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Dev Discussion #3 - Group Gameplay

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Comments

  • Ideal grouping for me is fraught with peril. In order to trust, or care about those you group with, they have to be able to betray you and screw up what you are doing. With immunity comes toxic behavior, the threat of imminent destruction/loss of time/money can reduce that, and promotes guild and friend reliance.
  • zerkerzzerkerz Member
    edited May 2019
    My ideal group is, behaved. Between 5-10 people(small), so communication wont be chaotic. Unless a war incoming e.g: Big NPC incoming trying to destroy village because player have invaded his area, or ruining his food source, or ruining his habitat, or ruined water source, or disturbed during the NPC hibernation, ect.. Or if war of PvP that another node is trying to gain our node.

    Communication is via text chatting, unless something important is spottet by a random team player, like a big powerful enemy approaching, and we need to run to another place and continue with whatever we was doing.

    I'd like filter that users that talk much have to press a button and talk, to give important messages. While casual talk dont require button press or require different button press. And for important messages I'd like a voice changer for it with an alarm in background, or with a deep voice so players easily can differentiate the importance of message the person speaking.

    I'd like group I could just jump as I don't play much. And play at very different times, at the day.

    I would also like to jump in specific task objective groups like:
    Farming
    collection(picking/looking for herbs)
    Woodcutting
    Mining
    PvE material gathering eg, leather,
    PvP caravan protection
    PvP Siege


    Other stuff I'd like to talk about.
    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    I'd also like to mention How I would like some PvP and PvE gamplay to play out.

    - PvE zone to gain access to certain Mining sites, Mining caves, Rare Tree forrest you have to Fight a local/mini Boss or army or army with a boss or a small camp or a small castle. Otherwise the NPC will just kill the people trying to gather the materials.
    - PvP A zone(non static) on the map will become with warning so that people will be able to get out in time and not have additional risk on losing stuff(X amount), to fight over certain resources or land. The loss may be some currency, gear(just dont use your main gear if you don't wanna lose it and still have some PvP fun). After win certain group may extract resources from it, and nobody else, maybe some NPC to help protect it from those who won it.





    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    How to evolve gear in material categories.

    Basic(very little or none of the armor is made to look good just for protection, maybe just Node emblem:
    -Copper
    -Bronze(copper and tin)
    -Iron
    -Steel
    -Aluminium
    -Black armor
    - X
    - X
    - X

    Advanced:
    - Stripe armor (folded, The metal have been folded over and over and over and over again to gain strenght it will look stripey)
    - Rune
    - Mithril
    - X
    - X

    Rare
    - X
    - X
    - X
    - X

    Epic
    - X
    - X
    - X
    - X

    Heroic
    - X
    - X
    - X
    - X

    Legendary
    - X
    - X
    - X
    - X

    Ancient/Legendary
    - X
    - X
    - X
    - X


    God
    - I dont think it is a good idea to add a god gear since, there rather just be better legendary gear. Since god armor/weapons sounds waaaay OP. and just strange it would be like having combat lvl up to 104440 combat lvls, and the first 500 is reached in 20 min, which is just ridiculous.


    - But I think i wanna suggest god weapon not as a literal god, but the a legendary weapon have been blessed and/or enchanted by a certain god. But not in armor. But I want to suggest to have enchanted pickaxe, fishing net, fishing net. possible, But Gathering items should not strech farther in than Epic, Since Heroic and legendary is related to Heroic and legendary deeds. But god may bless resource gathering items because you help other survive, and therefore are blessed with an enchantment. And bags, and other things. related to resource gathering that do not involve combat.
    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________



  • Also wanted to add that party size should be 5.

    A large amount of people who gave up on MMOs moved to MOBAs they mostly have a group size of 5.

    This would make it easyer for those groups to come to this game.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    To me, the ideal group gameplay is taking a bunch of guild mates to an open dungeon that also contains a number of small instanced encounters within it, and has the possibility of having a rare spawning raid encounter.

    To me, this provides everything I am looking for in a good group. The open dungeon base population will likely be literal face roll easy, and so gives me and my guild mates a bit of time for some banter and such. To me, some down time like this in a group or raid is important.

    The bosses in the open dungeon should be challenging, but not intricate encounters - hard hitting, high HP mobs that obviously if we lose against we respawn at the start of the dungeon (or back in town). The distance to the respawn location adds weight to the encounter, especially if we are half way through the open dungeon knowing full well there are a number of boss encounters further down.

    The instances in the dungeon should essentially be single encounters that contain intricate scripts that need to be followed, similar to many raid encounters in some MMO's. This gives us a chance to stop and actually think about what we are doing.

    And lastly, the both the fact that most of this takes place in an open dungeon where other - potentially hostile - players are also adventuring, and the fact that there is a chance of a raid encounter being present, means the whole thing could go unpredictably wild.

    Now, the problem with all of that is that I can't think of a single worse kind of content to run in a pick up group. I'm not really interested in random banter with people I don't know, a pickup group losing to a boss and respawning in town would result in the end of said pickup group, pickup groups are not known for their ability to deal with intricate scripted encounters, pickup groups stand very little chance against organized groups, and if a pickup group comes across a rare spawn raid mob, it is almost guaranteed that the pickup group leader will want to stay there and try and turn his pickup group in to a pickup raid - which will probably fail when a more organized group comes along and sees the encounter, calls in guild members and kills the encounter in front of the pickup group that has been standing there doing nothing but wait for friends to come along for the last 90 minutes.

    To me, a good pickup group needs content where there is a single liner path for them to take in order to reach a specific goal, and the success or failure of that pickup group needs to be solely in the hands of the members of said pickup group. It isn't about quality of content, quantity of content or difficulty of content, it is about everyone in the pickup group having the same goal, and the game not throwing new goals at them until they have completed their initial shared goal.

    If the goal of one member of a pickup group changes half way through the group, then that group is in trouble.

    So, to me, content needs to be developed both with the organized group and the pickup group in mind.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Also wanted to add that party size should be 5.

    A large amount of people who gave up on MMOs moved to MOBAs they mostly have a group size of 5.

    This would make it easyer for those groups to come to this game.

    Start up with a tank, a healer, a utility and two DPS. When you are running group content you can ask for 3 more to fill out your group - literally any 3 characters of appropriate level will be fine.

    Gives you a chance to meet new people.
  • theonegargoyletheonegargoyle Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    damokles wrote: »
    - Make "Class/Tank" classes be able to actively tank (just not as good as a "tank/class") and "class/cleric" classes heal at least passably xD

    ^ This. A million times this.

    Do we think there is still any hope that they might do this ?

    I don't need Class/Tank to be as good at tanking as Tank/Class, and I'm 100% ok with needing Tank/Class for 40 man raid progression content. Hell, make it require Tank/Tank for all I care.

    Same goes for Class/Cleric healing compared to Cleric/Class or even Cleric/Cleric. I absolutely support the people who wish to give it that level of dedication.

    But since we're being asked about "Group Gameplay" I'd give my right arm for Class/Tank to be able to tank group content ok as long as a) they know what they're doing, b) they've invested in making a proper tank gear set, and c) they've put points into levelling up the right skill trees.

    Again, same for Class/Cleric and healing.

    To me this is a deal-breaker for small and ad-hoc groups. It's fine for if you're putting together a full 8-man group to go do a challenge mode dungeon to carefully put together a group capable of tackling that, and for that you're going to need a Tank/Class and a Cleric/Class, and that's fine.

    But if you've got a small guild, or group of RL friends, who aren't always on at the same time as each other but when a few of you are you want to be able to run dungeons or take on some tougher landscape fights, at least let us have options to be able to do that.

    Again, I'm not suggesting every toon can do everything. I'm saying if someone wants to dedicate & invest the time to learn how to do it, maintain a gear set for it, and put their precious points into levelling the right skills for it, they should be able to do it enough to make small groups work without having to have their only options to experience the game be Tank & Cleric.

    If there was one wish I could have for the game, it would be this.

    Anybody else agree ?
  • Well forty are great. kind of hard to explain in words. But seeing seeing like ten or more players on one add poping all their cool downs doing incredible damage but add is only at 50 percent health making you wonder how in the world the raid boss is going down. Seeing your tank tank all those adds and mobs getting on low health makes for a sense of urgency.

    But players should not be forced to do those type of raids. Just make a pretty good size raid (or a few) and make it a 40 man raid with no option for ten man or 20 man raid. Thing is you guys are not tied down to a certain number. If you see the community does not react very to 40 man raids (could be 30 think 20 is to low)

    But as far as grouping is concerned you could go do a little trial and error to and see.
    People understand things like.

    We made a few 40 man raids we know it takes longer to get a group that size but we will be looking at the feed back from those.

    I have watched videos on how 40 man raids are so much better than ten man raids in wow. Never thought to much about it until I actually did one. Seems like the more people get involved the more fun it is.

    As a developer you are not tied down to a certain style. For example when the game goes live you could pick
    most popular content and change it in the following manner.

    let say you have a 20 man raid you could just change the game mechanics turn it into 40 man and say something like.

    Dear player this Month we will be featuring this dungeoun as a 40 man raid instead of 20 man raid looking forward to your feed back.

    1) this would prove to the players that you are trying to make a better game even after the game is released.

    2) you would not have to guess you would get real data and reactions from your own player base

    3)Players could even vote on it.

    By the way this applies to other things like This month monsters in general are going to given one special ability or Dungeouns monsters in dungeouns next three days will do ten percent more damage have healing abilities.
  • To answer your question best way to maximize group experience is showing people how to find a guild that is good for them social guild casual guild raiding guild pvp guild. Could have guild profiles that show what they are doing together. Doing things with guildies no matter the group size is the best overall experience.

    So you should provide incentives to being in a group and guild. Other side of the coin is making people feel like they have to be in a guild or a group to get a better experience out of the game. But that is actually true.
  • Forgot to mention there is a game mechanice called scaling back. So lets say i AM LOW LEVEL and my guildies are max level. Normally If you wnat to play with guildies you have to get to max level and get geared up which could take months. So you joined a guidl excited them find out that you still going to be about let say 3 months before dyou get to play with them.

    Even people that are not max level might not want to play with you. Think there are going to be 50 levels. So a level 40 will not have to much incentive to play wiht low level toons.

    I like to run low levels through dungeouns but kind of pointless when you just going around one shoting every one and the new palyer is not really learning their class or learning how to play their role in a group.

    Now if you had scaling technology just for dungeouns. So lets say me and soem other guildies could rune some new guildies through a low level dungeoun then toons learn and enjoy grouping at low level. As a guild leader you would want to hone in those skills on early/easy content then havign to do it at max level in more difficult content.

    Additionally there could be a feature that could be toggled on and off were a player get a visual que if another palyer is on the same quest so they would be more inclined to quest together.

    Also for new players their needs to be videoss on how to meet people, get into guilds, make groups, and so on. You basically have to hold their hand and spoon feed to them. Forums are great but people do not like to read. Just to prove how valuable this can be the is a video for WoW just 11 min made by Mike Preach

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uieU0KOIoPw

    Only 11 minutes but the information that he provides is invaluable. Realy I recommend hiring him to do some Videos. Video is for WoW raiding so some information does not apply like world of logs but still v4ery useful plus he also did one on keybings very useful to new players.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38s7e1sixRk

    You guys have to bridge the game between new palyers and casual playeres with out it being annoying like having some guy follow you around and tell you what to do.

    If new players get removed from group enought times for lack of knowledge then well they might become lonewolfs.

    Personally at max level I play for a few hours go off line watch class videos and read forums for about one hour to get better (not all the time but often enough) As a new player no one wants read forums and go watch
    several class videos hoping you learn something from them. So be better if you nudged them in that dierection.
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