Josh Strife Hayes has a video on why people play MMORPGs Solo, It’s an interesting topic for discussion.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGezDYNLIU
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Dark Age of Camelot had really good team group raid thing going on wish more MMOs were like that 3 realms battling all the time for forts castles land heck whoever had the most forts of the three got access to a secret area had some really good battles in that game but I play solo now mainly EverQuest 2
I'm thinking of getting into ff14 at some point here soon. Probably after I finish my first playthrough of ff6, which I'm doing right now 😁.
You're never really alone in a mmo even when playing solo
From what I have noticed. Minecraft has a massive install base, dwarves any mmorpg in existence. Allows as small as 8 people to play together or more depending on servers. Though people in Minecraft more often then not prefer to play alone. Minecraft has twice the amount of players active compared to WoWs peak. And Minecraft is still in its 1.x edition. Just trying to say, given the option people want to be able to create a good experience, even if it means that they have to play alone.
I was never a huge fan of forced grouping to do anything in MMOs, like in early WoW you had one or two quests in each region that was an "elite" mob hunt, basicaly solo impossible but needed atleast a party of 3 and it felt like there were never people willing to do it, that are at the level of the mob, only max levels that "pull you through". And when you are already in a group you might aswell do the other quests which you now steamroll as they were balanced in mob strength for 1 player, the combat quest were simply not satisfiying, and usualy typing and chatting were difficult for me due to language barriers. Atleast those types of content were not mandetory, but it felt bad to walk past the NPC with the questmarkers.
Duty support has only been added through half of HW
As a looong time ff14 player I only extract gatherer/crafter materia because…… Materia is worthless … let's be honest…Just a waste of my time to extract it
One reason people solo is bad connections. I'm in Australia playing with friends out side Australia, NZ and south east Asia is a pain. 200-300 ping to other parts of the world. This drives design and player choices. I'm in a Star Citizen org but get stuck soloing a lot because of bad link, bad server design and there intentionally byzantine item logistics.
Another is interruptions. If your solo while at a work place you can drop out of the game or hide in a corner or something while you deal with the customer that just called up, walked in or put a pile of paper in your in tray. If your in a group you let people down. A lot of jobs are intermittent in work demands now. Your there 9 to 5 but each job, with modern office tools, takes only 10 minutes leaving you waiting for the next task.
I was playing Everquest 2 and in a group with others. One froze up but did not log out. We guarded him for a while and then moved on. He caught up 15-20 minutes later with the words, "Sorry that was a mortar attack!" We asked where the hell was he. Answer, the green zone in Bagdad. He was US Army.
One of the guys killed at Benghazi was playing Eve Online minutes before the attack. He never made it back to the game.
We get interrupted more today.
about this "playing mmos solo" theme, taking ff14 for example i like the game but i dont enjoy mmos in general so yeah im all in favor of mmos letting you play throu the game solo. i can experience it as a single player rpg and i think thats great. sure i understand the argument that the multiplayer experience makes it better for some people but to me personally i prefer playing solo
I stated this on Josh's post and I'll copy and paste here:
I started my MMO gaming back with Everquest in May of 1999 ( a few months or so after it initially released). I recall the days of spending many minutes, if not HOURS, standing around waiting for other players just so I could enjoy the game.
Want a bind at a city-spot near where you're going to camp? Gotta wait for a caster to cast Soul Bind on you.
Want to group up at one of the myriad of camps in an area so you can level your character? You're going to have to wait for a group to appear or an opening at one of the spots.
There was a reason that Druids, Necromancers, and Magicians were some of the more popular classes outside the holy trinity (Which in EQ was Tank-Healer-Enchanter) because those were the classes you had more options with what you could do with the time you had to sit down and play. If you weren't those classes, you simply couldn't DO much of anything for the most part until you got into a group.
I recall an article where one of the reasons World of Warcraft was cited as having taken off as well as it did back in Nov/Dec of 2004 (I started on day 1 for WoW) was because of how solo-friendly all of the classes were. You still had to group up if you wanted to do dungeon or raid content or you wanted to take on an Elite mob (for the most part) but otherwise you could just…go quest, go crafting, you didn't HAVE to have a group of people to go out into the world.
I agree that there is something to be said for putting players in positions where they HAVE to rely on other players and fostering a social dynamic that way…but as someone who remembers well the days of old EQ, I don't ever ever ever EVER want to go back to those days. As a mostly solo player, I can't take the claims that modern MMOs are "too solo friendly" very seriously. I can't solo Mythic dungeons or ANY of the raids in WoW for the current expansion, I have to wait TWO expansions before I can do that. I can't solo any of the raids or dungeons in FFXIV and still get the same rewards as I would doing it unsynced without a group.
It wasn't that the older games had 'more' group content, it was that almost EVERYTHING required a group, so it felt like there was more group content.
I think this is a great big case of "you think you do, but you don't". Sitting around for lengthy periods of time because you don't have a group and therefore can't do much of anything is the drizzling shits, doubly so for a game I'm paying a monthly subscription.
So glad to see someone else loving the original Guild Wars. I played it back when I was in middle school(solo with henchmen only for most of the game), but I’ve gone back a lot over the past few years and it’s still a blast, and there’s still tons of stuff I haven’t done yet. The best part for me has always been the build making and execution, which only got better once they introduced heroes where you could design the entire party to complement one strategy.
I just don’t like GW2 because it doesn’t really feel like guildwars, sure the story is all there, but the gameplay just doesn’t do it for me, like they took what made Guild Wars unique and replaced it with cookie cutter MMO combat and skill systems.
Destiny 2 really pisses me off with some of their gane philosophies. They make you LFG for content that is brain dead easy. It's obnoxious.
Disagree, Planetside 2 is MMO and it has no Fishing!
Even back in the EQ1 days, I rolled solo for the most part. I just don't like being bothered or feeling like I gotta have 40 dudes chained to my nutsack to make any progress.
Going to park with people around a
Is still not being totally alone , you can obverse others watch kids running around etc
You keep asking for feedback yet on your new video civerinf pvp you have comments locked. Probably an oversight…
Old school FFXI required people. You couldn't get passed level 15 without people lol. Not these days.
Because people that's why, just because we play the same game doesn't mean we can't get on each other nerves nor will we see eye to eye. I like doing my own thing sometimes and can't always find people IRL who like the same games as me and group chats aren't for me(like discord).
I'm antisocial. I DO NOT like people as a whole. I can learn to like individuals, but most of the time I can be bothered to spend the energy to actually care. I explain these so others can understand why I'd rather play mmorpgs by myself. No need to mute people talking over the cut scenes or quest dialog, no trying to keep other people on task or chase down idiots with a shorter attention span than my own ADHD fueled brain, no need to discuss who gets what loot (loot ninjas can and should burn in hell), and certainly no need to listen to anyone bitch about their day. I get enough of that crap at work, and because it's work, I have to smile and be nice… No one wants to work with an asshole, nor should they be required too.
I can take my time and actually enjoy the story, which is 99% of the reason I typically pay for a game. Just like the novels I grew up reading and the movies I learned to enjoy, role playing games are a chance to go on this journey and hopefully feel something wonderful and different without the risk of actually dying that such adventures would incur in real life. I have had wonderful moments interacting with others within these worlds. It's a bit like going to a bar and making new acquaintances. Good memories of silly and often incredibly stupid activities that you'll probably never admit to outside that temporary social circle. Most of the time though, I just want to sit at the bar and have my drink and be left alone.
im a solo only mmo player basically. only reason for me to be in a guild is to randomly play chat simulator. The best way i can describe it is i want the world. I could care less (and am usually annoyed) by people. Compare old school FF7 as a mostly open world experience (after midgar) with an option to go play the story if you want. There was always something to go spend time on whether farming, grinding materia levels, playing around at gold saucer. Modern games try to be big but most are just "on rails". With MMO's it has everything i crave. A large open world where i can do what i want. when i want. The game play also evolves over time to help from becoming stale. Whereas i can only do so much red dead 2 before im just bored.