So group up with someone and do them? It doesn't penalize you and actually seems to make things quicker imo. Forced grouping isn't the answer either.
Fair enough.
What some of us want is relatively moot at this point considering some of the core mechanics would need to change and it's too close to launch. Most of the issues that were brought up during early testing fell on deaf dev ears. Some of the issues have been addressed but it wasn't because of the devs. The modding community has picked up the slack in those regards.
I believe that forced grouping IS the answer. Solo questing is a serious detriment to recent MMOs. Between the extremely active gameplay and the ability to solo your way to level cap you end up with mechanics that are inherently antisocial, creating this bastardized genre of 5000 player games that have less player interaction than a coop diablo game. If you want to group in a quest focused game you have to be in sync with each other on quests, you have to find players that aren't playing the game like a single player rpg, you have to fragment the gameplay into meaningless public quests and instanced dungeons, you have to homogenize class design so that everyone is self sufficient and can dps and you have to remove any spells or mechanics from your game that allow players to interact with each other in any way.
So what do you actually want in a MMO?
And almost all of them have failed to one extent or another. Of the MMOs that have been successful, they either have a large emphasis on group content or they are a hybrid of some other genre+MMO.
But that's exactly what Im arguing against. This is just another stale solo quest grind. And a bland one at that. Why? Because most of us here have been through this shit countless times in those games you described. In wow it was fresh, new, exciting. Now? 10 yrs later and 20 games since, its old stale and played out.
Personal tastes, I guess. This plays very ES like, but with a lot of traditional MMO functionality layered. I'm not forcing myself to play, as I like the design and classes. The only thing I'm not really a fan of is the combat, which is kind of meh. That's where I really miss Rift and WOW. Outside of that, those games are Zzzz.I dont know ~ i played it again and forced myself to go further. This is just one of those MMO's, like SW:TOR, that I want to do well and enjoy... but its just not happening.
What other grouping mechanisms do you expect to see in a MMO besides group dungeons (basic and elite level), raids and PVP?
I will echo this again: ESO's first 3 or 4 levels were terrible the first time through. Now that I know what I am doing, they may be less so but its anti-Tortage: The game improves markedly and regularly as you unlock content by progressing through the story.
While it's true that slow combat speed, long downtime/ relative lack of player UI interaction, and limited and stable server populations contributed to player interaction, are you really arguing that making content hard enough to require players to form groups of 4+ people won't increase player socialization?
Forcing players to group in order to advance thru the PVE content would obviously increase player socialization, but is that how the large majority of paying customers want their MMOs to be designed? A LOT of EQ1 players flocked to WoW because they were fed up with forced grouping, myself being one of them.
