…so I sort of missed the original point.
Syl’s comment on my previous blog post about solo playing in MMO’s pointed out a couple of things:
- I was preaching to the choir.
- She wasn’t really asking why people solo so much as why said players feel the need to demand such things out of MMO’s–a failure of reading comprehension on my part.
Coincidentally, I just ordered this on Amazon! 😀
So let me expound upon this whole thing a little further. I think I touched on why people solo in an MMO. Now I’m going to directly talk about how MMO devs can make good design choices to feed solo players and group players without causing risk to the genre…and like anything else, it’s about striking a balance.
So first off, Syl rightly and smartly (and also probably quite prettily) stated that solo content makes the whole leveling up thing easier to deal with. It’s progression, and in an MMO that relies on levels, that’s pretty much important. I’ll not expand on that point too much.
What I will state is what happens after the levels have gone away. The endgame. If your MMO has nothing but dungeons at the maximum level, then you’re putting a segment of MMO players out in the cold entirely. An MMO is a sort of game that seems to work as either a laser-focused title that fixates on feeding one sort of player well, or trying to have multiple ways for people to play. Tiers of content. So obviously an MMO should consider what sort of players it wants and work to portray that message as obviously as possible. A game like EVE Online does not really mince words with what it is, and the game and those who like that sort of thing are better for it. No matter how jealous I may be of those who can effectively play EVE, I am not the sort of player that game is made for.
Damn you for having such sexy space trucks that I’ll never get to fly…
So if you’re an MMO that wants to cast a broad net and cater to different playstyles, then you have to be sure to commit resources and care to ALL of those playstyles. Including solo players.
As someone who enjoys solo progression, I can say that it’s not something that has to be on par with harder group content to feel rewarding. It just has to strike a note of time or effort equaling to reward. I am not risking anything except for some currency in footing a repair bill of gear, so I don’t anticipate being able to enter a raid with my gear…but I’d like to at least feel like I got a sweet shiny for the effort I’ve laid out.
WildStar’s Contracts hit this nail right on the head for me with an example of solo progression done right. There’s a balance of time and effort, along with a semblance of choice in what activities I can do. I get to pick out some missions, head out in to the world and do stuff, and earn points that lead to gear over a pretty reasonable length of time. It’s a perfect way for me to feel like I’m doing an endgame activity without having to force myself in to a group situation where I’m not terribly comfortable.
The Relic Weapon quest in XIV, to a lesser degree, also hit this note of personal progression. It’s kind of cheating, since the most recent Relic required one to do dungeons during one of the steps, but it was still a personal achievement for my character that gave me a pretty solid boost in power as well as a sense of accomplishment…though not accomplishment like “Yay I did it!” so much as “Oh thank goodness that nonsense is over with…for now.”
Nothing says “accomplishment” quite like a weapon with swirly purple shit around it.
Of course, the other side of the coin is doing TOO much for solo players. The Old Republic stands as my example here, with its recent emphasis on the story of the current expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. While the stories being told in this expansion are, apparently, some of the best the game has put out, it also must be said that group stuff is being put to the wayside. Near as I can find, the last time new group content was done for TOR was in December of 2014. That is a pretty long drought for those who maybe were hoping for stuff to do in groups.
This goes back to my opening mention of balance. TOR has been a confusing little number with regards to what it wants to do with itself over the course of its life. It started as an MMO with big stories, then it did a bit of everything, and now it’s back to stories only. There was also some ship-to-ship combat stuff in there too. It’s as muddled as a mojito.
And that really illustrates how balance is needed. Solo players should get really great stuff in TOR, but so should those who want to do more cool Operations or Flashpoints. If TOR wanted to make episodic games in a Star Wars universe, they should have taken a cue from Telltale Games.
…well, almost.
This is not to say that people who like Knights’ stories are horrible monsters. It’s more that the developers for TOR are leading the way in how to make an MMO with your feet. Or at the very least, to not have a gameplan. Hell I’ll even concede that my loved WildStar is suffering from this malady. OmniCore-1 was probably the best piece of solo content I’ve seen come out of the game. But that was a LONG while ago…and we haven’t seen any new dungeons or raids for players since the game first came out.
I suppose the final point is that it’s not really a fault of solo players wanting solo things out of MMO’s as it is a lack of focus on the part of MMO developers. The ability to plan, plot and follow through is what separates a good MMO from the rest of the pack. I adore when a game has a clarity of vision, even if that vision doesn’t focus on my preferences. When a game knows what it is and what it offers, and gives lots of those offers to its players, it makes the game great. Which in turn makes the genre great too.
I am a solo player. I dislike grouping with people and definitely don’t want to be forced into it to progress my levelling. I played FFXIV for a while, and even did the first compulsory levelling dungeons, but my feeling after doing so was not one of enjoyment, it was one of ‘Nope’. I quit the game pretty soon afterwards. Did I demand the levelling experience be made soloable? No. The developers have chosen how they wish to make their game and there are lots of people who are enjoying it and more power to them. It just wasn’t for me.
Currently I play WoW and SWTOR. In WoW all I do at the moment is garrisons and AH to make gold whilst waiting for Legion to come out. WoW is a good time filler but current max level content is of little interest to me so I have lots of alts that every now and then I go solo old max level content to get mounts with 🙂
SWTOR is a different kettle of fish all together. You called it muddled and I would beg to differ. You point out that there has been no new group content in over a year as and example. I would say it is more an example that they have finally worked out where their strength lies and are focusing on what makes them money – solo play. You can now do almost all of the content in SWTOR solo, except for PvP (obviously) and Operations. You still get the best gear from the top group content and I am fine and dandy with that.
They way they have the game set up so that you scale down to be level appropriate for all content is excellent and I am really loving the game now. I am currently taking each class through the original story and have not even started on the new content, let alone the content from the expansion before that. It is glorious 🙂
I don’t have to want to group with other people to enjoy having them around, though. As you pointed out, there is a vibrancy in MMOs from having real people running around the place that you just don’t get in single player RPGs. Auction houses are a great reason to love MMOs. I may not want to group with you but I will happily trade with you, just like in real life.
Also, as you pointed out, there are limits to players in MMOs that I rather enjoy. I KNOW that there is gear I will never be able to get and I am fine with that and more power to those who can get said gear. I enjoy getting what I get and as long as that is the case then all is well in my world.
One major reason I enjoy playing MMOs solo as opposed to RPGs (which I do enjoy as well but for nowhere near as long) is that there is always something to do (especially if you play WoW). Single player games end. MMOs don’t.
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Fair points all, and while I don’t completely agree with them entirely, I certainly appreciate the perspective. ❤ I think the difference here is that you look to these as games for what they are instead of wanting them to be different from what they should be. Which I support
I still think that TOR is muddled though. 😄
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I would agree that TOR was muddled. It has suffered for a while because hey had never done an MMO before, but the designers seem pretty focused now, and that focus is on the story driven solo game. There seem to be no current plans to add more group content and the only reason I can see for them taking that course is they have decided it is not where the money lies.
The percentage of people who do top end raiding content is small and dungeons get boring after a while. Story keeps people interested and, for SWTOR, subbed, since the sub numbers are apparently the highest ever.
No game is ever going to be 100% what we want. People don’t seem to realise that 🙂 One of the biggest issues I have with WoW is all the people who want it to be something else and feel the game should change to suit them. The WoW I play now is very different to the WoW I played in Vanilla and that is fine by me. I look for the content I enjoy in the game and do that. If there comes a day where there is nothing more I enjoy then I will stop playing. Not like there isn’t a ton else out there to play.
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All in all SWtoR is the prime example of the worst design of a MMO ever.
Would they pack up the higher quality parts of the story (and burn most of the side quests, especially those which utterly insult the intelligence of the player), convert it into a boxed single player game, without the weird “we are free to play, but we hate you and punish you all over if you do not subscribe” business concept, without the MMO specific grind and without all the time sinks which originate from subscription based MMOs and only make sense there, I would buy and play it.
But being the very only MMO out there which punishes you for playing in group, it absolutely does not deserver to be played this way and I won’t ever touch it again. To clarify where I am coming from, i started playing with two friends. The two of us who play together a lot, we decided to go for Vanguard (tank) and Commando (healer who can also DPS), to cover the essentials. Our less frequent playing friend went for a smuggler for DPS.
Unfortunately it turned out:
– Whenever we got into our story, the two soldiers were not able to play together. So those who looked like they would fit best, were very often blocked from playing together.
– Whenever our third man, the smuggler, joined the group, everything got much harder. While he was able to do a little more damage than a well geared companion, it was not that much more damage. At the same time the enemies were able to deal and absorb more damage due to the “balancing” mechanics. So the more people our team got, the more healing I had to do and the slower the fights became.
So already in the first month after launch we learned that the optimal way of playing the game was to not group but everybody playing for himself. Within the second month we optimized even further by leaving, never to return.
So for me it permanently remains as the prime example of “how not to do it”, even before the additional mess up of creating the worst mockery of F2P ever.
On, and on “Single player games end. MMOs don’t.”
1. History has shown that MMOs are the ones which die. I could dig out a 20 year old single player game and still get it running on my PC. I would have to use an emulator or partition my hard disc and install an old operating system and it might require some tech fiddling, but it is possible. In contrast, there is a growing number of MMOs which are gone and will lever return.
2. In what way do MMOs not end? The content is as limited as in single player games and usually of lower quality than single player games. (And btw. the -only- MMO out there where the quality of the content can compete with single player games is TSW. While SWtoR is better than most MMOs, it still is far behind that. ) Also the content in a MMO usually is less than in a single player game, the exception being MMOs with multiple expansions, but hey, it also means you paid multiple times the money. To make content last, MMOs generally tend to busy the players with time sinks, which usually are required to stay “good enough” for group content. But as you don’t need that for solo play, I don’t get the point of busying yourself with pointless time sinks.
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