Monday, July 14, 2008

Small Group Content - Seeing the Light of Day Once Again

Currently on EQ2's Test Server is the following update:

Kander has lowered the difficulty on Karnor's castle, added a couple of named critters, spread out some of the loot a bit, and thinned some of the population. We'd like to get this zone in shape so that it's more appropriate for smaller groups of players entering that level range. Please take a few friends with you and see what you think of the zone. Do keep in mind that we're shooting for smaller groups of level 72-76 players with average treasured/mastercrafted gear.

If this actually makes it to Live, all I can say is it's about time! And tweaking it for us poor average geared players too! While it existed in the older MMO's, small group content has been absent from nearly all the more recent releases. So you are left with soloing or a three-hour ordeal of waiting for a group to fill and then a long journey ahead. Certainly I can gather two friends to do solo mobs. But really why bother?

I believe many that solo do it because they don't like the only other option available. A large percentage of our guild solos. I can say with certainty that if there was a dungeon three of us could do, and be done in 45 minutes to an hour, the majority would jump at an invitation to do so.

I would really love to see a change to this solo/full group mentality in the future MMO's. Warhammer seems to offer an interesting alternative with their public quests. We'll have to wait and see how that actually plays out. But good to see EQ2 make a change in this direction. It's just one small step, but hopefully there may be more to come.

5 comments:

Unknown said...
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Elementalistly said...

The MAIN reason I still love Guild Wars.
The option to create a part if no friends are on with AI based henchmen and most missions last no more than an hour (unless it is a huge work out)
Most quests can be done in 10-20 minutes.
The feeling of accomplishment is always there.
Great stuff.
Reason me and the wife love EQ2 is so much we can do together, so more content for us duos equals more game time.

Aspendawn said...

We did play Guild Wars for a time but hit a point where we couldn't duo anymore, even with henchman along. Content just got progressively harder. All those mobs that popped out of the ground about drove us nuts lol. I know they added some expansions since we left so not sure if it's changed.

But we absolutely loved the pre-Searing content. The world was pretty and playing was fun. I kept re-rolling just to play that area over and over. Just didn't enjoy it as much once we left.

EQ2 we could duo up to a point. But again, content just keeps getting harder and at level 80, dungeons are out of the question. We can't even do the green ones. We're hoping with the revamped Karnor's Castle we might have some better luck.

Elementalistly said...

Aspendawn
Same for us. We reached a point where we could not progress. The mobs were ridiculously over powered for Duos.
That has all changed with Nightfall.
Now you get Heroes.
You control their actions, you can add runes to their armor, give them your better weapons. And the best part...
The healer is not always the first to die...and usually can res you.
Hooray.
What is cool we added Nightfall on to our game, and then took our old Prophecies characters over from a quest in Lions Gate.
This was a mini mission, and once there we each got 5 heroes to work with.
I took these Heroes into area's that were near impossible with Henchmen, and actually was able to survive.
You have to level them up first though as they give them to you at level 15.
But, this started a whole new round of fun, working on getting these guys up there..

We plan to try and tackle the final missions now that became too much for our schedule, and see how we do.
Should be fun.

As to duo in EQ2, we are still in our late 50's, so we have not seen everything, but we would be happy to reach 70 or 80 even.
We sure have enjoyed what we have played though.
Cheers

Thallian said...

I will give another vote to flexible grouping, that was one of my favorite things about city of heores is you could have a group of almost any size and roll into a dungeon and it would change to adapt.

p.s.plz come on over to my blog and see if you have any ideas to share with me and Anton for the game were making.