Specifically things like instanced 5 man dungeons (like Ragefire Chasm or the Deadmines in WoW) which are explicitly designed to challenge a full party of a certain level range. Notably, not endgame content. I’m sure the answer changes based on different factors (e.g. how good are the rewards? What are the drop rates like? Are similar rewards available elsewhere? How long is the dungeon? Am I late picking the kids up from soccer practice?), but I’m curious what folks’ thoughts are. I’m personally sour on the idea, but I understand that my attitude is “the less MMO an MMORPG can be, the happier I am”, so MMO designers should probably disregard my opinion.
Supplementary Context: usually about once a year, I get the bug to hop into an MMO. However, I am not a good MMO player. I tend to flit around my gaming library like an ADHD pixie on cocaine, and there’s no telling how long my interest will sustain itself. Therefore, any “meta” choice I make is purely by accident, and I don’t spare even a moment of thought on “efficiency”. In fact, I’ve often thought of my dalliances in MMOs as digital tourism. By and large, I’m there to craft, read quest dialogs, and poke around in the weird corners of the map for a couple weeks before logging off for another few years. Anytime I’ve ever done group content (which is, admittedly, not often), I’m desperately trying to keep up while someone nukes everything in the dungeon as they sprint towards the end. I wind up feeling like my lackadaisical approach is probably fucking up someone else’s farming loop. Now, I don’t think either the sweatlords or I are playing the game “wrong” so to speak, but our priorities are in conflict. Maybe I’m letting people-pleasing anxiety get the best of me, but I feel like the person that cares enough to grind a dungeon reward as fast as possible should get right of way over my happy ass who will intentionally sandbag my way through a dungeon if the vibes are right. Therefore, I tend not to engage with such content, if it’s not possible to solo.
This has all come to a head because my current preoccupation is Star Wars The Old Republic. Given this game’s much greater emphasis on story and dialog than a typical MMO, I actually feel like there’s RP content that I want to see in the dungeons, irrespective of any item reward. To the game’s credit, many of these can be done solo by selecting the “story” difficulty option before loading in, but not all of them. I just don’t want to be the asshole holding up the party cause I want to watch the 3 minute into cutscene (or whatever) while everyone else is hammering their skip buttons trying to get to the boss.
Not necessarily asking for advice, as the solution seems obvious to me (it’s “talk to your fellow players”, like it always is), but I thought this might foster some discussion, especially from old heads who might have lived the raid life back in the day, but now have different priorities.
I think Warhammer Online had the best mix. They just had some balance problems, and of course huge technical issues. There were some great elements to the game though. The automatic pickup raids and scenario system were pretty good ideas.
I don’t like it. I play odd hours or very sporadically, sometimes with large gaps, due to life/work. I would prefer the ability to jump in, have fun solo, and bounce.
Removed by mod
I think it is the only way to do it.
Most MMOs don’t go far enough with “forced” group stuff.
I played wow again not long ago after years and you where forced to do group dungeons but talking to each other was never encouraged. Quite the opposite.
In FF14, it tells you if it’s someone’s first time, so for big setpieces, there’s a culture of “let the newbie take the lead and do all the cool stuff.” I’ve seen everyone like stand beside the interactables and pose, too, so they know where they have to go. I absolutely don’t mind waiting for a newbie and letting them get the full experience.
But then, they’ve also gotten better about not making it, like, 20-minute unskippable cutscenes, and weaving it better into the gameplay so the people coming back have less waiting around to do.
I’ve not had this experience actually. Usually I queue up into a dungeon and everyone speed runs as fast as they can. If I want an actual experience I have to q with NPCs.
Agreed, this has not been my experience. That’s kinda fine with me, I don’t always have the patience to spend 30 minutes on a dungeon. But God save you if you watch a cutscene! I did Odin with some friends and never even saw the fight!
That being said, I like the game a lot. It’s the first MMO I’ve dedicated this much time to since the original Guild Wars launched. Also the first time I’ve actually paid for a sub. Players are generally nice, and progression isn’t particularly difficult.
I just… I just don’t want to return to the waking sands anymore…
I like FFXIV, but not for the gameplay or story. I quite literally mod it to hell and play dressup and GPose for hours. Occasionally I run content. This game is basically Blender on training wheels for me.
I feel like forcing the multiplayer, and especially communication enforces the “multiplayer” part of MMOs, and it’s great. I’d often just play alone till I get bored if it wasn’t for these “forced” interactions with random people.
We got couple new guildies while leveling in classic TBC earlier this year, and some of them still play with us which is nice
I play mmos and expect to be social, otherwise it’s just an RPG.
If there’s a good in-game group finder, where you can specify like “first time doing it” or “chill group” vs “speed runner” then it’s probably fine. If you can find players, that is.
I played a lot of guild wars 2. I’d start groups on the lfg with a message like “chill [content] run - I don’t care about your build” and people would join, and we’d have a fine time.
Some other MMO, I forget which, I’d end up sitting at the lfg for a long time and never got a full group
This is where I land as well. A solid group finder tool with enough population to fill slots makes or breaks forced group content. Also nice to see low level gear retain a purpose at later levels like having cosmetic slots to continue showing off the gear without sacrificing stats.
Playing with other people is such a hassle. You mentioned SWTOR, so let’s use that as an example. The “Operations” have some fun story content, don’t they? Suppose I want to play one of those.
If you get a bunch of randoms, you’ll get a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing, or could try doing their own thing. Many of the Operations bosses have mechanics that require coordination, so your party of randoms is going to get wiped.
Clearly, you need to get a team together to do it. But Operations want 8 players (including you), who all have their schedules free to do the operation with you. And you have to hope that people don’t get other plans or drop out midway through. And you have to be in a position where you can arrange such a group in the first place.
I’m fine with forced group content if it’s easy for randoms to clear, and if no one gives a shit to queue for it anymore, that it can be done solo. Coordinating big groups isn’t feasible these days.
Idk man I play gw2 now which it’s fine.
If you have a group of friends it’s good fun, and really cool. You can also get in Groups fine for easy enough content and it’s there if you want more but also in gw2 nothing is really forced there’s a ton of open world content and story and etc you can do even for endgame that don’t require you to form a party. But also that games built to make seeing other humans a good experience instead of bad, and map meta events bringing everyone together but not needing to coordinate or anything save for specific maps make it fine for those who don’t want to talk to others (or are trash at the game) but still want big cool fights and such.
There is story in the 5 man dungeons but the literal story paths for those are soloable, and the 5 man ones do I guess have story but it’s mostly irrelevant (plus it’s not very hard content)
Agreed. GW2 is the most accessible of MMOs when it comes to group content. The open world events are especially nice, as you can just wander into a massive battle, join the attack, and automatically get XP / loot. PvP in their World vs World mode works pretty much the same way.
I was a WoW refugee when I picked up GW2 about five years ago and never looked back. It’s an objectively superior MMO in almost every category. The only other MMO that comes close is ESO, but GW2 combat and horizontal progression absolutely trounces ESO hands down.
Not sure about accessible group content in guild wars 2, dungeons - yes (but they are a buggy mess and not a group content), open world zergs and metas - yes, other instanced content - not really. Fractals are sort of accessible, but even on tier 1 you get some shit for not knowing all mechanics by the heart and not knowing shortcuts, etc. Raids (and former strikes) absolutely aren’t.
What? T1 fractals are easy quick join randoms. Like, you can fail every mechanic and be fine.
T3’s are where you need to know mechanics by.
I mean some people might be dicks about it but I mean, I don’t think that a majority of the people doing T1’s unless it’s like fractal rush where people are doing those for quick rewards and get grumpy about it taking more than 5 minutes.
In a single sentiment? Fuck em.
If you didn’t want me to sit there watching the content cutscene, reading intro text and participating in your game, don’t put cutscenes and text in. Somebody worked on it and put in the effort, least I can do is try and enjoy it without peer pressure to get me to skip any optional bits.
Ultimately a good mmo should be playable and fun solo without the need to involve other people, but adds interesting twists, complexities and mechanics when there’s multiple people attempting the same content as a group.
The game design should serve the people playing it, not people serving the design of the game in order to make it playable.
Forced group content is why I don’t play most of these games. I’m not playing at a specific time to do a specific thing. I’m going to play when I want.
I hate it, but understand why they put it in multiplayer games.
A lot of people have this problem and the answer is always the same: find like-minded people.
I used to play pretty hardcore, these days I’m just like you. But I always would ran into a guild or two that was doing things fairly oddly, slowly, to their own drum.
Either create a guild, if you’ve got that kind of ability, or, take some time to ask around and look for one and start on their server.
There is always a need for this kind of thing, you just have to find it.
As a former MMO player, I absolutely hated anything that required playing with a group. I mostly played solo (although back in my LotRO days I had an awesome guild to occasionally play with). I remember this being one of the reasons I liked ESO (I haven’t played an MMO in ages so I don’t know if anything changed or my memory of that is bad).
If something required a lot of group play, I was likely to stop playing it and find something else. It really depended on how easily I could ignore the group content.
