Originally posted by Slukjan
I miss the good ole days of EQ. When grouping was both more fun and more rewarding than soloing. I wish there was a modern game that had the same dynamic.

You should play WOW. It has the same dynamics WITHOUT all the pain.

Grouping for dungeons is more rewarding than solo-quest. You level faster and you get blue items.

And you don't have all the down-side of EQ .. slow progression, no instance/a lot of camping, grinding very boring single mob (fighting in an instance with varying bosses is a lot more fun).

Most people who like grouping like grouping.

They tend not to require every other player to be forced to group in order to enjoy grouping.

I mean if you want to criticize ToR's lack of a dungeon finder feature, that's fair.  But certainly in RIFT grouping was frequent and convenient and if you were healer/tank you could do it like WOW and purely group your way to max level.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Most people who like grouping like grouping.

They tend not to require every other player to be forced to group in order to enjoy grouping.

I mean if you want to criticize ToR's lack of a dungeon finder feature, that's fair.  But certainly in RIFT grouping was frequent and convenient and if you were healer/tank you could do it like WOW and purely group your way to max level.

Ummm RIFT had grouping, and it was like grouping with bots most time. No one spoke no one socialized. Even in the large RIFT events, which was a system I originally thought wow this could be fun.. I found that no one hardly spoke. They joined up without so much as a hello and after the event was over they left without a goodbye. Occasionally 1 or 2 people might actuallly speak with each other. Or you might get someone trying to shout out commands that half the people involved ignored anyway.

This is actually one of the things I fear might happen in GW2. I will Keep my fingers crossed on that.

I think all the Automated UIs that are coming about play a huge factor in people not socializing. I am sure you will get people  come here and start ranting about people use voice client and are talking but they are talking with their friends.,. Well in a game where you have people you  are actually supposedly working with.. Speaking to those people instead of treating them like bots goes a long way.

If people want a group friendly game I highly recommend checking out Vanguard. Im not playing it myself but apparently it is about to F2P  and is now getting some much needed dev support again. The game was based and built with grouping in mind. That doesnt mean there are solo areas and quests. It just means the most rewarding aspects of the game come from the huge open world dungeons that are group oriented. Its also a game where PUGging is not considered a bad thing. But some people do regularly and made alot of friends doing it. Something most post WOW game players seem to hate to do.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Quizzical

The problem is when people who only have half an hour or an hour to play are forced to spend half of that time looking for a group before they can do anything.  If a game is only really playable by people who can set aside chunks of hours at a time every single time they play, then that's a very small potential customer base.  Far too many games assumed that players would magically find a group, without putting any real thought into how players would find a group--or in some cases, actively trying to make it harder for players to find a group.

Instead, what you need to do is to take a good grouping system like that of Spiral Knights, and then put it into a real MMORPG rather than a somewhat, kinda, not really an MMORPG like Spiral Knights.  And then you can require grouping without breaking the game.

The solution for those people? Play Diablo or WoW.

Why do you think Diablo and WOW are so popular? Of course they do.

Now if developers think that is a big piece of the market, the design choices are obvious. Do not require players to adhere to your schedule, be flexible for them.

It's been a while since I've played WoW, but when I played, it was illustrative of the problem, not the solution.  If you wanted to group for a relative handful of the most popular things, sure, you could get a group for it.  But if you wanted to go way off and do some obscure content that most people skip, good luck.  The automatic group finding tool won't help you.  My understanding is that that tool has improved some since I played.

But if you want to group with your friends?  Sorry, no can do.  You're a different level from some of your friends, and that makes grouping together a massive no-no.  Technically the game would allow the higher level player to trivially slaughter everything while the lower level player mostly stood there and watched, but it didn't make for interesting gameplay.

There are good reasons why I mentioned Spiral Knights.  It's not just a name pulled out of a hat.

1)  Content difficulty scales to group size.  Have a 4-man group and lose a player?  No problem.  The content will make itself easier immediately, so that clearing it isn't much easier or harder than before.  And if you get a fourth player back, the content difficulty scales itself right back up.

2)  Coarse level-appropriateness.  Getting better gear gives you access to deeper tiers.  Still, there are only three tiers, and even brand new players aren't stuck on tier 1 for long.  After that, everyone is geared for either tier 2 or tier 3, so it's not like how in WoW, you could have 10 different players, with no two of them a suitable level/gear for the same content.

3)  Higher "levels" can do lower level content--and reasonably.  Once you've got a full set of five star gear, that doesn't mean that tier 2 is completely trivial.  In fact, deeper tier gear gets heavily nerfed down when used in earlier tiers, so in tier 2, your five star gear isn't necessarily much better than three star gear.  If you're bad at the game, you'll still struggle even with five star gear in tier 2 (which is meant for 2-3 star gear).  Furthermore, the loot in tier 2 isn't completely stupid and worthless to a player decked out in five star gear.  It's not as good as tier 3 loot, certainly.

4)  Easy to jump into PUGs.  A player can request to enter a PUG for a given set of content (gate and tier).  The game will immediately place the player into a PUG that isn't full, is set to allow PUG joiners, and is no more than halfway through a tier.  Only if there is no such group in the entire game will the game fail to place the player, in which case, it will suggest that he start his own group.  The group leader can change a flag to accept PUG players or not at any time.

5)  Easy to group with friends and guildies.  The game gives you a list of everyone on your friends list who is online, and also everyone in your guild who is online.  It will tell you exactly where they are, and how many players are in their group.  If their group isn't full and the group is set to allow guildies or friends to join (which can be set independently of each other, and also independent of the PUG grouping system), then you can jump right into the group in the middle of whatever they're doing.  This is in addition to the option to manually invite particular players.

6)  Loot distributed continuously and equitably as you go along.  There isn't any "but I've only killed half of the mobs for this kill ten rats quest" problem.  There isn't any "don't let anyone else join because we don't want him to roll on the boss drop" problem.  The second half of a given tier does tend to drop better loot than the first half.  But the game is very much designed such that other party members can come and go as you move along, and it doesn't mess up your loot.  And if you come in well into a run, or don't stay for the end, that doesn't mess up your loot, either.

7)  Easy to get out of a bad PUG--and without having to start over.  One problem with PUGs is that some of them are bad.  If you don't like the group you're in, you can "go solo", right where you are, and it will copy the instance you're in, except with you alone in the new copy, and the rest of your former group still in the old copy.  And then you can invite others to join you, right where you are, and continue along with your new group.

Does WoW have all of that?  Does WoW have any of that?  An MMORPG that did have all of those features could easily require players to group everywhere, without it breaking the game because a bunch of people are upset that it's too hard to get a group.

Sometimes I am not sure certain people understand what certain other people mean by grouping.

The grouping Quizzical describes is the exact OPPOSITE of the grouping that I and many others want.

Also, in most games you solo at the start and group up at the very end. In TTS its practically the opposite of that. And soloing is only possible through the use of consumables like poison and potions and traps and enchantments and such. That's the dream. And even then to do anything real you have to group, at best you can group as crafters and enchanters and then a player can do things alone because of that prep.

Not some stupid scaling content bullshit. I understand why GW2 has to scale content although I would prefer they didn't but they get points for at least trying to be interesting.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Sometimes I am not sure certain people understand what certain other people mean by grouping.

The grouping Quizzical describes is the exact OPPOSITE of the grouping that I and many others want.

Also, in most games you solo at the start and group up at the very end. In TTS its practically the opposite of that. And soloing is only possible through the use of consumables like poison and potions and traps and enchantments and such. That's the dream. And even then to do anything real you have to group, at best you can group as crafters and enchanters and then a player can do things alone because of that prep.

Not some stupid scaling content bullshit. I understand why GW2 has to scale content although I would prefer they didn't but they get points for at least trying to be interesting.

Well then, what is the grouping that you want, if it's the exact opposite of needing to be in a group for all content?

While Spiral Knights will scale down to a party size of 1, there's no reason why you couldn't take the same system and set some floor that it will not scale below.  You could, for example, make content scale with anywhere from 3-6 players.  If you have fewer than four players, then you have to do everything at 3-man difficulty--which could be essentially impossible to solo.  (Well, in a lot of MMORPGs it would be essentially impossible; Spiral Knights has a sufficiently heavy dependence on player skill that a very good player could solo most or all content that is scaled to 3-man difficulty.)

Note that in Spiral Knights, if you don't want to PUG, you don't have to.  If you want to group exclusively with guildies and friends, you can uncheck the open group box, and the PUG system will never randomly throw anyone into your group.  A lot of players don't ever PUG.  Personally, I found the PUG system to be a good way to meet new people, pick out the ones that are good, and add them to your friends list, so that you'll have other good players to group with in the future.

I don't miss groups when some guy(happen in clans but also random groups) who start with know it all and demand this and demand that but when you actuall go raid he's the one who screw it up hehe.

If people just have fun and not so fix as if its work or dont go afk/leave or screw it up im all for grouping.

Its for me being longtime now ive party raid with nice people who do it for fun and dont screw it up in stupid way.

I specially dont like the partys and raids if its so importend for most getting those precious items.

Thats why i love FFA pvp games its about fight other players having fun instead go to work become richer getting precious items.

One of my best experience in grouping was Asheron's call 2

Originally posted by cybertrucker

Ummm RIFT had grouping, and it was like grouping with bots most time. No one spoke no one socialized. Even in the large RIFT events, which was a system I originally thought wow this could be fun.. I found that no one hardly spoke. They joined up without so much as a hello and after the event was over they left without a goodbye. Occasionally 1 or 2 people might actuallly speak with each other. Or you might get someone trying to shout out commands that half the people involved ignored anyway.

This is actually one of the things I fear might happen in GW2. I will Keep my fingers crossed on that.

I think all the Automated UIs that are coming about play a huge factor in people not socializing. I am sure you will get people  come here and start ranting about people use voice client and are talking but they are talking with their friends.,. Well in a game where you have people you  are actually supposedly working with.. Speaking to those people instead of treating them like bots goes a long way.

If people want a group friendly game I highly recommend checking out Vanguard. Im not playing it myself but apparently it is about to F2P  and is now getting some much needed dev support again. The game was based and built with grouping in mind. That doesnt mean there are solo areas and quests. It just means the most rewarding aspects of the game come from the huge open world dungeons that are group oriented. Its also a game where PUGging is not considered a bad thing. But some people do regularly and made alot of friends doing it. Something most post WOW game players seem to hate to do.

It'll definitely happen in GW2.

But in GW2, as in every game with convenient grouping, you can also be social yourself and form actual relationships with players yourself.  These things never happened automatically, with or without auto-grouping features, so don't expect socialization to magically happen.  But as with any relationship anywhere, if you put effort into making friendships happen in games then they're going to happen.

Meanwhile when my real friends are offline and it's 3am, I'm not utterly barred from having a fun teamplay experience (which is what I love most about MMORPGs,) because I can queue up and find a group while doing something reasonably fun (certainly more fun than AFKing in the capital.)

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Quizzical

The problem is when people who only have half an hour or an hour to play are forced to spend half of that time looking for a group before they can do anything.  If a game is only really playable by people who can set aside chunks of hours at a time every single time they play, then that's a very small potential customer base.  Far too many games assumed that players would magically find a group, without putting any real thought into how players would find a group--or in some cases, actively trying to make it harder for players to find a group.

Instead, what you need to do is to take a good grouping system like that of Spiral Knights, and then put it into a real MMORPG rather than a somewhat, kinda, not really an MMORPG like Spiral Knights.  And then you can require grouping without breaking the game.

The solution for those people? Play Diablo or WoW.

Why do you think Diablo and WOW are so popular? Of course they do.

Now if developers think that is a big piece of the market, the design choices are obvious. Do not require players to adhere to your schedule, be flexible for them.

Diablo and WoW are popular for the same reason Final Fantasy is popular....fanboys.

Both Blizzard and SquareEnix can easily survive no matter how craptastic a game they release purely on the guarantee that the fanboys (even just counting the ones from Korea and Japan alone respectively) will continue to buy into it. Recently WoW has been losing steam in the west, but in the east its still going strong. They dont have to make good decisions because there are enough people out there that will consider anything and everything they do to be gold no matter what.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Cuathon

Sometimes I am not sure certain people understand what certain other people mean by grouping.

The grouping Quizzical describes is the exact OPPOSITE of the grouping that I and many others want.

Also, in most games you solo at the start and group up at the very end. In TTS its practically the opposite of that. And soloing is only possible through the use of consumables like poison and potions and traps and enchantments and such. That's the dream. And even then to do anything real you have to group, at best you can group as crafters and enchanters and then a player can do things alone because of that prep.

Not some stupid scaling content bullshit. I understand why GW2 has to scale content although I would prefer they didn't but they get points for at least trying to be interesting.

Well then, what is the grouping that you want, if it's the exact opposite of needing to be in a group for all content?

While Spiral Knights will scale down to a party size of 1, there's no reason why you couldn't take the same system and set some floor that it will not scale below.  You could, for example, make content scale with anywhere from 3-6 players.  If you have fewer than four players, then you have to do everything at 3-man difficulty--which could be essentially impossible to solo.  (Well, in a lot of MMORPGs it would be essentially impossible; Spiral Knights has a sufficiently heavy dependence on player skill that a very good player could solo most or all content that is scaled to 3-man difficulty.)

Note that in Spiral Knights, if you don't want to PUG, you don't have to.  If you want to group exclusively with guildies and friends, you can uncheck the open group box, and the PUG system will never randomly throw anyone into your group.  A lot of players don't ever PUG.  Personally, I found the PUG system to be a good way to meet new people, pick out the ones that are good, and add them to your friends list, so that you'll have other good players to group with in the future.

Popping all over the fucking world with no concern for geography, plus cross server this and cross server that. Is bad.

Grouping is where you go around doing things and you meet people and then you work together. Or you meet in town or something and say hey wanna group sometime. And where actually being near something is a requirement to group. And no content scaling... And no people popping in and out of group every 5 seconds.

I play casual games, and I am fine with them, but I want games without all those casual friendly features to play too.

Without any sort of fast travel, grouping at all is very difficult, and grouping with friends or guildies basically impossible.  So it sounds like what you really want is the games from the bad old days when the basic rules were:

1)  You must get a group (in order to do content), and

2)  You cannot get a group (because you can't find enough people that the game mechanics will allow you to group with).

I hope you can at least understand why a large majority of players do not like that style of gameplay.

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

 

Where could one find this magical world of unicorns?

In a sandbox of course!

 

I think a magical world of unicorns is easier to find.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Most people who like grouping like grouping.

They tend not to require every other player to be forced to group in order to enjoy grouping.

I mean if you want to criticize ToR's lack of a dungeon finder feature, that's fair.  But certainly in RIFT grouping was frequent and convenient and if you were healer/tank you could do it like WOW and purely group your way to max level.

Rift just has a serious lack of group content.  Just 1-2 dungeons per level bracket, that you will need to grind at max level anyway.  And there really snt any incentive to run them, because the gear is outleveled so fast anyway, and Rift is a very easy game to level in to begin with.  I think theres even less incentive to group in Rift than there is in SWTOR.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Without any sort of fast travel, grouping at all is very difficult, and grouping with friends or guildies basically impossible.  So it sounds like what you really want is the games from the bad old days when the basic rules were:

1)  You must get a group (in order to do content), and

2)  You cannot get a group (because you can't find enough people that the game mechanics will allow you to group with).

I hope you can at least understand why a large majority of players do not like that style of gameplay.

That is bullshit if the game is designed properly.

I don't want to go back to EQ or UO or w/e. I want to improve on them in a different way than pugging tools. Why can't you find enough people to group with? Because of poor game design. WoW fixed the symptoms instead of the disease and that is stupid.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Without any sort of fast travel, grouping at all is very difficult, and grouping with friends or guildies basically impossible.  So it sounds like what you really want is the games from the bad old days when the basic rules were:

1)  You must get a group (in order to do content), and

2)  You cannot get a group (because you can't find enough people that the game mechanics will allow you to group with).

I hope you can at least understand why a large majority of players do not like that style of gameplay.

Did you actually ever play in those days? Finding a group was never that hard unless you just didn't try. Did you try?

Those games thrived because (surprise) there are a lot of people who enjoy that style of gameplay! What I don't understand is why people like you, who obviously don't enjoy that style of gameplay, seem to think that every single game out there HAS to conform to your preferences.

The only excuse I ever hear is "xxx is popular! There's more money in xxx!" You know what, though? FPS' are crazy popular, but people still continue to make platformers, racing games, RPGs, and what have you. So theme parks are popular. Why, then, is it so inconceivable for sand boxes, sand parks, and games that actually consider dying a bad thing to exist? Why can both styles not be available to those who would choose either one?

I agree... out with questing back to the grind.. the grind that made MMOs fun!

Originally posted by teakbois

Rift just has a serious lack of group content.  Just 1-2 dungeons per level bracket, that you will need to grind at max level anyway.  And there really snt any incentive to run them, because the gear is outleveled so fast anyway, and Rift is a very easy game to level in to begin with.  I think theres even less incentive to group in Rift than there is in SWTOR 

Well that's a fair criticism, although honestly I found the rewards pretty excellent in RIFT's dungeons.  

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Quizzical

Without any sort of fast travel, grouping at all is very difficult, and grouping with friends or guildies basically impossible.  So it sounds like what you really want is the games from the bad old days when the basic rules were:

1)  You must get a group (in order to do content), and

2)  You cannot get a group (because you can't find enough people that the game mechanics will allow you to group with).

I hope you can at least understand why a large majority of players do not like that style of gameplay.

That is bullshit if the game is designed properly.

I don't want to go back to EQ or UO or w/e. I want to improve on them in a different way than pugging tools. Why can't you find enough people to group with? Because of poor game design. WoW fixed the symptoms instead of the disease and that is stupid.

Except that WoW fixed neither the symptom nor the disease, even if you want to distinguish between the two.

Spiral Knights has a grouping system that works very well.  Guild Wars has one that works pretty well.  And that's all that I can think of for games that make it practical to log on and get a suitable group quickly.  I've heard that City of Heroes has a grouping system that works well, but haven't played it myself.  And after that, I'm not even aware of any MMORPGs that even have a reputation for making it easy to get a group for PVE content.  The reason for the move toward soloing is because most games haven't figured out how to make it practical for players to get a group.

If you've got some great ideas for how to make it easy to get a group, then I'd like to hear it.  Just making it so that players have to get a group to do anything doesn't magically make it practical to actually find a group.  Many games have tried that, and without putting mechanics in place to make it easy to actually find a group, it's invariably a complete fiasco from a game design perspective, and usually also a commercial disaster.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Without any sort of fast travel, grouping at all is very difficult, and grouping with friends or guildies basically impossible.  So it sounds like what you really want is the games from the bad old days when the basic rules were:

1)  You must get a group (in order to do content), and

2)  You cannot get a group (because you can't find enough people that the game mechanics will allow you to group with).

I hope you can at least understand why a large majority of players do not like that style of gameplay.

With friends and guildies, it is hard without fast travelling, that is true.

But in the old days there was nothing like that and I still grouped with friends and guildies, even though I had to PUG more back then.

If the game is grouped focused you will find groups. Fast travelling however and for that matter no trinity, helps to make things simpler.

The thing that really makes grouping hard is the focus and better rewards of soloing that have come the last few years. Why group until you max out when it is faster and easier to solo? And soloing all the way up turns many players pretty useless in groups.

I don´t think it is that the majority don´t like that gameplay, just that they will play the simplest and fastest way.

It's not that people dislike being in groups.  It's that people dislike having to spend half of their time trying to assemble a group, waiting for people to get to the site of the group content, trying to replace someone who left the group, and other such things that aren't fun.

That's why I say the solution is to make it easier to get a group.  Go ahead and require a group, but make it so that you reliably can get one for the content you want within a few minutes.