I choose my words carefully man, as I said "very little" should be solo-able.. So why you take such a direct stance against my opinion I dont know.. but either way. I agree it's nice to be able to do your own thing in your favorite game from time to time.. but if the whole game is entirely soloable you may as well play any offline single player Rpg.. no? Why make an MMO that allows that kind of play.. it would have the worst community of all time..
I find that players always complain about something.. you make a game solo-friendly and its fail community.. you make a game require grouping to often and its lame cuz you cant solo anything. You make a game that lies somewhere in the middle, which most mmo's do, and you get agruements on both sides.. All in all, gamers are immpossible to please, and with that Im out. Enjoy the discussion.
I have played alot of MMO's but I certainly aint of the impression that any other in particular are highlighting themself out for being any worse than others. What I general find pleasing though, is that there are more maturity on RP-PvP servers as well as in "sandboxy" MMO's like Anarchy Online.
I choose my words carefully man, as I said "very little" should be solo-able.. So why you take such a direct stance against my opinion I dont know.. but either way. I agree it's nice to be able to do your own thing in your favorite game from time to time.. but if the whole game is entirely soloable you may as well play any offline single player Rpg.. no? Why make an MMO that allows that kind of play.. it would have the worst community of all time..
I find that players always complain about something.. you make a game solo-friendly and its fail community.. you make a game require grouping to often and its lame cuz you cant solo anything. You make a game that lies somewhere in the middle, which most mmo's do, and you get agruements on both sides.. All in all, gamers are immpossible to please, and with that Im out. Enjoy the discussion.
I have played alot of MMO's but I certainly aint of the impression that any other in particular are highlighting themself out for being any worse than others. What I general find pleasing though, is that there are more maturity on RP-PvP servers as well as in "sandboxy" MMO's like Anarchy Online.
Yeah, on WoW...the RP-PvP server (Emerald Dream, alliance side) has an amazing community. Sure bad apples, but those are everywhere.
But not all "old" (or classic) mmos were forced group. That was only Everquest. Ultima Online and Asheron's Call were very solo friendly...well not 100% sure on UO but I remember it being. But AC was more solo friendly than even WoW.
But here is the key
Even though Asheron's Call was more solo friendly than WoW...groups happened all the time
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
One thing that I like about mmorpg is how big the world is, how different it is and how social we can be, however some people want different things. Some people wish to solo the content by them own with less need of people, and some people want to group with others to do things together such as dungeons or quests or anything out there. To a Exact word to put it, most people feel that mmorpg means a massive co-op game where people can (if they want) join with others to do the content, while not wanting to be forced to do things.
I think a lot of people are letting their emotions fuel this discussion more than logic. Though the original poster could have been more clear they have a point. Games like Warcraft provide content that can be played without a group all the way up to the level cap, at which point the content of the game is either repetitive and usually not-so-much-fun activities, or group content. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't group while leveling, in fact in a game like Warcraft you level much faster by running dungeons.
No one is suggesting that group content be removed from MMOs. That would be silly. What is being suggested, and what I'd like to see designers realize, is that we need better end game content that isn't so heavily focused on group activities. More specifically games with leveling need to be just as diverse and interesting at the level cap as they are in the beginning.
Now to address this pedantic nonsense about multiplayer. Just because a game is touted as being multiplayer, doesn't mean that the majority of the content in that game should require groups. All multiplayer means is you can interact with other people, not that you have to. Forced socialization is just a little paternalistic and in some cases kind of creepy, which brings me to a single conclusion:
If you play games that force other people to play with you it may be time ask why that is.
When I played Everquest for the first time, the idea of playing a 3D RPG with other people sounded really cool. But I certainly didn't expect that I would have to group with other people to play the game. When I first picked up Everquest what I saw was a persistent world to explore, and the ability to create a character that would continue to develop as the game expanded. I got a lot of that, but I also realized that if I wanted to play, I had to have a party or guild to do so. I enjoyed playing with some of the people I met in EQ, but not enough to contact them in real life. There's nothing wrong with making friends online, but I rarely have the time to accomodate new friendships, so when I play an MMO it's not for that reason.
TLDR: Massive means it's a big world to explore, and Multiplayer just means other people are playing, it doesn't mean the playerbase should be forced to group with each other.
Your honest view is appreciated. Answer this, name one major mmo that was made for single player or that a single player can solo all the way through.
orginal post was:
"If you want to play by yourself, go grab a single player game and have at it. MMORPG's are about interaction and socialization, amongst other things of course. Dont get why people want a single player console game as a mmorpg, its silly. You already ahve thousands of solo type games out there, why try to ruin the industry even more."
Your honest view is appreciated. Answer this, name one major mmo that was made for single player or that a single player can solo all the way through.
orginal post was:
"If you want to play by yourself, go grab a single player game and have at it. MMORPG's are about interaction and socialization, amongst other things of course. Dont get why people want a single player console game as a mmorpg, its silly. You already ahve thousands of solo type games out there, why try to ruin the industry even more."
Lineage, Lineage 2 (back when 85 was maxlevel, dunno bout now), Runescape (doesnt even have groups per se )
As always the problem is defining the things we argue about, soloers generally do not want a singleplayer experience, they just prefer to do things on their own, which does not stop them from socializing, trading and helping other people.
Which is the biggest problem about newer mmos, people who are in a groups and raids 24/7 but dont talk, dont interact, dont care a rats butt, isnt that truly THE singleplayer experience?
Which is the biggest problem about newer mmos, people who are in a groups and raids 24/7 but dont talk, dont interact, dont care a rats butt, isnt that truly THE singleplayer experience?
Flame on!
Teehee, look at all this rip roaring chat when the game goes "group" based, I think you might be onto something. They ARE the singleplayers after all and were never recognized for it. The NPCs are the ones talking.
This image was found while traipsing thru GW2 forum and someone reporting a graphical bug.
Ever since WoW launched, games have been going more and more this way in general. Back in EQ you HAD to talk in groups or you died. That game was was "too hard" so along comes WoW and casual gamers (peeps that don't play like a second job) comes along and BAM 12M subs. Now every company wants a piece of that action so the games get dumber and dumber. I played GW2 for 3 weeks and I think I may have spoken in a group just a couple times. Why? Because I didn't have to. Bring back games designed like the EQ of old and this will not happen.
Sounds to me like what the OP is asking for is an arcede mode of your favirite MMO...
I kinda roll my eyes at the idea, but: Strangely enough that is what I always wanted in WoW. A single player mode, preferably without sub...
Yeah, it is definately weird to want solo content for yourself but when others wanting the same you make rolleyes. Interesting from a psycholigical view, thats for sure.
OP, your logic baffles me. If you want to solo everything, go play Skyrim. If everyone could solo everything in an MMORPG, then there would be no need for the MULTI-PLAYER aspect of MMORPGs. Do you honestly think Blizzard would have over 10 million subscribers faithfully paying $15 a month if the game was completely soloable?
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Majority of people think mmorpgs are about quests and story now. Thats the problem lol. There is a lot more to a mmorpg, just over time game companies have neglected those things and obmitted them from game to save time so they can rush their product. Probably why those games rush to f2p or the garbage can.
Grouping use to be fun, it had meaning. Todays games its just a chore. Meeting new people, making friends in game, forming or joining guilds, helping your guild out, helping noobs out, it was fun and had meaning. Now you have people that rush to max level and dont know their class properly or how to act in a group. In SWTOR, once the group was done people just left the group, didnt bother to say thanks, or have a good day. Kind of opposite of social interaction
can't fix the introduction of mechanics for cooperation.
The most popular choice for that would be class division into tank/healer/dd, but there is also plenty mechanics that require actions being done simultanius which simply cant be done solo (push x buttons at same time, kill enemies at same time, ...)
I think a good MMO design is that you should be able to solo most things during the leveling process, with obvious group functions excluded, such as dungeons. I liked how WoW did it in Vanilla, where you actually got experience bonuses for grouping, but most stuff didn't require the group.
I found it annoying in SWtOR where after finishing a planet, I'd have 4 to 8 group quests that were stuck in my log because there simply weren't enough people there interested in doing them. It meant I saved them until I could go back and solo the quests later on, which kind of defeated the point of making them group quests in the first place.
Anyway, the issue isn't that I don't like to group (I do), or that I want a single player game (I don't). It's that I don't always have people online at the same time as me, and in the same leveling area as me, interested in doing the same quests as me. For end-game stuff like raids, that's OK, because we plan it out as a guild. For random questing, it's obnoxious to be expected to drop what you're doing (probably leveling) to head over and help 10 other people with different quests, just for the sake of "being in a group."
If a game has a lot of group content, then it better have some really good ways to facilitate putting groups together. Many games do not, and simply assume you'll be happy joining some mega guild with hundreds of people in it.
Originally posted by monstermmo uhh World of Warcraft. =p
No. Which was the reason I quit playing it; cause it forced me more and more to interact with morons. If WoW offered ways to achieve all gear with solo play, I would return instantly.
Get all the gear in a day then would quit instantly.... Congrats on the time you spent in your single player mmo.
A single player game has an ending, be it running out of content or finishing the last level. Thus, if an MMO was completely soloable it would also have an ending, and then you would be moving on to the next single player game or solo MMO. Or in the case of a soloable MMO - just an O. That said, these are the things you have to look at:
A developer creates a game that is completely soloable from start to end. What is the incentive of adding multiplayer to this if there is no multiplayer content and everyone can deal with the content alone? To add multiplayer coding, servers and stability, as well as frame rate issues when multiple characters are on screen at once, is extra work that most won't want to bother with if the game works just as well if released as a single player game.
The content will come to an end. In MMO's raids are there to act like a hamster wheel while the developers work on more content. A raid boss might drop 1 item for your class, there might be 20 of your class there, that drop might not appear every time, so you repeat the raid over and over, week after week, until you finally get what you were there for. If you're a good raider you then repeat the raid again week after week to help your friends get their items. How does this work in a soloable MMO? If you can walk into a 'raid', kill the boss on your own then grab the gear, then you've taken the hamster wheel away and the content is over an hour after you've started it. Now what do you do for the weeks to come?
What is the point of having multiple players in the game world? If you have no reason to work with them then they're nothing more than random people running back and fore. Will that make the game somehow better? What if those players were replaced by NPCs? Would you be able to tell the difference? Would it matter if you could? If everyone is soloing then these people are going to be killing the same things as you, fighting the same bosses, chasing the same treasures, so isn't that going to cause frustration rather than fun if they keep stealing your kills? Or maybe you can be in an instance, but then why is it multiplayer if you're alone in an instance?
These are just a few thoughts on why it wouldn't work, not to mention the fact that it would put the nail in the coffin for the MMO genre. MMO's are fantastic when done right, joining forces with other players to fight through dungeons and defeat Gods in their own realms. What other genre offers that sort of thing? Why would you want to kill that by making it a single player experience?
I could understand if you guys were trying to advocate for your own genre of game MSORPG massively single player rpg. but what your doing is trying to take something already established and change it into what you like.
gather data make graphs and do whatever you please to convince a company or some dev's that your idea would make them money and go from there. but please allow MMORPG to be multiplayer
I could understand if you guys were trying to advocate for your own genre of game MSORPG massively single player rpg. but what your doing is trying to take something already established and change it into what you like.
gather data make graphs and do whatever you please to convince a company or some dev's that your idea would make them money and go from there. but please allow MMORPG to be multiplayer
If "multiplayer" the way you envision it is so popular and fun, why are you afraid of soloability (which is quite different from single-player-only) ?
Why do you care that someone can kill a boss in 100 minutes you and your group take down in 10?
A single player game has an ending, be it running out of content or finishing the last level. Thus, if an MMO was completely soloable it would also have an ending, and then you would be moving on to the next single player game or solo MMO.
<snip>
Why do you think a soloable mmo MUST have an ending?
Where do you see a difference between raid grind hamster wheel and solo grind hamster wheel? Especially if either is optional.
Why do you think "saving time and effort" is NO reason to group?
Do you really think "soloable" means "as fast and utterly easy as with a group"?
Do you really think 90% of the lfr crowd would even notice if the players would be replaced by NPCs ?
Comments
I have played alot of MMO's but I certainly aint of the impression that any other in particular are highlighting themself out for being any worse than others. What I general find pleasing though, is that there are more maturity on RP-PvP servers as well as in "sandboxy" MMO's like Anarchy Online.
Yeah, on WoW...the RP-PvP server (Emerald Dream, alliance side) has an amazing community. Sure bad apples, but those are everywhere.
But not all "old" (or classic) mmos were forced group. That was only Everquest. Ultima Online and Asheron's Call were very solo friendly...well not 100% sure on UO but I remember it being. But AC was more solo friendly than even WoW.
But here is the key
Even though Asheron's Call was more solo friendly than WoW...groups happened all the time
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Diablo 3, and Borderlands 2 as well.
I think a lot of people are letting their emotions fuel this discussion more than logic. Though the original poster could have been more clear they have a point. Games like Warcraft provide content that can be played without a group all the way up to the level cap, at which point the content of the game is either repetitive and usually not-so-much-fun activities, or group content. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't group while leveling, in fact in a game like Warcraft you level much faster by running dungeons.
No one is suggesting that group content be removed from MMOs. That would be silly. What is being suggested, and what I'd like to see designers realize, is that we need better end game content that isn't so heavily focused on group activities. More specifically games with leveling need to be just as diverse and interesting at the level cap as they are in the beginning.
Now to address this pedantic nonsense about multiplayer. Just because a game is touted as being multiplayer, doesn't mean that the majority of the content in that game should require groups. All multiplayer means is you can interact with other people, not that you have to. Forced socialization is just a little paternalistic and in some cases kind of creepy, which brings me to a single conclusion:
If you play games that force other people to play with you it may be time ask why that is.
When I played Everquest for the first time, the idea of playing a 3D RPG with other people sounded really cool. But I certainly didn't expect that I would have to group with other people to play the game. When I first picked up Everquest what I saw was a persistent world to explore, and the ability to create a character that would continue to develop as the game expanded. I got a lot of that, but I also realized that if I wanted to play, I had to have a party or guild to do so. I enjoyed playing with some of the people I met in EQ, but not enough to contact them in real life. There's nothing wrong with making friends online, but I rarely have the time to accomodate new friendships, so when I play an MMO it's not for that reason.
TLDR: Massive means it's a big world to explore, and Multiplayer just means other people are playing, it doesn't mean the playerbase should be forced to group with each other.
Your honest view is appreciated. Answer this, name one major mmo that was made for single player or that a single player can solo all the way through.
orginal post was:
"If you want to play by yourself, go grab a single player game and have at it. MMORPG's are about interaction and socialization, amongst other things of course. Dont get why people want a single player console game as a mmorpg, its silly. You already ahve thousands of solo type games out there, why try to ruin the industry even more."
Lineage, Lineage 2 (back when 85 was maxlevel, dunno bout now), Runescape (doesnt even have groups per se
)
As always the problem is defining the things we argue about, soloers generally do not want a singleplayer experience, they just prefer to do things on their own, which does not stop them from socializing, trading and helping other people.
Which is the biggest problem about newer mmos, people who are in a groups and raids 24/7 but dont talk, dont interact, dont care a rats butt, isnt that truly THE singleplayer experience?
Flame on!
Ever since WoW launched, games have been going more and more this way in general. Back in EQ you HAD to talk in groups or you died. That game was was "too hard" so along comes WoW and casual gamers (peeps that don't play like a second job) comes along and BAM 12M subs. Now every company wants a piece of that action so the games get dumber and dumber. I played GW2 for 3 weeks and I think I may have spoken in a group just a couple times. Why? Because I didn't have to. Bring back games designed like the EQ of old and this will not happen.
Sounds to me like what the OP is asking for is an arcede mode of your favirite MMO...
I kinda roll my eyes at the idea, but: Strangely enough that is what I always wanted in WoW. A single player mode, preferably without sub...
Yeah, it is definately weird to want solo content for yourself but when others wanting the same you make rolleyes. Interesting from a psycholigical view, thats for sure.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Majority of people think mmorpgs are about quests and story now. Thats the problem lol. There is a lot more to a mmorpg, just over time game companies have neglected those things and obmitted them from game to save time so they can rush their product. Probably why those games rush to f2p or the garbage can.
Grouping use to be fun, it had meaning. Todays games its just a chore. Meeting new people, making friends in game, forming or joining guilds, helping your guild out, helping noobs out, it was fun and had meaning. Now you have people that rush to max level and dont know their class properly or how to act in a group. In SWTOR, once the group was done people just left the group, didnt bother to say thanks, or have a good day. Kind of opposite of social interaction
can't fix the introduction of mechanics for cooperation.
The most popular choice for that would be class division into tank/healer/dd, but there is also plenty mechanics that require actions being done simultanius which simply cant be done solo (push x buttons at same time, kill enemies at same time, ...)
Pi*1337/100 = 42
Yes, and why is there not a public transport where I can drive alone?
BECAUSE IT IS PUBLIC, JACKO!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
You could steal a bus if you realy had to
I think a good MMO design is that you should be able to solo most things during the leveling process, with obvious group functions excluded, such as dungeons. I liked how WoW did it in Vanilla, where you actually got experience bonuses for grouping, but most stuff didn't require the group.
I found it annoying in SWtOR where after finishing a planet, I'd have 4 to 8 group quests that were stuck in my log because there simply weren't enough people there interested in doing them. It meant I saved them until I could go back and solo the quests later on, which kind of defeated the point of making them group quests in the first place.
Anyway, the issue isn't that I don't like to group (I do), or that I want a single player game (I don't). It's that I don't always have people online at the same time as me, and in the same leveling area as me, interested in doing the same quests as me. For end-game stuff like raids, that's OK, because we plan it out as a guild. For random questing, it's obnoxious to be expected to drop what you're doing (probably leveling) to head over and help 10 other people with different quests, just for the sake of "being in a group."
If a game has a lot of group content, then it better have some really good ways to facilitate putting groups together. Many games do not, and simply assume you'll be happy joining some mega guild with hundreds of people in it.
You make me like charity
The Secret World has several quests multiple people can work on at once.
Of course, choosing the wrong options in these quests will delay the success of the quest for everyone doing it at that time.
So some in the game have taken to trolling other players by making some quests unsolvable so long as they are there.
Get all the gear in a day then would quit instantly.... Congrats on the time you spent in your single player mmo.
A single player game has an ending, be it running out of content or finishing the last level. Thus, if an MMO was completely soloable it would also have an ending, and then you would be moving on to the next single player game or solo MMO. Or in the case of a soloable MMO - just an O. That said, these are the things you have to look at:
A developer creates a game that is completely soloable from start to end. What is the incentive of adding multiplayer to this if there is no multiplayer content and everyone can deal with the content alone? To add multiplayer coding, servers and stability, as well as frame rate issues when multiple characters are on screen at once, is extra work that most won't want to bother with if the game works just as well if released as a single player game.
The content will come to an end. In MMO's raids are there to act like a hamster wheel while the developers work on more content. A raid boss might drop 1 item for your class, there might be 20 of your class there, that drop might not appear every time, so you repeat the raid over and over, week after week, until you finally get what you were there for. If you're a good raider you then repeat the raid again week after week to help your friends get their items. How does this work in a soloable MMO? If you can walk into a 'raid', kill the boss on your own then grab the gear, then you've taken the hamster wheel away and the content is over an hour after you've started it. Now what do you do for the weeks to come?
What is the point of having multiple players in the game world? If you have no reason to work with them then they're nothing more than random people running back and fore. Will that make the game somehow better? What if those players were replaced by NPCs? Would you be able to tell the difference? Would it matter if you could? If everyone is soloing then these people are going to be killing the same things as you, fighting the same bosses, chasing the same treasures, so isn't that going to cause frustration rather than fun if they keep stealing your kills? Or maybe you can be in an instance, but then why is it multiplayer if you're alone in an instance?
These are just a few thoughts on why it wouldn't work, not to mention the fact that it would put the nail in the coffin for the MMO genre. MMO's are fantastic when done right, joining forces with other players to fight through dungeons and defeat Gods in their own realms. What other genre offers that sort of thing? Why would you want to kill that by making it a single player experience?
I could understand if you guys were trying to advocate for your own genre of game MSORPG massively single player rpg. but what your doing is trying to take something already established and change it into what you like.
gather data make graphs and do whatever you please to convince a company or some dev's that your idea would make them money and go from there. but please allow MMORPG to be multiplayer
If "multiplayer" the way you envision it is so popular and fun, why are you afraid of soloability (which is quite different from single-player-only) ?
Why do you care that someone can kill a boss in 100 minutes you and your group take down in 10?
Flame on!
Why do you think a soloable mmo MUST have an ending?
Where do you see a difference between raid grind hamster wheel and solo grind hamster wheel? Especially if either is optional.
Why do you think "saving time and effort" is NO reason to group?
Do you really think "soloable" means "as fast and utterly easy as with a group"?
Do you really think 90% of the lfr crowd would even notice if the players would be replaced by NPCs ?
Flame on!