Fuck quest driven content.

[ghost]

If soloing is less efficient than grouping, people will play in groups.

Some will.  Most won't and will just quit the game.

[Koyasha]

If time is your metric then solo play should take longer to accomplish the same task as group play.  I'm fine with this.

I don't think players would revolt because you could obtain top tier gear without grouping.  Rather the opposite, I think they would revolt about the time it takes to obtain if you make it take an equivalent number of man-hours to obtain a piece as a soloer as it takes as a grouper/raider. 

Take an example raid and say it takes 2 hours and you down 4 bosses.  Say each boss drops 3 pieces of loot, and the raid is for 48 players.  3 pieces of loot times 4 bosses equals 12 pieces of loot total.  Let's simplify slightly and say that all pieces of loot are tokens or something, making them equally useful for every one of the 48 players on the raid.  Let's also simplify and say that the loot system is such that all players get one item before anyone gets two items.  This means that the raid needs to be run 4 times before every player has a piece of gear.  A 2 hour raid times 4 runs is 8 hours.  Times 48 for the number of players.  That's 384 man-hours.  If time is your metric, then it should take 16 days of /played time for a solo player to obtain a single piece of loot. 

Still ok with it? 

And this is without counting all the time spent learning the encounters in the first place - we came in when the raid was already on farm, for these calculations.  Count the time wiping and learning the encounters, especially if there's no pre-written strategy to follow, and that 384 man-hours per piece of loot is quickly going to increase.

[Khaldun]

Right. It would be one thing if it was a simple case of "hours spent = progression reward". But in fact, in that setting, the grouper faces a serious risk of non-completion of tasks and non-achievement of progression simply because of the complexity of maintaining a social infrastructure capable of sustaining that effort over the time necessary for all players to achieve progression. Under those circumstances, if there is any alternative where the player controls his risk exposure, he will choose it, even if the loot in the controlled solo or casual-group setting is suboptimal. Suboptimal progression is better than a sizeable risk of time spent for zero results.

[tazelbain]

If time is your metric then solo play should take longer to accomplish the same task as group play.  I'm fine with this.

I don't think players would revolt because you could obtain top tier gear without grouping.  Rather the opposite, I think they would revolt about the time it takes to obtain if you make it take an equivalent number of man-hours to obtain a piece as a soloer as it takes as a grouper/raider. 

Take an example raid and say it takes 2 hours and you down 4 bosses.  Say each boss drops 3 pieces of loot, and the raid is for 48 players.  3 pieces of loot times 4 bosses equals 12 pieces of loot total.  Let's simplify slightly and say that all pieces of loot are tokens or something, making them equally useful for every one of the 48 players on the raid.  Let's also simplify and say that the loot system is such that all players get one item before anyone gets two items.  This means that the raid needs to be run 4 times before every player has a piece of gear.  A 2 hour raid times 4 runs is 8 hours.  Times 48 for the number of players.  That's 384 man-hours.  If time is your metric, then it should take 16 days of /played time for a solo player to obtain a single piece of loot. 

Still ok with it? 

And this is without counting all the time spent learning the encounters in the first place - we came in when the raid was already on farm, for these calculations.  Count the time wiping and learning the encounters, especially if there's no pre-written strategy to follow, and that 384 man-hours per piece of loot is quickly going to increase.

2*48 = 96 man hrs
96/12 is 8 man hrs per token.

[Venkman]

If soloing is less efficient than grouping, people will play in groups.

Some will.  Most won't and will just quit the game.

This. Grouping is by nature more complicated than just soloing. Whatever feature in your game requires active active grouping will be the one fewest players in the game will partake. And I say "active" because something like a random BG match in WoW is just people banging on the BG UI to get into whatever group they can and then doing whatever they want once there. That's what I call "passive" grouping.

You can't force people to want to group. They want the opportunity to do so, but they want to choose the when and for how long. Forcing it upon them annoys them as any forced activity does (sitting/medding in EQ1, battle fatigue in SWG, etc).

This is why people solo in MMOs. It's not them actively chosing to play a crappy RPG alone. It's that they choose to play a light RPG in a world with other people they may want to interact with at some point. Diku MMOs are also a lot easier than your normal RPG, which generally is more complicated and requires a lot more thought than riding the rails through the content gates.

[Glazius]

In my experience, custom mobs created via the COH mission architect tend to just use their abilities (either copies of player abilities, or sometimes more powerful versions of player abilities) "on cooldown" whenever they're available with some rudimentary melee/ranged power selection AI. This, combined with uneven power scaling, also means that some powersets are absolutely devastating on custom mobs; finding out which ones these are is half the fun when creating a MA arc.  

(anecdote: after testing and review feedback, I ended up changing powersets of almost all custom mobs in my arc at one point, except for 2 minions)

There are a few specific powers like Unstoppable where the AI "knows how to handle it" and pops it at low health. But most of 'em just come out whenever.

I'd like the ability to do a little more AI scripting, like firing off specific powers at low health or even on death -- or get a little more control over specific spawn points and suchlike. I wonder how much they're going to throw at the MA during/after Going Rogue.

[Nebu]

Still ok with it? 

Does grouping have to be more efficient in a linear fashion?  That makes almost no sense.  If 5 people can complete a quest in 1 hr, must we force one person to take 5x as long?  There must be a law of diminishing returns applied here.

I do agree with the risk/reward issue brought to the table though.  What my beef is that raiding or grouping should be optional playstyles.  This is not the case in today's MMO.  I think that Blizzard has made a number of leaps to close this gap with faction vendors and dailies that reward tokens, but it still remains obvious that you must overcome a certain social cockblock in order to experience the most dynamic content the game has to offer.   

[Goumindong]

2*48 = 96 man hrs
96/12 is 8 man hrs per token.

You want token/hour/person not token/hour

The answer is indeed 8*48. 2x48 achieves 12 tokens, enough for 1/4th of the people to get tokens, or 1/4th of a token per person. Equal time investment required to get 1 token per person is 384

[Rendakor]

If time is your metric then solo play should take longer to accomplish the same task as group play.  I'm fine with this.

I don't think players would revolt because you could obtain top tier gear without grouping.  Rather the opposite, I think they would revolt about the time it takes to obtain if you make it take an equivalent number of man-hours to obtain a piece as a soloer as it takes as a grouper/raider. 

Take an example raid and say it takes 2 hours and you down 4 bosses.  Say each boss drops 3 pieces of loot, and the raid is for 48 players.  3 pieces of loot times 4 bosses equals 12 pieces of loot total.  Let's simplify slightly and say that all pieces of loot are tokens or something, making them equally useful for every one of the 48 players on the raid.  Let's also simplify and say that the loot system is such that all players get one item before anyone gets two items.  This means that the raid needs to be run 4 times before every player has a piece of gear.  A 2 hour raid times 4 runs is 8 hours.  Times 48 for the number of players.  That's 384 man-hours.  If time is your metric, then it should take 16 days of /played time for a solo player to obtain a single piece of loot. 

Still ok with it? 

And this is without counting all the time spent learning the encounters in the first place - we came in when the raid was already on farm, for these calculations.  Count the time wiping and learning the encounters, especially if there's no pre-written strategy to follow, and that 384 man-hours per piece of loot is quickly going to increase.

This is really fucking stupid. Where did you come up with the idea that the solo player needs to put in the effort of all 48 raiders? Each raider plays for 8 hours to get loot, so the solo player should also play for 8 hours to get the loot. That way, players can play what is FUN rather than what has the largest carrot.


As an aside, I'm guessing you're referring to EQ1 with your 48m raids, as most modern MMOs (WoW, EQ2) have much smaller raid sizes.

[Venkman]

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.

This is why 25 people on a raid playing for four hours equals 100 hours for a solo player. That's the relative investment.

If you'd like a solo player to game the same loot for four hours of investment, then forget having raids at all. Therefore forget having the choicest gear locked behind the hardest boss in the game (at that time). Therefore design your game to withstand the assault of relatively easily-acquired awesome weapons.

Or you can just do what has already been working: Choicest gear that the 25 people shoot for after thousands of cumulative man hours invested in all tiers before that dungeon, with the rabble getting what they can from rep and badge grinds of solo and five mans.

There is nothing wrong with this. It provides adequate rewards against the investment. The endy-endest game stuff is only required for that endy-endest game. If you're not partaking in it, you only need the "best" gear for your category of play.

Any problem with this is largely emotional.

[Nebu]

Any problem with this is largely emotional.

Not when you enjoy dungeon crawls but aren't allowed entry because of your lack of schedulable free time. 

If it takes a group to run a dungeon, then allow me to buy henchlings.  Problem solved.  You can keep the raids and raid gear.  I just want to see a few dungeons without having to wait on idiots or listen to mouth breathers in vent for 4 hours. 

[tazelbain]

2*48 = 96 man hrs
96/12 is 8 man hrs per token.

You want token/hour/person not token/hour

The answer is indeed 8*48. 2x48 achieves 12 tokens, enough for 1/4th of the people to get tokens, or 1/4th of a token per person. Equal time investment required to get 1 token per person is 384

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.

[DLRiley]

It shouldn't take the single player more time to complete an activity if it is SOLOABLE. Its called scaling.... jesus its 2009, playing in groups should net 2-3x xp than solo.

[AutomaticZen]

If it takes a group to run a dungeon, then allow me to buy henchlings.  Problem solved.  You can keep the raids and raid gear.  I just want to see a few dungeons without having to wait on idiots or listen to mouth breathers in vent for 4 hours. 

This is the only reason groups get better gear.

[DLRiley]

Its funny that developers are still struggling with the group, solo, pug vs premade argument. I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for 2009.

[March]

If time is your metric then solo play should take longer to accomplish the same task as group play.  I'm fine with this.  Sadly, this will never happen because subscription retention is closely tied to the development of social bonding.  The only way to reinforce social networks are to force grouping to accomplish significant milestones within the game. 

Is it the only way?  Wow seems to have "soloized" the MMO experience, to a large extent.  You can play the whole game solo if you want, although some of the very high end content does require grouping.  You don't have to raid to enjoy Wow.  Arena is a nice point in the middle, in that you can participate with only one or two partners.  In the end, it seems to me that social bonding develops social bonding.  Make guilds easy and accessible and chat functions usable-there you will have your answer.

While I take the gist of your point, I would say that WoW has demonstrated that you can enjoy a significant Solo experience for _much_ of their game; the game still grinds to a halt at level cap with the de jure end of soloing -- there is no character progression without group content... no badges, nothing to spend money on, no craftable items to compare with group content.

To Nebu's point... I would gladly shepherd henchmen with bad AI through a dungeon before I invest in yet another guild (after what, 10-years? I'm over the thrill of virtual communities of liars, cheats and broken human beings).  The fact that I could weigh the benefit of substituting a real human for crappy computerAI should be upside, not a requirement.  Oh yeah, and get of my Lawn.

[tazelbain]

Its funny that developers are still struggling with the group, solo, pug vs premade argument. I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for 2009.

I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for a true Scotsman.

[Lantyssa]

The box comes deep-fried?

[Polysorbate80]

World of Whisky

[Endie]

Its funny that developers are still struggling with the group, solo, pug vs premade argument. I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for 2009.

I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for a true Scotsman.

Draughty.

[ghost]

Deep fried whiskey with soloable content.

It's called Alcoholism Online

[Polysorbate80]

Never solo with alcohol; the group quests are far more entertaining.

[Khaldun]

Not if it's a PUG.

[UnSub]

Not if it's a PUG.

Pulling it back vaguely on topic: not all grouping is the same. Some games require highly coordinated, large and disciplined groups to pull off the content. Others you can pull a group of strangers together and have a fair shot at success.

It's not really solo vs group. There is a whole continuum from solo to duo to small group to large group to huge group that can then also be sorted by no required abilities up to "content will kick you in the nuts unless you have Navy SEAL-levels of teamwork and discipline".

[stray]

Seems to me like any group "content" (outside of a raid.. and even there, this applies) can't really kick your ass if you just follow the tank/healer/damage formula. I think most Pugs can even figure that one out. I'm not sure what you mean by Navy seals like discipline. Sometimes a dungeon might be crammed or something, and require you to ease into the encounter a bit.. But I'd hardly call it discipline... since it's always the same game you were playing over and over 10,000 times before. Pull, tank, heal, etc.. It's too dependable to make anything challenging. Unlike many other types of games that change the rules on you from stage to stage/boss to boss.

[edit] That said.. I kind of like pugs/retarded players. It's rare that I find bad ones actually, but I sort of enjoy it when I do. It gives me the illusion that I'm playing something challenging. Swear to god/not being facetious here. For instance, new Blood Elf paladins (when BC came out) were fun. They just rushed headlong Leeroy style into everything.. Everyone ends up skirmishing, trying to fight, heal, bandage, potion at the same time.

[Koyasha]

I should note that my example was more along the lines of how ridiculous trying to base rewards purely on time spent is in the first place.  Time spent is a really bad way of gating rewards, and if you look at the way it works in games now it's not really that much based on time spent anyway.  Time is a requirement pretty much only because it takes time to present any form of challenge that feels well-paced.  It wouldn't feel anywhere near as fun to go in and have a single 15 minute fight and be done with it.  You need the trash and clearing and such - as annoying as it is when there's too much of it, having none of it wouldn't be that much fun either.

Currently the real metric is error control.  The more people there are, the higher the error tolerance usually is, while the less people there are, the lower the error tolerance.  As a general guideline, not a hard and fast rule, of course.  This has been the case ever since about the Velious Age, where error control became the main point of an MMO fight.  MMO fights in general aren't about reacting to the unexpected, because even the unexpected becomes expected after the 20th time.  Now, as long as we're using error control as a measure of difficulty, in order to make a fight as difficult for one player as it is for 48, 25, or whatever number, you need to make approximately the same number of opportunities to make an error.  That would mean making the fight very very long so that one person has as many opportunities to make an error as an entire raid does in their version of the fight.  If every 10 seconds, in a 25 person raid, each person is capable of making an error, that would mean you have to make the fight 25 times longer if you keep the same pace (error chance every 10 seconds) or increase the timing of error chances while still lengthening the fight.  Because there's no way you can throw 2.5 error chances per second at anyone.  This is all assuming 1 error = wipe, of course, which is usually not the case.  Severity of error will also play a part here, but it's harder to quantify in these back-of-the-envelope calculations.  It should be noted though, that requiring consecutive errors in order to generate a wipe makes it easier if a single person is doing it, because they can pay more attention after the first error and reduce the chances of the second.  In a large group, it's likely one person won't even know that another has made an error until they also make theirs.

And ironically we get back into time spent, only this time it's consecutive time spent since it's all in a single fight.  Because in order to make the fight for a single player as difficult, by the error control metric, as it is for a large group, you'd have to make it many times as long.

What I'm really getting at is that a new way of making fights difficult needs to be determined in order to supposedly allow soloers to get similar rewards to groupers or raiders.  Something that isn't based on error control or cat herding (which is also taken into account as part of the difficulty of the fight, I'm sure).  I'll be damned if I know what fits the bill, though.  But it would have to not only provide equal benefit and challenge to various group sizes, but also figure out some way of making it feel sticky without forcing people into interaction, otherwise there's no point in doing it at all.

[Venkman]

Any problem with this is largely emotional.

Not when you enjoy dungeon crawls but aren't allowed entry because of your lack of schedulable free time. 

If it takes a group to run a dungeon, then allow me to buy henchlings.  Problem solved.  You can keep the raids and raid gear.  I just want to see a few dungeons without having to wait on idiots or listen to mouth breathers in vent for 4 hours. 

Your solution is certainly valid (EQ2, GW), but it is still an emotional challenge. If you don't want to change your gaming preferences nor lifestyle to play the game as designed, that's a choice you're making. It's also a choice that a LOT of people are making though, hence these games devolving ever more into shared-space light RPGs with occasional mass duels.

[Ratman_tf]

[edit] That said.. I kind of like pugs/retarded players. It's rare that I find bad ones actually, but I sort of enjoy it when I do. It gives me the illusion that I'm playing something challenging. Swear to god/not being facetious here. For instance, new Blood Elf paladins (when BC came out) were fun. They just rushed headlong Leeroy style into everything.. Everyone ends up skirmishing, trying to fight, heal, bandage, potion at the same time.

Some of the funnest times I've had raiding is when things go wrong and we still pull it off. Adds when clearing trash or a boss fight that goes pear shaped. One thing I dislike about WoW raiding is how static and predictable it can be.

[stray]

Next MMO I play I'm just gonna try to form the shittiest groups possible. [edit] Err, but where there's a slight chance you can survive too.  

[UnSub]

I'm not sure what you mean by Navy seals like discipline.

I was thinking about FFXI at the time. And possibly exaggerating. But there is definite discipline involved in "if we don't do this all right the first time, the last 4 hours will have been wasted and we'll be locked out for 24 hours".

[stray]

Ah.. yeah, I had a feeling you were referring to that. I never got anywhere in that game, but I heard the group dynamic was more demanding. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, I guess.

[Stormwaltz]

I will pre-order the first mmo that is being designed for a true Scotsman.

"Not crap?"

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.

[UnsGub]

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.

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.

Getting a large group of people in one place and something done or many things done in a few hours can be very rewarding.  I am sure some guilds still stay away form spoiler sites just to have that reward of figuring out the fight.

[Nebu]

I am sure some guilds still stay away form spoiler sites just to have that reward of figuring out the fight.

If the raid is > 10 people I doubt it.  Why?  People attending will complain that the leader is an idiot even if they are in the same guild.  MMO's are all about the status quo.  I'd bet that 90%+ care only about their ability to peen wave rather than the actual fun of the game.  Why do I know this?  Because, outside of PvP, the fun in MMOs is VERY limited. 

Players want a pull at the slot machine.  If the pull happens to be a little fun, then all the better.  Darniaq hit the truth.  People raid for the loot and the ability to say that they raided X. 

[DLRiley]

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.