Team Battles encouraged?

[Nikech]

Originally posted by Vengeance
The whole point of MMORPGs is to team up with people and get to know them.  Thus grouping is very important for social interaction in the game.  There are a couple of objectives we need to have with this, however:

a) Don\'t totally preclude soloing.
b) Reward grouping, no matter the size.
c) Make very large groups possible, and give them things to do also.
d) Make it so that finding a group doesn\'t take hours.
e) Enable friends at very different levels to group together.
f) Do NOT enable friends at very different levels to power-level their newbie friends by grouping them in hard raids.

I believe our grouping ideas will do this.

- Vengeance

Great goals to aim for.

[Harwen]

Originally posted by Vengeance
The whole point of MMORPGs is to team up with people and get to know them.  Thus grouping is very important for social interaction in the game.  There are a couple of objectives we need to have with this, however:

a) Don\'t totally preclude soloing.
b) Reward grouping, no matter the size.
c) Make very large groups possible, and give them things to do also.
d) Make it so that finding a group doesn\'t take hours.
e) Enable friends at very different levels to group together.
f) Do NOT enable friends at very different levels to power-level their newbie friends by grouping them in hard raids.

I believe our grouping ideas will do this.

- Vengeance

That\'s just....beautiful!

I like the idea of about 20 people in a group treking throught he labyrinths, I am a little insecure hehe. Spiders creep me out.

[Nikech]

Originally posted by Vengeance
c) Make very large groups possible, and give them things to do also.

- Vengeance

Many games that I\'ve played have had limits for party size, and I think it\'s a good thing to allow large groups. The more the merrier. )

[Grakrim]

Originally posted by Nikech
Many games that I\'ve played have had limits for party size, and I think it\'s a good thing to allow large groups. The more the merrier. )

Aye, there\'s no in-game reason for their to be a party size cap.  If you want to kill a sewer rat with a group of 30 people, by all means!  However, computers can\'t cope with infinite numbers, so there has to be a cap somewhere.  256 members to a party is more than enough, and since computers tend to align things on bytes anyway, it would be silly to implement a smaller cap.

[edit]
I just remembered, in FFXI there seems to be a system for parties to ally with each other.  I think the party cap is 20 there, and something like up to 5 parties can ally to form a 100-strong group of people.  I don\'t know how that\'s supposed to work...
[/edit]

[Harwen]

Reminds me of this PSX Rpg that you could have over 100 characters in a single party...I just can\'t remember the game...that was the time of monster rancher 2...ah, those were the days...

[Cha0s]

I think that team partying is definetly a good thing. A system of equal gold would be good, and for quest items, the monster would drop one for each member of the party that killed it. This way they could all complete the quest seperately or as a group (this is kinda how Diablo 2 works).
As for division of normal loot... I think it should be up to the party members to work together and agree on how to distribute things fairly. Doing things for the players can create more problems than unfair looting (though I guess it could be easier to have a built-in loot division system, so this could be an on/off option that is decided at the party\'s creation...). Partying is a must, but as long as big parties are allowed and things work I\'m happy!

[Harwen]

I think that the division should be up to the paties, and you should know that your party will be fair and such. One item per member sounds a bit iffy, Diablo shouldn\'t influence this game like that....

Imagine 60 Holy Swords of The Blue Crystal....when only 5 members of the party did anything....not fair...

[Grakrim]

Originally posted by Harwen
I think that the division should be up to the paties, and you should know that your party will be fair and such. One item per member sounds a bit iffy, Diablo shouldn\'t influence this game like that....

Imagine 60 Holy Swords of The Blue Crystal....when only 5 members of the party did anything....not fair...

I think the best solution may be implementing several loot division mechanisms.  The easiest to implement would be all loot goes to the leader, who divides it up himself (again, requires a trustworthly leader).  Of course, it would have to be implemented in such a way as to prevent griefing.  Maybe you can only select the division mechanism at party creation, and not mid-adventure?

[Harwen]

Hm...I wonder if after a hard battle a single golden chest falls to the ground and the entire 60 member party just stares at it...the blood shed.

I am sure the simplest route is the best, as to give it to the hopefully trustworthy leader, and let her/him decide the division of spoils. At least everyone gets the experience, no? So no one really goes out empty handed.  I see wether a level of trust is in order there.

Division does sound handy Grak.

[derwoodly]

Long before you get to 256 group members you will run into problems with group funtions.  Many games, and I hope PS is one of them, will show you a list of the group members and there health.  256 little bars of health and the characters names would not fit on your screen.

However you could create large groups by making groups of say 10 people and then grouping the group leaders.

[Kiva]

Err... Who says PS will have little bars of health on the screen, next to the names which these bars belong to? This isn\'t Helbreath, you know... Besides, if a group of 10 people decide to kill something which they actually have a chance of killing, (not 10 peasants vs. rainbow-dragon) they should have a chance against it.

[Harwen]

Hrmm... Rainbow dragons vs 10 peasants sounds like a good fight...
 
Huh? Oh yeah, what we were talking about...

Perhaps assinging numbers to each group and giving them hotkey commands would be nice.

\"Group 2: Ins= Kill Monster, Give me the gold\"

\"Group 3: Del= Why are you sneaking behind me?\"

\"Group 2: Pgup = Where are you g-aaack!\"

\"End= Heal me?\"

[paxx]

Derwoodly, there has been a lot of thinking on this. And in reality it will be one group, and later with sub groups, what this means is the overall leader will be able to sub divide his party up.  You could have say 10 groups, each with a nuker, healer, thief and fighters?or there will be groups of healers, nukers, heavy infantry, light infantry and scouts? it will be up to the leader to choose how, and up to the user to see what info they want?if they want the status if subgroup B then they get subgroup B and all their vitals.

Also we have in the plans for group heals to not be centered on the caster but around the target?so healing at range will be possible at higher levels.

At least that is what we have on paper :-)

The big issue is group and subgroup designation.

On the, loot issue, that will be worked out, we will have loot that is only good for guilds, temporary loot?that you might as well use ASAP, money that goes to everyone involved?and other stuff. But the dragon dropping one thing is bad.

The better idea is the dragon drops 500 things and it is like a pi?ata of good stuff, but only one or two great things.

Also a list of everyone in the group and what they looted keeps people honest to a degree.

Since you can?t lie about not getting something, when everyone saw the text saying you did take it.

[Etra]

I think teaming up in a Party is a good thing, but it shouldn\'t be mandatory to level like in some games..x_x;
Otherwise, teaming up should have its advantages over fighting solo.

As for a item giving system, just do a roll the dice type of thing. You click a button and a number pops up, whoever gets the highest number gets the item (and of course you could pass the item if you don\'t want it). Thats the best way I\'ve seen any game do it so far~(from FFXI if your wondering)

[Harwen]

Pinata Time!!! What a wonderful way to put it Paxx!