When I played EverQuest, Saga of Ryzom, or Ultima Online, and now World of Warcraft, I primarily play solo. Most of these games are designed to play in groups. Often, that requires joining up with random, anonymous people you’ve never met before, and will never meet again. Given that your character in these games are part of a particular “class” (for the most part), these random, anonymous people tend to judge you on your class alone, and often your equipment. Groups are always of limited size, so they will pick the “best” random people they can to fill the group.
Obviously, this is not optimal for those of us like me who are “casual” players, unable to get (and uninterested in getting) the best of the best equipment/spells/items.
My idea (although I don’t claim that I am the first to come up with it, I just haven’t seen it in a game I’ve played) is loosely inspired by Planetside’s gameplay. In Planetside, there are three factions of warriors, and you’re playing PVP against the other two factions trying to take over bases. Everyone in your faction is working towards the same goal. Everyone in your faction near a base is working towards the same specific goal — taking over the base. When the base is captured, everyone gets a porportional allotment of experience for being part of the assault.
In more traditional MMOGs, the PVE ones, I propose eliminating the concept of “grouping” as it stands. In its place, I propose that every player automatically join and leave “groups”, as they arrive and depart from dungeons or buildings or small outdoor regions. As long as you’re within the group, and killing things, you get a share of the experience from everyone killing. You can spend half an hour and still help out the “greater cause” — the elimination of whatever pest it is the game is having you kill.
This takes care of a number of problems:
- No more “kill stealing” — Since everyone’s working on the same goal, and everyone shares in the experience, there’s no more need to worry over kill stealing. You can feel free to help that guy who’s trying to solo more than he could handle.
- No more “we don’t need any druids|warlocks|warriors” responses when people want to join a group.
- Less crowding in popular zones — As more people show up, there would be less XP to go around, so people would naturally spread out more
- You can contribute even if you don’t have much time to play. You don’t have to join and then leave a group, causing hard feelings if you have to leave early.
Of course, the traditional way of splitting XP earned from kills would have to be redone, so we don’t end up killing a dozen creatures and getting 1 XP for our troubles. That would be a trivial modification however.
The key to it is its automatic nature. Nobody would ever get left out, even on accident. Another bonus is that “raids” (massive attacks on enemies) are automatically handled with no additional code.
I haven’t been able to find a place to have a good debate on this idea, so I guess I’ll leave it here and call it good. Anyone can have it. I hope to one day play a game which takes advantage of this. Soloers win. Groupers win. Everyone has fun.
February 17th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
I think this idea has merit, particularly for outdoor areas and ad-hoc raids. I see it being a bit less useful for instances, particularly for end-game instance raids. Let me run down a list of thoughts that I have, though:
1) This makes the low-level game much more easier and enjoyable, particularly for new people, since they probably won’t die quite as often. Although conversely the challenge of not dying is something that has to be taken into account.
2) How do healing classes monitor the health of those around them? In a proper party system they have the status bars of their party members to go by. Do they just see the status of everyone within X yards of them, where X is the approximate range of their healing spells?
3) This seems like it will lead to a lot of zerging. That might be fun for a few minutes…
4) WoW is supposed to implement “meeting stones” at some point. These are supposed to assemble groups for people waiting to go in. They will automatically group you in a reasonable group (tank, healer, dps) so you can expect to survive the instance. One would hope that it would keep in mind that a druid works much better as a main healer if the tank is a paladin, and other such things… Do you have any thoughts on this?
4) For high-end instances (both 5-man and raid) strategy is key to surviving. Jumbling together a bunch of people isn’t going to result in rewarding gameplay, particularly if people have the zerg mentality. Sometimes coordination is important!
February 17th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
“1) This makes the low-level game much more easier and enjoyable, particularly for new people, since they probably won’t die quite as often. Although conversely the challenge of not dying is something that has to be taken into account.”
You’re right — that would be an unintended side effect I hadn’t considered. Perhaps the dungeons could be dynamic, and then made more difficult as more people arrive. (Perhaps not linearly)
“2) How do healing classes monitor the health of those around them? In a proper party system they have the status bars of their party members to go by. Do they just see the status of everyone within X yards of them, where X is the approximate range of their healing spells?”
Also hadn’t considered that — and I used to play a healing class in Everquest, heh. Yeah, I’d say it’d probably be best if they could see the status of everyone in the area, on a “quickbar”. The quickbar’s entries would need to come and go as people enter/leave, but not instantly (so it’s not constantly flickering). Perhaps they could arrange it so people on their “friends” list are “always” on the bar, or on a separate bar. That might overcomplicate the interface, though.
“4) WoW is supposed to implement “meeting stones” at some point. These are supposed to assemble groups for people waiting to go in. They will automatically group you in a reasonable group (tank, healer, dps) so you can expect to survive the instance. One would hope that it would keep in mind that a druid works much better as a main healer if the tank is a paladin, and other such things… Do you have any thoughts on this?”
I’ve read about that, and I think it’s a great idea. However I do have a concern about it. It will help to reenforce the idea that every group must have X, Y, and Z class characters, leaving only 2, max 3 slots available for every other class in the game. It might all balance out since the non-staple classes can try to start the groups at the stone, allowing a warlock or a druid to recruit the staple classes themselves. It would basically allow anyone/everyone a chance at being the leader.
I just hope people don’t start automatically leaving groups started by the less-favored classes. I don’t know if there’s a way to avoid that, though.
“3) This seems like it will lead to a lot of zerging. That might be fun for a few minutes…
4) For high-end instances (both 5-man and raid) strategy is key to surviving. Jumbling together a bunch of people isn’t going to result in rewarding gameplay, particularly if people have the zerg mentality. Sometimes coordination is important!”
You’re right. I wonder if there would be some sort of “happy medium”. Instanced zones would still require coordinated grouping, to get everyone in to the right instance. That would exclude a lot of people, but if this were done, then there would hopefully be plenty of non-instanced zones that they could play in, and still have an enjoyable time.
I’m not sure of the best way to address zerging — you are correct that it could lead to a lot of zerging. Dunno. The idea definitely needs some fleshing out.