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

[mactabilis]

Well it's a good question. The thing is the vast majority of games are tailored toward even a 5 year-old being able to succeed, alongside the rest of us. Do i want to have to team up with a 5 year-old or someone of equivalent maturity/intelligence to level? No. Do i want to, aside from BST, seek for HOURS to find a PT and hope they can navigate to camp and not flake out after 10 minutes like in ffxi? Definitely not. It's pretty sad so many leveled jobs solely based on their likelihood of invite (BRD/RDM vs THF/SMN) rather than, i dunno, fun. You also had the annoyance of other groups that were too clueless to do /sea and camped right on top of you. I agree with Kaylia completely on that. It was fun to experience once and it did translate into friends that i still play other games with years later, but few have time for that anymore. The answer is no, casuals would not stick with a game like that when there are alternatives. Back in 2004 there were few alternatives, keep that in mind.

One of the things i noticed after ToA and yeah, abyssea, was most of those in PUGs were just bad players, or again, they talked like a whiny teenager. Same game, different level of difficulty, far less enjoyable experience. Level sync helped a bit but it generally sucked unless someone brought PL. This is why i now prefer offline games that might have some online component. I don't really care if you want to call this new trend of "MMO" something else, so long as i'm not *forced* to play with 5 others *all* the time. Even doing queue PvP in TOR i can tell i would not want to tolerate these random ppl just to reach lv50. Not the ones i'm trying to kill, but my own team, just full of barely literate offensive crybabies. I would rather afk leech and screw them than help (I did this till GM warned me). So i quit doing PvP and thankfully it's not required.

How do you get around all that and still have the PT system be of value or necessity, aside from endgame? I dunno if it's possible these days. They could give incentive to organize a 6 man PT via harder quests and zones that give like triple EXP rate, but this seems like alot of unnecessary work for devs. TOR somewhat tried it with flashpoint and heroic but...yeah not really rewarding enough to sit around seeking. First and only time i joined a group for heroic the "healer" ran away to let us die our 2nd pull saying "I'm a SITH u can't trust me." I mean, the option to solo is here to stay and you *can* duo/trio with friends if you want. I'm having a great time doing that now. I also see things like companion npcs replacing actual players. Is that really such a bad system?

I'll agree that there were some benefits to the old way however. Like others said, forcing you to learn your job within the group *before* some kind of endgame would be helpful, although again the games are usually so damn easy now that it hardly matters. Building a reputation and facing consequences while solo is also not gonna happen, and it's far less daunting to reroll or hop on an alt now even if someone fucked up badly.

[Renzokuken]

First and only time i joined a group for heroic the "healer" ran away to let us die our 2nd pull saying "I'm a SITH u can't trust me."

This is absolutely fantastic.

[Kachiko]

I think the real question is, how many roles can single player game-play have in an MMO? When you limit your view to only this, or that, you ignore the possibilities that could really open up your game-play experience. The current puzzle is how to wrangle the open world character progression and meaningfully link it to all of the roads the game provides.

[Renzokuken]

I think the real question is, how many roles can single player game-play have in an MMO?

I think that's a great way to frame the question. Any good MMO that would more or less require grouping to level would have plenty of single player content in the form of crafting, ect.

I think over the life of ffxi you can see both extremes of these views. Starting at launch, being a more hardcore, "grouping required" game, then 2008-2010 when more soloing/small group content came out, like FoV and later on magin trials. And finally abyssea where you level ninja and solo, or dual box everything.

That middle period was the sweet spot for me. I had a ton of solo content I could do, but didn't have to rely on because group content was also readily available most of the time.

Abyssea lead to me quitting, in part, because I felt like I needed to dual box or solo to make the best use of my time, and I wasn't interested in doing that any longer.

[Eldelphia]

I actually like SWTOR because I can do stuff very low man. I've played FFXI for over seven years and I have to say it has been an amazing game. However, I simply can't and won't force myself to go back to 18+ events constantly. SWTOR isn't perfect but if you added in Campaign/Besieged/Walk of Echoes style events to it, I think it would help. I'm not actually looking for ward to being 50 (currently 47) because at that point I might need more people do stuff with. I've predominantly levelled duo with a friend and teamed up with another couple of people for Heroics and Flashpoints.

I think FFXI was an absolutely amazing game and that we won't see the like again. Whilst part of me is sad about that, I think in all honesty, it's a good thing. As Aksannyi said, I don't want to commit the same amount of time to games anymore. I'd love to play the harder stuff but I can't face years more of 5+ hrs a day. So I'd rather have more content I *can* solo but for there to be option to team up with others. The problem with that approach is the phenomenal amount of content you need to generate.

Square Enix believe in punishing their players for getting things done quickly... preferring to draw out your time in game by making gear hard to obtain over time. It's cheaper I suppose but unsustainable. I'm enjoying the change of pace but I know part of me will miss the 18+ man events which signify old school FFXI endgame. However I don't miss the time it takes to administer groups of that size. So I'd rather have Walk of Echoes/Campaign/Besieged style events.

Without constant updates though, Bioware are going to lose hardcore MMO players. I don't think they have anything to worry about yet but I think they'll need to give us a very clear idea of where they're heading in the spring.