General Discussion

Originally posted by Swiftblade13

I fully agree with the OP.  This one fact is probably the sole reason I didnt stick with WAR for at least a couple months.

 

Why pay a monthly subscription to play alone?

 

 PS- Now this will surely get me flamed... but I have to say the "middle ground" on this topic is what WoW does.... the world is solo friendly, but at any given level there is a nice challenging five man dungeon available that is totally worthwhile for XP and gear... players who want to always group can just level up on dungeon runs (which is what I did for the last 30 levels of WoW). 

Even though I am EQ old-school in my opinions, and believe nothing came close to EQ.

I have to admit, I am not a WoW-hater. It actually was a pretty good game. It dd in fact, have some pretty good group content, challenging, decent loot. You could also solo.

Unfortunately, the end game was intolerable.

you know what i do when i dont have time to play MMOs? i play another game my playtime has shrunk in the last month or so majorly, so what i did is went out and bought Mass Effect, I bought STALKER I bought Fallout 3 ... games i can jump in and play as long or as little as i wanted.

I didn't piss and moan, cry and whine till the whole MMO genre changed to my play schedule. I am not an egomaniac that thinks all games should cater to me. thats why i dont play RTS's i understand people like resource management/gathering ... me id rather shoot things. i don't go to an RTS forum demanding them to add fps elements citing numbers and polls about how popular FPS's are.

i just don't play the genre, maybe more casual soloist should reconsider thier choice of genre.

Old UO could be played by everyone took dedication to master.  If mmos weren't such loot whoring POS we wouldn't need to have this debate.

Give the power back to the character.

Originally posted by Ravanos

you know what i do when i dont have time to play MMOs? i play another game my playtime has shrunk in the last month or so majorly, so what i did is went out and bought Mass Effect, I bought STALKER I bought Fallout 3 ... games i can jump in and play as long or as little as i wanted.

I didn't piss and moan, cry and whine till the whole MMO genre changed to my play schedule. I am not an egomaniac that thinks all games should cater to me. thats why i dont play RTS's i understand people like resource management/gathering ... me id rather shoot things. i don't go to an RTS forum demanding them to add fps elements citing numbers and polls about how popular FPS's are.

i just don't play the genre, maybe more casual soloist should reconsider thier choice of genre.

Yea I see that logic in that. However for me, I need to be in the game world with 100s of other players or the game experience feels flat. I wanted to love Mass Effect and Oblivion but I went back to WoW and EQ2. Even though mmos are not as visually exciting as great solo games, they just feel more alive. I play mmos for that living world feel. I get that feeling in a good mmo both in solo and group play.

Grouping and soloing,

You ever heard this: LF2M Need tank/healer? As you stand there with bow and arrow in hand, or being stealth With two daggers equipped! I think Dev's need too give all classes benifit for the group. I had a friend choose rougue, soloed the whole game cause he could not get invites to a group and gave up. Or a hunter offering his pet as a tank, and leader saying I rather a defensive  spec tank! And offensive spec tank being asked where there shield is? I don't think you have to spec a certain way to contribute, and that's why I am hoping Darkfall will help bring grouping back(cause with that many skills you never know what people can do)!

Originally posted by nomadian

Soloing is a big thing now especially as mmos want all the subscribers they can get- a mmo allows soloing as a big part of their game and it stretches the appeal of the game to include much more players than perhaps otherwise. This may spell doom and gloom in a way- well at least until the level cap- a more grouping-emphasized game in WoW at the end, but I think mmo companies could actually provide special rule-set servers which are more grouping-specific. For instance in WoW I suggested on it's a forum where maybe all mobs might be elite on a server- this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea but it would encourage more grouping on this server(or very hardcore soloers...)

 

You know this is actually a great idea. We have pvp, pve, roleplay, core, launguage specific servers, why not servers that focus more on solo play or group play. This could easily be added to games like WoW, LOTRO and EQ2.  A very good simple solution that just might work.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

 

I played CoH. It's fun, but it's not a great grouping game. It's decent fro grouping, bettern than WoW, but not great.

The scaling is what makes it not a great grouping game.

I completely disagree with you.  I could log on and play with a full group and be challenged, I could duo and feel challenged, or I could solo and feel challenged.  I never had a hard time finding a team when I wanted one either.   No game has achieved a greater balance between solo / group play IMO.

Originally posted by Aetherial

Originally posted by Ravanos

its definately ruining the community of MMOs as i have said in many other threads in games like EQ1 and DAOC where grouping was the norm and soloing was only done while waiting for a group. I knew tons of people on the server and could tell you about people at the endgame because i grouped with them so much.

this add accountability to those games because if you were a stupid jerk and acted like one in game then you might as well reroll your character because your character developement would pretty much end if you did it enough.

now with the solo oriented games any halfwit jackhole that can click buttons can get to max level and be a complete douche

 

Brilliant post!

So how do we correct it...

We make it so that you need a group to do anything significant.

We add a NASTY death penalty, and corpse runs.

Then, when people are idiots, or just bad players, word gets around and they have a tough time advancing.

.. which means you have more of a "world" now, where actions have consequences, and there is accountability.

I too, enjoyed knowing most of the people on my server at the end-game. I enjoyed it in WoW also... even if that game was too easy :)

 

Exactly this, and EQ still has "some" of this, though no where near as much as it once did.
 

I personally would love an old-style EQ in a Forgotten Realms setting - and make it a niche game where soloing is only just barely feasable.

Originally posted by eccoton

Originally posted by nomadian

Soloing is a big thing now especially as mmos want all the subscribers they can get- a mmo allows soloing as a big part of their game and it stretches the appeal of the game to include much more players than perhaps otherwise. This may spell doom and gloom in a way- well at least until the level cap- a more grouping-emphasized game in WoW at the end, but I think mmo companies could actually provide special rule-set servers which are more grouping-specific. For instance in WoW I suggested on it's a forum where maybe all mobs might be elite on a server- this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea but it would encourage more grouping on this server(or very hardcore soloers...)

 

 

You know this is actually a great idea. We have pvp, pve, roleplay, core, launguage specific servers, why not servers that focus more on solo play or group play. This could easily be added to games like WoW, LOTRO and EQ2.  A very good simple solution that just might work.

You run into far more issues balancing mobs for two seperate styles of gameplay.  They essentially have to be turned twice, once for solo and once for group. I did, however, like the way EQII was set up before they did the first revamp and knocked most of the overland content from small group content to solo content. (Some, but not all, classes could still solo efficiently if played with skill.)