Jaybles, on 08 March 2017 - 01:43 PM, said:
OK maybe I just have a different gaming background, but every MMORPG I have every played has forced you to group up to get the best rewards, and every single game gives you a "clan" option to do so. And the people who usually get the best rewards are in the best/most active/grind kings "clans."
Why is it so crazy that PGI has implemented this same system in MWO. If you want to tag planets and get MC, you have to group up. The Units that do it the best earn the tags and the MC. Why is this so controversial with the MWO population? If PGI had made the MMO PvE game so many seem to want, do you think it would be any different? You'd still have to group up and you'd still have elite units with all the best space opera junk around.
Apparently I'm just not capable of understanding why people want to play solo in a team based game, or why solos should be rewarded equally as well as people who want to group.
Guild (clan) option in MWO is mostly non existent for a few reasons:
1. social interaction in this game is severely limited. No one talks to anyone else outside of drops, and even in drops people don't talk much. A big part of which is a lack of general communication channel, or even a reasonable way to text back and forth with another player. The chat interface is actually terrible even if you are just trying to talk with some one on your friends list.
2. The chat tools that are included effectively lock you out of every other aspect of the program, and don't allow you to do anything else while you are chatting. I have never played any mmo like this that locked all other aspects of the program away any time you wanted to chat. Basically PGI has set it up so chatting is a punished activity. It isn't like there is a handy chat box in the bottom left corner of every non active drop screen so you can talk to people. It is instead "oh you want to talk to your faction, ok np, click the faction play mode, and go to the faction play chat, and oh congratz you can't do anything else but wait to talk to people in the faction play area, which is completely dead b/c no one sits around in FP screen hoping to talk to others. There should be options in a dialogue box to swap your chat to your faction, your guild, the general population, people lfg, etc. But there aren't any of those things.
3. You are punished for inviting people to your guild because you have to pay an exorbitant c bill cost to do so. If you invite the wrong person or they don't work out you have wasted c bills. Thus being exclusive and choosy about who you invite because it costs you. Every other MMO has a basic fairly trivial cost to start a guild and you can invite and kick whom ever you desire cost free.
The other problem is Lack of accessibility:
Yes MMO's do have a guild system that rewards people for joining together to progress through raids. But many, in fact most of the guilds in those MMO's didn't raid and were formed strictly for social reasons or to progress through non eliete content or content of a different sort and were not hard core in nature. We don't even have those options here in MWO because the only reason to join a unit is not to join FP because you can FP with out a unit, but the reason to join a unit is to club baby seals in FP, which in and of itself is not very compelling.
But back to your MMO example. You know what those MMO developers found? They found that they spent all this time making this end game content and almost none of their player base actually experienced it. An active minority certainly would move from tier to teir but most of the players never experienced it at all and those who did no more than a fight or two in the first tier, and certainly never more than the first tier. What problem does that sound like... oh right MWO has very low numbers of the player base experiencing FP.
So what did MMO's especially the most successful ones do? The increased the ease of access. They created LFG tools that actually let you pug que for a specific elite dungeon with random people. They lowered the skill necessary for Pug groups to compete in said elite dungeon. They created a method whereby you could get rewards similar to people doing elite dungeons by doing non elite dungeon activities. The made the game over all much more accessible.
Guess what MWO should do ? Make the game more accessible. This is why pug que in FP is what people think will truly help the game grow. Even in a pug que you would still have to work together, just as those people in the pug que for elite dungeons had to work together. Sure the team work just doesn't get to the same level as say an elite raiding guild with a dedicated shot caller would, but most people don't want or need that level of organization they want to have fun blow off some steam and experience some content. So yeah they are willing to do some team work because you can't beat the bosses with out some team work, but it is hardly like they are going all out to be the most honed fighting force to grace the planet. People have day jobs many don't need that type of commitment.
Once you get more people experience in playing the FP game mode and then those who crave more structure go on to find an MWO unit by google warrioring their way to a unit with pre defined group drops, which leaves you with more people playing the mode and a group of people who are actively looking to regularly join the more organized ranks because they want more than is offered in the pug que. But you also get a healthy pug que that is experiencing and enjoying this content as well, and you get a larger player base because people are sticking around because now they get to enjoy the end game content as well.
The more exclusive and harder you make it for people to get into a game mode the fewer people will play. Every artificial barrier to entry you erect the order of magnitude of the player pool drops because some people won't bother when QP is so easy. This is why the shouts by people when any change is suggested about NO IT IS FOR HARD CORES ONLY HURRR DURRR.!!! DESIGNED THAT WAY!!!! DURRR!!! make no sense and do nothing but show you are out of touch with the problem and the solution. The solution is to be more inclusive and get more people into the mode. This will help the health of the game and the health of all ques.
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