Originally posted by nosto

Originally posted by tmr819

 

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Originally posted by nosto
I guess something I'm seeing several times from people in this thread is that they want to be able to do things in the game with 1 person that others who actually socialize, meet players, group up and form a community do.  If I wanted to have a group of people that are mindless npc drones fighting alongside me - then I'll play neverwinter nights, or KOTOR.  If i want to play a game by myself and conquer the world - I'll play Zelda, Fable, Halo, (insert any console game here that I dont have to pay 15 a month for).  WTH is the purpose of playing online if you do everything yourself?  I guess I'd also kind of find it funny to dump money into a companies lap for something you don't really utilize.  Play MUDDs if you want to play solo some times and online others.  Not trying to be a dick or talk down but I think its a bit funny.  The more i thought about it I don't know if I even agree with scaling in the first place - if you can't meet the requirements - meet more people, form a community, and get out there and conquer the world in the way (I believe) most MMO companies want the game to be played.

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You really aren't getting it.

In Guild Wars, you use mindless drones when you cannot find real players. In WoW, however, you simply have to SKIP content. How is that an "improvement"? As for me, I'd rather actually PLAY content using drones than not play it at all, which is basically what is happening now in WoW.

Another thing you are not getting is the fact that, sometimes, I want to play with just one or two players. In WoW, you have to find FIVE people to do anything in an instance at your own level. In Guild Wars, you group up with your friends and fill in the rest with NPCs and actually PLAY.

Guild Wars made it possible for people to play solo or in small groups of 2 or 3, the latter of which you CANNOT do in KOTOR, etc.

 

No I think you're missing my point.  "massive" to me - is not 2 peeps.  End of story.  And I'm saying wtf is the point of even having drones to work through the content - just make the content soloable then and allow you to hang with buddies to do it.  I have never and will never have an issue finding people in an MMO or working with others to get through things.  The reason you have to find drones is because you can't find people to play with - its not that they are not plentiful - its that the game caters to players being solo lone emo heroes - so unless a RL friend comes along - you have to use drones in GuildWars - fantastic they've found a solution to your dilema but had that dilema not existed in the first place by making the game group centric from the beginning - you wouldn't be so QQ about it.  

Yep, forced grouping makes people more willing to group (they have to)  and  at the same time, there are fewer people to group with. Many people will not play a game if  they cant solo. Personally im good either way if the game is good but forced grouping isnt as popular as one would think.

I stopped reading at the word "scaling".

Any game design with "scaling" or any type of "linearity" in mind dont deserve any interest.

Originally posted by Interesting

I stopped reading at the word "scaling".

 

Any game design with "scaling" or any type of "linearity" in mind dont deserve any interest.

Linearity, as in leveling from 1-80? That is the very definition of linear.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Yep, forced grouping makes people more willing to group (they have to)  and  at the same time, there are fewer people to group with. Many people will not play a game if  they cant solo. Personally im good either way if the game is good but forced grouping isnt as popular as one would think.

[not to stray super far from the thread but I'll tie it in]

I mean we can obviuosly tell that by the responses - a lot of people want to be able to solo - I would say it isn't a drastic amount of people want to solo vs. group.   I mean - the hype and love of MMOs (originally) was the idea of a D&D table in which you were interacting with fellow mates who wanted to join in.  What happened with WoW was that you got a huge Blizzard fanboi train jumping into the MMO stream and as such they catered to a Diablo 2 play style.  Do your jam solo - group if you want.  So the focus definitely changed - not because of Blizzard - but because of the people who play their games.

I can't say I've never played an MMO solo - I have.  I did it in wow, I had a solo toon on EQ1, I rarely grouped in AC.  However, I think that a grouping game is superior - if I really wanted to get my jollies off of being Epic Hero Solo #1 guy Jesus - I would have played something different (pretty much anything not an MMO).

Going back to the thread topic, if you make everything scaleable I want to ask the players not the game developers, "Why Play it?"  I don't see the reason to play a game where the only difference is the people in town are talking about the football game on or politics or chuck norris.  To get a feel like you're in a town from the fantasy world - you'd probably want to have only the NPCs chatting or play a game with a lively town life like in fable or something along those lines.  To me - if you are going to scale difficulty - allow the player to manipulate it vs. attempting to do your own concrete system where all calculations and decisions are made on your side.  That way - you don't get people bitching about it other than the choices they are offered.  No game can please everyone and its LOL to think it is possible.  For those who want competition and to fight other players and kill them - there are plenty of FPSes and RTSes

I still fail to see why your defintion of "MMO", which is grouping and socializing is one whit more realistic of our definition which is solo'ing and competitive gaming.

I play plenty of FPS/RTS games and am quite happy when I do. I also would like a persistant online world where I can thrive in player-to-player competition. And to head off someone saying "That is what pvp is for" that has nothing at all to do with this discussion. This has to do with challenging the solo player and offering them the chance towards high-end gear that is presently only possible if they partake in raid instancing.

I rather like the way scaling, grouping, and the optional use of NPCs are handled in DDO:U, since that game offers players a variety of ways to complete the content. Unfortunately, I do not like the clunkiness of the UI in DDO:U, nor the combat/skill/stats system, nor the lack of a truly persistent MMO world, else I would play it.

Nosto, you say 2 people is not "massive" to you, and I see your point. But somehow 5 people *is* "massive"? That's the standard group size in WoW and I wouldn't call it massive. Most MMOs are played out based on probably 80 to 90% solo content and 10 to 20% small-group -- not "massive" -- content. That should tell developers something right there.

You say you have no problems getting groups, well, I do. Just try getting a group together for Uldaman or Mauradon on my server. I'd rather at least have the option to solo these dungeons (scaled or with NPCs) than just routinely level past them, with quests not done and eventually abandoned. That's just a broken system, and one that Blizzard and LotRO and many other level-based games (apparently) choose to ignore, although I will say that WoW is getting better about dealing with the "accessibility issue" with each additional expansion.

I think games like WoW and LotRO have a problem in basic design: 5- or 6-man instancing works when a game or expansion is just released and popular -- there are lots of people around then -- but I think these games need to make adjustments as a game ages, the population at a certain level thins, and it becomes harder and harder to find groups.

WoW made certain accommodations to this problem by "de-elitizing" a lot of its group-oriented areas (Stromgarde in Arathi Highlands comes to mind) a few years ago, so that players can now complete quests on their own that used to require groups. Something similar ought to be done for the lower-level instances.

Scaling seems like as good a suggestion for dealing with this problem as any. I think that if WoW and LotRO continue to ignore this problem, they are are going to lose subscribers to games that offer a greater variety of options.

OMG

Time to go back to Tic, Tac, Toe.

"CAN WE PLEASE MAKE GAMES EASYER!"

"YOU SEE I HAVE A REAL LIFE AND CAN ONLY PLAY FOR 10 MINS TODAY"

"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY MY DOT COM( LEVELED) CHARACTER, I JUST GOT HIM!"

"I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE, BUT I PLAY A MMO!"

See what happens when you bring 10+ mil. into a system that have know idea what thay are doing?

Thanks Bizz.

Originally posted by LordDmaster

OMG

Time to go back to Tic, Tac, Toe.

"CAN WE PLEASE MAKE GAMES EASYER!"

"YOU SEE I HAVE A REAL LIFE AND CAN ONLY PLAY FOR 10 MINS TODAY"

"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY MY DOT COM( LEVELED) CHARACTER, I JUST GOT HIM!"

"I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE, BUT I PLAY A MMO!"

See what happens when you bring 10+ mil. into a system that have know idea what thay are doing?

Thanks Bizz.

Hah - I got a nice laugh from this - thanks.  Yea lets make games basically slightly interactive movie experiences!  Lets put a chat function in there so I can talk to my friends even tho millions of chat options exist out there already to do just that.  Let me buy a toon because I don't want the fulfilling experience of leveling my own toon.  I hate you all but I will pay 15 bucks a month to be around you.  This mentality didn't exist 8 years ago.  Thank you - you made my day.

It really shouldn't be to hard for any developer to add scaleable dungeons to any game instance. SOE did that with one of their adventure packs called The Splitpaw Saga.  

EverQuest®II The Splitpaw Saga™ - Deep within the Sundered Splitpaw Dwells a Great Threat!

In The Splitpaw Saga players will explore the collapsed caverns and twisted tunnels of Sundered Splitpaw. Throughout this adventure, the truth behind the dungeon's mysterious demise is uncovered by using moveable planks, crates and barrels to work through a series of intriguing event-based zones. A ferocious clan of cannibalistic gnolls will stand in the way as players seek to destroy a great threat. Experience the adventure right away and meet additional challenges a second time around as the encounters scale dynamically to match your player level or group size.

Unique content with an exciting storyline and plenty of action that solo players, groups and raids can enjoy for months to come.
Event-based adventure in two new dungeons with twelve additional instanced zones.
Dozens of unique scenario-based quests that take you right into the action.
Interactive Environments: Chop your way through barriers and use exploding barrels to destroy enemies or blast your way through tunnels

Scalable dungeons would not be difficult to implement.   Just scale them depending upon how many people are in the group.  Rather than have 5/10/25 - scale it as such [dps output of mobs would also scale]:

5-9 - 5 man [typical 5 man loot drops]

10-19 - 10 man [better loot drops]

25 - no change [high end loot drops]

Originally posted by Unrivaled1

I still fail to see why your defintion of "MMO", which is grouping and socializing is one whit more realistic of our definition which is solo'ing and competitive gaming.

I play plenty of FPS/RTS games and am quite happy when I do. I also would like a persistant online world where I can thrive in player-to-player competition. And to head off someone saying "That is what pvp is for" that has nothing at all to do with this discussion. This has to do with challenging the solo player and offering them the chance towards high-end gear that is presently only possible if they partake in raid instancing.

Our definition of MMO isn't - our definition of MMORPG is however.

The name of the Website you are posting on might also give you a clue to this.

WoW is (according to the label anyway) a Role-playing game.

Methinks you want to be playing a MMOFPS or a MMORTS (if such a thing exists). While I admit the amount of RP in most MMORPG's is not large it is where there origin is and where they try to be. Individuals filling a role in a team has been the basis for RPG's since they were invented 35years ago. We're supposed to be playing a role (tank, dps, healer, comedy sidekick, whatever) - not all the roles.

Also :

The basic point is effort & risk vs. reward - if you scale everything perfectly (which I doubt is possible) then a scaled instance that give one item to the soloer should give one item each to the raiders (and more or better due to the extra effort required to organise a raid). If it doesnt then why even bother with any group content?

Back to scaling :)

I think scaling would be very hard to implement - its more than just ramping up damage and HP - just look at the one scaling system they already have in place - Tenacity - you want something similar in instances & raids??

Never found anyone who is happy with Tenacity.

Scaling up is probably doable.

But scaling down will lead to a point where single target abilities overpower the players. The point of some boss abilities is to temporarily remove one player from the fight (sheep,sleep, web, freeze etc) - or to do that and require other to go rescue him (snobolds, webs, ice blocks etc). How do you scale that to 1 or 2 players?

Plus it trivialises, overpowers or negates other abilities - (as I mentioned before) - look at the difference between the "keep your distance" issues in Emalon10 and Emalon25

And how do you scale a fight so that one non-healer clothie dps can kill an entire pull without dying? That isnt doable without making it laughably easy for hybrids. My mage can do far more dps than my holy pally - but theres a ton of things my pally can solo that my mage cant. And don't mention CC as the balancer - its not 100% reliable and only works on certain types of mobs.

Scaling down to 1 (or 2) would require re-balancing all the classes for it - which I don't think is possible (without making them all far too similar and dull)  or worth the effort

This is what I meant earlier by posting your thoughts without having read or at least understood the posts that came before.

It would be a completely different fight for a "clothie" as it would be for a hybrid. When a solo cloth-wearer enters the instance the instance reorgs into clothie-friendly mob sizes and when said clothie initiates combat with a mob they are then adjusted in difficulty based on the player's Level, Class, Gear and Talent Spec. During the fight the player cannot swap out armor or talents so there is no chance of "cheating" the system. As I said earlier, it will have to be an elaborate formula to account for all of this but it's by no means impossible.

I get the impression that most of the angst concerning this proposal has more to do with "I had to do it the hard way, so should everyone else!" than anything else. Based on what Blizz has done before I'd wager there will be an option to toggle "dungeon scaling" on or off for the party leader. Want to do it the old way? Be my guest.

I hate to start off any post with "well back in the days of EQ" but I am going to anyway.

You can argue if you like which game was the start of the MMO genre but there is no denying that EQ brought the MMORPG to main stream gamers and SOE did it with grouping. As many have stated in previous posts, the whole game centered around the group and that was what made the game as popular as it was at the time. Not just because of the group but because of what happened when you grouped. You made friends! You came back day after day to play and interact with people you met while grouping. 

Anarchy Online came around and changed that in a way. It was the first game to allow for real soloing based on scalable missions. You had the ability to scale your instanced mission by level and thereby alllowing for solo or group play based on the level of the mission. It wasn't dynamic like EQ2 Splitpaw Saga or the skirmishes coming out the the next LOTRO expansion but it still allowed you to group and interact with people and the difficulty and loot was determined by the level of the mission you selected.

In my opinion, as MMO's have evolved they have moved farther and farther away from the group and more toward the solo player in order to cater to the casual gamer and I don't fault any company for wanting to provide themselves a greater revenue stream but I still think that groups are the way to go, it is after all called an MMORPG for a reason.

Point is, scalable group instances are possible and if it is going to get more people to group then I am all for it. Just rambling but thats my 2 cents.

Originally posted by Unrivaled1

This is what I meant earlier by posting your thoughts without having read or at least understood the posts that came before.

It would be a completely different fight for a "clothie" as it would be for a hybrid. When a solo cloth-wearer enters the instance the instance reorgs into clothie-friendly mob sizes and when said clothie initiates combat with a mob they are then adjusted in difficulty based on the player's Level, Class, Gear and Talent Spec. During the fight the player cannot swap out armor or talents so there is no chance of "cheating" the system. As I said earlier, it will have to be an elaborate formula to account for all of this but it's by no means impossible.

I get the impression that most of the angst concerning this proposal has more to do with "I had to do it the hard way, so should everyone else!" than anything else. Based on what Blizz has done before I'd wager there will be an option to toggle "dungeon scaling" on or off for the party leader. Want to do it the old way? Be my guest.

I'm guessing that you meant "without having understood or at least read" rather than the other way round but I'll put that down to a typo or translation error :)

I didn't realise that your comment on class,level and gear was a suggestion to scale based on them rather than a simple mention to show the vast scale of variance within simple numerical scaling.

As we can already see scaling a single dungeon so it works at two different numbers (10 and 25) isn't easy and all the 10/25 raids have had numerous tweaks and nerfs post Test Server. So it can't be that easy to balance.

The idea that they can scale to fit 1-40 players in a single instance seems an enormous amount of effort when two scales takes repeated tries to get reasonably close right.

So the mere thought of scaling based on (at a very conservative estimate)

40 (number of raiders) * 10 (classes) * 3 (specs) * 11 (+/- 5 levels) * 25 (gear, average iLevel rounded to nearest multiple of 6) = 330,000 variants....

did not occur to me.

An only slightly less conservative estimate would be 40 * 10 * 5 * 21 * 50 = 2.1 million options.

Go playtest that :p

And you want it to do this as every fight starts??

A few secondary thoughts :

I'm also guessing you want to remove that capability to swap weapons during fights to avoid a rush to buy iLevel 1 weps for starting combat with? Not sure how that would effect things, I don't weapon swap during fights but I know that some people do for certain abilities. Doubt it would unbalanced things to remove that.

Scaling with gear also brings another question - why bother with new gear? If an instance scales with gear then you have removed the point of getting better gear.

If my new gear doubles my dps but scales the dungeon to have double the HP then its exactly the same fight just with bigger numbers floating above my head.

Some of the issues here come down to one basic flaw in WoW (and one of EQ's greatest strengths) - lack of focus.

EQ stated they were a group game and balanced for that. Very well once they had got their feet. Solo wasn't balanced, nor was raiding to a large degree (esp. early on)

WoW doesn't focus and suffers numerous balance issues because of it.

How many times has your class been nerfed in PvE because of a PvP issue? (or vice versa).

How many ongoing "x is underpowered" problems are not fixed in PvE because it would overpower in PvP? (or vice versa).

How many raid balance changes have nerfed solo play?

Until WoW either focuses or properly delineates PvE and PvP these issue will continue to crop up.

I am a great fan of the saying "If it ain't broke don't fix it"

but Blizz constantly "fix" issues with one aspect while breaking/nerfing the abilities in other aspects while leaving broken bits unfixed.

Once again getting a bit off topic but :)

 I think the problem is guilds just don't want to help gear up members you have to be on par with them or you don't get in which is why they struggle to get a 25 man off the ground. In classic WoW we never had a problem filling all 40 spots we did not just run current content we helped gear new players but we also farmed. So I'm not sure how current raids are but if guilds are not helping gear up new level 80's it might be because of the no farm aspect. But even with PUG you must have certain achievements or you don't go so me I'm forced to PvP and stuck not being able to raid thus results in me quitting due to lack of play. 

I would love to join a raiding guild but most are new that will end up disbanding shortly after being made the older guilds want you at their level so these guilds that want and need to fill 25 plus backups need to run the older dungeons they have cleared.

Excellent idea and easily implemented in spite of Kaplan's BS pontificating @ Blizzcon about raid instances needing the appropriate 'pacing'.    'Pacing' just means tedious timesink mechanics that are a useless holdover from his EQ days.  

Blizzard's clustered servers are just another attempt to try to force people to play the way Kaplan thinks they should play instead of the way they want to play.   The same thing happened at the first Blizzcon where people were asking for casual endgame content and developers told them they expected people to join large raid guilds.  

Blizzard is finally seeing that many players are not putting up with that anymore.  That's why there aren't any 40 man raids, that's why they're clustering servers.   All of these are just work-arounds that scaled instances would immeadiately solve once Blizzard realizes they have to stop trying to force all of  their customers into one playstyle.

Now if this is an issue over gear (and what isn't in WoW) just lower the chances of getting gear drops when you're in an instance with less people so you end up with the same probability of any individual of a large group getting the gear.    The elistist snobs won't be able to swing their epeens around as much, but wouldn't that be a shame.   

There are SOOOO many things wrong with this article....
 

/sigh...

isn't it just wonderful how so many people in these days actually thinks and believes that their meaningless "opinions" are actually "facts"...

Originally posted by Fr0z1nDuDe

There are SOOOO many things wrong with this article....
 

 

/sigh...

 

 

isn't it just wonderful how so many people in these days actually thinks and believes that their meaningless "opinions" are actually "facts"...

See the issue isn't that they think what they think is a fact.  Its that the "fact" or conclusion they have drawn should be the one the game they play does as well.  I wonder if these same people go out and buy a Corolla or some 4 cylinder car and then go onto forums and bitch and complain that the engine doesn't have the pickup or the seats aren't shaped the right way and as such the company should change the car to meet their needs.  The company set out with a vision and implemented it - of course as a business they want the most customer's possible - but I doubt any company has visions of grandeur that their product is going to make everyone happy.  If that were the case - why would any other game exist.  I mean kudos to these people for having an issue with a game and a possible solution they have come up with - at least its not full blown QQ fix it posts.  But I really don't understand why people seem to think they can just buy something and then expect the company to change its vision and apply their new one.  I mean when someone comes up with a game, they sit there and create THEIR game with THEIR rules - the people bitching about it are the kids that were never "it" in tag because "you didn't make contact with all 5 fingers" or never got shot when playing guns because "you were aiming at the tree" its just silly - they just don't wanna play by someone elses rules.

Originally posted by epitaxial

Scalable dungeons would not be difficult to implement.   Just scale them depending upon how many people are in the group.  Rather than have 5/10/25 - scale it as such [dps output of mobs would also scale]:

5-9 - 5 man [typical 5 man loot drops]

10-19 - 10 man [better loot drops]

25 - no change [high end loot drops]

 

That is not scaling, that is a static change. Scaling applies to the direct strength/amount of mobs per person added/removed. Six players has its own particular level of difficulty as does seven players, eight players etc... True scaling involves extremely difficult and tedious processes to achieve correct mob scaling versus players and added loot drops to reflect said difficulty. True scaling is a fantastic way to allow all players to experience all content and I support the idea of true scaling but what your suggesting is naive and lacks any forethought to the actual meaning of scaling and the hurdles needed to achieve true scaling.