Irritating new tactic

[Deunan]

If your doing sites on your own (with only the help of randoms) your doing it wrong. An MMO is meant to be played with others, so go out there and make some friends.

Way to miss the point. Take a low EGO character of yours (~500-1000) with a full group of friends of similar EGO rating and go to one of the conflict sites where you get rushed by large waves of allied mobs at the end but have another friend who is EGO 5500 stand just inside the conflict site and not lift a finger to help your group to get some actual perspective on the matter.

Also, since you've brought it up, an MMO is meant to allow and encourage you to play with others. It encourages co-op play by offering better incentives for playing co-op, not by taking harsh punitive measures for soloing content. Any good MMO allows viable options for soloing although often for lesser rewards. It's the foundation of contemporary MMO's and good game design to ensure a player will engage the game even when friends aren't around or have left the game while a player looks for new friends in the game. It ensures game longevity. Any good game developer knows this.

A good MMO also doesn't allow for the kind of exploitation of flaws in the game design that are causing the kind of issues brought up in this thread, and the reason why it exists competely contradicts your claim that it's meant to be played with others in an actual group of friends (as you claim). If it were otherwise conflict sites wouldn't allow ungrouped players to share credit in the accomplishment of goals at the conflict site.

In addition, there are scaling issues that still need to be adjusted in the game. A high EGO player teamed with low EGO players is overscaled to Threat Level 10 at conflict sites regardless of whether the players know each other or not. This is the problem in general with dynamic scaling in the outside world and it's not just an issue for the low EGO players.

[Mordresh]

A good MMO needs to do a lot of things, however - if one were to just read all the MMO forums - there isn't one in existence. I really appreciate the fact that all content can be done regardless of progression status.

On the solo remark: MMO's use to be about grouping with some solo, MMO's today's are (sadly imo) about solo with some group content. As one that has been playing this genre since 1996 I do not like this evolution, MMO developers need to rethink the genre and try to alter the expectancy that MMO's should be about "going through content alone, with group content as the climax". In a way Trion have done this, the way how you can just walk up some event and join while the game adapts to that, I dare to call it innovation. Though innovation that still require work, of course, Rome wasn't built in one day.

[Bonehead]

Parking is nothing new. I griped about it back in the alpha But ya, they get no score for it other then maybe the rep points if it's a rep mission. Thing is it has gotten to the point that often I have no choice but to run and hide or just leave. I'm fed up with being macho and losing my score.

Yep Definitely not a new tactic,
Definitely.
Just WAY more annoying now.

Working as intended I suppose.

[N3gativeCr33p]

If your doing sites on your own (with only the help of randoms) your doing it wrong. An MMO is meant to be played with others, so go out there and make some friends.

[Manstan]

What I find interesting is the number of people that believe MMO means GMO. Massively multiplayer does not mean group multiplayer.

[Mordresh]

What I find interesting is the number of people that believe MMO means GMO. Massively multiplayer does not mean group multiplayer.

What I find interesting is people playing an MMO to mostly solo

[N3gativeCr33p]

What I find interesting is people playing an MMO to mostly solo

Want to hear something that's even more interesting?

Developing an MMO that's had an otherwise shtako chat system in place for almost a year. Certainly makes forming a group that much more of a daunting task.

[Festival]

Want to hear something that's even more interesting?

Developing an MMO that's had an otherwise shtako chat system in place for almost a year. Certainly makes forming a group that much more of a daunting task.

And even then it's a "group" only in terms of there being more people shooting at enemies, etc. All that MMO "social aspects" stuff is pretty much irrelevant because it's so hard to, you know...talk to each other. I use the present tense here because the updated chat is only marginally better.

[Extreme Rugburn]

This has always happened, people want the reputation for the daily/weekly without doing the work. Unfortunately now it totally screws the people actually doing the work because it raises threat level and increases mobs and their strength. As someone else mentioned people dont need to stick around and most dont. They simply stop by, put a few rounds into something, and leave. I still dont like this as I get swamped all of a sudden when they get buffed by the new persons presence, but at least when they leave the threat level goes back down. Those that stick around and do nothing are a problem though and it really doesnt make sense for them to sit there unless they are purposely being pricks.

[Manstan]

What I find interesting is people playing an MMO to mostly solo

Why would I want to do them any other way? I'm a soloist, I learned to play these games solo. Grouping was not an option. MMO doesn't mean I have to group. or soloing is not allowed. It just means a bunch of people playing the same game at the same time on the same server. I prefer racing games, there just isn't any good F2P ones out there and the sub ones are archaic. Racing games are MMO soloplay. I don't group, clan, fellowship, or team. I've only done one coop mission since launch; did them all plus shadow wars, and team VS team in the alpha, I'm not a team player.

I actually did my first coop a couple of days ago. It was fun because the other playera knew their part. I had cloak so I ran ahead and turned off the autoguns, they kept the enemy off my back while I turned them off. The other players new zone tactics, so even though there was only 4 of us and a TL of 5, things never got too far out of hand. It was fun, thing is, in my experience, that is an exception, not a rule. And you know just what I mean

Now I will admit to saying one of the things I like about defiance is the auto-grouping. During the alpha we all seemed to move through the game at the same pace, or you ended up getting to the same mission at about the same time as others playing at your pace. Didn't take long before everyone knew their part when they got there. I; as always, tanked. Get in there, get the enemies attention, keep moving away/opposite of the key/trigger man, give the big gun the chance to get clear shots off, keep the enemy grouped so the sniper can get clear shots, back up the medic. But I had load outs for each role, big gun, sniper, medic, that is just a bit harder now.

And for those that say this isn't a role playing game, then maintain it's a group play game, what role do you play in the group? If you say "what"? you're doing it wrong

Thing is to me an arkhunter is a lone wolf of sorts, maybe has a buddy or two, but a group has a leader and I don't see arkhunters as being led. Oh yes, they know cooperating in a group is mutually beneficial, but not if they can get it done solo. That is one of the things that appealed to me about this game, you could solo 90% of it. And the marketing dept loves soloists, they are the ones that spend all that money on cosmetics to stand out lol

On a role.

What about people that say there is no end game? What do you think we are doing now? Even though I'm doing the story line over again, my game is done so anything I do now is end game content

"Developing an MMO that's had an otherwise shtako chat system in place for almost a year. Certainly makes forming a group that much more of a daunting task". N3gativeCr33p

Or had 40 players spread across 20 shards.