Thread: 6.1: Deep reflection to the Devs

Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I just think it sounds very illogical to play a game who's genre contains the word multiplayer in it, and expect, demand, or want an entire single player experience or for the developers to cater to a single player experience. It would be like playing a FPS game, with the expectation and demand that there will not be any weapons used to shoot things.

If said FPS game ends up increasingly having more and more people who prefer to play with melee only weapons instead of guns maybe it is time to start asking yourself why it attracts more of such players and less gun focused players, cuz something is going on there.

Unless of course you want to ignore reality to follow some old outdated strict word definition their school/parents taught them.

Like I said, many of us enjoy mmorpgs with a solo mindset for many reasons, one of the most important being "numbers go up" meaning max gear is wanted because that is a way for "numbers go up" and that is fun, seeing yourself do better than others is fun, that requires others to exist, but does not require me to interact with them.

Originally Posted by Moonsprite

I don’t want them to take away my raids, trials, relic groups because solo players feel forced to group

And this is where the solution is extremely simple yet players make it hard.
Give solo players a gradual difficulty solo designed deep dungeon where at the near max floors you get savage tomes and unique titles or anything similar really.

The solution is very simple, it gives everyone a path to max gear, yet players, typically raiders complain about how that devalues their speshiul raid gear or that they ll be forced to do the deep dungeon too which makes the easy solution suddenly hard.
Now they could make the savage tomes drop only once per week so you either get it from raid or the deep dungeon but never both, but this doesnt stop the raiders crying about how their gear is not as special anymore cuz "dirty solo players" can get it too which is a player created problem.

Originally Posted by Moonsprite

Part of savage is cooperating in a group to overcome a challenge together.

No, because YOU do not control the performance of others.
If you do the mechanics well and perform well dps wise you can still be rewarded with failure because someone else failed the above, this was not a mistake of yours, you didnt do anything wrong, you did not deserve this failure because you played your part great both mechanically and performance wise.
The reality is savage is not that hard just like any high end group content is never truly extremely hard otherwise nobody but an extremely tiny minority would clear it, talking about less than 0.2%, 0.3% of a population

Most group encounters create an illusion of difficulty and that is easy to explain, the devs cannot create something that requires literally perfect performance otherwise the above scenario would happen.

At that scenario only computers and literally perfect players with 0 mistakes both mechanical and dps wise can beat it, we are talking about 100% performance and perfect timing.
So the devs obviously have to create some room for error, let's say 5% for ultimates, a very small amount for group wide error, plus keep in mind they have to try balance so it is viable for all combs so another maybe 1% of error room is added.

For savage you have an even bigger room for error, let's say 15%.
The error % is obviously made up but if you want a number you can try gauge it by how easy it is to carry someone in said content if you play well, the moment carrying is possible(and literally buying carries) it is the moment you have to realize perfect play is VERY FAR from required.

So let's say each person has a performance score that combines mechanics and dps performance. (And let's ignore the common scenario of a raid wiping mechanic targeting the bad player and instantly wiping the entire group cuz of them)
1: 95%
2: 97%
3: 90%
4: 93%
5: 70%
6: 85%
7: 80%
8: 50%

Total average being: 82.5
Total average required to clear savage boss: 85%

So even though all these 5 people performed well enough and some way above what was required they still failed the encounter which results in the illusion of challenge, if we took player no.2 and sundered him into 7 others and let's say he has the same performance as a healer and a tank the savage raid boss would be a joke for him and he would even be able to clear ultimates. (Note: The percentages are obviously rarely like that, it is rare for the bad performance to only belong to one or two people, its often a few people under 85% and the few decent players who are above 85% are not that far ahead of 85% to carry the rest)

That is why often for good players high end solo content feels like a joke and too easy, because there is no illusion there since you are in complete control of the encounter, you do it well and beat it, simple

So what we have that matters individually is ability to manage the encounter's mechanics while keeping a strong dps performance, the thing you have CONTROL OVER as a player.
Those 2 can easily be placed in any solo encounter and that includes deep dungeons therefore you have similar difficulty solo content that deserves the same rewards, and honestly you can tune it so it is even harder because it is a lot easier to manage encounter design with 1 player than 8 with different classes.

Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

And this is where the solution is extremely simple yet players make it hard.
Give solo players a gradual difficulty solo designed deep dungeon where at the near max floors you get savage tomes and unique titles or anything similar really.

It's actually not that simple, because if the solo version is any easier than savage, than everyone would just do that vs the group content to get the gear.
It's effectively the way you would kill the little bit of group content this game actually has.

Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

The illusion of difficulty in high end group content was just explained on my previous post.
Though dont think you are gonna want to understand that anyway xd

Again, even if it is an illusion of difficulty, if the solo content gives the same rewards, and is viewed easier for any reason whether it actually is or is not. It would effectively kill the little group content the game actually has.

Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

It's actually not that simple, because if the solo version is any easier than savage, than everyone would just do that vs the group content to get the gear.
It's effectively the way you would kill the little bit of group content this game actually has.

The illusion of difficulty in high end group content was just explained on my previous post.
Though dont think you are gonna want to understand that anyway xd

Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

The illusion of difficulty in high end group content was just explained on my previous post.

You explained that solo play removes the difficulty of coordination, making the content easier.

No part of that explains away the fact that then, yes, the solo content (unless remade/retuned to have a more difficult baseline) would be easier and therefore, if given the same rewards as group content, would greatly disincentivize group content, likely to the point of starving it of participation.

Also...

Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

Only reason i bother with high end group content these day is because i am FORCED TO because of the gear rewards, otherwise I would only touch raids for the occasional fun, not something i would do often.

This makes no damn sense. There is zero need for raid gear in anything but still more difficult content than what you get it from. If you don't like raiding, then why would you raid just to get stuff you'd never need outside of... Savage raiding? If what you want to do is purely the least gear-relevant stuff anyways, then you're going into content you are already soured to just to fawn over an irrelevant ilvl value.

That's like insisting on having a mansion... just so you could sleep in a tent on its driveway.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You explained that solo play removes the difficulty of coordination, making the content easier.

Then I guess if you and another car agree who goes first but the other guy screws up and crashes onto you aka "something you are not control of" you just call that "higher difficulty" xD?

Reality is, you didnt fail coordination, the other person did which once again is something out of your own control.

Difficulty exist in relation to things you can control, not things you are not in control.

If a meteor crashes next to my home I wont be calling that higher difficulty

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Except you absolutely have a degree of control in coordination. Working with others does not somehow strip you of agency. There are absolutely ways to coordinate more effectively, or less.

Yet no matter how much you talk about coordination in advance, if they fail to do the mechanic at the right moment like everyone else you wipe and you have no control over that because that is another person's failure.

Thus you have no control over what matters, the moment where the individual fails to do the mechanic as that is a PERSONAL FAILURE.

What you have control over is your own performance and your personal mechanics, hence that is what matters, if you are doing well on those you should be clearing the boss and receiving your reward alas, the illusion of difficulty that comes from other players failing has resulted in people thinking high end group content is something incredibly hard while solo content even when tuned to be difficult is quite easy because there's no illusion of difficulty since other people's failures dont exist.