Cross posting this from the SoE thread. In short, designers need to decide as early as possible if their game is going to cater to holders of multiple accounts/boxers.
Elerion said:
1. You speed the game up and increase interaction required, which makes multiboxing harder - see WoW relative to EQ.
I"ve touched on this numerous times. MMO designers need to decide early on if they are going to support multiple accounts and boxing. If they decide they aren"t remove /follow from the game goes 90% of the way to eliminating it. Two points :
i) multiple accounts and boxing make up a large part of the customer base; I would be surprised if its less than 40%.
ii) no game has taken multiple accounts and boxing into account at the design stage;
...iia) thats a huge part of the customer base whose needs are not being taken into account;
...iiib) the fact their game play is not considered at design stage is a big part of the reason boxers annoy non-boxers.
Small things - eg making mobs drop a quest item for everyone in the group, not just one person - would make a difference. Boxers "control" areas of the game sometimes because it takes so much longer to get the items they need.
Instanced, repeatable content you port into that are mainly tank and spank cater to boxers and get them out of the hair of non boxers.
Even slightly more complex encounters than tank and spank discourage the majority of boxers. Balance the two types of encounter in instance runs in line with how/if you are catering to boxers.
We need to start thinking out of the box and realize that we can have it all. Some people like boxing, some people like grouping, some people like soloing. The main point is that it has to be foundational - you cannot plug in whole new directions for gameplay, as EQ2 has tried to do, over the years.
1) Introduce repeatable, instanced content, where you can accrue rewards and that are straight tank and spank. Hey, the game has content for boxers.
2) Utilise the job system we have been discussing across threads. Even boxers have mains. There are numerous reasons why this would help the boxing issue and promote non boxing.
Designers need to understand boxers; so do people who don"t box. I box a lot, but I prefer to group. Why not have content that covers it all ? Of course, remove /follow and there"s nothing else to consider.
