Questing kills grouping

[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.