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Walking Other Worlds
- Title: Final Fantasy XI
- Developer/Publisher: Square/Enix
- System:360 (PC, PS2)
2003 was a long time ago, though. The Taru Taru are still cute, but just about every other aspect of the game feels dated in comparison to modern online games. Questing is extraordinarily awkward; There are lots of quests to do but almost no way to know how to find them. Hint books or the internet are really the only way you'll know that the surly gang of school kids behind the fish warehouse in Windhurst is a consistent source of fun missions. Graphically, the game looks serviceable but out of place on the Xbox 360. On a hi-def screen the jaggies ignorable on the PC or PS2 try to reach out and remove your optic nerves. The job system (allowing you to try all the classes with one character) is still one of the finest examples of balance and utility in the genre ... but raising levels on those classes will drive you to distraction. Leveling is an unrelenting, punishing grind. The first ten levels are basically required soloing, but beyond that you'd better be grouped or you're going to be enjoying the 'feature' of xp loss on death. My favorite moment is when you die just after having gained a level. You lose xp so, of course, you lose your level. That's some class A fun.
The 360 version collects up all three expansions to the game (Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, and Treasures of Aht Urhgan) along with the original gameworld, to allow the 360 experience to be a 'complete' one. Unfortunately, unless you've already been playing this title on the PC or PS2, much of that content will be weeks or months away from your level 1 character. The most recent expansion, Aht Urghan, has been getting very positive commentary from those who can play it, but the expansion's inclusion into this bundle is of limited interest to the new player.
Me personally, I like Final Fantasy XI a lot. After the minty-clean ease of WoW or EQII, the brittle hardcore crunch of FFXI is a really nice change of pace. That said, I don't really understand this title's release for the 360. In essence, this game was only released on the console so that Microsoft could check off a box for the MMOG genre in its launch window library. With new and innovative Massive offerings still quite a ways off (such as Huxley), FFXI provides a stopgap marketing measure for Microsoft, and once again proves Square/Enix's skill with hardware integration. Definitely not for the MMOG newcomer, and probably already a notch in the belt for the experienced, I'm just not sure who this bundle is for.
- Title: Guild Wars: Factions
- Developer: ArenaNet
- Publisher: NCSoft
- System:PC
The two new classes brings the total up to eight, and fit seamlessly into the world of Ascalon for both PVE and PVP play. The Assassin is a direct damage character, carrying a lot of similarities to the Warrior class. An Assassin character has to get very up close and personal to do maximum damage, though, not having some of the skill with ranged weapons other classes do. The class also breaks ground with 'combo' moves. The mix-and-match actions that any character can slot are always fun to combine in interesting ways, but the Assassin relies on stringing together specific moves for increasing damage. The other new class, the Ritualist, is a support class that features a good deal of group buffing and debuffing. I found the Ritualist's laid back style of play kind of awkward in PVE, but it was a lot of fun in PVP matches. As long as you're in the main pack of your team, you're doing some good. A simple strategy even an inexperienced player like me could follow.
The new questing continent, the region known as Cantha, will keep the PVE players happy for a very long time. It's simply gorgeous, and artistically very different from many of the initial Prophecies zones. For example, the summer green that the lower-level original zone uses gives way to an autumnal orange and gold in Eastern-themed Cantha. There are over two dozen core quest missions, and enough side-quests to keep even the most dedicated PVE character busy for some time. For me, the most enjoyable element of these environs is the smaller zones, some of which go far beyond the traditional fantasy tropes we've come to expect. A beach-front area dominated by villages built on giant tortoises, and an ancient city built into a massive gorge, are just two of the nonstandard zones you'll travel through in Cantha. The Guild Wars designers went about as far as they could from the look and tone of the original Prophesies zones, and the Eastern sensibility and flair is like a breath of fresh air.
PVP is the gameplay that most people come looking for when they sit down to a session of Guild Wars, and Factions provides for these players as well. Besides the same gameplay seen in Prophecies, travelers to Cantha have the opportunity to align with two warring groups seeking to control the newly found lands. In PVP battles, guilds can struggle back and forth across a highly militarized zone. The more PVP victories a faction has, based on the guilds associated with it, the more land it can claim to control. The most interesting thing is that individual guilds can then lay claim to some of these lands, based on the amount of favour they've curried with their patron faction. This favour is earned not by PVP, but by PVE questing. The most successful guilds under Factions, then, are mixed bags. PVE questers garner favour with the ruling faction, while PVP gladiators ensure that their faction has control of a large swath of land. It forces players that normally would not associate to come together in a common goal, and is a right brilliant idea.
As has been the case since its launch, the heights of this game are not for the hardcore. At this week's E3 ArenaNet has flown some of the most dedicated guilds out to compete live on the show floor. These players spend hundreds of hours each month honing their skills in the arena, and if you want to compete at that level you're going to have to sacrifice. For those of us with less ambitious goals, Factions is a lot of added flavour for a great casual game. You can pop in, play for 30 minutes with NPC allies, and pop out having had a lot of fun. It still has the same drawbacks as the original; Communication elements are a little rough, and if you find yourself questing with other people you're likely to find yourself frustrated sooner rather than later. That said, if you enjoy the Prophecies portion of Guild Wars ArenaNet's additions to the game are going to make you reconnect with your very first humiliating loss and that sweet, sweet first victory all over again.
The X360 port of FFXI was basically just a straight copy of the PC version - however they managed to bork the graphics (looks like 640x480 in many places), and the framerate just drags at times (there's speculation it's actually running on a PC emulator).
OTOH it's primarily aimed at the PS2 gamers for an upgrade and is a big improvement for them.
IMO you either like things like FFXI or you like things like Guid Wars. If you want PvP then go for GW, if you want involved storylines and RPG then go for FFXI.
Know what I'd like to see in multi-player on line games? More automated characters. Seriously! But ones written by ordinary users to interface with the online world. Perhaps running as a screen saver on their machine - BOINC anyone? What a great place to develop AI algorithms. Bit of computer vision, map building and path planning to navigate around. Some basic interaction problems to solve. If the API for these things was better published I could almost imagine having a go myself!
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
I played FFXI the other day. For $30, I got the game and a 30 day trial for me, and another free trial for a friend. I uploaded the game to him (He's in Norway) and we eached played for a while. I cancelled after about 2 weeks. I think he cancelled closer to the end of the month.
It was total grind-ville. There was nothing to do but grind. Want to hunt? Grind. Want to make potions? Grind. Want to fish... Okay, you could fish a bit without grinding much. But only a bit. And only after you earn enough money for a fishing pole and bait.
I spent the first 2 hours walking. Not looking and talking to people. Walking. I was looking for a way out of town so I could hunt. Once I finally found it, I killed a couple things, got hurt and wandered back through town to rest and get healed. I eventually stopped a passerby in the field and asked if there was another way (no mention in the manual) and she said it was a certain button on the gamepad. (I was on PC, she PS2.) I thanked her and started the button hunt again. It turns out, after you hit the button there's a pointless 2-3 second delay, and then the animation begins. Grinding went a little quicker after that, but was always still grinding. (Kill, kill, rest, repeat.)
As for GW: Factions... I played the PvE of the original Guild Wars for 260+ hours before I finally got bored. For a person who thinks 40 hours games are long these days, that's pretty impressive.
Now, I have a full time job and don't have the time I used to dedicate to gaming, but it's excessively hard to find the time needed to sit down and do a mission on GW Factions now. I need to dedicate at LEAST an hour, probably 2-3 because there are so many noobs that think Assassins are cool and they can play them like a warrior. The usual solution is to just reject any group that has an Assassin in it. Since most groups are doing this anyhow, good groups aren't as rare as they could be. It still takes time, though, to find any group at all.
The first mission you get if you sail your character to Cantha requires that not only you find a group, but that you get lucky and another group from another area isn't totally stupid, too. You each have to keep a single character alive through many swarms of mutants. It's not hard, but you HAVE to heal your NPC. It's a small nightmare. (I won't even mention that that quest glitches quite often and the NPCs stop moving, and you can't go on. Ooops, I did anyhow, didn't I?)
Once you get past that mission, things liven up quickly, but it's a real downer at first. I've only managed to put 10-15 hours into it so far, so there's still a chance to have the kind of fun I had in the original. We'll see.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
As a long-term, semi-hardcore FFXI player, I've had mixed feelings about the 360 launch. On the one hand, it's been great that we've had an influx of new players again. It really keeps the game lively, keeps the lower-end economy working properly and staves off the inevitable decline that's going to hit every MMORPG some day.
On the other hand, I can't help but feel that Square-Enix have wasted a big opportunity here. Don't get me wrong - I vastly prefer FFXI to World of Warcraft, and the fact that almost everybody who left FFXI for WoW ended up coming back seems to indicate that a lot of other people feel the same way - but WoW taught everybody some important lessons about MMORPGs that you just can't afford to ignore these days, particularly in terms of inducting new players. The simple, depressing fact is that getting started in FFXI as a new player now is no easier than it was when the game first launched. Which is to say, it's bloody hard. If anything, it's even harder now, as much of the game is becoming geared towards end-game content and prices on newbie gear are much higher than they used to be. The 360 release was an opportunity for S-E to address this; to revamp the hideously outdated quest-log, to put in some easily-identified, tightly structured quests to break newbies into the game and teach them the basics of playing while also getting their low level gear for free and, in short, to make the game FUN to play with a character below level 50, which is something that's always been lacking.
Don't get me wrong, my opinion is that in terms of end-game content, FFXI stomps everything else around. There's challenge, variety and a whole lot of other stuff that's absent from other MMORPG end-games, particularly WoW, and, to cap it all, this is geared for everything from 3 man groups through to 64 man alliances, unlike the WoW focus on ever bigger groups at the top levels. However, if I were just getting started on the 360 version now, I seriously doubt I'd stick with the game long enough to see that.
Also, I know I'm in the minority here, but I personally think that the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion *stinks*. It's had an easy ride from the player-base, because it added 3 new jobs, which is what people always shout for in expansions. However, I don't see any of these jobs as adding anything new or exciting to what was on offer before. Frankly, the chances that more than about 0.01% of the player-base had actually experienced everything that the existing 15 jobs had to offer are pretty miniscule. So we get landed with 3 new jobs which suddenly everybody and their dog are playing as and which break the game-balance quite nicely. We also get some of the ugliest zones ever seen in the game. The zones for the previous expansion, Chains of Promathia, were breath-taking visually. It's a bit disappointing to go from that, to wading around in a swamp with blatant copy-pasting of tiles, which is all that ToAU seems to be. Besieged and Assault (new game-modes) have also completely failed to live up to their potential.
I played for a year and a half, and quit. Alot of my friends along the way had dropped off, and then SE went and ruined my job in the infameous "Ranger Nerf." I had overall enjoyed the experience, but I thought I was done.
I was wrong. 3 months ago, I picked it up again in anticipation of the new expansion, and I will say this: I played both Guild Wars and WoW in the interem, and neither presented the depth or quality of gameplay that FFXI has. I think that one of the biggest complaints about FFXI is the need for a party to gain experience and level; I feel quite the opposite. The game is really based around it's community, and whether it be a terrible party that you laugh about for weeks, or a great LS (guild) in the endgame, the social experience is a nice change of pace from the anti-social communities in so many other games.
The complaints about the dated graphics are valid, but the complaints about the fundamental system are not.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
This is in no way meant to disparage Guild Wars. It's a fine game with some really cool ideas. But it is simply not a MMOG. Even the developers have said it's not a MMOG. From their FAQ:
It's just a pet peeve of mine. MMOGs typically entail a large, explorable, public, cooperative world. Guild Wars is highly instanced. The only public areas are small towns that only serve as staging areas for the instances. Guild Wars' gameplay actually has more in common with Diablo 2 than it does a standard MMO, like EverQuest.
Okay, done being pedantic, now.
While you have to play Guild Wars online, it really isn't an MMOG. Every time you enter an area where combat is possible, you enter a separate instance that is private to your group. So you are never in a fighting situation with more than a handful of people.
Contrast that to, say, World of Warcraft. You could potentially run into any other person on the server when you are outdoors.
Guild Wars is really just Diablo 2 with some clever camouflage to make it appear to be a seamless world. But towns are really just Diablo 2 chatrooms, and the level of interaction with other players in the combat areas of the game is small.
Pardus is a free Massive Multiplayer Online Browser Game (MMOBG) playing in a futuristic universe where traders, pirates and other pilots of various races and factions strive to gain wealth and fame in space. it's been started by a couple of students from the technical university vienna and has grown in the last two years to 5000 active players. it's simple but fun, takes only 15-30min time / day and for those of you remembering amiga console games ... we'll it's kind of retro.
try it
less random!
I would like to point out that within the Guild Wars fanbase, Factions has been met with a great deal of outright anger over a number of problems:
1. Compared to the original Guild Wars, despite costing the same, you get SIGNIFICANTLY less content. When you buy one of the chapters, you get 4 character slots. When you add on another chapter, you only get 2 more slots (e.g. - you double your cost, but you only get 50% more character space). The map is also much smaller.
2. The problem with character slots above means that your storage is limited. The original GW had an abundance of items, so storage was already problematic. The fact that if you combine chapters you get a diminishing return on character space compounds the existing storage problem a great deal. ArenaNet has claimed many times now that a fix is in progress for this.
3. Many people have complained about the "delivery boy" syndrome Factions suffers from. many of the quests, especially early on, require that you run messages or items from one person to another. Because there is now no way to explore on your own (see #4 and #5), this often means literally having to slog through dull, repetitious fights to do the quest.
4. In the first chapter, many people enjoyed exploring on their own and opened up areas by simply running around the map. In Factions, this is not possible as they have locked gates placed around Cantha that only open at the completion of missions (only six missions were actually necessary in Prophecies to complete the game).
5. Monsters were not very challenging and were easy to avoid in some places in Prophecies. In an attempt to solve this, many patrols were overlapped in Cantha and given a very wide range of movement. Unfortunately, this means that it's not uncommon to submit to a very large and growing group of enemies because other patrols came into range from far off while you were battling another group.
And, of course, the main problem:
6. GRIND.
In Prophecies, many people chose to grind for gold and items, but it was not required. In Factions, because of Alliances, the only way to get to many of the missions is:
a) To join a large guild - a daunting task as groups of trusted players solidify - so you can be part of a large alliance
b) Grind out "faction" points for your chosen side in the Canthan war to contribute to your Alliance so that you can retain control over towns - the only way you can play certain high level areas ("Elite" missions) is if you are part of the Alliance holding the related town, which requires these Faction points.
I would say Factions is an enormous disappoint. At guildwarsguru.com/forum you can find many, many people who agree.
One of the biggest changes in Factions is the new Tutorial sequence - the "newbie" area.
In old version in Prophecies only gave you a few abilities, and you were put out of it around level 7. In reality, you didn't hit the "main game" (the level 20 areas) for a while after. Also, new abilities were gained as rewards from quests. Your introduction to your class included a few "theme" quests - necromancers had necromancy-looking quests, etc. Some of the quests required you to learn to use a specific ability, but very few.
In Factions, when you get out of the newbie area you're around level 17 (20 if you explore a bit more than normal or if you use the quest rewards to up your experience gain rate) which means that you're pretty much capable of doing anything - and questing with your non-newbie guildmates is reasonable (when you're level 8, having a level 20 around is like enabling god mode - not all that fun when you're trying to learn). You also get a ton of abilities dumped on you at a quick but reasonable pace, and your class quests help explain a bit more of what it means to be your class.
The key, though, is the new Dojo system: after you complete your class quests you can (optionally) do a set of dojo quests, which are heavily-scripted single-player quests that focus around a specific technique. Kiting, dealing with spells, dealing with curses, dealing with conditions, etc. You are given abilities that allow you to deal with these things, and then given the opportunity to test them out. It's brilliant, and it will save a lot of teaching later on (many newbies in Prophecies didn't know these techniques at all - which was okay, they'd never been expected to!).
Also, another big shift: you no longer get abilities as the result of quests. Instead, quests and missions are worth much more gold, and you can use that gold to buy abilities from the skill trainer. Hence you can start mixing and matching much earlier (instead of having a set sequence of skill progression, you can pick and choose). Elite skills are still gained through capture[1].
I wish World of Warcraft had the dojo system, I really do. New players are faced with a very high number of techniques to learn. Getting with a good set of people can take care of this (and plus some!), but it would help raise the waterlevel.
[1] - For non-guild-wars people: some abilities are called "Elite" abilities. You can only have one of these available at a time. These abilities are found on bosses. You "capture" them after defeating the boss if you bring along a special skill called a "signet of capture" - so, the boss is slightly more difficult to kill (you have 7 skills instead of 8), but there is a reward from it.
I can see several points to this issue that need to be interrogated.
How many people who are experiencing this type of social phobia were already prone to it before the game became the focus of their lives? It seems to me for those who are agoraphobic (or another ailment) this is something that could be very helpful. In some ways it allows people who would otherwise have almost no contact with others a chance to have a social experience however limited it is. In some cases (although very rare) a person could actually manage to be more productive online than in real life. In Second Life one could actually generate some income via the virtual world. I'm not certain that this is the best way to go but how many data entry jobs just have one sitting in front of a computer all day without any contact with others? Would that be so different?
For those who are have developed an addiction and disappeared from real life social circles because of it, it becomes more difficult to ascertain solutions. The truth is that we have had this issue with television long before now. I believe that every person has to choose for themselves how they want to spend their time. Although it may be frightening to see someone slip into the machine, as it were, that's their choice. On top of that I've seen many people slip into mindless television watching.
On the flip side I have friend who lives very far away. I like the idea of being able to meet them in a virtual world and do activities. It's not better than the real thing but it's cheaper than a plane ticket.
The real issue then sticks out clearly to me. In real life there is not enough of a public space (especially in urban centers). We are either on the streets or consuming. There needs to be a balance, a place where people can meet and have meaningful exchanges in real life. The model used in the United States is consumer driven and that makes it very difficult to build communities. I think of both Mexico and Europe (as I've experienced them). They have huge public squares in every town. On top of that people actually gather as a community in these squares nightly.
Thanks,
Dore Dormir
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
The other thing about WoW is the sense of danger. You are out in a world where anyone from the other faction can 'gank' you. I love that. In Guild Wars, that is not present. You are alone in the world, or with your small group. I like the excitment of stalking my prey (I have a 60 Troll Rogue) and attacking.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Fine, so it's your pet peeve that GW doesn't comply with your definition, but you are actually entirely wrong in your assessment. What you really mean is that for you, a "MMOG" is the traditional kind of MMOG with all its traditional problems, as in EverQuest.
Well let me tell you something: the world changes, and the EverQuest idea of how you define a MMOG does not fix it in stone for eternity.
ArenaNet designers found a way to preserve all the good things in the genre (most importantly the gameplay), and throw out all the bad things, like camping, kill stealing, training, harrassment, downtime, level grinding, and mindless repetition.
They did so by instancing, but that's no different to what many other MMOGs have done with instanced dungeons. The big difference with GW is that they did it with outdoor zones, and the result is 100% absolute magic. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in removing the bad and promoting the good.
You are hung up on the bad things, and think that by not being able to have 50 mobs trained on you by a passing idiot, then somehow it's not a MMOG. Wake up. You're simply not thinking straight. None of the shared world "benefits" you claim are real, they're just a right pain in the butt, and I speak as someone who took two of the largest traditional MMOGs to their end games on several characters.
Guild Wars has got it very very right, and boy, not only is it a full-blown Massively Multiplayer Online Game (it's truly Massive, because it doesn't split people off onto different named servers), it's also one of the very best.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Howsabout I help you help yourself stop trying to help people that don't need it?
If I hold down a career that makes me enough money to survive and also contributes to the knowledgebase of society more than Programmer X. Websitedesign, why does it matter to you if I want to spend my free time in front of a computer or at the park? Obviously your friends prefer their computer to you. Do you feel threatened?
Everyone in the end looks back on their lives and wonders if they've really accomplished anything. And the deeper you get into philosophy, the more you start questioning if you're really going to find a meaningful accomplishment in anything you do. You're taking up this crusade because it makes you feel like you're doing something positive. It gives you self-righteousness. It confirms your view of a meaningful life.
I stopped going out with my friends in large part recently because, frankly, I've been bored going to the same old parties, having the same drunken conversations, pretending there's some deeper meaning where there really isn't. I'm not hiding from the world. I did not suddenly develop a social phobia in my twenty-second year on this world. And the patronizing kiddie-freud analysis that people try to subject me to with those conclusions (like you're doing to your friends) is one of the #1 reasons that I really don't want to hang out with them. If I told them the truth, that I'm bored with them, that I spend more time trying to entertain them than being entertained, that I think their deep philosophies and purposes and meanings are shallow, I don't think they'd want me around much longer. But I can't quite bring myself to do that.
You get all the classes, access to the Factions PvE content, access to all the PvP modes. You don't get access to a few skills and elite skills. You don't get access to the Chapter 1 PvE content. For a serious PvP player, you really need access to all the skills. For a more casual player, you can have fun with just Chapter 2.
I was part of the team that flew to Taiwan to compete in the first GW championship back in February. A few notes on the review:
*The new continent is Cantha. The old continent is Tyria. Ascalon is one of the kingdoms of Tyria.
*Warriors and assassins both use melee weapons, beyond that they share next to zero similarities. Assassins play much like rogues, complete with critical hits, minus the backstabbing (but they do have teleportation, called "Shadow Stepping" in game.)
*The assassin "combo move" mechanic is neither groundbreaking nor game defining. Nearly every effective attack sequence has always been executed by queuing up skills (e.g. Eviscerate into Executioner's Strike). Assassins skills are explicity limited - first a lead attack, then off-hand, finally a dual attack. There are a few exceptions to that rule but the system feels dumbed down and gimmicky to me - they've taken the choice out of when you decide to use your skills. There's no such thing as lead attack into dual attack - it (nearly) always goes Lead->Off-hand->Dual. Personally it irritates me because part of the appeal of the skill system was choosing whichever eight skills you wanted- now if you want one particular skill you may be "forced" into choosing three. Eventually the players would have figured out the best combinations on their own, this just feels like the choice and discovery has been taken from us.
*Your assessment of ritualists is pretty good- they have a lot of area buffs and can summon immobile spirits that can help defend important locations. Your gameplay tip is solid for nearly every inexperienced player- stick with the team and use skills on your bar that you (and your teammmates) get a lot of benefit from. New assassins tend to run off on their own and get killed quickly. Ritualists don't seem to have that problem.
*The artwork in the game (original and Factions) is gorgeous. ANet's artists continue to impress me, especially in a game with light system requirements.
*New PvP Zones: You missed a few points here, or were mislead by the advertising. The old game had three types of PvP game types: Ladder play (8v8), Arena Play (4v4, random and team), and an ongoing tournament/king of the hill battle (8v8). Prophecies introduced a new type of gameplay, called Alliance Battles, which are ostensibly 12v12 battles for control of territory.
I say ostensibly because during the beta event you could play the alliance battles as full 12v12 fights (though the objective is to capture and hold as many of the six control points as possible.) You could enter on your own or as part of a four person squad and it was always easy to get into an ongoing fight, and they tend to last no more than ten minutes (as opposed to the lengthier 20-35 minute ladder matches). The format changed in release however, so now you must enter with a team of four, and you no longer see (or share a chat pane) with the other eight people on your side, even though you are all fighting for the same side. The change has incited a lot of bellyaching because it put a big damper into the fast, furious, and accessible style of the early Alliance fights. Now you are forced to go in with a team and you can only communicate with your squad, which are not necessarily bad things, but a lot of the appeal of the early version was the ability to "jump in" and participate in a larger fight without having to worry about the organization other formats require.
*Territory control: each guild can now become part of an alliance. Each alliance can hold up to ten guilds. There are roughly ten cities (five per side) that can be controlled by the alliances with the most faction. Faction can be earned either through Alliance battles (PvP) or quests (PvE). Holding a city gives various benefits. Holding territory is a numbers game though- the more people you have generating faction the bigger the city you can control- there's no advantage to being part of a small, hardcore
You are in the world with your group and possible the enemy group and that is it. You are talking the number of people in an area that a home run quake server could handle. It is the reason they can offer the game without a monthly fee because they do not have the gigantic overhead of hundreds of players in the same area.
It truly is like diablo 2 as has been pointed out before.
All the checks are there except for the massive.
Doesn't mean it ain't an intresting game. BTW you are aware that the game developers themselves don't claim it is an MMO either are you?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.