you run more dungeons to get better gear, so you can run more dungeons to get even better gear ad infinitum.
It's the commercialisation of virtual space. MMOs started off as virtual worlds where people could escape and live out a fantasy. As they've evolved, they've become more and more commercial, and more and more sinister. What's the difference between a perpetually growing economy in which people have to keep spending on items that break, to fuel a chain of consumption, and a system in which the only goal is to get gear, so you can kill higher-level monsters, to get better gear? I'll tell you what they both have in common: they generate huge amounts of money at the cost of the individual, and they're both unsustainable in the long run. In terms of an economy, resources will eventually run out. In terms of a game, the demands on the developer, and the extraordinary cost and complexity of churning out expansion after expansion, ultimately undermine the whole point of the exercise. Even now, the WoW playerbase is consuming content so fast that Blizzard has stated they will decrease the time between expansions, but there's a finite limit to the speed at which a quality product can be produced.
The solution to all of this is to remove levels altogether. There are other game models out there that are far more robust in the long run. Hell, UO is still going after all this time, and it looks like something I drew in 2nd grade. Even MUDs are still going strong, and they have no graphics to speak of. The real problem is that creating games like this is risky, and the outlay on a modern triple A title is massive, with no guarantee of return. There's a solution to that as well; use older, proven technology, tone down graphics, stylise art direction, and rely on fun, simple mechanics. Create player freedom, and give them control over they way they move in the gamespace. There's a lot to be said for things like gliding in Aion, or being able to run up walls and bounce off objects. Make gear disposable, and have a variety of pastimes that are part of the internal architecture; e.g. chocobo racing, poker, gambling, fishing, flying/gliding, etc. Finally, make a game that you think will be fun to play, not a game that you think will sell well.
Disagree.
Giving players the choice of how they wish to play is a good thing rather than forcing them to a specific playstyle. Rather than forcing the issue, offer incentives.
As a person who does shares if a company I have invested money into does the last line (and they are NOT Google/Apple) I'd be fairly upset as an investor/shareholder.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Both the dungeon finder and low dungeon difficulty provide their own set of problems.
If you ran some of the new Cataclysm heroics at the beginning of the expansion, you would have found yourself running dungeons of moderate to high difficulty through use of the dungeon finder. As a result, the following situation occurred quite frequently:
Everyone silently joins the party. Perhaps someone askes "ready?" or just "r?" But probably not. Pulling commences. Maybe some crowd control marks are put up, but not everyone is on the same page because none of the symbols have been discussed and all cc gets broken within the first seconds of each pull. Maybe you wipe once or twice on trash before reaching the first boss, depending on how well your healer is handling the insanity. Standing before the first boss, the tank may or may not ask "r?" again. After 3 seconds of waiting for a response, he pulls. Group wipes because most of them are unfamiliar with the mechanics. Everyone zones back in. One person mentions one of the encounter's 5 mechanics. Tank says, "Ok so don't stand in the red. Going." Healer pulls his hair out. Group wipes again. 1 or 2 people silently leave.
I've seen this scenario more than once. It has little to do with dungeon difficulty (as it was actually somewhat "difficult" relative to gear, past WoW dungeons, and other games' dungeons), and everything to do with the anti-social environment created by the dungeon finder as well as players' conditioned expectations for running dungeons from the previous WoW expansion.
Both the dungeon finder and low dungeon difficulty provide their own set of problems.
If you ran some of the new Cataclysm heroics at the beginning of the expansion, you would have found yourself running dungeons of moderate to high difficulty through use of the dungeon finder. As a result, the following situation occurred quite frequently:
Everyone silently joins the party. Perhaps someone askes "ready?" or just "r?" But probably not. Pulling commences. Maybe some crowd control marks are put up, but not everyone is on the same page because none of the symbols have been discussed and all cc gets broken within the first seconds of each pull. Maybe you wipe once or twice on trash before reaching the first boss, depending on how well your healer is handling the insanity. Standing before the first boss, the tank may or may not ask "r?" again. After 3 seconds of waiting for a response, he pulls. Group wipes because most of them are unfamiliar with the mechanics. Everyone zones back in. One person mentions one of the encounter's 5 mechanics. Tank says, "Ok so don't stand in the red. Going." Healer pulls his hair out. Group wipes again. 1 or 2 people silently leave.
I've seen this scenario more than once. It has little to do with dungeon difficulty (as it was actually somewhat "difficult" relative to gear, past WoW dungeons, and other games' dungeons), and everything to do with the anti-social environment created by the dungeon finder as well as players' conditioned expectations for running dungeons from the previous WoW expansion.
The above is a totally avoidable situation.
Either join a guild or explain the fight to the rest of the group.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
1.The know the tacticts shit which makes the dungeons boring . Solution is make dungeons random with random lvl range around the lvl about supossed to be with unepected encouters,stealh enemies patrolling mobs ,random created bosses etc etc .That way there wont be the do u know the tactics shit issue and dungeons will require abit of caution from players making dungeons more intresting to play.
2.Sadly yes the dungeon finder for al the reasons OP mentions in his thread. If the game is good it will have population and u ll find mates to creaty/join party and go to dungeon. Also if the game is good you ll have plenty of things to do apart go to dumgeons in case x day x time u cant get party to go to dumgeons so u ll have plenty intresting activities to get involved(pvp,raids,rewarding adventuring,rewrding exploration in the wilds,rewarding and intr3esting outdoors quests etc.
Sadly current top selling in the market mmorpgs are dull so u have to farm dungeons since they isnt anythign other intrestingthing to do.
We cannot bring back the Everquest atmosphere now no matter how much we cry and moan and blame tools currently in games to facilitate the community. I myself am from old EQ and simply loved that game for its camaraderie. It is gone I think the last game I experienced it was FFXI. To some extent I caught brief glimpses of it in early WoW. No game since then has ever come close unless I am in a guild group. Occasionally I get a few individuals far and few in between to make me loath what has become of games these days but I do not blame the tools.
Both the dungeon finder and low dungeon difficulty provide their own set of problems.
If you ran some of the new Cataclysm heroics at the beginning of the expansion, you would have found yourself running dungeons of moderate to high difficulty through use of the dungeon finder. As a result, the following situation occurred quite frequently:
Everyone silently joins the party. Perhaps someone askes "ready?" or just "r?" But probably not. Pulling commences. Maybe some crowd control marks are put up, but not everyone is on the same page because none of the symbols have been discussed and all cc gets broken within the first seconds of each pull. Maybe you wipe once or twice on trash before reaching the first boss, depending on how well your healer is handling the insanity. Standing before the first boss, the tank may or may not ask "r?" again. After 3 seconds of waiting for a response, he pulls. Group wipes because most of them are unfamiliar with the mechanics. Everyone zones back in. One person mentions one of the encounter's 5 mechanics. Tank says, "Ok so don't stand in the red. Going." Healer pulls his hair out. Group wipes again. 1 or 2 people silently leave.
I've seen this scenario more than once. It has little to do with dungeon difficulty (as it was actually somewhat "difficult" relative to gear, past WoW dungeons, and other games' dungeons), and everything to do with the anti-social environment created by the dungeon finder as well as players' conditioned expectations for running dungeons from the previous WoW expansion.
The above is a totally avoidable situation.
Either join a guild or explain the fight to the rest of the group.
The "above situation" is just the parrot arguement against making it easier to get a group. The idea is there is some kind of "socially" related dynamic that would make all players great!! I will admit I am anti social in most MMO's simply because I have to put so many people on ignore or leave chat channels all together. Yet strangely I still know how to play the game, how to play my class and how this all relates to my role in a group when I do group.
It is an entirely avoidable situation because you don't have to use the "system" at all. Its entirely optional and if someone really hasn't figured out their class by level 80+... Then you have a problem far beyond an "anti social" environment.
As far back as you can go in MMO history there have been bad players. World of Warcraft has more bad players simply because it has more players period. Some of this simply goes back to game design and that means you can "blame it on the devs". People don't have a fundemental understanding of 'crowd control" because its not a key to gaming anymore. If you have players with you that played EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot.. they may have a very good understanding of CC.
and before I see it as a response.. this has nothing to do with them making games more solo friendly. I've solo'd in every single MMO I've ever played going back to Ultima Online. I group with people when I decide I like playing with them.
I know the above does happen quite often in WoW.. I just don't agree with the reason why. I used to be told quite often by one of the guild Shaman that I was the only Hunter they would ever do instances with... I liked the way things were when Cata launched (difficulty wise).
The problem with WoW isnt the dungeon finder as much as it is the shallowness of many of the people that make up the Wow community and play the game and its dumbed down gear grind content..
Grinding up quick and selfishly for both level and for gear is precisely what the game has become and it is likely time for players that dont like it to leave it..
I always enjoyed the extra challenge and burden of helping lesser geared players gear up using DF however there was always the whining overequipped crybabies with no skill that were always more interested in voting them out in favor of a faster and easier run..
And thats pretty much what finished me up on the game, for many its not about the journey, fun or finding challenge its always about gear and the fastest way to jump straight to the end..
Giving players the choice of how they wish to play is a good thing rather than forcing them to a specific playstyle. Rather than forcing the issue, offer incentives.
As a person who does shares if a company I have invested money into does the last line (and they are NOT Google/Apple) I'd be fairly upset as an investor/shareholder.
I'm arguing for choice. The fact is that modern MMOs have removed choice from the game. You can only really do one or two things, and you have no ability to change the fundamental playstyle of your character.
As for the second part, that's kind of the point. If games are an artform, the fact that shareholders have a stake in that artform undermines the whole enterprise. How can it be art if the shareholders are telling you what to make? Keep in mind that the blockbuster game phenomenon is a relatively recent thing, and all it's done is give us Call of Duty clones and rpg mechanics in other genres to keep us playing longer with achievements and unlocks. If you tried to pitch the original Half-life to a board in 1997, after the colossal failure of every other FPS that wasn't Unreal or Quake, we may never have seen Half-Life 2 or Portal, or Counter-Strike, or TF2. Shit, if you tried to pitch Civ, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, or any number of classic games that came out of the late 90s and early 00s, we might never have seen them get made. Hell, the puzzle-gaming genre had been dead for years before Portal came along, because shareholders and producers didn't think they could sell.
The fact is that the two most important games of the last few years were made by indie developers. Yes, I'm talking about Narbacular Drop and Minecraft. The developers are out of touch with the gaming community, and are too busy looking for ways to milk us for our disposable income to care. If shareholders really want an idea that will sell like Jesus' undies, they should manufacture a button that gives you an orgasm when you hit it, and it automatically debits your bank account. We'd all be dirt broke, but at least we'd be having a good time.
It's just a symptom of Modern MMO's. Content is designed to be soloed except for the dungeons which need a group. People spend their entire time soloing so don't need or talk to other people. When they need to enter a dungeon they have no friends to ask for help, they lack the social ability to ask over chat channels for help, plus they've been playing solo the entire time so really don't want to be bothered with grouping anyway.
And so to help these no-friend skill-less idiots out, they put in a Dungeon Finder to allow the soloers to effectively summon a bunch of people to help them solo through a dungeon.
To be honest, it's really pathetic the way MMO's have gone since their glory days.
I wouldn't call it a symptom but more of a 'control/power' type design.
If your game forces grouping before the level-cap, you are effectively limiting the growth of your playerbase as eventually the existing playerbase levels beyond the grouping content. This leaves any new players at the mercy of existing player's 'goodwill'.
You can kinda of mitigate via mentoring/reward system but at the end of the day, the game developer has now lost control of the growth of the playerbase. This is probably not acceptable for a lot of companies (esp publicly listed ones).
If your game has grouping as optional than the vast majority of the playerbase will not group and solo it through.
Developers could create content that influences older or higher-level players to help out the new ones. Perhaps the higher levels need something from lower level content, but only the lower levels can "mine" it. In order to mine the stuff, the lower level players need to get to The Mountain of Doom. But, the only way to get there is to traverse areas that would be extremely deadly to any low level player alone. Just an example. I'm sure someoene with more experience could come up with a similar mechanic that wasn't so obvious, particularly in a PvP setting.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
dungeon-finder is pretty good in that you get an asshole in a group- you can leave get another, and you don't have to wait going on 30 mins just to create a group. But yeah there is a big problem in that the social aspect has eroded.
Cross-server is a bit of a pain in the ass really. If levels weren't an issue everyone could group with everyone on a server- but can't see a mmorpg coming without a 70 level treadmill.
Comments
Guild Wars has them too.
Dungeon-finder is the product of developers figuring out what is ´fun´about the game. It is the dungeon encounters.
Social - For people that say DF kills the social aspect of the game, what happened before DF? A lot of players would sit in town an spam public channels looking for a group. is this social? typing ´/2 ranged dps lfg for heroic´. and then repeating that same line 3 hours until you find a group? That is not social. DF is actually an improvement because now you can queue for a dungeona and LEAVE the city to do daily quests or some mining etc. In the past, you had to sit where the public chat was and constantly spam. But the really important part of the DF is that it is for casual and solo players. Guilds still do dungeons by themselves... the DF doesn´t affect their social behavior in any way. The DF allows solo players to see the ´fun´part of the game without constantly having to spam public chat channels.
Fun - I hear all this stuff about ´lobby´. And again, it is backwards. Like I said, having a LFD tool for solo players frees them from having to sit in town. The other part is travel. People say it makes the world ´smaller´ if a DF tool ports you into a dungeon. Wow, so taking a 5 minute flight path while you afk to the bathroom is better? How about those fun dungeons that were far from the city where you were spamming /trade to find your group. So you spend an hour spamming trade, you finally found 5 people to group with you.. now comes the 20 minute ordeal of figuring out which people are going to actually take the afk flightpath across the continent to the dungeon.... and hope someone in the group doesn´t decide to quit the group becasue that means you have to port back to the city to spam to find a replacement.
Fun is beating bosses. Fun is using your combat abiltiies to kill mobs. Fun is not spamming trade chat looking for a group, or taking 20 minute flightpaths while you eat lunch.
There will NEVER be another game that backtracks on a DF tool. I promise you NO game will require you to spam a public channel to find a group and then travel with that group to a dungeon. The future is now, players don´t want to have to play 3 hours to complete a 30 minute dungeons. They also don´t want 3 hour dungeons at all.
WOW definitely has issues, but the DF is not the problem. But again, it is hard to argue that point on a forum about MMORPGs. because all of us are so far away from being the áverage´player that our views are jadded.
Hilarious Made me wonder how long before our entire party can be NPCs? No more worrying about other players at all.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
And people complains about no down-time to chat? Waiting for the dungeon to pop is the perfect time to chat.
And what is wrong with a lobby game? Diablo is a lobby game and it is 100x more fun than most games out there.
And i dont complain about the world being too empty. Just the other day, a guy stole the titanium node i was trying to mine. I wont complain if he wasn't there.
NPCs are probably more competent than some of the tank/healers out there.
If a tank/healer can't get through the first trash pull, i am quiting.
Dungeon Finder is just a symptom of the real underlying problem.
The problem is that players whine for more and more and more until there's nothing left to ask for. Then one day, after everything has been handed to the gamers by the developers who want to please their customer base because of dollar signs, everyone turns around and wonders why the MMOs of today are broken and boring.
The moral of the story? Be careful of what you whine for.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
What happened before lfd. Before lfd you actually had to make friends.
Dungeon Finder:
Dungeon finder is a good way of allowing players to complete group content quickly, but it has sort of divorced a lot of the social aspect of MMOs. It can be used as a diagnostic tool to understand what's going on though. Part of the problem is the reward system encouraging dungeon finder behaviors that are not the most ideal. If should not have to feel like a chore to have to pug your random, so it's not so much the dungeon finder that's the problem , but rather the concepts of dungeons themselves and both the reason for running them and the people that do.
Dungeon Finder really isn't the problem, or a symptom, but rather a megaphone. Any problems become amplified by it, and any benefits become amplified as well. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly spotlights many bad things.
Currently Watching: TSW. << Very Eager for a Beta invite. Have experience with Beta Testing.
Not personally a big fan of raiding or current pve endgame mmo philosophy. Nothing wrong with it, I just sort of burnt out on it.
Hardcore raider in wow from Launch to.. about 7 months ago.
Currently Playing: Champions Online.
It's just a symptom of Modern MMO's. Content is designed to be soloed except for the dungeons which need a group. People spend their entire time soloing so don't need or talk to other people. When they need to enter a dungeon they have no friends to ask for help, they lack the social ability to ask over chat channels for help, plus they've been playing solo the entire time so really don't want to be bothered with grouping anyway.
And so to help these no-friend skill-less idiots out, they put in a Dungeon Finder to allow the soloers to effectively summon a bunch of people to help them solo through a dungeon.
To be honest, it's really pathetic the way MMO's have gone since their glory days.
I wouldn't call it a symptom but more of a 'control/power' type design.
If your game forces grouping before the level-cap, you are effectively limiting the growth of your playerbase as eventually the existing playerbase levels beyond the grouping content. This leaves any new players at the mercy of existing player's 'goodwill'.
You can kinda of mitigate via mentoring/reward system but at the end of the day, the game developer has now lost control of the growth of the playerbase. This is probably not acceptable for a lot of companies (esp publicly listed ones).
If your game has grouping as optional than the vast majority of the playerbase will not group and solo it through.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Dungeon finder is a good solution for all the wrong reasons.
The real problem underlying games like WoW is that they're poorly designed. Players want to experience game content and have fun with their friends, but the leveling mechanic makes this difficult. People level at different rates, and the power differential alienates individuals that may have started playing together, as one can no longer keep up with the other. Players power through to the level cap, because of a prevailing misconception that the game starts at the end, and so the leveling curve is getting increasingly shorter. To facilitate this, and to help new players who can't find other players to experience low-level content, the Dungeon Finder was created. However, it's been co-opted by the same mentality that the game doesn't start until the end, and so again, you get players running dungeon after dungeon just to get to max level, max badges etc. It's all part of the same treadmill that PVE games create: you run dungeons to power-level, then you run more dungeons to get better gear, so you can run more dungeons to get even better gear ad infinitum.
It's the commercialisation of virtual space. MMOs started off as virtual worlds where people could escape and live out a fantasy. As they've evolved, they've become more and more commercial, and more and more sinister. What's the difference between a perpetually growing economy in which people have to keep spending on items that break, to fuel a chain of consumption, and a system in which the only goal is to get gear, so you can kill higher-level monsters, to get better gear? I'll tell you what they both have in common: they generate huge amounts of money at the cost of the individual, and they're both unsustainable in the long run. In terms of an economy, resources will eventually run out. In terms of a game, the demands on the developer, and the extraordinary cost and complexity of churning out expansion after expansion, ultimately undermine the whole point of the exercise. Even now, the WoW playerbase is consuming content so fast that Blizzard has stated they will decrease the time between expansions, but there's a finite limit to the speed at which a quality product can be produced.
The solution to all of this is to remove levels altogether. There are other game models out there that are far more robust in the long run. Hell, UO is still going after all this time, and it looks like something I drew in 2nd grade. Even MUDs are still going strong, and they have no graphics to speak of. The real problem is that creating games like this is risky, and the outlay on a modern triple A title is massive, with no guarantee of return. There's a solution to that as well; use older, proven technology, tone down graphics, stylise art direction, and rely on fun, simple mechanics. Create player freedom, and give them control over they way they move in the gamespace. There's a lot to be said for things like gliding in Aion, or being able to run up walls and bounce off objects. Make gear disposable, and have a variety of pastimes that are part of the internal architecture; e.g. chocobo racing, poker, gambling, fishing, flying/gliding, etc. Finally, make a game that you think will be fun to play, not a game that you think will sell well.
Disagree.
Giving players the choice of how they wish to play is a good thing rather than forcing them to a specific playstyle. Rather than forcing the issue, offer incentives.
As a person who does shares if a company I have invested money into does the last line (and they are NOT Google/Apple) I'd be fairly upset as an investor/shareholder.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Both the dungeon finder and low dungeon difficulty provide their own set of problems.
If you ran some of the new Cataclysm heroics at the beginning of the expansion, you would have found yourself running dungeons of moderate to high difficulty through use of the dungeon finder. As a result, the following situation occurred quite frequently:
Everyone silently joins the party. Perhaps someone askes "ready?" or just "r?" But probably not. Pulling commences. Maybe some crowd control marks are put up, but not everyone is on the same page because none of the symbols have been discussed and all cc gets broken within the first seconds of each pull. Maybe you wipe once or twice on trash before reaching the first boss, depending on how well your healer is handling the insanity. Standing before the first boss, the tank may or may not ask "r?" again. After 3 seconds of waiting for a response, he pulls. Group wipes because most of them are unfamiliar with the mechanics. Everyone zones back in. One person mentions one of the encounter's 5 mechanics. Tank says, "Ok so don't stand in the red. Going." Healer pulls his hair out. Group wipes again. 1 or 2 people silently leave.
I've seen this scenario more than once. It has little to do with dungeon difficulty (as it was actually somewhat "difficult" relative to gear, past WoW dungeons, and other games' dungeons), and everything to do with the anti-social environment created by the dungeon finder as well as players' conditioned expectations for running dungeons from the previous WoW expansion.
The above is a totally avoidable situation.
Either join a guild or explain the fight to the rest of the group.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I've never had any real issues with the DF, but then again - the best way to spread WoW rumors is to have them hold a negative tone towards the game.
Eleanor Rigby.
2 things are the problem.
1.The know the tacticts shit which makes the dungeons boring . Solution is make dungeons random with random lvl range around the lvl about supossed to be with unepected encouters,stealh enemies patrolling mobs ,random created bosses etc etc .That way there wont be the do u know the tactics shit issue and dungeons will require abit of caution from players making dungeons more intresting to play.
2.Sadly yes the dungeon finder for al the reasons OP mentions in his thread. If the game is good it will have population and u ll find mates to creaty/join party and go to dungeon. Also if the game is good you ll have plenty of things to do apart go to dumgeons in case x day x time u cant get party to go to dumgeons so u ll have plenty intresting activities to get involved(pvp,raids,rewarding adventuring,rewrding exploration in the wilds,rewarding and intr3esting outdoors quests etc.
Sadly current top selling in the market mmorpgs are dull so u have to farm dungeons since they isnt anythign other intrestingthing to do.
We cannot bring back the Everquest atmosphere now no matter how much we cry and moan and blame tools currently in games to facilitate the community. I myself am from old EQ and simply loved that game for its camaraderie. It is gone I think the last game I experienced it was FFXI. To some extent I caught brief glimpses of it in early WoW. No game since then has ever come close unless I am in a guild group. Occasionally I get a few individuals far and few in between to make me loath what has become of games these days but I do not blame the tools.
The "above situation" is just the parrot arguement against making it easier to get a group. The idea is there is some kind of "socially" related dynamic that would make all players great!! I will admit I am anti social in most MMO's simply because I have to put so many people on ignore or leave chat channels all together. Yet strangely I still know how to play the game, how to play my class and how this all relates to my role in a group when I do group.
It is an entirely avoidable situation because you don't have to use the "system" at all. Its entirely optional and if someone really hasn't figured out their class by level 80+... Then you have a problem far beyond an "anti social" environment.
As far back as you can go in MMO history there have been bad players. World of Warcraft has more bad players simply because it has more players period. Some of this simply goes back to game design and that means you can "blame it on the devs". People don't have a fundemental understanding of 'crowd control" because its not a key to gaming anymore. If you have players with you that played EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot.. they may have a very good understanding of CC.
and before I see it as a response.. this has nothing to do with them making games more solo friendly. I've solo'd in every single MMO I've ever played going back to Ultima Online. I group with people when I decide I like playing with them.
I know the above does happen quite often in WoW.. I just don't agree with the reason why. I used to be told quite often by one of the guild Shaman that I was the only Hunter they would ever do instances with... I liked the way things were when Cata launched (difficulty wise).
The problem with WoW isnt the dungeon finder as much as it is the shallowness of many of the people that make up the Wow community and play the game and its dumbed down gear grind content..
Grinding up quick and selfishly for both level and for gear is precisely what the game has become and it is likely time for players that dont like it to leave it..
I always enjoyed the extra challenge and burden of helping lesser geared players gear up using DF however there was always the whining overequipped crybabies with no skill that were always more interested in voting them out in favor of a faster and easier run..
And thats pretty much what finished me up on the game, for many its not about the journey, fun or finding challenge its always about gear and the fastest way to jump straight to the end..
Playing GW2..
I'm arguing for choice. The fact is that modern MMOs have removed choice from the game. You can only really do one or two things, and you have no ability to change the fundamental playstyle of your character.
As for the second part, that's kind of the point. If games are an artform, the fact that shareholders have a stake in that artform undermines the whole enterprise. How can it be art if the shareholders are telling you what to make? Keep in mind that the blockbuster game phenomenon is a relatively recent thing, and all it's done is give us Call of Duty clones and rpg mechanics in other genres to keep us playing longer with achievements and unlocks. If you tried to pitch the original Half-life to a board in 1997, after the colossal failure of every other FPS that wasn't Unreal or Quake, we may never have seen Half-Life 2 or Portal, or Counter-Strike, or TF2. Shit, if you tried to pitch Civ, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, or any number of classic games that came out of the late 90s and early 00s, we might never have seen them get made. Hell, the puzzle-gaming genre had been dead for years before Portal came along, because shareholders and producers didn't think they could sell.
The fact is that the two most important games of the last few years were made by indie developers. Yes, I'm talking about Narbacular Drop and Minecraft. The developers are out of touch with the gaming community, and are too busy looking for ways to milk us for our disposable income to care. If shareholders really want an idea that will sell like Jesus' undies, they should manufacture a button that gives you an orgasm when you hit it, and it automatically debits your bank account. We'd all be dirt broke, but at least we'd be having a good time.
Cheers
Before lfd, before cross realm anything, that was the best of times in WoW for me.
Developers could create content that influences older or higher-level players to help out the new ones. Perhaps the higher levels need something from lower level content, but only the lower levels can "mine" it. In order to mine the stuff, the lower level players need to get to The Mountain of Doom. But, the only way to get there is to traverse areas that would be extremely deadly to any low level player alone. Just an example. I'm sure someoene with more experience could come up with a similar mechanic that wasn't so obvious, particularly in a PvP setting.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
dungeon-finder is pretty good in that you get an asshole in a group- you can leave get another, and you don't have to wait going on 30 mins just to create a group. But yeah there is a big problem in that the social aspect has eroded.
Cross-server is a bit of a pain in the ass really. If levels weren't an issue everyone could group with everyone on a server- but can't see a mmorpg coming without a 70 level treadmill.