Bottom line, if a game is designed to be group centric, then solo ability should be limited, period. It's not hard - just do what EQ did. Make self-heals rare, make mana regen slow, and make monsters tough to the point where 1v1, you are only slightly better than the mob, but 1v2+, you stand no chance and get smoked. Yeah, a necromancer with darkness, fear and feign death and a couple dots can survive that, but at what price? In a group, you kill a mob every 20-30 sec, and solo fear kiting, you kill every 90 seconds. Add in the grouping exp bonus, and grouping really starts to make sense.
Now, give some compelling exp/monetary reason to level alts or help lower level players in groups, and the problem kinda solves itself, and does so without watering down the classes.
Galden said:Gottbeard said:Except that if you need to rely on a gimmick like constant arbitrary game changes to generate fresh interest in your content, then you have not done a good job of creating meaningful worthy content. /snip
Disagree here - people leave these types of games for a variety of reasons - but wont rejoin unless there is something new that draws them. When they rejoin they may stay, as they realise the core game is good and fun. Sure, new content would be the ideal draw, but reality is that even AAA studios with millions in revenue have consistantly failed to deliver. Therefore balance tweaks & seasonal events.
Case study: Mechwarrior Online
I completely disagree with your position Galden and I completely agree with Gottbeard.
A real MMO should not need to try and keep its players by running quartlery patches that nerf whatever is currently popular to play and buff something unplayed to make a new FOTM in order to encourage people to come back and play.
That's unhealthy for a game ecosystem, a good MMO should be striving for a game that remains well-balanced and stable at all times, with as few balance changes as possible, the content to keep people playing on a daily and weekly basis should be from the world itself and the social interactions of the people adventuring through it with you.
Your example of Mechwarrior online is of no comparison; it's a PvP only FPS with 12v12 fights on a time-limited map..., free-to-play and pay to reduce grind, of course it has to use gimicks to keep players coming back, it's a shallow game with no PvE or real content. It wasn't designed like an MMO, it's not an MMO.
Ezrael said:I completely disagree with your position Galden and I completely agree with Gottbeard.
A real MMO should not need to try and keep its players by running quartlery patches that nerf whatever is currently popular to play and buff something unplayed to make a new FOTM in order to encourage people to come back and play.
That's unhealthy for a game ecosystem, a good MMO should be striving for a game that remains well-balanced and stable at all times, with as few balance changes as possible, the content to keep people playing on a daily and weekly basis should be from the world itself and the social interactions of the people adventuring through it with you.
/snip
In an ideal world, I agree - but how many MMO have had substantial regular patches ? at best a couple of new zones and an expansion every year.
Reality is that Pantheon will proably be quite niche , and will therefore struggle with even the above release schedule. I want to be playing with a healthy player base size , with reasons to start new alts (and therefore be availible to group with real new players) therefore between the 'real' content there would be balance tweaks and seasonal events.
Reason why I chose MWO as an example is that beyond genre and monetisation it shares some similarities.
- Old school sensibilities in core gameplay
- little competition in genre
- Loyal but small fan base to genre
- Good core gameplay (assume from vids pantheon will have this - and also be much wider in scope)
Despite a very poor track record of delivery from the developer, MWO still hangs on after many other online games have come and gone. Six months ago there had been no changes for over a year, numbers were plunging and was expected to be shut down permanantly. A few balance patches and some minor reskinned maps have brought figures back to what they were years ago. Stagnation = death , small low cost changes area great way to keep up interest and retain players. This will be even more true in Pantheon, as players will be paying a monthly subscription - much easier for players to justify cancle and much harder to restart.
I admit there are too many games out there now for me to keep tabs on - so if you have an example of a sucessful niche game with where there have been no changes for more than a year and numbers are stable/growwing please call it out. Brownie points if it also has a monthly subscription fee.
EQ never needed quarterly balance patches to create new FOTMs to sustain a population and keep people playing during its main years.
Pantheon is aiming to create a modern MMO of that kind of experience, it's not aiming to be GW2 or BDO or whatever FPS where the devs purposefully nerf a bunch of over performing classes and buff a bunch of underperforming classes every 3 months to create FOTMs and keep players with short attention spans logging in between FOTM, daily quests and 'seasons'.
In a well designed MMO with a healthy amount of PvE content, a vast world, interesting lore, mechanics, early/mid/endgame content; that FOTM approach is not needed at all.
Pantheon is also trying to be different to the modern generation of 2008+ MMOs which have become quite cookie cutter, so coming to the forums and requesting Pantheon be more like all the recent generic MMOs, with things like quartley FOTM, daily quests, DPS speed run dungeons, solo to max level etc isn't going to go down well, we're not looking for that, we're here because we don't want that.
What MMOs have you played before?
Galden said:Disagree here - people leave these types of games for a variety of reasons - but wont rejoin unless there is something new that draws them. When they rejoin they may stay, as they realise the core game is good and fun. Sure, new content would be the ideal draw, but reality is that even AAA studios with millions in revenue have consistantly failed to deliver. Therefore balance tweaks & seasonal events.
Case study: Mechwarrior Online - all development was put on hold whilst dev team worked on Mechwarrior 5 - numbers playing dropped by half even though the core game (with all it's flaws) was quite balanced, engaging and had no real genre competitors. Last 6 months , some minor changes are put in that adjust balance and some events , and now numbers are nearly back up to before. People have come back and stayed.
Stagnation = death (even if you have a brilliant core game).
Hell, if I was a dev I might even be tempted to put in a limited 'phases of the moon' type mechanic where balance was automatically tweaked between alternates on some sort of time based period. e.g. for 5 days non physical melee damage has a 5% buff , next 5 days ranged physical damage has a 5% buff. Sure , this would create noise as people would 'feel worthless' when other competeing classes got thier day but would actually help make sure each class had thier place and generate a loit of interst to see what the next moon phase buff was.... /windupmerchant off.
Anyhow this whole sub-topic diverges from the main jist of my post - fun core game and class identity first , balance second.
While I've never played Mechwarrior, I highly doubt that compares to what Pantheon is trying to be. Just guessing, but if Mechwarrior is designed to be more of a theme park/guided/character narrative game, then yes, I can see how people would leave once the game/story is over and the content is consumed. How many people continue to play console games when progression has stopped? Very few. If Pantheon succeeds in being more like older MMO's, the progression is going to take long enough that even between 1-2 years of major changes that there will still be plenty to do.
Ezrael said:EQ never needed quarterly balance patches to create new FOTMs to sustain a population and keep people playing during its main years.
Pantheon is aiming to create a modern MMO of that kind of experience, it's not aiming to be GW2 or BDO or whatever FPS where the devs purposefully nerf a bunch of over performing classes and buff a bunch of underperforming classes every 3 months to create FOTMs and keep players with short attention spans logging in between FOTM, daily quests and 'seasons'.
In a well designed MMO with a healthy amount of PvE content, a vast world, interesting lore, mechanics, early/mid/endgame content; that FOTM approach is not needed at all.
Pantheon is also trying to be different to the modern generation of 2008+ MMOs which have become quite cookie cutter, so coming to the forums and requesting Pantheon be more like all the recent generic MMOs, with things like quartley FOTM, daily quests, DPS speed run dungeons, solo to max level etc isn't going to go down well, we're not looking for that, we're here because we don't want that.
There's so much truth to this post that I can hardly contain myself.