Party is a Unit???

I copied this out of The Navigation Thread...

I liked it and replied with this....

Not opposed to that. Personally I would like that. It seems really clean if a party can travel as a group on the map. If one hex is a kilometer then why would some party members be in a hex on the hill and another be in the trees etc? Having a leader for the party sounds like a good way of handling that.

However seeing that this is such a heated topic maybe others can chime in Yay or Nay or give some other response about party travel. Proceeding with caution...

EDIT: There's got to be a way to make something like that work. It just seems right to have a party traveling together. If a party gets ambushed, the whole party should be there at the same time, otherwise it really isn't a party. I can see some downsides to this as well, but there's got to be some middle ground.


Anybody else like this idea or have an alternate idea that makes sense? Just throw out ideas. Even if our ideas don't make it into the game maybe it will be a catylist for some other new idea the devs decide to use.

 

I suppose it would require more play testing. "What makes sense" should trump all else. But frequently in games I'm in party with people just for the chat channel. We do our own thing and join up if we need to join up. Maybe there's a big raid soon and people are out gathering or crafting or whatever during the 30 minutes of getting all the groups together.

But as I said, SotA is a different game. So what worked well in other MMOs isn't necessarily this one.

 

@Isaiah,

It depends on how deep the support will be for the party splitting up during adventures. RG has already discussed scenarios where some party members would get split up, but that might be in a single hex. But it would be interesting to see if there are scenarios where a party might be split up across hexes, either by being forced by the quest.. or by choice and intention.

 

What about having the option to "tag" along with a party leader? So you can have an option to tag yourself to the group, and maybe be able to untag yourself when it the group stops moving if you desire. Then it's not forced, but optional. This might also tie into later additions such as wagons etc too.

 

Non-unit travel creates a lot of ambiguity as to what a party actually is, the more I think about it. They'd have to provide number limits... after all, if you were able to add as many party members as you like and you were able to split up as much as you like, in theory you could have 50 people as member of the same party, all in different parts of the continent. That doesn't make a party anything more than a specialized friends list.

If they provide number limits, they could do this...

In another thread, we were discussing what PvP skills might be, and I suggested a party leader -- whether in a PvE or PvP environment -- could have leadership skills. These would be things that would help the whole group, like boost their morale (rally). What they could in theory do is not require party members to be all part of the same travelling group, but where they are part of the same group, enable the group leader to use his leadership skills.

Then parties would have to be distinguished from groups, of course.

 

In the traditional MMO model, every character moves independently. They can eventually show up in the same location in the same instance, but they're not forced to travel as a unit.

I like having the freedom of stepping away from the group to buy something or do something, but there is also the possibility of convenience of joining a party and instantly ending up where the party travels.

 

I'm pretty sure they mentioned that parties would have a limit. Last i heard they were mentioning like 8 party members??? However the more I think about it I would like the ability to tag along, but I definitely would like the ability to take off if need be.

However I think the party unit would only be a thing for the overland map. In a town, or a hex we would obviously control our characters. (unless we are sitting in the back of a wagon someday).