
Originally Posted by
Geffreyy
I think olf Final Fantasy XI handled grouping the best. I haven't played in a while so I don't know how the game has progressed. I've heard that grouping is no longer required.
In the game, if you wanted the get exp you basically HAD to group. Soloing was almost not an option. Furthermore, unlike most mmorpgs where there is high mob density and low HP mobs that die very fast, the game had high health, hard hitting mobs. Each mob required upwards of 2 minutes to kill and required some kind of tank, Paladin, Warrior or Ninja main as well as a healer. Furthermore, to kill mobs faster you had to be aware of each party members weapons, what weaponskills those weapons have, what element those weaponskills are and when your party members have enough meter (forget the name) to cast the weapon skill, so that you could effectively chain your weapon skills. Mages had to pay attention to the weaponskill chain elements and magic burst on top of the weaponskill chain within a specified short time to further increase the damage.
Since the game required grouping there were always groups available to join. There was a search option to seek out online players and you could filter by class and lvl range.
I feel that grouping has to be incentivized in this manner otherwise people will always prefer to do boring solo grind and this reduces the overall enjoyability and playability of the game.