Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.
The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.
I've been playing this game for a few years now, stopped for a bit and have now come back. I'm just going to try and keep this short with suggestions.
Needs more tools that help form parties
Needs more incentive to group play( slight bonus xp, loot, or make content more difficult)
Needs an optional level sync, I used to hate level sync, but with all of the new players coming in, I really hate the fact that some higher level players are going to "help" the newer players out by one shotting bosses, instead they are actually ruining their experience of the boss and the dungeon.
Make soloing nearly impossible/inefficient IMO. Design around minimum duoing. IT"S AN MMO FOR A REASON
Combat is still too fast and messy, really need to slow down combat and define roles better.
Right now this game feels like, solo 90% of the time, grind for materials. Then 10% of the time do a dungeon with a group. Ideally IMO this needs to be more 50/50.
I see where you're coming from, as most MMO's are like that. I'm not poo-pooing your input.
With that said, I don't know how many are playing this and having a wonderful time at it, in that I really like that you can be solo in this game, unlike many of the others. There are several reasons this appeals to people, which I won't list.
As for the MMO side, I have been a proponent of increasing guild size to unlimited, and adding unlimited guild alliance sizes.
If they make this where players can't do their own thing, well...why would I play this and not another MMO? I think they are onto something special here - of course, I could be wrong.
I agree with nearly all your points except #4 . I think the current grouping situation is pretty good as is. If you want mats and trash loot, solo. If you want fast, steady, low-risk XP, group. If you want to play end-game stuff, group. I think addressing #2 on your list would help. On the NWN2 server I played on for years, we were having the same problem with a lack of grouping, until we implemented a script that gave a bump in XP based on the number of players in the group. When that hit, people started grouping up with much more frequency because it became more rewarding to fill out your group up to 6.
I think if you took out soloing, you'd lose 75% of your players. More reasons to group would be good. I expect a lot of new content will have areas that need a group.
There is huge incentive to party(in later dungeons) from how boss drops work and most later mobs being bosses. A party of 5 will each get like 3x the loot of someone soloing. The best EXP when I was levelling was soloing lower level areas but if AoE continues to get nerfed that will change to partying at on level dungeoins.
I found it extremely frustrating with the boss loot and hated the fact that if you're not in a full party you are wasting your time as you're doing things super inefficiently.
Slowing down combat and adding a party finder(like /lfg on eq2) would be quite good.
Best loot in game armor wise is crafted yellow gear, it was frustrating indeed trying to get good loot in general so since I was leveling leatherworking I maxed it and crafted myself a suit, if using a basic ability for combat refresh nothing compares to crafted armor bonuses.
I'm fairly confident at this stage that people are going to try level everything themselves, so there's no real inter-reliance on other players. You can't be like "Hey let's group, you take X and I'll take Y" when you're more likely than not going to be wanting X & Y for yourself.
Forcing grouping is just going to drive away solo players. There's always going to be a type of player that just wants to play alone with people to chat to / show off their accomplishments - you can't really tax that market because it's a MMO.
As for "Level Sync" I still think Project Gorgon should've gone for a smaller power curve beyond level 50 (I.e. a level 70 player is ~10% more powerful than a level 50 one).
All group bonuses would do right now is reinforce the viability of power leveling.
You can't be like "Hey let's group, you take X and I'll take Y" when you're more likely than not going to be wanting X & Y for yourself
Well, that's how I always group.
Sure, I might want X and Y at some point, but the way stacks work means that I should take X and they should take Y and we should split the things we're getting XP on. It's just much more wasteful to try to hoard everything in your inventory at once.