LOL I dont think any of us thought this thread would reach 500+ posts......What your game is trying to do is great in thoery, and alot of these guys will talk it up big, but when it comes time to support it that is often a different case.
It's pretty simple. There are 2 posters that constantly bump the thread in the morning and evenings.
Interesting looking game, for certain. I hope development goes smoothly. I will be watching it with interest. I am kind of sad though, because I feel the days of hardcore grouping are over for me. I spend most of my time soloing in game, switching amongst EQ2, LotRO and SWTOR every few weeks. My wife spends most her time messing with the housing in EQ2 and the daughter enjoys the companion drama in SWTOR. Even in the old days playing EQ, groups of more than three were a stretch. I am afraid my playstyle has changed with the times.
But I like your style! Good hunting!
Heck, I only play 2-3 hour stints these days, and I'm the exec producer on this project. The game is being designed so that players set up their sessions in advance as often as possible, so that those 2-3 hours are made making forward progress within the caravans, and then smaller sessions are with PUGs and caravans. And of course the random Sat/Sun when you sit down with the family and game together for 3-4 hours or more
LOL I dont think any of us thought this thread would reach 500+ posts......What your game is trying to do is great in thoery, and alot of these guys will talk it up big, but when it comes time to support it that is often a different case.
It's pretty simple. There are 2 posters that constantly bump the thread in the morning and evenings.
I no longer can muster up excitement for an idea. Been burned too many times. Not even videos are enough any more. Only when it goes live (IF it goes live) can any one really know what they are getting into. Wish you guys all the best.
I no longer can muster up excitement for an idea. Been burned too many times. Not even videos are enough any more. Only when it goes live (IF it goes live) can any one really know what they are getting into. Wish you guys all the best.
I am a 42 year old father with 3 kids. I still manage to live a normal life and game regular. I put in 18 hours in EQ2 in 2 weeks not counting Shadowrun: Dragonfall I am trying to get through so I can play SR: Hong Kong. Though in our home we do not watch TV. We game and read books. (Just finished the latest Dexter book) This game and the play sessions you can have in it is just what I love. Looking forward to it. Been reading through the info on the site. Very exciting stuff.
Despite the fact that my wife is not a gamer, it's roughly the same with us. Although we do watch and follow a few shows, they are streamed/downloaded so that it's without commercials and we don't deal with TV.
Most of my friends who are gamers, game with their spouses or significant others. One of my longest friends I met while playing EQ1 when he and his wife were first married. Now they have two children who are in their mid-teens, and the entire family games together.
My wife doesn't game, and we do a lot of activities outside of the house with our travel brand. Ruins, museums, beaches, press trips, etc., and yet I still manage to find time for the #1 hobby in my life: gaming.
Core gamers, the people who take this seriously and have it set aside as their primary hobby and passion, will *always* find time for play sessions with family and friends. Those are our core audience members.
This future MMORPG has my attention. I look forward to seeing your progress.
I would show more enthusiasm but the last few years of MMOs took the wind out of my sails. I think you can understand that. Will be watching.
I've got a blog post coming up shortly which talks specifically about this. We get it; we've backed the same games, been burned by the same promises from veteran developers who then failed to deliver (Godus, anyone?, as an example), and we totally do NOT expect folks to simply jump on our bandwagon.
For those who want to, that's why there is Early Access. For everyone else, a "wait and see" approach is absolutely the right decision for the skeptical.
Your honesty is appreciated We hope to see you around!
I owe the massive length of this thread to a handful of specific super fans
Actually, if I had to guess i would say that the length is due to you personally posting around 200 of the 450 or so posts in here
So do you know when and where the next crowdfunding attempt will be made? Kickstarter?
People have questions, I reply. In between here and the article itself. And a couple dozen other forums. And our own. And at our social media. That's my job as the face of the company and community manager; be out there communicating with people. I try to answer every single comment, no matter if it's positive or negative.
We'll be opening up our pre-order store in September, and that's all she wrote.
We've toyed with the idea of a Kickstarter for a very specific, targeted reason: an orchestral score for the game. But it wouldn't be to fund the game. We'll poll our community at some point next year, and if enough people want us to do so, we'll have David query a few orchestras to find out how much they would charge to take his existing score and take it from digital to orchestral, and we would perhaps do a Kickstarter campaign for that.
But as far as game development goes, that's all sweat equity on our part, and out-of-pocket expenses mitigated with pre-order sales.
P.S. There have been no "attempts" to-date, so not sure what you're referring to. We've sold some shirts, ran a flex-funding Indiegogo at the behest of our community (really, we've already hashed and re-hashed this about a dozen times in this thread) that generated just under 4k out of a 5k target (so more than enough to cover the things we needed it to cover), and basically have raised about 6k and spent about 8k.
Renfail is usually just answering questions from fans or interested parties. Sometimes very uninterested parties. Kudos for a developer to come on here and be that candid. Many many developers need to take notes. The Indi studios are going to take all their player bases.
Ayep. That's my job. I try to answer every single comment or question, no matter if it's positive or negative. That's what community management is all about: communication.
I'm here, there, in between a couple dozen forums, our own forums, our social media, our newsletter day in, and day out. That's my "day job" here, apart from writing the lore and managing the team.
Kind of a given that I would make up half the posts here because it's a thread related to our game
For interested parties, the latest episode of Inside The Studio with our music composer David Bradford is live on YouTube this morning. He streams on Twitch Wednesday evenings at 9 p.m. EST.
He's been streaming the live development of an ongoing piece of music for the game, and last night was a mastering pass, if I'm not mistaken.
Interesting looking game, for certain. I hope development goes smoothly. I will be watching it with interest. I am kind of sad though, because I feel the days of hardcore grouping are over for me. I spend most of my time soloing in game, switching amongst EQ2, LotRO and SWTOR every few weeks. My wife spends most her time messing with the housing in EQ2 and the daughter enjoys the companion drama in SWTOR. Even in the old days playing EQ, groups of more than three were a stretch. I am afraid my playstyle has changed with the times.
But I like your style! Good hunting!
A fear of mine also...I dont really like soloing, and I do miss the comraderie we had in EQ in the group dynamic, but as time has gone on I find myself not wanting to group much anymore also.....If I do it would be smaller 3 person groups and not 6 again...Just too frustrating waiting for people and having them quit all the time.
Interesting looking game, for certain. I hope development goes smoothly. I will be watching it with interest. I am kind of sad though, because I feel the days of hardcore grouping are over for me. I spend most of my time soloing in game, switching amongst EQ2, LotRO and SWTOR every few weeks. My wife spends most her time messing with the housing in EQ2 and the daughter enjoys the companion drama in SWTOR. Even in the old days playing EQ, groups of more than three were a stretch. I am afraid my playstyle has changed with the times.
But I like your style! Good hunting!
A fear of mine also...I dont really like soloing, and I do miss the comraderie we had in EQ in the group dynamic, but as time has gone on I find myself not wanting to group much anymore also.....If I do it would be smaller 3 person groups and not 6 again...Just too frustrating waiting for people and having them quit all the time.
To be honest, I've never seen this happen.
Except in WoW or SWTOR or the modern version of LOTRO, where the dungeon finders and soloability has led to complete anti-grouping mentalities.
Back in EverQuest, I was a Ranger from day one, one of the most "hated" classes when it came to groups because so many failed to play the class right. And yet I never had an issue finding groups, or friends. I joined a guild, was an officer within a matter of weeks, and from then on, I was always organizing groups or ready to join one at the drop of a hat. I still have friends to this day who I met during that initial guild.
I played EQ1 until the GoD expansion and never had any issues finding groups.
Then in EverQuest II, once again a group-based game (in the beginning). I started off by pre-building a guild and had around 30 players ready to go when launch day came. That core group build over time to 40 players, and then we formed an alliance with other guilds, and groups came and we made friends and every day was group adventures.
I played until I got my Vanguard alpha invite. Then I moved into alpha, and went through 18 months of alpha/beta, and built a guild up that went on to the Florendyl server at launch (Haven; I was Thanon Rockguard) until we got about six months in and made it to a non-existent, broken end-game.
Always with 30-40 people who I was on a first-name basis with.
I'm not quite sure where the disconnect happened, between people enjoying grouping with others, and people becoming AFRAID of grouping with others, and preferring to 3-box accounts or have their MMOs be all about the solo experience.
But what I've found is that if you are friendly, if you are sociable, if you are proactive in finding groups and good people to group with, you will ALWAYS have a group, always have a good time, and always keep meeting up with the same people over and over.
The caveat being "in a game where groups are required and manners are also". The moment you add a dungeon finder to the equation, you strip away the need to communicate or get along or become friends with people, and it's all about just filling the tank/dps/heal slots. And also, the game has to be forced grouping. You don't see groups happening like they used to in the modern MMORPG with instant dungeon finders and solo content to max, because people would rather take the path of least resistance.
EVERYONE starts off as Internet strangers. Once you find common ground, you form friendships, groups, and regular adventures together, and communinty is born. THAT, to me, is the essence of MMORPGs: playing TOGETHER with other people and not being afraid to meet new faces, bring them into the fold, and make them friends instead of strangers on the outside looking in.
That sound great, i mean Vanguards dungeon were great but this sounds more to the extreme scale. I guess in one way you could say "less is more" meaning vast quality dungeons.
We've got 10 planned for now. They'll all have multiple wings spread out across multiple skill ranges, acoss multiple skill sets, so that you can't complete the dungeons without mechanical skills for traps/locks/doors, as well as scholars and archealogists for runes and magical traps and etc., and areas where you'll need someone who can climb and/or use rope/climbing tools, and areas where you'll need brute force to force a door/etc.
Players trying to go in with a min/max DPS / hitpoint build will find themselves quickly up against a wall they can't progress beyond. It's all about diversity here and that's where having an 8 man group really comes into play, so that between the party members you'll have a well-rounded team.
Some of what we're doing is related to the size of the dungeon, but scope is also important. Without maps, there's going to be a lot of fumbling/learning your way around, at least in the beginning. This will eventually be mitigated by players who create wikis, to some degree. But this was also the same with EQ Atlas back in the day. In the earliest years of gameplay, it was all about memorizing the zones and fumbling/exploring/learning.
The point is that we make the dungeons large enough to support several months of exploration, across multiple tiers, so that one one level you've got the people with skills 15-25, and then on the next tier it's the 35-40, then the 40-50, then a final tier for the 50-60 skill range. For example. And you'll have to work your way up in the first tier to make it to the second, and beyond.
I think one big change is that as modern mmos don't need grouping, people view the times when you do group as inconvenient and therefore want it done as fast as possible for those 15 minute so called hard runs. As a result, often the group is fairly unfriendly and running into asshats with demands of X skill must be on bar, Y DPS must be met and this ruins the experience - basically people start treating group content as if it were raid content with an organised group of companions. In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment. Course, maybe that's just me.
I think one big change is that as modern mmos don't need grouping, people view the times when you do group as inconvenient and therefore want it done as fast as possible for those 15 minute so called hard runs. As a result, often the group is fairly unfriendly and running into asshats with demands of X skill must be on bar, Y DPS must be met and this ruins the experience - basically people start treating group content as if it were raid content with an organised group of companions. In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment. Course, maybe that's just me.
This is basically how Rift is. Many groups are extremely picky about finding a member because they want to steamroll dungeons A through E in 60 minutes. I get that some people don't have the time or patience to walk a new adventurer through a dungeon or raid, but it makes the game seem a little elitist and holds some of the newer player back from enjoying the game. Sadly, a lot of the content forces this behavior, however, as certain dps/heal/HP checks are scattered throughout.
I love the idea of majority group content because that's what MMOs are built upon. Some games (ESO) you can basically solo through a huge chunk of content without really needing any group unless you're a completionist. This works for ESO because the grouping tool sucks, but it really takes away from the whole MMO experience.
Some games (Everquest) you absolutely need a group to complete the majority of the content (box or otherwise), and because of this I find many are less picky about group members. I also find the overall experience to be more enjoyable.
I would love to see some of the old days of group adventuring return to MMOs.
I think one big change is that as modern mmos don't need grouping, people view the times when you do group as inconvenient and therefore want it done as fast as possible for those 15 minute so called hard runs. As a result, often the group is fairly unfriendly and running into asshats with demands of X skill must be on bar, Y DPS must be met and this ruins the experience - basically people start treating group content as if it were raid content with an organised group of companions.
In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Course, maybe that's just me.
This is where community comes into play: In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Sure, a group-based game means you can't just hop on and go do something in 15 minutes. But it's a small price to pay for an enhanced social experience, because as you mention, you NEED other players to do things. When you NEED to work together with other people to make forward progress, friendships are formed. First, out of necessity. But as time goes on, those partnerships that were initially formed out of sheer necessity, become more than just that. You start to know the person. They talk about their life, significant others, families, pets, passions, etc. You get to know them. Suddenly they are no longer a stranger, but a friend.
Relationships form. Expand. You bring in more friends. You grow into a full group, and then a guild, and then you start to take on bigger and bigger challenges and the experience evolves with you.
Will there be asshats who make it difficult? Sure. There were in EverQuest. But does anyone here remember the server forums, and the associated blacklists where ninja looters and kill stealers would have their names published? Boom. Instant group punishment. You quickly found that if you were a douchebag in the game, you were without groups. If you couldn't get groups, you couldn't progress.
Which means you either learned how to play nice with others and get along, or you quit playing and went somewhere else. Win-Win for the community in either case, because you either became a productive member of the server, or you shoved off and were no longer a thorn in anyone's side.
I think one big change is that as modern mmos don't need grouping, people view the times when you do group as inconvenient and therefore want it done as fast as possible for those 15 minute so called hard runs. As a result, often the group is fairly unfriendly and running into asshats with demands of X skill must be on bar, Y DPS must be met and this ruins the experience - basically people start treating group content as if it were raid content with an organised group of companions.
In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Course, maybe that's just me.
This is where community comes into play: In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Sure, a group-based game means you can't just hop on and go do something in 15 minutes. But it's a small price to pay for an enhanced social experience, because as you mention, you NEED other players to do things. When you NEED to work together with other people to make forward progress, friendships are formed. First, out of necessity. But as time goes on, those partnerships that were initially formed out of sheer necessity, become more than just that. You start to know the person. They talk about their life, significant others, families, pets, passions, etc. You get to know them. Suddenly they are no longer a stranger, but a friend.
Relationships form. Expand. You bring in more friends. You grow into a full group, and then a guild, and then you start to take on bigger and bigger challenges and the experience evolves with you.
Will there be asshats who make it difficult? Sure. There were in EverQuest. But does anyone here remember the server forums, and the associated blacklists where ninja looters and kill stealers would have their names published? Boom. Instant group punishment. You quickly found that if you were a douchebag in the game, you were without groups. If you couldn't get groups, you couldn't progress.
Which means you either learned how to play nice with others and get along, or you quit playing and went somewhere else. Win-Win for the community in either case, because you either became a productive member of the server, or you shoved off and were no longer a thorn in anyone's side.
Community > all
As much as I disagree with this game being more hardcore than the current MMO Population can do today, I will say this. You explain my feels with MMOs well today when it comes to grouping. The only thing you really left out is that the CORE problem with grouping today is people rely solely on LFD/LFR tools to do their grouping for them, which in turn kills the entire community and makes grouping worse than Better. Where their grouping problems in Early MMOs where people were just looking for Warm Bodies. Sure it was there and it was a problem, however LFD/LFR did not fix this problem it made the problem worse. What really was needed is a Party Finder tool much like FFXIV made and not WOW's piss poor raid browser.
As much as I disagree with this game being more hardcore than the current MMO Population can do today, I will say this. You explain my feels with MMOs well today when it comes to grouping. The only thing you really left out is that the CORE problem with grouping today is people rely solely on LFD/LFR tools to do their grouping for them, which in turn kills the entire community and makes grouping worse than Better. Where their grouping problems in Early MMOs where people were just looking for Warm Bodies. Sure it was there and it was a problem, however LFD/LFR did not fix this problem it made the problem worse. What really was needed is a Party Finder tool much like FFXIV made and not WOW's piss poor raid browser.
That is exactly why we have NO group finder in our game. Instead, you have to actually be a real person and communicate with your fellow men and women to build friendships, find groups, and be part of the community.
We do have local bulletin boards in the taverns to faciliate players being able to post "looking for guild/group" or "looking for more" posters, but they cannot be accessed unless you are IN the tavern, socializing with your fellow gamers and roleplaying/hanging out/etc. Plus, there are the game forums as well.
When I came into the P99 server early last year (where I met the core team members on our project), I spent several days and found a few PUGs, but I wanted something more stable. I went to the forums, made a post, I play X hours, Y class, and I'm looking for 5 more. Within a few days, I had a full static group of 6 players and off we went, Monday - Friday from 6 - 10 a.m. for four months until we got too busy building our game to keep playing.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
In our game, the only way to find a group is to communicate with others and be a real person. No group finding tools allowed, as they strip the soul out of needing to communicate and get along with your fellow gamer.
This is basically how Rift is. Many groups are extremely picky about finding a member because they want to steamroll dungeons A through E in 60 minutes. I get that some people don't have the time or patience to walk a new adventurer through a dungeon or raid, but it makes the game seem a little elitist and holds some of the newer player back from enjoying the game. Sadly, a lot of the content forces this behavior, however, as certain dps/heal/HP checks are scattered throughout.
I love the idea of majority group content because that's what MMOs are built upon. Some games (ESO) you can basically solo through a huge chunk of content without really needing any group unless you're a completionist. This works for ESO because the grouping tool sucks, but it really takes away from the whole MMO experience.
Some games (Everquest) you absolutely need a group to complete the majority of the content (box or otherwise), and because of this I find many are less picky about group members. I also find the overall experience to be more enjoyable.
I would love to see some of the old days of group adventuring return to MMOs.
That's one of the reasons we said "no" to levels, and instead went with a skill-based game. This ensures that a person playing four years can still drop back and help out a player who has only been playing one day, if they want.
At some point, you'll always have players who cannot or choose not to drop back to help new players out.
A good example is a raid guild who has spent 24 months working their way up to 95+ skills, gone through the hell levels, equipped their team, have all their resists up, and they've done the faction + crafting + flagging necessary to get access to the final raid zones of the game. Putting a minimum requirement for new membership is a strategic decision, and it has nothing to do with them being "elitist". It's simply that they CANNOT accept players below a certain threshold, because their gear/resists/flags won't match up to the rest of the guild, and when you have 40 players at one level, there's no room for one player who is too far down the totem pole.
That's why there are always going to be guilds that exist at different levels on the totem pole, and players will naturally gravitate towards the guilds that most suit their playstyle AND their current level of gear/skill/etc. Here's a guy who needs to be in a guild with players in the mid-range areas of skills 50-75. He goes to the forums, finds a few, talks to the leadership, and eventually applies to one.
Meanwhile, here's the girl who wants to roleplay all the time. She goes to the forums, or asks around in game, and finds what she needs.
There will always be groups to suit every players' needs.
I, too, have ALWAYS found the group-based games more enjoyable. I loved SWTOR for the lore and the world and the single player experience. I abhored the community, because there was -- quite simply -- none. It was simply a matter of putting your name in the group-finder and bam, you go, finish, and never see those players ever again. Even worse in WoW when you are grouping with players across servers!
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Wish you guys all the best.
It was fun! Can't wait to go back on. Karl's actually one of those joining us for our Saturday night roleplay sessions kicking off September 5th.
Despite the fact that my wife is not a gamer, it's roughly the same with us. Although we do watch and follow a few shows, they are streamed/downloaded so that it's without commercials and we don't deal with TV.
Most of my friends who are gamers, game with their spouses or significant others. One of my longest friends I met while playing EQ1 when he and his wife were first married. Now they have two children who are in their mid-teens, and the entire family games together.
My wife doesn't game, and we do a lot of activities outside of the house with our travel brand. Ruins, museums, beaches, press trips, etc., and yet I still manage to find time for the #1 hobby in my life: gaming.
Core gamers, the people who take this seriously and have it set aside as their primary hobby and passion, will *always* find time for play sessions with family and friends. Those are our core audience members.
I would show more enthusiasm but the last few years of MMOs took the wind out of my sails. I think you can understand that. Will be watching.
For those who want to, that's why there is Early Access. For everyone else, a "wait and see" approach is absolutely the right decision for the skeptical.
Your honesty is appreciated
So do you know when and where the next crowdfunding attempt will be made? Kickstarter?
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We'll be opening up our pre-order store in September, and that's all she wrote.
We've toyed with the idea of a Kickstarter for a very specific, targeted reason: an orchestral score for the game. But it wouldn't be to fund the game. We'll poll our community at some point next year, and if enough people want us to do so, we'll have David query a few orchestras to find out how much they would charge to take his existing score and take it from digital to orchestral, and we would perhaps do a Kickstarter campaign for that.
But as far as game development goes, that's all sweat equity on our part, and out-of-pocket expenses mitigated with pre-order sales.
P.S. There have been no "attempts" to-date, so not sure what you're referring to. We've sold some shirts, ran a flex-funding Indiegogo at the behest of our community (really, we've already hashed and re-hashed this about a dozen times in this thread) that generated just under 4k out of a 5k target (so more than enough to cover the things we needed it to cover), and basically have raised about 6k and spent about 8k.
Ayep. That's my job. I try to answer every single comment or question, no matter if it's positive or negative. That's what community management is all about: communication.
I'm here, there, in between a couple dozen forums, our own forums, our social media, our newsletter day in, and day out. That's my "day job" here, apart from writing the lore and managing the team.
Kind of a given that I would make up half the posts here because it's a thread related to our game
He's been streaming the live development of an ongoing piece of music for the game, and last night was a mastering pass, if I'm not mistaken.
To be honest, I've never seen this happen.
Except in WoW or SWTOR or the modern version of LOTRO, where the dungeon finders and soloability has led to complete anti-grouping mentalities.
Back in EverQuest, I was a Ranger from day one, one of the most "hated" classes when it came to groups because so many failed to play the class right. And yet I never had an issue finding groups, or friends. I joined a guild, was an officer within a matter of weeks, and from then on, I was always organizing groups or ready to join one at the drop of a hat. I still have friends to this day who I met during that initial guild.
I played EQ1 until the GoD expansion and never had any issues finding groups.
Then in EverQuest II, once again a group-based game (in the beginning). I started off by pre-building a guild and had around 30 players ready to go when launch day came. That core group build over time to 40 players, and then we formed an alliance with other guilds, and groups came and we made friends and every day was group adventures.
I played until I got my Vanguard alpha invite. Then I moved into alpha, and went through 18 months of alpha/beta, and built a guild up that went on to the Florendyl server at launch (Haven; I was Thanon Rockguard) until we got about six months in and made it to a non-existent, broken end-game.
Always with 30-40 people who I was on a first-name basis with.
I'm not quite sure where the disconnect happened, between people enjoying grouping with others, and people becoming AFRAID of grouping with others, and preferring to 3-box accounts or have their MMOs be all about the solo experience.
But what I've found is that if you are friendly, if you are sociable, if you are proactive in finding groups and good people to group with, you will ALWAYS have a group, always have a good time, and always keep meeting up with the same people over and over.
The caveat being "in a game where groups are required and manners are also". The moment you add a dungeon finder to the equation, you strip away the need to communicate or get along or become friends with people, and it's all about just filling the tank/dps/heal slots. And also, the game has to be forced grouping. You don't see groups happening like they used to in the modern MMORPG with instant dungeon finders and solo content to max, because people would rather take the path of least resistance.
EVERYONE starts off as Internet strangers. Once you find common ground, you form friendships, groups, and regular adventures together, and communinty is born. THAT, to me, is the essence of MMORPGs: playing TOGETHER with other people and not being afraid to meet new faces, bring them into the fold, and make them friends instead of strangers on the outside looking in.
We've got 10 planned for now. They'll all have multiple wings spread out across multiple skill ranges, acoss multiple skill sets, so that you can't complete the dungeons without mechanical skills for traps/locks/doors, as well as scholars and archealogists for runes and magical traps and etc., and areas where you'll need someone who can climb and/or use rope/climbing tools, and areas where you'll need brute force to force a door/etc.
Players trying to go in with a min/max DPS / hitpoint build will find themselves quickly up against a wall they can't progress beyond. It's all about diversity here and that's where having an 8 man group really comes into play, so that between the party members you'll have a well-rounded team.
Some of what we're doing is related to the size of the dungeon, but scope is also important. Without maps, there's going to be a lot of fumbling/learning your way around, at least in the beginning. This will eventually be mitigated by players who create wikis, to some degree. But this was also the same with EQ Atlas back in the day. In the earliest years of gameplay, it was all about memorizing the zones and fumbling/exploring/learning.
The point is that we make the dungeons large enough to support several months of exploration, across multiple tiers, so that one one level you've got the people with skills 15-25, and then on the next tier it's the 35-40, then the 40-50, then a final tier for the 50-60 skill range. For example. And you'll have to work your way up in the first tier to make it to the second, and beyond.
With multiple dungeons across the world.
In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Course, maybe that's just me.
I love the idea of majority group content because that's what MMOs are built upon. Some games (ESO) you can basically solo through a huge chunk of content without really needing any group unless you're a completionist. This works for ESO because the grouping tool sucks, but it really takes away from the whole MMO experience.
Some games (Everquest) you absolutely need a group to complete the majority of the content (box or otherwise), and because of this I find many are less picky about group members. I also find the overall experience to be more enjoyable.
I would love to see some of the old days of group adventuring return to MMOs.
This is where community comes into play: In games where you need to group, in many cases you were just happy to get warm bodies to do content so groups were a much friendly and happier enviroment.
Sure, a group-based game means you can't just hop on and go do something in 15 minutes. But it's a small price to pay for an enhanced social experience, because as you mention, you NEED other players to do things.
When you NEED to work together with other people to make forward progress, friendships are formed. First, out of necessity. But as time goes on, those partnerships that were initially formed out of sheer necessity, become more than just that. You start to know the person. They talk about their life, significant others, families, pets, passions, etc. You get to know them. Suddenly they are no longer a stranger, but a friend.
Relationships form. Expand. You bring in more friends. You grow into a full group, and then a guild, and then you start to take on bigger and bigger challenges and the experience evolves with you.
Will there be asshats who make it difficult? Sure. There were in EverQuest. But does anyone here remember the server forums, and the associated blacklists where ninja looters and kill stealers would have their names published? Boom. Instant group punishment. You quickly found that if you were a douchebag in the game, you were without groups. If you couldn't get groups, you couldn't progress.
Which means you either learned how to play nice with others and get along, or you quit playing and went somewhere else. Win-Win for the community in either case, because you either became a productive member of the server, or you shoved off and were no longer a thorn in anyone's side.
Community > all
We do have local bulletin boards in the taverns to faciliate players being able to post "looking for guild/group" or "looking for more" posters, but they cannot be accessed unless you are IN the tavern, socializing with your fellow gamers and roleplaying/hanging out/etc. Plus, there are the game forums as well.
When I came into the P99 server early last year (where I met the core team members on our project), I spent several days and found a few PUGs, but I wanted something more stable. I went to the forums, made a post, I play X hours, Y class, and I'm looking for 5 more. Within a few days, I had a full static group of 6 players and off we went, Monday - Friday from 6 - 10 a.m. for four months until we got too busy building our game to keep playing.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
In our game, the only way to find a group is to communicate with others and be a real person. No group finding tools allowed, as they strip the soul out of needing to communicate and get along with your fellow gamer.
That's one of the reasons we said "no" to levels, and instead went with a skill-based game. This ensures that a person playing four years can still drop back and help out a player who has only been playing one day, if they want.
At some point, you'll always have players who cannot or choose not to drop back to help new players out.
A good example is a raid guild who has spent 24 months working their way up to 95+ skills, gone through the hell levels, equipped their team, have all their resists up, and they've done the faction + crafting + flagging necessary to get access to the final raid zones of the game. Putting a minimum requirement for new membership is a strategic decision, and it has nothing to do with them being "elitist". It's simply that they CANNOT accept players below a certain threshold, because their gear/resists/flags won't match up to the rest of the guild, and when you have 40 players at one level, there's no room for one player who is too far down the totem pole.
That's why there are always going to be guilds that exist at different levels on the totem pole, and players will naturally gravitate towards the guilds that most suit their playstyle AND their current level of gear/skill/etc. Here's a guy who needs to be in a guild with players in the mid-range areas of skills 50-75. He goes to the forums, finds a few, talks to the leadership, and eventually applies to one.
Meanwhile, here's the girl who wants to roleplay all the time. She goes to the forums, or asks around in game, and finds what she needs.
There will always be groups to suit every players' needs.
I, too, have ALWAYS found the group-based games more enjoyable. I loved SWTOR for the lore and the world and the single player experience. I abhored the community, because there was -- quite simply -- none. It was simply a matter of putting your name in the group-finder and bam, you go, finish, and never see those players ever again. Even worse in WoW when you are grouping with players across servers!