Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Whitebeards

So what i am saying is that anyone else having this problem where they are finding it harder and harder to stick to one MMO? not because you are not enjoying it but because you have too many MMOS to choose and play from?

I'm having that same experience, but I wouldn't describe it as a problem. I'm enjoying it.

Originally posted by Axehilt

In some ways this actually broadens my ability to play the games I want.  With subscription MMOs I was always sort of obligated to play the one I was subscribed to and not spend time in others. Although I suppose I'm still doing that with a WOW subscription, I'm back dabbling in SWTOR and GW2 recently and if either of those had been full subscription games I would've stayed away most likely.

It's overall a good thing.  When players are able to freely play whatever game they want without being locked into a subscription, then the best games will end up having more players.

Now all someone needs to do is release a game with better grouping gameplay than WOW.  At some point someone will have to do it purely by random chance, right?

These two posts sum it up for me.  I'm enjoying it and I'm starting to play the stuff I really want to.

It's been a weird transition for me because for so many years I've been conditioned to play because I'm paying.  Now I'm finally starting to focus on stuff I want to do.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

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Originally posted by Torvaldr
Let people play how they like and then reward them for doing it right. Encourage people to experiment and take risks.  Reward success and cleverness and don't reward failure, but when players do fail, help guide them towards success.

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You had me until the "doing it right" part. What do you mean? Is one way better than another way of playing? Is there a "right way" of playing the game?

Overall, I like what you said in that post.

No, one way of playing isn't better.  I was using that as a metaphor for success.  If you go into content with any group size (that could be solo or larger) and succeed with your goals then you're doing it right.  It mostly just means being able to handle the content.  It does not mean tackling the content in a specific manner or having a set number of people to do it.  Basically it means, did I kill the monsters or did they kill me, did I enchant the item or did it fail, and similar such stuff.  It could really apply to anything you want to do in the game that you might find challenging.

I had in mind Lineage public dungeons and difficult overland areas when I wrote that.  Some were very dangerous solo or even in a small group.  If I could go into the difficult area (alone or in a group) and come out with goals accomplished then I did it right.  In that game my goals were often just trying to farm a specific item and not dying while doing it or seeing if I could take down the boss spawn before someone else arrived and I had to compete for it.

Lineage discouraged risk taking due to the very heavy death penalty.  I would rather see risk taking encouraged, but failure not rewarded.  That doesn't mean that failure should mean drastic punishment either, but rather success (whatever that means for a given situation) rewarded in such a manner that the risk is worth it.

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Torvaldr

This is why I think your envisioned paradigm is limiting and ultimately fails.  In early MMOs grouping always meant fewer rewards because you had to split them.  It meant less xp per person per kill because you had to split it.  That was the tradeoff for easier safer gameplay.  If you engaged content with fewer people (or solo) then you go greater rewards for greater risk.  It is the foundational principle of risk versus rewards.

Fast forward through the complaints about grinding, repetition, griefing, and rare drops/boss mobs (those were all nerfed or removed) and you have a system where the risk is lower and rewards are higher.  Well that can't go on or gamers complain about welfare epics.  So devs create an artificially more difficult content stream (group/raid) and then bump up the rewards.  They must nerf overland content and rewards or people won't go through the more difficult channels to get the better rewards.

Note that historically no one ever complained that there wasn't "group" content.  Most of us gaming back then didn't really fathom that.  That was a developer initiated concept to try and solve the other complaints (grind, fairness, etc).

So of course your group content has nerfed xp.  It's not "now the groupers get penalized".  It's always been that way because grouping stuff started out as the faceroll tactic.  Devs created "groupers" and "soloers" by the very one dimensional answer they use to address some design flaws.

Nothing about the system is right because the evolution of the design is absolutely perverted from its original incarnation at this point.  The fact that you're in the frustrating position where you feel like your preferred method of approaching content is unrewarding illustrates this.  Believe it or not there are soloers who feel the exact same as you for the very same reasons, only they enjoy playing differently.

People want to progress and they want to play how they like.  If we remove the artificial community designations (like soloer, grouper, raider) created by overly simple design tropes then we can start solving the problem.  Let people play how they like and then reward them for doing it right. Encourage people to experiment and take risks.  Reward success and cleverness and don't reward failure, but when players do fail, help guide them towards success.

More ad hominem bs...

Im not telling you how to play, its you telling me how to play. All I am doing is trying to keep soloers from changing every single MMO that comes along into a solo mmo.

You guys do it every time, fill up the forums with your whining.

Instead of whining on forums and bashing players who actually like other people, why don't you focus all that anger on the game devs.

Maybe one day we will get a game that is fully scaleable, and all content can be enjoyed by groups and soloers without being penalized.

Ad hominem  - you use that word a lot.  I don't think it means what you think it does.  Ripping your premise to shreds is not the same as belittling or insulting you in an attempt to undermine your argument.  I never actually commented about your character in my post.

On the other hand calling people who disagree with you whiners is, along with the other logic foibles you spewed out there.

We've already had games that scaled.  That was my point.  Most of the early games, except EQ did scale like this.  Once upon a time there was grouping, but no content explicitly labeled group.  People grouped for other reasons than the content said, you must have Jack, Jill, and Corky.

I'll say the same thing I do in the million threads where people ask the same question over and over.

I'm not renting my games anymore, the rest is just specifics.

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Actualy, I'm not in favor of the "contrived group instance" sort of gameplay....or even formaly established game groups. I'm more of the COOPERATIVE style of play, player.....much like you'd find in some MUDS or in FPS games. Those are also not solo-freindly designs because you are VERY dependant upon assistance from other players for success.....whether it's getting help to recover a corpse or get rezzed or take down a difficult opponent or simply need a variety of different skills for a particular objective some of which you don't possess yourself. Or get rolled over in a PvP battle (or even PvE one) because you aren't coordinating with other freindlies.

I think you'll find a lot of the people who like solo play also like cooperative gameplay, as well. UO, AC, Puzzle Pirates, EVE... in most of the older MMOs you'll find that many of their players enjoy solo play, enjoy cooperative play and team efforts even more, but generally dislike contrived group content.

I think your spitting hairs here...lol

What's the difference between cooperative play and group play???

If you mean coorperative play like GW2, then its not really a problem, because the dungeons are group play, only the quests are co-oped. Leaving soloers able to solo all the quests without be bothered, and groupers can do the dungeons, and quests too.

There is no "contrived group content", its called multiplayer mmo mechanics and millions of gamers love it!

Group content most certainly is contrived.  Whenever you enter group content areas, especially instances, the entire encounter is preconceived.  Queue for a dungeon as a role (right there we're entering the realm of contrived because someone has in mind what the party composition and builds should be) and play through it, the entire experience is preconceived and expected to be executed along a fairly narrow number of options.

Contrived content doesn't just apply to group.  It applies to solo, small group, large group, raid sized, or anything else where the scope is already planned out.  This is one of the themepark design flaws.

The premise you operate under, that all mmos are designed this way, is false.  Not all mmos have been designed this way.  Most every MMO since EQ has been designed this way, and all the very popular MMOs work this way, now.  So I guess you would naturally assume that it was always this way, but that's not true.  It has become the norm unfortunately.

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

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Originally posted by Adalwulff
I'm saying multiplayer MMOs were designed with groups in mind, and every time they cater to you soloers, the group loses content. This is inevitable when you make content easier for soloers.

 

The holy trinity, the economy, the class balancing and so much more, all designed with groups in mind.

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So, can a player group for solo content?

 

How does "solo content" deny group play? Did I miss something here?

 

That's the issue, we don't need a lot of solo content in multiplayer mmos, but of course some is good, for crafting, or quest driven stuff, and if you want to group for it and lose exp and loot, that would be your right.

If a game dev wanted to spend the time and make a ton of content for both soloers and groupers, then great, no problem, but they don't because that would take way too long, and they would never get all their investment back.

So, when the devs start caving in to soloers and their incessant whining, and make changes to group content, thus making them too easy for groups, it happened in WoW in the early years. All quests and dungeons got revamped just for the soloers, leaving only Raids for group content.

Now the groupers get penalized in a multiplayer mmo, so a few players can go it alone. You will never convince me that is right, or fair, or in anyway valid.

This is why I think your envisioned paradigm is limiting and ultimately fails.  In early MMOs grouping always meant fewer rewards because you had to split them.  It meant less xp per person per kill because you had to split it.  That was the tradeoff for easier safer gameplay.  If you engaged content with fewer people (or solo) then you go greater rewards for greater risk.  It is the foundational principle of risk versus rewards.

Fast forward through the complaints about grinding, repetition, griefing, and rare drops/boss mobs (those were all nerfed or removed) and you have a system where the risk is lower and rewards are higher.  Well that can't go on or gamers complain about welfare epics.  So devs create an artificially more difficult content stream (group/raid) and then bump up the rewards.  They must nerf overland content and rewards or people won't go through the more difficult channels to get the better rewards.

Note that historically no one ever complained that there wasn't "group" content.  Most of us gaming back then didn't really fathom that.  That was a developer initiated concept to try and solve the other complaints (grind, fairness, etc).

So of course your group content has nerfed xp.  It's not "now the groupers get penalized".  It's always been that way because grouping stuff started out as the faceroll tactic.  Devs created "groupers" and "soloers" by the very one dimensional answer they use to address some design flaws.

Nothing about the system is right because the evolution of the design is absolutely perverted from its original incarnation at this point.  The fact that you're in the frustrating position where you feel like your preferred method of approaching content is unrewarding illustrates this.  Believe it or not there are soloers who feel the exact same as you for the very same reasons, only they enjoy playing differently.

People want to progress and they want to play how they like.  If we remove the artificial community designations (like soloer, grouper, raider) created by overly simple design tropes then we can start solving the problem.  Let people play how they like and then reward them for doing it right. Encourage people to experiment and take risks.  Reward success and cleverness and don't reward failure, but when players do fail, help guide them towards success.

Originally posted by Whitebeards

Originally posted by Nitth

Originally posted by PsyMike3d
After the F2P announcement , the servers are getting alive again and it is still, with monthly subcription model! 

At last Trion!

took you a while....

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 f2p does not solve the reason why people left in the first place...

People leave because they just have disdain for paying monthly subs to get acces to the game. You can make the best MMO in the world and people would still leave if that MMO follows a P2P model. That is how people feel these days.

That says it nicely.  I don't mind subscribing like I did when Tera went F2P because when I drop the sub I can keep on playing.  If I feel like powerleveling I'll sub for a month or two off an on.  The rest of the time I'll buy stuff in the cash shop.

Subs aren't bad, gating my access exclusively through the sub is bad, for me.

Originally posted by H3deon

Originally posted by Jimmydean
They will drop us into an open world with resources and monsters. Nothing else. Have at it.

well...and story brick NPCs and raids (yes Smed have already confirmed raids ; )

Scripted raiding and the sort of progression built into that design mechanic is nearly the antithesis of sandbox design elements.  I wonder how they plan on presenting the two mechanics in the same world.  That is interesting.

Originally posted by WellzyC

When they say sandbox I hope they mean it in the traditional sense of the word, and not stupid content creators. Player created story lines and quests are not any more fun than dev created story and quests.

I just want a sandbox in a virtual world...

The problem with sandbox is that it is a very loosely defined concept.  What do you mean when you envision mmo sandbox?  Do you mean outright builder like the popular voxel builders?  Do you mean the ability to affect the world in a lasting fashion, and if so what does that entail?

People only heard the word "sandbox" when SoE talked about EQN.  What they said in every quote I've read is "sandbox style".  That's a huge difference.

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Originally posted by Torvaldr

You're right some games are designed this way.  Games weren't always designed with this in mind (Lineage, Asheron's Call, UO) and some people would like a return to that philosophy.

Grouper's operate under the premise that all mmo gameplay should be the contrived group instance sort of design (WoW, EQ2, LotRO, etc.).

Even in a game with contrived group mechanics it's not so much that there isn't room for solo or small group progression, but that they fear people will opt for the non-group option for advancement.  This is probably true because a reasonable portion of people do group content because they want to advance, not because that is their choice in gameplay.

Actualy, I'm not in favor of the "contrived group instance" sort of gameplay....or even formaly established game groups. I'm more of the COOPERATIVE style of play, player.....much like you'd find in some MUDS or in FPS games. Those are also not solo-freindly designs because you are VERY dependant upon assistance from other players for success.....whether it's getting help to recover a corpse or get rezzed or take down a difficult opponent or simply need a variety of different skills for a particular objective some of which you don't possess yourself. Or get rolled over in a PvP battle (or even PvE one) because you aren't coordinating with other freindlies.

That's another style of play that most "soloers" seem to find objectionable.

Edit: When I stopped playing LOTRO it had shifted from a nice balance of group, small group and solo based play (when it origionaly released) to almost entirely solo centric based play.

I do like cooperative play most.  In the games I've played that have a more cooperative design I've found it's easy to play solo or with any group size.  What I like most about that style is they aren't typically trinity based so you don't need a certain group composition to enjoy them.

Mostly I play duo or sometimes in a trio.  I do solo a lot in between that, but I don't really have a preference one way or another.  I've just run up against a wall where gathering a precise number of people that must contain a specific composition is becoming boring.

In Lineage if I wanted to go into a dungeon alone or meet someone there, I could.  If I wanted to solo or duo that dungeon or difficult area I could, but I would often go with 3 or 4 other people for safety because it just made things faster and easier.  In a world with death penalties, that was a huge motivation.

The contrived part is when content is specifically labeled for "X" (where x is solo, group, raid, small group, blah blah).  Just give me content and let me deal with it how I want to.  I don't really expect designers to accommodate that anymore, but I do miss it.  I just wish no matter what content I did engage in that it counted towards the same progress.  I really hate that one content style has one progression path and another has a nearly unrelated progression path.  Maybe the genre will evolve past this paradigm, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hmm, consoles don't look that appealing to me this time around.  The WiiU hardware sucks by comparison and for the price.  I don't see anything that makes me want to run out and dump around $500 on a PS4 or an Xbox One.

I'll end up passing on all three for now and just stick to PC gaming until the console offering improves.

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

No one wants to "force" anyone to play a game in a way they don't enjoy (as if that were possible with video games) but what soloers often don't realize is that in order to accomodate thier prefered play style you have to change the fundemental mechanics of the game in such a way that it invalidates many of the things that groupers like and find fun about thier own play styles.

Think about baseball or football, for example. In order to make those "solo freindly" you'd have to change the basic rule-sets of the games an eliminate many of the things that people enjoy about those games. You probably wouldn't be able to have fielding or base-running in baseball....you certainly wouldn't be stealing bases or making double plays. In football your probably wouldn't be able to do passing or blocking or run different formations.

While people who enjoy cooperative play or team or group based games....don't want to "force" anyone to do something that they don't enjoy....much of what we find fun isn't actualy compatible with going solo. It's that simple.....so unless a game can encorporate entirely different rulesets under the same play-space. "Solo freindly" just isn't going to work well in the type of games we'd enjoy to play.

You're right some games are designed this way.  Games weren't always designed with this in mind (Lineage, Asheron's Call, UO) and some people would like a return to that philosophy.

Grouper's operate under the premise that all mmo gameplay should be the contrived group instance sort of design (WoW, EQ2, LotRO, etc.).

Even in a game with contrived group mechanics it's not so much that there isn't room for solo or small group progression, but that they fear people will opt for the non-group option for advancement.  This is probably true because a reasonable portion of people do group content because they want to advance, not because that is their choice in gameplay.

Originally posted by VassagoMael
The exploit was always in the game, since closed beta at least. The roll back only covered the time after which it was posted on the forums and it was being done on a massive scale. People have been using it and breaking the game economy ever since the final wipe.

According to a forum post in one of the stickied threads they are dealing with the rest individually, whatever that means.

Originally posted by anwar

Originally posted by lizardbones

Wow. They are being pretty free with the content. I wonder how quickly we can get someone complaining about F2P ruining the industry in this thread.

 

Did I win?  The problem with F2P is simply that with subscription models, devs were only concerned with making a game fun enough so everyone would keep playing, when you have a store, those devs are constantly worried about how to sell you stuff so if you buy them you have fun. 

It changes the entire feeling of a game.  If you DON'T buy anything you quit because of all the grind and monotony, if you DO buy stuff you feel like a fool.  Games tend to live shorter now and they have to go to f2p quicker and they spend less on initial development.

F2P is a lose-lose proposition.

What sort of made up world are you coming from?  Devs are concerned with making you pay money.  That is where time sinks, grinds (just more time sinks really), dungeon/raid lockouts, and boss timers came from.

Remember Lineage, UO, and EQ?  You know the godfathers of grind and monotony?  They weren't f2p.  The grind and monotony came from impatient players wanting instant gratification.  It was just game play but became grind because people didn't like progressing so slowly.

I don't know why games go f2p now and I seriously doubt anyone knows exactly why, but I know that because of my long term experience I don't want to rent my game access anymore.  No game, to me, is worth renting for $200 per year.  I don't mind spending $100, $200, or more on a game per year, but I don't want to have to pay more just to access the stuff I've already paid for.

It's a win for me because unless they make a fun game, I'm not paying them a dime.  If they make a fun game then I'll pay and support them just like any other business.

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by allendale5

"We’re also overwhelmed by your positive support and patience during the downtime"

 

looks like those everything-is-peachy and positive-spin-on-everything press release writers never get a break.  I'm pretty sure that they were inundated with positive feedback and player love during this crisis.  

What would you have rather they said? You are a bunch of tossers and most of you exploited this crap, but here have this free item pack to shut you up? No company is going to say that. Just like Starbucks will apologise for the quality of your coffee if you complain and thank you for your feedback, even though its clear that you are just a twat.

Hahaha.  That pretty much sums it up.  Not a lot in there that excites me, but then again what would they give me and everyone else that wouldn't totally feck up the game?

I do hope that they continue to monitor accounts for people who laundered a bunch of stuff.  I really hope those people lose their accounts.

In a month or two it won't likely matter anyway.  There will be some other drama to latch our indignation onto.  Maybe it will be Rift's F2P, or something Wildstar has done, or maybe Jacobs will make an outlandish poke at the industry.  Rage will happen I tell you, rage!

I'm glad the NDA is lifted.  So far I really like the game.  It's an action oriented combat style and I found the classes fun.

I'm not sure how the cash shop is going to be at this point, but it seems mostly in line with SoE's style in EQ2 only without the sub option:  Lots of little fees to unlock stuff, but nothing that seemed outrageous.

There is a lot of translation work left and some class balancing issues.  They keep messing around with mobility for the ranger, as an example, which makes it hard to get a feel for whether I'll like the class or not.  The oracle is a fun melee/magic hybrid that is a lot of fun.

Some of the other stuff in limbo that makes me feel uncertain is pvp tied to housing and large guilds spawn camping rare dragons.  Neither of those will go over well so I'm not sure why they're choosing those design decisions.

It's definitely worth the download to check out though.

Originally posted by Talonsin

LOL, PWE will punish you.  I had a good laugh at that one.

Actually your credit card service or PayPal may punish you.  PWE isn't the only one that loses money when you do a chargeback.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Baleout
All I want is a level playing field to start this game on but wont be getting that it looks like.

How in the world can you offer a level playing field in a game that allows you to buy currency with RL cash?

For that matter how can any game that uses time as a currency offer a level playing field.  There is no such thing as a level playing field.  If I join EVE tomorrow as a total newbie, how level is my playing field, not only that but it would take me both time and money to try and catch up.