Early MMO designers wanted people to form groups. After all, why play an online game, if not to interact with others? And what better way to interact than in a group, just as people had been doing for years in MUDs and D&D?
The problem was that those early MMO designers tried to encourage grouping by making it painful to solo. No single character had enough hit points, healing, or damage-dealing power to make much progress alone; only a group could adventure effectively.
But of course grouping is a pain in the neck. To join a group, you first have to find a nearby group of the appropriate level, with an empty slot, which needs help from someone of your character class. Once you've found a group, you have to risk rejection from a stranger by asking the group leader to let you join. And once you've been let into a group, you have to deal with immature players who call you a noob while making you wait until they finish their pizza before they ninjaloot the boss and log off.
In 2008, Warhammer Online introduced the public quest: a recurring combat challenge in a given location. Anyone that wanders by may join the public quest without asking permission, and everyone shares the rewards automatically. This mechanism is great for painlessly pulling people into co-op play, but it suffers from silly repetitiveness (the mummy will respawn in 4:59, :58, :57...) and the ghost-town effect of not being able to gather enough people of the right level.
The main grouping dynamic of Steel Chaos is more or less "holy crap we've got to attack/defend location x RIGHT NOW!" I call this "ad-hoc grouping": players working in close proximity on a common cause, but without a formal grouping mechanism. Steel Chaos is massively co-op, so the players are already working on a common cause. The game has neither XP nor loot, so the issues of mobcamping, killstealing and sharing rewards with freeloading strangers just aren't there. And since anyone can play any role and everyone is always the same level, there should be fewer problems gathering people to help.
I want Steel Chaos to break down the barriers separating MMO players from their friends. My hope is that ad-hoc grouping will painlessly provide the social benefits of grouping without the problems that normally attend formal groups or public quests.
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