Here is the catch for me... you make mechanics and features that give solo content, fine. but I like the concept older content even raids can be soloed. the thrill for me was visitng older raids that took 25-40 people that was once the hate of poop socks basement dwellers and beat it solo. it gives the sense of power rush that makes me wanna progress if i hit a boss in an old raid that gives me a helluva time, i look for gear that will boost my stats against him before hard enrage.
Building solo dungeons in to content for me creates the sense this thing can be beat and i can't brag since by design you can it's made to be beat solo, since thats the way it was designed. were as old raids solo give me the sense i'm a god if i can pull it off.
Solo content is in every MMO it's called world quest. dungeons that were once for groups and i beat it solo are gravy and a testiment to my current power i have attained with gear and progression.
Most developers don't understand that. they think solo dungeons should be a standard feature for casuals.. i think solo dungeons long term take the sense of true achievemnt away long term.
I can compeltely understand this fact, as well as i have indulged in it myself afew times. Yet solo content can have as many methods and uses as anything else in the game. It can bbe used as story telling tools (rpers and such love this.), as somethign to do while you wait for a raid or group fill, places to showcase either class or perssonal story progression. Solo content is a good way of showcase class techniques, explain thigns about the class, and also a way of showing that your hero/character is not attached at the hip to others. Even in books as well as legends heros or characters would go off alone or in small groups for personal reasons, and come back changed. I wish that many of the more solo oriented activies like gathering, crafting,a nd such had some more group oriented aspects to them as welll.
The reason why i love to solo is because most people in mmo's are retarded and to stupid , drives me nuts and rather do it myself instead of seeking help and thats the only real reason and the other would have to be i can go afk when ever i want instead of making a person waste his time waiting for me to get back.
Originally posted by Yellowbeardd The reason why i love to solo is because most people in mmo's are retarded and to stupid , drives me nuts and rather do it myself instead of seeking help and thats the only real reason and the other would have to be i can go afk when ever i want instead of making a person waste his time waiting for me to get back.
Then why pay to play a game with such inferior creatures?
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
The reason why i love to solo is because most people in mmo's are retarded and to stupid , drives me nuts and rather do it myself instead of seeking help and thats the only real reason and the other would have to be i can go afk when ever i want instead of making a person waste his time waiting for me to get back.
The problem is that your solution just breeds the problem.
If a person never groups because they don't have to they won't work well in a team, If other people don't work well in a team people will not want to group with them. Group with enough people like that and you won't want to group because your sick of it. If people are sick of it they just don't group at all.
Then repeat the cycle.. Although part of this is because of the easy leveling curve and lack of death penalties, basically people level without actually learning how to play their char or they play them very poorly because of lack of practice (because it didn't matter they leveled anyways)
At least in EQ if you reached max level you had about a 90% certaintly that you at least knew the basics of your class (the missing 10% is for alts or twinks). Because in many cases you learned your role in a group because you had been doing it your entire leveling career.
So I give you a factual example of an MMO that DRASTICALY altered the experience it offered group based customers in order to cater to solo-ers more......and your response is "Yes but that doesn't count because it was REALLY done to speed up progression and make players more independant." ?
Sorry but your attempt at "frameing" the conversation falls flat. Duh, making the game more solo-oriented has the effect of speeding up progession and making players more independant.... it's a big part of the reason why alot of the guys who solo like to solo.... it's a distinction without a difference. It would kinda like me saying "Yeah they changed the game to make 99% of it REQUIRE being in a group....but they only did it to push more social interaction... so your complaints that they astro-turfed soloing in favor of grouping are invalid."
As far as loosing most of thier group oriented customers....... What do you EXPECT will happen when you change the orientation of your game to include LESS group content and LESS group freindly mechanics? It's kinda like a resturant who had a pretty even split between meat and vegtible dishes changing thier MENU to be 99% vegitarian and then wondering why all the customers who love steak and hamburger aren't eating there anymore.
The baseball and golf analogy is ENTIRELY apt because the rulesets and content design that are supportive of group-based play is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT then the rulesets and content design that are supportive of solo-based play, in fact they are CONTRADICTORY. If you design content that is supposed to be challenging for five 50th Level characters, then they same content is NOT going to work very well when one 50th Level player attempts it. When you design a combat mechanic that is dependant upon the interaction of multiple different characters...then the same mechanic is NOT going to work very well when you've only got 1 person there.
Yeah....you can probably design a play-space that CAN accomodate both baseball and golf... but it's going to be a pretty darn crappy baseball diamond when compared to something that was PURPOSE BUILT for Baseball...and didn't need to make all those design compromises to accomodate Golf....... and NO it's NOT a "Public Park".... it's a COMMERCIAL ENTERTAINMENT Product/Service that us "Groupers" are actualy PAYING FOR. So as consumers, we have every right to EXPECT a product is designed to accomodate our tastes.... or the producers of said product shouldn't be EXPECTING our business.
Here's what happens though, EVERY single time we find a game that is even MILDLY oriented toward our play-style... you solo-ers come in and WHINE to high heaven on the Forums about why the game isn't more "supportive of solo-play". It MAY not be you or Isabelle personaly that do that ....so I'm not blaming you or Isabelle, personaly for it.....but there is no shortage of soloers who do EXACTLY that. If the Dev's of that game are actually stupid enough to listen to them.... it ends up WRECKING the game for those of us who actualy ENJOYED that group orientation. So we end up leaving....finding another MMO that has a group orientation.... and you guys chase us there trying to WRECK that product for us too. I've seen that pattern repeated so many times it makes me want to pull my hair out.
Memorize this: NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of EVERY POSSIBLE play-style. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of SOLOING. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of Grouping/Cooperative play. Pick a game that is DESIGNED to suit your tastes and STOP trying to change every other game to be something it is NOT.
You Developers out there.... Pick a darn Focus and STICK WITH IT. Your not doing yourselves OR your customers any favors by trying to be all things to all people. No matter how clever you think you are.....you just AREN'T good enough to pull that off.... NO ONE IS. Telling someone "This isn't the game fo you." Is the ABSOLUTE BEST thing you can do as a business. It may cost you a sale today.... but you may just want to build another product some day.... a product that caters to different tastes. By trying to shoe-horn someone into a product today that really isn't designed with thier interests in mind, you burn ANY credability you might have had to sell them a different product in future.
/RANT
P.S. I've got nothing against "soloers". I want them to have plenty of games that are designed to be fun for them. But the design that makes a game fun for a soloer makes a game UNFUN for me (and those who share my tastes). Why is it so hard for some people to get that through thier skulls?
I blame people playing the games, back when i started everquest in 2001, sure solo was not easy and grouping was pretty much the only option, but it never felt like a hassle, grinding xp in "The overthere" for 6 hours in the same group was fun and peole where nice, and the game was huge and there where so much to explore.
People in say wow tend to be jerks that care more about there epeen dps / hps meters then being social and having fun, they treat the game like a job that needs to be done with as fast as possible, so in wow i solo like 95% of the time, unless raid or instance stuff is so damn nerfed even a rogue can solo stuff that used to be group mobs, no challenge at all anymore, played Age of conan for a bit recently and ouch i died a lot thanks to mobs doing more dmg if you pull 4 or so, sure it was frustrating but refreshing to.
You can stop every person making the "Multiplayer means you have to play in groups" statement in his tracks by saying "Well, I guess that means you are really into roleplaying too, right? I mean it says right there in the label, "Massively Multiplayer RolePlaying Game".;)
Play a role and participating in a group. Yes, of course. That's why I signed up.
Really if you're not into role-play games or multiplayer games in a massive format; what the fuck are you doing paying a subscription for a game to play all by yourself?
Your argument fails.
What in the world are you talking about? lmao!
He doesn't need to be "in a group" to be playing with others. As such, his argument isn't a fail at all, though likely incomprehensible in mysterious and mystical ways to, ummm, people afflicted with "stubborn" and binary thought processes.
I'm Primarily a grouper and prefer games that encourage and reward players who do decide to group. That doesnt mean I dont solo from time to time, and I am personally glad that games have made it an available option.
Like many "old school" Gamers I have grown up alongside my responsibilities and I dont always have time to invest hours and hours each day into gaming. That being said even if I only have 2 hours when I get the chance to log in. I would most likely be looking for a group oriented dungeon or group activity to do. Its only when I have very little time do I really solo.
I have watched games develop and change over the years. Becoming more automated, with way more advanced UIs, insane graphics and crazy combo systems or more complex combat then what we had in yesteryear. However even with all the advanced systems and great graphics. Games today seem a shallow shell of what their predecessors were. In reality though its the people I used to play the game with, the friends I made. The games back then encoured that style of play. Games these days simply dont do it as well.
Bonds were formed during those hours of gameplay, friendships made. I see nothing wrong with people wanting that again in MMOs. However the games are catering to the masses, and with the masses you earn profits.
I have found myself leaving games due to the lack of good communities. I will leave them nameless. However I personally feel if I wanted to play a game by myself.. There are much better SOLO games out there to play to fill that type of gameplay than MMOs.
Everyone obviously has their own opinions. These are mine.
The fact is that they shifted their focus to the primary gamers they provided entertainment to, which was soloers yet if that is true the game was already primarily a soloer playerbase. As such in this case shifting the focus to more solo content is not that soloers whined for it, but that the company choose to not waste money with content that would not be used as much. Also shifting the difficulty or amount of content of one type to allow for players to reach what they presieve as where they will have fun is only catering to solo play as a side effect trully. They create content that is solo to make getting to content that is for the most part group oriented faster paced, and so in some ways you can say that this actions s more catering to raiders then it is to soloers. Even if they made content as easy as it is now yet with groupng being the best method of getting to the end-game content it is merely catering to the end-game players with the side effect of focusing on group content or such.
Now which do you think came frist though the playerbase being more solo oriented, or the changes to make the game have more solo content? From my experinces in the game till i left, as well as what i have heard from players that played from beta to now, the playerbase has always been quite solo oriented. THe fact of which came first is vastly more important, then if the game is catering to the soloers or not, sicne if your game is already mostly solo players catering to them is good for business. Now in wow alot of players do end-game content weither that be arena, raiding, bgs, or what have you, and it is seen as the actual start of the game. As such catering to pushingg a design that deals with maximzing your progression regardless of soloing or grouping, is about catering to these end-game players not solo or group players as the trip to max/end-game content is irrelevent to these players.
Now where it is with finding games with more orientation to group or not play, i have to ask this does the end-game change to a more solo or group playstyle. Do they make the end-game more solo or des it remain the same? The reason i ask this is that in games like rifts, wow, l2, and such where the leveling has been streamlined to make solo or power-leveling better or faster, the end-game remain group oriented in these games. So do you blame the side effect or more soloing or such content that came from a desire to get to end game faster, or do you blame the fact that the end-game players want to get to end-game as fast as possible no matter the route they have to take. I mean why would a soloer who wants to supposedly wants to play alone, want to speed level to max levle content where most of their time is spent in groups. Most soloers do not want to have easy content just as much as a gropers do nto want that, but they do want that ability to enjoy that laystyle, the issue is the soloers are being blamed for the fact that end-game players use their playstyle to reach their prefered gaming (as well as makie the trip as fast as possible.). In many games the focus eithher slides to end-game content, or it has always been end-game content, while the fact of the amount of players in the world to do group content dwindles as players rush to the end-game content , and many of these end-game players are actually the ones that complain about the difficulty or need of groups in content since these facts cupled with the fact prior make getting to end-game slower and slower.
Both sides of the playstyles have room in mmos to play so long as the focus of where you have fun in the mmo remains off of end-game, but that wil not happen since that is the main perception of the playerbase. Mmos were created to be living worlds that players could live in, interact with other players while online, yet the focus has gone to really that you need to group at end game while you solo in the begining for speed. This focus on the end-game of mmos being wherre you have fun that makes players seek out a way of progressing to it as fast as possible is the issue and true blame for much of the problems of mmos, not solo or group playstyles as they exist in equality till the "end-game is where you have fun" mind set came about. Even in wow you could solo up to max level or group with large amounts of group as wel as solo content, but once the focus was set to the end-game of it, and players sought to get there as fast as possible then you see whines/cries for nerfs to content as well as quickening of the pace of progression.
Love this article and agree 100%. I am a solo player just like her. She is absolutely correct that you can be a solo player and enjoy grouping. I play alone 95% of the time but will group if asked. Even though I play solo my favorite time was in WOW BC in AV as a healer. Although I hate forced grouping I loved vanilla RIFT automatically joining players together to fight invasions. It was as much fun as AV. Now most of the time you are kicked out of the group as soon as you are joined - by hardcore groupers.
Love this article and agree 100%. I am a solo player just like her. She is absolutely correct that you can be a solo player and enjoy grouping. I play alone 95% of the time but will group if asked. Even though I play solo my favorite time was in WOW BC in AV as a healer. Although I hate forced grouping I loved vanilla RIFT automatically joining players together to fight invasions. It was as much fun as AV. Now most of the time you are kicked out of the group as soon as you are joined - by hardcore groupers.
Soloers do not ruin mmos, it is entitled idiots that do that (they fall on both sides of the solo/grup boundary though one could make a decent argument the entitled solo idiot ruins the hardcore elements of an MMO while the entitled group idiot does not give any consideration towards the solo/casual demographic) and as such any lynch mobs that form should go for entitled players only, in a true MMO there is room for every type of player except entitled ones because they somehow always think they deserve more than the game is offering them.
Note:
True MMO= sandbox with themepark elements (not the other way around, allow progression via quests, raids, etc in zones which change very little from player actions but offer a safe haven from pvp and in the sandbox areas you have pvp, world affected by player actions, towns, ruins, debris from battles, territory claiming either of static units of land or dynamic amounts of land, etc, player caravans between player towns, bandits/pirates, armies/fleets engaging in death struggles).
I totally agree. I'm working full time, finishing up my masters, and mentoring/tutoring students. I don't have much free time - and definitely not a fixed schedule of free time. So I spend time solo'ing at wacky times like 4am when i can't sleep. But I love large groups. I loved AV back before it was a rush to the other side - when you would log off from a battle at 10am and it was still going on when you came back on at 2. And RIFT was like AV with a dollup of ice cream on top. Your leveling, and wait - all heck just broke loose. You start trying to close the rift closest to you, a few players riding by stop by to help you, and before you know it - you are part of a raid 30+ strong on the way to take out the rift boss. That's exciting. Playing with a fixed raid group, where everyone knows where to stand, exactly what to do and when, and just follows the script - yeah - not my cup of tea - I can do crap like that at work.
Memorize this: NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of EVERY POSSIBLE play-style. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of SOLOING. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of Grouping/Cooperative play. Pick a game that is DESIGNED to suit your tastes and STOP trying to change every other game to be something it is NOT.
You Developers out there.... Pick a darn Focus and STICK WITH IT. Your not doing yourselves OR your customers any favors by trying to be all things to all people. No matter how clever you think you are.....you just AREN'T good enough to pull that off.... NO ONE IS. Telling someone "This isn't the game fo you." Is the ABSOLUTE BEST thing you can do as a business. It may cost you a sale today.... but you may just want to build another product some day.... a product that caters to different tastes. By trying to shoe-horn someone into a product today that really isn't designed with thier interests in mind, you burn ANY credability you might have had to sell them a different product in future.
Riddle me this: how does your philosophy mesh with me, someone with an inconsistent schedule, who enjoys group content but also wants to be able to log in and do something fun quickly and without inconveniencing anyone if I have to suddenly get off the computer? The only way to play in those circumstances is solo, because teams take a while to put together, and I'm not going to be the guy who has to leave / afk in the middle of a dungeon.
MMOs need both solo content and groupt content, because NOBODY is strictly a group player or a solo player. The trick is balancing those playstyles. As for "no game can be supportive of both grouping and cooperative play": GW1. If you're waiting for an example of a persistent MMO, wait a few months so I can tell you GW2.
Comments
I can compeltely understand this fact, as well as i have indulged in it myself afew times. Yet solo content can have as many methods and uses as anything else in the game. It can bbe used as story telling tools (rpers and such love this.), as somethign to do while you wait for a raid or group fill, places to showcase either class or perssonal story progression. Solo content is a good way of showcase class techniques, explain thigns about the class, and also a way of showing that your hero/character is not attached at the hip to others. Even in books as well as legends heros or characters would go off alone or in small groups for personal reasons, and come back changed. I wish that many of the more solo oriented activies like gathering, crafting,a nd such had some more group oriented aspects to them as welll.
The reason why i love to solo is because most people in mmo's are retarded and to stupid , drives me nuts and rather do it myself instead of seeking help and thats the only real reason and the other would have to be i can go afk when ever i want instead of making a person waste his time waiting for me to get back.
Then why pay to play a game with such inferior creatures?
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
The problem is that your solution just breeds the problem.
If a person never groups because they don't have to they won't work well in a team, If other people don't work well in a team people will not want to group with them. Group with enough people like that and you won't want to group because your sick of it. If people are sick of it they just don't group at all.
Then repeat the cycle.. Although part of this is because of the easy leveling curve and lack of death penalties, basically people level without actually learning how to play their char or they play them very poorly because of lack of practice (because it didn't matter they leveled anyways)
At least in EQ if you reached max level you had about a 90% certaintly that you at least knew the basics of your class (the missing 10% is for alts or twinks). Because in many cases you learned your role in a group because you had been doing it your entire leveling career.
@Asuran24
So I give you a factual example of an MMO that DRASTICALY altered the experience it offered group based customers in order to cater to solo-ers more......and your response is "Yes but that doesn't count because it was REALLY done to speed up progression and make players more independant." ?
Sorry but your attempt at "frameing" the conversation falls flat. Duh, making the game more solo-oriented has the effect of speeding up progession and making players more independant.... it's a big part of the reason why alot of the guys who solo like to solo.... it's a distinction without a difference. It would kinda like me saying "Yeah they changed the game to make 99% of it REQUIRE being in a group....but they only did it to push more social interaction... so your complaints that they astro-turfed soloing in favor of grouping are invalid."
As far as loosing most of thier group oriented customers....... What do you EXPECT will happen when you change the orientation of your game to include LESS group content and LESS group freindly mechanics? It's kinda like a resturant who had a pretty even split between meat and vegtible dishes changing thier MENU to be 99% vegitarian and then wondering why all the customers who love steak and hamburger aren't eating there anymore.
The baseball and golf analogy is ENTIRELY apt because the rulesets and content design that are supportive of group-based play is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT then the rulesets and content design that are supportive of solo-based play, in fact they are CONTRADICTORY. If you design content that is supposed to be challenging for five 50th Level characters, then they same content is NOT going to work very well when one 50th Level player attempts it. When you design a combat mechanic that is dependant upon the interaction of multiple different characters...then the same mechanic is NOT going to work very well when you've only got 1 person there.
Yeah....you can probably design a play-space that CAN accomodate both baseball and golf... but it's going to be a pretty darn crappy baseball diamond when compared to something that was PURPOSE BUILT for Baseball...and didn't need to make all those design compromises to accomodate Golf....... and NO it's NOT a "Public Park".... it's a COMMERCIAL ENTERTAINMENT Product/Service that us "Groupers" are actualy PAYING FOR. So as consumers, we have every right to EXPECT a product is designed to accomodate our tastes.... or the producers of said product shouldn't be EXPECTING our business.
Here's what happens though, EVERY single time we find a game that is even MILDLY oriented toward our play-style... you solo-ers come in and WHINE to high heaven on the Forums about why the game isn't more "supportive of solo-play". It MAY not be you or Isabelle personaly that do that ....so I'm not blaming you or Isabelle, personaly for it.....but there is no shortage of soloers who do EXACTLY that. If the Dev's of that game are actually stupid enough to listen to them.... it ends up WRECKING the game for those of us who actualy ENJOYED that group orientation. So we end up leaving....finding another MMO that has a group orientation.... and you guys chase us there trying to WRECK that product for us too. I've seen that pattern repeated so many times it makes me want to pull my hair out.
Memorize this: NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of EVERY POSSIBLE play-style. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of SOLOING. NOT EVERY game needs to be supportive of Grouping/Cooperative play. Pick a game that is DESIGNED to suit your tastes and STOP trying to change every other game to be something it is NOT.
You Developers out there.... Pick a darn Focus and STICK WITH IT. Your not doing yourselves OR your customers any favors by trying to be all things to all people. No matter how clever you think you are.....you just AREN'T good enough to pull that off.... NO ONE IS. Telling someone "This isn't the game fo you." Is the ABSOLUTE BEST thing you can do as a business. It may cost you a sale today.... but you may just want to build another product some day.... a product that caters to different tastes. By trying to shoe-horn someone into a product today that really isn't designed with thier interests in mind, you burn ANY credability you might have had to sell them a different product in future.
/RANT
P.S. I've got nothing against "soloers". I want them to have plenty of games that are designed to be fun for them. But the design that makes a game fun for a soloer makes a game UNFUN for me (and those who share my tastes). Why is it so hard for some people to get that through thier skulls?
I blame people playing the games, back when i started everquest in 2001, sure solo was not easy and grouping was pretty much the only option, but it never felt like a hassle, grinding xp in "The overthere" for 6 hours in the same group was fun and peole where nice, and the game was huge and there where so much to explore.
People in say wow tend to be jerks that care more about there epeen dps / hps meters then being social and having fun, they treat the game like a job that needs to be done with as fast as possible, so in wow i solo like 95% of the time, unless raid or instance stuff is so damn nerfed even a rogue can solo stuff that used to be group mobs, no challenge at all anymore, played Age of conan for a bit recently and ouch i died a lot thanks to mobs doing more dmg if you pull 4 or so, sure it was frustrating but refreshing to.
What in the world are you talking about? lmao!
He doesn't need to be "in a group" to be playing with others. As such, his argument isn't a fail at all, though likely incomprehensible in mysterious and mystical ways to, ummm, people afflicted with "stubborn" and binary thought processes.
Wherever you go, there you are.
I'm Primarily a grouper and prefer games that encourage and reward players who do decide to group. That doesnt mean I dont solo from time to time, and I am personally glad that games have made it an available option.
Like many "old school" Gamers I have grown up alongside my responsibilities and I dont always have time to invest hours and hours each day into gaming. That being said even if I only have 2 hours when I get the chance to log in. I would most likely be looking for a group oriented dungeon or group activity to do. Its only when I have very little time do I really solo.
I have watched games develop and change over the years. Becoming more automated, with way more advanced UIs, insane graphics and crazy combo systems or more complex combat then what we had in yesteryear. However even with all the advanced systems and great graphics. Games today seem a shallow shell of what their predecessors were. In reality though its the people I used to play the game with, the friends I made. The games back then encoured that style of play. Games these days simply dont do it as well.
Bonds were formed during those hours of gameplay, friendships made. I see nothing wrong with people wanting that again in MMOs. However the games are catering to the masses, and with the masses you earn profits.
I have found myself leaving games due to the lack of good communities. I will leave them nameless. However I personally feel if I wanted to play a game by myself.. There are much better SOLO games out there to play to fill that type of gameplay than MMOs.
Everyone obviously has their own opinions. These are mine.
The fact is that they shifted their focus to the primary gamers they provided entertainment to, which was soloers yet if that is true the game was already primarily a soloer playerbase. As such in this case shifting the focus to more solo content is not that soloers whined for it, but that the company choose to not waste money with content that would not be used as much. Also shifting the difficulty or amount of content of one type to allow for players to reach what they presieve as where they will have fun is only catering to solo play as a side effect trully. They create content that is solo to make getting to content that is for the most part group oriented faster paced, and so in some ways you can say that this actions s more catering to raiders then it is to soloers. Even if they made content as easy as it is now yet with groupng being the best method of getting to the end-game content it is merely catering to the end-game players with the side effect of focusing on group content or such.
Now which do you think came frist though the playerbase being more solo oriented, or the changes to make the game have more solo content? From my experinces in the game till i left, as well as what i have heard from players that played from beta to now, the playerbase has always been quite solo oriented. THe fact of which came first is vastly more important, then if the game is catering to the soloers or not, sicne if your game is already mostly solo players catering to them is good for business. Now in wow alot of players do end-game content weither that be arena, raiding, bgs, or what have you, and it is seen as the actual start of the game. As such catering to pushingg a design that deals with maximzing your progression regardless of soloing or grouping, is about catering to these end-game players not solo or group players as the trip to max/end-game content is irrelevent to these players.
Now where it is with finding games with more orientation to group or not play, i have to ask this does the end-game change to a more solo or group playstyle. Do they make the end-game more solo or des it remain the same? The reason i ask this is that in games like rifts, wow, l2, and such where the leveling has been streamlined to make solo or power-leveling better or faster, the end-game remain group oriented in these games. So do you blame the side effect or more soloing or such content that came from a desire to get to end game faster, or do you blame the fact that the end-game players want to get to end-game as fast as possible no matter the route they have to take. I mean why would a soloer who wants to supposedly wants to play alone, want to speed level to max levle content where most of their time is spent in groups. Most soloers do not want to have easy content just as much as a gropers do nto want that, but they do want that ability to enjoy that laystyle, the issue is the soloers are being blamed for the fact that end-game players use their playstyle to reach their prefered gaming (as well as makie the trip as fast as possible.). In many games the focus eithher slides to end-game content, or it has always been end-game content, while the fact of the amount of players in the world to do group content dwindles as players rush to the end-game content , and many of these end-game players are actually the ones that complain about the difficulty or need of groups in content since these facts cupled with the fact prior make getting to end-game slower and slower.
Both sides of the playstyles have room in mmos to play so long as the focus of where you have fun in the mmo remains off of end-game, but that wil not happen since that is the main perception of the playerbase. Mmos were created to be living worlds that players could live in, interact with other players while online, yet the focus has gone to really that you need to group at end game while you solo in the begining for speed. This focus on the end-game of mmos being wherre you have fun that makes players seek out a way of progressing to it as fast as possible is the issue and true blame for much of the problems of mmos, not solo or group playstyles as they exist in equality till the "end-game is where you have fun" mind set came about. Even in wow you could solo up to max level or group with large amounts of group as wel as solo content, but once the focus was set to the end-game of it, and players sought to get there as fast as possible then you see whines/cries for nerfs to content as well as quickening of the pace of progression.
Soloers do not ruin mmos, it is entitled idiots that do that (they fall on both sides of the solo/grup boundary though one could make a decent argument the entitled solo idiot ruins the hardcore elements of an MMO while the entitled group idiot does not give any consideration towards the solo/casual demographic) and as such any lynch mobs that form should go for entitled players only, in a true MMO there is room for every type of player except entitled ones because they somehow always think they deserve more than the game is offering them.
Note:
True MMO= sandbox with themepark elements (not the other way around, allow progression via quests, raids, etc in zones which change very little from player actions but offer a safe haven from pvp and in the sandbox areas you have pvp, world affected by player actions, towns, ruins, debris from battles, territory claiming either of static units of land or dynamic amounts of land, etc, player caravans between player towns, bandits/pirates, armies/fleets engaging in death struggles).
I totally agree. I'm working full time, finishing up my masters, and mentoring/tutoring students. I don't have much free time - and definitely not a fixed schedule of free time. So I spend time solo'ing at wacky times like 4am when i can't sleep. But I love large groups. I loved AV back before it was a rush to the other side - when you would log off from a battle at 10am and it was still going on when you came back on at 2. And RIFT was like AV with a dollup of ice cream on top. Your leveling, and wait - all heck just broke loose. You start trying to close the rift closest to you, a few players riding by stop by to help you, and before you know it - you are part of a raid 30+ strong on the way to take out the rift boss. That's exciting. Playing with a fixed raid group, where everyone knows where to stand, exactly what to do and when, and just follows the script - yeah - not my cup of tea - I can do crap like that at work.
Riddle me this: how does your philosophy mesh with me, someone with an inconsistent schedule, who enjoys group content but also wants to be able to log in and do something fun quickly and without inconveniencing anyone if I have to suddenly get off the computer? The only way to play in those circumstances is solo, because teams take a while to put together, and I'm not going to be the guy who has to leave / afk in the middle of a dungeon.
MMOs need both solo content and groupt content, because NOBODY is strictly a group player or a solo player. The trick is balancing those playstyles. As for "no game can be supportive of both grouping and cooperative play": GW1. If you're waiting for an example of a persistent MMO, wait a few months so I can tell you GW2.