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Should MMOs let you have the ability to solo raids?
TheScavenger
Member EpicPosts: 3,321
I'll talk about WoW for this, since its the longest played MMO I've been a part of and only one I had actual fun with at end game.
In WoW, only two classes can solo raid (or did when I played, that being, Death Knights and Paladins)...these two were (when i played) regarded as the best. However, they can only solo old raids that don't matter anymore. It is a fun challenge, but not much else.
But when WOTLK came out...I couldn't experience the Lich King for myself. Which was really disappointing after playing the Warcraft 3 and expansion. I had to go on Youtube and watch videos of it, which isn't nearly the same.
Why not let one do raids, but get much weaker items than one who would do the same raid in a group? This way, everyone can enjoy the content and not just the very small population that raided in WoW. This would add lots of content in the game for a much larger group of people. This would be true for any MMO that has raiding. The raiders still get their uber items and achievements, soloers get suitable items, but more importantly, get to actually see the story AND the content.
Then everyone wins and experiences the whole game.
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Well, when it is a crucial element of a storyline...it defeats the whole purpose of doing the story line. Not all MMOs I guess would need this, like Vanguard doesn't have any storyline and I don't think Everquest ever did. But, like WoW...the raids are the biggest element to the finale of the story.
However, one is able to do the whole story solo...all the way up to Blizzard's finale.
I'd be okay if the whole storyline forced you to group (or raid), but Blizzard did not design the story that way.
I personally don't care at all about the items or money...I just wanted to see the end of the story.
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To the idea of soloing a endgame raid I say hell no. If what you are asking for is a story mode, where all you get is the story but zero other benefits including xp, loot, attunements and achievements, then maybe. As long as it's only story.
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Something like what LOTRO did. While I never got into LOTRO...it had story mode dungeons (at least while leveling, never got to endgame). You still got exp, loot...but it was far weaker than what you would get in a group. Find better items out in the world. But, it let you see the actual story and progress the story.
To be honest, I wouldn't care however if there was no xp or loot...if the game has a heavy story element to it (like LOTRO and WoW)...I just want to see the story. Don't care about purples or whatever.
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For sightseeing and going through the story, yes I agree with you. There should be no noteworthy rewards.
With completely perfect play the player should be able to solo even the latest raids. However the player should be punished pretty hard for even the slightest mistake.
However there should not be any disadvantage in grouping that ever-wow-alikes have(exp split, loot split, and similar).
Grouping should be something a player chooses to do and should be emergent rather than forced.
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BY NOT SHOVING THEM IN INSTANCES
Like Vanguard, makes me laugh when people make these comments yet they are not playing Vanguard.
I dont mind them making easier versions once they become redundant, like Rift does, but I dont think there should be solo versions while the raid is active. It just cheapens the experience. EQ2 is doing this at the moment, having solo versions of all the end game stuff and I personally think it is terrible. Half the fun of raiding was seeing the epic new encounter you would be facing off against. Having a solo version available just ruins the appeal.
So the MMO in MMORPG... isn't crucial? It'd be like getting to the Super Bowl on an NFL game with no team. Experience it all you want, you're missing the point of the game.
Why not let one do a raid and if he can pull it off by himself, he reaps all the respective rewards of it as he managed to solo what normally takes, 5, 8, or 10 players to do?
Asheron's Call was a very social game and when someone solo'd difficult content, and the global announcement went out of their achievement, they'd get a bunch of 'congrats!' tells from people. I get the feeling you'd send a different kind of tell.
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Yeah but vg doesn't have pvp
Play DF then, thing is their are games out there that have what people claim they want, don't moan about it because you or they chose to play games like GW2 or NW.
You don't want instances but you want PVP, why are you not playing DFUW?
IMO max level raid content NO. Lower level raid content probrobly yes.
If any company decides to have solo raid content than have the rewards diminished. There is the possibility to have the player pick a difficuly level for better challenges and awards. Several games have tried this successfuly.
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one possibility is doing something similar to the WOW quest, Battle for the Undercity
http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:The_Battle_For_The_Undercity_%28Alliance%29
pair you up w an epic NPC to experience the story (but your participation is meaningless)
personally, I'd rather devs not spend time on "living movies" to tell the story
I dont see how else to tell a Raids story in solo mode
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One of the reasons I quit WoW was because of the quality of end game raiders. The horrific, better than everyone attitude was a real turn off. If I had the choice to play those end game raids solo, I would not. Coming from Vanilla WoW and experiencing raids as a group with pugs and or guild members, I know how rewarding a successful raid encounter could be when everyone involved worked together fluidly. Being able to run through an encounter that took a group weeks of practice to complete, would cheapen the experience to me.
If I want to play something solo, I don't look to the MMO genre to achieve it.
TLDR; My heresy is believing that solo raids are a good thing, if given a separate progression tier and done without otherwise diminishing the quality of traditional raids. Most of the arguments against this are based on ideological rather than practical reasons and reflect long-held beliefs that the current market just doesn't seem to bear out.
I'm going to go well against the grain here and suggest that, yes, MMOs should allow some raids to be soloed. I will even tread into still more heretical territory and suggest that these solo raids (I prefer Rift's term, Chronicles) should be given cool rewards for people who can overcome them. This comes with a couple caveats, of course. The dev has to have the resources to do it properly, so that raids and chronicles both get the attention they need going forward. Since the gear-treadmill is almost always a part of the equation in a heavy raid-instanced endgame, a new solo tier of gear needs to come about that should exist for progression along solo lines without diminishing the rewards gained from progressing through raids.
Now, there have been tons of posts made here and elsewhere balking at this notion and clearly I'm in the minority here but from what I've seen most of the counter-arguments come from a place of ideology rather than practicality. Ideology says that group content is inherently more challenging than solo content, to which I argue that most of the challenge in the end comes down to execution and coordination among a group of skillful players. There's no inherent reason why those same 10 players couldn't each be equally challenged in a solo instance requiring them to learn, adapt, and execute at their highest levels.
Some may say that MMOs are a genre designed around grouping. A fair point and my own preference is always to group up to get through content and socialize. However, the genre has changed to reflect a new sensibility. There isn't a triple A MMO worth its salt today where a player can't see most of the games content or engage in most of the games systems as a solo player from start to finish. In fact, Raids are most often the only piece of content unavailable to them. Some may feel that this is a misstep or an aberration, much like some people feel rock should never have replaced jazz or that 20th century classical music pales compared to true classics. Some may wish to tilt at that particular windmill and that's fine but I believe some dev should be asking why the playstyle that gets so many people to enjoy their game through 50+ levels essentially becomes immediately redundant once cap is reached.
There's an ideology that says that raid gear should be the best gear and soloers should have no part of it. Again, a fair point but one that needs refinement. The point of raid rewards is (beyond the feeling of achievement) the status it confers and the notion that acquiring it lets players move farther still towards the next set of progressive challenges. Whether the gear treadmill itself needs to exist is a separate concern. There's a deep feeling here that if solo players could get raid caliber gear for soloing that it would disrupt raiding and cheapen their achievements. So, fine. Implement a separate tier just for soloing that gives soloists some progression, that gives them a status symbol to chase after, and the tools necessary to go for their next step in progression. Done right, both camps get what they want and the games players have even more to look forward to at endgame.
As I said at the start, most of the arguments given against allowing for chronicles/solo raids come from an ideological place rather than one rooted in how people are actually playing the game. Inertia is very much on the side of keeping things the way they are now but I'm convinced that the company that can pull it off well will have everyone wondering why nobody else dared to do it before.
IMO, that's the most important statement in this thread.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
If they happen to be soloable after outgearing them, go for it.
But don't waste time specifically making them soloable, because that's time you could spend on features everyone plays, instead of only a tiny handful of players.
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All you have to do is look at solo friendly mmos to know why solo friendly raids are bad for any game. The multiplayer aspect of most games now days is little more than, if there's two of you in a group everything is so easy the game is boring.
Do that to a raid and you might as well just take the game off line and sell it as a single player game. There's so little left in these multiplayer games that are actually multiplayer and it looks like solo only players are even going after that. What's next solo pvp ?
agree
some games have solo versions of heroic dungeons (like EQ2)
but i dont see the need to spend dev time on a solo version of a raid
especially when the raid story serves no purpose after you have done it once
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