Goblin Squad Member
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Some games out there have windows tailored for players looking for groups, or groups looking for players, whereas some games require you to shout out in whatever chat channel you think will get the best response before it gets quickly flooded out of view by a torrent of chat messages about irrelevant and frivolous topics.
Good grouping mechanics are important so that an MMO can actually be an MMO rather than a whole bunch of people connecting online to be able to chat and see each other's characters while they play the same single player game.
Please make it important and functional to group frequently with other players. Having said that, soloists like to have options as well, as well as people who don't consider themselves strictly soloists, but like the challenge of going it alone from time to time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In sandbox games I like running to town and hooking up with people looking for something to do, town was always the place to go to find a group.
As much as I liked the LFG tools in modern themepark games I tend to find the social aspect of meeting up in towns and forming your group more immersive.
It's a lot more work to get people together that way, but the towns always had people chatting it up and running around which made it feel more alive.
I would also organize large server raids from town by crafting books and writing in them all the details of what time, where to meet and what day the event will happen.
I would drop these books all over town for anyone to read. Somedays we would have dozens of players show up for the events.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with BlackUhuru here. I believe that MMOs have sacrificed community to cater to convenience. Take WoW as an example. When I first played the game at launch, there were no LFG tools, no cross-server ques, nor dungeon ques of any kind. The result was that I actually met players and kept a friend list. The people I met allowed me to play the game and enriched my gaming experience. I had adventures traveling to a dungeon. At one point I knew most of my server and the game world felt alive. Fast-forward to 2011 and WoW had become a chat lobby. I could find a group by pushing a button and waiting, like an elevator. Once inside, everyone kept their head down and we did whatever dungeon we had to do without any real social interaction. I know that is a tangent, but it's a slippery slope if we start making allocations for "the solo player" or "convenience."
I'm like anyone else. If I can take the easy route and do the quests, kill the monster or form a group without having to interact, then that's what I'm going to do; however, the MMOs that we all remember and love (EQ, DAoC, etc) you needed to group to play the game and that was what made it great. Recently, I played SW:TOR and despite having a 20 other players in vent with me, most of us were solo questing through the game world, leveling our toons. I hate that.
I know you're just asking for an alternate to "global chat," and allowing your request would do very little to change the social interaction in the game, but I'm so worried about what "ease of use" has done to ruin the modern MMO, that it has sent me off on an early morning tirade.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Buzzo, there's really two issues here.
1. There has definitely been a downward spiral in grouping that is partly due to the ease of soloing, but it's also partly due to the costs of grouping. I've gone into detail elsewhere, so I won't spend a lot of time on it here, but basically the cost-benefit analysis favors soloing a lot of the time. Making the cost of soloing higher is one way to change that equation, but I believe that's just going to increase frustration. I would much rather see an increase in the benefits of grouping, such as giving each group member the same xp they'd have gotten soloing the monster. But even that is going to be mostly irrelevant in PFO, because you won't be "leveling up" by doing quests, which means you won't be soloing a bunch of quests to level up. You'll have real goals that you make for yourself that will require specific tools to achieve.
2. WoW's dungeon finder is a perfect example of the ease of grouping causing a decline in socializing. Another is the lack of downtime. One of the things people look back on fondly in EQ was the downtime, where the whole group had to sit around for 2-3 minutes while the Cleric got back to full mana before they started pulling again. By virtue of necessity, those minutes were filled with idle chat and joking around, basic socializing. But what people often forget is the frustration of sitting around doing nothing, or of standing around in the Nexus for an hour trying to get a group and then logging off in frustration.
My point here is that there's a fine line GW will need to walk to avoid making the game too frustrating, but still create a space for socializing. Like most of the other things in the game, I expect it will ultimately be up to us to create our own space for socializing. We'll have to take responsibility for ourselves, and just do what we want to do, rather than expecting the game to force us to do what we want to do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While the point of sacrificing community is valid, what then is the solution for those who have less time to play? Those who don't have the time for the "immersion" of finding a proper group. Roleplay and immersion are fine, but the what it is being painted here poses a serious issue for people who actually do need that convenience.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I made a post in the blog discussion but but i'll continue it here
I don't want a LFG window you can access at any time
I want a button that directs you to a LFG billboard. The billboard will be a feature of every town and would be very similar to City of Heroes' player list, and be a kind of social network. And the great thing about fantasy games is magic! so all the boards are linked and display the same thing.
All players, if they want to group, would need to go to the board and select what kind of groups they want to join. The board now has a mini-profile of you that other players can see.
If you want to form a group, you go to any board and browse through the online players, selecting and inviting those with similar interests.
Once created your grouping profile is up until you take it down. Logging off doesn't remove it. You can change your profile at any time.
There can be faction/charter/kingdom only boards, alignment only boards, even town only boards. These can all be linked to the general board, or require a new profile for each.
The ultimate goal would be to never see someone running through town with a chat macro: "Ikickyourbutt shouts: Cool dude LFG for _______"
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One of the things people look back on fondly in EQ was the downtime, where the whole group had to sit around for 2-3 minutes while the Cleric got back to full mana before they started pulling again. By virtue of necessity, those minutes were filled with idle chat and joking around, basic socializing.
I really like mobinogi for this, there is a rest skill and if you make a campfire anyone resting next too the campfire will regen faster, in fact you dont regen in dugeons except next to a campfire( you could even share food next to the campfire)
I also like valk's suggestion. though i would probably stick to looking for people in my charter or the town im at.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Valkenr has it right. The key is to create a well-known place where people know they can go to find groups or members. Doing that should be far more effective than spamming the Trade channel looking for groups (not that I'm demanding there be a Trade channel!)
Nothing is more annoying that trying to sell 10 rocks of shiny+5 in the trade channel only to be overblown by someone looking for a group.
That's what the LFG channel is for.
though few games have them...
Personally I would not like to see a trade channel. I would like to see players paying for advertising on some "market watcher board". You don't go into the mall and shout "I WANT TO BUY A SHOES!" you go to the map and find the shoe store.
Come to think of it, most of my social mechanic suggestions steer towards magical networks of post-boards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Valkenr, you should have seen Star Wars Galaxies' markets, pre-CU and NGE. There was no global chat, and the Bazaar (AH) was only for quick and easy buy/sell. If you wanted to get good-quality items cheaply, you had to visit player characters' houses and see if they had any NPC Vendors to sell items. So, you'd go from shop to shop, basically. If you found one person who sold a lot of items you liked, you could mark their house as a waypoint on your map, so you always knew how to get back to it. You could even send them mail in thanks. Many merchants built up reputations for delivering quality goods at reasonable prices, and they made far more money than if they simply dumped their items on the Bazaar. I'm really hoping PFO does something like that.
That's all off-topic from this thread, however, so let me get back on-topic: How to make groups?
As the most recent blog has said, players can form parties like most other MMO's, and they can also form "charter organizations", which sound very flexible, but very small. (They say several dozen players is huge? Ha! Most guilds I've rolled with in WoW and LOTRO had over 200 players, not counting alts, and look at how huge EvE's corps get.)
As for how to form parties, I'm all for a bulletin board in town that everyone can post to, with some limit of posts/hour, posts/minute, or posts/day. You can look through the messages on the board, and click a button to have your character opt to join up with whoever posted the message. The message-poster click Accept, and bam! You join their group. That's just one option, as I see it.
One other alternative is to set up camp (maybe an actual in-game camp) at a dungeon entrance, and ask everyone going in if you can join.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Arbalester, you are mistaken. In SWG if you wanted to buy or sell something not available within the limits of the bazaar, you went to Corelia and shouted outside the spaceport until you got an interested person.
In terms of scale, consider that the goal for PFO is to be a tiny fraction of the size of the current big boys. Considering also the sheer scale of what is suggested (it looks like an intermediate goal is to have the entire River Kingdoms part of the game world, and you can walk across every acre.)