Episode II: Return of the Frustration
I thought I’d give it another go yesterday and put together a group to do the instance, Uldaman. It took an hour, but it finally happened, nad it was a well-balanced group that might have taken us through the entire dungeon. But there were new problems: contrasting player intentions. A couple people wanted to simply kill things and hope for good loot, while three of us wanted to do the quests in there that, ironically, require killing everything and getting the loot. In addition, one pair started to whack everything, effectively draw several mobs to us at once–a very deadly maneuver.
Eventually, the other two got frustrated and left. This group lasted less than the last group. My solution, I decided to work on what you could call a mini-game. A a leatherworker, there’s a set of armor I can make, but I had to find the patterns (mob drops) and get my skill up, so I took to hunting, killing mobs that have a good percentage chance of dropping the patterns I needed and the scorpions that drop the leather and scales that I can use to make the armor (I was also able to complete a couple solo quests along the way).
It’d be nice to have a good group, but that requires joining a guild, and guilds mean a social commitment I don’t want to make. So my interests in games are based on my interests in Composition, and I’m focused on player motivation and types (Bartle, Yee), as well as collaboration. (there’s the whole thing about production and consumption too–player generated content, inside and outside of the game).
I thank you for your comment.
Comment by Rosie — April 23, 2007 @ 8:07 pm