What role should single player gameplay have in MMO's?

[Renzokuken]

I've been trying to keep up with TORtanic as best I can without actually playing it.
*Self de-rail:

Spoiler: show

As an aside I really hope they are able to turn that game around and make it into a runaway success. Wouldn't it be great if every new MMO had the funding behind it that TOR did? If it fails I'm afraid that no one is going to want to heavily invest in the MMO market for a while.

From what I've been hearing, 1-49 is largely played single player. I've been checking out the Blade & Soul Pserver, and I have had no need to group for the 15 levels that are playable. In Aion, outside of instances, I solo'ed nearly the entire 55 levels.

It seems to me that the strength of the MMO genre is the ability, if not the need, to play with other players. Why then do some of the newer MMO's seem to provide no benefit to grouping outside of endgame, and perhaps a few instances on the way up?

So I ask the good people of BG, what role should solo gameplay have in MMO's? Would you play an MMO where you couldn't level at all unless you grouped? Maybe solo play is better left to crafting, gathering, obtaining maps and the like. Would casuals play a game like that?

I for one loved how old school FFXI let me play around, blissfully alone for about 10 levels, and then a bunny in La Theine Plateau kicked my ass, forcing me to look for help.

[Kaylia]

Playing with human being lose its appeal after the first mmo. There should be more solo content.


But seriously, if it's just grinding, let me play solo at my own pace. If you have some innovative drama-less gameplay that let me play as a team...I don't really mind.

[Eaglestrike]

What I would like to see in an ideal MMO would be different levels of advancement in the game:

1) Single player questing, actually advance storyline a bit in a "You're a hero!" type scenario with actual changes in the game world, like WoW does. But you'd need to make the world bigger for this to make feasible sense.

2) Group questing/grinding/dungeons. I thought Rift was going to handle this beautifully and was the ideal of the rift mechanic. The problem is managing a way to balance this since you can't be sure how big or good a group is going to be, so it's tough to create dynamic content to fluidly respond to the group.

3) Dungeons, and I think they should try to create a raid feel even while leveling up. The boss fights should be long, and I mean WoW raid long, not Kirin long. I hate that dungeons while leveling in WoW everything dies instantly until Cata stuff, they really need to fix the scaling.

I also think they can do similar PvP-type things.

1) World PvP, do a Wintergrasp but on a quicker timer, a more sophisticated reward structure and LEVEL CAP THE ZONES. Make there be one every 5-10 levels so you get a Wintergrasp-Ballista experience so people leveling through can join in for PvP fun but people at max level can come in and populate the area without being completely broken.

2) Battlegrounds for solo players, max of 2-3 together before you're sent off to your own queue for premade groups.

3) Arena grudge match, make this work for leveling, grant exp or a random piece of gear (make it a choice after you complete a win from an NPC or something).

WoW has a large variety of things to do, FFXI has a method of trying to make non-cap content be viable, combine the two and fucking run with it.

Well, I think I went somewhat off-topic a bit, but oh well. One thing I do know for sure is that the FFXI-style effect of no-solo-content is an absolute death sentence. Normal people play MMO's now and only so many true geeks will put up with that stupid limitation.

[Rulke]

I think "ideally" grouping with people should be when a person wants to, not forced upon them. This isn't to say a game needs to have all its content be solo-able however. I think your average gamer when they log on to to play has an agenda of what they want to do with that time and having to wait on other people isn't one of them (always).

Anyway, part of me wonders why people pick up a "MMO" if they don't want to play with other real people O_o I personally enjoy the opportunity to play with RL friends in that atmosphere so all is well. It was frustrating at times in FFXI after a couple of them quit to try and do anything worth while with 4/6 or 5/6 people. I like the idea of lower group caps for party style events, as trying to get a few pickups isn't always desirable.

The "companion" idea of TOR is pretty good and for the most part the companions are pretty competent I think. One of my turn offs in GW was how retarded the companions were sometimes. Having a computer AI helper can be useful and is a nice option to have for people.

[Renzokuken]

the FFXI-style effect of no-solo-content is an absolute death sentence.

Are you saying this because of the time investment it took to do anything meaningful with a group in that game? If that's the case, if developers could create a system that minimizes that time investment, would that change your opinion?

[Eaglestrike]

Are you saying this because of the time investment it took to do anything meaningful with a group in that game? If that's the case, if developers could create a system that minimizes that time investment, would that change your opinion?

I don't see how a developer could create such a system without all my other ideas being realized first. The problem with the FFXI-style gameplay is that people don't want to play a game they can't...play. And that was the major cockblock of needing groups for everything, you spent as much or more time just in group organization than actually getting to play the game, and that's not even counting strategy. If you had less than 2 hours, it was near pointless to try to LFG, so all you could do was...farm, oh, yay.

In the ideal circumstance leveling takes a little bit longer than WoW currently does, and maybe I dunno, 1/4 of FFXI old school (maybe 1/4-3/4 depending on what level you're talking about) and solo play is an alright pace, with grouping being about 50% faster gain. WoW has this nearly in effect right now, but LFD is so impersonal and the dungeons are easy and get bland easily, so there should be more group content. Like I said with Rift, that is a wonderful mechanic. I think it'd be awesome if a group (random grouping or pre-formed) could go into an instance and just have a Rift-like mechanic spawn, and then you could get a slider for difficulty (more difficulty for more exp) and have gear drop on the way. So that you could create an awesome power party and just have a merit-like experience with gear upgrades coming as you go and being able to choose harder and harder depending on the synergy of the group. Current development doesn't allow for this fluidity and dynamic nature, but I don't think it's too far off (You have difficulty sliders as old as Oblivion at the least and Rifts are almost a year old now as well) and then the trick is throwing it into an instance content. I mean even if you almost perfectly copied the rift mechanic in just elements and creatures, maybe add a little more variety, and then let any element rift spawn and that's more diversity than a merit party ever dealt with and plenty of people enjoyed those.

[Inactive]

I loved FFXI's party play because it really brought this community feel to your servers. It was fun to form statics and shoot the shit with random people for a few hours while getting some exp. Plus you were forced (before TP burns) to learn how to play your class in a group setting. However seeking for hours was pretty awful. WoW did a great job with the solo aspect, but completely removed the need to speak to anyone while grinding. I'd want to ability to solo, but have greater rewards for grouping (group bonus, rare item drops, more money etc.).

For endgame content I'd want it all to be grouped, with the ability to do lowman stuff. Endgame in an MMO needs to be group oriented, or you're better off playing any RPG.

[Grey Jorildyn]

TOR did a good job of granting bonus xp for grouping. I see a lot of duos in my guild when people level alts now.

While I appreciate the group aspect in end game I think there's some room for solo dungeons. It could have to dynamically adapt to the class entered with though, and have a reward great just for your class that would be BoP of course. Idk, just an idea. I'd do it.

[Viq]

There might be some herp derping from this, but the best idea they ever had for FFXI was MMM. If they had lifted the entrance requirement, it would have been fantastic. Unfortunately, as with much of FFXI, they never quite fulfilled the potential that MMM had. They did, however, get the leveling part of it right. It was possible to level solo, yet offering incredibly substantial rewards for grouping. You could tailor it to fit your job or group, so the need for a perfect comp wasn't necessary. It was fast-paced and easily accessible. I personally leveled a couple jobs through nothing but MMM, and it amazes me that people didn't take more advantage of it pre-Abyssea. A system that offers as much flexibility as MMM did would be a welcome addition to future games in my opinion.

[Hyan]

Make it like GW2's "grouping" is. Fleshed out Campaign/Besieged with the game designed to handle that sort of environment.

Plus some solo 1vs1(+npc perhaps) challenges like maat or the npc lvl50 genkai. Both felt pretty cool.

[Isiolia]

I personally leveled a couple jobs through nothing but MMM, and it amazes me that people didn't take more advantage of it pre-Abyssea.

Part of the issue there was that the system itself couldn't handle all that many people trying to use it. So, in a way, be glad they didn't, or the hands of darkness would have prevented you from proceeding many, many, many times (like they did every time my LS tried to do MMM).

[Iku]

Final Fantasy 11 is the only MMORPG that kept me subbed for 3 years.

WoW = 7 months sub
Aion = 3 months sub
Warhammer = 2 months sub


One of the main draw point is spectating high level players slaying HNM. I remembered the day when I went to Dragon's Aery at level 54. I was chilling outside of Boyadha Tree. Suddenly, I saw a bunch of high level rushing the tree. I was like "WHAT ON MOTHER OF EARTH IS GOING ON?". So I followed them to the famous room. I was like "Holy shit, what kinda cult gathering is this shit?". And then Nidhogg spawned and people fought him for like 40 mins. After that battle, I was like "Whatever it took; I will be slaying that mofos one day."

My point is: slaying a boss by yourself is boring. Slaying a boss with a group is pretty awesome. Slaying a boss with a group while having newbies watching you do it is pretty fucking awesome.


PS: A boss should be hard to kill. Remember when COP released; Tiamat, jorgumand, and Vrtra are like almost impossible to kill. They made Kirin seems like easy mode. BG was like theorycrafting on how to slay the 3 wyrms. Many LS attempted and got lolstomped. People worked together to figure out how to slay a boss unlike WoW, ZOMG ROUGE RAPED ME IN BG. PLZ NERF.



please excuse my post. i havent slept for last 28 hours and do not know what my fingers doing

[Renzokuken]

I don't see how a developer could create such a system without all my other ideas being realized first.

Those ideas are great, and I think they could be put to good use in the hands of a good dev.

The thing is, I've been trying to get at the root cause for why solo play seems to persist, seemingly as bad or lazy design for MMO's. My theory is that if a developer can make the grouping experience superior to soloing in every way, then the average player will hardly ever seek out solo play.

One idea I've had to help achieve this is already going to be a feature of an upcoming MMO, The Secret World. They are eliminating levels, and by extension, I'm assuming EXP. This is a step in the right direction because, until endgame, levels mainly serve to fragment the player base. How many times in FFXI did you need a tank for leveling, but couldn't invite him because he was one or two levels too low? [this was later fixed through level sync] That was a cause of the inaccessibility of grouping. In Aion, there were many times I was turned down from participating in Fire Temple or Steel Rake because of my level.

As a negative side to removing a leveling system, you might think that will destroy the feeling of progression for players. All it would take to remedy this is a shift of focus from EXP to directly developing your character by the game dev, and I hope this is what they have in mind for The Secret World. For example, instead of buying a scroll to earn some skill, why not turn earning that skill into an epic quest?

[Aksannyi]

Solo play is great because people also want to be able to log in and accomplish something in a short period of time. What could you do in FFXI if you only had two hours to play? You couldn't get a party, because by the time you found the members and made your way to camp, you'd have to log off. I like that I can log into WoW, solo a few things (daily quests, achievements, etc.) and go on with my life.

The MMO demographic is aging. We have lives - jobs, kids, dogs, responsibilities. These people want to be able to log into a game, get something done, and log out feeling like they didn't waste their time. FFXI didn't have that. If I only had a few hours to play, I'd log on, run back and forth to the AH a few times, and log out disappointed because I couldn't really do shit (this was back in 2009 and earlier, when I stopped playing. I have no idea if this is still true now).

While I agree that grouping should be necessary and available, it shouldn't be required to do everything, because sometimes the hassle of simply finding the group takes more time than the entire process of running the dungeon or the instance is itself, and it shouldn't be that way. How many times did you shout for something - or watch someone else shout for something - for over an hour, eventually giving up because no one wanted to help them out? That got really tiring to me. I sure did love playing with my friends and doing content which requires a bunch of people (provided they didn't fuck it up) but don't get me wrong, that was not how I wanted to spend 100% of my MMO time.

Short story: they create solo play because there are people who want it. Casuals especially, but even the most hardcore people like to do their own thing sometimes.

[Renzokuken]

Those are great points Aksannyi.

FFXI had great potential to have quick, casual grouping, specifically through the Assault system, but we all know how that worked out. I shouted in Whitegate for countless hours in order to eventually gain Captain. I'm wondering if design decisions could have changed that? Had we been able to search the player base by assault ranking, or if we could have just flagged that we wanted to do certain assaults and others could look that up. Do you think that would have been a step in the right direction?

[Hyan]

Server design changes can allow for that sort of thing. Was always out of XI's reach though.

Also gotta be ready to adapt when the playerbase's progression shifts. Group content changed to solo content, new group content released to keep up demand for groups to form.

[Grey Jorildyn]

A global party chat channel could have solved a lot of those shout problems. Communication always was part of the issue in XI.

[Lucavi]

Looking back at FFXI, considering how they only showed your character in all of the cutscenes, you should have been able to progress through the missions solo, or with the actual cutscene NPCs assisting you in the fights. As I go back and watch all of the RotZ and CoP CSes, I'm reminded of all the good times that I enjoyed the story, especially the post-Shadowlord death scene with the Ark Angels. All that warm, fuzzy nostalgia, however, is washed away when I think of how tedious it was grabbing people, making sure everyone was at the exact same stage, had the exact same key items, ect.

Hell, I'd play a "HD FFXI" if they modeled it after FFXII and made it single-player, or allowed for single-player runs through it. The game -itself- wasn't bad, but the over-reliance on needing people to do anything and everything just killed it in my eyes after awhile. Sometimes you just want to be immersed... alone, and since SE never gave me the option to play a game with such a rich story as XI through single-player, I stopped sending them monthly checks when I got fed up.

[Lordender]

I think you should be allowed to solo level but each zone should have a theme where the smaller quests eventually lead up to a battle with main threat of the area who will be a group boss where each will have raid-like mechanic's to get players used to things they will see later on, kinda like a mini-tutorial to learn along the way. One of the biggest problems in a game like WoW is that you never have to do any group content until level cap, when you get to level cap the game becomes a gigantic crash course where now you need to learn mechanic's whether its an instance or boss fight, learn high dps rotations, thus a high failure rate plagues the playerbase because they never had to learn anything along the way.

MMO's these days make everything extremely accessible to all groups but they all do a poor job of teaching the player.

Things that should be beat into a players heads by the time they reach the level cap.

* Knowing how to play your class, the game should put you in un-avoidable situations while leveling up.
* Knowing that fire, goo, acid, black puddles, lava is bad and always will be bad.
* Killing adds is important.

In today's MMO's there is no consequence for being a failure, in FFXI people knew who the failures were and avoided them. I long for the days where community mattered, your actions in game could deter you from ever finding an endgame ls because a person acted like a douchebag non-stop.

[Alderaan]

In today's MMO's there is no consequence for being a failure, in FFXI people knew who the failures were and avoided them. I long for the days where community mattered, your actions in game could deter you from ever finding an endgame ls because a person acted like a douchebag non-stop.

This right here is what i miss the most from today's MMO's.