What Would Matt Do

Number one reason grouping sucks and/or blows in any MMORPG: people.

Number two reason grouping sucks and/or blows in any MMORPG: developers.

What’s that you say? It’s not the developer’s fault that people in general have a hard time grouping? Really? Well, you’re plain wrong. Let me explain why:

MMORPG players, in general, are broken. We all know it, we all complain about it, we all suffer from it. Why is that? Because developers keep expecting people to act better. To act fairly, to not take advantage of others, to not run off and be retarded, etc. Do the developers do anything to further these ideas? Do positively reinforce any of these good behaviors? No. And that’s the problem. We get all kinds of negative reinforcement if someone in the group/raid/etc is a jackass (LEEEEEEROOOOOY), but what happens if everyone works together and gets the job done? Nothing but getting the job done.

Sure, that should be reward enough on its own. I agree completely. But apparently, it’s not. People are still figuring out how to group, they are still doing retarded things, mean things, dishonest ninja-like things, etc. So I propose the following:

1) Reward people for grouping. Not just the normal reward of not dying, but a bigger reward. Maybe the longer you are grouped, after a certain amount of experience with the same group (which could be tracked over time), or mostly the same group, you get additional experience. Or your healing spells work better. Or your defense automatically goes up. Something that says, “damn fine job with that group, friends”. Tracking this beyond the current grouping would help with casual players being able to take advantage of the same benefits.

2) Train people how to group. Sure, a lot of people aren’t going to listen/read/play whatever it is that trains them, but enough will do it to make it worthwhile. Remember those tooltips that WoW, and many others, have now? How about filling those in with such things as group etiquette, how looting should work, etc.

3) Rating of players. A global rating if at all possible (though any global rating system has too much room for exploits to really make them worthwhile), but a local rating system would be really helpful. I could group with said 4 other people, and if I really liked them, I could change their ratings with a simple right click, select rating. Then, whenever I was looking for a group, I could check my find group tab and see if anyone I have rated high is available and interested. Maybe even extend it similar to what XFire does. When looking said imaginary Find Group interface, you could see not only the people you rated highly, but check an option to see the people they rated highly. The grouping system would automatically expand itself as time went on.

4) Have all social and grouping system that encourage the right behavior in place at launch. Train people from the very beginning how to play. Don’t just put the game out and expect people to know how to play, assume they don’t and train them, with positive reinforcement, on how to play.

As I’m sure you know, I have no professional MMORPG development experience, but damn me if some of those ideas or other ideas couldn’t be implemented to make grouping better. The population needs to be trained, rewarded and to recycle groups. If those things could be done, we’d all benefit immensely.

Mr. Smedley has been hitting the eggnog a bit to hard is my only theory.

Galaxies To Beat World of Warcraft?

What a disappointment. After reading the previews, where the developers claimed all kinds of things (from riflemen standing in lines, firing, and ducking so the line behind could shoot to cannonballs wrecking entires lines of guys and to actual fun single player), I was ready for the next Age of Empires/Mythology entry. Boy was I silly. I played the demo, thought it was interesting… I should have caught on after I kept thinking the full game would have more than the demo. It didn’t. It was the same. I shouldn’t have bought it.

Ensemble, here’s some questions:

1) Was the 3D engine worth the small battlefields? ’cause that was a big part of what killed it for me.
2) Was it just too hard, or too imbalancing to have the soldiers fight like they really did back in war of 1812 era? All that talk in the previews of lines of guys, and the same in the screenshots in the mags, but in the actual game, just a mess of bitches firing at each other.
3) Do you not realize that your single player game has sucked for awhile now? The AoM single player was so bad, I literally stopped half way into the first mission? Sure, it’s just the single player and the real reason I bought Age games was for the multiplayer, but still. In case no one has mentioned it, your single player stinks. It’s boring. You ask the engine to do things it can’t and the player to just accept the sillyness of it all. Ugh.

So I traded it away. Maybe Gothic II Gold (Gothic II with the expansion) will be fun enough so I forget you. Maybe.

I’ve got nothing personal against any of these guys (other than the long hours of self imposed suffering I did in their respective games), but the only one who actually makes sense here is Scott Jennings, who I have total man crush on.

(stolen from games.slashdot.com)

• Brad McQuad take on Instances. - Brad being your EQ creator/hater. You remember, the game that completely and totally hated all it’s customers.
• Raph Koster’s input (who is a total game design god, just ask anyone that will parrot what Raph says) - Raph being the guy for responsible for the downfall of UO and SWG.
• Scott Jennings - LUM! And now employed by Mythic.

Quick breakdown for those too lazy to read:
Brad says instances are bad and response of gaming umberhulks who are used to single player games and that Instances have no place in MMORPGs. Brad goes on suggest that finite resources and hard work should allow some people to acquire some things and everyone else to suffer. Boy, I can’t wait to play his new game.

Raph rambles on in big words with marketing speak to back up his theories and basically comes down to the point, “games are box and instances are smaller boxes and I’m a retard.” I too thought it odd he called himself a retard.

Scott then proceeds to explain that instances have their place if done correctly. Duh.

Overall, a C+/B on the interesting gaming reading chart, if only because of the industry experts involved.