We haven't had a discussion here about grouping in a long time, so lets start.

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I'll start with admitting not being a major grouper, as a matter of fact I consider a two person group to be a near perfect size.  most of the simple ideas listed are going to be about encouraging groups without hurting anyone else.

Idea one:  single tier combat system.   When you start you're given a fully developed skill set, this is as powerful as you can get(Max Power Tier).   However you do have the ability to still advance by diversifying your skills and opening up more customization/combo's to your character.   (This is actually a HUGE mechanic that I've covered a few times).

idea two:   when you do group you split greater amounts of experiance.   If you have just yourself you'll be "splitting" 100% of the experiance, if you have two people you'll be splitting 110%(55% each) of the experiance from mobs,  if three 120%(40% each).  With these small experiance bonuses along with the power that teamwork can offer grouping becomes a convient idea, without hurting soloers at all.

idea three:  limited "energy".    All dungeons are designed for soloers however a soloer can only only take out one or two of the bosses in it, with very careful navigation and similar.    Where as a group could take out all 8 or the bosses with only avoiding  a few areas.     This is done by making it so that when you go into a "dungeon" nothing heals,  this means your mana/faith/whatever doesn't restore,  your health doesn't restore, basically nothing restores.    Sure you could bring some items but those will only get you so far as well.    The downside with this idea is that you need to almost completely redesign combat balance.

idea four:   No server entrapment.   Basically the ability to switch from server to server with minimal  thought and similar.    Granted others will say you're trading community for group easiness.   I disagree because people can be with ANYONE they happen to meet elsewhere, rather than there being some 1% chance that you'll be able to meet with someone.

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Discuss these ideas, post your own, or do whatever.

To encourage grouping one really needs to look at and understand the reasons some players have for not grouping and then you can have a chance of changing their behaviour.

If I recall correctly Everquest 2 provided a group exp bonus and that did seem to help but it still didn't overcome the main reasons why players don't group.

You yourself state that you think 2 players is about the best group size and this is probably the main reason people don't group as much as developers would like. And what is that reason? Simple, most players don't actually like other players. In a group of two leadership and loot management isn't much of an issue normally for a couple of reasons. First they generally know each other and with only two players deciding who gets what tends to be easier as you are less worried about one of the other group members getting the item you want. This is basically an issue of greed and selfishness that needs to overcome.

For me one of the reasons I tend to solo a lot in a mmo is beause I don't want to share my loot and even with a groups faster kill rate I find that tend to make a bit more or at least that is my feeling. Yes with better mobs comes better loot but especially while levelling most of the entry level and mid level loot is ultimately useless as it will be replaced at a later stage in the game. The other majore reason is that I like to do quests and I like to do them my way and in my order and with other people along I have to take into account their feelings and desires.

I love that the game is an MMO and I can see and communicate with other players. But, I find that in a group I feel like I have lost control of my character and am now along for the ride. This is especially true early on and if you are a support class. For me I tend to play a healer and standing in the back of group and healing away you tend to become just a healbot and it isn't quite as fun as when you do everything yourself.

Not sure why others don't group as much but I suspect that the hassle factor of grouping is high enough to overcome the small compensations you get at the lower levels. Of course at the high levels raiding is designed to overcome this by providing access to items you can't get any other way. The danger of providing any non-group way of acquiring this or equivalent items is to further erode the group level participation.

I agree that the standard MMO practice of starting with squat for combat diversity and having to work for it is getting stale on top of not at all helpful to getting players used to functions. Getting them one at a time is fine once you have a dozen to play with, but I had an experience as a Necromancer in Age of Conan where I had a moment to myself thinking "is this a bit redundant or am I really going to use all these?".There is definitely a line, but I think the middlepoint is getting a handful of things to work with and then slowly obtain the rest, even 15 minutes in-game used to level and get your first skill of use is far too long.

Two, I always thought simply giving extra XP as group incentive would be a sure fix, but as the above guy stated - it isn't when combined with loot dispersement and waiting on other players to ready up and get thier sh*t together. I think a simple solution in everyone getting to loot the same corpse for random drops from the table on a per-person basis or just adding more to the haul based on group size (rarities too). Sometimes you can simply trick people into it with a reward function, like good old' Squad Leaders from SWG that needed to group for the XP gains, and others that got bonuses from having one. In any case it would be as if grouping gives players "cooperation XP", and could get skillgains or traditional level up's in group skills/tactics or stat boosts. I have many things similar to this in quite a few of my GDD's, one in particular records events done in a group behind the scenes and gives hidden boosts to players that they cannot chart - all they know is that when they party with the same people they get stronger when with them. A bit of mystery to what goes on behind the scenes never hurts.

Three would be awesome in a rogue-like. Randomized maps and mob placements, limited time based on "getting tired" or some other encroaching doom, and the more people you have the better hte chances of reaching the end. I would think your recovery skills are best suited to the D&D or FF1 style of magic where you get 9/9 charges of spells in tiers that do not regen, and they are like your stock needed to get through and must be used in earnest.

Is four like switching channels? In a way I am against it, and only for the reasons you may suspect, but this doesn't mean I don't employ the Guild Wars method of instancing in my GDDs, nor the swapping of channels (which is in quite a few). Sometimes there is a need in condensing everyone to the same world, and usually for PvP games that have land conquests, sieging, etc. You really can't have a contestable world with various versions of it going simultaniously without there being that rift of server division. Usually just faster methods of meeting up with people are the perfect fit, and this depends on setting where you would teleport your friends to you in a social hub for fantasy or sci-fi, but call them a taxi in a real-life simulation. Either way it means semi-quick access to where you are for quick grouping.

 ~ As an added point, I think the best tools for grouping are in a smart UI interface. DDO, from what I remember, had the best working one I seen. Basically you just set yourself as flagged for wanting to group for whatever instances, they can see your level and class, and before you know it you got a couple tells asking you to join up. Even if the game is classless, leveless, or anything of the "base nature" you can still have a window design to connect people. You just need to figure out what people will be looking for in a groupmate, make selectable options to weed through, and then let it go to work.

 Also, if you think in the opposite direction and make it harder to group over distances, even impossible, you set up better methods of getting hubs to act like an actual gathering place where players wouldn't want to stray from in case they miss the chance at a good grouping starting at the inn. If it takes a while to get to the destination, and all people are in the same spot once they group up in the first place, it would seem much easier to get orgainized and have the entire group move out in unison. Instead of the usual "I'll brt in 10, gotta finish a quest" stuff you get in more accessible games. Sometimes you can use the lack of communication to your advantage to push people, it definitely helps in PvP situations where quite a few games garble messages from enemies under a guise of some lore-language.

In fact I was discussing FFXI's translation system (which was superb)  with a friend, saying how it allowed me to play with people from around the world and deal normally. Then I came upon the idea, "what if the game was international and meant to have a lack of communication through the language barrier?". I've been thinking it over quite a bit, and besides an idea about players developing coded message systems through a tool interace in-game to garble messages up, I really haven't gotten anywhere with the idea.

Originally posted by GTwander

 ~ As an added point, I think the best tools for grouping are in a smart UI interface. DDO, from what I remember, had the best working one I seen. Basically you just set yourself as flagged for wanting to group for whatever instances, they can see your level and class, and before you know it you got a couple tells asking you to join up. Even if the game is classless, leveless, or anything of the "base nature" you can still have a window design to connect people. You just need to figure out what people will be looking for in a groupmate, make selectable options to weed through, and then let it go to work.

This is pretty much the only bit that makes sense in this whole thread. I wonder why this is only a passing point.

I'm also wondering why we aren't trying to find ways to simplify the grouping process. We all seem to be too concerned with how we can get other systems to conform to a broken one.

Right now, grouping is a puzzle in most games: finding the right classes / the right people for the job (who you assume know what they're doing), the right level, the right skills, etc. It's a terrible puzzle that only serves to segregate people in even more ways. I mean, come on, social interaction was already a problem to begin with, and we just up and decided to make it worse for no reason (soloing has developed because of it). This slide-show addresses this issue clearly: clicky.

Moving on to loot: I believe the loot issue is a stupid side-effect of the negative aspects of our capitalistic nature. The loot system as we know it was designed around a problem we have IRL: physical items can't be shared between two people in different places. Now when we look at a solution to this sharing problem, where do we look? Simple - software piracy. People share freely and don't mind doing so in that context. Not because they aren't losing anything by doing it, as they are giving up bandwidth and hard drive space. There's another reason for it... it's easy, and sharing helps others.

Maybe instead of declaring to players "you have one or none of the item and other people are your competition" we should say "you have ##% of this item complete, join more groups to collect more parts of it." So when you kill an enemy, loot drops and everyone gets a certain % of that item. More of the same items drop, people get more pieces until they're done.

Promote sharing over direct competition - because the last people you want to be your competition for a scarce resource are your friends.

All that combined with a simpler grouping interface, say from DDO or BF2142, and you get something that fixes most of the inconvenient parts of grouping. Players will join more groups that way. They'll do it because 1) it's easy to start and join groups, 2) nobody is "the wrong whatever" and, 3) there's no loot sharing issues. BF2142 is a great model of this.

You don't need a puzzle for every part of your game. Grouping and social interaction is already a puzzle to begin with, it doesn't need to be tampered with to give people more reasons to be social outcasts.

inb4 "stop referencing FPS games, they're completely different from MMORPGs and I'm incapable of realizing that every game is the same set of puzzles presented in different ways hurrrr durrrrrr"

I had a crazy idea for handling grouped XP. I'm thinking 2 combat pools, a solo pool and a co-op pool. Each would be spent in different ways, the solo pool adding to stats and the co-op pool to modify skills. I played around with a few equations and came up with a set that yields total XP (both pools) that hits its lowest potential at 4 players, granting 64% of soloing. After that a fully involved group (non active group members tank the numbers) grow the co-op pool faster than the solo pool shrinks. At 40 active party members XP is gained at about 200%. (I'm being lazy but will happily share the equations if anyone is interested)

Another obstacle is loot. It might just be me, but I'm sick of gear being the source of all power as it is in most games. Doing away with rare gear and the obsolescence from "out leveling" the gear would be a great step. FF10 had a great system for this, your gear had slots that you could add properties into, but it had no innate attack or defense value. Rare loots would then be the items that grant these properties (resist/absorb fire for example), something far easier to either share or multi-loot.  It's also something that maintains its value regardless of where you are in the game.

An open skill use system would be great in this.  I picture a situation like this: in your starting skills you have a single target spell, its effects are entirely dependent on the focus used.  A focus for fire, could have 2 effects- a single fireball for enemies, or to remove a bleed effect on friends.  By simply switching the focus (you can only equip 1 at a time) you could switch from fire to ice or any other element.  You could have several copies of that skill, each loaded with different modifications (splash effect, over time or whatever else).  In spite of using magic for all this, it would be just as easy to apply this to physical actions as well.

IDEA 5

all mobs provide loot to each person that interacts with them.  Each player in the group can freely loot any corpse(even raid boss), the amount of players looting a corpse does nothing to affect the "cha-ching".  however loot is modified so that rather than finding finished items it provides materials, and a wider range of items than what you would see in a normal MMO.

This may be drifting a little off of the main topic but on the loot question, what if we didn't get item upgrades as drops at all?  Instead your items level up along with your character.  So you get experience, you go up a level, and your items go up a level in tandem with your character. 

Ok, so when you log in the first time with your character you would go to a shop and purchase all of your level one equipment, selecting it mostly based on looks, and then you never have to worry about getting new loot.  Your items level up with you and as they do maybe you get to select the added modifiers that will go on your stuff in much the same way that you would apply new skill points to your character. 

If, later on, you decide you would like to change the look of your items you could transfer the level and all modifiers from one item to another similar item.  Let's say you are level 20 and still using the sword you started with which is also level 20 and has 20 levels worth of modifiers on it.  But now you decide that that other sword graphic looks more cool and you want to switch.  Simple, you just get that other sword (level 0 and no modifiers) and you transfer the levels and modifiers from your current sword to the new one.

To be honest I'm not absolutely certain that I like this idea even though I'm suggesting it.  But it would eliminate all the squabbling and compition and scrambling for loot upgrades.  Now all you have to do is what you would be doing anyway, gaining experience.  Gain experience and your items level up with you.

However, it might take something away from the game I think.  That little thrill when you get some nice new item.  On the other hand I've always felt that the loot whoring nature of these games was a rather pathetic gimmick used to keep people interested when the gameplay itself isn't really all that great and every one of these levels & loot games takes it to ridiculous extremes.  So I'm sort of on the fence with this idea.  I see what would be lost but I also see how it would eliminate some of the "rat race" feel of these games. 

Off the top of my head,

Looking for group menu, that shows open groups and people looking for groups and specifically what they are looking for. People looking for groups could have their name change color or something to visibly show people too.

Ways so a group can "summon" or whatever you want to call it, other group members.

Meet up points for group content, like public quests.

Way to equalize power so you can play with a larger variety of people, or have a lower power difference in the first place.

Way to partially change roles, I don't mean make everyone a tank dps healer, but allow them all to play an offense, defense and support role that they switch between like stances, so you don't have to stress about the proper classes/skill builds.

Award XP only for the completion of tasks, like quests and make some repeatable, that way you don't have to worry about splitting XP for kills, everyone gets the same XP for completing the same quest, which could also mean grouping could be more effecient to level by.

Quests with secondary goals, like without dieing, which give extra rewards, nothing big, and which would be easier in a group.
 

Loot aquisition mostly through achievement and only a little through random drops, that way people can form groups to complete achievements, quests or public quests together and all get loot.

Okay, we're still tied to our "old ways" here.

Let's look at this: Looking for group.... that's a terrible way to put it, really. How about "group looking for more" instead? So you just post groups (and only groups) on the group window. And anyone can join a group whenever they feel like it, whether the leader wants them to or not (although he can still kick them out if he wants). So this way, groups have to look attractive for other players instead of the other way around, and they'll have to be smart about how they describe their group in that window to attract the right players.

Let's also try this: no hubs. People can check the market, their stats, etc.; most things you would normally do in town you can do out in the field. Also, no quest hubs, simple as that. One guy goes and grabs a quest, everyone else can play with him and complete it without having to use a silly "share quest" function (think City of Heroes mission tracker). So now you've eliminated like 90% of "town lag". The hubs are chat panels and group windows, etc. Social gathering spots are in the interface, not in the physical space, although players will eventually designate their own hubs based on some unforeseeable factors.

Role Problem: Champions Online tried fixing it: join a group, choose what position you play. That's a great idea. All it is is being able to chance classes whenever you feel like it, without changing characters.

Here's how problem solving works: there is a problem, so solve it. Temporary fixes are forbidden. You don't fix problems by letting them sit there and then inventing creative ways to work around them. IE: you don't fix a leak by putting a bucket under it.

Improvisation is silly when you can design everything about what you're trying to solve.

If the reason that people don't group is that it's too hard to get a group together, punishing them for not grouping doesn't help that.  All it does is push them to quit the game, thereby making it even harder to get a group together.  A reward for grouping is implicitly a punishment for not grouping.  It's kind of like giving "extra credit" in a course where the grades are curved.

Your idea #4 is an absolute minimum prerequisite for any game to be serious about letting players get groups together.  Some games already implement it, but those that don't are effectively telling players, no matter what else the game entails, we don't actually want you to group, and to prove it, we're going to make it an awful pain by putting artificial barriers in place.  That speaks much louder than any meaningless pro-grouping words that the developers may say.

Well Plausuma, all your points of making access to everything in the game easier is a good point, I even employ it in a few games where all your mission info is fed through an easy to access UI that handles everything in the game world - but even then the mission parameters require you to find a location by address - and why? Exploration. In EVE online I rarely explored the world, and that is because most everything i needed was in my window panels and I only needed to dock in order to accept missions from the [same] questgiver - that applies to your point because without having to visit an unseen place, your GUI becomes the only questgiver you'll ever see, and most likely you are gonna miss out on places of interest unless you get a message saying to go their directly anyway. Are we in need of that much handholding yet? Even I am guilty of it sometimes unless the game is like Wurm, where if you can't think of a goal, you might as well give up. I think you either leave it to the imagination from the start, or prepare to hold hands until endgame.

What about hardcore vs casual types? They fit into this from all angles as some will want a difficulty scale all the way down to "how" things work, and the others what everything they ever need up front and easy to approach.

So forcing people to wait on transport, making communication hard outside of a local distance and making "hubs" is simply a way (even if old-timey) to get players to socialize, though some will not put up with it. The [issue] of solers in a multiplayer game is from everything being so accessible, that might not including any of the social aspects I covered, but it's from trying to make crafting and gameplay more self-sufficient. I feel that if players want to solo, they might as well be in a private instance like Guild Wars - but people still complain about it "not being massive enough", all the while holding the term "too many people fighting my mobs" on a napkin in their pocket.

The real fact of the matter is that people see/worry about [gains]. If loot is dispersed, or skill/level is faster without having to wait on others then people will solo. If at some point it's simply faster to group, not even with the usual [required] group stuff, then people most likely will. You never see people solo in the "lvl X grind groups" that haunt every mid-to-end level zone of any game. You can still solo all the way to the end in some games like AoC, but it's not fun, and just having the option seems to have bitten the game for some reason as now it's "too easy to solo".

The answer is that you NEED to state what kind of game you are making, quit trying to hit every demographic and just implant an urge in the most likely one to enjoy it. This includes the PvE/PvP divide, do one good or go home. Nowadays people are asking the question "is it solo or group oriented?", and in my opinion you should lean one way or the other. Perhaps somebody needs to make the perfect game for a soloer, isolating like Silent Hill so that when people do meet it's either epic battle or the friend you never knew existed. My guess though, is that soloers like to be alone, but in a crowd - god forbid they are in an empty zone by themselves.

Originally posted by Plasuma!!!

Let's look at this: Looking for group.... that's a terrible way to put it, really. How about "group looking for more" instead? So you just post groups (and only groups) on the group window. And anyone can join a group whenever they feel like it, whether the leader wants them to or not (although he can still kick them out if he wants). So this way, groups have to look attractive for other players instead of the other way around, and they'll have to be smart about how they describe their group in that window to attract the right players.

Warhammer did that, no one used it though, I think people are put off by joining a group unannounced and they are also put off by asking to join.

I figure it would be easier for the people who started the group to invite new members, since apparently they have enough gumption.

But Warhammer like Champions and other games that make it easier to find groups people still don't group, so perhaps the biggest constraint is peoples unwillingness.

Before we continue, EVE Online was designed as a PvP / space conquest game with a side of RPG. You're not meant to play it like a PvE grinder (begs the question, how do developers tell their players "our game is meant to be played this way, alright?" But that's a later discussion).

Had it been designed as a PvE grinder, you'd think the missions would be more interesting, huh. Nahhhh, of course not, the developers are too stupid to have done that! Those silly developers, always being so stupid. ~~heuheuheuheu

Oh, but yes, you're right, we should stop trying to optimize our games to fit the most possible consumers for the longest amount of time and instead focus on tiny groups, after all, pin-point marketing gets you a more loyal fanbase, and I should know, I'm a game designer. **polishes his ass-shaped-hat and replaces it on his head as he scoffs loudly in your general direction**

NO1 we should make our games so bland that it has to appeal to everyone regardless of their interests!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!! <3  /em hug self

NO THERE CANT BE MIDDLE GROUND!!1! You can't have a grey area in life ANYWHERE, oh no, that would mean everything you know is wrong!!1! KEEP FIGHTING!!!^! BLAAAA@*&$E&*^FGSDFRGH!

herp derp ~desu

/sarcasm

Let's try to think optimistically for a second: maybe you can have games that appeal to the most possible people without being bland and shallow. Just try to think like that for a second.

Are you still thinking about it?

Good.

For a bit off topic (or is it?): tell me, who's music do you like more; Joe Satriani or John Williams?

That's a question of personal taste and you should not be judged on it. However, John Williams is far more popular as he designs his songs to be memorable and puts them into a wide range of media. Whenever you hear that a film has a Williams score, you expect it to be good - because that's how he works. He writes awesome scores that appeal to a wide range of people. Joe Satriani, on the other hand, is an awesome rock musician... but I personally don't much care for his style (many other people of similar taste agree with me), and he doesn't care to appeal to people like me.

Now who's games do you like more; Tilted Mill or Blizzard?

One is a pinpoint target model (Joe Satriani / Tilted Mill), the other aims for a wider range (John Williams / Blizzard). Is it wrong for either one to do what they do? No! They're just different styles! One is trying to fill a niche, the other is trying to get to the most people possible. Who is right? Who is wrong?

In capitalistic terms, the one who is right is the one trying to get the most people interested with the least amount of spending.

So game designers, if they want their jobs, will design games to attract as many people as they can get.

Now, heading back into the familiar territory of soloers and group stuff: just read through one of my other posts in this thread until you hit a link to a power-point presentation. It contains pretty much all you need to know to gauge your thoughts on the matter of socialization and "the loner."

For the matters of loot and group simplicity, the purpose of it is to remove player frustrations (and as a side-effect allow for more diversity in the rest of the game's design). No loot sharing problems means nobody ninjas loot or loses out on a roll, if you have a random loot system involved or not doesn't matter. Simpler (and faster) groups means you wont' spend hours looking for a group, you can start one instantly yourself - and anyone who wants to join a group can do so whenever they wish without having to whore themselves.

Without having to worry if you'll get a spot on a team, you are free to experiment with classes as a player. In design, with class experimentation now a possibility, how would you allow players to experiment with who they are and what they can do instead of forcing them into some cookie-cutter regime? A skill system, probably. There are other ways, too, but that's another discussion.

Actually, read this whole thing backwards from here up. Start with the idea of class experimentation, and move up towards a grouping system that allows it... there you go. You started with a simple idea and designed a new system to augment it in a harmonic way.

RESPAWN IN 5

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I really don't see how the linearity of EVE Online missions applies to my point except that you really want it to.

EVE has a great UI system: you can talk to agents, get market data, manage assets, etc. from anywhere in the world. That isn't a limiting factor on exploration. The limiting factors in EVE for exploration are more like 'why the feck would I want to go there?' and 'this isn't worth my time.' Missions are obviously just a way to grind money in that game, nobody who's played it for longer than a month will argue that.

So what makes exploration worth the player's time? Rewards. Mainly Time vs. those Rewards. So how do you reward them enough to get them to look and explore? By punishing them with terrible directions? Bit Draconian, there.

I challenge you to come up with a better method than nerfing mission waypoints into oblivion. Because you know what? Once one person does your "go explore the world" quest with vague directions, everyone on the internet will have a guide explaining step-by-step how to do it. And they will use it because your directions were inconvenient.

It would just be a better idea to put interesting things between the player and their destinations. You have to distract them, not frustrate them.

"Random locations in my missions," you say? "What a dull game, I wish the developers would have made more unique content," the players will scream.

I'd really like to know why so many of you spend so much time trying to come up with ways to force people to do things (group) that they are inherently adverse to doing.

Why not focus your energy on creating content that is of interest to your target audience rather than trying to find ways to convince people that they really want to do what you want them to despite their predisposition to do otherwise?

It's a serious question. In my opinion, you are going about this game design thing all wrong. You pick your target audience, identify the size of your audience, identify what they want, and set out to build what THEY want to play based on what THEY are looking for in a game.After all, isn't your (the gamer that wants to make a game) goal to make something that a specific group thinks is the bestest coolest most amazing game ever?

Half the drawn out and repeated threads on forums like this are on a lack of creative and fresh ideas and the other half are how to make a game that appeals to everyone. That's two completely different paths to follow.

Now, I wouldn't make this post, ask these questions and present this suggestion if I didn't think it would do any good. There are creative minds here. There are some very bright minds here. So here's my suggestion: 

When creating these posts, present who you feel your target audience is. Don't think about who WON'T play your game. Only think about the type of people who WILL play your game. Now, that might be only 5,000-10,000 people. That might be 5-10 million people.  Whatever the number, consider only them initially and develop your idea or mechanic with them in mind.

I think you'll make a lot more progress and headway that way than trying to come up with ways to create the ultimate universal system to make people do things they, by their sheer nature as a human being, have no real desire to do.

I hope I didn't come across ranty there. I'm really just trying to offer a more productive direction to take these threads.

Originally posted by Plasuma!!!

Before we continue, EVE Online.... rant.

You can say whatever you want about "what EVE was designed around" - it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that a noob has to work his way up through missions like that to [afford] upgrades. Not that many people are willing to walk blindly to some player corp to have his needs handled when he barely has a grasp of the game. The journey from frigate to battleship is a loooong one of either mining, rats runs or missions - I chose the efficient route for what I had equipped.

You really hit a snarky tangeny that doesn't even need rebuttal, and far too much of a "dramatic pause". How do you expect anybody to reply to that in all seriousness? You take too much pleasure on venting, and nobdy really cares what level of arrogance to capability you have if you are this hard to even discuss things with.

Marketing sells, but then the fallout of over hyped product. Satriani is not gonna suit most people, no matter if he branches off into rap or country - it's a horrible sentiment, and your really go off the deep end sometimes. In the sense of the game industry it just means a game that is marketed to all, and pleases none. Pick a demographic and make it happy, because when you tell someone "this game is not for your kind" they want to play it even more - i.e. Darkfall. Then it's up to you if you "sell out to the masses" and try to appeal to all the players, and in turn alienate the potential long-term ones while giving the very players that asked for the consessions a chance to mock your move like they always had planned. More people are interested in the death of a game then it's ascension, so you do NOT listen to players. Half of what is asked for is overkill to pacing, or ways to exploit through something the devs have no clue about. The more you make it like "that game" the more they all start looking alike and then your product has to battle it for subs, and that is totally the fault of developers trying to meet the wants of everybody by using what works best from all existint products to make a "super game" that is the [same damn thing].

You don't fight the competition by trying to be like it, and in game design you don't have to give players simplicity or efficiency. That's just handing cookies out, and then people search for something more "indepth" like a brownie sooner or later. There are two mentalities to please, that's it; UO generation, and EQ/WoW Generation (which are in fact the same). You either want a game with a serious amount of intricate and mysterious points to it, or you want something you can understand on day 1 and get right into... and the latter is only a recent phenomenon since everyone wants a game to ween people off WoW - another reason everything feels so "samey". It may be a sandbox vs Theme Park dicussion to that point, but even more reason to question "who are you making the game for"? The line between them exists, but it's not happening yet, even if you think you've figured it out.

nm

Grouping can be the best thing in gaming if the developer puts some effort into the game.This is again why we point fingers at cheap games,especially when so many of those lame cheap as designs are games people are ranting and raving about as being great ...lmao ya right.

You take a game like FFXI......you have something unique and cool like the THIEF [ SATA ] attack.It takes a tank another player and the thief to pull it off,it takes team work and in this case 3 players.You have a job class called the Samurai.The sammy in FFXI had the ability to create fast TP for skill chaining weapon skills.He could literally do a skillchain with one player,then TP up and move onto skill chaining with another player.

Then you have the whole RENKAI system in FFXI,it takes all sorts of different weapons and elements to factor into skillchains.Then you Magic Bursts,heck you can have all sorts of players MB,but the obvious ones would be Black mages or Red mages.

So as you can see,if a developer makes a good game with a good combat system,it will entice fun group play.These simplistic fast ,rinse and repeat pop a heal pot games are a joke,they offer nothing to game play at all,very simplistic.Then you have players who think EVE is a complicated game,,LMAO.A great combat group system in FFXI does NOT revolve around how much money you have or ISK you earn,it does not revolve around filling out spread sheets ,heck you don't even need to worry about gear if you don't want to.The thing is that a nicely designed system can work for all players ,if they choose to have FUN over speed leveling.

We already have simplified games,i think we have too many of them,and that is why ALL the players are speed leveling and ignoring the entire games,because they are terribly designed.We need more games like FFXI and more that take the game even further,advancing our thinking when we play,IMO there is nothing wrong with having to think a little.

GT, I absolutely love your responses to my posts.

You know why? Because with my deliberately wordy and misleading posts, you always reply with something challenging my character - so I get to keep on responding!!!

Just keep in mind: when you read my posts, don't take anything seriously. At all. Ever. Pretend I'm the most sarcastic asshole you've ever met (I bet it's pretty hard to think of me that way, but just try) and only take what I say with a grain of salt. It's worth nothing more than that.

About your EVE point: it makes one wonder. If EVE is such a terrible game, why do people play it and CCP's subs continue to steadily grow? They're doing something right. I think that something is their interfacing solution, huge world, and balanced PvP.

What I think they're doing wrong is the risk of PvP, the meaninglessness of missions, terrible tutorial, the ridiculous grind and wait for money and skills, the lack of an over-arcing story, and the absence of engaging character customization (what they're missing and how they could fix it is another huge list, but I make a list like that for every game I play).

Everything else about EVE is probably a moot point for me until I can recall what other elements of the game could fit into either category.

About Joe, I really do love his stuff (yes, I said I didn't before, but I make a habit of lying about what I do and do not like to make people believe my argument isn't skewed), and my friends tell me it's too unpredictable or sometimes flat and boring. He writes his songs with musicians in mind... you listen to his guitar riffs and go "how did he DO that?!" and go back to your current project, wondering how you can put it into a different perspective with what you just experienced. The way he composes his stuff appeals only to a certain audience because of its artistic nature. He has financial backing, and his fans love him. That's enough for him.

John Williams, who you completely avoid talking about, appeals to a wide range of individuals. I have yet to meet somebody who doesn't like the score to Star Wars, Superman, or Harry Potter. His stuff is logical... too logical. It flows too well to be accidental or completely artistic. He engineers his music because he knows what he's doing; he's pretty much mastered the theory of music...

And I believe it's possible for a John Williams of game design to surface somewhere, sometime. Somebody (or somebodies) who knows enough about games and the techniques used in them will make hit after hit, impressing the world - and only get better with time. Blizzard comes close, and I relate them to John because of that. I mean, you really can't deny that Blizzard has has a lot of chart-toppers in its time, and the games were genuinely good.

Yes, I agree, you don't fight the competition by trying to be like it. But you also shouldn't forbid everything they've done. We're not making a religion here - there is no good or evil idea. In fact, music theory was stifled because of such thinking for the longest time: some chords were evil, dissonance was said to summon the devil and the musician responsible for such a terrible act would have his hands cut off. It took a while to get out of that mentality, when we figured out that the same musical ideas can be good or bad in different contexts.

So there are ideas that work, ideas that don't work, and every game is made up of some odd amount of both of them. The most appealing games just have more working ideas than ones that don't. It is possible to root them out and make something genuinely appealing to a massive audience across multiple spectrum.

What we need to do is eventually standardize a "game design theory" as we have done with music theory. Why shouldn't you play Bb as a leading tone over a C Major 7th chord? That's been explained, by whom I can't recall, but I'm sure he used a song for his reasoning (and you can run this experiment yourself quite easily). Why can't you have PvPvE with full-rights looting and permadeath? That's still up for debate... and probably will be well into the future until somebody writes a game that solves it. Unfortunately, game development takes longer than writing a song (at this time), so it will take that much longer to fully develop a theory on the subject.

My ideas are just as flawed as everyone else's. I like to think they're not and vocally berate anyone who says otherwise because that's the nature of humanity: to defend what one knows over what one does not know, but I try to stop myself. At most times I'm slightly successful, at others I'm not.

Anyways, I said earlier in another thread that these debates about game design won't end up anywhere. They never do until someone's point is proven with fact. That can't happen until somebody goes out there and makes a game. Who will do it? Who will master the theory of game design?

Nobody in our time.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

It's a serious question. In my opinion, you are going about this game design thing all wrong. You pick your target audience, identify the size of your audience, identify what they want, and set out to build what THEY want to play based on what THEY are looking for in a game.After all, isn't your (the gamer that wants to make a game) goal to make something that a specific group thinks is the bestest coolest most amazing game ever?

I agree, but I also disagree. It's about providing content the player didn't even know he liked yet. Something tells me that some of the first people to say "let's make the bestest coolest game out there" decided it had to an existing IP, like Batman or Cool Runnings. Trying to please everyone in the slightest way leads to bastardising a beloved setting or adapting something everybody is used to (mechanically). In my opinion the bestest most awesome games have been indie or overlooked for a long period of time. My top three are SWG , FFXI and UO in that order - UO being my first and still not making me fawn for the old ways. Now there are people who would say that I'm stupid and those games are slow/sucked, you are not going to please the both of us with anything - and for that matter - mixing those communties has robbed the in-game chat lines of intellegent banter for years. WoW's greatest downfall is it's horrid and widespread community, a bunch of people that need to move onto games that suit them more since WoW is no doubt their first and they refuse to take the first steps of dropping that bottle.

People move on from games, and when games are copying what they just walked from there is nothing to go to. I think there will be a new age of indie games coming, but most players don't actively look for something that suits them - they wait for it to drop in their lap, or in WoWs case, were nagged by people at work or high school to join them. Word of mouth is the industries most powerful tool.

Originally posted by GTwander

I agree, but I also disagree. It's about providing content the player didn't even know he liked yet.

There's an incredible amount of arrogance in that statement and it reinforces my point.