General Discussion

Originally posted by Aetherial

(Title paraphrased from someone else in another thread)

Bottom line...

In order to make a game solo-friendly, you have to make it easy. (Please don't insult us by claiming your 1337 game play is what allows you to solo ALL recently released MMO's... they are easy, stupidly easy, period.)

If it is easy, it is no challenge for a group. There is no need to play well, no need to coordinate, it gets very stale, very fast...

which leads people to solo. Why bother grouping.

In other words, if you *can* solo, you will. The social aspect of the MMO is severely diminished.

Thus, IMO, soloing is killing MMO's.

It should be *possible*, but only barely, with only limited options to do so.

You got it partially wrong.

Solo friendly playstyle isn't the problem, it's just that developpers don'(t make group play MUCH more rewarding than solo play, only slightly better.

Group play means gathering a party at point A , going to point B, and fighting harder mobs. ALl those factors should make developpers triple the exp reward and give players much more powerful items than a solo player would get.

As a MMO player who likes to solo i have to agree with the OP.

I do think games should have solo content, because there is a large group that wants it, but the game should not be as solo friendly as say WoW is.

I think the main problem is with the soloers themselves, at least some of them. I solo'd quite a bit in EQ, i actually prefered it though i did like grouping with my guild. But i also knew that by soloing i was going to miss out on alot of stuff in game be it places or loot. The problem is the soloers who want to solo all the time but still be able to get all the best loot and see all the cool places. Unfortunetly the devs have listened to these people who want it all but are unwilling to put in the time it took to get it.

As a soloer i chose not to do 9 hour raids in order to get great gear, but i respected those that were willing to put in the time to do those raids. Then the soloers popped up who whinned that they should be able to get that same gear by themselves that the group of 6 or 30 would get. Ya, that makes sense.

I agree that the community goes down the toilet when you have pure solo content. I was only in a handfull of groups in WoW and that was mainly just to get a quest item that was somewhat difficult to get alone. But there was not community to those groups, when someone would loot the item, they would drop out of the group and leave, rarely with even a "Thanks, Goodbye". If you did that in a game like EQ or DAOC or FFXI it was doubtfull that you would get into a group with any of those guys again.

So, yes to solo content in MMOs, No to solo MMOs.

Originally posted by Aetherial

(Title paraphrased from someone else in another thread)

Bottom line...

In order to make a game solo-friendly, you have to make it easy. (Please don't insult us by claiming your 1337 game play is what allows you to solo ALL recently released MMO's... they are easy, stupidly easy, period.)

If it is easy, it is no challenge for a group. There is no need to play well, no need to coordinate, it gets very stale, very fast...

which leads people to solo. Why bother grouping.

In other words, if you *can* solo, you will. The social aspect of the MMO is severely diminished.

Thus, IMO, soloing is killing MMO's.

It should be *possible*, but only barely, with only limited options to do so.

My initial response would be...

Going all the way back to 1997 and Ultima Online.. I can't think of a single MMO I couldn't solo in.

I'm not sure of any MMO that has raid content that can be solo'd at the appropriate level anyway.. so for average content I've solo'd in every MMO if I chose to... and I can't think of one where it was possible "barely" with very limited options.

I don't honestly think this makes the game more or less fun.  Its the overall design.

However, and this is the logic part (no I don't like this but its how I see it):

Games cost X amount to make and that dictates the player base needed.  So currently the design is going to be to hit that goal.  If what is described in the original post would equate to a very limited player base... you won't see it happen anytime soon(tm).

Oh and for the record for me it is the actual design of the games.

This would be the level, crap raid content and "uber loot" that totally destoryed crafting / player economy among other things.

Personally I'd love to see a "modern UO" tho it could be sci fi or something other than orcs etc

Then I know at least *I* would have fun.

If I found people I liked to play with.. I'd group with them.  Other than that.. I certainly don't want to be forced to group with most people I meet in MMO's lately.

Oh then again you could say the reason MMO's suck.. is they sold out aka went main stream.  I certainly liked it better when it was a niche market.

Originally posted by Gemma

That's why WoW was able to bring in so many people.  Nobody wants to sit in the LFG channel for hours to find a party and go grind on monsters.  It just isn't fun to most people who have time commitments.

Join a guild that doesn't blow, genius.  It's amazing how easy group content can be when you have reliable grouping partners who are online regularly and at consistent times.

I have to agree. I have found myself going from game to game playing for about 3-5 months and wonder to myself what was missing. I have come to a conclussion. It's the fact that almost every game now can be solo'd with ease. I miss the prime of EQ and all 5 years that I played it. I never found it hard to find a group. I could solo if i wanted to being a Druid. "Quad Kite FTW" lol. What I really miss is the fact that in games now-a-days You don't need all the classes that are made available. But sometimes like WoW for example you don't need anyone else at all. You can grind to 70 in less than a month. and then in another half a month grind all the pvp honor you need. and whats the point in doing the arena? give it a couple months or so and bame you can get it with honor.

I say it should be solo play from 1-30 or 40. then from 40 to 60 or 70 which ever is the max level should be group. and don't make it kiddyfied like wow solo content.  Example- I am 34 in wow i Can kill anything below me and anything 4 levels above me.  The only thing I can say about that is overpowered. You shouldn't beable to kill anything 4 levels above you. 1 level above you I can see. 

I dunno I just hope The Old Republic Online ownz all face lol.

I don't ever know what possesed those devs at WOW to make their game so solo friendly ! And all those d&#+  subscribers keep sending them $14.95 a month .  Must be  some secret  mind control code written into the game. Subscribers beware !

Originally posted by Arawon

I don't ever know what possesed those devs at WOW to make their game so solo friendly ! And all those d&#+  subscribers keep sending them $14.95 a month .  Must be  some secret  mind control code written into the game. Subscribers beware !

lol. The arrogance on this board is amazing. It's as if we have some sort of gaming Ivory Tower that is completely out of touch with the world and they can only see themselves.

The reason they made it solo friendly was because they saw that there was a market for people who wanted to play online games, liked the idea of a living world but quite frankly didn't want to spend hours looking for groups, waiting on spawns, etc.

When I tell my gaming friends what mmo gamplay, even with the more accessible games of today, is about they just laugh at me and say it sounds like a waste of time. And quite frankly it sort of is. Oh sure we all enjoy it and like certain aspects of this type of gameplay but it's hard to sell the idea of getting a group, going into a dungeon and just killing mobs.

So Blizzard developers (as they had stated) took online gameplay so that it made more sense (or at least what they saw as sense).

And it works. They don't have 11 million or so subscribers just because they were blizzard. They have 11 million subscribers because it was an easy game to get into, anyone could do it and not lose their lives (and I'm sorry, but it's gamers who have a problem with the whole raiding end game not the average person who plays WoW... they DON'T raid every night per week or fret about uber gear).

WoW is a social phenomenom. It has drawn non-gamers, families, people who would normally not be playing these games.

It works. I don't find people who enjoy it any lesser than anyone else. Just like I don't find people who play pictionary or monopoly any lesser as compared to people who play chess or go.

The evolution of online games seems glacial because it takes so long for them to be made. So let's see if in another 10 years or so you find games more to your liking.

I'm pretty convinced that you won't find large studios making them but just small studios. They won't be cutting edge games (because of time and money) but they will be made by people who want to see their type of game created.

I certainly hope Dark Fall is the end all and be all for you guys. However, my guess there is that people have made it the holy grail of indy games and that it just won't live up to what you want it to be.

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

Ok, but that niche game is going to be coming from a smaller developer, the graphics might not be contemporary to other games and you probably will have smaller updates. Nothing major.

None of this is necessarily bad. But from the small games that I've seen pass this site, no one seems to be very excited about them.

heck, Ryzom is back. Yet I wonder how many people wanting sandbox games rushed to that game?

I certainly hope it is enough to warrant them bringing it back.

Way back when... I tried to install  the initial Ryzom beta. I could not get it to work (and I am not a PC/Network dummy by any means). I uninstalled and deleted.

This past week, I downloaded the Ryzom Client. I got it to work, but would lag out after 5-10 seconds. I opened all the necessary ports in my firewall, and still, the same thing.

After 30 minutes of messing around... I uninstalled.

Maybe it is a great game, who knows. All I know is that I have never been able to get it to work and I don't have patience anymore for game companies who can't do the fundamentals properly.