The real problem with group activities

[Doubleplay]

The ability to engage in group activities such as ship to ship combat, took a lot of time and effort to enable from a programming standpoint. However the real problem in the end for making the scenario viable is the fact that all our personal lives do not coincide with the scheduling necessary to organize a fight.

Take, for example, EM events. On my shard all the em events start at dinnertime here on the west coast. It is impossible to schedule an hour or two away from the family at that time.

To organize a ship full of people for a great time on the high seas faces such scheduling problems. Getting all the supplies ready is no problem really as that can be done at the player's convenience. However the fight itself must occur at a defined time. Sure you can get a bunch of close friends together for a fight, but what about all the other people who play ultima? How can I expect to participate in a group fight when heading home from work early? The group fight is always tied to a specific time. Our schedules are variable.

There must be a way to be able to sit down at the computer at a random time, and find a way to join up with a group to do the activity that you are looking forward to. I am sure that at any time of the day or night there are people who will want to climb on a ship and have fun together, but how do they organize on the spot for such an endeavor?

 

[Trebr Drab]

The ability to engage in group activities such as ship to ship combat, took a lot of time and effort to enable from a programming standpoint. However the real problem in the end for making the scenario viable is the fact that all our personal lives do not coincide with the scheduling necessary to organize a fight.

Take, for example, EM events. On my shard all the em events start at dinnertime here on the west coast. It is impossible to schedule an hour or two away from the family at that time.

To organize a ship full of people for a great time on the high seas faces such scheduling problems. Getting all the supplies ready is no problem really as that can be done at the player's convenience. However the fight itself must occur at a defined time. Sure you can get a bunch of close friends together for a fight, but what about all the other people who play ultima? How can I expect to participate in a group fight when heading home from work early? The group fight is always tied to a specific time. Our schedules are variable.

There must be a way to be able to sit down at the computer at a random time, and find a way to join up with a group to do the activity that you are looking forward to. I am sure that at any time of the day or night there are people who will want to climb on a ship and have fun together, but how do they organize on the spot for such an endeavor?

I understand your thinking, but I have a basic problem with this in MMOs. WoW does this, I believe, where you can log on, sign up, and instantly teleport to what you want to do. This is the natural culmination of such designs, IMO.

It just doesn't feel like a world out there, just a cheat sheet handed out to the players. While I understand some won't agree with me, we all have our own opinions, this is mine.

 

[popps]

The ability to engage in group activities such as ship to ship combat, took a lot of time and effort to enable from a programming standpoint. However the real problem in the end for making the scenario viable is the fact that all our personal lives do not coincide with the scheduling necessary to organize a fight.

The Chat Channells can do wonders to find fellow players interested in getting a group together for some fun.

It works to get a Focus at Brit bank, it works to put together a team for a hunt also....

There does is room for improvement in this area, though.

Like for example, some special NPC or a Board were people apply listing themselves up for some type of hunt.

Whenever other players sign up for that same hunt the various players who applied for that given activity will be notified that a Chat has been created for them by the system and that they can gather there for arrangements in regards to the common interest hunt.

Merely an idea, there could be tons more to improve this area.

 

[aibandit]

I understand your thinking, but I have a basic problem with this in MMOs. WoW does this, I believe, where you can log on, sign up, and instantly teleport to what you want to do.

It just doesn't feel like a world out there, just a cheat sheet handed out to the players. While I understand some won't agree with me, we all have our own opinions, this is mine.

You haven't played wow have you? it's hardly handed to you.

In wow you have to fly or run to placed and we can recall wherever we want.

Wow has instances that have multiple bosses that can take a group of 20 9 hours. Kind of like going to madusa but you have to fight your way through a bunch of tough mobs and a few mini bosses before you get there.



This is the reason I have quit wow so many times because once you get to the high end crap I just can't dedicate 4+ straight hours to an instance that usually doesn't get me anything (you have 20 people rolling for the good item)



In UO we can't do this crap because our servers are so low pop in the first place.
Requiring teamwork means it will die off quick. Unless you make it really profitable.

 

[Zomeguy]

It just doesn't feel like a world out there, just a cheat sheet handed out to the players. While I understand some won't agree with me, we all have our own opinions, this is mine.

In UO you always had the recall/gate spells, you dont have to know where dungeons are, you just instantly teleport there. It is your choice, in WOW you can run there too . In most older MMOs you always had to run way more than in UO, although that trend seems to have gone recently with the general dumbing down of gameplay.

The problem with UO is the population, barely anyone plays anymore. In the hours I spent during the recent free return to Britannia offer, I have perhaps seen half a dozen messages in global chat. and perhaps that many random people (didnt visit Luna).

How can you expect to organize a group activity with so few people?

 

[Trebr Drab]

I understand your thinking, but I have a basic problem with this in MMOs. WoW does this, I believe, where you can log on, sign up, and instantly teleport to what you want to do.

It just doesn't feel like a world out there, just a cheat sheet handed out to the players. While I understand some won't agree with me, we all have our own opinions, this is mine.

You haven't played wow have you? it's hardly handed to you.

In wow you have to fly or run to placed and we can recall wherever we want.

Wow has instances that have multiple bosses that can take a group of 20 9 hours. Kind of like going to madusa but you have to fight your way through a bunch of tough mobs and a few mini bosses before you get there.



This is the reason I have quit wow so many times because once you get to the high end crap I just can't dedicate 4+ straight hours to an instance that usually doesn't get me anything (you have 20 people rolling for the good item)



In UO we can't do this crap because our servers are so low pop in the first place.
Requiring teamwork means it will die off quick. Unless you make it really profitable.

It just doesn't feel like a world out there, just a cheat sheet handed out to the players. While I understand some won't agree with me, we all have our own opinions, this is mine.

In UO you always had the recall/gate spells, you dont have to know where dungeons are, you just instantly teleport there. It is your choice, in WOW you can run there too . In most older MMOs you always had to run way more than in UO, although that trend seems to have gone recently with the general dumbing down of gameplay.

The problem with UO is the population, barely anyone plays anymore. In the hours I spent during the recent free return to Britannia offer, I have perhaps seen half a dozen messages in global chat. and perhaps that many random people (didnt visit Luna).

How can you expect to organize a group activity with so few people?

I wasn't talking about WoW's "End Game", which is another matter entirely, but good point anyways Airbandit. But didn't WoW add some system for lower level instances where players sign up, and when ready you just teleport to that instance?
That makes Zomeguy's point though, that in UO you "Recall", and you have the new "Global Chat", so, same thing pretty much.

Good points, both.

I guess my real point is that without the social aspects of gathering, where making friends and joining guilds and being active really helps, these games all get boring. My opinion, of course. These games get too easy, and then it's just a matter of logging in, doing the "run"....and that's it? Yeah, players can socialize if they want to, in any game. But they don't (generally speaking). That's just the way people are. Take the easiest route available. But that leaves out what really makes MMOs special, the social aspects. They're more like Single Player Games these days. UO's been going towards that too. And adding code to make it easy to group up is like Single Player Games with Multi-Player capability. It's still lacking that social arena that MMOs should be all about, in my opinion.

Anyways, that's why I don't like easy solutions to grouping and doing specific things in the game. It's too "gamey" and loses "world".

 

[aibandit]

I see your point but the one thing uo has that wow doesn't is it's ability to have a tight nit guild.

Guilds on WOW are a bunch of individuals anxious for the next item drop.

A good guild can get rid of that "gamey" feel and keep it social.

 

[Kiminality]

I see your point but the one thing uo has that wow doesn't is it's ability to have a tight nit guild.

Guilds on WOW are a bunch of individuals anxious for the next item drop.

That's not strictly true.
While the style of the game will have an influence on the social grouping at occur, by introducing a bias in the "pool" of players that can be drawn from, the group itself has a greater bearing on what the guild is about.

One of UO's problems is that it doesn't have sturdy mechanics for grouping.
Yes, there's parties, but the party system is full of bugs and poor designs.
Health bars are buggy, fair loot sharing is entirely at the mercy of player greed, and so on.

 

[aibandit]

Well the good thing is origin,osi,ea,mythic or whatever the hell it is has trained us to ignore bugs and live with them because they wont be fixed.

the party bar bug is a great example of what this training can do. how many people just accept it as normal now .

kinda like choppy boats that took 12 years to fix, or like recently mentioned Sacred journey charging twice.

Adaptive people play uo, we have to be.
We can still be social with party bugs.

 

[Trebr Drab]

I see your point but the one thing uo has that wow doesn't is it's ability to have a tight nit guild.

Guilds on WOW are a bunch of individuals anxious for the next item drop.

That's not strictly true.
While the style of the game will have an influence on the social grouping at occur, by introducing a bias in the "pool" of players that can be drawn from, the group itself has a greater bearing on what the guild is about.

One of UO's problems is that it doesn't have sturdy mechanics for grouping.
Yes, there's parties, but the party system is full of bugs and poor designs.
Health bars are buggy, fair loot sharing is entirely at the mercy of player greed, and so on.

Yep. WoW takes care for all that for you.
The result is that the other players might just as well be BOTs.
Wait...they ARE Bots!

[YOUTUBE]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WhNM2K8cmU8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WhNM2K8cmU8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]

Hmm, something wrong with the YouTube thing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNM2K8cmU8&feature=PlayList&p=A9FC35298688D4CF&index=0&playnext=1

 

[Kiminality]

That's taking it too far.

I used to play some WAR, which has "open parties" and need/greed loot rolling, and all that terrible "gamey" stuff.
What did I observe from that?
People worked together a lot more often than you see in UO, and seemed to have a lot more fun doing it.
The added mechanics to "moderate" parties, and allow open parties/warbands, reduced the ability to screw other players over.

 

[Babble]

Without owning the booster I wonder where this 'I have to be in a group to catch pirates' thing is comming from.
Will it be easier in group? Yes.
Can i do it alone too? Yes.

People behave as if they never done any macros in UOAssist.
As far as I heard you can macro the cleaning, loading, firing and so on anyway.

 

[Trebr Drab]

That's taking it too far.

I used to play some WAR, which has "open parties" and need/greed loot rolling, and all that terrible "gamey" stuff.
What did I observe from that?
People worked together a lot more often than you see in UO, and seemed to have a lot more fun doing it.
The added mechanics to "moderate" parties, and allow open parties/warbands, reduced the ability to screw other players over.

Well, War was a new game. What I'm talking about takes some time, and evolves away from the social stuff. Not for every last player, of course. Speaking generally. You may have been a part of a group of friends who always play that way, or a group of old timers, who do, or whatever. But I still think this is the general pattern in games with such features.

And in my opinion, it matters how the players play a game, in general. Because that's the way the game will follow then as it evolves too, one following the other into a spiral based around that play style.
It's sort of a "be careful what you ask for" thing.

 

[Skrag]

Without owning the booster I wonder where this 'I have to be in a group to catch pirates' thing is comming from.
Will it be easier in group? Yes.
Can i do it alone too? Yes.

People behave as if they never done any macros in UOAssist.
As far as I heard you can macro the cleaning, loading, firing and so on anyway.

The question is more "Why would I catch pirates?" Other than grinding for rares, the best anyone has told me in the last 2 days of flames is "shut up and do it for nothing".

 

[Babble]

Because it takes the developers some time to notice their rewards are crap and to change it.
But no one forces you to hunt pirates.

 

[Skrag]

Probably tomorrow or something like that the developers will come on and mention that they're aware the rewards suck, and I'll shut up and give them a chance to fix them.

 

[popps]

Because it takes the developers some time to notice their rewards are crap and to change it.
But no one forces you to hunt pirates.

Rewards are crap ??

How so when I last heard a 120 fishing powerscroll going 50 millions and an Orc Galleon 100 millions not to mention Orc Galleons ship parts ?

If tens upon tens of millions are crap then what is a worthy reward worth ? A billion ????

 

[Babble]

Problem is it is more lotery than gameplay.
Something I dislike since doom artefacts.

 

[Skrag]

Rewards are crap ??

How so when I last heard a 120 fishing powerscroll going 50 millions and an Orc Galleon 100 millions not to mention Orc Galleons ship parts ?

If tens upon tens of millions are crap then what is a worthy reward worth ? A billion ????

Go check the other thread, that 100 MIL OMG ORC SHIP that has replaced "TEEEEAAAAM" as your new thing to scream is already worth 1/10th of that, tops. Tip: It's only been a week, it's not going to stop falling.