Originally posted by Sovrath
I think you are pretty much spot on. though I would disagree in that there probably are people who eat and watch t.v. in a group. Some call them familes ; )
Ah, yes! But I think we both agree that they can't quite be compared to guild members, and certainly not PUG's. And for those of you who have a family full of gamers, you're truly blessed! Unless you don't have enough PC's, that is... :P
But I've never met a soloer who begrudged others their choice to group or who didn't even like to group up on occasion with like-mined people.
My thought is that some people require the idea of an opposition in order to strengthen their argument which is why some people believe that soloers are against people who group. It's just a ridiculous notion.
Agreed. Though they(groupies) are half right. Like I said, solo(family as an exception) is a default state of being, while grouped is an exceptional/occasional state of being in real life, and thus, that's how many people game. As devs get more and more privvy to this psychological fact, games will be more more solo friendly, and particularly, will shun forced grouping. A lack of forced grouping will naturally make grouping less common. So in that, they are somewhat correct. Problem is, people don't like to be FORCED to do anything.
However, one thing that I believe is correct is that there are players who will moan and complain when the game is entirely not soloable. Not that one can't get to cap solo but that there is a place they can't get to solo or that there are solo quests that offer better rewards.
Rare, but true. And in my experience these sorts of declarations are usually a response to an attack from a groupie. Not so much a call for all group content to be solo content. It's after the discussion gets heated that the polarization starts occuring, and both sides go to extremes.
I think it's ok to have group quests and group quest chains that offer good rewards. And that there should be areas that have only group quests.
Agreed. Though, apparently for some, that isn't enough. AoC's epic versions of their playfields was mentioned and immediately shot down by the groupies. And that's not even counting AoC's group content in their "solo" playfields.
Part of the problem is with the developers because in my experience, more often than not, they will have a quest chain that one can solo to a point then suddenly it's all about grouping only to go back to soloing again.
While it might make for more compelling storytelling in that you have to gather others for particular mission, it does tend to ruin both solo and group players' experience.
for example, the player who is a solo player who suddenly needs a group to continue will most likely drop the quest until such time he can get into one easily or at a time when he can spend undivided attention to the group. He might even drop the quest completely, become discouraged that he can't continue and leave the game. The obvious answer would be "just get a group" but grouping (and grouping well) sometimes requires a lot of time (just going to say it, tomb of elendil: LOTRO, among others) or that you don't leave the keyboard because your kid needs you or dinner is burning or you have to take a shower (which happened in a group I was in. Luckily it was before we started but we were all waiting on that individual)
Yep. LotRO bugs me too in that respect. As a result, I have epic quests from as early as lvl 35 for my lvl 65 toon. Tried last week, got wiped once and the leader had to bail... waited for 45 minutes for a replacement player to finish something else. By then, most of the group had to leave. Mission aborted.
Tomb of Elendil I just flat out dropped after several wipes at the end.
I think the best solution for this was what WoW did; open these instances up to ALL servers. If LotRO could do that, that would solve alot of problems.
And sometimes people just aren't comfortable with meeting strangers in such an abrupt fashion and will avoid the grouping aspect until they can do it on their terms. Many players tend to forget that as people we are social in different ways.
Well, IMO, it's the real life equivelent of meeting somebody on a bus who is headed to the same store and "grouping" with them. Most of us would never do that unless we were forced to.
conversely, it is unfair to the grouper to go back and forth between solo and group in an area or quest chain becuase what ends up happening is that players will group for the one or two quests and then drop. Gone are the days when players will get a group for an entire evening. Now it's one or two things and then it breaks up. This is very unfair to players who want their mmo's to be group experiences.
The solution would be to either separate quest chains and areas to group and solo and give different but comparable rewards or allow each quest to be played differently between group and solo and to give different rewards depending on which option was picked.
Yep! And making grouping as quick and easy as possible..
As we've seen, if it's not advantageous, even group players won't group. Too often I've seen group players turn down the group optioins because the xp is cut a bit. Personally when I group I cease caring about xp and it's more about the experience. Which I think is hilarious as groupers are always touting that it's the experience of a group that makes these games and yet they will opt out if the xp is not quite the same.
Most modern games I've played give XP bonuses for groups, already. While you still get less XP per mob, you can mow through them much quicker. In a group that can stick together, I'd had far faster advancement than anytime I solo. In LotRO, in CoX, in pre-cu SWG... In those games, I found the benefits of grouping to be perfectly satisfactory. I think the benefits are there, I just think that groupies don't recognize soloing as the default state; most don't solo because it has equal rewards to grouping, it doesn't. They just solo because that's the way they do things IRL. Groupies, however, just see grouping occur less and less, and assume its the rewards(or their perceived lack thereof) to be the problem.
Still, (wow, this got long!) it's unfair to players who always group to always suffer xp penalties for grouping because though they are gettng the game play they want, to labor with less than the optimum xp rewards will just cause them to become discouraged.
I agree, but as I stated above, most games I've played have taken measures to make grouping more rewarding for XP. Particularly CoX. If you're looking to level quickly, full teams grinding missions is ALWAYS the way to go. Massive amounts of mobs in a private instance= xp gold...
