Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Soloing: The unavoidable spiral down
Yunbei
Member Posts: 898
I start this with a confession: of all the "modern" MMOs (meaning post-WOW published) IMVPO the game LOTRO is the best. But, saying that is like the often quite one-eyed who is king among the blind. I can name many good things about LOTRO, like the good combat pacing, many interesting quests, fascinating story, beautfiul world, but thats not important.
Important is, going back to LOTRO I came to realized that prolly MMORPGs are indeed doomed. Not that they will die out. People will buy and play them. But the MMOs as we knew them are really dying. Someone here recently wrote about his experience with EQ1 and how he met people and how they grouped with you, just so, and that is the crux of it all.
On the one hand you can solo LOTRO all the way up. It has many solo quests and most of them are fairly good. IMO. As good as quests in a MMO can be. But... whenever I come back to LOTRO I have this overwhelming feeling of loneliness, that aloneness which is worse than being alone in a room: being alone in a crowd. My attempts to join guilds all were futile in different ways. Either it were tiny family style guilds, nice people no doubt, but mostly circles of RL friends with some sort of invisible barrier I could not really penetrate. Or huge guilds, guilds where you are a number, and which at best are better chat channels. More often not, because Teamspeak has drained chat in the last years. As a sidenote, I am a VIVID, PASSIONATE hater of Teamspeak and Ventrilo and the like. I use the word HATE well chosen in connection to TEAMSPEAK. It is IMVPO a pestilence, a pox, a BLIGHT in the virtue of MMO gaming, deepening the already existing rift.
TS focusses you on those you know, your friends, your small circle and it strengthens the trend that make those "meeting new people" even less likely.
Now while it sure is nice that you CAN solo all the way in LOTRO, what happens there is a symptom of most MMOs today. There is a certain percentage of NOT soloable content, namely if you want to hunt more than bats, rats or boars and confront something BIG, you have to ger items with radiance, which you get only with reglar, organized gaming in a big guild. You CANT make it with pickup groups, because if you are geared with solo gear nobody takes you along. Even some of the lv 50+ skills for my Guardian were fomally soloable but in fact all grouped. With lv 60 I still had not accomplished ANY of the lv 50 Guardian quests, because none wanted to tag along some unknown, unguilded person.
On the one hand I can see the comfort and freedom that you dont have to bind yourself to a guild to daily schedules and practice a MMO like work to accomplish anything, on the other hand the really good stuff is still for e-sports like gamers who plan their days and weeks around their MMO. Now with more and more content soloable, the result is, no one groups with randoms anything but trivial quests and all too often I found myself yelling for Book quests or radiance runs or difficult group quests days and days until I had just levelled past them. For MMOs it is a no-win situation. People ask for more solo content and the community goes down the drain. Gone are the times when people grouped with you even when they didnt have the same quest, just for the sake of people helpful or killing mobs. Today, to get a group and to get ANYTHING remotely valuable done, you need guilds and regular schedules. So while the simple content has become easy to do for anyone, in a strange twist it has become way more difficult to get the worthwhile stuff done, so the rift between casual and elitarian gamers has widened.
In time past it was easy even to get invited to demanding quests as an unknown person. Today in the days of minmax gaming you dont get a chance, or you have to seek very, very long and daily. The result is the death of communities and the gamers are split in low-geared nobodies and super high end geared gamers with e-sports mentality and there is little in between or to bridge those two. sides. Teamspeak has added to this, because it focusses gamers even more to stay with those handful people you know. In the end the MMOs are now full of low geared people stuck with solo stuff and people who play their MMO like a 2nd job, and the spirit of community where people just group and take another along is killed by the very mechanics of today. And while I am all for making games comfortable and that wheel will never be turned back, it has in the same way destroyed the community spirit which made mediocre games like SWG into GREAT, MEMORABLE experiences. I don't see any remedy or any change. But my recent LOTRO experiences where despite 1000s of people logged in, most of the time it was impossible to find a group save for the most popular trivial-tasks has left me deeply disappointed in how this entire genre has developed.
Comments
The community division issue you speak of might be exclusive to LOTRO from my experience: where there are a lot of people online, but nobody's talking or wants to talk. I've never had this issue in any of the MMORPGs I've played.... except LOTRO.
I think the cause is a combination of things. Firstly, the level gap, which divides the community based on some number; and secondly, the soloability of each class, which means nobody needs each other to reach a common goal.
The goal is there: reach max level. Just nobody needs help for it. You don't ask strangers for help or even acknowledge them if you're doing fine on your own. And the feeling is mutual - so when you ask a stranger for help, they don't need you or are busy with something else, so they decline or ignore you.
On this, I really doubt the MMORPGs of the future will be anything less than what we love today. The path of advancement in this industry is making new ways to allow social gaming (since people are an inexhaustible source of entertainment). The objective is not to make the goal of the game "to be social", that just doesn't work - the primary goal of the game must be made too inconvenient to do alone, so as a result you become social.
That's the game of the future. One with inexhaustible ultimate goals that everyone will work towards for the benefit of themselves and their allies (which in turn benefits them doubly). One that does not force grouping, but rather makes it more convenient than soloing.
To you, OP, I would suggest EVE Online to give yourself a complete culture shock. Everyone talks in that game - because everyone needs someone, and people aren't always "busy" while grinding. Most corporations / guilds accept almost anyone if they're sociable. I doubt you'll enjoy the game much, though. There's a lot that goes unexplained in the tutorial, and it's impossible to do a majority of the content alone.
Well said! They need to make grouping a more attractive option (notice I say grouping NOT raiding) in these games. Seems like they worry so much about appeasing everyone that they grant a meager xp bonus and the ability to get some items that in the end don't add as much as just levelling once or twice. With all the downtime involved in groups (ie. forming them, having players go afk, go to town, organizing etc.) players just skip it entirely and play solo. In the end you can often get xp just as fast with the less downtime and in a level or two the item won't matter. As pointed out though soon the player finds himself at max, or near max level and no guild or friends....
Drop the solo xp rates a bit more, reduce the number of solo quests so players face some grinds (which encourages grouping if you can do further quests/dungeon romps) and make grouping a significantly better choice!
I agree! LotrO was a very group oriented game at first but they made it more and more solo friendly so people grouped less and less. At the same time they made "end game" very group oriented so the soloers became angry because they coldnt get the best gear anymore. Turbine even added alot of solo instances and a new zone full of solo quest for lvl 60 characters but the soloers were still angry since they still couldnt get the best gear... So for me the soloers are the reason why I dont play LotrO as much anymore.
Luckily DDO is all about grouping from level 1 and onwards and people are very social and chatty
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
I don't like the idea of nerfing something we've grown used to and expect in order to enforce a change of play style. I say we let the soloers solo, but we give the team players something they actually want.
So grouping mechanics could use a face-lift.
I think FPS games are the champions of teamplay: you join a game, you're already on a team (unless it's a deathmatch). If you can do beneficial things such as heal or recharge / give ammo, you can make it free and open to everyone on your team and get points for it.
MMORPGs have this clunky grouping system for some reason. First somebody starts a group, then the leader has to sort through all these different levels to find more members that can play (takes ages), and nobody knows the groups exists unless you shout around about it. And even when people are interested, they're usually the "wrong class" the "wrong level" or they're at some earlier point in the quest chain you're working on. That's a bit awkward and inconvenient.
Take Battlefield 2142 for some examples of what could be good game design: you've got your different classes for different roles, each one can help another in some way - but you can still go solo.
You can switch classes every time you die, so you're never stuck with a choice you made at the beginning of the game. You unlock gear with ranks (equivalent to MMORPG "levels"), and you choose what you get to unlock as you go along... even though you can still be very effective using just the default gear (the unlockable stuff just gives you a different way to play, not a better one).
But what really interests me is the openness of groups (called squads): the loadout menu where you pick your gear has a list of all squads in the area - just right there! To make a squad click a button (you can be a one-man squad). If anyone wants to join your squad, they press a button and they're in (max of 8 people).
The squad leader is granted special rights to certain equipment, which actually motivates the rest of the squad to work as a unit (squad beacons are spawn points, mobile UAVs point out enemies on the field around the leader, and you get bonus points to kills and any actions done within the squad leader's radius). Of course, some squads don't work in the beginning because there are those who don't work well together as a PUG, but it's much more effective and the rewards are greater if they do.
So here it is: a minimized level gap and a group list for easy-access pick-up-groups with all players in the area.
That's one simplified example, and there are many more ways you can tackle the issue besides that. I prefer this one because of its simplicity - it streamlines grouping to a point that it's natural and welcome.
Well EvE is hardly the game to suggest if he abominates voice comms as much as he says he does; there's even a voice client built right into the game itself. But because EvE is SF, maybe it wont seem so out of place to him?
There are certainly plenty of elitists in EvE, but it is indisputably true that you can start getting usefully involved from Day 1 (Well, Day 15, because most corps wont recruit trial players for various good reasons, but you get the idea. )
It would be a TOTAL culture shock compared to LoTRO though...
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Ya know today I thought, with all the Turtle, radiance inis and hunter quest grind, I wonder why the LOTRO devs put SO much effort into making some really cool quests and great story and a wonderful looking world, when people just need 10 radiance inis and 10 hunter quests and maybe you place 25 faction NPCS in one hall and be done with it. All this wonderful details of world and story and people grind instances and rush through like there was no tomorrow. So sad.
As to EVE: space is just not my sort of world, I need forests, cities, deserts, whatever... worlds to explore. Space just isnt my thing.
Very much agree, OP.
I don't know much about Aion but around lvl 16 I saw people starting to ask for a group to do quests. The last day of beta and at level 17 I got a group full in no time to kill just 20 elite mobs in a campament, and it was really fun. Of course game is new, all is fresh, people is happy and cooperative... but it really felt .. I don't know... kind of a good old MMORPG feeling.
I think this is a huge issue for MMOs as a genre. Every single one of them has problems with this, whether it's one of the few that forces grouping, putting off lots of potential players, or one of the many that are so soloable that people don't socialize much - not the way we used to in the early days of MMOs, from EQ to DAOC. I even remember having no problem finding groups in at low levels in Anarchy Online, because its what players were used to doing in those days.
I think the real problem is that the genre can never take that step backwards. Part of the 'problem' is that MMOs have so much competition these days, people just won't put up with the hassles they used to, even though such hassles tend to be rewarding in the long run.
I think the solution needs to come from some sort of major innovation. The obsolete old system of simple forced/encouraged grouping just isn't going to work anymore. In turn, the guild system suffers because players aren't getting to know eachother anymore, creating a sort of catch-22. Somebody needs to stop thinking inside the box, and add something to their game that brings players together in a whole new way, and then work from there, on grouping, guilds, and all that.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
This downward spiral as some would call it is just another side effect of the # leveling system. When you have parts of the game sectioned off according to a players levels eventually the beginning areas become ghost towns and obselete. Sure there are players making alternate characters but if you aren't a certain level many parts of the game are unavailable because you will get 1hit killed. Its design is to keep you occupied until you hit a certain level then you are rewarded with newer places to explore. You are constantly grinding not only to get to the "Endgame" but max skill, final place to settle in, and max out character equipment. Other games used to be designed more for exploration, actual random "rare" items, and easily replaceable equipment. They concentrated more on community and interaction instead of throw away grouping and stat/damage tweaking and calculation.
If games were aimed more towards skills, areas had something important to return to, and concentrated less on number/stat crunching games would probably be more immersive. They way they are heading now is a sweatshop like solo level grinding with optional online interaction.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I guess I'm one of those "soloers". Let me explain why I would rather solo and group only with friends I've known for years. To put it simply it's because of Idiots, pricks and overall asshattery from the general public that's why. There is way to much opportunity for some idiot to come in and mess up your quests, pulls or general fun with impunity. The few pugs I did, were done by people that lied, cheated and took me for a ride far to often to say it's just an isolated occurrence. I've been in to many kins, clans and guilds where the drama is high and some are asshats just because they can and because they're bored. It makes it where one does not trust anyone anymore. Just go to the 21st hall and look around. Sometimes, I will help someone if asked, I often help out with questions in the various channels. I'm not socially inept, I get along with many in real life. All I know is I've been burnt way to many times from folks on the internet and the MMO world to really care.
Am I missing out on some prospective friendships? Maybe. I know I may very well be, but I'm done working through the sludge of internet humanity to find that one gem. Life is to short to put up with people who get bored and decide to create some 'fun'. Besides I have friends already I am perfectly happy with. Why would I need more?
I'm just guessing here, but I suspect many gamers feel the same way, as well has having busy lives to deal with. Way to much opportunity for people to act like idiots with impunity and way to many take advantage of it.
So I guess you can thank all the people that decided it was ok to be jackasses to others far to often. I think the gamers in general are sick of it and look for various ways to get away from it.
My 2 centavos.
I agree entirely, if you want to make grouping "better", you need to dramatically improve the quality of the players that are grouping. The majority of PUGs are failures because everyone is in it for personal XP and loot, nobody has any real stake in keeping anyone else alive and if the team fails, you just go get another team. Whatever.
That's why I'll always play solo first, because most groupers are asshats.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I'm curious how the numbers really break down, in overall gamer population. I know some agree with the above, but my experience has been the opposite - of course I have RL friends, and a few of them are even gamers, but it's pretty rare for us to be playing the same game at the same time, in any coordinated sort of way. Too rare for me to count on. Even when we've tried, our real lives tend to put us on different pages, so that we hardly ever end up grouping up or anything in a game.
That's why I need the much larger pool of an overall MMO population to play with. I need to find 20-30, just so that I can find 2-3 at any given time to anything with. And as much as I agree that the masses of an MMO population tend to be rife with idiocy and asshattery, I've still had some good times with them.
As long as I don't get to know them too well - part of why I agree with the OP's gripes with ventrillo and the like. And why I like to discourage too much OOC blather about what they're watching on TV, what they think of Obama, or whatever. But despite it all, the best times I've had in MMOs have been with guildmates I've barely known, except that they make good tanks, or healers, etc.
Is that more of the exception, or the norm?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
That makes no sense. There is no MMORPG wehre you cannot solo to the cap. The definition of "Forced Grouping" means it's more convenient to group than solo.
In order to make PUGing worth while you have to filter out the idiots... but then the idiots would have no group.
Its a double edged blade.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
I say let the idiots make their own group, every ones happy then
Except, what about all the good players that start as idiots, but learn to play better with others? I think there's too much black&white thinking on this issue of idiot players who we want to avoid. Sometimes its just a process that occurrs when people group a lot, there are lots of idiots, but lots of those idiots eventually get the hang of it - unless the game is so full of soloing that masses of idiots never really get the chance to figure out what they're doing wrong, just get discouraged, go back to soloing, and complain that the idiocy is everyone else's fault.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I've never played LoTR, but I feel very much the same way as the OP. So much so, that I can no longer justify spending money on a monthly subscription to get an experience that is inferior to many recent single player games, and almost every single multiplayer shooter out there.
On the subject of Teamspeak and Ventrillo, they are fine for multiplayer shooters, because you really aren't playing a role. You are playing on a team. Now in and RPG, when some big Tauren looking character has a little 13 year-old girls voice, it just kills the immersion for me. I still used it in PvP situations, or some raids with folks who can't type that fast and that demanded quick responces, but for regular grouping, even within a guild or with friends, TS and Vent are out. It's just like talking on the phone, which I don't really like that much with people I do know.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I figure that's a job for mothers and fathers, not your general gamer. Some probably are decent people overall, I don't doubt that at all. I play a game to enjoy it, not become a surrogate mother and/or father to teach someone common decency and respect for fellow gamers. Something that should already have been taught well before they joined a game. It's not hard to be respectful and decent to others in real life or in a game world. It's just to easy to not see the real people on the other end, unfortunately many don't.
One of the biggest problems is the leveling system. If you come to a game late you are pretty much screwed for getting groups in lower level content. One of the reasons why I quit Lotro was because I would sit for hours trying to find groups for group quests and dungeons. That game has some great content if you can get a group for them, for the most part I couldn't so I couldn't justify paying a montly fee for a poor single player experience.
I wish new mmo's would just get rid of the antiquated leveling system. Find some other way of character advancement.
You're grouping with idiots because idiots can succeed in your world. If the world were more demanding and players were required to rely on each other, than an idiot would quickly get a bad reputation and would not succeed. Reputation does not exist in a soloable world.
In EQ I could recruit total strangers who were willing to volunteer a few hours of their time to help me with my epic quest, why? Well luckily for me I don't have to speculate now, I asked them. Some of them were looking for a shot at a drop or a chance to see a boss, but most of them said they knew that one day they would too require help with their epic, and wanted me to remember their generosity.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
I think what the OP is talking about is very specific to LOTRO.
I see no such things in WOW. In fact, WOW has been transforming this year and PUG raiding is very possible. The hardcore players are crying bloody murder (well, go do your hardmodes!) but it has been great and open up the end game to people like the OPs.
Secondly, I don't see a problem with finding people to socialize. I am in a friendly guild that we chat all the time (abt each others' life, NOT just the game) and sometiems i will make random frds (like this rogue that suddenly just chat me up).
In fact, my problem is that i don't have that much time to socialize.
Good point. There is a quest in LOTRO where you escort Bill the pony to safety. I have come upon two people at different times doing that quest and stopped to help them. They both seemed surprised and thankful and my response both times was, your welcome i had help doing it and thought i would lend a hand. Just seemed the thing to do but doesnt happen often enough.
Edit for typo.
Guess we're talking about different kinds and degrees of idiocy, then. I don't worry so much about people being blatantly rude or disrespectful, as that seems rare enough, relatively speaking. I worry more about players being kinda clueless or just annoying.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
People like to blame solo people for the lack of community, but part of the real issue is how group content is hard coded and the fact that everyone is fighting over the phat loot.
To foster better mmo communities a couple things could help.
Grouping:
Grouping needs to be encouraged not forced, by encouraged I mean the deeper you go in a dungeon the more mobs you have. So at some point a single person couldn't handle the spawn alone or the front portions of dungeons would fill up and people would start random groups to push deeper to get away from the crowds.
Group content needs to stop being hard coded. If you can only take 5 people to an area this causes clicks which doesn't encourage community.
There needs to be something different from the standard leveling system. If you add more people to your group the over all xp gain lessens. Again this doesn't promote community.
Loot:
Loot needs to be random.
You need to get rid of the greed mentality which loot base mmo created. If everyone is fighting over the same phat loot no freaking wonder mmo communities suck. Give character power back the the character.
It would be easy to make a game which greatly favours grouping. While it would result in more grouping, it would also result in fewer total players (meaning less money), as many players don't want to group - or grow tired with the hassle of grouping. The "MM" is optional for many players.
I have played WoW (off and on) since '05, and way too much of that time has been soloing. Not because I want to, but because grouping is awkward and inconvenient. My usual experience is to make friends with people, and gradually lose touch with them as they outlevel me.
I think that (in time) games will be made which greatly favour grouping, but the devs have got to get the 'must be everything to everyone' mentality out of their heads.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2