Lalai wrote: »

drogon1 wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

It was probably more along the lines of a discussion on how they could best give the player an experience where they (the player) felt like a hero, and that their individual choices were making an impact in the world.

In a lot of developer discussions (not just for this game, but industry in general) there's talk of how to use phasing to tell the individual story in an MMO, where it's easy to get lost in the mass of people, all on the same quest as you.

I do think they went a tad overboard with it being forced, but can see where they may have at least wanted to try it, or thought it fit best with their game/vision. SWTOR kind of did the same in the beginning, where people could join you on your story missions, but only if they were a different class. I don't know if it's still that way, and that doesn't make it a good decision.. but it is something heavily story driven.

I personally disapprove of forced soloing and forced grouping when talking about the main storyline of games. Don't mind either for side stuff.

I'm for player choice, especially when it doesn't impact how other players want to experience the game. 2 players want to group for a main story quest, fine, what's the problem? I'm surprised it's even controversial.

I'm in general surprised at how ESO devs have artificially narrowed how players are able to enjoy the game via their bonehead reward system. One of the first polls on launch was for xp equalization caused after players realized that most of their xp derived from one source: quest completion.

The poll requested the obvious: allow players to do what they liked with the content (dungeons, pvp, questing, grouping for the quests, and so on) by allowing them to progress similarly doing so. You like questing, go quest, pvp, go pvp, dungeons, go dungeoning, and so on - you know, what EVERY other premium MMO out there already does. Freedom to play your character how you like - kind of a supposed hallmark for ES titles.

Have not heard a peep from ZoS on this topic.

Character progression flexibility will win you a diverse, stable playerbase from which to develop your game. Am I missing something?

I would agree with you here. There are a few exp things I want to see boosted (like exp from dungeons in general, and PvP).. and then some things where I wished they provided different paths for different people. I love going through Veteran content, and being able to see all the content on one character. Lots of people don't.. and they shouldn't be made to only have Veteran content as their option.

In FFXIV:ARR I hated that group dungeons were a required portion of the storyline. You -had- to do them to unlock other areas to travel to, get your mount, and just advance in general. ..and it wasn't just one dungeon. It was three dungeons in a row.. and dps queues were essentially the same as they are in every game.. long. I feel the same way about forced solo content. It doesn't belong in a place that forces people to do it.

Now, where it gets kinda into a grey area is how a story person wants you to experience their game. Choices are good for the player, but may be bad for the designers vision.. and depending on how important that vision is, the designer may be willing to sacrifice some subscriptions (I know FFXIV:ARR has stated their goal is 600k subs, as an example.. they happen to have more, which is good.. but they also aren't majorly changing things to try and appease angry forum goers/keep subs.. they're sticking to their vision). SWTOR had a similar system at launch, and while it is F2P now, it certainly wasn't that way at launch (and wasn't until about 13 months after release). That could speak to how well the system was received, or it could just be coincidence. Most the rants about SWTOR I hear involve poor endgame, with little options for people to do much after the storyline ended.

So it's sorta a balance between what the company is willing to budge on, and what players want. How much does allowing other heroes into the instance destroy the sense of accomplishment for the average player, and how adamant is the company about making sure the story is experienced in a certain way in a heavily story based game? I am not sure it really fits with an TES game, but that's just me... and unfortunately I didn't design any part of the game.

Unfortunately, ZoS seems adamant that you spend 80%+ of your time questing to 50, probably 90%+. I don't see how this conforms to any positive vision for an MMO.

The major questlines must be completed to progress, and unfortunately they must be solo'd, and this seems ok for a quest-centric narrative style MMO. But these questlines constitute a fairly small portion of your overal character progression to 50. Let's be generous and say that those questlines altogether give 10 bars of xp out of 50.

It's that other 80% of needed xp that baffles me. There are so many fun things to do in game - that aren't questing - and the devs just keep steering you away by denying xp for them.

Gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the devs maybe think they are limiting botting and perhaps speed leveling by removing xp from certain aspects of the game, such as dungeons. But such an outcome is senseless to me, because they will lose - have already lost - a substantial number of MMOers that otherwise love the game. Kill the bots without killing your players' fun.

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In a lot of developer discussions (not just for this game, but industry in general) there's talk of how to use phasing to tell the individual story in an MMO, where it's easy to get lost in the mass of people, all on the same quest as you.

Yet everywhere we go, even in quest chains that are dreams or visions of the past, there are mobs of players.

This is true, however it seems like with the removal of nameplates and chat bubbles, this game is doing a lot to try and make them seem like other people just wandering around the world. Their extensive use of phasing makes sure that the world only changes when you complete something... you can see that other guy running around, you can see him hacking away at mobs, but they don't actually shape your personal world... and when you complete something, it stays that way. The village you just saved from bandits, drove them out of town.. those villagers stay there. You don't have to sit and watch a bunch of other adventures killing the bandits that you already rid the town of. Even the stuff you can group for is very solo-centric when speaking of quests in general.

I'm not saying it was the right decision, I'm not saying I agree with it, and I'm not saying that I think it necessarily belongs in an MMO.. I'm just saying from a story driven standpoint, where they want the player to feel at the center of all things happening it seems to make at least a little sense. The major, huge, downside to it (and the reason I don't really like it) is that it forces solo play and makes grouping extremely difficult, if not impossible for anyone who isn't carefully coordinating quests. They are working on fixing the phasing portion of it, which is good.. that still doesn't address the forced solo. That I don't know if it will ever be fixed. It may be one of the design choices the team isn't willing to budge on, and is willing to take a sub loss for. Sometimes not everything is about money, so long as you have enough subscribers to continue on.

Not being able to group outside of the forced solo quests they've already recognized as an issue, shown by their willingness to fix it.. however the forced solo stuff doesn't have that yet. The most they've done is reduced difficulty of the solo boss encounters. That suggests to me that they're pretty set in place about those fights taking place solo, even if it means nerfing them for folks to get through.

Again, not saying I agree. I can just see why they may prefer it that way. As I've said earlier, I rather dislike either forced soloing, or forced grouping, when it comes to non-optional content like the main storyline. I still enjoy the game, that kinda stuff isn't really enough of a frustration for me to overcome the fun I've been having.