I sure hope HW is not going to be more armor grind treadmill!

[Dijana]

Not the gear grind, but the anonymity the game allows you to keep. I don´t want to say you can´t form a nice Guild with friendly people, I just say its much harder here because you can do almost anything for yourself

But that's still ultimately the choice to play on your own. With the game the way it is, you know those that go out of their way to socialise do so because they want to, not because they have to just to get stuff done. You don't have to play with other people to get anything done as you say, but I think it's far more enjoyable to do so. I quite often try to chat to groups in DF, sometimes nobody responds, sometimes others start chatting too after a bit of coaxing. I've made good friends with people I've met in DF this way too.

[Gumbercules]

Personally im a bit worried about the "increase" in the ilvl progression from normal raid to savage. Not to say savage shouldn't be better, but it should only be better within a margin that the "previous" tier can still potentially find a place in depending on your current gear/stats and playstyle. The game currently allows something akin to this by the ilvl gap being "manageable" from one previous tier to another, and i feel too large an increase between tiers will just allow the main stat to overpower any secondary stat benefit from lower ilvl tiers. Its still vertical, but with options, as opposed to just higher ilvl = automatically better.

should note i mean this behavior as in regards when content is first out and relevant, obviously with time and as more gear is farmed the current "best gear" is going to more than likely overpower the old once the players average ilvl is equal to the then current ilvl. But before that the old gear should at least make you wonder if you wanna use that new shiny piece now or wait till you have more shiny pieces cuz your old one is still doing its job well :P

[Blissa]

We have very different views about what is "rewarding". My reward was spending a good time with people I knew for months who like me, loved a challenge (bring down a 24 man boss with only a group of 8). We didnt need an achievement to pop up on our list so everyone can see it, it was enough to know the 8 of us did it.

There more I think about it, the memory, even 14 years later is also a reward. More then any piece of gear, stupid achievement or another class at 50 can ever be.

I can count on one hand how many groups I had where people said more then hi. And that is another major problem with this game.

[Musashidon]

I can count on one hand how many groups I had where people said more then hi. And that is another major problem with people

fixed it for you. people choose not to talk.

[Blissa]

fixed it for you. people choose not to talk.

Yep thats true, they choose not to talk and it makes gameplay nothing more then a action RPG. There is zero incentive to talk in DF because you can faceroll everything.

[Callinon]

Yep thats true, they choose not to talk and it makes gameplay nothing more then a action RPG. There is zero incentive to talk in DF because you can faceroll everything.

Right up until you don't.

I talked a group of 1 new player and 2 guys in full AF who must've been asleep the first time through story mode Titan just the other day.

Most of the time, I don't want to have a conversation in my dungeons. I want to do the dungeon and be done. During raids with my static I talk, I joke, I have a relationship. I don't need to be doing that constantly in every bit of content in order to feel fulfilled as a person.

[Sapphic]

I never said it wasnt. The huge difference here is you had to rely on people to get that gear and they had to rely on you. You met people, formed friendships and so on. There wasnt a new patch where you could obtain the good stuff with just spamming random dungeon finders and behave like little brats without fearing any consequences. Funny enough, a few days after I finished my level 50 Cleric in Daoc I already had best in slot gear (best stuff was crafted). I still played around 2 years and only switched my Guild 2 times. And no, it wasnt only about PvP. Imagine: Doing raid bosses just for the challenge. Not for the gear or achievments. Staying in the game for months without getting better gear, just being part of the world and the community. That is what MMORPG´s are about (for me).

Well DaoC got then PvE side expanded upon with expansions, but still, the main (main is !=sole) focus of DaoC was frontiers.

Anywho. EQ was a prime example of problematic design in making previous content as keys to higher content as it got to a point where no-one was running that content anymore and players where hitting brick walls they could not progress beyond due to no one running those raids on the server, thus they were unable to flag and/or key for content that players were running. By adding cross server queues aka DF, it expands the pool to facilitate progression through older content that a large part of the playerbase has moved on from, the rewards from roullette are to incentivize players to return to that content whilst reducing the cherry picking of certain dungeons to help newer players progress and clear that earlier content.

Outside of certain roulettes, DF is wholely optional to que and to be matched up with random players, the choice is there for the player to either utilize DF thus or to do the content as a full premade party either created through friends, LS, FC or party finder.

Also if you think older games where are all fine and happy with a 100% friendly community then you are looking through rose tinted glasses. In Everquest there were certain guilds notorious for griefing.

[Caraway]

I can count on one hand how many groups I had where people said more then hi. And that is another major problem with this game.

I don't comm people who don't talk in the dungeon. You could be the most amazing player of all time but if you don't social you get nothin'.

That said, I don't tend to use the duty finder for two reasons (both of which apply to your losing people); 1) I'm in no rush to get the bestest of the shinies, and 2) I want to spend my time playing with people I can talk to.

When my partner and I first started this game at launch we rushed through everything, burned the content and did all of the things. We got to 50, did the dungeons and trials and then... Got bored. We didn't look forward to the prospect of doing the same two dungeons over and over again to progress. So we stopped. When we came back? We've taken our good sweet time. We bumble about, exploring the world (what there is to explore, really) and just sampling things here and there. It's the people we know that mostly keep us occupied and that's what so many people who play modern MMOs are overlooking.

People like the people in your guild don't care about the social aspect. They will come in, do their duty roulettes, get their gear, max out then leave because they only care about consuming the content. To them, you and everyone in your FC and everyone they'll ever match up with in the Duty Finder might as well be NPCs there who's only purpose is to get them closer to their next piece of gear.

This is not a problem with the game (though I do wish there were more horizontal options, but that's a topic elsewhere!) but instead a problem with why people play these games.

[Callinon]

Also if you think older games where are all fine and happy with a 100% friendly community then you are looking through rose tinted glasses. In Everquest there were certain guilds notorious for griefing.

FFXI also had rampant elitism going on. The "good old days" almost never were.

This is not a problem with the game (though I do wish there were more horizontal options, but that's a topic elsewhere!) but instead a problem with why people play these games.

Actually it isn't either. You're assuming it's a problem because it's different than what you want out of the game. Blissa is doing the same thing.

A problem is something wrong that requires a solution. But just because some people are playing the game differently or for different reasons than you doesn't automatically create a situation in need of a solution. It's possible that you simply won't enjoy playing with those players, and that's perfectly fine. You've already said you prefer to play with your FC and that seems like the most reasonable way to handle it. But it doesn't mean there's something wrong with the other people who might be playing the game differently.

I, personally, will usually say hi at the start of a dungeon and thank everyone at the end. But I don't go out of my way to strike up conversation with 3 strangers I'm never going to see again. If, in your view, that makes me some kind of anti-social misanthrope, then ok.. but it's not actually a problem with me.

[Caraway]

Actually it isn't either. You're assuming it's a problem because it's different than what you want out of the game. Blissa is doing the same thing.

Well, truth be told, it's something I expect out of an MMO because I always thought that was the point. Coming at an MMO from a solo/anti-social stand-point I'm of the opinion there are much better single-player games out there that evoke the kind of grind you get from a lot of MMO games available.

A problem is something wrong that requires a solution.

Going with the above, and my understanding of an MMO being a social-based grinding game (that's generally the tie that binds the genre, so I've seen), it seems wrong to me in that it kills the games. If people are constantly leaving then that is bad and a solution is necessary. Long-term retention is kind of the point of MMOs and you'll see the ones with the longest retention are the ones with the biggest focus on community (EverQuest had plenty of stuff wrong with it, but it's still going strong and has had people subbing for over a decade).

I, personally, will usually say hi at the start of a dungeon and thank everyone at the end. But I don't go out of my way to strike up conversation with 3 strangers I'm never going to see again. If, in your view, that makes me some kind of anti-social misanthrope, then ok.. but it's not actually a problem with me.

Honestly, with how most folks are in game just a "Hi!" and a "Thanks for the run" at the end are enough. It's an acknowledgement that you're playing with humans and not NPCs. It's the folks who'll wait just long enough to get Protect (sometimes not even that!) and then bolt to go pull the first set of mobs without so much as a "how do you do?" who get my goat.

And in that instance, I think it is a fault with the game. Mainly in that when you Duty Finder you're unlikely to ever see the person again so why bother making a connection? I don't fault folks for that thought, it's an easy one to get into (and again why I avoid Duty Finder). I keep hoping that some day they'll make an adjustment to the inter-server so that you can actually communicate to people on other servers.