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Soloing in Champions Online
Tecknic
Member Posts: 458
I ran across a blog post made on the Champions Online website just now that I thought was kind-of interesting. Below is an exerpt and a link to said post. I continue to be very excited about the game, but after seeing some of the posts around here lately, I'm sure that this'll interest a number of you MMORPGers.
I do have a lot of fun playing a MMORPG with friends or a pick-up group. But I'll confess that sometimes I'm just not into that. Maybe I've had a rough day. Or I'm just plain grumpy. In my mind, that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to play a MMORPG. If a game enforces some form of grouping, I'll be compelled to play something else when I am in a solo kind of mood. But I play MMORPGs because I enjoy the environment, the gameplay … why should I be kept from that?
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Playing: Nothing
Played: Champions Online, CoX, STO, PSO, WoW, lots of free-to-play crap
Looking Forward To: DC Universe Online, Blade and Soul
Comments
What struck me more was this part: "World of Warcraft released roughly six months after City of Heroes and we, of course, know its success. One of the truly amazing features was that a player could solo effectively the vast amount of the game. Certainly, this told us something at Cryptic. But more important than that was the feedback from our fans. They simply didn't like the idea that they would need to stop their mission in order to go find help. And you know what? The players were right!"
I haven't played either game at launch, but just looking at all the fundamental changes to CoH during the first issues, I would say that the big difference was that Blizzard actually managed to launch a polished game, unlike Cryptic
. If Jack Emmert thinks what made the difference was that not all ATs in CoH could solo everything, then Champions Online is in for some big trouble.
originally super heroes worked solo against the baddies... with help in the political level.
It'd be nice to see a game emulate that.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
You'd be quite wrong. From a fundamental standpoint, we all have expectations on a very basic level when approaching a game. For instance, if a Mario MMO released today we would all expect to have some sweet platforming involved. We'd probably have some notions about the act of killing baddies with hammers and shells too. If a Devil May Cry MMO dropped, we'd expect to be juggling demons in the air with pistols and cleaving marionettes in twain with our awesome swords.
Bear with me.
Now, a SUPER HERO MMO hits shelves. I'm willing to bet that "running around asking for 4 other super heroes to help you take down a single armed thug" is probably the furthest thing from "super" you could imagine. You'd be rather correct about this, as many other players felt the same way too. In order for a super hero game to work, you have to fight and FEEL like a super hero. That means taking on swarms of basic thugs without breaking a sweat. Even Batman could rock out the simple gang members...and he didn't even have super powers. So, for CoH to work...yeah...being able to solo IS the most important thing. Structurally, a super hero game sucks monkey organs if you can't even fight off ONE single un-super thing alone.
To be honest, CoH had a rather nice launch. The largest issue it ever had was the mundane mission farming you had to do. The game was actually nothing BUT instanced quest missions. Oh, it has great zones...but you don't often actually DO anything in them. They had some bugs, naturally, but nothing which actually detracted from those two big issues.
Given the changes they made to CoX, and the lessons they have stated they paid attention to when other games learned them...I think Champions is shaping up to easily be the best thing since sliced cake. I've not heard them say they are trying to add things I feel they cannot. Indeed, most of the things they are promising are things they have already touched on in CoX with some additions and improvements. There is no massive hype being generated...no insane promises, thus far.
One of the main things that killed CoH (compared to WoW and a couple other games) was the lack of marketing; I only found out that the game existed through the grapevine 1 week after it was out. All of my gaming friends (EQ nuts at the time but not me) didn't know anything about it either. For those that were there, it had a very smooth, very fun release that was full of pleasant suprises for me and everyone I teamed with at the time.
Then what are you basing your assumption on?
Having played both games at launch, I hate to tell you but your theory couldn't be further from the truth. That's not to say City of Heroes launched bug free — it most certainly did have some (mostly balance issues and exploitable power sets), yet none that were even close to game-breaking. WoW on the other hand had more than its share. Several even persisted for months long after launch. TAB targeting for example was atrocious at best, if/when it even worked. And then there was the looting bug that froze characters in a kneeling position, unable to continue playing, and in some cases even prevented logging out. Let's not even mention server queues, though arguably not a "bug" per se, it was anything but exemplary of a polished launch.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash WoW. It's evolved into quite a compelling game and obviously its popularity reflects that. Just don't kid yourself into believing the secret to its success was a polished launch.
Back on topic, this portion of Jack's blog got me the most excited:
And here's another groundbreaking element to Champions Online: we are striving to make sure that the end game contains a component for soloers. Yep. That's right. The Champions Online end game isn't just about large teams, raids and guilds. If you don't want to do that, there's still content for you. I'll admit that we haven't put the finishing touches on the Omega System, but I can tell you that we are designing and developing with the solo player in mind.
I can't imagine Spiderman standing around waiting for 4-5 more people before going after the Vulture, or Superman waiting for the same amount of people before going up against Lex Luthor.
MMOs these days need a mixture of playstyles. I enjoy grouping as much as soloing, but I hate sitting around for hours looking to fill up a group.
You'd be quite wrong. From a fundamental standpoint, we all have expectations on a very basic level when approaching a game. For instance, if a Mario MMO released today we would all expect to have some sweet platforming involved. We'd probably have some notions about the act of killing baddies with hammers and shells too. If a Devil May Cry MMO dropped, we'd expect to be juggling demons in the air with pistols and cleaving marionettes in twain with our awesome swords.
Bear with me.
Now, a SUPER HERO MMO hits shelves. I'm willing to bet that "running around asking for 4 other super heroes to help you take down a single armed thug" is probably the furthest thing from "super" you could imagine. You'd be rather correct about this, as many other players felt the same way too. In order for a super hero game to work, you have to fight and FEEL like a super hero. That means taking on swarms of basic thugs without breaking a sweat. Even Batman could rock out the simple gang members...and he didn't even have super powers. So, for CoH to work...yeah...being able to solo IS the most important thing. Structurally, a super hero game sucks monkey organs if you can't even fight off ONE single un-super thing alone.
To be honest, CoH had a rather nice launch. The largest issue it ever had was the mundane mission farming you had to do. The game was actually nothing BUT instanced quest missions. Oh, it has great zones...but you don't often actually DO anything in them. They had some bugs, naturally, but nothing which actually detracted from those two big issues.
Given the changes they made to CoX, and the lessons they have stated they paid attention to when other games learned them...I think Champions is shaping up to easily be the best thing since sliced cake. I've not heard them say they are trying to add things I feel they cannot. Indeed, most of the things they are promising are things they have already touched on in CoX with some additions and improvements. There is no massive hype being generated...no insane promises, thus far.
100% agree with you. Reading about some of the "insanely" cool customization features, and other things stated about CO, soloing some goons would be interesting.
I think that, and this is just my opinion, that when CoH/CoV was created, they had X-Men, The Justice League, and other supergroups in mind; Minus the fact that -Alot- of the superheroes/supervillains became famous or infamous on their own lol.
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You'd be quite wrong. From a fundamental standpoint, we all have expectations on a very basic level when approaching a game. For instance, if a Mario MMO released today we would all expect to have some sweet platforming involved. We'd probably have some notions about the act of killing baddies with hammers and shells too. If a Devil May Cry MMO dropped, we'd expect to be juggling demons in the air with pistols and cleaving marionettes in twain with our awesome swords.
Bear with me.
Now, a SUPER HERO MMO hits shelves. I'm willing to bet that "running around asking for 4 other super heroes to help you take down a single armed thug" is probably the furthest thing from "super" you could imagine. You'd be rather correct about this, as many other players felt the same way too. In order for a super hero game to work, you have to fight and FEEL like a super hero. That means taking on swarms of basic thugs without breaking a sweat. Even Batman could rock out the simple gang members...and he didn't even have super powers. So, for CoH to work...yeah...being able to solo IS the most important thing. Structurally, a super hero game sucks monkey organs if you can't even fight off ONE single un-super thing alone.
To be honest, CoH had a rather nice launch. The largest issue it ever had was the mundane mission farming you had to do. The game was actually nothing BUT instanced quest missions. Oh, it has great zones...but you don't often actually DO anything in them. They had some bugs, naturally, but nothing which actually detracted from those two big issues.
Given the changes they made to CoX, and the lessons they have stated they paid attention to when other games learned them...I think Champions is shaping up to easily be the best thing since sliced cake. I've not heard them say they are trying to add things I feel they cannot. Indeed, most of the things they are promising are things they have already touched on in CoX with some additions and improvements. There is no massive hype being generated...no insane promises, thus far.
Totally agree Gish. As you said there were some balance issues and the game was a bit montanus, but at the time COH was the poster boy for a good launch and held as proof that MMOs didn't have to launch broken and unplayable. This attention was just short lived mostly due to the machine that is WOW.
Might as well call these games MORPGs. All this soloing is ruining the massive part. Maybe if someone actually made it fun and more productive to group, it would encourage people to do so. People only enjoy soloing because grouping is a hassle in most games.
Yeah, but it's usually only a "hassle" when your choices of whom to group with consists of: assholes, control-freaks, XP-leeches, "let-me-tell-you-my-life-story" creepy people, and drama queen divas. There's very little a game developer can do about that.
You can always ask: what does playing on a team have to do with "Massively Multiplayer"? If it's you and 4 or 9 other people crawling through a dungeon and killing things in an instance where you can't see or hear or interact with anyone else, where's the 'massive'? How is that different from Counterstrike or Quake or NWN on a mini-server?
In WoW people mostly group because they are tricked into doing it (long quest chain ends with group boss) or they are forced to if they want to experience new content and get the cool stuff. I very rarely see anyone grouping with more than one or two peers to do random quests just for fun, even in world pvp. I'd be surprised if most of the lower level content right now in WoW isn't being used by 1 high level and 1 or two lower level alts getting powerleveled or farming special rewards.
The reason that WoW tricks people into forced grouping to accomplish major rewards is because it slows players down and keeps groups separated between haves (the ones that play with friends and actually like a few people) and have nots (the ones that don't). It's not really about player skill or effort when comparing the guy in an active guild vs the soloist in WoW. Sure there are solo players that do well, but their played time is usually off the charts compared to guild-members with equivalent or slightly better gear/resources.
For me, massively multiplayer is good because:
1) It is competitive. There's always people around that are better and worse than me. In solo games I don't feel any satisfaction from beating them because I don't know how well I did compared to anyone. Tournament PC/console games are good for competition too, but there's usually a much smaller selection of competitors.
2) There's always someone to show off to, someone to help who isn't a leech and someone that deserves to die (and someone that feels the same way about me). That's interaction.
3) There's trading and the occasional organized events and chatting.
These exist in MMOs, even solo friendly ones, and have nothing to do with forced teaming.
Personally, I HATE having to ask for help to accomplish things. I hate tying someone else up for an hour+ to get something done that in no way helps them. I hate being forced into leading teams when I'm not reasonably sure I'm not going to get everyone killed/lost (and there's virtually no bonus for being a good leader vs following one). I hate owing people debts that I can't instantly repay. In real life most of that is fine, it works out and is necessary, but in fantasy land I don't want to be Captain Dependent or Captain Team-player. That's a major turn off and has nothing to do with the source material for any of these games.
It's actually a natural barrier. MMO's are based off MUD's and they have alwyas been like this. Most players want to be self-sufficient that's part of why the endless search of bettter stuff appeals to so many people.
Personally, I enjoy soloing in MMO's. Not all the time, mind you, but making a game soloable is definitely a perk in my opinion.
Make soloing the focus of the game and you will end up with AoC.
Massive MULTIPLAYER Online Role-Playing Game.
Something I enjoyed in City of Heroes was the Carrot over Stick approach to grouping. You could solo quite a lot in that game and do fine (in the main -- some characters soloed better than others, for example). However, in a group you got significant XP bonuses. Additionally the way that a team interacted with a lot of fast-paced combat and mayhem was just... fun. Instances scaled to the number of people in your group, and I think that played a part. The more in a group, the more mobs within the instance. Finally, you could only have a couple of hours to play and still accomplish something in a team.
I tend to be a solo player; I like the idea of being part of a larger world, but in the main I enjoy going through content at my own pace. I teamed up a lot in City of Heroes, though, for the above reasons. I could have soloed... but hopping into a group was more beneficial and enjoyable.
I compare this to WoW, where finding a group seems like a major chore. In the pre-70 game (all I've experienced), I've barely ever teamed up. The content that requires teaming (Dungeons) I just avoid because it's easier.
CoX is such a great game because it is the few games that have a group friendly environment. i never understood the anti social people in these games, if you wanna solo play an offline game. the reason why there are wow haters, or some people believe (myself included) the mmo world is sinking is because of the fact that everything is solable and linear. I really hope this game does not steer away from the group friendly environment that is found in CoX. Personally i think the best way to meet solo peoples needs is to make a solo class that is purely develop for solo play and have other classes have a group role
playing: Dragon Age
Waiting: for FF14, Mass Effect
Want to try: Fallen Earth