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General: MMOWTF: Going Solo: The Grouping Dilemma
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Weekly MMORPG.com columnist Dan Fortier uses this week's MMOWTF to share his own personal opinions on solo play versus group play.
When someone outside looks at the MMO genre they don't see things the same as folks who have been playing for years. The terms like buff, nerf, AoE, and mezz don't mean as much to someone who has never played an online game since they are were rarely applied to the same effects in the old RPGs. (I don't recall ever calling Hold Person a 'root' spell in AD&D) Another misconception that is generally shared by the MMO-less crowd is that a vast majority of MMO gamers choose the genre because they are interested in the social aspect of the games. Why else would someone choose a Massively Multiplayer game over the much prettier, cheaper and more stable single player titles?
Read the whole column here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
As I always said, solo is the single most important aspect of a MMO-RPG; after grouping.
Before tradeskills, before raiding, before PvP...there must be a good, strong, PvE-soloing option.
If devs can't get solo right, they can't get anything right.
Happy soloers provide the raw ressource for appealing grouping. Yeah, a big chunck of them won't group today; but that is cool. Having 100k soloers happy and 500k groupers is better then having no soloers and 200k groupers. Grouping is better when not enforced on soloers. Best soloers should be peoples who solo a lot. Best grouping have to be groupers. There are many ways to achieve this. Happy soloers = better community = happy groupers. You don't want peoples to group because they have to, you want peoples to group because they want to. If Joe Blow is in a poor-piss mood, he is better left alone, soloing. Tomorrow maybe he will group, maybe not.
It is my experience that in a game that is solo friendly, all soloers eventually prefer grouping over soloing at moments...as long as they can commit to grouping. Maybe they won't like me, or groupB. And this is cool, they will group peoples they enjoy grouping; and they will avoid peoples they dislike.
A big part of the problematic come from some geek who took offense that peoples rather solo then group him. But I would prolly prefer soloing over grouping that geek myself. And this come from a grouper. Some peoples are better left alone until they learn how to behave in society. Enforced grouping isn't working, never was, never would.
Peoples need a reason to solo, which is solo-uberness. And they need a reason to group, which is group uberness. Having 1 overall system can only work in a casual setting with no "deep hardcore" desires. Which is cool, but then all paths have to lead to total uberness, including soloing.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I like solo play in MMO because it gives me a chance to kill annoying people without going to jail
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
The social aspect of MMOs is also non-gaming chatter, both in guild and in various channels.
I mostly solo and craft. I'm a constant gamer, but rarely have an extra hour to wait to get a group together.
Shava
The common rebuke is that the solo player would rather be having fun than finding a group, and I would reply that group play, is more fun than randomly clicking on the same old boring AI. The MMOWTF column states that versing a real person is stimulating beyond the boundaries of single player games. I agree, but I would argue that being part of a group of people, fighting alongside them, exchanging jokes and banter while supporting them and working as a team is just as, if not more stimulating.
My point is that yes, it might take longer to find a group, but the rewards will be accrued much, much faster (so long as the game isn't World of Warcraft) and you'll have a lot more fun along the way.
When did MMOWTF turn into another casual play column?
Its rare these days that topics started by staff writers appeal to me or rather that they make any sort of real sense and are written with people with real brains but this one is perfect. As in I agree or rather empathize with the writer. I just don't have the time like I did when I was a teenager or in college to muck around for hours on end with a group everyday all the time.
While i'll never put down raiding because there should be something that everyone can hero worship over (as in so and so's guild did this OMG thats so awsome I wish I had time for that) why should we as people with lives who can only put in a few hours a day maybe even less be punished from good gear? I'm perfectly wiling to take up a quest that requires me to do it by myself and take several days or even weeks to get an item that is on par with raid drops. End Game has in some games become so repeative so tedious and requires dealing with so many people at once that even some hardcore players are sick of it.
When I read about WAR I was like oh my god its going to be WoW with DAoC RvR, then they put more and more out about it and I now I admit I'm on the bandwagon. The fact i don't need a guild or need a group to progress or to even do the big stuff completely appeals to me. I can jump in and have a good time form friendships with people if I want too and not feel I need too. I really wish, no hope that more games (if this built in point system works instead of playing constantly for player given points (DKP or whatever guilds call it these days) ) take a look at what WAR is doing and embrace it. If a player can play and play well do the work even if they dont' live in the game constantly the player should be rewarded by the game!
More MMO's need to reward all players equally even if one way or the other requires more work to get it. (im not saying it should be some outrageous grind but we can't expect things to be handed to us on a silver platter).
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Solo replies are for Noobs!!!!
LFP to reply to this post.
Need support chars with high lvl Spellchecking and or Grammar Wizardry.
I already have a Font Master and Paragraph Builder.
Only want peeps that will not go AFK in the middle of building the reply.
Anymore, I only have a very few people that I consistently team with in GW, and they're great. I think quality of the team is more important than churning through pick up groups until you finally finish the mission/quest.
Because of that, I really think that it should be possible to _finish_ any of the MMORPGs, solo, with NPCs, or some similar option. It's better than dealing with people that you're just not compatible with.
Maybe community building tools would help; player matching, etc.
Anyone got a good answer for this never ending problem?
WoW is not solo friendly.
It is a soloer trap, not solo friendly at all.
Saying that WoW is solo friendly is like saying a trap with cheese is mouse-friendly. Sure, the cheese is good, sure some mouses may work around and get the cheese. It still isn't the ideal setting for mouses.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Excellent article.
It's unfortunate that developers seem to miss the boat on the concept of solo vs group play. So much potential lost to raid mentality.
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I am a quester...always have been. It gives me a sense of purpose and direction while working on them and a feeling of accomplishment once I complete them. But this can be a real hassle with finding groups in MMORPGs.
Most PUGs in games I have played are experience groups. They may do a quest or two along the way if it is easy to get (talk to mob in zone, get quest, randomly slaughter until complete). But if the quest requires doing something far away from the latest hot grinding area, it is tough luck finding comrades, unless the quest results in some uber-reward that everyone wants.
Oh, and I want to comment on the notion that I should just play a single player game. Those games are often too linear. I like quests, but I also like deciding when and in what order to do them. I like the Elder Scrolls games for that reason, but I found Oblivion to be too much like a console game (navigating nested menus designed to controllers drives me batty).
Hi,
I played many times whit WoW, so I understand that what other peoples says who playing only in solo. Finding a group in this mmo is not a really hard. The other opinion is that you not playing in group, you can't join a guild and you haven't got any friends ingame. So you not received any help.
Hardcore play, yes is the mmo games hardest way, sitting before the computer whole hours (4-5 h) and following the leader's commands is really hard and you getting bored after 1 or 2 hours.
Too often an MMO reaches a point where certain items or spells/abilities end up as requirements to group (and sometimes to even survive). It's a "power creep" effect. And when this starts to happen, it becomes a pain to find a group. You'll find that in trying to find a decent group in a good place, they'll either want you to have the best items/abitlities or you just need them in order to stay alive and carry your own weight.
At one point in EQ1, there was a high-level mana regeneration spell (Koadic's Endless Intellect, or "KEI") that due to an oversight, could be cast on anyone. It lasted a long time, and was very popular. And due to this, if you didn't have that on you, you were less desirable than someone who did. And this effect, even after it was altered to where you had to be of high enough level to receive it (as it was a high level spell), caused the game to change: encounters became faster and harder, forcing you to keep up with the latest and best gear. Fall behind, and you can't compete as well, nevermind joining in groups. You could get by, but it wasn't nearly as enjoyable, and therefore made you decide if the game was really worth the monthly fee.
This can easily spin off into a side discussion, but it does impact this topic. Popularity and demand will drive the desires of a grouping style MMO. And when it's forced on people, those who aren't as "hardcore" will lose out.
And to people who say that all MMOs out there have good soloing options, I can agree in one small way: it is usually possible to solo your way through some areas of the games. But it means having to play it ultra safe and go ultra slow. You see all the people around you pass you up so quickly, so that if you don't have the time to spend trying to get into groups or joining raids, you will be left unwanted when you do have time for it, since you don't have the desired stuff to be allowed to join them.
And even if it's not a problem of desired items, it's still a matter of fun. It is not fun when soloing in a game means having a very high chance of losing, of incurring death penalties, and making so little progress as to be frustrating. Many quests in MMOs quickly require fighting harder and harder things as you advance in levels, and often you reach a threshold where the encounters are designed for groups for almost all quests. Example: kill 20 giants, where each giant is a monster designed for a group of at least 3 to 6 to fight. A person alone cannot complete that quest. And too many quests are automatically designed by developers to be group-oriented.
So soloing is not as viable an option as many people love to point out. And the stereotypical response of "play a single-player game offline" usually means the types of games that have some 20 hours of content before they're done. And how many times can you play those through before you're tired of it? MMOs are just more massive... hence the name.
I can't say that I am a big fan of grouping,
I mostly solo for three reasons
1. If I only have three hours to play, I don't really like having to spend an hour of it looking for a group.
2. I feel having to do something in a group makes my accomplishments less important than if I did it myself. Grouping makes my character seem less useful and powerful.
3. This is probably most important: it seems that as my character gets to higher levels there are more dungeons/instances to do or even worse, raiding, and the more he has to rely on other players to survive. It seems that all that leveling was for nothing, now that my health recharges slower than ever and I need a full team to even think about tackling a dugeon. Yet when I was level two I could solo stuff so easy, I actually felt more powerful by comparison. MMOs should really put the grouping stuff at the beginning and give players the ability to solo as a reward as they get more powerful.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I'm what many refer to as a "hardcore soloist". This means I solo out of vast preference but put in lots of time and effort to achieve everything I can. I love the challenge of soloing. I love how tough it is to beat an opponent others would cringe from. I feel bad when games like World of Warcraft (especially pre-Burning Crusade) reward their raiders (those who participated in 25/40-man raids)
with untouchably superior equipment to anything I could ever get solo, no matter how much time or effort I put in. I look for games with good social interaction but without a grouping requirement. A good example was early Star Wars Galaxies. My guild tended to solo for the most part but were very close socially. We would have great parties with music and a bartender and dancing, the social aspect of the game, but then would go kill monsters solo.
Where are the MMOs that not only allow soloing but don't punish that play-style in the long run?
I'm by no means an MMORPG social butterfly, but I'd say I enjoy grouping a little more than soloing. However, the time commitment involved in raiding and dungeon crawls doesn't always make it an option. But as the author of this article pointed out, even when I am soloing, I do like the unique sense of life that is present in MMORPGs that is just not there in the static world of single player games. Even if I'm running around the woods killing goblins by myself, I like that sense of other players running around on their own quests and the possibility for random, spontaneous things to occur around me in-game.
If there are a bunch of solo players all hoping to complete the same objective, there's always the possibility they will A) politely stay out of each other's way,
team up to reach their goal collectively, or C) act like antisocial immature pricks with only their own motivations in mind. Granted, option C happens all too frequently and usually results in me cursing at my screen, but it's a much more exciting array of options than the simply point + click + kill of single player titles. I personally feel that casual grouping is the life's blood of MMORPGs, and its the way I first met many of the players who later would become fellow guildies or good in-game friends.
I never have problems finding groups/friends to play with . Nowadays, I have the problem where TOO many people /whisper me to join their group...
I like to PVP, and I like to raid. Both, very group oriented activities. I can join a PVP match up solo, but am of course placed into a group. Wandering around by yourself killing random people is sadistic and just plain dumb in my opinion. Grab a few friends, make a tiny little marauding party and go mess with the other guys.
I play MMO's because of the social factor to them. I like to chat with the people in game that have become my friends.
I only go "solo" to farm/quest when I have to. Still, I'd rather bring a buddy along to make it go faster.
I guess part of that is the character I always end up choosing to play. The more support/utility/specific job type classes rather the the more "natural" solo'ers like hybrids and dps classes.
That being said, would I like to see epic solo content? Of course! The true hero walks into a room of 50 bad guys, alone, and is the only one left standing. The truly epic battles are not where you have 10-20-30+ people fighting the same big huge super bad monster villain, but when the ONE hero faces off against this incredibly insurmountable evil and comes out on top.
Problem is, it's just too hard / time consuming to design for. Put it this way... You create instanced, solo, epic content for each class. Let's say you have 9 classes in your game. That means, you have to create 9 versions of the same encounter, perfectly balanced / optimized for the particular class in question. You have to do it this way, because if you make it generic so all 9 classes have the same encounter, it'll be too easy for some, too hard for others, and lose a LOT of the epic feeling.
Or, you create 1 epic encounter optimized for a small group of 5-10 or larger 25-40 people.
The latter of the two is much "easier." And before you complain about the dev's being lazy, have you worked on a major MMO and know how much work/effort goes into everything? Ok. That's what I thought. I don't either, but any idiot who says the dev's are too lazy/don't care enough for epic solo content is just that, an idiot.
And what do you do for the healer? What kind of epic solo content can you create for a person with very little offensive ability or defensive skills, someone whose primary role is to heal others? I mean, yes, there are options... the whole Epic Solo Content idea has been mine for a very long time in regards to World Of Warcraft Hero Classes...
but the implementation is very, very tricky and problematic. That's the punchline.
Hi, I happen to be a big MMORPG fan ever since i discovered them playing the sweet Maple Story, maybe not the best game to star but a nice game in overall, now im a Lineage player and 9Dragons lover, I'm part of a great team of people who have moved from one game o the next and we ussually Solo, hehe, sounds kinda weird, but we share the same killing desire but rarelly hunt in groups, rather we share knowledge of the games we play and so making a great way to pass time. I dont even mind not finding a group if someone else allready told me where to do a great hunt soloing, but i have to agree, soling rewards need to get beter, so a antigruping can have the very same items and skills than the best leader of a guild.
What can I say, I enjoy soloing. Vast freedom to do what you want, where you want, when you can. But to get better end game type rewards, the chain arcs would have to be huge or multiple arcs combining to be worthwhile. Besides it would be an excuss to give more storyline.
Although not a fan of PUGs, I find it inevitable if i do want to make some friends online or better yet quest with some people instead of joining a guild blindly. Some of my best times in MMOs were with a static group in FFXI to get all the advance classes. But the down side to that game was your level progression would creep unless you and a group stay in a corner of a dungeon and grind. Now thats borring! Thankfully most games have gone away from that.