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The most exciting news for years is that LOTRO will not add any more group-content. Is this the trig
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Everyone loves group content, but hates the LFG queue...
Stupid idea.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Can you link to this? What are they doing for "end game" content these days if not group based dungeons and raids? I'm not sure how this would work to be honest.
May be Turbine has done player studies. Don't you think it is pretty obvious for a company to study their customer base?
True but they can also make bad errors with that.
for instance there used to be quite a lot of players scrreaming for more and more meaningful group content. Turbine doesn't add it and those players decide to go elsewhere. Who is left? Those who don't do a lot of group content.
Their conclusions? "Our players don't like group content" as opposed to realizing that their players who liked/wanted group content decided not to stick around.
And again, they were so bad at it. They would have these "one off" quests that required a group. As soon as it was done people would drop
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Well, you really don't know if they have done any study, or have done them right. The self-selection bias is not exactly new, and if they hire any decent business analytics people, they probably will control for it.
Plus, even if there is a self-selection bias, they may opt to serve whoever left, instead of expanding the market. And in that case, they are correct that those who are left prefers solo content. If that market is big enough, and they already have their audience in that segment, there is no reason not to cater to them.
It was a pretty bold claim to make with no evidence to back it up other than "turbine said so " Like other people said multiple times in the next three pages...got a link to the source of all this ?
The game was already group heavy and adding more solo stuff isn't suddenly going to make all that group content disappear.
LOTRO isn't the first group centric game to start adding a lot more solo / duo content. EQ and EQ2 add it all the time. Even Vanguard is adding more solo / small group content. Aside from the fact that even the most solo friendly games have tons of group content and group exclusive content as well.
When they stop making group content, we'll all watch the game die.
Maybe other developers will see this and they will focus more on group content.
well spoken.
Well i must say that i think the OP is trying to Fail Troll by Proxy lol. Turbine already screwed their player base to the wall so many times now they have no credability left with me, but i did really enjoy my time in LOTRO. Op has provided no evidience to support his claim that another company has made, c'mon seriously a multi player game that does not produce multi player content? lol. As for the rest of the genre following? ROFLMAO PMSL LOTRO is a bit long in the tooth to be leading the industry in anything other than gathering dust in its twilight years R.I.P. LOTRO.
Just my humble opinion
I'm wondering how this thread has gotten this far with no links to Turbine's claims. Was this said in person, in a leaked document, from a friend of a friend of a friend, derived from personal boredom with the game or purely speculation based on their recent content releases?
Turbine has not been a leader of the industry in years. How could this affect anything. Rofl. Turbine might have lead the free to play crowd but they live in the shadows now.
I think this is a misunderstanding of what Turbine said.
But honestly, people who group have only themselves to blame for the direction the game has gone in. If they would group with other people, instead of their own little cliques, then more people would be able to do group content, and thus it would be more popular.
But nope, people never talk to anyone outside of their guild or clique. It's by far the most insular community in a game I've ever seen. F2P helped at first, but then apparently those people all left, leaving the same old people that want all players not in their circle to get off their lawn.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Not so where I play. But one has to do a little digging to understand how the community works. There are many alliance channels available running under the radar so most who dont bother to find good kins, and/or just want to stay aloof of the community in general, dont know they are there. On Landroval We have networked our community kinships in such a way as to have multiple outlets for LFF and that with likeminded grouping, i.e. no gun and run types.
Is that good/bad? It depends on what you want in gameplay. LOTRO is 6 years old therefore since it appears the game attracts older more mature gamer types in general, community tends to solidify around that mindset.
I can see where this makes us look insular, but it works and it works well. All one has to do is to is a little legwork and find a good active kinship to get in on this stuff. We are not snobs, we have just developed a system that works among ourselves, and anyone can join in if they are willing.
This is where the paranoia and complaining comes for the freelance gamer who may be a loner type or wants instant grouping satisfaction. A community of gamers on any server have feelers and hookups with many others in said community to facilitate easier grouping than just the GLFF.
Those who wont abide by community standards and learn the deeper workings of server community are always going to complain they feel left out. LOTRO is a unique game in that regard I think. Maybe Star Wars Galaxie had elements similar, but I never got to play that one.
I remember the same 'guilded community' attitude becoming prevalent in Vanguard when everyone maxed out.. didn't help much.
Bottom line games only thrive when new subs are coming in. That means new players need help. They can't get help if the maxed out players are gating themselves away in their little communities ignoring them. Average new player doesn't know about other chat channels, active/large kins, etc. All they know is how to log into the game and play. If no one at the top takes time to interact with them, they leave after a day or two due to boredom, frustration, or thinking the game is dead, and they won't come back.
Actually, even though your post was to deny it, you really pretty much validated what he said. You mentioned alliance chats and advocate that the player look for a kinship to join, basically agreeing with the above poster that everything is guild/clique focused and a non grouped person would find themselves very much on the outside. I agree this doesn't make you all snobs, but it does seem to me that you are insular.
i put to you all a working community dynamic that appears to also exist in other games atm. It is not nearly the ONLY networking that exists. While I cannot speak for all kinships (guilds) I happen to belong to one that has many players with low level alts always organizing groups, and seeking LFF opportunities.
I guess the one thing we dont do is to stand at the spawn points where newbies enter the game for the first time. Although, when f2p went live, our kinship was standing right there at the spawn points greeting and welcoming newbs with gifts and bands playing on the first day.
Look at LOTRO /Landroval forums. All kinds of opportunities for all kinds of play styles are being advertised. Most all of them are open invitations to the server public. Most of them are advertised by kinships. Think on that.
Kinships are not secret societies. Not the good ones. For example our kin, having many low level alts, uses both our insider networking and also uses on the spot LFF as well. Many times a low level is standing near the instance they want to do and we can invite them right there or vice versa. we just have more tools to work with.
And how is this different from any other method gamers use? LOTRO players themselves set up the GLFF channel and then sullied it with OOC and garbage chat.
Becoming friendly with newbs is a major factor in what keeps our kinship, for instance, so large. We are attractive to many new players for that reason. Being attractive in this way Makes those good kinships grow in popularity making for even more possibilities to group and making the kinnie aware of that mechanism I mentioned before.
I would say that kinships (guilds) that focus on race only,,..I.E. Hobbits or Dwarves etc and those who only take military or are hard core rp would be the insular ones.
From what appears to be a general consensus that once a socially active MMO becomes a mature, stable community, a "us" versus "them" mentality forms. So what do the non kinned, soloer types do to attract and nurture those who are newbies besides filling ones personal need for a group and ultimately to make friends?
Generally the kinships on a server are the major part of the community. How would one change this to make it better? I dont know of any way at all.
If this were true across the board regarding kinships, then shame on us. But it is not true in all servers and among many kinships at least in lOTRO.
What he said, like other mmo company will even consider turbine fail decisions. The game is failing lol.
/close thread
Yeah but there is a reason why people group with people they know and trust.
Heck, the other day, in lotro, I was in the area outside Moria (not yet getting to moria) when someone spammed a group invite. My first thought was "no, don't do it, stay in your own happy place and enjoy the game at your own pace". But then I thought "why not, it's an mmo, part of the fun is grouping so go for it".
So I did.
I accepted the invite, asked him what quests he needed help on and his response was "just wanted to group with someone". I told him I just needed to kill wolves so grab those but other than that I'd follow him.
I then proceeded to follow this guy who never once stopped for anything I needed, he ran around aggroing everything, then went afk for a few minutes without telling me.
The kicker?
We then went to a ruin to do some of his quests and he accepted this quest where you release a prisoner and escort him out of the ruin.
This npc would walk slowly, we'd kill an enemy, the npc would run back a few feet to "re-orient itself" and then repeat. I suddenly noticed that my group buddy kept following me very closely. his character would help fight but then immediately return and follow my every move. It seemed he was on some sort of auto-follow. I asked if he was there and once again he was not.
So I let his quest npc die, I lead him far out to another area, dropped group, logged out and in and left his afk butt there.
I don't play these games to deal with other people's issues. And I've had other instances of having to deal with other players and their issues.
So it's not beyond the pale to understand why people stay in their own cliques.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Leave it to Turbine to take the "Massively Multiplayer" of out MMORPG. This game is a shadow of its former self. Pity really, LoTR deserved better in the MMO world.