Yeah it sucks for Joe but just like any normal person in his situation what he should do is find freinds to play with. Maybe he wont play that day, or the next, or the following day, but eventually therell be a spot and he can start making friends there. You cant expect the MLB to change the way the game is played to be solo-friendly just because there are guys like Joe who dont have any friends that play... even if they found a way around the physics, it just wouldnt be Baseball.
.... pretty much the same applies to MMOs. Good thing about MMO's is its a VERY large park with many people in it.
I was Joe once. Yet through EQ1 i ended up with friends i am still in regular contact with 18 years on and even a wife. So if Joe is happy to put in the effort he will be in for a great time and hopefully form meaningful friendships he can take with him to future games and possibly real life
Yeah it sucks for Joe but just like any normal person in his situation what he should do is find freinds to play with. Maybe he wont play that day, or the next
.. and by this point Joe has uninstalled the game.. and is back playing GW2 again.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Yeah it sucks for Joe but just like any normal person in his situation what he should do is find freinds to play with. Maybe he wont play that day, or the next
.. and by this point Joe has uninstalled the game.. and is back playing GW2 again.
Yeah, that's the trouble with Kayo83s line of reasoning, the original 'Joe' model no longer exists.
In 2018 we are up to Joe model 2 or even 3 and with all the changes from Smart Phones, social media and cultural shifts, very likely what appealed to (or he was willing to tolerate) Joe in 1998 won't do so today.
Besides, the average Joe didn't really play MMORPGs in 1998, they were dominated by a geekier, more technically saavy player model called John, and his voice got drown out by the sea of Joe's in the last 20 years.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I will admit I have always found it ironic to take a group of people who are not generally known for being social, that is, people who stay inside their (or someone's) home playing video games night and day, and then design their games to where they have to be social to succeed in them.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon. A great day for baseball.
Joe grabs his baseball glove and heads for the local field hoping to play ball and make a few friends in his new town. As he arrives, in comes several Packup trucks and a few cars. They unload a keg of beer, set it all up and automatically head out onto the field to their pre-defined positions.
Joe with full intentions of fitting in approaches this seeming nice guy and ask if he could join in. Nick is his name, Nick is truly a nice guy and has a little conversation with Joe, but he also informs Joe that they're full and they don't have room for him on the team. Joe smiles and watches them play for a while, grabs his glove and goes home.
Pantheon like first generation mmorpg's will be set as a team based game, such as the example above. Many new players like "Joe" will come from all around the world hoping to find a new social niche. On paper Pantheon sounds great. The player will work as a team on a slow dungeon crawl, others will craft weapons and bags for their Guilds.
New players should understand the basics of penetrating the social aspects of such a game. Many will, but I worry about the small guy with good intentions. This type will be a large percentage of the population.
I hope Visionary Realms will have a great feature to help a guy like Joe have a place in the world too, because MOST will NOT have a pre-determined game plan. Thousands will get sucked into the small worthless Guild that yield nothing and constantly searching for something that works..... This is 80% of the population of any mmorpg I've ever played.
I want this to work for everyone
Your intentions with this thread are good delete. Tehre does need to be some attention to new players in every game. This is doubtless and undeniable. In fact, it's a huge factor in a successful game. If new players are leaving in droves a game won't have an audience.
But a few factors are working against you. First, almost all new players leave an MMO after the first couple months of trial. A sizeable chunk of these leave in the first several hours of their playtime. The result is only a small handful remain after the first year of introductions. This is true for probably every MMO. Niche or indie MMO's cannot be singled out on this. Second, this being a more niche group-based MMO will mean a smaller audience. Nearly 2/3 of players in the MMORPG genre express strong desire for soloing in the research I've seen. This is why so many MMO's have strong solo gameplay. A smaller audience means fewer new players. Since MMO's lose incoming players as they age, it'll be increasingly hard for new players to find groups in Pantheon.
So where's the cutoff? How many need to stay? You can easily ask too much delete, and that's the trouble I have with your good intention. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is precisely what has happened with MMO's. They've tried to satisfy everyone and the result is nearly every MMO available is strongly solo-based. This occurs because you can't satisfy everyone, but you CAN satisfy the greatest majority. The greatest majority happens to be the players who prefer soloing and less consequences and more graphics and more loots/experience and short play sessions and more accessibility. This is why MMORPGs are this way. This is what the largest number of players want.
At some point you have to cutoff. You have to stop caring about that "small guy". You have to say enough is enough. Otherwise, your MMO will look like all the others and there's no point in trying to make a better World of Warcraft, unless that's your calling.
How do we make a better Pantheon? Lets ignore World of Warcraft and all the other MMO's we know about for a moment. How do we make it more possible for players to meet and group without also making our MMO just like all the others out there?
This is what needs to be answered and I think it's failing to be answered because the knee jerk response is always to use the answers provided by World of Warcraft or other giants of the industry. It's human nature to copy each other. This has served us well over the course of our history it seems. Do we really want to see Pantheon become like the others though? Those MMO's serve a--mildly--different audience, so using those answers in Pantheon might be like exchanging your coffee for some apple cider. You might like apple cider, but apple cider isn't loaded with caffeine. It's not the same thing.
Please don't read this wrong. I'm not angry at you. I'm not a steadfast loyalist either. You're not wrong to be concerned about the new player. In my prior post about "Faith" I expressed the desire I will play Pantheon irregardless of its choices. My expectations are low. I expect a fair number of modernist interpretations and casual-friendly insertions. If I didn't expect these things, I'd be setting myself up for an epic disappointment. Yet I also expect some EQ-ish features like some strong group-based content and big world and less hand holding. It'll be a mixture. It won't be everything I want to be. Some things will anger me. I'm in my forties now. I don't expect as much as I used to, and that's because it's oftentimes like admitting bitterness into your life.
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and inverse proportion to my expectations.
the only thing I don't have a choice about is whether I have
parkinsons. everything else is my choice. and that's incredibly
liberating. that's much more liberarting than the physical constraints
of this disease are limiting.
We have to be grateful for what we CAN get from Pantheon. We won't get everything we want. Thinking about what we CAN do is much morel liberating.
Comments
.... pretty much the same applies to MMOs. Good thing about MMO's is its a VERY large park with many people in it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
This should be a major priority for any old school mmorpg to attract larger amount of subscribers.
Wouldn't it be a tragedy if the game was great, but people were disappointed because of an unthought out social panel ?
In 2018 we are up to Joe model 2 or even 3 and with all the changes from Smart Phones, social media and cultural shifts, very likely what appealed to (or he was willing to tolerate) Joe in 1998 won't do so today.
Besides, the average Joe didn't really play MMORPGs in 1998, they were dominated by a geekier, more technically saavy player model called John, and his voice got drown out by the sea of Joe's in the last 20 years.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
But a few factors are working against you. First, almost all new players leave an MMO after the first couple months of trial. A sizeable chunk of these leave in the first several hours of their playtime. The result is only a small handful remain after the first year of introductions. This is true for probably every MMO. Niche or indie MMO's cannot be singled out on this. Second, this being a more niche group-based MMO will mean a smaller audience. Nearly 2/3 of players in the MMORPG genre express strong desire for soloing in the research I've seen. This is why so many MMO's have strong solo gameplay. A smaller audience means fewer new players. Since MMO's lose incoming players as they age, it'll be increasingly hard for new players to find groups in Pantheon.
So where's the cutoff? How many need to stay? You can easily ask too much delete, and that's the trouble I have with your good intention. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is precisely what has happened with MMO's. They've tried to satisfy everyone and the result is nearly every MMO available is strongly solo-based. This occurs because you can't satisfy everyone, but you CAN satisfy the greatest majority. The greatest majority happens to be the players who prefer soloing and less consequences and more graphics and more loots/experience and short play sessions and more accessibility. This is why MMORPGs are this way. This is what the largest number of players want.
At some point you have to cutoff. You have to stop caring about that "small guy". You have to say enough is enough. Otherwise, your MMO will look like all the others and there's no point in trying to make a better World of Warcraft, unless that's your calling.
How do we make a better Pantheon? Lets ignore World of Warcraft and all the other MMO's we know about for a moment. How do we make it more possible for players to meet and group without also making our MMO just like all the others out there?
This is what needs to be answered and I think it's failing to be answered because the knee jerk response is always to use the answers provided by World of Warcraft or other giants of the industry. It's human nature to copy each other. This has served us well over the course of our history it seems. Do we really want to see Pantheon become like the others though? Those MMO's serve a--mildly--different audience, so using those answers in Pantheon might be like exchanging your coffee for some apple cider. You might like apple cider, but apple cider isn't loaded with caffeine. It's not the same thing.
Please don't read this wrong. I'm not angry at you. I'm not a steadfast loyalist either. You're not wrong to be concerned about the new player. In my prior post about "Faith" I expressed the desire I will play Pantheon irregardless of its choices. My expectations are low. I expect a fair number of modernist interpretations and casual-friendly insertions. If I didn't expect these things, I'd be setting myself up for an epic disappointment. Yet I also expect some EQ-ish features like some strong group-based content and big world and less hand holding. It'll be a mixture. It won't be everything I want to be. Some things will anger me. I'm in my forties now. I don't expect as much as I used to, and that's because it's oftentimes like admitting bitterness into your life.
He said it better than me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F5p9JHpv1s