Massively Single Player, Part 1
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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I meant it in the sense that you could really put some effort into that thing and get results, and that it required much more skill than most people realised.Shamus Young said:I never said that Hunters SUCKED, or that they were over powered, or underpowered, and I can already see this thread is going to be nine miles of thin-skinned hunter hater / apologists. Sigh. Shoulda seen that coming. Honestly. This is why we can't have nice things.dogstile said:I got to the bit about hunters being a casual class and was just like
I mean, i took out /warlocks/ with that thing, and warlocks are stupidly easy to play as in pvp.
It's simply possible to play a hunter while you're barely paying attention and they're the ultimate solo class. Yes, you can get more out of them if you learn to play them well, but they're forgiving in that you can get by with just the basics.
But still, i agree that you can play while barely paying attention. Sorry for the misunderstanding there
EDIT: Having read through the thread, i see very little hate for that comment. You sure you're not just assuming?
I'm sort of in this camp. When I play MMOs I'm always a little nervous about jumping into the pool. I guess I'm casual when it comes to MMOs- I've only started dabbling in them this past year and I'm usualy somewhat intimidated by all the special lingo people throw out- worried that if I join a group I'd embarass myself by breaking some of those laws of the land I dont know, ("You're not a tank, what are you doing, get back") So I go solo for a very long time in the begining. It's only when the solo experience gets taxing and feels like a grind that I dip my toe tentatively into the multiplayer side of things and try some grouping.
I will say that if there's no groups out there I usually get fed up- this happened to me with DDO. I was to the point where I'd kind of hit a wall and and progress was impossible without some very boring grinding, but nobody wanted to group with me (I have no gamer friends so I dont have a built in group).
Another reason people like soloing in MMOs is because they might like the fact that the economy is real in a way no single player game can simulate.
So anyway- I like the idea of soloing not being punished. However, I think that it's inherently very hard to ballance both. I mean, if players are well rounded enough to not need help, why should they group? Just for the social aspect I suppose.
I will say that if there's no groups out there I usually get fed up- this happened to me with DDO. I was to the point where I'd kind of hit a wall and and progress was impossible without some very boring grinding, but nobody wanted to group with me (I have no gamer friends so I dont have a built in group).
Another reason people like soloing in MMOs is because they might like the fact that the economy is real in a way no single player game can simulate.
So anyway- I like the idea of soloing not being punished. However, I think that it's inherently very hard to ballance both. I mean, if players are well rounded enough to not need help, why should they group? Just for the social aspect I suppose.
The moment I read this the first game that popper into my head was Dofus, mainly because when I played it, I was almost always with a group. I'd still play it now but the free-to-play area is far too small, and I like my money where it is.
I'm in your camp as well, although I attribute it to the fact that I deal with troublesome people and social situations at work all day, and when I get home, I don't want to have to deal with the same thing. Thus, I find I group up only occasionally, because I spent all day dealing with the stress of people management, and I don't want to experience that in my game and relaxation time at night. That doesn't mean I want to play a single player game either, necessarily....I like the auction house (possible only in an MMO), the guild chat (sometimes), and those fun occasional "random moments" that only happen when you bump into other players in the MMO and save their ass and vice versa. That's cool stuff, and its part of the multiplayer process.AgentNein said:
One thing I don't like is an MMO that "breaks the suspension" by making some areas arbitrarily harder just to force grouping...why is ogre X tougher than all these other ogres? Because the designer decided they need areas specifically aimed at multiplayer? Whatever. I like Guild Wars with its bots, and DDO has certainly made an effort (sort of) with its solo options. WoW has done the best balancing overall, though, as the process of leveling is very rich, with thousands of quests before ever hitting 80....I fail to see the advantage of rushing to the end game, honestly, with so much cool stuff to do.
Now, with the Random Dungeons feature in patch 3.3 I've been doing more grouping in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years....the game now finds players for me, drawn from other servers, who are not going to diss me because I want to do a DPS arms warrior and not tank. I love it! I've found this process less stressful now, as grouping is now something that just "gets done" and very quickly....no hour long waits to organize a party, no being told to respec tank or whatever because that's what they need (even though I don't enjoy tanking) and no more power-tripping controllers telling everyone else what to do (usually); everyone gets organized by the game itself, almost without more than a few minutes wait, and BAM we're having fun in a dungeon. It's dramatically improved the overall grouping part of the game for me, I gotta say.
I can't stand waiting on other people do stuff, I don't like having to dick around for 4 hours a night to find the week link in a 25man raid for why we can't down a boss. Many times I find myself with my head on the desk wishing I could walk in by myself, kill the bosses, see the story occuring there, say "Wow, that was awesome; can't wait for what comes next", and go to bed.
I've fooled myself into thinking that raiding is fun, but I'm sorry given the choice between running Ulduar or Icecrown with a 10/25 man group, and being told "Hey here's all this content made soloable for those of you who want the story"; I'm taking the latter option.
Why do I still do it? Because I'm a lore junkie, and I'll be damned if all that stands between me and the end of a story arc is 9 and/or 24 other douche-bags that have trouble pulling their heads out of their ass.
I've fooled myself into thinking that raiding is fun, but I'm sorry given the choice between running Ulduar or Icecrown with a 10/25 man group, and being told "Hey here's all this content made soloable for those of you who want the story"; I'm taking the latter option.
Why do I still do it? Because I'm a lore junkie, and I'll be damned if all that stands between me and the end of a story arc is 9 and/or 24 other douche-bags that have trouble pulling their heads out of their ass.
But then again...
Let's look at the case of Final Fantasy XI. Here we have a game where you are ALWAYS in a group (except for the hours you spend farming). Quests don't give experience, so it's ALWAYS about the grind. Nothing drops good gear except for rare spawns and certain bosses. Even then most of your gear will be obtained through the auction house or self crafting.
On that note: In WoW we find that endgame raids discriminate against people who are not geared enough at lvl 80 to handle the raid. In FFXI we get sets of equipment that become nessesary to equip as soon as you reach the level it can be equipped. You really do need to expand your moghouse and inventory because you'll need it to store all the extra sets of gear you will be needing to simply level up. Some groups won't even let you join unless you have the right FOOD. Eventually you find that you are gonna kill the same enemies over and over for pretty much the entire game. Crabs, pugils, goblins and mandies. What did these crabs ever do to you that you need to gang up on them and kill them over and over? If you wanna maximize experience they have to be several levels higher than you, so you are already at a disadvantage. There is no user friendly level on the mob, just a feeling you get about it's relative strength compared to yours. There is good story stuff in FFXI, and by capping your level in all the storyline places you really get the feeling that square hates you and wants you to die and lose a level. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but I thank my lucky stars that I have WoW to go to when I want to level from 1-20 in a single day.
I actually enjoy playing WoW as a duo. Leveling with a partner is MUCH more enjoyable than doing it all by yourself. My college roommate and I have duo'ed about 5 toons together to lvl 80. So long as you are willing to put that character down when the other guy is not playing him, it's perfectly fine.
Let's look at the case of Final Fantasy XI. Here we have a game where you are ALWAYS in a group (except for the hours you spend farming). Quests don't give experience, so it's ALWAYS about the grind. Nothing drops good gear except for rare spawns and certain bosses. Even then most of your gear will be obtained through the auction house or self crafting.
On that note: In WoW we find that endgame raids discriminate against people who are not geared enough at lvl 80 to handle the raid. In FFXI we get sets of equipment that become nessesary to equip as soon as you reach the level it can be equipped. You really do need to expand your moghouse and inventory because you'll need it to store all the extra sets of gear you will be needing to simply level up. Some groups won't even let you join unless you have the right FOOD. Eventually you find that you are gonna kill the same enemies over and over for pretty much the entire game. Crabs, pugils, goblins and mandies. What did these crabs ever do to you that you need to gang up on them and kill them over and over? If you wanna maximize experience they have to be several levels higher than you, so you are already at a disadvantage. There is no user friendly level on the mob, just a feeling you get about it's relative strength compared to yours. There is good story stuff in FFXI, and by capping your level in all the storyline places you really get the feeling that square hates you and wants you to die and lose a level. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but I thank my lucky stars that I have WoW to go to when I want to level from 1-20 in a single day.
I actually enjoy playing WoW as a duo. Leveling with a partner is MUCH more enjoyable than doing it all by yourself. My college roommate and I have duo'ed about 5 toons together to lvl 80. So long as you are willing to put that character down when the other guy is not playing him, it's perfectly fine.
It's a topic for another thread, but, to me there hasn't been a real Elder Scrolls sequel since Daggerfall. Morrowind and Oblivion were completely different, microsized, watered-down versions of DF. But I still hold some hope that a genuine Elder Scrolls 3 will come along.pimppeter2 said:
I can think of a couple of reason for Solo-play in an MMORPG.
1) Wanting to play in a persistent world that's periodically updated. Single-player is fine but sooner or later you're going to run out of things to do. The same could be said for an MMO but an MMO has an incentive to provide new content every so often.
2) The specific Genre only exists as an MMO. No one is making Space flight sims or Space capital ship sims anymore, or at least very rarely. Your options are EVE online, SWG: JTL, Jumpgate, and STO when it comes out. Superhero RPG game? If you don't own a console your best bet is City of Heroes/Champions Online.
3) I'm doing something specific that team play would steamroll right over. In City of Heroes, one of the reasons to solo was to play the story arcs. Granted some storyarcs required a team or certain classes weren't geared for solo-play. The pure "force multiplier" classes (Healers, Buffers, DeBuffers) could have a hard time soloing something that a tank or dps class could handle on their own.
4) Courtesy. This really only extens to people I knew in guilds/SGs, sometimes they didn't want to team for one reason or another. I respect there choice to do so and I'm not going to piss and moan that they don't want to team. The best I do is ask and maybe offer an interesting quest.
5) Running a PUG is a lot of work. "If you can't get a group, make one!" is my approach to when I want to team, but after a while it gets exhausting. Trying to make sure the team is full/balanced and everyone is gaming adequately. I don't ask much from PUGs, sometimes all I need from them is to be a giant meatshield distraction anything else on top of that is gravy.
1) Wanting to play in a persistent world that's periodically updated. Single-player is fine but sooner or later you're going to run out of things to do. The same could be said for an MMO but an MMO has an incentive to provide new content every so often.
2) The specific Genre only exists as an MMO. No one is making Space flight sims or Space capital ship sims anymore, or at least very rarely. Your options are EVE online, SWG: JTL, Jumpgate, and STO when it comes out. Superhero RPG game? If you don't own a console your best bet is City of Heroes/Champions Online.
3) I'm doing something specific that team play would steamroll right over. In City of Heroes, one of the reasons to solo was to play the story arcs. Granted some storyarcs required a team or certain classes weren't geared for solo-play. The pure "force multiplier" classes (Healers, Buffers, DeBuffers) could have a hard time soloing something that a tank or dps class could handle on their own.
4) Courtesy. This really only extens to people I knew in guilds/SGs, sometimes they didn't want to team for one reason or another. I respect there choice to do so and I'm not going to piss and moan that they don't want to team. The best I do is ask and maybe offer an interesting quest.
5) Running a PUG is a lot of work. "If you can't get a group, make one!" is my approach to when I want to team, but after a while it gets exhausting. Trying to make sure the team is full/balanced and everyone is gaming adequately. I don't ask much from PUGs, sometimes all I need from them is to be a giant meatshield distraction anything else on top of that is gravy.
Yahtzee once described Eve as a space-themed chat room. That right there offers a lot of insight into the issue. You don't have to be grouped up and playing together to experience the massiveness of it.
The "game" of an MMO is gearing yourself up, or generally empowering yourself however the game has you do it. If it requires others to help you down the boss then so be it. But if it doesn't, then recall the saying: to do anything right you have to do it yourself.
People who are clingy and want to be your friend in an MMO feels a little wierd anyway.
The "game" of an MMO is gearing yourself up, or generally empowering yourself however the game has you do it. If it requires others to help you down the boss then so be it. But if it doesn't, then recall the saying: to do anything right you have to do it yourself.
People who are clingy and want to be your friend in an MMO feels a little wierd anyway.
With only a few exceptions, I always play a game because I think that it will be fun. It's why I tried the WoW free trial in the first place and why once in a blue moon I think about coming back to it. I'm not really interested in joining one of the guilds, but I do want to play the game.
Although the presence of other players is good too. I feel like I'm in an actual world, surrounded by real people. I can ask others for help (and in turn help others). Occasionally, really cool stuff happens, such as a level 70 character plowing into Goldshire and single-handedly taking on every single person in that place (I was a level 10 wizard. I threw every spell I had at him, and he just healed it all back up).
What I'm trying to say is that in an MMORPG, this solo player only cares for the G part.
Although the presence of other players is good too. I feel like I'm in an actual world, surrounded by real people. I can ask others for help (and in turn help others). Occasionally, really cool stuff happens, such as a level 70 character plowing into Goldshire and single-handedly taking on every single person in that place (I was a level 10 wizard. I threw every spell I had at him, and he just healed it all back up).
What I'm trying to say is that in an MMORPG, this solo player only cares for the G part.
I believe you mean "Concept"?Shamus Young said:
Anywho, having been playing WoW for the past 4 years of its 5-year history, I find that I mostly agree with everything you said. One portion of the demographic I don't think you mentioned though was the more casual players whom don't necessarily prefer to play alone, but they don't have the time to devote themselves to the multiplayer sections of the game, especially not the lengthy PvE sections that can sometimes take hours to complete.
Take WoW, for example. The average raid in that game can take upto 3 hours to finish (give or take depending on the group's skill-level), and even that's after you're group has mastered the bosses so they can clear them all in a single shot. It can take all week to clear a dungeon if you're still learning it. Some people just don't have that much time for a single span of time, or they prefer not to play a game for that long.
So it's a group of people who enjoy playing the game, and they've love to get into some multiplayer aspects of the game, but they find that doing such makes the game into a much bigger time-sink than they're able, or willing, to allow for. So they content themselves with what they can get done on their own because fun is still fun, even if they're missing-out on something else in the game they'd enjoy.
I stopped playing MMOs this year. This was after a period of time when I found myself playing alone more and more first in WoW last year, then in LotRO in spring.
I have played online for 10 years, but I won't be bothered anymore. People weren't always nice, or particularily good players, but there always used to be a remote chance of having fun with other players. I could still meet lovely people on a random chance maybe three or four years ago.
I can't remember the last time I met an ok fellow player online. CBA hanging around with torturous griefers and trolls, hysterical roleplayers, angry self-antagonized nerd children, ppls woh cant b bthrd 2 spl, sexual predators, and all the other dysfunctional members of the "online community". Are these people even gamers? Do they love games? Or are they just online to dump their problems or project their miseries on other people.
This year instead of going for MMO subscriptions, I've enjoyed The Path, Tales of Monkey Island and Torchlight. Good times.
I have played online for 10 years, but I won't be bothered anymore. People weren't always nice, or particularily good players, but there always used to be a remote chance of having fun with other players. I could still meet lovely people on a random chance maybe three or four years ago.
I can't remember the last time I met an ok fellow player online. CBA hanging around with torturous griefers and trolls, hysterical roleplayers, angry self-antagonized nerd children, ppls woh cant b bthrd 2 spl, sexual predators, and all the other dysfunctional members of the "online community". Are these people even gamers? Do they love games? Or are they just online to dump their problems or project their miseries on other people.
This year instead of going for MMO subscriptions, I've enjoyed The Path, Tales of Monkey Island and Torchlight. Good times.
That's funny considering they are the worst pvp class in the game.dogstile said:I got to the bit about hunters being a casual class and was just like
I mean, i took out /warlocks/ with that thing, and warlocks are stupidly easy to play as in pvp.
If you have to grind levels in WoW, You're doing it wrong.Irridium said:
Because I usually play as either the healer or the tank. And I freaking hate PUGs. So whenever I wasn't in a guild group in Aion, I played my Templar ALONE. Because in 9 out of 10 cases someone stupid would rush, overaggroing 3 groups of elite monsters, or some DPS idiot would just spam the "nuke everything" button and think I have 10 taunt skills to draw the attention of mobs, or the healer would go AFK without telling anyone.
Also, I love playing Guild Wars because while the heroes can't use some of the skills players get, or can't understand how some comboes work, they are still superior to 90% of the playerbase.
Also, I love playing Guild Wars because while the heroes can't use some of the skills players get, or can't understand how some comboes work, they are still superior to 90% of the playerbase.
LotRo, Conan and Warhammer are free to play but need subs to complete.targren said:
Of the three at the moment, I'd pick LotRo, almost purely because of Monster Mode and it's so damn pretty.
Conan is nice but it's very linear. Same with Warhammer.
City of Heroes/Villains is always lovely though. A Blaster/Scrapper:Tank or Mastermind/Stalker team should kick ass while still being a scream to play.
If you're into retro, a new EQ update is coming out soon; and EQ2, despite its flaws is still the most pretty, evocative, well-made world ever.