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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Livestream Update - Solo vs Group Content
AlmostDead
Member, Alpha Two
I found the latest livestream excellent. Of course I was hoping to see even more progress, but I thought what they did show was fantastic.
I have been thinking about the nature of the graveyard area that the group was playing. To me, it seemed like a fairly typical questing area, mostly. I'm guessing there's likely an OW dungeon entrance in a crypt within the graveyard, and likely some gathering opportunities surrounding the area. As for the difficulty of the encounters: many people have said it seemed too easy, and Steven seemed to validate this feedback when he said that Ashes PVE difficulty has yet to be fine tuned, but will definitely be on the more difficult end of the spectrum.
All good. I enjoy group content, and feel an MMO should absolutely require player cooperation. I want both solo and group content to be difficult. I want every encounter to require me to be on my game, or die.
But...
At least 50% of the time when I log in I don't want to need to be grouped up for the entire session. I want to run some quests, explore a little, maybe craft some shit, and maybe find a couple ad hoc groups for especially difficult quests, to kill some annoying players, or whatever. And of course on raid nights I expect to be grouped with my guild all night.
In the graveyard area, even with a "less difficult" setting than we can expect at launch, it just seemed too difficult to solo quest or solo explore. And like I said above, I view this area as a fairly typical questing area. Yet it seemed like you would absolutely need to be in a group of at least two to run the area. Am I wrong on this?
What do people think of this? Do you want to be able to solo quest and solo explore for ~50% of your playtime like me? Or do you want to need a group the majority of the time, even to run your basic quests and do your gathering?
Personally, I want difficult quest lines that require groups. I want some areas that are too much for me to handle solo. I want difficult content, overall. But I also want to be able to level, quest, gather, etc solo for a few nights a week when I don't have the time or desire to group up.
Would be interested to hear thoughts on this.
I have been thinking about the nature of the graveyard area that the group was playing. To me, it seemed like a fairly typical questing area, mostly. I'm guessing there's likely an OW dungeon entrance in a crypt within the graveyard, and likely some gathering opportunities surrounding the area. As for the difficulty of the encounters: many people have said it seemed too easy, and Steven seemed to validate this feedback when he said that Ashes PVE difficulty has yet to be fine tuned, but will definitely be on the more difficult end of the spectrum.
All good. I enjoy group content, and feel an MMO should absolutely require player cooperation. I want both solo and group content to be difficult. I want every encounter to require me to be on my game, or die.
But...
At least 50% of the time when I log in I don't want to need to be grouped up for the entire session. I want to run some quests, explore a little, maybe craft some shit, and maybe find a couple ad hoc groups for especially difficult quests, to kill some annoying players, or whatever. And of course on raid nights I expect to be grouped with my guild all night.
In the graveyard area, even with a "less difficult" setting than we can expect at launch, it just seemed too difficult to solo quest or solo explore. And like I said above, I view this area as a fairly typical questing area. Yet it seemed like you would absolutely need to be in a group of at least two to run the area. Am I wrong on this?
What do people think of this? Do you want to be able to solo quest and solo explore for ~50% of your playtime like me? Or do you want to need a group the majority of the time, even to run your basic quests and do your gathering?
Personally, I want difficult quest lines that require groups. I want some areas that are too much for me to handle solo. I want difficult content, overall. But I also want to be able to level, quest, gather, etc solo for a few nights a week when I don't have the time or desire to group up.
Would be interested to hear thoughts on this.
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Comments
I dont mind niche classes finding niche routes for solo content.
Example - Everquest - for the most part it is heavily relied group content. The only class, AT THE TIME, without twinking who can solo were Necromancers.
Now - AT THE TIME Necros still couldnt out paced group players tho. Nowadays - the game is min/max, there are efficient routes for Necros to solo and outpace group players in terms of XP.
I dont mind that - I do mind seeing 64 classes able to solo whenever they want and to be efficient.
Should all 64 classes be able to solo? Yes - killing lower level mobs for inefficient xp rate per hour and only a few niche classes, in the right areas for decent xp rate here n there.
And the content from the stream seemed like right around the harder side of soloable content to me. I'd just pull only a few mobs when I have my big nukes on cd. And unless the difficulty will come from purely the sponginess of enemies - these mobs would definitely be quite soloable. Agro ranges were fairly low, grouping was pretty sparse and with some proper movement you could easily only pull a few mobs at a time, if that.
I'd definitely prefer muuuuch harder pve than this. And as for questing, unless the quest is just "go kill 300 mobs", you should be able to just walk around these kinds of locations w/o too much issue, because I'd expect most of the respawn points to be occupied at most times. And if they're not, then it would just make a quest that much more exciting.
Should soloing be the baseline assumption of how players will play the game? At least for any content that isn't a random overworld entity, I'd say no. Should soloing be possible, if you're well-prepared and customized your build for it? Yes, absolutely.
As for group content... What size of group are we talking about? Because if we're talking about groups of 2 and more, I, a professed soloer, would be comfortable if 75-80% of content fell into the group category, at least for content of equal level. I hope a lot of content will be possible without a full group, but full (and balanced) group content definitely need to exist, so does multi-group content.
You can particpate in Caravans without formally joining a group.
You can particiapte in Node Sieges without formally joining a group.
You don't have to have your guildmates with you to participate in the weekly Castle Node Sieges.
Looks like the expectation from the devs is that a good solo player can solo two or three mobs of equal level.
Steven indicated at the end of the video that the encounters werent tuned and it will be tuned much higher. So what we saw can easily be soloable - this will not be the case in A2, which I'm happy to hear.
Also fair enough to have group content if you log on and have sufficient time to get a group (scheduled or just whoever is around), if you have time.
But then there are times, well, you don`t have much time to group up or don`t have sufficient committable continuous gameplay time but would still like to play and do something. I hope that is accommodated to a degree.
Definitely hope that the following also are able to be done solo or groups:
I try not to read to much into this because they were talking a lot, plus I know there will be fine tuning needed for the respawn times. But if it's too short, that clearly will reduce ability to solo through an area because of the longer ttk. And if we need to sit to regen, those respawn times need to be even longer.
From an immersion perspective, I prefer long respawns so I'm not encountering mobs I've already killed.
Or whatever, just let me play
1. Solo can complete all content (much more risk/difficulty so more reward)
2. Solo cannot complete all the content, so automatically less reward and less risk
I say make it possible, just be insanely difficult, because why not? The difficulty/risk would be so much higher that less people would attempt it, which means its not gonna affect the social aspects of the game for those who want that. The benefits are that-
1. It rewards skill
2. it gives another option for solo players
3. It is something meaningful and cool that you can hear stories about- which in itself is social in a way
- Open world, leveling, and PvP should all be able to be played alone.
- Dungeons, raids, and other group content should also be able to be solo'd but with extreme difficulty.
Gating content due to group requirements can create long, artificial downtimes in gameplay that feel really bad. It goes without saying that all of the above should be easier to complete with a group, but I don't think groups should be mandatory.Plus, it's pretty cool to be able to say you can solo something difficult or meant for a group of players.
AoC could also take the GW2 route and have open world PvE encounters scale in difficulty depending on how many players are in combat.
What if there was something like a meeting stone outside these group content areas, and you can wait for people to gather and form a group. This would require the game giving players a lot of reason to go to these areas, and reasons for groups to have more players than absolutely necessary. If you can clear with 3 people, and someone wants to go, normally that means less loot for everyone else. So maybe loot scaling or something like this?
Keep up the great conversations, as I'm curious to see more people's opinions on this topic!
Multiplayer refers to a group of people sharing a single system. Co-op is short for cooperation. A multiplayer game can have soloable, single-player friendly content. There is nothing inherent to the term multiplayer that means players must play together.
I definitely agree with this. The multiplayer aspect of "MMO" will permeate the game. Sieges, caravans, trading, dungeons, guilds, economy, etc, etc. That shouldn't mean that there isn't a copious amount of soloable content within the context of the multiplayer game.
I do not think dungeon difficulty should scale to number of players. Multiplayer dungeons should be a set difficulty, very difficult and tuned for groups, and should be almost impossible to solo. Maybe 5-10% of dungeon content could be soloable, with extremely high difficulty. Dungeons should be so dangerous, so epic, so rewarding, that you just absolutely need a group to complete it. That's what defines a dungeon and makes it special.
On the other hand, I would like 80-90% of quests to be solo/soloable, with 10-20% extremely hard to solo and require multi-player cooperation. This is where my concern arose in the live stream. It seemed like typical questing, but also seemed to require a group.
Lastly, gathering/exploring should absolutely not require grouping to survive the environment.
If you dig a bit deeper, the whole drive behind WHY a shared world is attractive is because there's a deeper hope there for meaningful social interaction.
It's an oversimplification that I've heard Asmongold echo.
As someone who has watched MMO's bleed out, I don't want another "shared world solo play" because that's what all these bleeding MMOs are now - please not again.
I want an MMO where I'm actually laughing with strangers, or shouting at friends coz we're under pressure and things are falling apart, or I'm in flow state with a friend because we know how to read each other.
I want good coop, which means interdependence, which means specializations, which means weaker solo options for all-rounders.
I don't want a cheaper knock-off "shared world" multiplayer experience - that definition is literally facebook.
Interdependence implies dependence, and when you're dependent on others, that means there are times you will have to wait for them to deal with their stuff before you can move forward. What happens then, if you make it so that solo play is more rewarding than coop play? Social Splintering.
I'm not saying "remove all solo play", I just want to re-establish why group play must always be valued over solo play if we want an interdependent world.
I'm basically saying that if solo play takes more skill than group play, then the game has bad coop.
Idk, what game do you play where this is true?
In all the ones I play, playing in group 'spreads out the responsibilities', and even if it adds new ones, it pretty much CAN'T add 'more' than it is taking away since the primary always comes 'from the opponent'.
We're talking about semi-standard PvE content, right?
I don't think I've experienced many if any games where this happens. The enemy 'poses the same problems', which you then 'deal with on yourself', or 'deal with on others'.
To be clear, when I talk about 'solo play being viable for content' I'm talking 'content intended to be done efficiently in a group'. The sort of 'crazy soloing' that people do, not 'content that is designed for single players or duo which is separate from 'group content'.
@maouw nvm about this. I explained it to her. Bardic Lore, etc.
Yeah when both sides are equalized, of course- but the point is that we know the game will be focused on and balanced around group content, so having a solo player attempting group-based content would be unequalized by handicapping themselves in relation to the amount of players that would normally be required to complete said content- which would be a huge disadvantage- thus more difficulty.
I think you are talking more in terms of gameplay loops revolved around and balanced around solo players- in which case yeah that would be less interesting- but I would still argue to make that a possible style of play, but having it set up as less risk/less reward to reflect the less amount of depth in that style of gameplay- but it would give players that option, of course having to sacrifice the benefits of the group-based gameplay loops.
I might withdraw from this discussion for now, because at the moment it's too theoretical, so we're very likely to talk on different wavelengths - but let's bring up the conversation again when combat/enemies is more developed.