I was reading something on the forums here. "We want groups to get the best gear." Fair enough, that seems to always be the old adage when it comes to MMOs. Get the best gear to beat the next mob and get better gear.
This seems to be becoming a really stupid reason to keep doing it.
Why don't we have a "Solo Story" and this should be the reason we want the best gear available. So in our story, in the instance of our story we need to fight mobs, get clues and connect the dots of our story over the course of 3 or 4 years of the game. Maybe even 8, 9 or 10 year over the game. (This is for the devs to decide).
But I would be much more inclined to continue to grind, find a raid guild and grind so I can do "My Story" time line easier. (Best raid gear has better stats, so doing the instance of "My Story" I could do it a little more easily than if I just have "normal" gear)
So, TL;DR, if there is a "My Story" that happens at each level cap, getting the best gear would be a good carrot at the end of the stick.
The point of having better gear drop from group content is to encourage people to group rather than to go solo.
Solo should provide enough experience and gear to make it more than a waste of time, but in a game billed as encouraging grouping, group content should give better gear and more experience.
I speak as probably one of the most solo-oriented people here - someone that has argued repeatedly that solo play is valuable for the game, good for players, and needs to provide reasonable loot and experience. All of which I still say. But in *this* game it should be slower to solo to level-cap than to group, and you should get there with inferior gear (exclusive of crafted gear which is a different issue).
I'm having a very hard time understanding what "my story" even means. There are already quests in the game, are you talking about something in the vein of choose your own adventure with branching paths?
Either way, an MMO might not be the best place to look for a personal, character-driven story.
@Kittik
Would you like to explain more about what you mean by a "Solo Story"?
As I read your post the sentence "in the instance of our story" makes me think it's something kinda like in GW2. Though I'm unsure that's what you mean.
To me, my personal or "solo" story is class quests, epic quests, lore quests and what ever else I personally want to do.
-sorte.
Yeah, sorry. I'm not good at putting ideas down on paper.
So, yes I agree I want to encourage group play and I want to encourage raiding and I want to have a goal to strive for to get that better gear. Gear that can be obtained from just solo'ing shouldn't be good enough. But why do I need better gear than what I can get in a group? To raid, ok, but why do I want to get the best raid gear? Once you've got that raid gear, you're done. At least until the next expansion pack.
But, what if inside this MMO, there is also "My Story" to progress through the quest of your story, you need to do some quests in the world, but then there is also an instanced version of a zone that is just for you. It would be only End level, or it could happen every 25 levels, or 10 levels, whatever the case could be. So, the idea is you want to get the best gear you can, because inside your instanced version of your questline for your story there are puzzles, mobs, even a boss. So if you're just a solo player and the best gear you have is common gear with a rare peice here or there, you're going to stuggle mightily inside your story quest zone. But if you raid, and you have the best gear, you'll probably breeze through this zone.
Now I know some people are vehemently against raiding, so they'd complain about how this is unfair. So, I'm not saying this zone is undoable in common gear, just harder, and there could be achievements or small bonus rewards for doing it quicker so that would entice people to want to get raid gear.
Anyway, I'm just exploring ways to constantly encourage the desire to get the best gear available.
As for why the story exsists. It would be one part of an even larget questline that leads to an Hereloom Epic Weapon or something.
Kittik said:
But, what if inside this MMO, there is also "My Story" to progress through the quest of your story, you need to do some quests in the world, but then there is also an instanced version of a zone that is just for you. It would be only End level, or it could happen every 25 levels, or 10 levels, whatever the case could be. So, the idea is you want to get the best gear you can, because inside your instanced version of your questline for your story there are puzzles, mobs, even a boss.
What you describe looks like the Epic quest line like f.ex in Lotro where this quest was accompanying your character from level 1 to level max . Most of it could have been done solo but sometimes groups were necessary . However I don't really see what it has in common with drops . Yes there were rewards and sometimes even good to excellent rewards but the purpose of the Epic quest was not really drops but character developpement, lore and immersion .
It was like a movie where your character was playing a role and one enjoyed to see and experience the links there were between the world and teh character . I find this kind of quest one of the most interesting things in an MMO but I only moderately care about what kind of rewards I get when I finish this or that personnal episode within the Big World Story .
My problem with most 'My Story' driven questlines is it tends to force my character into a story arch I would never want to really do. I don't want to be the hero that saves the world. I don't want the big time Terminus NPC's to know me as the Commander like in GW2 or the savior of the world. I want to build my own story out in the world and not be pigeon holded into whatever story a master questline forces me into.
I realize that's not the real point of your thread, as it's about obtaining gear, but that's my inherent issue with main story questlines in general. Don't write my story, let me write my own.
Kittik said:Yeah, sorry. I'm not good at putting ideas down on paper.
So, yes I agree I want to encourage group play and I want to encourage raiding and I want to have a goal to strive for to get that better gear. Gear that can be obtained from just solo'ing shouldn't be good enough. But why do I need better gear than what I can get in a group? To raid, ok, but why do I want to get the best raid gear? Once you've got that raid gear, you're done. At least until the next expansion pack.
But, what if inside this MMO, there is also "My Story" to progress through the quest of your story, you need to do some quests in the world, but then there is also an instanced version of a zone that is just for you. It would be only End level, or it could happen every 25 levels, or 10 levels, whatever the case could be. So, the idea is you want to get the best gear you can, because inside your instanced version of your questline for your story there are puzzles, mobs, even a boss. So if you're just a solo player and the best gear you have is common gear with a rare peice here or there, you're going to stuggle mightily inside your story quest zone. But if you raid, and you have the best gear, you'll probably breeze through this zone.
Now I know some people are vehemently against raiding, so they'd complain about how this is unfair. So, I'm not saying this zone is undoable in common gear, just harder, and there could be achievements or small bonus rewards for doing it quicker so that would entice people to want to get raid gear.
Anyway, I'm just exploring ways to constantly encourage the desire to get the best gear available.
As for why the story exsists. It would be one part of an even larget questline that leads to an Hereloom Epic Weapon or something.
Sounds like you may want to give FFXIV a shot because that's exactly what that game does.
Ludek said:Kittik said:blah blah blah
Sounds like you may want to give FFXIV a shot because that's exactly what that game does.
No, I wouldn't want to give that a try, because I'm not looking for that.
What I'm looking for are ways to make this game and it's inherent gear grind relavent. I'll raid, I'll raid alot and I'll eventually completely gear out my main, my alt, and 1 or two other toons. But why? This is what I'm trying to avoid. I want the best gear so I can solo a red con mob. Do I want to solo, no, but I want to be freakin' awesome. But I don't want to grind gear just to grind for gear.
Give us a reason to want to be freakin' awesome. A solo story that stops us for progression ( or something with reason to want to get better ) would be a reason to grind for that gear.
Again, as I said in my OP this is just an idea of how to make getting gear matter. What is everyone else's ideas?
I always thought class based quests that were mostly focused on being solo were fun and a nice change of pace in group based games.
I also like the idea that there may be encounters that are solo focused and unbeatable that tracks your progress of how far you got.
As you continue to grow your characters power you can keep going back and improve over your last try. It is a nice, tangible, way for a player to see their characters growth instead of just number output increasing in your combat window.
It becomes a point of pride to say "I got to stage X" and for players to talk amongst themselves to figure out strategies to maximize their output in these type of unbeatable encounters. It really does encourage communication in the community through a solo gameplay system which can be hard to achieve with normal solo gameplay.
In an open world game there would have to be a mechanic that wouldn't allow help from other players, but that is easy enough and can be added in a number of ways without using instances.
"My Story" sounds like Guild Wars 2's Personal Story. Or even Rift's little solo to small group story instances. Or LotRO's repeatable instances. The list goes on.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but solo instances would funnel people out of the population. That's usually the exact opposite of what a fledgling MMO aims for. If the rewards were as worthwhile as grouping, that would similarly undermine the community focus of the game.
If you can't feel awesome in a group just as well as soloing against a red con mob, then does the mob's level really mean anything? Would it be just a gear/class check and you wanting to poke something solo? Good class design should make you feel powerful. Good gear should make you feel powerful. Saving your team should... you get the drift. The rest are just activities or avenues for bumping numbers on your stat page - maybe tweaking your appearance or utility. Or, ya know, having fun. It sounds to me like the thrust of the argument here is you want to be able to have fun solo, more so than gear or anything else. The incentive bit ("making gear matter") and how that ties specifically into soloing activities has me scratching my head.
If a player fells an ent, and no one else is around to hear it, does it make a sound? (I may have taken too much artistic license with that one).
Solo instances have been popular elsewhere, may even come to be necessary in Pantheon eventually, but they are unlikely to be the current developer focus. Meaningful quest lines within the Perception system, sure. Purely solo ones, possibly. I'd venture most will take you into some hazardous areas best delved with friends, however. If you're advocating for top-level quests to fill your time, I'm sure many people are on board with that.
DagNabbit said:"My Story" sounds like Guild Wars 2's Personal Story. Or even Rift's little solo to small group story instances. Or LotRO's repeatable instances. The list goes on.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but solo instances would funnel people out of the population. That's usually the exact opposite of what a fledgling MMO aims for. If the rewards were as worthwhile as grouping, that would similarly undermine the community focus of the game.
If you can't feel awesome in a group just as well as soloing against a red con mob, then does the mob's level really mean anything? Would it be just a gear/class check and you wanting to poke something solo? Good class design should make you feel powerful. Good gear should make you feel powerful. Saving your team should... you get the drift. The rest are just activities or avenues for bumping numbers on your stat page - maybe tweaking your appearance or utility. Or, ya know, having fun. It sounds to me like the thrust of the argument here is you want to be able to have fun solo, more so than gear or anything else. The incentive bit ("making gear matter") and how that ties specifically into soloing activities has me scratching my head.
If a player fells an ent, and no one else is around to hear it, does it make a sound? (I may have taken too much artistic license with that one).
Solo instances have been popular elsewhere, may even come to be necessary in Pantheon eventually, but they are unlikely to be the current developer focus. Meaningful quest lines within the Perception system, sure. Purely solo ones, possibly. I'd venture most will take you into some hazardous areas best delved with friends, however. If you're advocating for top-level quests to fill your time, I'm sure many people are on board with that.
Glad someone else mentioned the likeness to the GW2 (and other games) personal story! Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I don't want the story to force me into a direction ala GW2 personal story. I think VR has an awesome system (on paper) with their perception quest system like you mentioned, @DagNabbit. Meaningful choices where I can create my own story is what I miss. I don't want to always be the hero or the commander. Sometimes, I just wanna be the villian or agnostic towards an NPC's problems. Perception sounds like it's giving me the power to make my own decisions, and I really dig that.
Not a fan of mmoes where you are "the big hero and central theme", it's okay for solo games, but when brought to MMO levels what is the sense of all beeing heroes and world savior ? That also forces the player into beeing a good and epic guy (like FFXIV) where you can't even have nuance in your choices, or just giving no **** about what happens next.
It also forces the writers/designers to write hundreds of lines of scenarii, and even more if they want to fork some choices, all that only for a one time use per character (and often, a speedrun for alts).
Some games did stories very well. SWTOR may have been the best single player MMO ever made. FFXIV had wonderful cutscenes in great number.
But as others have said here - this is also very limiting and forces every player, and worse every character, into a predetermined path.
Story-driven progression and making each character a great hero - that isn't what we hope for in Pantheon.
Now there is room for some story-driven content. But it shouldn't be extensive and it shouldn't be a bottleneck limiting other content.
To give an example. Suppose the back-story of one of the races was shown by a series of quests. Not giving great gear - not giving great experience - not needed for a character to do any content. Just something that gave more depth to the race for those that wanted it. Substitute class for race if you like. Suppose parts of this were instanced. They could even work like session play in LOTRO where you got to play the role of a racial here or villain for a few minutes. I don't think most of us would be bothered by this. It is the SWTOR/FFXIV/LOTRO approach where so *much* of the game is story-driven and we are *forced* to be a great hero or villain that drives most of the objections.