Grouping

ArchivedUser

The reason I want to bring this up is I want to see most important pillar of MMORPGs come back which is the Community. This cannot happen if Grouping is trivialized to click a button wait in queue for 10 minutes, get ported to the instance, dont say a god dam thing, smash mobs and bosses quickly and 10 minutes later click the button to queue up again. This way of doing grouping in today's MMORPGs has screwed up the entire genera to the point the games are now treadmills and there is nearly no social experience anymore including in 99% of the guilds out there. People no longer make friends and learn there is a person that plays the other character.


So how to fix it. #1 break instances away from the WOW/FFXIV/SWTOR/Etc dungeon/Raid treadmill. Make Instances something that is fun to do for the content NOT a gear treadmill. Yes Gear should come out of instances and mats to make gear, but gear should not be BOE/BOP any of this BS. The same gear that can be found in a dungeon should be crafted by someone as well. Instances should be done for fun, Experience and the mats to either sell or help a friend out with.

#2 No Dam LFD/LFR/Duty Finder Automated grouping tool. Grouping should be completely organic where people need to talk to each other about joining a group and what they are looking to do. This does not mean no grouping tool it means a Group Browser that allows me to place my group up for players to search to join and for me to search for players looking to join my group. This also pushes people to make friends and keep up a friends list. They should have to say "Hey Dave how is it going today on Saturday night my friends and I are doing a few instance runs again do you want to join us?" This will increase socialization between people and it will create communities. For example if 4 or 5 guilds in 1 node know that there are a group of people who always run instanced or even world content together on said nights members between these guilds will become friends and hang out together other players will learn of these communities as well. O and no I am not saying there should be a general chat and people should be LF1M for X dungeon, the Browser will help that out but we should not have a copy and past of WOW here.

#3 Make instances that are both Dungeons and raids Flexible. I think this is where some problems come in from people who want to group up but miss out on groups because their raid or dungeon group is full so they sit out. Dungeons should be setup where a group as small as 5 or 6 people can go in and as many as 10 to 12. This will reduce the need for an Automated tool because yea it will make content easier in the way of well if the Holy Trinity for the bare minimum is 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 Support and 3 DPS classes. Also if you built in some AI to the boss fights you can make each boss randomly choose a way of fighting based on number of players in the group. Having more could make the boss fight easier or harder. But having more flexibility on number of people will allow for people who want to go to go without the need of dungeon finders because the group is full. Raids could be 12 to 24 or more flexibility

I want to see more of the older style of grouping vs today's click button way of grouping. This has made MMORPGs into fast food restaurants that people play for very short periods of time. They have no social connections anymore to todays games which hurt subscription numbers. Again we dont need Channel Spamming for a group but we also dont need Automated tools taking away the social aspect of MMORPGs

ArchivedUser

I agree with you on most points.
Especially point 2, the Duty finder is in my eyes one of the main reasons why people don't talk with each other anymore during dungeon runs.
But from my time in FFXIV i think there are two more reasons for this enstrangement:

The first one is probably avoided already if a Duty finder is not in the game, but i still want to name it: grouping with random people from different servers. The anonimity and the "i will never see them again either way" leads to some kind of "ignore them until it is over" behaviour in which player communication amounts to a "hi" in the beginning and a "gj & bye" in the end of the dungeon. During my time playing in FFXIV i was a tank and I always did my best to make the run somewhat comfortable, in the beginning I was asking everyone what they wanted to do this time (speed run, getting all the chests,...) or if anyone was new and wanted advice or wished for a blind run.
Almost never did I get an answer or sometimes just a "do what you want", sometimes at the end of the run someone was going at me for doing the run in a specific way (doing a speed run, not doing a speed run, marking the mobs, not marking the mobs,....) or insulted me in the beginning ("shut up Tank, you and the Healer are just here to bring us DD's through the Dungeon so do your slave work and get going" <---- a very nice specimen of the DD group (happened exactly once) that was kicked after a lengthly discussion why one should not talk like that with others).
That was going on for so long that at the end of my tanking career I also becamme one of the silent runners, if someone else started some small talk though I was always happy to chip in.

Something additional for the cross server grouping: there were these rare times when you found a group full of people you would love to group up with again and then you ask them which server they are from just to realise that none of them shares your server... which means no future content with these guys (besides out of pure luck getting them again zthough rng).

The Second reason (in FFXIV) was that Dungeons were simply to easy, in that game you were supposed to run them at least once every day and people got tired of them fast, so SE made them easy to lessen the streß players would have with them. But the side effect of this was that communication was simply not necessary, the routine everyone had with these dungeons and the absolute ease in executing said routine made any kind of communication absolutely unnecesary


Your third point is something I would really love, as I found these restriction to exactly X people always lead to excluding people even if it is just X+/-1 (so lets say 4/5/6 People for small dungeons and 10/11/12 People for bigger dungeons that would really help already. I just imagine that it will be a lot of work (for the Devs).

ArchivedUser

Looking at how you both wrote it, I feel like the odd one out.

While I agree that the cross server annonyminity is part of it, I don't think the system itself has much part in it.
You don't go into a dungeon with the goal to socialize and anyone who tells me that the tedious process of spamming/scanning the LFG channel makes you socialize is crazy. "Lfg tank" "hey I'm tank xxx gearscore" <press invite button and continue to spamm that lfg channel>
As long as people don't want to talk and just do the dungeon, they won't talk, findersystem or not.

I agree with Tam_Hawkins: the problem I see is the dungeondesign, you don't need to communicate, tank runs in, pulls, everyone does his job and you continue until you are finished. There is no communication required. You just run down a linear path, that is often trivial, maybe skip this or that, kill the boss, get the loot, leave.
I don't socialze in dungeons either, because of the very reason Tam mentioned, I didn't do it before the dungeon finder and I continued to do so afterwards. THose people are just strange most of the time, big mouth but absolutly bad.
I made my friends by running outdated raids fooling around, pvp, questing, joining a guild and even trading. Never in dungeons.

ArchivedUser

The problem is this. A Blizzard Developer at Blizzcon before they made the party finder tool in WOW say that you cannot have any challenge in a dungeon with the LFD tool because its designed for people who do not want to socialize with people. So Yes the Automated grouping tool is the problem. People who want to play with people will manage to make friends and do stuff without a automated group finder tool. For example in my SWTOR guild in the first 6 months of SWTOR we always had Flash Point groups going on during out play times. There was no automated tool and our groups didnt have problems finding people to do stuff. We are always on TS talking and having fun.


If there is no automated tool it will force people to either setup or no do the content. For world content there is no way to automate grouping there, there should be no need to automate instance grouping. An Automated took is not need.

ArchivedUser

Its 100% true that you cannot create any content that is hard with a LFD tool. Look at WOW during Cata. All the Dungeons were very hard at first for Random Pugs but my premade groups with my friends who ran stuff together all the time did just fine. What happened? The community bitched to no end how hard the content is and then Blizzard nerfed the content

Also look at FFXIV They do not put the extremes into the Duty Finder until most people are overgeard for the content because no one wants to work as a team. The TOOL is the problem. If you dont put in a automated system you force people to put the effort in or move along that is what the attitude that need to be. If you put a Automated tool in people will bitch that shit is hard and they are loosen 10% of their EXP and gear. If a person wants to group up they will use their social skills.

ArchivedUser

In EQ1 groups were important not just for dungeons but for pretty much everything. Basically if the content is tough enough and the consequences of dying important people will seek out good groups. That's why I used to group with the same people again and again even if they weren't in my guild. I also made RL friends this way.

EQ2 had some good non instanced zones which were group or raid orientated. Ok there can be a few problems with contested mobs but there is a real sense of urgency to get to them.

LOTRO started out well. At first the good players managed to do all the content. Ok there were a few complaints that it was too difficult but it wasn't until it became free to play that random pugs really formed. Then it became quickly noticeable that they constantly failed. Eventually the devs caved into pressure and made content either easier for groups or possible to solo for any class. This killed the challenge and therefore the community because people didn't need to work together any more.

I think part of the problem is that a lot of people want an easy time. They want to quickly log in play for a bit and log off with no commitment to the game or to a guild. I get that people have a real life outside the game. Gone are the days when I would raid until 5am and I wouldn't want to return to that again but I do like a challenge.

Its true that in game grouping tools where you insta transport to an instanced zone diminishes the gaming world and the community. There's no need to travel, to explore or even work together. Ok so Vanguard had a massive world and it took a while to get places so some horse travel is great but I dislike the ability to ping here and there at will.

I've never had a cross server group in any of the games I played and it sounds even worse than instances or grouping tools. Why even bother playing a MMO, go play a single player game instead.

Basically I think the devs need to make a decision. What sort of game are they developing? What are their aims? Whatever they decide they should stick to it now and forever. If they don't, Ashes will become another run of the mill game indistinguishable from all the other 'solo player' MMO's out there.

Take LOTRO as an example. It started out as one of the most polished games I've played they had so much right and now they have got so much wrong. They began by making it a bit easier and then a bit easier and then a lot easier. Now I could log in, play naked and kill pretty much anything I wanted. What's the point of that?

ArchivedUser

@Aalla9

Yea in WOW groups are terrible because you will never play with you again so if they mistreat you o well. Like I said because people want fast food games, MMORPGs have gone down hill because of catering to these people. I do think some Solo content is needed but I really think they need to stay away from automated grouping because it does not serve anyone. Hell there are people today that no longer want to play MMORPGs because they cannot get a group because they refuse to use the Group Finder tools that throw them into a random group, and they dont find people that are willing to stick together to run content together.

ArchivedUser

I think big problems of MMORPGs today is that everything in the game must go fast as possible. I think all trends goes that way and I don't like that, for example, 10 min dungeon, power leveling, I really don't like that, because it is not MOBA game where is all about destroying their base as fast as you can. MMORPGs are so much more, I mean they were. They were places where you go and relax, talk with friends and stuff. I think developers should try to slower some things but I know this is hard because people demand some stuff to change.

ArchivedUser

I defiantly like the idea on no party finder. Sometimes it feels like you actually split the population and get some people actively looking for a party and some people just afking with the party finder. Also having no party finder can make for a bit more communication between players which is a good thing for mmo's.

On your last point of flexible raiding I think its interesting the problem I think will be balance. Dungeons are usually limited because of how easy something can be the more people you have. Also in some ways making the party system static can force some people to go and meet new people maybe make a new friend or 2. it could make it a little harder for some solo players because everyone else could just run it with their friends or guildies. This also depends on the type of community a game has if people are willing to reach out and accept solos into their group even when they meet the 5 man minimum to enter the dungeon it could not be a problem.

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=6826]I think big problems of MMORPGs today is that everything in the game must go fast as possible. I think all trends goes that way and I don’t like that, for example, 10 min dungeon, power leveling, I really don’t like that, because it is not MOBA game where is all about destroying their base as fast as you can. MMORPGs are so much more, I mean they were. They were places where you go and relax, talk with friends and stuff. I think developers should try to slower some things but I know this is hard because people demand some stuff to change.

[/quote]

That is the problem with convenience tools and easy content. Once you make content so fast MMORPGS become very shallow because you cannot keep up with making content that players are consuming within weeks when it takes months or years to develop the content. Then players get bored and subscriptions drop like a rock. This is why F2P and B2P came around. When players are bored its easier for them to get back into the game than a sub. Automated group finder tools and easy fast content cause too many problems vs letting Dungeons be something people do once or twice a week than 6 times a day like you can now.

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=6830]I defiantly like the idea on no party finder. Sometimes it feels like you actually split the population and get some people actively looking for a party and some people just afking with the party finder. Also having no party finder can make for a bit more communication between players which is a good thing for mmo’s.

On your last point of flexible raiding I think its interesting the problem I think will be balance. Dungeons are usually limited because of how easy something can be the more people you have. Also in some ways making the party system static can force some people to go and meet new people maybe make a new friend or 2. it could make it a little harder for some solo players because everyone else could just run it with their friends or guildies. This also depends on the type of community a game has if people are willing to reach out and accept solos into their group even when they meet the 5 man minimum to enter the dungeon it could not be a problem.

[/quote]

Yea an Automated Grouping tool is not what Ashes needs. A Browser system that lets people post groups, post that they are looking for a group and search for both groups and members will make things easier.


Me personally if I am running a group and have the minimum 5 people for an instance I would be open to take more people. Not so much because its easier but because I might make more friends. I think of it as when I was killing Rancors in SWG people around would join my group and I made friends, thats how my guild I ran grouped up with 18 other guilds in an alliance. Just meeting people out and about and making new friends. I do think people will go without more people but I think there will be a lot of people who will go with more people if this game if the developers make it so that being a part of a community is preferable than playing by yourself all the time.