Does anyone group in this game anymore?

[Kalfear]

Bioware, you need to go through the game and change all the group quests to solo quests while leveling up. Because at this point nobody groups anymore for leveling content period and you are just forcing me to skip all kinds of quests because of it. Every night and morning when I get off of work and log in to play, I try to get people together to run group quests to no avail. The couple times I am even lucky to get a response in chat to form a group, we can never find enough to finish the group and actually run the quest. I don't even know how you guys call this a mmo at this point. This is very frustrating.

 

I started playing mmos back in the Ultima Online and Everquest days, people grouped all the time to play even in the middle of the night. Now I can understand people not wanting to group up to actually level but it seems we have come to a point where people don't want to group up for anything period. Just finish what you guys have started and change all the quests to soloable quests.

 

Signed.......A frustrated player.

 

or least give a solo player option to complete them

[alricka]

I grouped relatively often in the past few days, but as a whole, no, I've spent more than 90 % of the leveling of my main on my own. Part of this is that whenever I log in to play, there are very few people on almost any planet. One or two days ago, I got a Heroic Quest on Corellia and just abandoned it cause on the whole planet there were two of us - me and another player. Two. 2. It was the same with the Hoth Bonus Series.

 

But to be honest, whenever I have tried to get people to group with me, I have had no problem whatsoever. Nobody has ever ignored or flipped me off or someone like that. But with 2 or 3 people on the whole planet - one of which is me - I just don't bother them.

[Kalfear]

1. I play MMOs because by their nature; I want a world in which there are thinking (and yes a few nonthinking) human beings to interact and play with. If i want a solo RPG I have myraids to choose from; Skyrim, DA, etc.

 

2. I want to explore all of the available content. I enjoy what some of the flashpoints and heroic content brings to the game from lore, immersion, accomplishment standpoint. However the game is not conducive to achieving this. It is a combination of ease of levelling through companions; ability to bypass content; no keying/requirements to pursue higher objectives; server vacancy; and general apathy of the playerbase.

 

A game without a social element becomes just like every other solo RPG. It will be devoured and consumed by the masses. Without a social element to keep players together they will move on like locusts to the next shiny field of play; carrying their complaints and gripes with them.

 

EQ had hell levels; disgusting long treks to obscure locations; zone break ins; lost gear; spawn camping; and trains. However we played that game for ages. WoW eased much of the struggle but grew the content; it only started to fail when it put in place tools which made the world seem more barren and eased the reliance on your fellow players. LFG tools/dungeon finders; phased questing lead to a world where you never had to set foot outside of the cities. People became nothing more than a means to an end and reputation had zero meaning since you could always just queue with the next group of strangers and accomplish your goals. Levelling became less signficant; the need for a social structure deteriorated and content was consumed much quicker to the point of becoming trivialized.

 

SWTOR has taken it one step further and we are seeing the results.

 

When I CANNOT play the game; I cease playing the game.. that is where I am at now.

 

I recently joined a guild of decent people; however they have their eyes on the horizon for the next game because even with a social aspect filled; the challenge is missing. There is no accomplishment in the victories; there is no pain to make the rewards seem that more worthwhile. No cheers at the end of a boss fight. No feeling of accomplishment compared to that first 'Ding" from those years ago.

 

While I disagree with WOW growing the content. We are in this position because of WOW. WOW did nothing positive to the genre ive loved for 21 years.

 

Everything else is bang on (and I told them this in Beta)

 

Its to easy, you get titles and levels and everything to easy. So nothing is special

 

People keep balh blah blahing about how you have to make it easy for casuals but thats simply not true. Casuals are not by nature stupid lazy players. They dont mind being challanged and having to work towards the end as long as its entertaining and interesting journey.

 

WOW killed this genre and the post WOW games, where the devs didnt have the experience to understand this copied a broken and faulty design and thus their games are also broken and full of faults!

 

Im playing out my 6 months as well but I gotta admit, the last 4 days (once I got my legacy 6 level) ive sat here and just didnt have the drive or interest to log in. My buddies rarely log in anymore now and the game just doesnt offer up anything interesting to do.

[MMornard]

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

 

Grouping is a hallmark of the MMORPG genre. Just because there are people online at the same time should not classify something as an MMORPG when most of them are running around playing the game like any ordinary single player game.

 

If that's how people want to play it, fine. Sell the boxed game at $49.99 with no subscription fee. Bug fix patches are free. Content updates are $10-$25 each, depending on amount of content. Just like DLC. Because that's precisely what the single player folks want this game to be. A single player game with DLC. So let's model it like one.

 

a) Multiplayer -- So *********** what.

 

b) Make a game like that where I can play with my wife and I'd buy it so fast my money would go into hyperspace.

[Mezla]

Group quests outside of dungeons were always a stupid idea. Blizzard figured it out after 4 years, I don't understand why BW went ahead with it. No matter how great, or fun, or rewarding they are, outside of initial leveling rush (2 weeks max) nobody will do them. So that content is there, but it is completely wasted.

BW should change them all to normals/2s, like they did with Belsavis dailies, and just add more quests, with good rewards, to flashpoints.

As it stands Heroic4s and FPs are a complete waste of time while leveling.

[GalacticKegger]

Group quests outside of dungeons were always a stupid idea. Blizzard figured it out after 4 years, I don't understand why BW went ahead with it. No matter how great, or fun, or rewarding they are, outside of initial leveling rush (2 weeks max) nobody will do them. So that content is there, but it is completely wasted.

BW should change them all to normals/2s, like they did with Belsavis dailies, and just add more quests, with good rewards, to flashpoints.

As it stands Heroic4s and FPs are a complete waste of time while leveling.

I feel heroics & FPs during the leveling process:

• builds team chemistry and reinforces situational awareness
  
• familiarizes the player with their character's skills & abilities in extended twitch-quick combat encounters
  
• helps the player learn how to apply them effectively versus different boss fight mechanics
  
• provides usable loot, with orange items providing a classroom on learning min/max specifics
  
• and good old fashioned boss fight problem solving
  

Plus, they are fun. A group I run with in our guild (Scruffy Looking Nerf Herders) just completed Hammer Station after 3 days & a dozen wipes trying to time the taunts & AoEs for the Kreshan fight, redirecting his blaster fire away from the healer, moving around to stay out of the stuff and constantly repositioning ourselves away from ledges because of the huge knockbacks. The whoops and hollars of congratulations ringing through Vent after the boss finally dropped are why we do them.

Edited April 22, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Bulwyf]

I group with my wife and we can duo almost all Heroic 4s. We don't do any flashpoints or raids though. I feel your pain. There is really no incentive to have more than just one other person to group.

[Pokerface]

Actually I group when I play. But the only people I group with are my guild mates and not Pugs. Since I stopped grouping with Pugs everything became almost perfect.

 

I feel sorry for the people without a guild and have to endure the stupidity of some or a lot of Pugs.

Edited April 22, 2012 by Pokerface

[Lt_Latency]

This is one of those things that probably varies by server.

 

I play on the fatman, so there is tons of players and I group for most quests

[Bluerodian]

I feel heroics & FPs during the leveling process:

• builds team chemistry and reinforces situational awareness
  
• familiarizes the player with their character's skills & abilities in extended twitch-quick combat encounters
  
• helps the player learn how to apply them effectively versus different boss fight mechanics
  
• provides usable loot, with orange items providing a classroom on learning min/max specifics
  
• and good old fashioned boss fight problem solving
  

Plus, they are fun. A group I run with in our guild (Scruffy Looking Nerf Herders) just completed Hammer Station after 3 days & a dozen wipes trying to time the taunts & AoEs for the Kreshan fight, redirecting his blaster fire away from the healer, moving around to stay out of the stuff and constantly repositioning ourselves away from ledges because of the huge knockbacks. The whoops and hollars of congratulations ringing through Vent after the boss finally dropped are why we do them.

 

Fun for you perhaps, I've yet to find anything of value to the heroic quests and dealing with other people can cause frustrations I simply have no need for anymore. I did my time raiding long before WoW.

 

As for community, there is no community in TOR. This game is, in essence, an unfocused mob of individuals with the occasional clique (aka Guilds). If they want a community then they need to implement community building tools for people. You cannot just hope one will form on its own and trying to reach out to be a social butterfly will more often than not get you burned and bitten.

[Talon_strikes]

This is one of those things that probably varies by server.

 

I play on the fatman, so there is tons of players and I group for most quests

The only thing bad about The Fatman is the annoying trolls and guild recruitment spams. Even through all that, I see some players being ignored when they're LFG.

[Darklordxenu]

Took me 3 weeks of casual play to cap, once I did at the end of December and a bit into January I found it near impossible to get a group together or find one even during peak time. I figured all these months later with the addition of giving something free I decided to re-sub and hope that was not the case anymore, I was wrong there is still the same problem as before. I wish I could do operations or hard modes on my own Instead of wasting time but I can't do more than solo dailies and sit in the fleet for hours.

[Darkulous]

There are many players out there who are willing to group up but they refuse to go to Fleet and spend X amount of time getting it started. In their mind, they'd rather go level an alt, quest or complete dailies than go to fleet and potential waste gametime looking for a group that may or may not start a FP. Edited April 23, 2012 by Darkulous

[Darklordxenu]

There are many players out there who are willing to group up but they refuse to go to Fleet and spend X amount of time getting it started. In their mind, they'd rather go level an alt, quest or complete dailies than go to fleet and potential waste gametime looking for a group that may or may not start a FP.

 

Sounds like a single player game to me which is kinda sad.

[ApotheosisLanyx]

if I can solo all of the heroic missions why would I bother risk grouping up with an idiot who is going to make it take way longer?

 

edit: and in terms of fp/ops, I recently rerolled to one of the last servers with heavy/full pop and I find groups in a matter of a few minutes on the fleet. Every once in a while it will take more than 5 minutes to find a tank or a healer, and four times out of five everyone says "oh my GAWD NOONE GROUPS IN THIS GAME," leaves, and I get a whisper from the tank/heals two minutes later.

Edited April 23, 2012 by ApotheosisLanyx

[MWidowmaker]

Fun for you perhaps, I've yet to find anything of value to the heroic quests and dealing with other people can cause frustrations I simply have no need for anymore. I did my time raiding long before WoW.

 

As for community, there is no community in TOR. This game is, in essence, an unfocused mob of individuals with the occasional clique (aka Guilds). If they want a community then they need to implement community building tools for people. You cannot just hope one will form on its own and trying to reach out to be a social butterfly will more often than not get you burned and bitten.

 

spot on.... they should really look into some sort of cross faction tools as well.... i have 2 50s Empire side, so i made a Republic character, cant communicate with anyone in my Emp guild, dont know anyone Republic side, found a few groups here and there, made a couple of friends, but very few and far between... been trying to find a group for Taral V since I have never run that FP before and Maelstrom Prison... but nope....

[LordSkyKnight]

Well I have seen some good points and of course some people who totally missed the point of my initial post. WoW really did a number on grouping dynamics and of course starting out with MMOs back in Everquest days pretty much brought me up on grouping and community building. I often chuckle a lot when people bring up the discussion about community into today's MMOs. You used to have large living and thriving communities back in those days. MMOs today are pretty much a loose collection of cliques. I don't think there is any easy solution to fixing the issue in the games these days as companies try to build their games to cover so many different aspects to try to draw in the maximun amount of players they can.

 

One good idea I saw was about content changing to scale to your groups numbers. This game is so heavily instanced, I wonder how hard it would be to do this to all of the group quests. You could have scaling mob difficulty and loot rewards. We already see this kind of stuff with raids, why not take it a step forward and do the same to flashpoints and group heroics.

 

One person a page back or so gave me the typical dismissive options. Join a guild, make some friends, or form the group. Do you really think I haven't tried this? The time frame in which I play makes this difficult. There just aren't anyone on playing this game. It's a friggen ghost town pretty much and the others who are playing are generally the type such as other posters, that just want to be left alone.

[Karthannar]

For me, it's turned into a ask a higher level guildie to roflstomp the heroic for me (Running lowbies through flashpoints or heroics is the official pastime for my guild.) I still do group with random people when the occasion presents itself. I tend lose my patience quickly with people unwilling to learn or people that keep wiping the group when they break CC multiple times.

 

Speaking of community: The last couple real cohesive community I participated in was in FFXI (woo, Cerberus!) and the early days of Planetside. Every MMO I've played since has been more of a loose mob of individuals that happen to be playing the same game.

Edited April 23, 2012 by Karthannar

[Journeyer]

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this topic; took our group longer than expected getting through Karagga's Palace yesterday.

 

Impression on grouping: The game has gone Guild. Very few people are asking for groups anymore on Mind Trick, but I've found that within guild chat, people are looking for, and finding groups all the time. So, the game is looking more and more "dead" as group activity ramps up amongst, well, groups.

Edited April 23, 2012 by Journeyer

[LordSkyKnight]

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this topic; took our group longer than expected getting through Karagga's Palace yesterday.

 

Impression on grouping: The game has gone Guild. Very few people are asking for groups anymore on Mind Trick, but I've found that within guild chat, people are looking for, and finding groups all the time. So, the game is looking more and more "dead" as group activity ramps up amongst, well, groups.

 

That first coment really helps. I think you really missed the whole point of the thread. There are no groups running around on these servers, you can just sit there and watch all the people left playing, running around solo.

[Lurchy]

its a single player RPG not an MMO. There is no reason to do grouping really unless u have irl friends to play with.. There is no content in the game to justify being in a guild and the game is not orientated to force people to be in Guilds let alone groups.

 

The game does have a gear grind that requires grouping but as there is no particular reason to get the gear most people do not bother any more as far as I see it.

 

The above issues are massively compounded by the ridiculous amount of servers with no sign of merger or transfer in sight. Most 'semi serious' MMO players have already quit the game so the population that is left are optimists like me that took a 6 month sub and playing a bit til its finished, BW fanboyz, people that are dedicated to the SW lore and hoping for a miracle and very casual players that dont mind paying a monthly sub for what is basically a solo RPG

 

 

 

TL,DR. Not a bad RPG but as an MMO complete and utter fail.

[Carambole]

What I'm curious about is why people besides IRL freinds as you put it. Or Raiding guilds. Don't even try to find groups for raids and FP's.

 

Am I naive? I sure hope not. No. I think there is something more sinister at bay here. I just can't put my finger on it ...

[Mar-Ad_Gon]

I just tried to get an ops group for the Rakghoul World boss together. Three hours of twisting arms and it turned out it wasn't enough (managed 5 50s 2 high 40s and 3 lower 40s). We were soundly beaten. I find it strange that an event would limit who could do all of it. I lucked out on a group for the Bantha the other day and finding a group for Trapjaw isn't hard, but in 4 days I have not been able to kill that Rakghoul. It seems rather poor to make most of the event quests scale (and trapjaw is level appropriate for the world), but those two level 50s are out of place in my opinion.

 

I wanted to vent my frustrations, because I feel the event really highlights the problems discussed in this thread. The game does little to encourage grouping and when it becomes necessary it's almost impossible. Even members of the Op that were in guilds couldn't get their guildmates to join up.

[djlowballer]

During levelling I only grouped occasionally but at 50 I group quite often. Two out of three days I find a random partner to clear out daily quests quickly, I PvP in groups, and during the recent Rakghoul event I was grouping every day to kill the event bosses/roll everything in world PvP.

 

Usually I have to ask around and take the initiative if I want to group, but grouping is very common.

[mrwillie]

I never group, too many headaches. I'm not desperately in need of friends and I hate having to rely on other people to play a game. Frankly, I think that the whole notion of bonuses and perks for grouping is ***-backwards. If anything, a soloer works harder than any cog in a group and for less reward! It's a pity that developers can't seem to work scaling encounters into more of their systems.

 

The problem is that I'm not alone. There are a lot of people who don't want to be joined at the hip with strangers. Trying to coerce these people into groups and guilds will only have one result - cancellation. Bioware already seems to be leaning towards this tack and I'm pretty certain that this is one factor in declining server populations.

 

I always hate to see threads like this where groupers try to come up with ways to coerce the soloers. It's simple. People who like to group will. People who don't won't and they will leave once they determine that a game is not designed for them. No one's going to pay $15 a month to do something they don't like doing.

 

Bingo! The heroic quests are pretty much useless anyway. They offer nothing for the headache of dealing with others.