Questing kills grouping

[Vllad]

While playing Champions of all people Vanna brought up the obvious fact that unless all members have the same quest their is no reason to group with people. I started to think she was actually correct. Champions is the ultimate end result of all of the past games quest systems.

If you aren't on the same quest whats the point of hanging out with other people?

Games should have some form of sharing model and receive some form of bonuses even if they are doing a quest that has previously been completed.

At the very least if you have map tags that list where quest are you should be able to share them with your group mates.

The above is why having an active world vs a static one is just that much more important.


Vllad

[Kakarat]

That is where you can look at Warhammer and say. Okay, most of the quests in your book can be solo'd, where their public quest system requires some sort of group.

The dwarf/orc teir were the best for these public quests. You actually had RVR to deal with while doing them.

[Slamz]

This is exactly the point I was trying to make with my One Rule topic.

It's critically important than an MMORPG be designed in such a way that you can always play with your friends.

You shouldn't have to "synch up" for quests.
You shouldn't have to have some highly specific number of players available (too few and you can't do the thing, too many and some of them have to sit out).
You shouldn't have to just shrug and do your own thing because the level gap is too big between you.

This is something I like about EVE, Planetside and WW2O. They're the only MMOs I know of that let you just log in and start playing without regard to who's on what step of which quest or how full the group is, etc.


Champions is going to die a lot faster than it should have because I really can't log in and group with anyone. I mean I *can* but we won't be on the same quests. Neither of us will want to go back and redo quests we already did (especially if we already did them 3 times while helping other people catch up...) We can log in and PvP together but sadly (and as expected), Champions doesn't have the most in-depth PvP.

The whole MMORPG quest model really needs to be set on fire and thrown in the pit.


Champions is still a fun game and I'm still enjoying it but it is turning out to be exactly what I expected: a fun single player game where sometimes you can play with or against other people, but for the most part it's just a single player superhero game.

[Hoofhurr]

I'm still of the opinion that this is not the game's fault. Synchronisity is in the hands of the players. Don't play the game like its a single player game if you want the experience of a multi-player game. If you truly want the multi-player experience, I'd argue, you still have to conform to some of the basics of real world social interaction. Online games give us an unprecedented ability to play with people across the world at the same time. What they can't do very well is give us the ability to play with people across space "and" time.

If I log in whenever I have a second and play play play to my hearts content, advancing my character through the game world and advancing my skills as a player, I shouldn't be surprised that I've distanced myself considerably from those players/characters that haven't been playing the game as much. I could try to make the argument that this isn't a good game but I'd have to face the fact that there's something inherently appealing about the advancement model of gaming. In fact, it's the process of advancement itself that's appealing to me and if that's true then I have to accept the trade off that if I advance by myself I will create distance between me and those I would like to play with.

I could choose to play games with people where in-game advancement is minimal and that game would certainly be more accessible to us as a group but we would have to accept the fact that all sense of advancement would probably begin with an individual play session and end with that same play session. We would also have to agree to start at roughly the same time and end at roughly the same time or run the risk of 'gasp' not playing together.

The only thing a game can do to counter the 'time' component is to be sufficiently non-complex enough that you can join whenever you want and instantly know what is going on and join in the fun. FPS games are great for this but there's a reason that so many FPS games have HLstats servers and that so many FPS games form into leagues. It's because many players need advancement and greater complexity from their gaming experience. As accessible as fps games are because there isn't much in-game advancement, if I play more often than my friends I'm likely to become a more skillful player than they are. This creates a distance in and of itself that is hard to overcome and is really unavoidable. Again the game has to be sufficiently simple enough that no matter how much you play, you never really get much better at it than the next guy and that's some sort of extreme form of socialism.

[Arsilon]

One thing I liked about Asheron's Call comes to mind. There was an XP bonus if you were in a group.

Solo you would kill a mob and get 10 xp lets say.

If you killed the mob in a group of two, you would each get 6xp lets say.

If you killed the mob in a group of three, you would each get 5xp.

There was a bonus so that you would get more xp per person up to an "optimal" group size which would get everyone more xp than if they were to play alone, especially when you factor in the fact that you could just mow down spawns much faster in a group on top of it.

It paid to group up, even if with strangers.

[Slamz]

Well, it depends on what you're going for.

If you wanted to do, say, a D&D simulator, it would make sense that you only play when all the players in your party are ready to go. If Bob can't make it, you probably just postpone the whole gaming session so he doesn't fall behind (although even there, any novice GM would probably run the campaign anyway and simply fit Bob back into it and quickly get him caught up in the next session).

But that, in a way, is "serious gaming". Having to make and meet a schedule is not really what online computer gaming has been aiming for, and rightfully so: most people can't do that.

Heck, The Purge as a concept is basically a group of people who can't or won't play games like that.


Should this mean that we simply can't play MMORPGs together?


I fault the game design because it's a problem that can be addressed.


The biggest part of the problem comes from "quest driven gameplay". As soon as you start a game design with that concept, you have probably ruined the ability for casual players to play your game together. It was true in WOW, it was true in Warhammer, it's true in Champions. (Or at any rate, the players have to go out of their way and make external arrangements in order to be able to play together.)


For an MMO to really work for a group like us, it cannot be quest driven gameplay.

[Rallick]

It almost sounds like you guys want a game like EQ that isn't EQ It was quest based really at all and people were always in groups and it was highly sociable.

[Snowreap]

questing doesn't inherently require that all the group members be at the same point. "hey, I heard that there's this guy in the next town who will give you 5 gold pieces if you can bring him 5 wolf pelts. I want that reward, can any of you come help me with the wolves?"

it doesn't matter if I've already done the quest or not -- if I want to help you get your 5 gold then there shouldn't be any reason I can't help you kill wolves.

the problem is that too many games are using the quest mechanic for storyline purposes where it doesn't make sense for different players who are at different points in the story to all work together.

or worse, their quests are filled with boring or otherwise unrewarding grind steps ("but before I send you after the wolves, you must first prove your might by slaying 1000 squirrels") that people won't *want* to help each other with ("I'd love to help you with the squirrels, but they drop no loot and give no xp, and since I already did that quest, there's zero reward in it for me")

-ken

[Slamz]

It's really a big part of why I like PvP so much.

It's something you can sign on and just start doing without worrying about synching up quests.

Ideally it's MMO so you don't have to worry about having the right number of people.

Ideally it's not severely level based so you don't have to worry about being the wrong level.


So once again, EVE, Planetside, WW2O are good examples and....just about everything else is a bad example.

I mean this is why I'll likely never play WOW or WAR again no matter what patches or expansions they do. If I can sign up and join up and get right down to business grouping with friends then maybe. If I have to go play "catch up" before I can really be useful again then forget it.

Whereas I go back to Planetside and WW2O all the time because it doesn't matter what they've done since I last quit, I can still sign right back on, meet up with whoever is playing and shoot enemies in the brain.



The best idea to hit the MMORPG lately is "public quests".

That's a brilliant idea and they need to expand on it. Conceptually I think you could do an entire, dynamic game world based on the principle of the dynamic quest. Make the whole game just one giant public quest. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whoever you're with, whatever time it is, you can be working on the public quest. No synching up, no group size issues, just log on, check the state of the public quest and start doing stuff.


WAR hit on a good idea.

I bet you a dollar that Blizzard comes out with a game based on this very concept and blows all other MMORPGs clear out of the water before anyone else can get their act together and capitalize on the concept. Champions Online actually has public quests, but like WAR, they are fairly basic, spread out and not integrated into the larger world.

There's so much room to do great things here.

[Hoofhurr]

Well if we make that argument then the Purge has never found a game that we genuinely like to play. Every game we've played where we lasted as a unit of more than 6 players for more than 3 months was part of the advancement model of gaming of which questing is just one mechanic that, for the sake of argument, is a synonym for any game mechanic that causes two character/players to lose synchronisity. If we've spent the last 10 years not enjoying the games we've played then what have we been doing? Running the most extensive beta test in history? :lol:

Even in our hypothetical game where most of the world is NPC driven, you've basically created a single player game if you don't make a concerted effort to play with your friends at the same time they are playing. Otherwise you end up with one of those really long turn based chess games where each player makes one move a day whenever they get a chance to stop by the chess board. This isn't necessarily a bad model but I don't think it's the one we're aiming for either.

Every game we've enjoyed playing 'together' has been enjoyable because we've made an effort to play them together.

I have a hard time reconciling the goals of 'play as much as you like' and 'never leave your friends behind'. If you come up with game I'll let you lease that tag line. :lol:

[Hoofhurr]

There's no way that Eve is on that list. Part of what made the game accessible to you guys is that you all started at the same time. If I started today it would be weeks before I'd find you, get to you, pull my weight and know what was going on enough to gain daily satisfaction from playing the game in the multiplayer sense. And should I finally get to that point, it's clear from many of the postings that people that have been playing for years still find it hard to get the numbers to be an insured pvp threat. Is that bad game design or a lack of effort on the part of the players to actively play the game with one another?

[Vllad]

I would agree with you Hoof however MMO's have evolved beyond the model you are basising some of your thoughts on.

The last 2 or 3 games we have played relies specifically on quest in order to level. Champions being the worse of them. You can not just go grinding on mobs and level in any reasonable amount of time.

As Bulgy brought up the exact opposite of that is EQ where you had to grind to level and questing was a side show.

EQ is more group oriented because it makes no difference with in a 5 levels where people are. In Champions since grinding is useless you absolutely have to quest. I am all with you Hoof as long as there is some lax varience.

If we both log in at 7 PM EST and I play 30 mins longer then you every singe night with in a week we will no longer be grouping together. Games no longer have the varience needed to be player friendly.

There are better ways to do this.


Vllad

[Slamz]

There's no way that Eve is on that list. Part of what made the game accessible to you guys is that you all started at the same time. If I started today it would be weeks before I'd find you, get to you, pull my weight and know what was going on enough to gain daily satisfaction from playing the game in the multiplayer sense.

Where EVE falls flat and where it fails relative to PS and WW2O is that if you joined us, you'd have to join us. You would not be able to solo out there, at least not for a month or two. If you signed on and were by yourself there would be almost nothing you could do.

But even there, EVE has a certain "learning curve" beyond which everything is fairly flat. At the point I'm at now, EVE is like Planetside. I can quit for a year, come back and join right back up with everyone else. I passed the learning curve.

Similarly, I'm looking forward to the WW2O graphical update coming in the next patch. I haven't played for months but I know I can sign back on and be right back in the thick of it.


But you could still join me in EVE faster than you could join me in WOW or Warhammer if you'd never played before. EVE has a learning curve. WOW and WAR have leveling curves, which end up taking longer.

And should I finally get to that point, it's clear from many of the postings that people that have been playing for years still find it hard to get the numbers to be an insured pvp threat. Is that bad game design or a lack of effort on the part of the players to actively play the game with one another?

Bad game design.

For example, EVE sucks solo. Maybe I could argue with other EVE players over the full definition of "sucks", but I think we'd all agree that EVE solo is not how you want to play. People who play EVE solo for months on end are inhuman freaks.

Consequently it can be hard to get a good PvP group going and stable, cause if you die and find yourself solo again back at the base, well, it's mighty tempting to just log off, because what are you going to do by yourself? Nothing. Because EVE sucks solo.


Similarly, Pirates of the Burning Sea sucks unless you have EXACTLY six people at all times. Got 3? The game sucks. Got 4? The game sucks. 5? A little better but it still pretty much sucks. Got 7? Well it's great for 6 people and it sucks for 1. Consequently it became impossible to have and maintain a stable group in POTBS because we couldn't always all have fun. We'd have 9 people online which just means 6 are having fun and 3 aren't.


Now is it our fault that EVE sucks solo? Is it our fault for not having the dedication to sit around and twiddle our thumbs dutifully while waiting for other people to join up with us? Is it our fault that we sometimes have 5 or 7 people for POTBS?

Maybe you could argue that. These were problems that were, perhaps, fixable by the players. You should know best of all of us, since you ran an Arena group in WOW for a while, and that has the same issues: you need a specific group to play during specific times in order for it to really be something fun. You can't just go hit the area with 3 people, nor can you sign up 8 dedicated players. You needed a specific size group. No more, no less, and online at the same times.


So yes, I blame game design. If a game requires exacting participation from players in order to have fun, then there's something wrong with the design (or it's just going to have a fairly narrow audience). It needs to be able to incorporate the comings and goings of casual players. Most games (including WOW) do this largely by supporting soloers.

FPSs, though, tend to do a fabulous job of solving this issue, as do dedicated PvP environments. I see no reason you couldn't take Planetside, slap an RPG game model down on top of the character and combat systems and then end up with "the ideal Purge game" -- a game for gamers but which allows for unpredictable numbers and windows of opportunity.


MMORPGs make you walk a narrow road and the narrower it defines how the game must be played, the quicker we fall off the wagon.



Incidentally, this is also why I made The Purge relatively easy to get into: invitation only, but you didn't need approval to invite your friend or cousin or whatever. You know em? They're in. WOW went so long and did so well for us simply because we had, at one point, something like 80+ active players I think. When you have enough people online it's not hard to find someone decent to group with, regardless of where you are or what step you're on. So the failures of "quest based gameplay" can be covered up somewhat simply by joining the game with 80 of your closest friends.

But can you picture playing WOW with, say, 10 casual people? Starting from level 1? You'd rarely have anyone to group with. You'd always be getting out of synch. I think we'd have quit WOW before reaching the endgame had we not had such a big crowd with so much free time between us when we started.

[Hoofhurr]

I'm curious though. Let's say they created a WoW server where you could roll up a max level character and equip him with any permissible item in the game every time you logged in. Would that work as a game? That's basically what an FPS let's you do. You wouldn't be barred from any content except that which your skill level and organization would bar you from. What if they allowed you to form a group of any size, any time, for any instance? This would be a casual persons dream come true but might be really unappealing to people who derive joy from achieving those goals by working towards them.

Would that game work and be something you would continue to play for a long time?

And to be fair FPSes don't work if it's 2v2 or 10v5. The maps are designed for a certain number of players. Some maps are far too large for only a couple of players. You can spend a long time running around before you run into anyone.

[Slamz]

That's where you have to ask, "What's your endgame? I'm max level. I have excellent gear. What now?"

And if the answer to that question is a good one, the next question would be, "Well do you even need the rest of the game, then?"

If you can reach max level, max gear and still have fun (by claiming territory, building castles and smashing other people's castles, perhaps) then do you really need anything else?


The secret is that you don't just get rid of "goals". You still have them. But rather than personal goals for quests and loot, you have guild goals or team goals. WW2O may be one of the best examples of this. I think what stands in the way of that game being popular is simply that it's a WW2 simulation and is very slow paced. Imagine World War 2 Online as a massive battle for control of Europe, as now, but replace all the characters and mechanics with Champions Online.

As I've said before, I think what we really need is a "war game" -- a game that's driven based on a huge, ongoing war rather than individual quest objectives. You would still have objectives but they would be part of a much bigger picture.


That Mechwarrior game you had talked about once is probably a good example of this. You have battlefields with immediate objectives but there's also an overarching campaign. Granted the players had to create an artificial overarching campaign but there's no reason something like that couldn't be built in and made a very real part of the game.

Maybe there would still be individual gains and losses, but not on the scale of an RPG where you log in as "shit" and 3 months later you can finally compete with the big boys. I would rather it be more like Planetside or WW2O where you log in and are immediately capable of killing veterans (under at least some conditions...i.e., a rifleman can't kill a tank, but a private with a rifle can kill a general with a rifle. You aren't just useless. If you make me level up to the endgame you might lose me along the way and perhaps more importantly, if I reach the endgame, love it and sign up 10 friends to join me, it turns out they can't join me until they, too, spend 3 months leveling up.)

[Hoofhurr]

It seemed to me like Warhammer would be the answer to a lot of your outline if they had a lattice system of fronts and advancement. Perhaps if they had greatly reduced the amount of time they spent on developing the classes and characters and had spent that time on developing the end game RvR, the game would have been better.

Here's an idea. I really loved the concept of leveling a guild up. What if instead of the characters having classes the guilds had classes instead? You could have 'scout' guilds whose members would all be scouts and they would derive every ability they have from the guild and not from their own personal exploits. You could have the Magician's Regiment that would be your magic users. The Phalanx regiment that might be your tanks. The Healer Regiment etc.

There might be a shadowbane-esque guild architecture where you would belong to a network of guilds. Healing Regiment=>The Purge=>RedShirts Alliance etc. The regiment level might be where you derive your skills from as a character, the guild level would be your identity as a group of regiments, and the alliance level might be linked tightly to some geographic space that you've claimed.

If someone were to join the game late they would join one of your regiments and immediately have access to a broader base of skills and bonuses than someone without a regiment. At the same time you would reward characters who stayed with a particular regiment for extended periods of time.

I realize this is still an advancement model but you shift the advancement focus from the character to the unit and from the unit to geographic space. Maybe if you have several healers from your regiment online and in the same area you gain bonuses to your healing and maybe if you are fighting on your own turf you get bonuses for defense so that a smaller group could fight off a larger zerg.

This game probably wouldn't have any pve component at all. I think also I would like people to be able to switch between regiments in the guild with each play session to fill class vacancies as needed. The only penalty might be that you have to actually spend the time developing a new character template and make the trip back to the regiment quartermaster. Planning out and equipping a character would still be fairly involved as would the intricacies of character skill so that this in and of itself would be prohibitive and keep people from constantly switching classes. People might get to know 2-3 different classes and become proficient but not have to level a character all over again because the power of the character is derived from the power of the regiment which continues to level as long as 'some' players are earning xp for that regiment.

Just some thoughts.

p.s. In the beginning of planetside, they had the virtual reality shooting and driving ranges so you could train and get a feel for the different weapons. Maybe the first few levels of my fictitious game would have scripted mock battles with NPCs filling in some of the holes so that players could spend as much time as they wanted getting a feel for how the different regiments perform. Perhaps we could finally have a game where formations of some sort actually play a role. One of the players could assume the role of field lieutenant and a formation grid would appear on the field kind of like in Rome Total War indicating where players of a particular regiment should stand to get the maximum bonuses. /shrug.

[Slamz]

It seemed to me like Warhammer would be the answer to a lot of your outline if they had a lattice system of fronts and advancement. Perhaps if they had greatly reduced the amount of time they spent on developing the classes and characters and had spent that time on developing the end game RvR, the game would have been better.

My thoughts exactly.

I was really disappointed when I discovered that Warhammer's tier 3 and tier 4 RvR content were no better than the tier 2 content I saw in beta. I expected it to keep getting bigger, better and more intricate with public quests and integrated PvE within the RvR zones, plus a sensible system of "front line combat".

Obviously the game fell far short of that goal. As usual, the vast majority of development effort had clearly been spent on PvE, even in the tier 4 zones, directly contrary to what they had indicated in their podcasts.

If we could take some concepts from WW2O or Planetside and mesh them with the Warhammer RPG system, we would probably have the perfect Purge PvP game.

Here's an idea. I really loved the concept of leveling a guild up. What if instead of the characters having classes the guilds had classes instead? You could have 'scout' guilds whose members would all be scouts and they would derive every ability they have from the guild and not from their own personal exploits. You could have the Magician's Regiment that would be your magic users. The Phalanx regiment that might be your tanks. The Healer Regiment etc.

There might be a shadowbane-esque guild architecture where you would belong to a network of guilds. Healing Regiment=>The Purge=>RedShirts Alliance etc.

Yeah, "guild leveling" is something I'm a fan of. Rather than everything being about improvements to your character, let it be about something bigger, be it guild, alliance, faction, whatever.

I do think a persistent world game needs something that players can focus on and see improvement in but I think we would do well to get away from personal improvement and towards some wider area improvement. There could be concerns about hard working players feeling resentment towards "hangers on" but I think you can keep them happy so long as their [guild/team/whatever] is better than someone else's [guild/team/whatever], and that their personal contribution is recognized even if the benefits are shared.

That is, you personally lead the charge to capture the enemy fort. Now it's your guild's fort. Dophuz, who wasn't even logged in for the fight, ends up sharing the benefit, but everyone knows it was you that lead the charge, and you got the satisfaction of seeing some other guild get defeated. Do you really need to be 10 levels higher than Dophuz and have The Holy Sword of Smiting +3 to justify the work you did? Or is it enough that everyone knows you did a good thing for the team, and everyone on the team sees the results of the guild banner on the fort's walls?

I'm thinking team rewards and personal recognition can be just as valuable to a individual as any personal reward could be.

In fact, it could be better. You make a name for yourself as a leader and a warrior for the guild and that's something that will last. You quit for 6 months and come back and it's a hero's welcome for the guy who will hopefully contribute to even more conquering.

Whereas you kill a boss mob and get an elite purple drop sword, you feel good about it but nobody else is going to care very much. You quit for 6 months and come back and not only do they still not really care about your sword, but your sword is probably outdated and needs to be replaced!



I do very much like the idea of a large scale entity (like a guild or faction) that "levels up", and anyone who joins can immediately obtain those benefits.

Like as a newbie you have access to, basically, scraps off of whatever you kill. Maybe as a newbie wizard you have access to the spells you personally created. But you join some established wizard's guild and now you have access to the higher grade equipment which they produce, plus you gain access to their extensive spell library, the work of three dozen wizards researching spells for the past two years. You also immediately gain power because of the pact they have with that demon they keep chained up in the basement.

You would still have "newbies" vs "veterans", but the gateway from newbie to veteran is less about spending 6 months killing rats and more about joining up with some existing veterans. From the veteran perspective, getting a friend to start playing the game is the best thing ever because they are immediately brought up to your level of power, rather than having to spend 2 months walking them through linear content which you were already sick of.



Basically, we need to move towards a "community" model and away from a "solo / individual reward" model.

There should still be specialization and maybe even some sort of personal advancement/customization similar to WOW's talent trees, but we need to get away from the "leveling" system that creates huge power gaps between players.

[Hoofhurr]

I started reading your last post and had a chuckle when I said to myself, "Slamz is saying that individualism and self-interest is killing MMOs!" I know you're not but I still grinned.

[Slamz]

Yeah, it's not so much that it's killing MMOs, but rather, that it's really difficult to build a game for. How can you reconcile personal improvement with the need to be able to bring in new players and let them immediately join their friends? Or how can you make enough content to drive personal improvement from start to never-ending-finish? Excessive personal improvement would make that difficult.

But the "wargame" concept works well.

It's like an army assaulting a fort. Here's a sergeant that's on the front lines, blowing up the front gate and charging in. There's a sergeant that's on the back lines, overseeing the cooking of pork chops. In the RPG model, the front line guy should become ten times stronger and be rewarded with a solid gold rifle while the back line guy should be able to make pork chops that renders him invulnerable for 5 minutes and which he could sell on the auction house for $1500 each. In the wargame model, they would both just make sergeant pay, although the frontline guy might be a little better at shooting rifles and the backline guy might be a little better at cooking pork chops, it's not going to be extreme.


Overdoing personal rewards just ends up being really silly, if nothing else.

[Crice]

While playing Champions of all people Vanna brought up the obvious fact that unless all members have the same quest their is no reason to group with people. I started to think she was actually correct. Champions is the ultimate end result of all of the past games quest systems.

If you aren't on the same quest whats the point of hanging out with other people?

Games should have some form of sharing model and receive some form of bonuses even if they are doing a quest that has previously been completed.

At the very least if you have map tags that list where quest are you should be able to share them with your group mates.

The above is why having an active world vs a static one is just that much more important.


Vllad

I play to play with others and own stuff as a team. I really enjoy the social aspect. Champions doesn't have that. I am level 20, and bored of the game already. I will prob keep it going so my kids can play it since it really doesn't take any smarts to play.

I am glad I tried it out for a week though.

WoW had a good social piece for the questing but... ya.. maxed out at 80 and gear what more is there besides waiting for the next release.

EvE sadly I can log on and just sit there and shoot the shit with people, more roaming gangs would be nice. I don't think it would matter where we are at in EvE, we just need more leaders that want to run PvP ops.... maybe we can hire some :-)