This is an issue on which there is an enormous culture gap between players in the genre. To me, MMOs are primarily about a shared world, not formal grouping. In fact, formal grouping is the antithesis of what an MMO means to me becasue it reduces the fluid crossing of paths to isolated pockets of forced dependancy.
Any argument that solo play is like a single-player game can be replaced with the argument that formal grouping is just a LAN party.
But in general, if I ever I find myself judging how other people are playing a game, I remind myself that it's my problem, not theirs.
Very nicely stated. Thank you for that.
I agree, definitely well said. To many people seem to want to impose their playstyle on others without taking other people into consideration. Preferences in playstyle and options are a good thing. However I think we will have World Peace before all gamers can agree to that. This whole, "my way or the highway" attitude that is so prevalent on these forums never cease to amaze me.
This 100% Times have changed and people are more busy. Not to many mmo's players these days have the time to play for hours anymore. I solo most mmo's unless i'm in a guild or have real life friends to play with. Never would i ever team up with strangers today. Someone once said the problem with mmo's is the people that play them.
I understand that grouping is fun and creates a better culture in a game. However, I also agree with the people who are tired of the endless gear grind progression. I did raiding once and I know what it's about and I don't need to do it again. I played that game.
What I don't like about being forced to group and raiding-based endgames is the elitism. I will define that as excluding players because of their build, yelling at people for whatever reason, no matter whose fault it is. I'm not the player who gets yelled at mind you. But I don't like to hear it happening to anyone. It's just a game after all.
And I don't like the "speed run" mentality. That is just no fun for me, at all. I want to play. I don't want it to be about getting the shiny.
But really, I found that most of the people who "like" grouping don't do it for the social interaction. They do it for the shinies. That's why I don't like grouping. I don't like the atmosphere that creates.
If there is a game where you need to group to safely adventure, explore, profit, and be a good trader or crafter, that would be interesting. However, if you are sneaky enough, you should be able to go through dangerous areas without being forced to group. However, you would take a risk. You might die. And the death penalty might sting. That would be a grouping concept I would be interested in. Is there a game like that?
This is an issue on which there is an enormous culture gap between players in the genre. To me, MMOs are primarily about a shared world, not formal grouping. In fact, formal grouping is the antithesis of what an MMO means to me becasue it reduces the fluid crossing of paths to isolated pockets of forced dependancy.
Any argument that solo play is like a single-player game can be replaced with the argument that formal grouping is just a LAN party.
But in general, if I ever I find myself judging how other people are playing a game, I remind myself that it's my problem, not theirs.
Yes that was very well said.
Case in point, a lot of people wrote SWToR off as a single player game. All I can say is that I did more grouping in SWToR than I ever did in, say, LOTRO.
It just happened that way. I was out in the world, people needed help, yadda, yadda, yadda, an evening was spent.
This is one of my favorite things. It's also how I've met people I've really enjoyed gaming with.
I'm out hunting for drops or gold, or just farming xp and I see someone that maybe is overwhelmed with mobs. I throw them heals, or cc some of the mobs, or help with dps until they have it under control. Or maybe they got attacked by a PK while hunting and I help them out. Or maybe I'm the one in need. Those scenarios are things I've enjoyed about mmos that I don't get a huge opportunity for in many games.
And that's the thing, you will rarely see me log in and say "hey guys what are you all doing". You will rarely ever see me say "lfg blah blah blah" and yet I get into groups.
I get into groups because I'm out in "the world" and see someone needs help or has a question and that's an evening. I get into groups because I see someone is asking for help and I help them.
Heck, the most epic pve group I have ever EVER had happened in lord of the rings online when a small group kept spamming for help with Elendil's Tomb. I agreed and what happened was multiple healers leaving, a few others joining and leaving and a core group seeing the tomb to the end "no matter how much we died and no matter how hard it was without healers".
It's was a looooong time and we died a lot but we made it happen.
But still I prefer grouping with guild mates and try to really read pug's as most players are just trash. Or maybe most of my pug's end up being with trash people. real scum.
I have more bad stories with pug's than good stories.
So "yeah" games with significant solo content work for me.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I am sue it is too much to ask but where is the balance between solo and teamwork? Honestly I find a game I like to play, and I have fun playing in a group, but when my friends out level me because I have less play time then they do, what do I do?
Or if I have had a really crappy day and just want to play alone, shouldn't I be able to continue progressing in the game I enjoy?
I think team work should be rewarded, better equipment, unique weapons, armor, etc... But should solo play be penalized?
I mean look at WoW, if I started playing a month after my friends started, they all hit raid levels and start getting this uber equipment, I catch up to them ,and they still don't invite me to raids because my equipment isn't good enough?
I think there should be a balance. Like people who do team work should get some perks, more XP? Better loot? Moe money? Sure, but they can't make the solo player inadequate. Every one plays at different levels.
I'm a casual player, my family, and my work comes first, games on the weekends, maybe in the evening on week days if I am caught up on stuff in real life. I don't think I should be penalized for being a responsible adult, while joe welfare on the other coast farms gold to pay for his subscriptions, the state pays for his childcare, so he sits at home in his underwear smoking cigarettes and playing an mmo 24/7 gets rewarded to play.
First of all, i think most people are misunderstood about what a "solo player" in a MMORPG. If you're gonna ask me, a MMORPG solo player is when you're solving a difficult picture puzzle (read: quests) by yourself, while for people playing in groups its like you're solving the same puzzle but with other people's help.
Now, with that interpretation i didn't say grouping is a bad thing, but when you can complete something difficult on your own, there's some kind of satisfactory feeling isn't it? Like when you ace a school test by learning hard on your own, and so on, it sets you apart. Solo players is the same, playing solo doesn't mean they're anti-social or selfish, but they're just trying to accomplish something by themselves that normally other players would need to form a party on.
Some people suggests that the rewards for group plays should far exceed those who plays solo. I disagree with that, since (as someone said here too) it will instead force the players to group only for the rewards, not for the fun, since we're talking about MMORPGs here, where whoever got better access to most game resources (gold, gear and so on) would be the top players. I would prefer something like if you're going on a quest solo, the rewards should be slightly better than going with a party (same chance of rare gear/item drops, but you don't have to split the gold rewards for solo), but if you die, the solo exp penalty is harsher than party groups.
In the end, i think that MMOs today is fine the way it is. Even if it is only a virtual world, people should still show respect to others, whatever their background or play style is, just that misunderstanding about solo plays that need to be cleared. Because, as a all time solo player, even i myself too joined guilds, helping guildies, PuG-ing and so on, because i'll tell you, no matter how hard you tried, whether in a game or in real life, there's some things that you can't just handle by yourself.
This is an issue on which there is an enormous culture gap between players in the genre. To me, MMOs are primarily about a shared world, not formal grouping. In fact, formal grouping is the antithesis of what an MMO means to me becasue it reduces the fluid crossing of paths to isolated pockets of forced dependancy.
Any argument that solo play is like a single-player game can be replaced with the argument that formal grouping is just a LAN party.
But in general, if I ever I find myself judging how other people are playing a game, I remind myself that it's my problem, not theirs.
Quite possibly the most sensible thing i have read on this forum.
Seb needs to ask himself a question, does he think everybody enjoys the same game style as him?
This is an issue on which there is an enormous culture gap between players in the genre. To me, MMOs are primarily about a shared world, not formal grouping. In fact, formal grouping is the antithesis of what an MMO means to me becasue it reduces the fluid crossing of paths to isolated pockets of forced dependancy.
Any argument that solo play is like a single-player game can be replaced with the argument that formal grouping is just a LAN party.
But in general, if I ever I find myself judging how other people are playing a game, I remind myself that it's my problem, not theirs.
Not entirely.
The distinction needs to be made in how the mechanics and structure of the game influences the play.
Why one might say 'solo play is the same as a single player game' may very well be because there are no game mechanics with dependencies on the input or interaction of multiple players.
This isn't to say people must group, but an MMO whose content is largely built to cater to the aggregate impact of multiple players eventually granting the outcome of events rather than simply one person dictating the success and progress experienced in the game world, that element of community suddenly becomes a much more real aspect.
And that's the thing right there. Does the game mechanically capitalize on the fact that it's platform allows the input of players to both directly and indirectly influence one another, or is the general experience each player gets largely encapsulated?
For the most part, it's an isolated experience. WoW, Rift, SWTOR, LOTRO, even GW2. They are built upon a game style and core game values that for the most part feel very little impact from the size of their community (beyond the group events for raids and PvP, which are generally isolated as lobby/side features of the games).
'Formal grouping' isn't really the solution either though. The thing people largely glaze over or fail to understand is that the manner in which a player can influence one another's gaming experiences can extend well past teaming up, griefing, fighting, etc.
What's advocated, at least from my stance about making MMOs more 'MMO' and less 'single player game on MMO platform' is the matter of how the overall features of the game play against one another. How progress is made in the game world, how the narrative takes form, how individual characters gain notoriety. It needs to have aggregate values that are affected by the achievements, milestones, and events that other players act in, not just oneself.
None of that presently happens. GW2 and Rift took a hazy stab at it when they implemented features that tally server progress to progress an events narrative, but they didn't move past that notion. Defiance is in a similar boat in that they tout how the community can influence the story by the events they complete, but even that's yet to be seen how much of an actual impact it shares both in the game and in the tv show (thus far it's fallen short as well).
So what are we left with? For the most part, games that have no real intrinsic value granted by their platform of choice.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Grouping can be nice and fun, then every once in a while you get that one guy that just ruins everything. Solo play is fine by me, unless the person is helpful or just follows me, but most the times they just want to complete objective and scram. I didn't play mmo's in the barbaric times where avatars were weaklings, I started WoW in early 2005 and solo'd to 60. So I don't get upset that these games are leaning towards solo leveling, I like it that way.
Making a second post as my edit to the previous one seems to be borking up.
An alternative situation would be to look at several single player games that draw values from multi-player ones.
Spore. That's a game that populates your personal galaxy with creations from other people. The value that game drew was the ability to keep a very malleable face and draw from a functionally limitless asset library to populate a sea of procedurally generated worlds to explore and colonize.
The relation we have here is noting that even with the draw upon what's essentially mass collaboration to create the game's visual content, it's still play-wise a single player experience.
Then there's Demon's Souls. This sin't strictly a single player game, as it has co-op and PvP. However, the focus is pointed at the elements that made the game novel. Namely the utilization of a network element to populate the game with snippets of other adventurer's experiences.
This was a manner that let people interact with one another without ever having to so much as be properly aware of the other. What's functionally a single player game, suddenly is provided a means to have characters provide sometimes crucial information to another, via an online component that's largely invisible to you during play.
And as a third example, Dragon's Dogma. If you left your game to connect online, you would not be greeted by other players, but a rather endless horde of companions. The added quality that each one was tailored by another player in both skills and personality meant you'd see a variety of NPCs with sometimes noticeably different behavioral patterns if their makers had spent enough time tweaking and training them.
The value this had was that even without the presence of other literal people, there remained a proxy that in many ways served as a stand-in for the grouping element multi-player games had.
It's a backwards thing to say somewhat, as it's just as much the problem as it is the solution, but we should look at and examine the manner in which such titles seek to create novel experiences and mechanics in their game play that is influenced by other players without it being simply 'solo or grouped'.
All three of these games are single player at their core, but all three require the same spine that MMOs use. A back end architecture with a persistent network of data linking each person's client together, to grant them an experience that can only be achieved through the collaboration and accumulative effort of each players actions impacting each other's gaming experience.
The fact there are games that are defined as single player yet use the MMO framework to deliver on this kind of experience, while there are those that go by the moniker of MMO which rather entirely lack such values, is something that bothers me.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Originally posted by Nadia this needs a companion article of Best MMOs for gamers who enjoy teamwork
It would be the same list, as each individual decides *how* they want to play their games, socially or not, you can play Rift, WoW, SWTOR, GW2 excusively with your guild if you want to.
I remember having friends over for solo games on C64, Amiga 500, Nintendo etc...
Its up to you to be social, or not.
Getting tired of reading this excuse for a lack of multi-player in MMORPGs, emphasis on the MM part. There is an entire genre for players that don't want to socialize, they're single-player games. I can be extremely social, doesn't mean anyone else is going to be. You need other people to actually care about grouping, and in these games they don't. WoW player-base is especially viscous, in my experience, with players that are not already experts in all the dungeons and simply want to enjoy the experience.
Grouping will always be a lot more work than soloing, if there is no incentive then these players will never do it. All we have left are dungeons and raids to actually interact with other players. The sad part of that is that in most of these games we can exclude the dungeons part for socializing. Being able to run through an entire dungeon without anyone ever saying ANYTHING is pretty common. Guild Wars 2 is especially bad for this. Other players may as well be NPC. If you don't want the MMO part in your game, that's fine. There are a TON of games, and an entire genre called "Single player role-playing games". Why are they trying to change the defining characteristic of this genre? Frankly, it sucks.
What lack of Multiplayer?
All these MMO's have tons of Group content! Come on now! Don't be so silly!
I am sorry, but an MMO that has Group content ONLY will be dead within a month!
Just face it! People don't want to sit and wait for a Group to come together, before they can play each and every single time they log onto the game!
Sometimes, you just want to log in, do some stuff, have some fun and log out again!
And other times, when I have more time, I go do some Group content.
It's all about CHOICE! Nothing wrong With that.
Plus! No one says you cannot Group up With someone and even do Solo content With another friend!
Can you really be so sure that this is what would happen ?
I mean you are basing your conclusion in this in todays MMO's climate , I understand that , but can you really be so sure ?
Today ALL games has solo possibilities atleast to the end level, so the only way of ever knowing if a a MMO that would "really" take it's time to reach the end . Is to create one !!
You see , what we have today is about the same, the games released lasts 1-3 months for the average player , and this is all because of "the ease" it takes to do things, you basically only need a 5-10 hours during a week and you will reach endgame after a month or 2, players are "completing content" alot faster than the developers could ever create new content. I agree with you that noone finds it fun to "sit and wait" as you where explaining it, but there is "OTHER" solutions for this, fun mini games is one, like a collectibe card game built into the game World.
Ok..Most moderns games doesn't die (as you described a Group MMO would) but they face other odd things like FTP or not, to draw in new players that also would play1-3 months then quit etc. Basically it's the same
Originally posted by Nadia this needs a companion article of Best MMOs for gamers who enjoy teamwork
It would be the same list, as each individual decides *how* they want to play their games, socially or not, you can play Rift, WoW, SWTOR, GW2 excusively with your guild if you want to.
...
example: WOW is not a group intensive mmo
...
WOW is largely a solo game until endgame w exception of dungeon instances
I have to strongly disagree on this commentary; in fact, I disagree on this so much that I actually bothered to register an account on this website.
Partial agreeing on what direction WoW is going to and that is what I don't like to see. But that's the current MMO culture, and original WoW actually had pretty decent group content UNTIL the so-called casual MMO culture hit. I feel sorry for the game, but as much so-called casual players hit the playerbase, there's nothing to save it. Because to that playerbase there's much more intensive things such as "real life" or "smoking weed" or "whatever I don't care". All of those legitimate reasons are GOOD but... That is one of the reasons that you can't save MMOs now.
To be honest, it is all about money and the cashflow of the company. The more casual, "fun, easy to pick up", has more potential of earning money, period.
It is like this: the games used to mean something, now they're just for "fun" that doesn't mean anything. But since it's casual now and the maingoal is "fun" contents cannot be hard. And then again, since everything is extremely easy nowadays, people then complain about "not enough content".
To be honest, when WoW was capped at lvl60, there were so many group required content other than raid/dungeon because those missions were actually hard. Nowadays a blood DK can solo a current tier raid boss..? I used to remember that a raid content can be competed for months between top guilds, and now FD records are actually made within less than three days with the new content release..? Because, some indirect quote from Blizzard devs, we believe that everybody should have a chance to experience the content, aka they won't be hard. Of course in current patches there are still so-called heroic raid in WoW but.. if you know what I mean, there are still "more end game content" after the heroic such as the hidden extra boss such as the dragon mother and ragnaros with legs and stuff on...
The cause of this madness is that there are different groups of playerbase and the "unelite" playerbase is just bigger than the "elite" ones.
I once met someone in TSW said, "I don't really care for the dps anymore because nightmare bosses still die." ... I guess these people are ruining other people's chance to actually experience the mMo respective. But then again, they themselves are "having fun" by pwning "easy content designed for everybody" and then complains the game is too easy and therefore not worthwhile. It is a very bad circle really.
Yeh, you can play easily without communicating. But you are often doing things with other players that you couldn't do if you weren't all helping each other.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Another post from somebody living in past. Or some jobless or "eternal" student, having so much time that he/she could plan for weeks ahead forced group play.
But i would say MAJORITY of players PAYING and playing games, including MMO, have some other business or responsabilities in world to do. I play myself to much, want to play and want to be able to SOLO ALL UP TO TOP if I WISH so.
Definitively was smart and logic selection of majority of companies to make their MMO or any other games soloable. Because for all group play lovers EVERY game has ENDGAME.
So I really have such hard time to understand all of this "soloable" games haters why they bother so much? Making MMO soloable up to end game is win-win situation. Game will be played by all that do not have luxury or wish to live 24h hours of their lives only in certain game and will be played by this and others that can enjoy end game.
But, hey, I do not have any problem if somebody at Blizzard, Trion, Bioware, .... decide to convert their games to be FORCED GROUP ONLY. Just I (and millions of others) will not be there to play. Because forced group players are in minority will be lose-lose situation. We others will not be playing. And there will not be enough of them to have enough people around to play their forced grouping game.
Simple as that.
PS: Obviously english is not my mother language but hope I was understadable enough.
I am one of those who has strictly soloed-I'm a loner. I am also a fanatic fan of D&D. In Neverwinter I've soloed a GWF and a RT to lvl 60, a CW to lvl 40 and another RT to lvl 30, and I've completely enjoyed it. I also play DDO as a loner as well.
Couple issues I take with this is lack of thought about player patterns and game design, and the fact that the original premise for MMO's was basically to enable AD&D LAN Parties for people all over the world.
Players will almost inevitably follow the path of least resistance. That is why DPS classes are more popular than other classes in MMO's. It's not because the classes are inherently more fun to play, it is because the games have been tuned to allow them to crank through content more quickly. The same thing applies to grouping versus soloing. Sure, you've got 10% of the population on either side of the spectrum who are always going to solo or always going to group, but if you make solo gaming easier and more rewarding than playing in groups, people are going to solo. If you make a game where you can solo, but you gain experience 10 times slower than grouping, people are going to group.
Why can't I have both? Of course you can have both, equally balanced, but it would take so much tuning that no one bothers doing it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Can you really be so sure that this is what would happen ?
Yeah, he can be sure. DDO was a grouping only game, which largely bombed until they implemented solo content, both in playing and in crafting etc, and the Freemium model. You don't have to introduce soloable PVE content, but you have to have some sort of soloable activity (like crafting, trading etc). Sometimes people just don't have the time to devote to a group activity, but the game still should be available for those people to play.
Can you really be so sure that this is what would happen ?
Yeah, he can be sure. DDO was a grouping only game, which largely bombed until they implemented solo content, both in playing and in crafting etc, and the Freemium model. You don't have to introduce soloable PVE content, but you have to have some sort of soloable activity (like crafting, trading etc). Sometimes people just don't have the time to devote to a group activity, but the game still should be available for those people to play.
Well yes I somewhat agree that this happened with DDO, but that was ALONG time since now , things has really changed and the market is OVER satturated with AAA titles that has the "solo philosophy" every game released has it, even DDO has it now. Besides I'm really not all convinced that this is what happened to DDO entirely, It wasn't that good game in the beginning and when I played it lately not many players solo ANYTHING in that game, basically it's still a forced grouping game even thou you have the choice of doing missions solo..But the core of Dungeons and Dragons is Groups and that will stay .
There is ROOM for a game or several that takes grouping serious, besides FF did it for a very long time along side all other games, so there is most certainly a market for it. A niche market but still...
There is nothing wrong with choice and a market that let's you choose your preference
Well in truth yes any game can be played without being social even if you group using the group finder or wows raid finder. The social aspect has taken a steep dive in the last several years. The group finders have damaged the community and cross-server grouping insures that trolls will be abundant since the need to be polite or friendly in groups has mostly faded from existence in group finder games. With free to play games being a dime a dozen on top of it people aren't invested and evens sensor themselves less since if they get banned "blah blah" studeo made another one just like it. These free to play games support is pretty much none existent. Buy to play is better but still the social problems that have been created by group finder and cross-server systems have caused really damage to the community as a whole and promoted antisocial MMOs. In the other hand though there still are social people that play together and guilds that do pve and pvp together and low and behold you don't find any none social players at the top of rankings in anything. The problem is that the communities have gotten so bad its hard to find enough people or a group doesn't try to run off and do there own thing and won't vote to kick if you say you haven't been there before that I doubt most people stick around long enough to find a good group of sociable people to run with. So really I guess the community has been weakend and allowed to have bad behavior but in the end those people won't stick around for more than a few months which is why the market is so flooded and those people will never be on top or considered anything more than warm bodies. The challenge in MMOs today that is harder than any content a developer can create is finding the part of the community that is worth sticking around a game for and that will work together and actually help each other when they have trouble with content at endgame.
It has become this way because alot of gamers are this way Killbane, I hate that it is this way I been a gamer since MMO's started, but alot of gamers are anti social....Its not like it used to be, I see some games try and promote it, and even Indies try hard and people find a reason to whine.
I have blogged many times, and ask people as a gamer and a dev what type of game would be the best game for you, and what would add more social features and I get a good game, no great answer from people, today so DEVS have a hard job because people today can't be changed to make them become sociable in todays games...
They are anti social period.... MMO's will be gone in the next 5 to 10, mark my words.
Comments
This 100% Times have changed and people are more busy. Not to many mmo's players these days have the time to play for hours anymore. I solo most mmo's unless i'm in a guild or have real life friends to play with. Never would i ever team up with strangers today. Someone once said the problem with mmo's is the people that play them.
FFXI in the early days. Nothing since.
And that's the thing, you will rarely see me log in and say "hey guys what are you all doing". You will rarely ever see me say "lfg blah blah blah" and yet I get into groups.
I get into groups because I'm out in "the world" and see someone needs help or has a question and that's an evening. I get into groups because I see someone is asking for help and I help them.
Heck, the most epic pve group I have ever EVER had happened in lord of the rings online when a small group kept spamming for help with Elendil's Tomb. I agreed and what happened was multiple healers leaving, a few others joining and leaving and a core group seeing the tomb to the end "no matter how much we died and no matter how hard it was without healers".
It's was a looooong time and we died a lot but we made it happen.
But still I prefer grouping with guild mates and try to really read pug's as most players are just trash. Or maybe most of my pug's end up being with trash people. real scum.
I have more bad stories with pug's than good stories.
So "yeah" games with significant solo content work for me.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am sue it is too much to ask but where is the balance between solo and teamwork? Honestly I find a game I like to play, and I have fun playing in a group, but when my friends out level me because I have less play time then they do, what do I do?
Or if I have had a really crappy day and just want to play alone, shouldn't I be able to continue progressing in the game I enjoy?
I think team work should be rewarded, better equipment, unique weapons, armor, etc... But should solo play be penalized?
I mean look at WoW, if I started playing a month after my friends started, they all hit raid levels and start getting this uber equipment, I catch up to them ,and they still don't invite me to raids because my equipment isn't good enough?
I think there should be a balance. Like people who do team work should get some perks, more XP? Better loot? Moe money? Sure, but they can't make the solo player inadequate. Every one plays at different levels.
I'm a casual player, my family, and my work comes first, games on the weekends, maybe in the evening on week days if I am caught up on stuff in real life. I don't think I should be penalized for being a responsible adult, while joe welfare on the other coast farms gold to pay for his subscriptions, the state pays for his childcare, so he sits at home in his underwear smoking cigarettes and playing an mmo 24/7 gets rewarded to play.
Not so nice guy!
First of all, i think most people are misunderstood about what a "solo player" in a MMORPG. If you're gonna ask me, a MMORPG solo player is when you're solving a difficult picture puzzle (read: quests) by yourself, while for people playing in groups its like you're solving the same puzzle but with other people's help.
Now, with that interpretation i didn't say grouping is a bad thing, but when you can complete something difficult on your own, there's some kind of satisfactory feeling isn't it? Like when you ace a school test by learning hard on your own, and so on, it sets you apart. Solo players is the same, playing solo doesn't mean they're anti-social or selfish, but they're just trying to accomplish something by themselves that normally other players would need to form a party on.
Some people suggests that the rewards for group plays should far exceed those who plays solo. I disagree with that, since (as someone said here too) it will instead force the players to group only for the rewards, not for the fun, since we're talking about MMORPGs here, where whoever got better access to most game resources (gold, gear and so on) would be the top players. I would prefer something like if you're going on a quest solo, the rewards should be slightly better than going with a party (same chance of rare gear/item drops, but you don't have to split the gold rewards for solo), but if you die, the solo exp penalty is harsher than party groups.
In the end, i think that MMOs today is fine the way it is. Even if it is only a virtual world, people should still show respect to others, whatever their background or play style is, just that misunderstanding about solo plays that need to be cleared. Because, as a all time solo player, even i myself too joined guilds, helping guildies, PuG-ing and so on, because i'll tell you, no matter how hard you tried, whether in a game or in real life, there's some things that you can't just handle by yourself.
Quite possibly the most sensible thing i have read on this forum.
Seb needs to ask himself a question, does he think everybody enjoys the same game style as him?
A little more than egocentric on his part.
What's up with the meme stuff and internet slang..?
A bit...
Not entirely.
The distinction needs to be made in how the mechanics and structure of the game influences the play.
Why one might say 'solo play is the same as a single player game' may very well be because there are no game mechanics with dependencies on the input or interaction of multiple players.
This isn't to say people must group, but an MMO whose content is largely built to cater to the aggregate impact of multiple players eventually granting the outcome of events rather than simply one person dictating the success and progress experienced in the game world, that element of community suddenly becomes a much more real aspect.
And that's the thing right there. Does the game mechanically capitalize on the fact that it's platform allows the input of players to both directly and indirectly influence one another, or is the general experience each player gets largely encapsulated?
For the most part, it's an isolated experience. WoW, Rift, SWTOR, LOTRO, even GW2. They are built upon a game style and core game values that for the most part feel very little impact from the size of their community (beyond the group events for raids and PvP, which are generally isolated as lobby/side features of the games).
'Formal grouping' isn't really the solution either though. The thing people largely glaze over or fail to understand is that the manner in which a player can influence one another's gaming experiences can extend well past teaming up, griefing, fighting, etc.
What's advocated, at least from my stance about making MMOs more 'MMO' and less 'single player game on MMO platform' is the matter of how the overall features of the game play against one another. How progress is made in the game world, how the narrative takes form, how individual characters gain notoriety. It needs to have aggregate values that are affected by the achievements, milestones, and events that other players act in, not just oneself.
None of that presently happens. GW2 and Rift took a hazy stab at it when they implemented features that tally server progress to progress an events narrative, but they didn't move past that notion. Defiance is in a similar boat in that they tout how the community can influence the story by the events they complete, but even that's yet to be seen how much of an actual impact it shares both in the game and in the tv show (thus far it's fallen short as well).
So what are we left with? For the most part, games that have no real intrinsic value granted by their platform of choice.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Making a second post as my edit to the previous one seems to be borking up.
An alternative situation would be to look at several single player games that draw values from multi-player ones.
Spore. That's a game that populates your personal galaxy with creations from other people. The value that game drew was the ability to keep a very malleable face and draw from a functionally limitless asset library to populate a sea of procedurally generated worlds to explore and colonize.
The relation we have here is noting that even with the draw upon what's essentially mass collaboration to create the game's visual content, it's still play-wise a single player experience.
Then there's Demon's Souls. This sin't strictly a single player game, as it has co-op and PvP. However, the focus is pointed at the elements that made the game novel. Namely the utilization of a network element to populate the game with snippets of other adventurer's experiences.
This was a manner that let people interact with one another without ever having to so much as be properly aware of the other. What's functionally a single player game, suddenly is provided a means to have characters provide sometimes crucial information to another, via an online component that's largely invisible to you during play.
And as a third example, Dragon's Dogma. If you left your game to connect online, you would not be greeted by other players, but a rather endless horde of companions. The added quality that each one was tailored by another player in both skills and personality meant you'd see a variety of NPCs with sometimes noticeably different behavioral patterns if their makers had spent enough time tweaking and training them.
The value this had was that even without the presence of other literal people, there remained a proxy that in many ways served as a stand-in for the grouping element multi-player games had.
It's a backwards thing to say somewhat, as it's just as much the problem as it is the solution, but we should look at and examine the manner in which such titles seek to create novel experiences and mechanics in their game play that is influenced by other players without it being simply 'solo or grouped'.
All three of these games are single player at their core, but all three require the same spine that MMOs use. A back end architecture with a persistent network of data linking each person's client together, to grant them an experience that can only be achieved through the collaboration and accumulative effort of each players actions impacting each other's gaming experience.
The fact there are games that are defined as single player yet use the MMO framework to deliver on this kind of experience, while there are those that go by the moniker of MMO which rather entirely lack such values, is something that bothers me.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Can you really be so sure that this is what would happen ?
I mean you are basing your conclusion in this in todays MMO's climate , I understand that , but can you really be so sure ?
Today ALL games has solo possibilities atleast to the end level, so the only way of ever knowing if a a MMO that would "really" take it's time to reach the end . Is to create one !!
You see , what we have today is about the same, the games released lasts 1-3 months for the average player , and this is all because of "the ease" it takes to do things, you basically only need a 5-10 hours during a week and you will reach endgame after a month or 2, players are "completing content" alot faster than the developers could ever create new content. I agree with you that noone finds it fun to "sit and wait" as you where explaining it, but there is "OTHER" solutions for this, fun mini games is one, like a collectibe card game built into the game World.
Ok..Most moderns games doesn't die (as you described a Group MMO would) but they face other odd things like FTP or not, to draw in new players that also would play1-3 months then quit etc. Basically it's the same
I have to strongly disagree on this commentary; in fact, I disagree on this so much that I actually bothered to register an account on this website.
Partial agreeing on what direction WoW is going to and that is what I don't like to see. But that's the current MMO culture, and original WoW actually had pretty decent group content UNTIL the so-called casual MMO culture hit. I feel sorry for the game, but as much so-called casual players hit the playerbase, there's nothing to save it. Because to that playerbase there's much more intensive things such as "real life" or "smoking weed" or "whatever I don't care". All of those legitimate reasons are GOOD but... That is one of the reasons that you can't save MMOs now.
To be honest, it is all about money and the cashflow of the company. The more casual, "fun, easy to pick up", has more potential of earning money, period.
It is like this: the games used to mean something, now they're just for "fun" that doesn't mean anything. But since it's casual now and the maingoal is "fun" contents cannot be hard. And then again, since everything is extremely easy nowadays, people then complain about "not enough content".
To be honest, when WoW was capped at lvl60, there were so many group required content other than raid/dungeon because those missions were actually hard. Nowadays a blood DK can solo a current tier raid boss..? I used to remember that a raid content can be competed for months between top guilds, and now FD records are actually made within less than three days with the new content release..? Because, some indirect quote from Blizzard devs, we believe that everybody should have a chance to experience the content, aka they won't be hard. Of course in current patches there are still so-called heroic raid in WoW but.. if you know what I mean, there are still "more end game content" after the heroic such as the hidden extra boss such as the dragon mother and ragnaros with legs and stuff on...
The cause of this madness is that there are different groups of playerbase and the "unelite" playerbase is just bigger than the "elite" ones.
I once met someone in TSW said, "I don't really care for the dps anymore because nightmare bosses still die." ... I guess these people are ruining other people's chance to actually experience the mMo respective. But then again, they themselves are "having fun" by pwning "easy content designed for everybody" and then complains the game is too easy and therefore not worthwhile. It is a very bad circle really.
GW2 and Rift shouldn't be on this list..
Yeh, you can play easily without communicating. But you are often doing things with other players that you couldn't do if you weren't all helping each other.
Another post from somebody living in past. Or some jobless or "eternal" student, having so much time that he/she could plan for weeks ahead forced group play.
But i would say MAJORITY of players PAYING and playing games, including MMO, have some other business or responsabilities in world to do. I play myself to much, want to play and want to be able to SOLO ALL UP TO TOP if I WISH so.
Definitively was smart and logic selection of majority of companies to make their MMO or any other games soloable. Because for all group play lovers EVERY game has ENDGAME.
So I really have such hard time to understand all of this "soloable" games haters why they bother so much? Making MMO soloable up to end game is win-win situation. Game will be played by all that do not have luxury or wish to live 24h hours of their lives only in certain game and will be played by this and others that can enjoy end game.
But, hey, I do not have any problem if somebody at Blizzard, Trion, Bioware, .... decide to convert their games to be FORCED GROUP ONLY. Just I (and millions of others) will not be there to play. Because forced group players are in minority will be lose-lose situation. We others will not be playing. And there will not be enough of them to have enough people around to play their forced grouping game.
Simple as that.
Take the 30 days MMO Challenge!
Couple issues I take with this is lack of thought about player patterns and game design, and the fact that the original premise for MMO's was basically to enable AD&D LAN Parties for people all over the world.
Players will almost inevitably follow the path of least resistance. That is why DPS classes are more popular than other classes in MMO's. It's not because the classes are inherently more fun to play, it is because the games have been tuned to allow them to crank through content more quickly. The same thing applies to grouping versus soloing. Sure, you've got 10% of the population on either side of the spectrum who are always going to solo or always going to group, but if you make solo gaming easier and more rewarding than playing in groups, people are going to solo. If you make a game where you can solo, but you gain experience 10 times slower than grouping, people are going to group.
Why can't I have both? Of course you can have both, equally balanced, but it would take so much tuning that no one bothers doing it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Well yes I somewhat agree that this happened with DDO, but that was ALONG time since now , things has really changed and the market is OVER satturated with AAA titles that has the "solo philosophy" every game released has it, even DDO has it now. Besides I'm really not all convinced that this is what happened to DDO entirely, It wasn't that good game in the beginning and when I played it lately not many players solo ANYTHING in that game, basically it's still a forced grouping game even thou you have the choice of doing missions solo..But the core of Dungeons and Dragons is Groups and that will stay .
There is ROOM for a game or several that takes grouping serious, besides FF did it for a very long time along side all other games, so there is most certainly a market for it. A niche market but still...
There is nothing wrong with choice and a market that let's you choose your preference
In the other hand though there still are social people that play together and guilds that do pve and pvp together and low and behold you don't find any none social players at the top of rankings in anything. The problem is that the communities have gotten so bad its hard to find enough people or a group doesn't try to run off and do there own thing and won't vote to kick if you say you haven't been there before that I doubt most people stick around long enough to find a good group of sociable people to run with. So really I guess the community has been weakend and allowed to have bad behavior but in the end those people won't stick around for more than a few months which is why the market is so flooded and those people will never be on top or considered anything more than warm bodies. The challenge in MMOs today that is harder than any content a developer can create is finding the part of the community that is worth sticking around a game for and that will work together and actually help each other when they have trouble with content at endgame.
Solo play is for off-line players.
It has become this way because alot of gamers are this way Killbane, I hate that it is this way I been a gamer since MMO's started, but alot of gamers are anti social....Its not like it used to be, I see some games try and promote it, and even Indies try hard and people find a reason to whine.
I have blogged many times, and ask people as a gamer and a dev what type of game would be the best game for you, and what would add more social features and I get a good game, no great answer from people, today so DEVS have a hard job because people today can't be changed to make them become sociable in todays games...
They are anti social period.... MMO's will be gone in the next 5 to 10, mark my words.