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.
I f you are job less or "eternal" student and have time to play whole day .. no problem, for all the rest of us SOLO is mondatory. And company have to decide if make 1 person happy or 99 others. I think you can guess.
About Swtor ... you can solo all up to max or level grouping all to max. It is your decision. You can have both and I do not understand why would you like to destroy game for 99 players.
The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design has been hailed as the way to go for busy player on the go, but I question if this was the best idea, or just the easiest to implement given the easily-attained consumer buy-in on the concept.
The only problem of "The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design" is a lack of challenge. It is simple to just put in a difficulty slider, or infinite dungeon progression, like D3, and the problem is solved.
D3 is instanced, challenging ... and you can totally choose to play it 100% solo, or 100% group. MMOs should learn from that.
The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design has been hailed as the way to go for busy player on the go, but I question if this was the best idea, or just the easiest to implement given the easily-attained consumer buy-in on the concept.
The only problem of "The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design" is a lack of challenge. It is simple to just put in a difficulty slider, or infinite dungeon progression, like D3, and the problem is solved.
D3 is instanced, challenging ... and you can totally choose to play it 100% solo, or 100% group. MMOs should learn from that.
I agree with this, and I would like solo players to have content in any game that I play. I just don't like that the rest of the big game wheel game has to rest on that axle of simplicity. Variation of activity, and meaningful differences in experience are something that I think of as a casualty of the model that has become prevalent.
So my question is: Do you think it's likely that they will learn from that, and someone therefore make a completely seamless SP + MM game where you can have both of those experiences from the same game? I know that you could always play a different game, so ceding that for now, what systems & features would be necessary to create such an inclusive game?
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
Coh had a lot of instances content that did that. It shall had world boss mobs whose level varied depending on your level that is it was always a purple mob whether you were 50 or 1.
I think they may be able to do something like that on a bigger scale.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
This justification is wearing thin for me. I have all of those responsibilities, and yet when I want to play an MMORPG I have to bracket time for that activity. The money-driven answer seemed to be: give people an MMORPG simulation that doesn't really match the actual gameplay, and their short available time will drive them to praise the truncated (and lightweight) experience. There is no complexity or depth to any of the game worlds because to allow that into the activity list leaves out the "play for 20 minutes," guy. You can't even have those possibilities in game because Bob Breadwinner will get invo envy and fucking quit I guess.
The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design has been hailed as the way to go for busy player on the go, but I question if this was the best idea, or just the easiest to implement given the easily-attained consumer buy-in on the concept. I ask you not to confuse my meaning. I am not saying that 5 hour Raid parking lots are utopia, but the progressive dumbing down and slimming out of features over time has reduced the genre to a state of elegant stupidity where games are a collection of clichés implemented as cost effectively as possible.
Its definitely a money driven decision. People were making the games they were passionate about, and then someone came along and made a more casual version and it drew many people away to that success. Not necessarily the devs, but more the publishers and investors and the devs had to follow.
Now that the whole themepark debacle is coming to an end, people can get back to making the games they love. There will always be a few casual games out there, but its obvious at this point that its becoming more and more risky to build that type of game when the market is full of similar options. Hopefully we can see a good balance of games of all sorts start to find success and we can all find something we enjoy.
The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design has been hailed as the way to go for busy player on the go, but I question if this was the best idea, or just the easiest to implement given the easily-attained consumer buy-in on the concept.
The only problem of "The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design" is a lack of challenge. It is simple to just put in a difficulty slider, or infinite dungeon progression, like D3, and the problem is solved.
D3 is instanced, challenging ... and you can totally choose to play it 100% solo, or 100% group. MMOs should learn from that.
I agree with this, and I would like solo players to have content in any game that I play. I just don't like that the rest of the big game wheel game has to rest on that axle of simplicity. Variation of activity, and meaningful differences in experience are something that I think of as a casualty of the model that has become prevalent.
So my question is: Do you think it's likely that they will learn from that, and someone therefore make a completely seamless SP + MM game where you can have both of those experiences from the same game? I know that you could always play a different game, so ceding that for now, what systems & features would be necessary to create such an inclusive game?
Let's examine closely of how D3 did it ... very simple .. by using different game mode. It has a solo mode, a 2-player mode, a 3-player mode and a 4-player mode.
and add to that, dungeons in each mode progress almost infinitely. None of these designs are infeasible in an instanced-based MMO. In fact, you can imagine each game mode is a separate game, except that they all use the same arts assests, combat engine and so on.
I don't think it is that difficult to do. It is just polished, implementation, and understand not to mix everything up in a big virtual world so you can control the experiences better.
Forced grouping, or "incentives for people to group" means that progression is locked behind that content.
Haha what? No... incentive to grouping is rewarding players for doing the harder activity, otherwise they won't do it at all. Players take the path of least resistance whether they're having fun with it or not, plenty of devs know this. It's basically a law of game design.
In DAoC you were encouraged to group but you could still progress solo. It just took longer, because it was easier.
If people are only grouping for the dangling carrot on the WoW treadmill, then they're really not interested in grouping.
This logic doesn't track.
People will generally do whatever is easiest and most benefitial whether it's fun or not. So you can't exactly track what is or isn't being enjoyed, you can only track what is being done by the player. Because whatever is easiest is what the most of them will do.
What you CAN track is that games that emphasize and reward socializing keep players around A LOT longer.
Comments
I f you are job less or "eternal" student and have time to play whole day .. no problem, for all the rest of us SOLO is mondatory. And company have to decide if make 1 person happy or 99 others. I think you can guess.
About Swtor ... you can solo all up to max or level grouping all to max. It is your decision. You can have both and I do not understand why would you like to destroy game for 99 players.
The only problem of "The heavily instanced, solo-centric, easy-park design" is a lack of challenge. It is simple to just put in a difficulty slider, or infinite dungeon progression, like D3, and the problem is solved.
D3 is instanced, challenging ... and you can totally choose to play it 100% solo, or 100% group. MMOs should learn from that.
I agree with this, and I would like solo players to have content in any game that I play. I just don't like that the rest of the big game wheel game has to rest on that axle of simplicity. Variation of activity, and meaningful differences in experience are something that I think of as a casualty of the model that has become prevalent.
So my question is: Do you think it's likely that they will learn from that, and someone therefore make a completely seamless SP + MM game where you can have both of those experiences from the same game? I know that you could always play a different game, so ceding that for now, what systems & features would be necessary to create such an inclusive game?
I think they may be able to do something like that on a bigger scale.
Its definitely a money driven decision. People were making the games they were passionate about, and then someone came along and made a more casual version and it drew many people away to that success. Not necessarily the devs, but more the publishers and investors and the devs had to follow.
Now that the whole themepark debacle is coming to an end, people can get back to making the games they love. There will always be a few casual games out there, but its obvious at this point that its becoming more and more risky to build that type of game when the market is full of similar options. Hopefully we can see a good balance of games of all sorts start to find success and we can all find something we enjoy.
Let's examine closely of how D3 did it ... very simple .. by using different game mode. It has a solo mode, a 2-player mode, a 3-player mode and a 4-player mode.
and add to that, dungeons in each mode progress almost infinitely. None of these designs are infeasible in an instanced-based MMO. In fact, you can imagine each game mode is a separate game, except that they all use the same arts assests, combat engine and so on.
I don't think it is that difficult to do. It is just polished, implementation, and understand not to mix everything up in a big virtual world so you can control the experiences better.
This logic doesn't track.
People will generally do whatever is easiest and most benefitial whether it's fun or not. So you can't exactly track what is or isn't being enjoyed, you can only track what is being done by the player. Because whatever is easiest is what the most of them will do.
What you CAN track is that games that emphasize and reward socializing keep players around A LOT longer.