How would you like to group up?

I believe there is a definite distinction between players that want to just play the game INSIDE the game, and those that want to be involved in the game 24/7.

If it hasn't been apparent, I'm old school. I don't want to use twitch to meet players, nor do I want to feel like I have to follow the dev's on twitter to get game info. We may be guildies or claim neighbors, but I don't want other players to have my cell # to text me or automatically become facebook friends because we share one interest - the game. I don't need to know what you look like or sound like in real life; all that matters to me is how other people act inside the game. MMORPG's are my release and relaxation from real life, not another part of it.

For other individuals that want a 24/7 game experience - I can respect their choice in how they want to experience the game. As a person that ONLY got a twitter account to read what the dev's are up to, I can tell you the info stream does not flow as fast or as strongly in other places as on Twitter. I wish I could merely come here to get my EQN and Landmark info, but what does actually hit here tends to be second hand info or half a day old. Its nice there are other outlets, but this is the official forum off the official website - why do 3rd party media services get the info faster?

I agree with Michael Flatley in this regard - 3rd party social media should compliment robust community tools inside the game, not replace them for first choice. Yes, I would love to attend an SOELive someday, but that shouldn't be the primary means of creating a community meant to be inside a game.

I think the problem with grouping up and the evolving debate on how to do it needs some rethinking.
Most peoples arguments come from thinking like its going to be in the theme park style. And if thats not the case , then most of it is a moot point. If it is an ever changeing world by how people interact with it (and some on its own) the auto grouping tool that people fear wont be the bane of its existence. But maybe the savior of it. Ill get to my thoughts on how to structure groups and how to group up later , but first let me talk about the reasons why people would group up and how they should change quests and advancment.

So for starters , how can there be static quests that people will want to group up for , when the A to B to C of them is going to change over time. Not that certain goals shouldn't remain static , but there should be various ways to get to those goals.
For example: The usual way of brute force , but also stealth through not being seen or disguise. Or maybe a diplomatic route ... setting up trade relations or just cold hard cash? Why not have a more real world approach?
This ofcourse depends on the level of AI given to the world ... but that doesn't mean the GM's couldn't steer the AI here and there as they see fit.
So instead of the traditional way to quest , its more about achieving the end. Like to kill said boss , or just steal something from him. Obviously the group could just bust in there and kill their way to him , but someone else could stealth their way and assasinate him. Or gain the groups trust and wait for the right moment. Possibly like the trojan horse where one person spent a week setting it up and then open the doors for a raid force. The list could go on and on .... real sandbox senario.

But on to my thoughts for grouping mechanics ...

Instead of the traditional group limited by 6 players , and all are inside that bubble of protection so to speak.
What if grouping was merely a matter of selecting people to be on your radar. Just so you wouldn't lose them.
Chat can be handled by joining a chat channel ... and the channel is started by 1 person advertising it and their goal. But of course they can stop advertising it when they want. Now as far as fast travel ... I don't see why a F2p game couldn't offer insta port for real cash. Meaning insta port to the player hosting the player made rally cry if you will. What ever lore needs written to justify it can be made ... but the basic premise ... The game needs to make money , and that is a pretty good one in my book. Infact just about anything should be attainable with real money. Not like people haven't been able to do it allready.
Might as well make the money go to the people who work on the game , not some shlepps that are trying to make money which takes away from the game. (it always happens unless the official people offer it and out bid the nefarious competition)

So my Idea brings up the question of "what about group buffs?" The simple awnser is , sure have some buffs be proximity based. But most buffs be for a specific target. And Im imagining groups can be what ever the actual server can render ... pretty much raid force anytime you want. It doesn't make sense to be able to infiltrate an Orc encampment with a group of 6 people anyways. Groups of people should be encouraged to work together in area's and use stategic means like flanking , and what ever the terrain will give to their advantage.
Im sure some of you are familiar with contested dungeons and working in tandem with another goup. Or even as a solo player ... following a group deep into a dungeon is a pretty good means to the end.

So in short in case my rambling confused you.

You have to join a chat channel ... which anyone can create and mark as free to join. Then you have to place people on a radar system which will define them from other things in the world. After that you will cast your buffs which will effect individuals or just be a proximity buff to your self. In essence no more buffs/abilities being dependent on a group bubble.

And with diplomatic options being another way to quest and deal with npc's ... might as well have your beneficials able to effect them.

What if the druid had an overtime heal that would effect even enemies? so the distance to the tank would definately matter .... by a couple feet/decimeters?

I guess you could call those area of effect heals , sorta friendly fire of a beneficial.
Could have debuffs that take away beneficials ... lots of possibility if you have to start watching out for how you deal out beneficial spells / and detrimental ...

If your thinking of a living breathing world that you cant just have dungeon x or quest giver y, in all their static horror. It wont work and I think players have become bored of it.

The only static quests should be those required to join a faction, and even these could be subject to change once and a while.

So when we look at grouping, I think we need to move toward the faction based model where players are brought together within the terms of the gameworld for reasons that they have in common and not tacked on mechanics. Likewise when you visit a faction what they needed today and what they needed yesterday might be different, and you should also be able to fail your quest, and not get a chance to re do it.

I think of it this way.

I log in. Ive joined a player guild, im a member of the mages guild, my high elven felwithe citizenship, and im a member of an adventure guild. I have access to all these different chat screens to access all the member that I have things in common (if ive earned sufficient ranks within the structure of course). Or I can ignore them all or turn on the ones I am currently interested in.

As opposed to the chat were used to in mmo's these chats are also advisory's for events, so I can be advised that felwithe is under attack from orcs, or that there are new (quests) jobs available, or adventure parties are forming up to do something specific. Its all voluntary and I can join a number of them at once, but each one is unique. I cant be in two player guilds at once, and I cant be a dwarf and an elf at the same time. I also cant join evil organizations if im in good ones.

perhaps today some player has initiated the building of a magical teleporter, and requires certain magical crystals and other components to complete the task. This now gives me a job to perform, with friends possibly from any of my circles, and a reward for completing my task.

As I progress my citizen ship with felwithe progresses and I get access to more and more things associated with it, and the same is true for all my other circles.

no longer am I just a level, class and suit of armor. I have deep roots in all my organizations, and these organizations become part of who my character is.

Its no longer about finding a group and doing dungeon x. Its about being in the world that day.

You cant redefine a genre without actually redefining it.

I reckon as far as grouping goes it could be semi random, for example the typical raid finder thing but rather than have all the players teleport to the dungeon they are simply put into a party and are responsible for organisation and getting there themselves. But in the end it depends on the kind of community everquest next is after, from personal experience there's nothing like having to find someone by yourself over chat or some form of meet up system in which your forced to actually spend time looking for people. It makes the whole experience worthwhile, and I personally find when people do this or have to put more effort into raiding or questing a stronger bond is formed with your comerades and people are more likely to friend up and quest or raid together in the future. Whereas I found with games that had automatic raid finding the experience was just rushed, you'd que up wait 5 minutes while doing a quick quest for the roles to be filled enter the dungeon, utter hi to each other, and that's if your lucky, and then everybody just robotically slides into their role and ignores everyone else till the end of the raid after which you get a gg or thanks before they disconnect. Sure I guess you get the loot but in exchange u trade community and the joys of actually forming friends online through games.

All sounds great - from a solo perspective.

Doesn't really say anything about quickly and easily forming a group when your friends are unavailable.
Or about being matched with strangers who share your playstyle.

Sure it does. It multiplies the people you have access to. You literally wouldn't choose any of these organizations unless you were interested in them in some manner. Since each organization has the ability to grow through your and like minded players efforts, the number of "things to do today" is also multiplied. They have the technology.

Thus the chances for groups are multiplied. If you decreased the group size to something more manageable like say 3 or 4 base (with multiple for larger encounters) you might just find that the group finders and such are simply not required. Whether you have them or not.

Its not like they have much of a choice. The same offering again and again is failure and they know it. Otherwise they would of made EQ3.

I think the Rohsong is going to be the primary tool that gives us the ability to accumulate friends based on like-minded players' efforts. In addition to the Rallying Call.
I don't think a race guild or a class guild necessarily means that players in the those guilds will be online and available or available during a specific session. Doesn't hurt, though.

Seems clear the devs are planning on a matching tool - they should also have the technology to make the matching robust enough that we're able to tailor the matching based on interest and playstyle.

It's all redundant systems for me anyways, since I'll be relying primarily on twitter and twitch to group.

In relation to a LFG matching system and LFG chat channel, I would also like a larger chat channel window I can open up which will have the speaking character's portraits next to their chat messages and let me see what they are and what preferences for grouping they have selected. Obviously, this larger window should automatically close if I get attacked.

Oh, now that would be an interesting idea, being able to Twitter/Twitch post (and read) from inside the game.

If it was up to me I wouldn't want any DF tool because it ruins the social aspect of a game in so many ways. But if there has to be one don't make it teleport players to the dungeon. At least players should have to travel to the dungeon. And it shouldn't drag players in from other servers that's just ridiculous.

Couldn't there be a server type where it's oldschool and hardmode where there is no 'Dungeon Finder' that would solve so many problems.

Another aspect of using organizations as a grouping mechanism is the area of content generation. Why are you grouping anyway?

The old model: get phat lewt and level up

The new model: get things my organization needs to grow, while getting phat lewt, while advancing my class.

So if someone doesn't decide to upgrade the power crystal for felwithe's magic shield, then there is no quest for the crystals needed to make that happen. Of course a weak shield is inviting the orcs to attack, unless of course you took the job to eliminate the orc scouts.

Its not content generation, its context generation. The setting is already made, the story is infinite in nature.

done right and you and your fellow felwithians can build up felwithe to a point where you can access some pretty crazy stuff like planar teleporters, develop the high elven spellmaking library or start a war with the orcs, or it can fall into ruin and despair.

that's the real power of the organization grouping model. I cant get new spells for my class until I help develop my class organization. I cant get high elven powers until I advance my high elven organization. I also have to make sure that the advances that are made are protected if I want to keep them.

I have a reason to grow my organizations, and keep them protected. That's what is missing and I don't think its a technological hurdle. This is easy to make auto content generation, thus reason to group, thus ease to find a group given common causes and thus no need for group finders.

I thought we were grouping to have fun adventuring with other players?
Typically, for me, getting things for my organization is more of a solo endeavor.

I don't think the question is why are we grouping - rather, it's what group activities are available?
I still don't see anything that helps us find other players online who are available and also interested in getting a new ability in my class during a specific play session.
The hope seems to be that there will be more places to check, but I think it's still not enough to find a sufficient match.

The difference is that there will be a lot more to get as there will be a lot more organizations. You could help out solo or in groups, but some things would need groups, and some things might need a legion of players. You could even help other organizations as a mercenary for hire.

You might have too many things to do, all generated in real time by what other players are doing at the moment. Or you might have to start something that will generate for others.

I doubt I can convince you of why this is a better strategy as you seem to prefer a lobby based game as opposed to a world. You might change your tune though when you actually become allowed to do something in the world that not only benefits yourself but others also in a way never even contemplated in a mmo before.

Let us not forget that it was Everquest that created the faction system. Its basically destiny to evolve that system.

The issue may be that when we create more external options to create groups we will be negatively affecting the number of players using internal methods of group generation.

Its a chicken and egg scenario - why bother logging in to find a group when you can just wait for someone on twitter to tweet for a group? In an attempt to create more grouping through external sources we are directly hampering in game grouping methods - creating statistics supporting the "no one wants to form groups in game" argument. In game communities should be primarily formed "in game"; any other method should be secondary imo. We're trying to build an in-game community first and foremost - its like going to a coffee shop to make facebook friends - when the purpose of facebook is to keep in touch with friends we can't meet up with in real life. We're already here at the coffee shop! Why not just actively sit down and communicate while we're here!

I'm all for giving us options, but let's not forget the reason why we are here. We're all here to play EQN, not to interact on twitter or twitch. I hear the "its only an option" argument, but it shouldn't be the best option for group formulation.

As I understand the Rohsong, it will look at our past experiences and possibly help us locate like circumstances for adventure.

I hunted undead before, and it may help lead me to more undead. Now if it matches me based on this, it may be helpful or it could lead me to a gigantic mess as there could be so many variables that make up my character after several years. Then again, if I'm actively in an undead infested area and see players there, my guess is we're both after the same ends. I could also just use some form of in game chat to say "Hey, I want to kill some undead here, anyone else after the same thing?" I don't expect the Rohsong to have the calculating abilities of a super computer to help me make friends online or even group me accurately in the long run. Player A and myself may both be after undead, but player A may primarily be a gold seller or a griefer - something the Rohsong match making tool won't accurately identify but simple word of mouth will let me know more easily.

Only time will tell, but I'm not so quick to put my faith in an artificial match making tool.

I forgot all about the rohsong, the principle behind it kind of makes me cringe, I hope it is implemented in an intuitive manner.

Redundant systems help maximize the matching.

Seems to me the more the more I adventure near the same people, the more likely we are to be guided to similar adventures.
Several systems can be used to help us group with players with similar interests and playstyles.
Multiple factions and guilds would be great.
Rohsong could be good.
Matching tool could also be great if it's designed well.

Why does a group have to be defined as a traditional "group"? With as much change to the tradition of MMO's as EQN is supposed to be, why does there have to be a LFG option at all? If I see someone travelling in the same direction as I am, why do I have to be invited to a private party in order to travel with them and be considered a "group"?

This.

Not to mention that every other game out there currently has merged servers and has gone f2p within 3 months because of the "watered down" aspect. See the community wants these kinds of spoonfed games so they can play them with one hand on the mouse, and one hand holding their 3 month old child. They want these "easy" MMO's that are "convenient". But these games end up being absolutely terrible and they never last. People leave in a month or two.