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Soloing in MMOs
Warning: poorly written and fragmented.
In my opinion, one of the major factors (not the only factor by far) of deciding if a MMO leaves a lasting impression has to do with how easy it is to solo.
Traditionally, let's take EQ for example; not the first but one of the first widely popular MMOs (sorry, I never played UO). Although in retrospect EQ seems a horrible game with horrible developers, I can't deny that I had some awesomely fun times in it. In comparison, when I look back on games WoW and other newer age MMOs (MMOs have become somewhat like a flavor of the month, except instead of month it's years; big money to be found) I don't have nearly as many memorable moments.
Now this could all actually be because the first MMOs I played (EQ and DAoC) were the ones I had the most fun in, but I think it's actually because of the importance of grouping and elements of danger.
In EQ you were thrown into your little newbie area with the normal assortment of harmless rats and bats like almost all MMOs, but you would quickly grow up from those and go to east commons (taking a character that starts in freeport as an example) although at first you are completely capable of handling your foes one on one, slowly you notice you're gaining xp slower and slower, and fights getting closer and closer. You have to group (yes I know people solo to 60 and such, but these required an overpowered class, a lot of free time, and a lot of knowledge of the game).
Also as you move into areas such as oasis, there is a great element that is missing in most modern MMOs. You are to kill crocodiles on the coast because that's what suits your level best. What level are they, 10-13ish? Okay. So say you want to adventure around. You may be instantly killed by a sand giant or one of those grim reaper type guys. Leave them to the much higher level people in the zone. Learn you place.
What's my point? In modern MMOs like WoW, you start of able to solo, and most of the classes are able to solo to at least 25-30ish if not all the way to 60! People only group up for elite quests, and as soon as they are finished they disperse. In addition to this, your levels are hand fed to you. Every zone seems to scale nicely, starting with levels a little higher than the last zone and going up toward the low end of the next zone.
Did you ever have a half elf in EQ? Did you ever try to leave the city through the forest! Holy crap, you had to run along the zone wall, and for god's sake don't do it at night. Sure it was hard, sure it was frustrating, BUT IT WAS EXCITING. Having to meander all over the world through areas which could insta kill you to get to your best suited leveling area was an ADVENTURE.
All I'm trying to say, but failing miserably at due to fatigue, is that developers shouldn't be afraid to make games difficult. By making it difficult, people are more likely to form groups and friendships and learn more quickly how to properly play their class. I, for one, hope soloing is very very hard in Warhammer because these are MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER games, if you can do it by yourself, why is it in an MMO?
Make the world feel epic and dangerous, make the player scared to be alone in an area. Make people depend upon others and they will value others rather than killsteal, laugh and call them noobs. People in MMOs are getting spoiled and selfish; and overcoming challenges is a great way to have fun and build pride and brotherhood.
Well this has to be my most poorly written rant ever, I am tired and apologize. I just feel that the whole MMO industry could use a big kick in the face as far as difficulty. But I did like one sentence in particular, which I would like to now make the centerpiece.
"...if you can do it by yourself, why is it in an Massively Multiplayer Online game?"
Edit: In retrospect I justify posting on this board rather than others because WAR is the MMO I care most about, and I really want it done right and want to hear what other people looking forward to WAR think of these concepts.
Comments
Oh really, and what happens when nobody is there to group with?
lets say i want to play at 3 am, and only a few people are on. What am i supposed to do then?
Wow is a good example, try to find a group/other play to group with and finish some quests. Good luck, especially in the night.
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
i agree.
).
WoW is what i call "EXTREMLY EASY"..
and the developers got even more lazy when they made raid instances in wow..(its clicking 3-4 buttons per class)
leveling is more like grinding, not finding an easy mob, you can take down, its just.. the same.
but Warhammer online, as far as i know, is pretty much based on PvP. which can be very fun, because its always new how the players you meet do against you(poorly, lousy or like a professional
and i surly hope they make HUGE areas where you have to find certain things, to actually go out and "live the map", or go on an adventure with ya pals(finding THE ONE RING, or something equal..).
You could solo in DAOC, it was just slower. You could also group with lower level players to help them out. Another thing you can't do in WoW because of the aggro radius.
I play more than my RL friend, and I have 2 60's, a 50+, a 40+, and 4 30+ characters to his 60 and 40.
I enjoy grouping but it starts to get more annoying and tedious when you start to get over 10 people involved. Mostly because of clashing personalities and ego's, but also because of waiting for everyone to show up. Not to mention being screwed by having a bad class mix.
So I would aim for a 5-10 person range with the group size, and pve content mostly gearing for 1-10 people. Raiding is really unappealing to me, 1 drop for 20+ people? Yeah that's not that fun.
In a PvE-only game there is little point in soloing. In a game with both PvE and PvP a player might choose to solo the PvE part to get to the PvP part. If you want to fight against human intelligence then you are going to have to play a MMO of some sort, but just because I want to fight against human intelligence does that mean I must be forced to endure days or weeks of 'leet-kiddy-conversations' to get to the PvP? There should be the option in any game world for a player to get to the PvP part by multiple means (solo, grouping or a combination of both).
I agree.
To an extent.
You don't want to make an MMO "easy". You want to make sure that when it comes time to do a quest, that that quest takes real chutzpah (sp?) to finish. You want those quests to require groups, maybe even a raid, because it's that damn tough.
But what if you can't get a group no matter what? Sit in town and mope, and spam LFG messages until the few who are on have you on perma-iggy?
Soloing is basically what you do when you can't get a group going, your guild went to bed, etc. You do not always do it because it's what you want. Sometimes you do it because that's all there is to do.
EQ is a good example. It's one thing to say, "Okay, this part of East Commons? Dangerous. Don't go near that part without a group." It's another to say, "You can't level up, quest, farm mats, or do anything without a group in any zone except the newbie one." By forcing people to group to do anything after a certain point, you force the game to only be played at certain times, by certain people. When a game comes along that even remotely promises to do otherwise (like, oh, I don't know, WOW did), then people depart in droves to that game. Not all of us have normal lives or schedules to game with others.
WOW's got that problem now with the end-game, because raiding is pretty much all there is, and raiding absolutely demand prime-time hours. You ever tried getting together a group, much less a raid, at 7:30 AM CST on a Monday morning? If you haven't, allow me to save you some time: you can't, and it's useless to spend month after month trying. People play games at certain times, then they get up and go to regular jobs. Those of us on graveyard shifts get the shaft there.
So what's left? Soloing. I never do it because I like it; I do it because I have nothing else I can get done. I can level up some, farm mats, play with the AH a bit, etc.
There's nothing wrong with making a game where some parts are difficult. But if you intend to say that an MMO has to be group-only after a certain level, no thanks. I'll wait for a game that gives me more options than that.
of your friends are online.
And i think you can do something in WAR solo, at least in the pve part of it.
In the pvp part it could be much more difficulty, especially without any stealth classes.
of your friends are online.
And i think you can do something in WAR solo, at least in the pve part of it.
In the pvp part it could be much more difficulty, especially without any stealth classes.
Err, sorry again about my original post. Now that I'm not posting this at 4:00 AM I should be a lot more concise...
What I originally set out to say with my post is that soloing is okay. It's fine for it to be possible. But I don't want it to be preferable. Soloing should never be a better choice than grouping if a group is available. I don't mind making progress on your own, but I think that a person soloing should think to themselves "this would be a lot better if I could get a group." I do not find this to be true in WoW.
As far as making the world dangerous, I didn't mean make it so that you can only level in one place. I was mainly complaining of the linearity of games like WoW and think that there should be plenty of places to hunt, but that maybe it will be a little dangerous or hard to get to the one you prefer. Zones convieniently set next to each other linearly with ascending level is boring.
As far as playing at 3 AM and no one being on, maybe it's a sign you should go to sleep ;p
Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
I've given up on grouping in WoW. Too many whiners and a-holes, and I don't want to spend my limited game time waiting to find groups, waiting while they're AFK... I don't want to depend on other people or other people to depend on me.
WoW is soloable by any class (maybe not any build), so was DAoC. I expect WAR to provide the same ability. I expect it to be easy for the first few levels, to allow players to learn the game and not scare them away. Challenging later on? Sure, as long as the rewards match the challenge. I don't want to spend 5 minutes fighting a mob, 5 minutes resting for 0.1% of my level on the grounds that I'm supposed to be grouping.
A good game would scale instances to the party or player's level (DAoC now has that with task dungeons, but it's still grinding and boring)
Game developers understand that, to reach a wide audience (translated into more $), you need to appeal to different types of gamers, so you'll only want to alienate soloers if you're aiming for a niche game which WAR doesn't seem to be.
Public quests will bring a new dimension to grouping. You don't have to wait for other people to do something and it will scale at least part of your reward based on the amount of work you've done, but it's still done while working with others.
I disagree about scaling. You've already discovered why it fails.
Anarchy Online, City of Heros/Villains...what do they have in common? They're boring and repetitive because of scaled missions. I didn't know about the DAoC now has scaling, but you seem to have already found out that it's boring.
I also agree with you that public quests should really allieviate most of the problems that have been brought up here, I'm really looking forward to it.
And what I think is that no game should leave solo players behind or restrain soloing to something-you-do-when-you-can't-find-a-group. I'd like for it to be an viable alternative to grouping.
As for the non-linearity, I think you're out of luck on WAR, they seem to take it to an extreme if you look up some of the E3 movies you'll see what I mean. They basically pair up wach opposing factions in neighboring zones, gradually moving into higher and higher zones until you eventually reach your capital and then strive to take the other faction's capital. It's probably too early to say, and we don't know how each coupled faction's zone will be connected to the rest of the world, but it does look like the zones will be very defined
It's boring because it's not that innovative over fixed dungeons.
Think about it, would it make WoW instances more boring if you could get into, say, scarlet library at 15, with level 15 mobs and level 15 rewards? I don't think it would change much or make it more or less boring, scaling is not what makes it boring.
DDO did it slightly better, in my opinion, by allowing parties to scale the dungeon for their group. You can choose a difficulty level for your party, scaling the monster levels, abilities and rewards accordingly. If you want an easy solo run, choose that, you want a challenging, rewarding raid, you can, and in the same dungeon (instanced of course).
I don't see a downside to allowing me, for example to go into Molten Core and select "easy, single player mode", it would probably have non-elite level 60 mobs, and the drops would either look like world drops or have 1/20th the drop rate (to compensate for the fact that I don't have 20 people in my group). I could experience the content, and people would still be able to brag that they killed Ragnaros or whatever boss mob on "Hardcore" difficulty, and for the same amount of work, I'd have the same equipment that others do.
Hey you could even add another option "normal level, shared instance". So if you're one of those who want to encounter other people in the dungeon, you'll all be in the same instance
Speanking of DDO, you have a good example of agame which pretty much spits on soloing. Only 1 or 2 classes can try soloing and it's not very rewarding to do so. That, plus doing the same dungeons 10 times in a row pretty much killed what was otherwise a nice game. The dungeons were very well designed, but even the best-designed dungeon gets boring the 20th time around.
That's okay. I work a 7 PM to 7 AM shift. I know what it can do to the mind...
There are places it is very true. Mages and warlocks get a fairly early quest that takes them into a rather dangerous zone to do quests to obtain some nice gear. That learning curve is steep there. It happens in a few other places, too.
The closer to end-game, the harder it gets to solo well. When I was farming Winterspring, I jumped into the first groups I got; it made grinding for mats and Timbermaw faction far easier.
But I agree with the sentiment: soloing should be feasible, though somewhat tougher, to make sure that grouping always looks better in comparison. There were places in WOW that that just wasn't true, especially of bad PUGs (i.e. people who couldn't learn to coordinate themselves to do better as a group than as an individual).
I'm not sure I agree here. Open zones is just plain great; WOW got that part right. The ability to just walk anywhere you want, at any time, is pretty swank.
Now, some more wildlife to make life interesting here and there wouldn't be a terrible idea...
Or that I just got home from a 12-hour shift and would like to play the game.
But when I'm awake and everyone else is sleeping or going in to work, that's a bit harder than normal.
I think you have very valid concerns here, and that nobody should dismiss the idea that MMOs are being dumbed down. In many ways, they are, because the best way to ensure the largest playerbase is to bring the general difficulty of the game down to the lowest common denomenator.
I myself am not asking for "easy" in MMO, just more options. The difference between difficulty and accessibilty is that if something is difficult, it can be eventually overcome with self-improvement; if something is inaccessible, then you can be the most skilled person in all the game, but if you haven't got the actual time or capability to get to something, it doesn't matter how good you are, you still can't do something.
What I seek are the most options in an MMO, as perfectly balanced as they can be with each other (so that no one thing - PVP, raiding, solo/small-group, crafting, etc. - is more or less important than anything else. Make it more difficult as you go on, just make sure that there's plenty of different things to do over time, and that you have robust PVP in there for a real end-game.
I personally like the option of being able to
solo. Id like for instance to be able to scout around, exploring, while questing
on my own. Some things are just not the same when grouping, unless your group
consist of people playing for the very same reasons as you (wanting to explore,
wanting to quest or wanting to pvp).
For instance in Guild Wars, I liked to once in
a while jump out of the questing, and pause, to look around and let the
beautiful landscapes and areas amaze me. But this would also cause me to be
left behind from the group, in many cases. So I ended up with grouping with the
NPC hencemen instead, most of the time.
Only once did I truly experience to group with
a player who played like me, and those were the best times in Guild Wars.
I like grouping aswell, but I certainly also
like soloing, as grouping is less relaxed most of the times, as it is rare that
everyone in a group game with the same motivation.. some want loot, others want
to complete quests, there are those who want to gain exp, and then again, there
are those who are just looking for a social time with other players.
I myself , find that I offen go for questing
and, when with a group, for socialising. But as mentioned before, I like
soloing very much, and the two kinds of gaming is really different and has very
unique aspects of their own.
Two situations where I would chose solo vs grouping,
would be for instance the Forest of Loren (The wood elven realm/kingdom) vs the
City of Mordheim (Corrupt and Daemon-infested city of the Empire).
I would love to enter the forests of Loren on
my own, exploring these wild and uncharted (by mankind) lands. It would be
fascinating to explore dales, tense forests, following rivers and lakes, and
generally exploring i ton your own. To really get a feeling of being an
adventure.
Mordheim, on the other hand, I would like to
enter as a group, as I would not be able to handle myself there (I hope), and
stalking through the city ruins, with 2 or 3 other adventures, would be nice
and creepy, never knowing what we’ll encounter, and what the outcome would be.
This is somewhat what I hope that WAR will
also support, as these are cool aspects of the Warhammer World itself.
Thanks
-Korric-
Hmm, perhaps because it's a Massively Multiplayer game and not an Always Do Everything In a Group With a Certain Mix of Classes game, or worse an ADEIGWCMC Until Cap, Then Always Do Everything In a Raid game. MMO is about having a persistent world with other players to interact with, it says nothing about having to do everything in a group with a certain balance of classes. There's been roughly 402485023 threads on these boards explaining that MMO!= ADEIGWCMC before, why do you guys who want an ADEIGWCMCRPG keep insisting that it's the only option for an MMO?
"If your only motivation for doing it is metagame, OOC stuff, why is it in Role-Playing Game?" You do remember that it's mmoRPG, right? I don't expect MMORPGs to provide the kind of story and especially individual motivations that are standard for a P&P RPG, but I find it insulting when the 'adventure' consists entirely of running around, using game mechanical glitches like zone boundries, to get to an area for which my character's only motiviation is that it's his best-suited leveling area.
Thank god Paul is there, I'm sure he won't let them make an "adventure" where the plot is "you're going to meander through the world, hugging zone walls and hoping to avoid touch-of-death mobs, to find your best-suited leveling area". Nothing in that sounds fun, much less a reasonable character motivation. Can you even imagine writing a story or telling someone who deosn't play the game about that kind of nonsense?
"And Ertheror set out through the forest, in seach of his best suited leveling area. (Most definately not in search of a worthy challenge, to solve a mystery, to investigate something new to him, to rescue anyone, to stop a reign of terror, or any other motivation along those lines). You see, he knew that the only way he could get more powerful was to kill spiders repeatedly. But not just any spiders, he needed the specific ones whose names showed green to him, as they would give him the most possible advancement per minute.
"However, the forest had many dangerous creatures. He couldn't seek the aid of friends, it would be pointless to bring them since the creatures could slay him or his friends with a single, casual blow. So instead, he looked for the edge of the world's zone, where a magical wall prevented movement. Staying close to the Zone Wall was his only chance to bypass them. So he set off at a constant, tireless run, hoping to attract the attention of none of the creatures, and when he did he kept running and shouting 'TRAIN TO ZONE! TRAIN TO ZONE!' until they caught up to him or he could find one of the magical zone passages through which they could not follow."
Absolutely the opposite, they should be terrified that they'll go broke making games 'difficult' if the difficulty is 'maintaining interest long enough to finish the repetitive, challengeless grind to X level' or 'finding a group of the proper mix of classes to be able to do anything', or 'never playing in blocks less than 2 hours because it takes 30min to an hour to find a group, and who wants someone in a group for just an hour?'.
Way too many MMOers confuse the concept of difficulty in the sense of challenging contenet with 'takes a lot of time' or 'requires coordinating RL schedules to complete'.
Lets just look at DAOC Classic and WOW and compair the 1-20 aspects of the game.
When I first started to play DAOC I must have died 10 times before lvl 5 trying to kill creatures that where even con (Yellow). In WOW I think I played all the way to lvl 15 before dieing. Now some of it was because WOW had quests that game great XP without a bunch of work. However I really do think the even con creatures where easier in WOW than they where in DAOC. Granted I did solo 1-20 in DAOC and did just fine, but it was much easier in WOW. The only reason why I grouped in WOW after 20 was because I wanted to get items out of the dungeons.
Even con creatures should be just that. 50/50 split if you will kill them based having the exact same class (ie. tank vs tank, caster vs caster). However if a caster takes on a tank class then 40/50 split. The same might be true if a tank takes on a caster class. One of the problems with WOW is that even con means you have a decent chance to kill them without dieing yourself.
Now you know that when there is risk there must be reward. The harder it is to kill the more XP you should get.
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