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The SWTOR MMO Dance-Party, or why solo focused gameplay is inherently flawed for MMO's
sludgebeard
Member RarePosts: 788
Honestly, I cant see why anyone still agrees that solo is better. Every single MMO that has been released and focused on providing 90% solo content and 10% group content has just not done well.
Like I was looking at screenshots of SWTOR a minute ago and thinking to myself. Damn, this game world looks amazing. Then I went back and looked at the classes and im thinking, "Hey you know what, it not SWG, but these are a really cool mix of classes, the mechanics for all of them read like a heroic Star Wars character!"
But then I go and look at videos of the group content and what is it? Its watered down solo gameplay with text choice options based off a damn coin flip! WHY?!
Thats to me where the problems begin for all these new MMO's, they make it a solo-game first and a group game second. Its so fundamentally wrong and confusing. There is a giant world, you and thousands are connecting to, yet they focus on your personal experiance and no one else.
Its like opening up the biggest new nightclub in town, and inviting everyone to come out. But when they get to the club theres rails separating the dancefloor, so everyone has to boogie by themselves until they walk outside for a smoke break.
Think about that, when your playing in a socially inclined setting and all of a sudden the time you interact with others is only a 10% of your time out, are you really going to wanna come back to that nightclub?
I mean you could just stay home, save yourself the 15$ entrance fee and not ever have to be put into that awkward social scenario ever again.
Comments
Some days you want to go to the Sports Bar, drink beer with your friends and talk or watch 'Sports' (Football / Baseball / Basketball / whatever).
Some days you'd rather have a gathering at your place with the BBQ at the backyard and your TV on with whatever Sports.
Some days you'd rather watch the game in private with your family.
Gasp! It is as if people have a CHOICE now and they can play to their preference!
You like forced grouping? Play games that does that.
You like solo-focused gameplay? Play games that does that.
The only 'problem' I see is your insistence that people like what you like and play games that you like.
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
SWG combat was/is worse than SWTOR by a large margin. It wasn't fun or challenging outside of PvP.
Also, people solo'd in SWG. I didn't as the devs didn't create exciting worlds to just go out there solo and explore. They were mostly dull and drab.
The only reason SWG was a good experience was because of people. If you took the people away the game/world was not up to scratch.
For me it has to be a good game first.
I agree totally. On top of that many of the mmorpg era gamers have grown and don't have the time to play. Hopping on the internet to play games now comes in between coming home, eating, helping with homework, getting the kids ready for bed, and then squeezing in half an hour to play. Not everyone has the time to prepare a week ahead to raid for 4 or 5 hours, and developers know this and are giving players this discretion.
MMOs do not have to be about being in a party or group. There is still plenty of immersion in doing quests and killing on your own and being allowed the luxury of choosing when to join someone. Something as simple as crafting and selling items at an AH may be all that some may want from an mmorpg. Choices.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Funny, back in the day we had this thing called a single player game for those moments. Your logic takes the MM out of MMO.
Not only do today's MMO's cater to single player minded people more than anything, but they are designed for the single player solo guy who obviously feels too lonely playing single player games, so he does it in an MMO where he can see other people doing the same thing he is while he reads trolls chat for entertainment.
I remember back in the day when games would give group bonuses for experience. Omg, how crazy! To actually encourage group play and socializing in an MMO!! But nah, the games have not changed, it is all just an illusion caused by us wearing these rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
/rant off
At this point, after all the threads you've created and participated in on the topic, it's obviously because you simply don't want to see why.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Solo play is not even remotely the same as single play on so many levels. I get tired of people stereotyping this issue with false analogies.
You know what makes a game like FF14 special and why its still doing so well and growing in a world full of F2P trash? Group play, everything in that game from like live 10 on is heavy group play, dungeons or go home, you literally cannot progress your character unless your grouping with people for content, there is little to no meaningful solo play. You can mindlessly grind quests to 50 but to what end, all real progression stops at that point, job, main story, everything. At some point you have to catch up on the group content you skipped in order to really progress.
the solo game play crowd just doesn't stick with games very long, they grow bored, because they are just playing with themselves, so the only way to inject something new into their hobby is to jump to another game.
When your gaming with a core group of people everyday its the people that keep everything fresh, its not just about what you accomplish its what your guild an your members have accomplished.
Its as simple as that. Solo gameplay makes for shallow gaming. Shallow gaming doesn't hold players.
You can group with other people to do these solo affairs (granted it's not designed that way so the mobs themselves are easier), outside of the personal story, you can even affect their story (on quests) and they can affect yours. Most of the time people can choose to do it on their own, but just because a quest is marked solo doesn't mean you have to do it solo. If you want to grab someone and play along with them you can.
You yourself are putting up that barrier because you want to be challenged, you don't have to follow the games rules because you can solo. it just means the content is easy enough for a single person to do. You can even (if you are in a group) follow people into their personal story instance and watch the story play out, something you wouldn't normally see.
One of the best times i had in the game was when I had completed a personal story segment and then went back in with another person to see how they would handle the situation and what happened. Thats something I wouldn't get doing that "solo" quest by myself unless i made a new character, then the surprise of not knowing what choice would be made would be absent. Most MMO's I don't recall running the quest with another person being different. Here because I'm with that person I got the surprise of not knowing how each encounter with an NPC would turn out.
They try to encourage group play by giving you participation points (I think it's that tab that comes up with the purple star with a number underneath) whenever you make a choice (you get a little bit more when you win).
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Then go play a solo RPG and stop diluting the MMO market with shitty compromised games that try to do everything at once. No MMO should focus on solo player, because that goes against everything that the genre stands for.
I agree with Greenbow and the OP. MMOs have been crap ever since they focused on Single Player content when a person who wants a single player game can easily buy a single player game. MMOs were never meant for single player content. Yes MMOs should not be as group focused as FFXI was. That was a pain in the ass to always have a group. Vanilla WoW had a great balance in that while you COULD level solo it was more enjoyable in a group and sometimes faster when you did instances with friends. The problem is today MMOs are too solo player friendly all the time vs before automated LFD tools you needed to make friends and play required personal skills. Today its click a button and the game will do it FOR you. Yes that has hurt the genera.
Problem is People like you Never were cared for in MMOs before we ended up with countless MMOs. IF you wanted to solo between 1998 - 2009 ish time frame you bought a single player game. NOT an MMO. Yet Marketing people thought it would be great to get you people into an MMO. What has that done? Yes its cheapen the MMO experience for people like me who PLAY TO PLAY WITH OTHER PEOPLE. MMOs were DESIGNED for that. Single Player games were DESIGNED to be a solo experience. So why would you want to play an MMO which is by definition a Mutliplayer game. Yes people can argue about Definition all they want, Pre Massive Single Player games MMOs were about playing with other people.
Funny, I do not recall making an analogy in my post. But yea, keep thinking you are right and I am wrong just because you say so then run off without explaining why I am wrong.
Solo play not remotely the same as single player on so many levels? Seriously? All you need is a chat room in your single player game and it is already 50% there. While of course they are not exactly the same thing, saying not even remotely the same is quite the stretch.
Well said. Back in the day there was a clear line between solo (aka single player) games and MMO's. Nowadays, not so much. Today's MMO's are single player games with the option of multiplayer. How many times in FFXIV I have queued up for a dungeon where not one person communicated throughout the entire dungeon run, despite my efforts, I cannot count. It is so bad these days that even though you are playing a group dungeon, people are STILL playing it as if they were solo. Back in the day this would never happen. I have even heard of people complaining when people were trying to socialize because they just wanted to blast through the dungeon as quickly as possible.
I will never tell anyone how to play, but I sure as hell will continue calling for an old school style MMORPG experience made for people like ME, not YOU. You have enough of your kind of MMO's.
The bottom line here is two worlds have collided, whether you naysayers want to admit it or not.
Your checking my post history? Dont you find that a bit scary and weird?
Also if you could, please tell me why every solo-focused MMO post WoW has flopped and gone either F2P or just had sub number dwindle to nothing?
Tell me why Wildstar, Age Of Conan, and Star Trek Online all have terrible reviews and sub numbers from the player base and then ill start looking for a reason why I should like single player (Spoiler -I will not).
Oh look another person that thinks the sun rises and sets on their ass. Do be careful when you get off your high horse. Wouldn't want you fall and hurt yourself.
Since when has MMO meant you have to do it as a group? I'm pretty sure the term was meant to describe a game world in which many people play or coexist in. Besides the only people that want to see solo content gone from online games are anti-social people that are too inept to make friends of their own. They need the developers, and game to do it for them.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
I don't understand why people want an MMO to force others to group. Did they forget how flawed those MMOs were?
Why should fetch and deliver quests require a group? Is it too hard for a solo person to deliver a report, or package, to an NPC? I guess it requires 5 players to do that!
Should players be forced to wait 10+ minutes for a group, only to have a player join, then leave without any reason. Would this same group wait another 10+ minutes for a replacement, only to have someone else disconnect?
Are you willing to wait 30 minutes to an hour for someone else to catch up to the same quests that you have?
Did anyone remember Lotro's group quests? Did they also remember how annoying it was trying to find someone else on the exact same quest? It wasn't fun waiting for people to catch up. It was like a chain reaction that slowed progress. Fewer and fewer people were able to complete the quests because the population was high level already, thus making it harder for those trying to advance up in the chain. Not to mention that the mid-level zones were thinning out.
There are many reasons why open-world group content & quests were made for solo play.
MMOs have a done a pretty good job at balancing this. Solo play for the open-world, and group content for instanced dungeons/raids.
Amjoco : On top of that many of the mmorpg era gamers have grown and don't have the time to play. Hopping on the internet to play games now comes in between coming home, eating, helping with homework, getting the kids ready for bed, and then squeezing in half an hour to play. Not everyone has the time to prepare a week ahead to raid for 4 or 5 hours, and developers know this and are giving players this discretion.
This would ofc be true if no one was born after you...there are other people that at this stage in their life are just beginning to go online,wake up and don't be so selfish,the universe does not spin around you.
The true reason for dev's going the solo route is so that any simpleton can partake in making them $$$ and the excuse you often hear them say is the tired waiting for group crap.When the true reason is they have no confidence to group at all and have never even been in the group zones.
Except it doesn't.
The genre is about having multiple players sharing the same virtual space, on a massive scale.
Solo and group play can co-exist, while sharing the same virtual space. It's only the group-centric purists who want to force others to their style of playing.
Where does it stop and who defines the parameters for group play? Quests, dungeons, crafting, traveling, interacting, chatting, moving, etc..? Should people be unable to move their avatars until there is a 5 player group? Or how about a group needed for using the chat channels, or auction house, or purchasing? What are the limits? Extreme examples, but there's probably some people out there who would like this.
For the IP & gameplay?
For example, there is no single player marvel heroes action RPG (unless you count the ancient MUA 1 & 2) ... and they have almost 50 characters you can play.
If you like that sort of games, you have to play a MMO.
What $15 entrance fee? Most MMOs are F2P.
Isn't anyone suspecting that the heavy emphasis on solo content might have caused a lot of MMO's to go F2P? Since people can blow through solo content very quickly, thus see no reason to sub.
It's like Skyrim - It's a pure solo game. You pay once and you can play it forever. Would you expect people to pay a subscription to play Skyrim?
And, since so many MMO's offer so much solo content which is basically identical to other MMO's, as far as game design and mechanics are concerned... Why play it at all when you can play for example, Skyrim?
I wonder how a group focused MMO would actually do. I only know of one and it's still doing quite fine after 12 years *with subs*. Hint maybe?
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
Ah, there we go. The actual motive is revealed. it isn't to understand anything, it's to try and drive away people who don't enjoy what he does.
Of course, pretty much every game that follows his recomendation fails, but what's that compared to being right dammit!
reach the level cap? That's where all the group content is. I can't even find solo content after the 50 hours I reached level cap.
Unfortunately people just call those solo content tutorial nowadays. Maybe the OP is just too casual he never reach the level cap. Just look at the guy in the link I provide.
http://i.imgur.com/6b61WZF.png
That being said, it'll be a good idea people can just login a new character and start grouping immediately. I kind of like how some RvR game gives people up level so everyone can play together immediately.
^Yep.
And of course they want to force others to play like them. Which should tell you how popular their views really are, that they need to force other people into playing like them, and why so few developers cater to them.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Reputation for certain posts? I post on here maybe 2-3 times a month at best, and in top of that the last post I made was about how we should respect the changes of the MMORPG genre as a whole.
I don't understand why people need to polarize these discussions. I have an analogy and an opinion and people react like I'm taking their first born.
The best part is your citing me as being unable to accept the way thing a are but have yet to defend 90% solo content MMOs failures and why they should still be relevant.
Group content had how long? 6 years. Solo has now had 10. I think it's time to give group content another shot and break down your own inhibitions about it.