Fuck quest driven content.

[CassandraR]

For me I believe my ideal is a single player online game with a lobby. Give me some chat channels, an auction house and some achievements and gear to show off. Do not give me pvp, groups, or group content. Charge me a subscription and update the game with new content regularly and I would be extremely happy.

[Khaldun]

I would really like a game where group fighting was all about improvisation and unexpected or random events. PvP is not really that, because it often comes down to dealing with everyone spamming the same exploits or dumb mechanics or it's about FoTM builds pounding on each other. But I completely agree that my favorite PvE group experiences have been playing with people I know and like, having things go kind of pear-shaped for some reason and then somehow surviving anyway. Like when the rogue is the only one still up on a boss that has 5% of its health left and manages to evasion tank it down, or when an off-tank steps in quickly and picks up a mob if the MT goes down unexpectedly, that kind of thing. Where you feel some sense of thrill that something unplanned is happening that depends on quick thinking or people using a class mechanic that they're rarely called upon to employ.

I love quest content that has some feel of this as well. I used to really like City of Heroes' ambush mechanic.

[Ratman_tf]

Oh the folly of mmo's. Mmo developers should insist that players play together in indirect ways than attempting to see how many people can be shoved in the same group. Really beyond 10 people,  no raid is about the fun. Its a logistic nightmare to get more than that many players (even in your own guild), together, on vent (and making sense) and ready to go. Especially when said raid takes several hours to complete.

I realize my guild is an exception, but we do it every week. Our TOC attendance is now about 30-40, and we still manage to raid on time and have fun doing it. It helps tremendously that our guild leader and raid organizer is an old EQ vet with lots of experience doing this shit for years and years.

Anywho. I don't think raiding is the zenith of MMOG development, but I do think it gets bashed for whining's sake.

[tazelbain]

For me I believe my ideal is a single player online game with a lobby. Give me some chat channels, an auction house and some achievements and gear to show off. Do not give me pvp, groups, or group content. Charge me a subscription and update the game with new content regularly and I would be extremely happy.

I find this repulsive, but I feel this probably common.  Playing alone with others.

Current issue grouping is not if its required but make up of the groups is required.  Nothing more annoying then having to standing around because you are missing a person with the required skill set.  Some hypothetical game where any 6 players will work (with adjustments) would be ideal.  The trick I suppose is to figure out a way to do this without watering it down and make every one a tank/mage/healer.

What is groups actually had named slots and a classes ability were adjusted by which slot they in.  Leader deciding who is in what slot.  Classes are more of theme than a skill set.

Say: Tank, PrimDPS, SecDPS, PrimHeal, SecHealer, and Util.  Obviously give them cooler names.  Also adds a little strategy layer deciding who is what slot depending on encounter.

[Nebu]

The better players would rather play alone or with players of their skill level or higher.  This will always be the case unless the person is very empathetic or has a pre-existing social network that they are willing to make concessions for.  

My gaming time is valuable to me.  I don't want it squandered because someone fails to pay attention or is just plain bad at games.  This is my primary motivation for following the rule above.  I consider myself a competent and attentive player.  I expect people gaming with to be at least as competent and attentive as I am.  I don't want to waste their time either.  You don't have to be my age to know that the most valuable thing all of us have is our time.  Particularly our free time.

I play games until I exhaust the solo content or the content I can do with a good friend.  I'm accepting of this for the most part, but still get irritated that I'm forced to group just to see parts of the game that I would have otherwise enjoyed.  Perhaps I'm not alone and there will be a game made that caters to my playstyle.  As the average age of the MMO gamer increases, this possibility seems more likely.

[Ingmar]

If you're raiding, it's fun because of the loot. Only. Because these are scripted encounters you eventually memorize where the only chance of failure is whether the loot table doesn't work or you're carrying along some newbie that doesn't know the event.

Speak for yourself? The loot is nice, don't get me wrong, but I raid plenty of stuff in WoW that I can't get much (or really any before they changed the badge system) reward from. I mean when you get down to it, nobody does just about *anything* in an MMO without a carrot of some kind. Why single out raiding as "oh you people only do this for the loot"?

[Koyasha]

Because the loot from raiding has to be so much better than the loot from everything else, otherwise people don't bother.

Lots of people will do quest X, or dungeon Y, even though it's not quite as good as dungeon F.  Very few people will do a raid unless it's considerably better reward than the dungeons or quests.  This doesn't display the need for a carrot - it displays the need for a carrot big enough and tasty enough to overcome the adversity to doing this in the first place.

If raids were designed to be done 1-3 times and then never run again, then sure, people would do them for fun.  But when they're designed to be done infinity+1 times, at least until the next raid comes out, at which point you can switch to doing IT infinity+1 times, that's not really going to happen.

[Sheepherder]

Time is the sole prerequisite to everything in an MMO.  What differentiates raids and renders them unfun is the recurring time penalty (forming up, wipes, repair bills, trash pulls, consumable buffs).  People can and do live with having to form up, and having to pull trash.  Wipes, and the resulting repair bills and multiplied consumables costs causes people to ragequit.  If raids weren't a losing proposition for people who already have the gear they would in all probability be more adventuresome.

[Goumindong]

I don't get the distinction, each player in the example only spent an 8 hours doing a 2hr quest 4 times to get their token.  Making a solo player run a 30 min quest 16 times would the functional equivalent minus prep time.  The real question to me is how much you value the prep time and the other difficulties with have a 48-person raid.

If its the same, then why do the raid? Everyone who wants loot will do the smaller things that they can do whenever they want, then get together for group activities solely on whether or not that is fun. That isn't to say that that is a bad model, but it is to say the motivation to do the activity needs to not be loot.

Also consider this

If 8 hrs solo = 1 token
8 hours group = 1 token per person

After 2 hours of the group, the 12 people who have gotten a token will leave, and do solo stuff for 8 hours and have 2 tokens in 10 hours, of 5 hours per token. The other 36 need to find 12 more people for the group and risk not getting a token. At the end of the next 2 hours, the 12 that got a token leave and do solo work getting another token in 8 hours. Now they have 2 tokens in 12 hours at 6 hours/token.

This is much more an issue with pick up games than regulars, but it illustrates the point. If your model is at all focused on doing group activities for loot then they aren't going to get many people doing them. People will do solo stuff for loot and then do fun stuff together.

Then again, i think that would be an interesting model.

E.G. Lets say you have at least two types of "quests", solo quests, and group quests.

Solo quests only grant items as rewards and no XP of any kind. Group quests only grant XP and only low value consumable items/chump change in the amount expected to be used[So you don't have to do solo quests in order to have money for pots]

Players advance when they play in a group, and get better loot when they play alone.  The only exception to that is that i would add a base level of equipment that would be "gifted" to you when you went up a level.

Now you don't have to worry about solo quest takers advancing faster or slower than group quests, and you can tailor the quests to each class that is doing it so that its a fun and enjoyable experience and works with their class abilities. Now you don't have to worry about people "not getting some" or people who play more "getting ahead" of your group.

[Ingmar]

The problem, as always, with 'progress only in group' systems is that those systems are bad for new players once the main mass of players has progressed past their level. Even sidekicking type systems don't solve the issue completely as sidekicking usually requires you to at least know someone who is willing to take you on (very very rarely do you see someone take on an unknown low level sidekick in CoH in a PUG situation) and also the opportunities tend to dry up when the big mass of players hits max level.

Solo leveling, when there's any kind of 'endgame' that people are shooting for, needs to be possible simply so new players have a chance of catching up and participating.

[Lantyssa]

Because the loot from raiding has to be so much better than the loot from everything else, otherwise people don't bother.

Maybe there's a reason for that?

[tazelbain]

That's really funny.  I just did this in DDO, a quest calls iInvaders.  Each time you do the quest, each person in the group gets 2,3 or 5 tokens depending on which end-boss spawns.  25 tokens get a great item especially for healers.  It real nasty quest with lots of beholders, instana-death and negative levels.  I joined a guild group in progress farming this.  They finished getting their tokens and did it an extra time to pass all their tokens to me so I could get my item.  And this is after they were already sick to death of the quest and for some random slob.  This was quite shocking to me and didn't expect it all.

As to your example, I would structure it like

Item = 16 tokens
Solo: 30min / once a day/ 1 token
Group: 60min / once a day / 2 tokens each
4 groups: 120min / once a day / 4 tokens each

So raids can get it done faster in real time, but the man hours per token are same.  And if you get behind your guild raid you can catch up with solo and group version in addition to raid quest.

[Venkman]

Because the loot from raiding has to be so much better than the loot from everything else, otherwise people don't bother.

Maybe there's a reason for that?

Yes. And the reason is the uber carrot. If there's not always something just out of reach from most players, then players feel they are done with getting new things. And if you don't need new things to tackle new things, then it's just a boring grind at the end game.

Consider raiding can be fun without the loot.

There was a time when boss fights had to be figured out for each guild.  Raid sizes were larger then today +50, +75, +100.

Valid, but finite, and the difference between Raiding and a long series of well-run well-crafted D&D modules. Raiding can be about the adventure of figuring things out. But how long does that last before people bail for guaranteed drops?

And that's the reason why raid sizes have gotten smaller. It's cheaper to manage slot machines than it is to keep ahead of players with new D&D modules. So instead of worrying about how to deliver those modules, they lowered the barrier of entry for raids (while of course still making more of them). And it's worked well so far.

And yes, this is absolutely all just my opinion. I honestly don't know how people can raid for years. I never liked it before WoW, could only stomach it when my guild had pretty much figured out the bosses in WoW, and haven't done it since.

Edit to add: Realize that came out a bit harsh. Raiding falls in the category of "to each their own" for me, as in, not for me. But plenty of people like it apparently. I'd think it's primarily for the chance of loot, but for those who do like to figure it out, that's months of enjoyment too. So yea, just not for me.

[Sjofn]

Pretty sure the reason raid sizes are smaller is because it's something waaaaay more people like and can achieve. I never raided until there was 10 man raiding, because I didn't want to join an official RAID GUILD. That ain't fun for me.

Little raids, though, that I can do in my little casual guild? Good times. And it's not the loot, at least not for me. Otherwise I wouldn't have done Karazhan the bajillion times I did. Although I admit something I enjoy is taking someone new into a raid and hearing them be all "oh man, that's cool" at the visuals, or a fun fight, or whatever.

Not saying raiding is 100% awesome fun, and I probably wouldn't do it weekly without loot carrots for SOMEONE in the raid (I do still raid/do dungeons I wouldn't get anything out of), but I think some people put way too much emphasis in their own minds on loot as to why people do it. Of course, some people who do it put too much emphasis on the loot for why they do it, so it probably balances out. :P

[Merusk]

I've always wondered if the people who dislike raiding also abhor team sports.   That's the view I've always taken of it, and why it's fun for me.  Accomplishing things as a group that you couldn't accomplish on your own.  Yes, it's sort of a forced and contrived method of doing it, but then so are sports.  1v1 is never as much fun as team play, imo.  If there was no loot progression, I'd still do it.

Hell, it's half the reason I still enjoy running PUG 5-mans, just seeing if the team can overcome the mandatory idiot.

[Montague]

I've always wondered if the people who dislike raiding also abhor team sports.   That's the view I've always taken of it, and why it's fun for me.  Accomplishing things as a group that you couldn't accomplish on your own.  Yes, it's sort of a forced and contrived method of doing it, but then so are sports.  1v1 is never as much fun as team play, imo.  If there was no loot progression, I'd still do it.

Hell, it's half the reason I still enjoy running PUG 5-mans, just seeing if the team can overcome the mandatory idiot.

Well, as someone who doesn't like raiding picture this:

A softball team where the pitcher constantly berates the other players for the slightest mistakes in the field, but gives the female shortstop a pass because he wants to doink her. The outfielders are all pissed off because they hit the vast majority of home runs and never pass up an opportunity to share that fact, and they are secretly planning on forming their own softball team full of home-run hitters because "they're tired of being held back". Meanwhile everyone is pissed at the third baseman because he's 14 years old and his mother tends to show up and haul him out of games to do chores. The catcher is a college student but cannot speak past a 3rd grade level and talks mostly in internet memes. The second baseman is a nice guy, but he's epileptic and never fails to have seizures at a critical point in the game.

After a few games on teams like this, its not surprising that people opt to play golf instead.   

[UnSub]

My opinion, worth what you paid, is that all MMG content barring raids should be designed to be completed by a single player, and scale up based on group size. Enemy waves equal to 1 + (party size * 2). Everyone completes the quest when any member of their group does. Everyone gets an "instanced" loot pull at the end.

The tech for this either already exists, or could be designed into the next generation of games.

You've not played CoH/V then?  That's pretty much 90% of the content. The enforced team stuff are the Task Forces / Strike Forces.

[DLRiley]

Fuck quest. I want grinding to be that way. Remember a wee old game called prisontale that was grindy as fuck but when there was 300 players in an area, there was 300000000000000000 mobs to kill. Those were good times.

[Merusk]

A softball team where the pitcher constantly berates the other players for the slightest mistakes in the field, but gives the female shortstop a pass because he wants to doink her. The outfielders are all pissed off because they hit the vast majority of home runs and never pass up an opportunity to share that fact, and they are secretly planning on forming their own softball team full of home-run hitters because "they're tired of being held back". Meanwhile everyone is pissed at the third baseman because he's 14 years old and his mother tends to show up and haul him out of games to do chores. The catcher is a college student but cannot speak past a 3rd grade level and talks mostly in internet memes. The second baseman is a nice guy, but he's epileptic and never fails to have seizures at a critical point in the game.   

Yeah, see, you think you're making a clever analogy but that IS your average softball team of random people.   Fuck, that's almost my office, just add 5 years to the 3rd baseman's age.  

Perhaps you should find a team of like minded individuals, or just admit you don't like softball and stop bitching about those guys while you're playing golf.

[DLRiley]

You have every right to bitch moan and complain if you have to play softball. Which in some social settings were having a softball team is a given it is almost mandatory because you just don't want to be that guy who is "too good for softabll". The whole "find like minded individuals" is the primary reason why people don't play softball. It may sound immature to complain about shitty softball teams when you're playing golf but the only reason why softball would be brought up is if someone as insisting you play softball.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The joy of team play with people who are most or all as skilled as you also requires that most or all of them take the game as seriously as you do.   Having one screw-up along who at least plays skillfully and fills a void in the team, or shepherding along a less-skilled player as they learn to up their game to the next level is usually doable.  It gets exponentially harder and less fun with more than one though.

I find it ironic that back in the day, WoW introduced max level content for 5- and 10-man groups as a dramatic alternative to raiding.  Now it seems some people are calling that raiding as well?

But back to the team sport analogy, barring American football, how many sports actually field teams of 30 or 40 people?  And does any sport actually have more than 12 or so playing at a time?

[UnSub]

Australian Rules Football is 18 a side.

Rugby Union is 15 a side.

[Nebu]

Michael Jordan isn't going to play a serious game of basketball on the same court with a kindergartener just because he answered an LFG queue.  There are numerous filters in sport that stratify skill levels such that competition occurs between/among players with some minimum competency level.  Sport comparisons would actually be more fitting analogies to arena matches, particularly if they streamlined the brackets to be based more on player skill than gear or class gimic builds. 
 

[tazelbain]

And you could design game were you make a character, one-shot god, and spend eternity completing how awesome you are. So what?  This basic issue is that players go through content like locust and we are discussing how slow them down without pissing them off. Sure you can Monty Hall the game, but you haven't solved a thing.  

Do you think rats discuss what is optimum rate to dispense cheese to motivate them to run an infinity series of mazes?

[Sjofn]

You don't have to play softball, though. You can play basketball instead. You won't get an awesome new softball glove if you play basketball, but who cares if you're not ever going to PLAY softball?

Also, you don't have to team up with morons you don't like. I always raid with morons I DO like.  


Edit:

I find it ironic that back in the day, WoW introduced max level content for 5- and 10-man groups as a dramatic alternative to raiding.  Now it seems some people are calling that raiding as well?

Ten man is raiding. Blizzard considers it such. Five mans are not, and Blizzard is getting better and better at making that a satisfying progression alternative. Smaller than that, though, you're mostly out of luck unless you like to PvP.

[Sheepherder]

There are numerous filters in sport that stratify skill levels such that competition occurs between/among players with some minimum competency level.

No thank you, my cock still hurts from the punching it got from Drakkisath four years ago.

Bastard still hasn't dropped my deflector.

[WindupAtheist]

I'll post more at a better time of day, but for now I'll just say that a shiny modern version of UO would make a lot more of you people happy than you think. Or to put it in a way that might be a bit more relatable for some people, imagine Diablo 2 with a real MMO built around it. All characters can solo everything but all play differently. People play in small groups because they want to, not because it's specifically required to access content. Groups larger than half a dozen or so don't exist, because why would you want them to?

[Khaldun]

To go back to the softball analogy, which is a good one:

If that softball team is your office, then it's fun (to the extent to which you like the people you work with). Because it's a social event with people you know and like, and all the weird interpersonal stuff is just life as you live it. When MMO groups are the equivalent of bowling night with familiar people, they're fine, whatever it is that you're doing. If you're competitive, maybe you push the group towards being better. Some neighborhood bowling leagues are pretty damn good, after all.

If that softball team is the result of showing up in a field when you say, "I like softball, I'd like to play some" and having a RNG assign you randomly to a group of eight other people who've been chosen from 500 who showed up at the same field at the same time, it's something else entirely. Now you have no reason to think warmly about the kid or the meme-spouting catcher or to roll your eyes about the lustful pitcher: all you want to do is finish the fucking game and get the hell away from these people that you don't know--and so there's no fun involved along the way. Now if that softball game is only ten minutes long and then you get to shuffle in with a different group of eight players, maybe you'll hit on some fun groups along the way. If that game is two hours long, it's a different matter.

[Numtini]

I've always wondered if the people who dislike raiding also abhor team sports

Love raiding. Hate team sports.

[Sheepherder]

I'll post more at a better time of day, but for now I'll just say that a shiny modern version of UO would make a lot more of you people happy than you think.

I'm actually pretty self-aware of how much I'd like to try something UO-ish.

[Montague]

To go back to the softball analogy, which is a good one:

If that softball team is your office, then it's fun (to the extent to which you like the people you work with). Because it's a social event with people you know and like, and all the weird interpersonal stuff is just life as you live it. When MMO groups are the equivalent of bowling night with familiar people, they're fine, whatever it is that you're doing. If you're competitive, maybe you push the group towards being better. Some neighborhood bowling leagues are pretty damn good, after all.

If that softball team is the result of showing up in a field when you say, "I like softball, I'd like to play some" and having a RNG assign you randomly to a group of eight other people who've been chosen from 500 who showed up at the same field at the same time, it's something else entirely. Now you have no reason to think warmly about the kid or the meme-spouting catcher or to roll your eyes about the lustful pitcher: all you want to do is finish the fucking game and get the hell away from these people that you don't know--and so there's no fun involved along the way. Now if that softball game is only ten minutes long and then you get to shuffle in with a different group of eight players, maybe you'll hit on some fun groups along the way. If that game is two hours long, it's a different matter.

Exactly. I'm not saying that all raiders are a bunch of maladjusted retards. My Kara/ZA/Naxx groups were all with people I liked hanging out with. When things are going smoothly raiding is rather fun, and when things aren't going smoothly being with people you know and like in the first place helps with the frustration and the tedium.

The thing is though it took me literally years to find that group of people to raid with that didn't make me want to stab my eyes out. Now if I want to resub back to WoW and pick up raiding with those folks again, that's great, but the thought of going to another game and having to wade through all the crappy, dysfunctional groups to find other people I'd actually want to raid with doesn't fill me with happy.

[Lantyssa]

I like doing things with friends.  I'm terrified of strangers, even virtual ones.  I suck at sports and dislike most competition but dig on cooperative ventures.

[Draegan]

I like team sports.
I like online team sports.
I like raiding.. sometimes.

I love raiding but I hate the time commitment of X days per week or fitting into an exact schedule.  Especially living with my girlfriend.

None of my real life friends play video games anymore so I have to rely on virtual friends that come and go.  I'd probably be playing WOW still if I had a solid anchor of people playing.  I did once, but they all mostly sucked at the game however they were good people and fun to hang out with.

Anyway, raiding is fun, regardless of your personal motivation.  You just have to find the right circumstances.  There is still to much stigma placed on "raiding" in the eyes of casual/solo/whatever players.  Shouldn't be though.

[Sjofn]

Well, part of the reason casual players loathe raiding is because raiders were such giant cockgobbling assholes about it.

[Slyfeind]

These are good points. I think when a lot of people say they don't like forced groups, they really mean they don't like forced groups with people they don't want to group with. I mean like assholes, ex-boyfriends, people who speak a completely different language, their mother-in-law, griefers, hackers, child molesters, etc.

If you think solo play doesn't belong in MMOs, you need to play every day only between 3 AM and 3:45 AM, on a Chinese server (unless you speak Chinese, in which case French or some other language you don't know). And if you cannot find a group in the first 15 seconds, you must log off and try again tomorrow.