I don't consider a group-based game catering to geeks and nerds. I see a grind-based game catering to people who generally don't have anything to do besides playing games (which is not the same as geeks and nerds). Early adopters are enthusiasts who compose a very different kind of a population compared to later adopters. Especially with something like a computer, which was much more expensive back then, they'd be more willing to spend a lot of time doing things on it. When you consider the people who play computer games as a whole now, I don't think you have nearly the same sort of willingness to grind for hours upon hours or the like. This is to say nothing of how games have evolved in gameplay.
I didn't say they necessarily catered only to geeks and nerds, but that geeks and nerds were the primary available audience at the time that these early games were written. MUDs and MMOs started at the time when the early adopters were primarily the nerd and geek set. I don't say that to offend anyone, I was one of them and I have no problem with the terminology. However, most of the early adopters were young people who had a lot of time on their hands and could spend hours and hours online every day doing nothing but playing games. I remember back in 1985 when Ultima IV came out for the Apple, I got it the very first day, sat down and played it for a couple of days straight, didn't get up from my computer for longer than it took to grab a quick bite or hit the bathroom and I beat the game. Today, I'd be insane to give that a try. As a college kid that could take a couple of days off work, I could do that. Today, with a more-than-full-time job, kids to raise, a house ot maintain, etc. there's no way. The majority audience for games today isn't college-age kids, it's adults. The average age for MMO players is 28. Today, I don't have time to spend 4-5 hours in front of the keyboard playing a game, much less 24.
A game that requires you schedule your life around it and devote massive amounts of time to it is going to have very limited popularity. That's just a fact. It was easier for a game like that to work 10-some years ago when there wasn't a lot of options among MMOs, but anything like that now would never grow that large. MMOs have gotten casual friendly for very good reasons. This is why grind-tastic MMOs that are made today do not do well.
They've gotten casual friendly because the overwhelming majority of people who play them have lives full of other things and only play MMOs as a diversion, not as a primary form of entertainment. Again, this is because the average age has gone up dramatically over what it was 10 years ago. I find it somewhat sad that there are people out there trying desperately to relive the same experiences they had 10 years ago, they've failed to grow up and expand their horizons. Again, not trying to insult anyone, but in my experience, lots of the people I know who spend large amounts of time playing MMOs are the people who have never gotten married, have no serious relationships and work low-end, minimum-wage jobs. It's no wonder they spend so much time online, their normal lives are such a disaster.
I don't think soloing needs to be difficult. Make grouping fun and as exciting as soloing and people will group. Even in punishing games like WoW leveling, spontaneous grouping happened. Remove the punishments and it will happen even more. You don't have to try to force people to do stuff they want to do anyway...just don't shoot them in the foot when they do it (and maybe toss in some light incentives).
Part of the reason grouping is hard is the Holy Trinity though. It makes far too harsh requirements on group composition (and then makes group gameplay stale unless a fight has some gimmick). Superspecialization like you see in HT really needs to stop. I think going with group combos (like FFXI's fusions or heck, those group-based Marvel universe games on consoles) is generally a better way to have people work together (it's easy and allows a lot of depth). This isn't to say everyone should be the same of course, D&D has much softer specializations than the Holy Trinity and the dynamic there works pretty well. I think it is important to have a system where you don't have to tell a friend to go do something else because they had the audacity to pick a class they enjoy playing -- this happens all too often in HT games.
The problem that I see is that many of the same people who espouse grouping also espouse hardcore games. It's not grouping for the fun and excitement of grouping, but as a survival tactic in games that are punishingly difficult. Again, that's something that's just not shared by the overwhelming majority of MMO players. For most, the game is a way to have fun for a little bit between having to deal with real life. It's not, as I fear is the case for some people, a way to escape from real life into a fantasy world where they don't have to actually deal with reality. If that's the case, these people need a lot more help than simply having a game to play, they need therapy.
I agree with you on the HT though, one of the problems I have with it is that it makes everyone a carbon copy of each other. There is little or no individuality among players when everyone needs to fill a particular role in a group. All the healers need to be interchangable and have the same spells/abilities. All the tanks need to be the same. All the DPS need to be the same. You can't really decide to go off the reservation and do something different because you'll never get into a group that way. Nobody wants individuality, everyone wants the "perfect build". Where's the fun in that?
"Funny, those are the games that are the most financially successful. You lose."
How so? Name all those successfull games.
MMORPGs that cater to solo play will fail because no one wants to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with a glofified chattroom.
I am speaking to WOW as the model. It has solo and group play. It is very nicely balanced. ALL the higher content is group oriented, as is the higher level combat. Its what defines WOW and seperates it from the others.
Group based strategic combat creates a sense of achievement. A sense of accomplishment and teamwork many people lack in their everyday lives. Without it that, WOW would fail.
Who brags about finishing God of War? No one, why? BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN FINISH GOD OF WAR. Not everyone can work as a team to down higher level bosses in WOW.
" There is little or no individuality among players when everyone needs to fill a particular role in a group."
I cannot disagree more. When their are "roles" then there is teamwork, and in a team, your SKILL and OUTCOMES define you FAR more than a colorfull wardrobe or stupid name. Without group play you accomplish nothing because everyone has done the exact same thing as you, you are an EXACT clone of everyone else, with the EXACT skills, and the EXACT importance, none.
What would make you different than any other toon in a solo focused MMORPG (which is hardly a MMORPG. Its a shared single player RPG world).
Your view of team based games is interesting. Did you play any sports? Are all the players the same? All quarterbacks the same? No, they standout because of their skill. After all, their equipment is standard (hands, feet, arms, helmit, etc). To say there is no variety defies real world examples.
"You can't really decide to go off the reservation and do something different because you'll never get into a group that way. Nobody wants individuality, everyone wants the "perfect build". Where's the fun in that?"
Sounds like you are a romantic for Pen and Paper.
" For most, the game is a way to have fun for a little bit between having to deal with real life."
I don't consider a group-based game catering to geeks and nerds. I see a grind-based game catering to people who generally don't have anything to do besides playing games (which is not the same as geeks and nerds). Early adopters are enthusiasts who compose a very different kind of a population compared to later adopters. Especially with something like a computer, which was much more expensive back then, they'd be more willing to spend a lot of time doing things on it. When you consider the people who play computer games as a whole now, I don't think you have nearly the same sort of willingness to grind for hours upon hours or the like. This is to say nothing of how games have evolved in gameplay.
Not a lot of that post I wanted to comment on except the mention of grind-based gaming. Are you saying that a group-based game is a grind-based game? Because it sounds like it. I really don't see how grouping equates to grinding. If you're saying that's how older games such as EverQuest used to be then sure, but that's the past. Things have moved on since then. There's no reason why you can't have a fantastic game that focuses on people teaming together to face powerful adversaries.
Forced-grouping games are almost inevitably wait-based games. Which sucks.
Everquest was grindy. Camping a spawn point for days where you have to schedule and rotate guild members in and out is perhaps the epitome of grinding. Frankly, I'm not sure forced-grouping advocates see the difference between the two at times. WoW's grouping is also grindy. In fact, a lot of group content in MMOs is very grindy and it is rather ridiculous. I don't think it is necessary for group stuff to be grindy, but I'm not the one romanticizing Everquest. When you advocate an Everquest-like game, that covers more than just group content...it covers a certain type of group content (and even a certain group structure...a quintinity, if you will).
My general feeling on the grouping vs. soloing debate is that it is something that's rather misguided to fight over. People who hate seeing another person doing something by themselves (or hearing about it) are just as irrational as people who play an MMO and get pissed off when they run into another player. There's no inherent contradiction in a game that has strong group support AND is friendly to people who can't find a group or who don't have friends and don't want to enter an anonymous queue or spam chat looking for people.
What would make you different than any other toon in a solo focused MMORPG (which is hardly a MMORPG. Its a shared single player RPG world).
Everything. Playing solo, you have to balance your skills properly because you are personally responsible for everything. You have to be able to heal yourself, tank by yourself, deal damage by yourself and getting that balance right for your playstyle is essential. In a group, all the tank has to do is tank, all the healer has to do is heal, they are only responsible for their own particular niche. Because there are superior builds that people are expected to fit into, nobody is ever all that different.
Your view of team based games is interesting. Did you play any sports? Are all the players the same? All quarterbacks the same? No, they standout because of their skill. After all, their equipment is standard (hands, feet, arms, helmit, etc). To say there is no variety defies real world examples.
This isn't the real world though. In most games, there are best ways of doing things. People can min/max their skills to be superior at casting healing spells, doing damage, etc. Because there is "best" gear for any particular level, most people min/max the same and carry the same gear and act in approximately the same way. The games are set up that way. That's why you can find walk-throughs for most quests in most games. Do this, go here, do that... that's all there is to it.
Sounds like you are a romantic for Pen and Paper.
P&P will always be superior to MMOs in the sense that they are tailored specifically for the individual players who are at the table. Unless you're only playing pre-written modules, a good GM will be able to make a game that's fun for everyone, based on their expectations and skills that they bring to the game. MMOs, on the other hand, are by necessity generic. They have to be made to the lowest common denominator because thousands of people are going to be playing through each quest and the quests do not change from one player to the next. Intense personalization and ease of modification on the fly will always make P&P superior.
You make that choice with your purchase dollars. Don't like what they're calling MMOs these days? Stop buying them and go do something else.
Problem solved.
Such a seemingly defeatist attitude. There is still a community here whether or not we play the games we complain about.
It's not a defeatist attitude, it's a realistic one. Understanding how the world works and accepting it as such is the first step to maturity. Otherwise it's just a bunch of wishful thinking and doe-eyed demands for entitlement.
MMORPGs that cater to solo play will fail because no one wants to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with a glofified chattroom.
I am speaking to WOW as the model. It has solo and group play. It is very nicely balanced. ALL the higher content is group oriented, as is the higher level combat. Its what defines WOW and seperates it from the others.
Group based strategic combat creates a sense of achievement. A sense of accomplishment and teamwork many people lack in their everyday lives. Without it that, WOW would fail.
Who brags about finishing God of War? No one, why? BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN FINISH GOD OF WAR. Not everyone can work as a team to down higher level bosses in WOW.
BTW, I have you by 1 game. I played Meridian59!!
How about WoW? Solo-based game and the largest, by far, in the marketplace. And it's got millions of players who are paying $15 a month for a solo-based game.
I like this particular article it gives me an additional input on the information around the world. thanks a lot and keep giving with posting such information.
MMORPGs that cater to solo play will fail because no one wants to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with a glofified chattroom.
I am speaking to WOW as the model. It has solo and group play. It is very nicely balanced. ALL the higher content is group oriented, as is the higher level combat. Its what defines WOW and seperates it from the others.
Group based strategic combat creates a sense of achievement. A sense of accomplishment and teamwork many people lack in their everyday lives. Without it that, WOW would fail.
Who brags about finishing God of War? No one, why? BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN FINISH GOD OF WAR. Not everyone can work as a team to down higher level bosses in WOW.
BTW, I have you by 1 game. I played Meridian59!!
How about WoW? Solo-based game and the largest, by far, in the marketplace. And it's got millions of players who are paying $15 a month for a solo-based game.
Try again.
There's market for only one game like this. One. People don't need other games, when they have WoW, with all their gear and preestablished connections. This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Name me any other solo-based MMO, that proved to be a great success and I'll give you a cookie.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
Originally posted by Goronian This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Can you actually name the 'solo-oriented games that failed before, are failling now and will fail later' instead of your vague and overly generalized claims?
"Funny, those are the games that are the most financially successful. You lose."
How so? Name all those successfull games.
MMORPGs that cater to solo play will fail because no one wants to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with a glofified chattroom.
I am speaking to WOW as the model. It has solo and group play. It is very nicely balanced. ALL the higher content is group oriented, as is the higher level combat. Its what defines WOW and seperates it from the others.
Group based strategic combat creates a sense of achievement. A sense of accomplishment and teamwork many people lack in their everyday lives. Without it that, WOW would fail.
Who brags about finishing God of War? No one, why? BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN FINISH GOD OF WAR. Not everyone can work as a team to down higher level bosses in WOW.
BTW, I have you by 1 game. I played Meridian59!!
I colored part of the text because I had to comment on it. This part of Wow is not what seperates it. It's what it most heavily borrowed.
When Wow was starting development, they hired former EQ'ers to help them. In fact, two of the key developers were former guild leaders in EQ, of two of the biggest guilds in that game. These guild leaders were hard-core raiders, and loved raiding. So, naturally, raiding got the best deal when Wow was designed. It has the endgame progress of both content and loot. Soloers, who were able to level and improve their loot through soloing, hit a wall at Wow's endgame.
Whether you agree that this is how MMOs should be or not, be clear about some facts. This is NOT how MMOs always were, and it is NOT how they MUST be designed for success. It is merely one way.
There's market for only one game like this. One. People don't need other games, when they have WoW, with all their gear and preestablished connections. This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Name me any other solo-based MMO, that proved to be a great success and I'll give you a cookie.
You said nobody would pay $15 for a solo game, I proved you wrong. Now you want another one? How about almost every damn game on the market? Virtually *ALL* of them are like that!
You make that choice with your purchase dollars. Don't like what they're calling MMOs these days? Stop buying them and go do something else.
Problem solved.
Such a seemingly defeatist attitude. There is still a community here whether or not we play the games we complain about.
It's not a defeatist attitude, it's a realistic one. Understanding how the world works and accepting it as such is the first step to maturity. Otherwise it's just a bunch of wishful thinking and doe-eyed demands for entitlement.
Bah, theres nothing wrong with being an idealist. Visionaries are a lot of fun to hang around. Being realistic is fine for some things, but video games are all about the imagination in my opinion. Just because we like to dream up what our perfect MMO would be like, doesn't mean that we are immature. And its more wishful thinking than a sense of entitlement, I think. We come here and bitch about what we don't like in the genre in hopes that someone is listening and might agree and be able to change things. If not, there is nothing lost. At least we found some entertainment value in bitching and arguing with other members of this site.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Originally posted by Palebane Being realistic is fine for some things, but video games are all about the imagination in my opinion. Just because we like to dream up what our perfect MMO would be like, doesn't mean that we are immature.
That is not what Cephus said.
The maturity does not deny imagination and creative thinking. Immature is when you cannot distinguish the difference between wishful and creative thinking.
Bitching about something you do not understand how it works and why - is immature.
Thinking that someone will listen to bitching instead of constructive posting - is immature.
Thinking that something is going to change because you are posting on game site magazine - is wishful thinking.
Finding immature bitching entertaining - is immature.
As Cephus said, understanding is a step to maturity...
This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Can you actually name the 'solo-oriented games that failed before, are failling now and will fail later' instead of your vague and overly generalized claims?
WAR, AoC, CO, RGTR... Even LotRo, the most successfull of the bunch had to switch to F2P model. Need I say more?
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Can you actually name the 'solo-oriented games that failed before, are failling now and will fail later' instead of your vague and overly generalized claims?
WAR, AoC, CO, RGTR... Even LotRo, the most successfull of the bunch had to switch to F2P model. Need I say more?
Well, first, WoW is the most successful of the bunch. Secondly, LotRO didn't have to switch to an optional F2P model; they chose to do so because they thought it would bring in more revenue (which is most likely correct).
As for War, AoC, CO, and RGTR....they came out as crappy games, without sufficient time invested to make them everything they could have been. That's what hurt them far more than anything else.
If we were going to get technical about it, then forced grouping games have done a lot worse than solo-friendly games. That said, I think it is a silly bifurcation to make. The real question is how to make game group friendly, because basically no MMOs have ever been group friendly. We've had plenty of group mandatory (or nearly so) games, but that's a different beast than friendliness.
If we were going to get technical about it, then forced grouping games have done a lot worse than solo-friendly games. That said, I think it is a silly bifurcation to make. The real question is how to make game group friendly, because basically no MMOs have ever been group friendly. We've had plenty of group mandatory (or nearly so) games, but that's a different beast than friendliness.
Lots of games are group friendly, you can certainly group in them and there's plenty of content both for groups and soloers. However, most groupers don't consider anything that isn't forced grouping to be group friendly. They don't see that there's a difference between the two. In order to be group friendly, they seem to think that they have to force, or at the very least, extremely strongly reward grouping as a means to "encourage" people to group as a primary game mechanism. If everyone isn't bribed, threatened or otherwise forced into grouping, it's not a "group-friendly" game.
Lots of games are group friendly, you can certainly group in them and there's plenty of content both for groups and soloers. However, most groupers don't consider anything that isn't forced grouping to be group friendly. They don't see that there's a difference between the two. In order to be group friendly, they seem to think that they have to force, or at the very least, extremely strongly reward grouping as a means to "encourage" people to group as a primary game mechanism. If everyone isn't bribed, threatened or otherwise forced into grouping, it's not a "group-friendly" game.
That, of course, is ridiculous.
That, of course, is also untrue.
As a pro-grouper, all I'm asking for is to make grouping an option because at present games are NOT group friendly. I don't know what games you're playing, but none of the ones I've been in have been group friendly. Everything is now solo friendly to the point of excluding the need for groups. Easy mobs, soloable dungeons, quest chains, no death penalty, and so on, all make it so much easier to solo that people just don't need or want to group.
In a perfect world people would group up because they like to, and everyone would play together, hold hands and dance, but this isn't a perfect world, so when games direct people into a certain type of gameplay - soloing - then that's what people will do.
It isn't about forcing people to group, it's about making it a viable and acceptable option.
Originally posted by Goronian WAR, AoC, CO, RGTR... Even LotRo, the most successfull of the bunch had to switch to F2P model. Need I say more?
They switched to model that the game developers consider to make more money. Well, that is a point of any business...to make money. I do not understand what you are trying to say here.
Being realistic is fine for some things, but video games are all about the imagination in my opinion. Just because we like to dream up what our perfect MMO would be like, doesn't mean that we are immature.
That is not what Cephus said.
The maturity does not deny imagination and creative thinking. Immature is when you cannot distinguish the difference between wishful and creative thinking.
Bitching about something you do not understand how it works and why - is immature.
Thinking that someone will listen to bitching instead of constructive posting - is immature.
Thinking that something is going to change because you are posting on game site magazine - is wishful thinking.
Finding immature bitching entertaining - is immature.
As Cephus said, understanding is a step to maturity...
That's fine. I'd rather be immature than a hypocrite.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
As a pro-grouper, all I'm asking for is to make grouping an option because at present games are NOT group friendly. I don't know what games you're playing, but none of the ones I've been in have been group friendly. Everything is now solo friendly to the point of excluding the need for groups. Easy mobs, soloable dungeons, quest chains, no death penalty, and so on, all make it so much easier to solo that people just don't need or want to group.
In a perfect world people would group up because they like to, and everyone would play together, hold hands and dance, but this isn't a perfect world, so when games direct people into a certain type of gameplay - soloing - then that's what people will do.
It isn't about forcing people to group, it's about making it a viable and acceptable option.
That's entirely untrue. I doubt there is a game out there that you cannot group through every single encounter in if you choose to. You're not asking for grouping to be an option, you want it to be the *PRIMARY* option, you want people to be "strongly encouraged" to group, either through difficulty or bribe, so that you'll have people to group with and will feel better about your playstyle choices. An option, by definition, is simply something you have the ability to do. I have the option of playing a healer class if I want. I don't have to, but I can. You have the option to group if you want. You don't have to, but you can. Grouping has always been an option in MMOs, you just want to make it so that others have to group as well.
Whether or not people "need or want" to group is irrelevant. If you cannot find other people to group with, that's the choice of the players. They have the option to group, they *CHOOSE* not to. Either you find people who make the choice to group or you can't do it, just like you have to find people who choose to play healer classes to form the holy trinity. If nobody does, you can't do it.
See, this isn't about making grouping viable, it's about wanting to have lots of people around who are forced to group so that you can find a group any time you want. It's not about viability and acceptability, it's about making your personal playstyle choices easier and more convenient for you.
If we were going to get technical about it, then forced grouping games have done a lot worse than solo-friendly games. That said, I think it is a silly bifurcation to make. The real question is how to make game group friendly, because basically no MMOs have ever been group friendly. We've had plenty of group mandatory (or nearly so) games, but that's a different beast than friendliness.
Lots of games are group friendly, you can certainly group in them and there's plenty of content both for groups and soloers. However, most groupers don't consider anything that isn't forced grouping to be group friendly. They don't see that there's a difference between the two. In order to be group friendly, they seem to think that they have to force, or at the very least, extremely strongly reward grouping as a means to "encourage" people to group as a primary game mechanism. If everyone isn't bribed, threatened or otherwise forced into grouping, it's not a "group-friendly" game.
That, of course, is ridiculous.
CoH is perhaps the most group friendly game out there, though I haven't played it in a long, long time and I only played it for a few months, so I'm hesistant to go into specifics. My understanding, however, is that there isn't much challenging group content (which is ironically, a problem many solo-friendly games have for people who are playing solo).
Most games like WoW, LotRO, etc, are NOT group friendly. Certainly there is good content for groups, but forming a group is at the very least a time-consuming task for most of the participants (even with WoW's dungeon finder it can take 15 minutes easily for a DPS to get into a group...to say nothing of how the dungeon finder is a terrible mechanic for building a strong community). They certainly are solo-friendly in that solo content is easy to find and not at all hard to get into (FFXI on the other hand, is NOT solo-friendly, though you can solo with great difficulty in it if you are of the right class).
So after thinking more while writing this post, I'd say there are two factors at least that are important with solo OR group content. "Friendliness" which we'll define as the ease of getting into the content once you've logged in, and "challenge" which covers finding content appropriately challenging for you or your group. Even games that are solo friendly typically fail at the latter, and pretty much all games with group challenges fail at the former. It's a pretty sad state of affairs. (Edit: I'm referring to MMO games here, obviously things are much better outside of MMOs).
I'd add that nothing stops a game from being both solo AND group friendly/challenging. (I'd also add, that there are very few players who ONLY ever want to play in a group or only ever want to play by themselves. Most people do a mix, which I think we sometimes forget).
However where we differ is in the examples you sited and peoples reactions to how they are handled.
CoH is very very easy to find a group but you can't state that grouping is not challenging. You can set the challenge. It can be very challenging if you set it and the have the ability to do higher content areas like in all games. People don't, and then state the game is not challenging - doesn't hold with me - They have limited themselves and then whined about it.
With regards to WoW, yes it does sometimes take 15 minutes for a dps to get a dungeon. And people say this is why it was not a group friendly game but they hold up EQ as a group friendly game. What?? Sometimes we had to wait an hour or mutliple hours to get a group. 15 minutes is a walk in the park, I'd then say that is 4x more group friendly than EQ. And for a tank or healer your wait time is less than a minute. And of course they can also do harder content.
So what else can be done. They've reduced the wait times and provided the challenge. They've also given better rewards for group content, more coin, more xp. They've even put the quest givers inside the dungeons themselves for groups to accomplish. Is there anything more short of forcing it? Seriously what more can they do.
Venge Sunsoar
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
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Such a seemingly defeatist attitude. There is still a community here whether or not we play the games we complain about.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
"Funny, those are the games that are the most financially successful. You lose."
How so? Name all those successfull games.
MMORPGs that cater to solo play will fail because no one wants to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with a glofified chattroom.
I am speaking to WOW as the model. It has solo and group play. It is very nicely balanced. ALL the higher content is group oriented, as is the higher level combat. Its what defines WOW and seperates it from the others.
Group based strategic combat creates a sense of achievement. A sense of accomplishment and teamwork many people lack in their everyday lives. Without it that, WOW would fail.
Who brags about finishing God of War? No one, why? BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN FINISH GOD OF WAR. Not everyone can work as a team to down higher level bosses in WOW.
BTW, I have you by 1 game. I played Meridian59!!
" There is little or no individuality among players when everyone needs to fill a particular role in a group."
I cannot disagree more. When their are "roles" then there is teamwork, and in a team, your SKILL and OUTCOMES define you FAR more than a colorfull wardrobe or stupid name. Without group play you accomplish nothing because everyone has done the exact same thing as you, you are an EXACT clone of everyone else, with the EXACT skills, and the EXACT importance, none.
What would make you different than any other toon in a solo focused MMORPG (which is hardly a MMORPG. Its a shared single player RPG world).
Your view of team based games is interesting. Did you play any sports? Are all the players the same? All quarterbacks the same? No, they standout because of their skill. After all, their equipment is standard (hands, feet, arms, helmit, etc). To say there is no variety defies real world examples.
"You can't really decide to go off the reservation and do something different because you'll never get into a group that way. Nobody wants individuality, everyone wants the "perfect build". Where's the fun in that?"
Sounds like you are a romantic for Pen and Paper.
" For most, the game is a way to have fun for a little bit between having to deal with real life."
Yes, its a glorified chattroom for those people.
Forced-grouping games are almost inevitably wait-based games. Which sucks.
Everquest was grindy. Camping a spawn point for days where you have to schedule and rotate guild members in and out is perhaps the epitome of grinding. Frankly, I'm not sure forced-grouping advocates see the difference between the two at times. WoW's grouping is also grindy. In fact, a lot of group content in MMOs is very grindy and it is rather ridiculous. I don't think it is necessary for group stuff to be grindy, but I'm not the one romanticizing Everquest. When you advocate an Everquest-like game, that covers more than just group content...it covers a certain type of group content (and even a certain group structure...a quintinity, if you will).
My general feeling on the grouping vs. soloing debate is that it is something that's rather misguided to fight over. People who hate seeing another person doing something by themselves (or hearing about it) are just as irrational as people who play an MMO and get pissed off when they run into another player. There's no inherent contradiction in a game that has strong group support AND is friendly to people who can't find a group or who don't have friends and don't want to enter an anonymous queue or spam chat looking for people.
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It's not a defeatist attitude, it's a realistic one. Understanding how the world works and accepting it as such is the first step to maturity. Otherwise it's just a bunch of wishful thinking and doe-eyed demands for entitlement.
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How about WoW? Solo-based game and the largest, by far, in the marketplace. And it's got millions of players who are paying $15 a month for a solo-based game.
Try again.
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I like this particular article it gives me an additional input on the information around the world. thanks a lot and keep giving with posting such information.
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We Buy Gold
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There's market for only one game like this. One. People don't need other games, when they have WoW, with all their gear and preestablished connections. This is why all other solo-oriented games failed before, are failling now and will fail later.
Name me any other solo-based MMO, that proved to be a great success and I'll give you a cookie.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
Can you actually name the 'solo-oriented games that failed before, are failling now and will fail later' instead of your vague and overly generalized claims?
I colored part of the text because I had to comment on it. This part of Wow is not what seperates it. It's what it most heavily borrowed.
When Wow was starting development, they hired former EQ'ers to help them. In fact, two of the key developers were former guild leaders in EQ, of two of the biggest guilds in that game. These guild leaders were hard-core raiders, and loved raiding. So, naturally, raiding got the best deal when Wow was designed. It has the endgame progress of both content and loot. Soloers, who were able to level and improve their loot through soloing, hit a wall at Wow's endgame.
Whether you agree that this is how MMOs should be or not, be clear about some facts. This is NOT how MMOs always were, and it is NOT how they MUST be designed for success. It is merely one way.
You said nobody would pay $15 for a solo game, I proved you wrong. Now you want another one? How about almost every damn game on the market? Virtually *ALL* of them are like that!
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Bah, theres nothing wrong with being an idealist. Visionaries are a lot of fun to hang around. Being realistic is fine for some things, but video games are all about the imagination in my opinion. Just because we like to dream up what our perfect MMO would be like, doesn't mean that we are immature. And its more wishful thinking than a sense of entitlement, I think. We come here and bitch about what we don't like in the genre in hopes that someone is listening and might agree and be able to change things. If not, there is nothing lost. At least we found some entertainment value in bitching and arguing with other members of this site.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
That is not what Cephus said.
The maturity does not deny imagination and creative thinking. Immature is when you cannot distinguish the difference between wishful and creative thinking.
Bitching about something you do not understand how it works and why - is immature.
Thinking that someone will listen to bitching instead of constructive posting - is immature.
Thinking that something is going to change because you are posting on game site magazine - is wishful thinking.
Finding immature bitching entertaining - is immature.
As Cephus said, understanding is a step to maturity...
WAR, AoC, CO, RGTR... Even LotRo, the most successfull of the bunch had to switch to F2P model. Need I say more?
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
Well, first, WoW is the most successful of the bunch. Secondly, LotRO didn't have to switch to an optional F2P model; they chose to do so because they thought it would bring in more revenue (which is most likely correct).
As for War, AoC, CO, and RGTR....they came out as crappy games, without sufficient time invested to make them everything they could have been. That's what hurt them far more than anything else.
If we were going to get technical about it, then forced grouping games have done a lot worse than solo-friendly games. That said, I think it is a silly bifurcation to make. The real question is how to make game group friendly, because basically no MMOs have ever been group friendly. We've had plenty of group mandatory (or nearly so) games, but that's a different beast than friendliness.
Lots of games are group friendly, you can certainly group in them and there's plenty of content both for groups and soloers. However, most groupers don't consider anything that isn't forced grouping to be group friendly. They don't see that there's a difference between the two. In order to be group friendly, they seem to think that they have to force, or at the very least, extremely strongly reward grouping as a means to "encourage" people to group as a primary game mechanism. If everyone isn't bribed, threatened or otherwise forced into grouping, it's not a "group-friendly" game.
That, of course, is ridiculous.
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That, of course, is also untrue.
As a pro-grouper, all I'm asking for is to make grouping an option because at present games are NOT group friendly. I don't know what games you're playing, but none of the ones I've been in have been group friendly. Everything is now solo friendly to the point of excluding the need for groups. Easy mobs, soloable dungeons, quest chains, no death penalty, and so on, all make it so much easier to solo that people just don't need or want to group.
In a perfect world people would group up because they like to, and everyone would play together, hold hands and dance, but this isn't a perfect world, so when games direct people into a certain type of gameplay - soloing - then that's what people will do.
It isn't about forcing people to group, it's about making it a viable and acceptable option.
They switched to model that the game developers consider to make more money. Well, that is a point of any business...to make money. I do not understand what you are trying to say here.
Also, as far as I am aware, WAR nor AoC are F2P.
Games do not direct people. It is the people directing the games.
That's fine. I'd rather be immature than a hypocrite.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
That's entirely untrue. I doubt there is a game out there that you cannot group through every single encounter in if you choose to. You're not asking for grouping to be an option, you want it to be the *PRIMARY* option, you want people to be "strongly encouraged" to group, either through difficulty or bribe, so that you'll have people to group with and will feel better about your playstyle choices. An option, by definition, is simply something you have the ability to do. I have the option of playing a healer class if I want. I don't have to, but I can. You have the option to group if you want. You don't have to, but you can. Grouping has always been an option in MMOs, you just want to make it so that others have to group as well.
Whether or not people "need or want" to group is irrelevant. If you cannot find other people to group with, that's the choice of the players. They have the option to group, they *CHOOSE* not to. Either you find people who make the choice to group or you can't do it, just like you have to find people who choose to play healer classes to form the holy trinity. If nobody does, you can't do it.
See, this isn't about making grouping viable, it's about wanting to have lots of people around who are forced to group so that you can find a group any time you want. It's not about viability and acceptability, it's about making your personal playstyle choices easier and more convenient for you.
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CoH is perhaps the most group friendly game out there, though I haven't played it in a long, long time and I only played it for a few months, so I'm hesistant to go into specifics. My understanding, however, is that there isn't much challenging group content (which is ironically, a problem many solo-friendly games have for people who are playing solo).
Most games like WoW, LotRO, etc, are NOT group friendly. Certainly there is good content for groups, but forming a group is at the very least a time-consuming task for most of the participants (even with WoW's dungeon finder it can take 15 minutes easily for a DPS to get into a group...to say nothing of how the dungeon finder is a terrible mechanic for building a strong community). They certainly are solo-friendly in that solo content is easy to find and not at all hard to get into (FFXI on the other hand, is NOT solo-friendly, though you can solo with great difficulty in it if you are of the right class).
So after thinking more while writing this post, I'd say there are two factors at least that are important with solo OR group content. "Friendliness" which we'll define as the ease of getting into the content once you've logged in, and "challenge" which covers finding content appropriately challenging for you or your group. Even games that are solo friendly typically fail at the latter, and pretty much all games with group challenges fail at the former. It's a pretty sad state of affairs. (Edit: I'm referring to MMO games here, obviously things are much better outside of MMOs).
I'd add that nothing stops a game from being both solo AND group friendly/challenging. (I'd also add, that there are very few players who ONLY ever want to play in a group or only ever want to play by themselves. Most people do a mix, which I think we sometimes forget).
I would agree that the two issues are:
1. challenging group content and
2. Ease of finding groups
However where we differ is in the examples you sited and peoples reactions to how they are handled.
CoH is very very easy to find a group but you can't state that grouping is not challenging. You can set the challenge. It can be very challenging if you set it and the have the ability to do higher content areas like in all games. People don't, and then state the game is not challenging - doesn't hold with me - They have limited themselves and then whined about it.
With regards to WoW, yes it does sometimes take 15 minutes for a dps to get a dungeon. And people say this is why it was not a group friendly game but they hold up EQ as a group friendly game. What?? Sometimes we had to wait an hour or mutliple hours to get a group. 15 minutes is a walk in the park, I'd then say that is 4x more group friendly than EQ. And for a tank or healer your wait time is less than a minute. And of course they can also do harder content.
So what else can be done. They've reduced the wait times and provided the challenge. They've also given better rewards for group content, more coin, more xp. They've even put the quest givers inside the dungeons themselves for groups to accomplish. Is there anything more short of forcing it? Seriously what more can they do.
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