The Paradox of MMORPGs
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
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You guys every play an MMO and think, "Wow I sure am massive and online... but am I multiplayer?" Haha, me too! So let's talk about the crazy world of playing MMORPGs solo and how it's affecting the genre as a whole.
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i hope you all appreciate my heavy use of papyrus in this one
Only play if you want to farm bots or against players with few k hours and 15 min queue times after grinding for tier X ships or spending $150 use and then play against cheese underwater torpedo players or Airplane's that will dump on you literally.
I think this Ad possessed my body to download and play world of warships
world of warships is a scam what happen to the funding for Ukraine
solo was prevalent when everyone was stuck on single player games and mmo struggled to get traction now aday if you were good you could easily see millions day one
also fyi war gaming doesnt want players they want investors
"I like to play with myself where others can see"
Forgot who said this, but pretty much how I feel about MMOs
I tried this in the park and they arrested me
@@brennansage4100a park r really? Bad joke dude
@@ClassifiedGrayZoneWarfareit’s a decent joke. Better than your attempt
@@dontblocktheboxHe didn’t make a joke tho?
@@Rolkey exactly my point friend. He brought nothing to the table. It was heavily sarcastic. I find it really lazy to bash someone and not even attempt to do better.
"I didn't mean to put you on a SECOND spectrum" killed me
Its the "go go go" mentality that i cant do anymore. I cant keep up, no one wants to slow down, and i don't want to ruin someone else's fun, or deal with the toxicity when i dont play the speed they do.
I have a similar problem. I like to look at the scenery and take in the details here and there. In ESO, a friend of mine and I would run slow dungeon crawls for our guild for whoever wanted to experience the lore or just see what was around. Usually had to run two groups.
i feel this in my soul
YES. It really ruins these games. I'm playing FFXIV and I want to learn the map, understand what is happening, and see the story. But so many players just want to speedrun every level and get mad at you if you slow them down. It is really obnoxious.
I wanna RP and it's kinda hard to do that in single player game. Unfortunately (playing ESO and GW2) it's hard to RP anyway
I tried to return to ESO couple of months ago. Queued for dungeon with new character, and they blast away everything in their path. Dungeon ended in like 2 minutes.
Not that I can't understand their view though. In every MMO, so many people are usually there for their dailies. And have done those a gazillion amount of times.
That second spectrum joke was Excellent
That one hit different
The joke is that rainbows are a spectrum (of color) so basically he was calling them gay, an old MMO classic.
Uhm no, the joke is autism, not homosexuality.
You could read into it that way. But the joke *really* is that MMO players are already on the autistic spectrum.
@@omegahaxors9-11 Go take a RAADS-R test rn
Why I play MMO solo: because I find it very hard to find people that want to play the same game I want to play, at the same time and in the same manner. I enjoy some multiplayer aspects of a game but they are usually things that are risk-free and that doesn't rely on me having good reflexes or being a hardcore player because I never had any interest on that. (ffs, I play most game in the Story Mode difficulty because I enjoy more the story and exploration rather then combat)
i have always prefer to play alone, but at the same time i play support characters...it is weird, but there is a very satisfying feeling about being able to help someone at random in an MMO and not have to know them at all...also... that feeling of "you are alive because i decide to heal you, deal with these monsters for me"
i like to play solo and as support as well, but i dont have a problem with solo qued dungeons. i LOVE when shit starts hitting the fan and im able to keep everyone afloat. or when im the only one alive (oops, my bad i guess..) and end up soloing dungeeon mobs or a boss as a healer. makes me feel cool😎
This is why I wish that more MMOs would have it where any player that hits a mob gets xp and loot when that mob dies. It would let players kind of team up on the fly instead of having to formally form a group. GW2 does that and it's nice design.
Damn, I remember making a healer in World of Warcraft back in like 2006, think it was an orc shaman and NOOOPPEEEE, got it to around level 25 or something and ran the dungeon in the horde capital and everyone died, ran the one in the Barrens in a cave and everyone died multiple times and I was kicked, then ran a werewolf dungeon in the undead place and had the same result.
Ended up just deleting the shaman and made an orc hunter instead and that worked out a lot better.
I don't play MMO's anymore though, too time consuming and I lack free time as it is. I'm married, work 45-50 hours a week, have two children aged 14 and 12, and a lot of craziness on a daily basis.
When I get off work I usually crack a beer from the fridge, screw around on UA-cam for 30 minutes, then watch a movie with my family after dinner. Friday nights and Saturdays are when I get to play video games because I get all morning to myself mostly so thats a solid 2-3 hours of gaming and I'm sure as hell not wasting those hours on an MMO lol! By lunch time shit gets busy so that 7-10am timeframe is sacred to me.
I main Priest in WoW and love running around a city casting Power Word: Fortitude on everyone I can find.
@@Travybear1989 It really is Joever during parenthood.
I haven't really seen you talk about doing solo content to aid the multiplayer experience. I'm talking crafting, baby! Mining, smithing, cooking. Farming rare items, or just coin. Selling your stuff to an Auction House or Grand Exchange. You play solo content, but you help another person doing group content progress. That dungeoneering or raiding person doesn't have to search for the Blue Rose and create a rare potion that increases their effectiveness. You can look for the flower and create that potion for them.
This is content that you can't do in a single player roleplaying game. You can sell items to NPCs in a game of Skyrim, but it's never going to be as wholesome as knowing you helped out someone else playing the same game on the other side of the world by doing solo content.
THIS!
This is exactly why, even in ARR, I paid to play. Cause, you know, trial users are garbage in the eyes of Square Peenix and need to be restricted in as many things as possible without getting them to leave entirely. Trading with other people or using the marketplace happens to be such a thing.
I paid so that crafting stuff felt meaningful, even though I got fucking flamed and ridiculed when I said I made my gil through crafting. (Yes, safe to say my experience with FF14 is awful and I probably will never return to the game). Crafting stuff and selling it was some of the only fun I had with ARR cause the rest is just too bland for me.
That used to be my role in a WoW guild a while back. I liked to fish and fishing used to be a valuable asset to raiding back in Burning Crusade. When I came back for Legion crafting just wasn't rewarding anymore so I haven't come back.
Something that has been happening in MMOs is that you must join someone's Discord server to access high level group content, which is simply unacceptable to me
Uh...what?
@@mobius4247 In most mmos that I played, to reduce chances of failing, the majority of endgame players use discord to organize raids
@@mobius4247An example of this is - Destiny 2. High level content such as raids are locked behind mandatory group play. Which is simply unacceptable to them and to me.
@@Rolkey Raids... require group play... [Mock gasp]... It's unacceptable to you, really? Challenging multiplayer content in a multiplayer game is... unacceptable? You play limbo without a pole, huh?
@@SupachargedGaming It sounded like the issue was having to use a third-party service. Discord hasn't gotten that bad yet, but now they're starting to put ads in it and I don't know how long it'll last before I end up jumping ship to another chat client for the seventh time now or something. LoL for instance eventually did add a built-in voice client so long as you joined the queue in the same group, which lets you coordinate without getting flamed by randos (since now you get flamed by friends)
Personally my favourite part of MMOs is 'offline' multiplaying as in playing alongside (irl with my bf in the room on his computer or through discord/etc with friends) and playing solo doing our own things like skilling/quests/etc but knowing they are also in the world doing their own thing at the same time as me. I don't think I've ever done content IN game w my bf on OSRS but we frequently play together and that's how we like our MMO games 😎
That's amazingly wholesome!
I like to be alone in a crowd that’s why I play (mostly) solo.
"centuries, or even years" already earned you a like, good sir.
As an avid ff14 player, it's worth noting that the new Trust system allows for almost every content to be done solo. They still make you join groups for some required mini-raid like encounters but it's a neat option. There's also new Variant Dungeons that actively scale with how many people you queued with. I just like ff14 idk
I’ll be honest, I actually appreciate that 14 made me group with others to do dungeons. I remember being physically anxious about doing my first group content but the combination of people being nice and having gone through the hall of the novice made it a somewhat smooth process and I loved tanking my whole way through the game after that, which led to me enjoying healing equally as much, and even got me to try some extreme and savage content later. Not to say everyone will have that experience, but I cannot personally say, in good faith, that making people *try* group content is a bad thing, but I will say that if my early groups had been toxic maybe things would have been different, so there’s something to be said about that as well
@DominicGreene72 in my experience ffxiv players are genuinely kind in comparison to most online games. Not to say that EVERYONE is like that, but in my 10 years of playing I've almost exclusively had good interactions
@@EnuHarumonia I was a lifelong WoW player, swapped to FFXIV for 4 years or so, and recently dipped my toes back into the WoW waters for Cataclysm Classic.
BOY are people toxic in WoW compared to FFXIV, holy shit.
Maybe it's because I'm on a PVP server, but the amount of slurs I have seen thrown at my head made my jaw drop. Either it was always like this and I just forgot, or it got worse in my absence. Literally had people asking if it was okay to say the N word in guild/FC chat, only to then do it in all caps because the leader said sure. Like...???
@@veradrost9654 I've had Ex-wow players ridicule me for saying I like OSRS and calling it a nostalgia bait pay to win piece of shit game while preaching that I should instead play FF14.
I tried ARR.
Put 50 hours into it and only enjoyed crafting stuff... I quit right after finishing the story with the racist elves.
I appreciate the heck out of that change cause fuck queueing up with other people, fuck having to wait, fuck having other people potentially ruin my story experience (I was in cutscene and they just finished the boss without me. I was the tank.) Fuck all of that bullshit.
But that won't get me back to giving the game a 2nd try tho. It's close but maybe if the combat was fun for me OR I would be able to use the marketplace as a trial player so crafting (The most fun part for me) feels meaningful at all.
I enjoy playing solo most of the time, but part of that enjoyment comes from the fact that I'm one person among many in the ongoing environment of the game. I loved walking through Stormwind or Orgrimmar and seeing other people running around all over the city doing whatever they needed to do (back when that happened).
Having the option to start being social at any time is a huge part of the atmosphere for me, because there are times where I want to do group content. I enjoy doing 5-man content, but I hate raiding.
I relate so much to what you said!!
"Playing solo" in an mmo isn't about doing everything by yourself, it's about being able to decide what you want to do. If that means joining up for a raid, that's your choice. If that means exploring alone, that's your choice. The problem with forced multiplayer content isn't that you have to play with strangers, it's that you often need to be at the whims of those strangers if you want to succeed.
I think great mmos have a good blend where the solo and multi build on eachother in tandem. Force example making a bunch of personal upgrades during the week and showing off how powerful you’ve become since friends last saw you in a dungeon or raid. Great video as always!
I have two issues with non-solo gameplay in MMOs. The first is that most players tend to be either at the beginning or end of the game, especially if said MMO has paywalls. Secondly, if I find one or a group of people to play with, I have to go at their speed and then I never see them again when we log off. I have to skip dialog I might've wanted to read if I want to stay at their speed most of the time (I prefer to read main story dialog if it's my first time through).
One MMO I play has a few forced sections that basically require you to team up with people who actually know what they're doing, where failure is actually really bad (it will ruin the entire run, which can sometimes be long). These forced dungeons have really good loot that everyone should farm for, but it's hard to find people to team up with in the first place when it's now mid-game content (when end-game content stops being end-game). Then, among the people you do find, half of them are only there to farm a portion of the dungeon rather than the whole thing, so they just leave early. They don't even tell anyone that they're leaving early or else they won't find people to team up with either.
I'm not sure what the fix for this is, but I definitely don't want these types of dungeons forced into the main story. I do actually enjoy these types of dungeons when there are actively other players, and I seem to find it the best with optional dungeons, so maybe that should be the path forward.
If you find a cool item in a single player game, you’ll never be able to trade it or be able to show it off to other players online. And it’s nice that all your characters are saved on their servers online. Even if a player decides to play mostly solo, it’s good to know that they have the power to play with other people any time they want.
Babe wake up, a new Idyl vid just dropped!
I thought this was j1mmy
Playing an MMO solo is like going out in public without a group of friends: it's perfectly okay to go out alone and a lot of times it's even easier that way
Nice video, just a quick note, in FFXIV you can solo all MSQ dungeons using NPCs, only trials are required to group
Yeah, it's great. Perfect dungeon runs 10/10 every time. Absolutely amazing tbh, no sarcasm
This is why the Event or Meta-Event system in Guild Wars 2 really captured me as a solo player.
It's a system where the objectives of this Event (dynamic multiplayer quest) are displayed throughout its course depending on the vicinity of the Event or sub-events of a Meta-Event you're in, giving you enough information to contribute.
This allows for you to play with a massive group of people, without the need for a lot of communication.
Eventually in expansions these Events became harder and more complex, sometimes you were in need of splitting the player pool on the map into 3 squads and tackle 3 lanes separately before encountering the big bad boss.
While those Events became harder, the need for communication also increased, almost tricking players into taking the lead, instruct other players or just communicate.
The quest system did it for me, when you had to grind XP by farming kills, it made sense to group and camp spawns. (Everquest, EQOA, EQ2, FFXI). Then you're playing wow, finally grouped your NELF with your Human friend in westfall, you do some quests, one of you logs, one of you does a few more, your quests are no longer in sync. For very rare and brief periods did I find people to group with and level on my first tune, but let's be honest, the most efficient way to grind levels in most MMOs is Solo play.
Holy, the FlyFF music at 18:00 brings me back. Good times, I miss that game. I'm so old.
YES gimee an mmo like flyff where optimal leveling is in pairs. uwu
@@TheSugurMonkey Personal ringmaster slave.... those were the days
I appreciate it when an MMO lets you take on everything solo, but still has strong incentive to take things on in groups. It's a difficult balance, but if they get it right it's great!
The ability to solo something is great because then even if your scheduling with friends fall through, you can still attempt the content you wanted to do!
Doing things solo usually means there's less room for error as if you alone die, there's no one to carry you through to the end and you probably have to start over the raid/dungeon or such. But if you're taking on something in a group there's different challenges like communication and coordination.
Theatre of Blood in Old School Runescape has a decent ratio of scaling monsters based on how many players there are (ignore the fact mechanics themselves make it significantly harder for someone to solo, the scaling is what I wanna focus on) Enemies have 100% health if you're 1 person, 190% health if you're 2 people, 270% if you're 3, 340% if you're 4 and 400% if you're 5 people. You get faster kills along with a bunch of benefits for having more people like the ability to let someone carry, more efficiently lower enemies' defences and give people roles for specific bosses where that's good. And while it's way more difficult it would still be reasonable to solo if you're skilled enough to take on all necessary roles and have good enough gear and resources to deal with the longer fights.
"I didn't mean to put you on a SECOND spectrum". Bold of you to assume most of us were only on one spectrum before now.
I'm rocking the Kinsey Scale rn
I'm on at least three
Ok but to be fair Rumours by Fleetwood Mac is a fire album.
Also yeah, solo MMOs and stuff
i only play MMOs solo because i hate team play and i love the challenge of doing bosses alone
I find that ESO does this very well.
U can really immerse yourself while you are questing alone with pretty good voice acting among all the quests.
Idk why but your little bits on people's personal lives like Damien's tweets and roasting companies is always funny. It's kinda like reading the controvesy section for a beloved celebrity.
dead mmos would be neat if they tried to sell them as full games for offiline use once they die
Would be kind of difficult considering the structure of an MMO is built with server relliance. Maybe if they released server files to the public but that'd bring whole lot of problems i think
@@maerto technically you can i have seen people make offline version of korean mmo like perfect world , ragnarok and rising force online
I play MMORPGs solo. When I play I want to have fun and play "MY Story". When you join a guild, you are no longer playing your story, you are playing the guilds story. When you join a guild you are no longer playing "The Game", you are now working a new job. Plus you must now put up with all the B-S krap from other guild members.
What if "my story" involves navigating the social metagame that is "integrating into a guild and cooperating them their goals as part of my own story"
As a solo MMO player myself, my biggest issue with group content is when making a group is required rather than auto matchmaking. In something like OSRS some of my favorite multiplayer content are things like Nex, Zalcano, and Barbarian Assault as they are all bosses where there is a dedicated world that has auto teams where you simply show up to the world and get into multiplayer within a minute. If wanting something more serious, can easily just branch out from the main group into a more dedicated group. Raids 1, 2, and 3 in OSRS however are not anything like that. You can't simply just show up and have a competent team within a minute. It could take more time to find a team than to do a raid. Can't simply just go to a world, say nothing, and be in a raid within minutes.
ngl, world of warcraft requiring 40 man raids made me meet so many people and some of them still one of my best friends ever.
I did not expect to see Idyl topless in this video... but then again, it's an Idyl video.
This is the other side of the coin to the "abundance of solo activities is draining the multiplayer aspect out of the (m)morpg" discussion.
Thank you Mr. President.
Finally, an Idyl video for me to face a blunt to.
Preach. Went to light up and saw the idyl video and I audibly cheered in excitement.
@@lasjok3r97 we are the same 🤝
That is actually a very interesting concept… maybe there is potential to take an open world rpg type game, but marry it to the community aspects of mmo’s such as a market place or leader boards…. I’d dig it…
I know very little about MMOs, and most of what i know is from your videos. This Runescape game sure does seem pretty great
Being scared of letting other people down, even though it's a ridiculous thought, is a massive thing for me. Good to see I'm not alone
I have some serious social anxiety. I don’t like talking to people in real life or in games. But I do like the feeling of being in an MMO. Feeling like I’m in a living world and seeing other people doing stuff is just… cool.
today i learned Fleetwood mac made a disstrack album.
it gives the album a whole new meaning when you know the background :O
An MMORPG is a millennial game. Most of its players are now in their 30s, which is why more and more MMO players play solo because of life commitments. I enjoyed grouping when I was younger and playing MMORPGs, but now with 2 kids and 2 jobs, I only get to play at certain times during the day or week. I'm guessing there are other players out there with a similar scenario.
Yep, I played like a no-lifer and high eusocial PvE interaction back in 2005-2010, but since then grad school, jobs, wife and kids, so 2019-2020 with the "Classic" vanilla hype, I just leveled mostly solo and did a solo self-found 1-life "hardcore" hunter challenge to lvl60. I could go at my own pace and didn't feel like I was missing out.
Millennials ruined MMORPG
FFXIV can be solo'd with NPCs now except I think the last trial of Endwalker which is like 300 hours into the game.
SWTOR's story is so damn good it works fine as a solo game. Like holy shit, I have never felt the need to do raids. The story is just too interesting. I mean you can be a good guy Sith!❤😂
I swear there was a frame that flashed that said "More farts on my Patreon"
I like observing people in the public, that's why I like to play MMORPG in solo
One of the design decisions of GW2 that I really like is making it so that there is no "mob tagging" in the game. This means that if you hit a mob, you get rewarded with xp/loot when it does, whether there was already someone else fighting it or not. I would love to see this design implemented in more MMOs, especially ones that use trinity class design.
This would allow players to work together on overworld content with practically no friction. You don't have to form a group, you don't have to talk to eachother, there's no pressure to stick together past the content that you're currently working on together. But, it allows you to properly play to your role in a multiplayer environment in a way that you don't really get to do if you're entirely playing solo.
This also helps solve the issue of players fighting over quest mobs which always always always sucks.
I think for this to work you would have up balance overworld mobs so that they aren't too easy to kill, but they can be killed solo if you're very careful. Something like how classic WoW was balanced. You can generally take on one, maybe two, mobs at a time and get through ok, but it would be a lot quicker and easier if someone else was there helping you.
honestly gw2 loot and mob system are god send ,especially for event like mad king's labyrinth
That's been in wow for almost 10 years at this point.
Playing online games solo somehow feels different from playing single player. Even if you never going to see another person through hours and hours of gameplay, just existing in same world with other people makes all the difference.
Excellent video. Design is the key. Solo play often makes you completely unprepared for coop. You get good at playing your class and then learn that everything you learned to do makes you a complete pariah in cooperative play.
Games ideally should provide you with AI teammate options so even if you're playing solo, you can learn team dynamics. In most games, the group is responsible for teaching every new person the basics which serves as a huge gatekeep.
I really appreciated the way you tackled your sponsor in the video. It gave me a good laugh. I appreciate that you made it fun lol. For once i didnt fast forward through that section
I play alone because most people can't get immersed in a game. They want to play with me and then banter and talk about deep topics and I'm okay with that but their focus is only on that even if they say otherwise. I want people who will get engrossed in the game and want to go on adventures not escape or vent about life. I want to talk about our next mission I want to talk about what we may find I want to talk about our fears of losing in the game.
Yeah I hate it when people start talking about real life issue. I already know real people in real life to talk about that.
I'm starting to wonder if my difficulties getting into a MMO's community is mostly just the actual gameplay. I'm one of those people that want to take on challenging content with a group and make friends. But having deathly allergies to rotations and copying meta builds online might be holding me back more than just "MMOs are being more solo friendly".
This is why I love RuneScape. I can play with friends and when I don’t feel like talking just turn off chat and play by myself
I've been playing Toontown Corporate Clash, and tbh I feel like it does such a great job at basically forcing you to rely playing with other people. You can solo if you want, but if you want to progress in the game, some things are practically impossible to solo.
I loved Ragnarok Online because all the challenging and group content was also solo content, that was the pinnacle of MMOs
Playing mmorpg is not about playing with other people. Is about being part of a living world, with other players. Like, you don't need to have friends in real life, if you don't want to
I like having the option to solo when i feel like it.
Even solo players often interact with systems that have real people on the other side. For example EVE Online can be played solo but by taking part in the economy you are basically seeing the mmo aspect.
The patron song at the end is perpetually stuck in my head, it has no right being as catchy as it is what the fuck
The main problem I have with getting into hardcore group play like pvp, raids, and sometimes dungeons is that it takes so much damn time to find the people, set up a time for these people to play and then gather all these people to whatever location they need to be to do this group activity. To make matters worse we then have to do this extremely difficult activity only for one, two, sometimes everybody messing up all the mechanics forcing everybody to restart. I hate it even when I had all the time in the world I felt like it took too much time and now I have a job so there’s no way in hell I’m doing another raid in my lifetime. Don’t even get me started on the idea that people need to record their dps and record how many times they finished a raid and all the bullshit. When I play a game I play it to have fun not stress over so many dumb details that stops from getting to play the actual game.
My solo tendencies started because I had pretty awful internet as a kid and I didn't wanna slow other players down. I guess I never grew out of it.
Now, why was I playing MMOs when my internet sucked? I was a very lonely child. Yes, this is paradoxical.
I used to play alone for the simple fact that when I'm playing a solo game I can go at my own pace. In some mmo guilds, people generally demand commitment and other things... This is usually tiring and many times we are not always able to actively participate in the guild's activities. However, recently I found myself playing T&L and in this game, playing alone is practically very difficult, since most of the content requires guilds. But surprisingly I managed to find really nice and friendly peoples who play at a calmer and simpler pace, just like me. After playing with them I just started having a lot of fun, my experience is much better compared to my experience alone. Currently I only play with this group of people, loud laughter and various confusions. This is the definition of playing with a group of friends.😂
19:58 in case you were searching too:
Sonic Frontiers OST - "Undefeatable"
"I didn't mean to put you on a second spectrum"
second? this would be my third.
As a former social player, I've grown to enjoy solo playing on WoW. It reminds me of a time years ago when I first started the game leveling through dark shore all alone, taking in the music and the atmosphere. And yea, people right now say "Just play a solo game then!" But I want to play wow, the game I fell in love with and still enjoy despite all its problems. I don't want to go back to guilds and raids and having to min-max every peice of gear and having multiple extra addons on my screen to shout at me because Im doing something wrong. I just want to play the game like a game not a job and if tomorrow, Blizzard announced a fully solo server with a companion system baldur's gate 3 style, I'd buy it.
With regards to Wow Classic specifically, trying to play such MMOs today as a new player is hell. It feels like saying "Hey, I'd like to get into cycling", and your friends (who've been playing on-and-off since launch) say "You should come ride with us on the weekends".
Then you show up and it's the Tour de France. Everyone there has been cycling for decades, knows every twist and turn, and is fully kitted out (although for the purpose of this analogy I'm not specifically referring to in-game gear). Once you start playing, you might say "Oh cool, I'm going to do _____" only to be told that _____ is worthless and you should be doing [thing] instead.
Finally, after weeks of playing, and only vomiting once out of anxiety, you finally work up the courage to ask if you can join in on a raid. Immediately you're told to "sign up" for the raid, which then involves learning all the ins-and-outs of the peri-raiding experience. You need to learn about some convoluted loot reservation system that people just throw out without really explaining.
Then finally you join the raid, but rather than taking some time to explain what's going on, what the story is behind the raid (because of course they didn't stop to help you do the quests), you just get thrown in the deep end. In the case of BFD, it's literal. You jump down a well, hug a wall, logout for some reason, and now you're somewhere different and you're being attacked by Horde because your friends' friends all wanted to play on PVP servers even though open-world PVP sucks and no one enjoys it (besides Rogues).
Gee, I wonder why I prefer to play solo...
Thats just bad MMO design. EverQuest back in the day was PvE only, grouping was _heavily_ encouraged, the playerbase is still gentle and helpful, the game was designed for you to need help and others to need your help. It's a blast delving into dungeons without maps, camping deep with a group of adventurers. Today's MMORPGs have lost sight of what mulitplayer should be in an MMORPG. Most fun I've ever had in an MMORPG, and I've played almost every MMO.
Best moments of MMORPG I've had where when I was alone playing and found a random, did a quick dungeon or raid, had a blast, befriend him, never seen him online again in my life.
I still remember you XxDevKnightxX
A version of classic WoW that is as group-oriented as EverQuest was sounds incredible.
I really like playing just on my own, because I can often enjoy the story and the world better and in my own pace.
On the other hand I do have problems in finding friends online and connect with other, what is very ironic, because I have no problems to connect irl with other people and I actually like to play with others.
I have this problem no matter the game.
It didn't work in MMOs aswell in Call of Duty and also other games, but those are the MP games I've put the most time in.
there is no paradox, there are just people who think games should require people to interact with them. why? because no one would want to play with them if given the choice. its what I like to call, "the dog and porkchop paradigm". nowhere in the acronym MMORPG does it state that players are _required_ to play with anyone. Its massively multiplayer, meaning theres a lot of people playing at once but not necessarily with each other. its online, meaning it requires a continuous internet connection. there is RP, meaning you play a role in character or out of character. its a game, meaning there are systems in place for a form of progression like levels, skills and activities.
As for "the dog and porkchop paradigm", its the situation where you take the old saying 'youre so ugly, your parents had to tie a porkchop around your neck so the dog would play with you', which is a way of saying that playing with you is so unappealing there has to be a form of incentive to coerce people into interacting with you. which is what forced/required grouping is, its the porkchop. the game devs are the parents and other players are the dog.
This is why you have advocates for forced/required grouping in games like MMOs, the average player isnt wont to socialize often and I can say that most people in MMOs play solo as most people are independent in real life. Could you imagine that if you needed to go to the store, you had to contact four or so other people just to walk in and buy a gallon of milk?
I am not advocating the removal of group content, far from it, but the base systems should allow for solo play.
As I solo player I can explain it this way: I like to do suboptimal content, readin text, exploring zones, completing quests even if they give nothing, in wow I collect everything from pets achivments to the transmogs, so It takes me long ass time to move from expansion to expansion, also I have every class and crafting possible, I just play my own version of the game, 1 or 2 expansion after eveyrone, but I dont want to drag other throu it as I feel I'm slowing them down as knowing I play suboptimal already is hard for me, I will join group for hard quests or dungeons with no problem, just that I need to get there in my own pace
I appreciate you bringing up the lack of time aspect of things. When I was younger I moved around a lot so video games were a good way to stay in contact with people and get me through the lonely points. Now I’ve got two kids and I barely can get 10 minutes uninterrupted so I don’t even attempt to be social in game because I just can’t give the game or other players my full attention. So when I do get to play I’m rocking out solo even though I really do miss it.
Unfortunately, people can end up in their 20's & 30's with a real need to be social, and we can't find an outlet in MMOs anymore because these games have become so antisocial. Nobody talks. If you see people talking, it's either that weirdo with zero social skills attempting to be edgy, or people talking in the shortest possible form of game jargon to get things done asap.
I've picked up and quit games quickly because the antisocial feeling is so strong, and when I read comments online about the games I'm interested in, I see other people saying the same thing. Players feel more comfortable if they have a reason to interact-- when they have to interact to progress. I like solo, too, but I wish SOME games prioritized the 'multiplayer' part of MMO.
For what it's worth, FFXIV's story dungeons have the capacity to be played with story NPCs instead of other players. It's only side quest dungeons and raids that *require* multiplayer
I remember someone trying to party up with me in an mmo, and I ended up making an excuse and going to the other side of the map just to not have to talk with them. They were even being nice, but I just really don't like playing with others in these Massive Multiplayer Online games.
I tend toward solo play in MMORPGS. But I like the option of engagement with others when im in the mood also. Oh and I wanted to add, awesome video. I think we may have the exact same psychology when it comes to gaming lol.
I will never forget the time I tried to get into warframe with a friend that just ADORES the games, it was dam near impossible to discover or experience the game with them there cause anything I could find out or learn they were exposition dumping
So much so that they became upset whenever I referred to the different enemy factions by dump names such as calling those dudes with the blocky helmets daftpunk
I usually play solo. Guilds are too much time commitment and my friends don't really play games anymore. I like being around people but I don't necessarily want to always engage with them. That's why I love MMOs and also Dark Souls multi-player. I like playing in a living world
I remember in WoW when it came out there were elite monsters just wandering around, and you needed a party to take them down.
i think what makes gw2 (basically the only mmo i play) so nice is that yeah, it's solo-able. but everyone is also just so chill??? like unless you're doing PvP everyone's super nice in my experience. and there are ALWAYS people on the map, even in lower level areas, cuz they have metas that take place in those areas and they downlevel you to match. i remember being relatively new and coming across the shadow behemoth for the first time, for example
i also tend to just play with my partner, i've been replaying the entire story with him (first time for him) and it's been really fun. let's me work on that damn legendary necklace at the same time since you need to replay the story for that anyway. but it's really fun just running around in-game and talking while we level up n stuff too
i haven't touched dungeons or raids much even though i've played the game for like 8 years, but i recently joined a discord full of people that i know from tumblr, so i'm hoping to get more into that side of the game! i loved doing fractals with my dad and his friends but they don't play very much anymore. but in the rare instances i've done dungeons with complete strangers, they were still super fun
I leveled 3 chars to 70 in wow retail and I encountered like 3 players while questing. Made me a little sad because I was thinking "wow is like such a big game but I guess it's soo big that I won't find anyone" . Just yesterday I tried final fantasy and got basically flooded by other new players in the first zone..which felt kinda better , also there's music being played and music is always good
W Sonic Frontiers soundtrack at the end
That Flyff bgm gave me nostalgia joy
12:01 , that was exactly what happened to me with new world , i was really enjoying the game for over month and a half , super casual super fun when i have time , but then the game impose a quest in a dungeon that you cant event enter alone , so as i could not continue my game and my story i just droped the game.
For me the selling point of an mmo is that just like in the real world , there are a lot of people doing their own thing , and you have the option of interact with them , but when the game push you to do it , is just like a mom pushing a boy to talk and to play with other random boy that is already playing with his friends, they will include you just to fill a space , but they are already a group , and you are just there , and be there in the group is not the same as being part of the team.
"I won't talk about Runescape... but the soundtrack do slap tho"
Edit: sike I'm also gonna talk ablut it
I've been Solo Playing MMO RPGs since 2004 with City of Heroes. I quest and level by myself, sometimes I'll do PvP or Dungeon/Raid content with groups. The only time I focus on purely playing with other people is when I'm roleplaying or I join a permadeath guild in an MMO (I really only attempt permadeath runs in DDO though).
I just wish there were more cases where a big event happens and others could join in. That was like, my favorite thing ever in any MMO I played
Theatre of blood is now a lot easier to do solo, but admittedly Nylo room for me as a learner would be rough. The rest of the raid would be all right solo as per the recent QOL updates to TOB.
7:06 I think that the right answer... group content used to be a feature of the game since the mmorpg started as an escalation from 1 player videogames into a community oriented environment. But now, it's everyday more common to see that you star the journey surrounded by players in a starting point in which you're rewarded for group activities from the start. As weird as it may sound that became exhausting as people is tired of social interaction. Solo player in mmo is somehow a response from players tired of obligatory interaction with other players. This isn't a good thing for mmos in the end. But the answer from AAA companies to this phenomenon is to force even further all kind of group content into the main aspect of their games. Being this said, is ok to asume that the highest successfull version of mmos was that in which group content was only one of many features? Is there forcibly a mandatory need of separating solo player from multiplayer making it obvious as two separated ways of gameplay? Note this: all mmo so far has failed in exploring this question through development design.
Runescape Classic was practically Ironman Mode. You went away from a bank to fight and skill and collect loot, then returned to the town to show off what you did all by yourself.
I also like the solo aspect. For example I started Genshin two weeks ago and it even felt weird to me that it was not an MMO.
Remember that part in early (FFXIV) A Realm Reborn when the early main story quest makes you run three dungeon instances in a row? My social anxiety hasn't allowed me to forget.
Coincidentally, I'm listening to this video, while farming ores in wow (solo, I might add)
Comin in strong with the Papyrus
I'm the same type of player as you and I genuinely enjoy grinding solo content but at the same time on an MMO I'm always kinda hoping to make friends, it's just idk how I guess! Doing group content, joining guilds, playing support roles, always being pretty chill and helpful and still I got no one to talk to whenever I log in. I'm also always outta the loop and behind on content because I'm in my 30s with a family and other hobbies so I guess I'm screwed lol
I felt part 4 the most, it's something I've echoed many many many times. The MMORPG formula was figured out decades ago and there is value in remembering what actually worked in the past... It shouldn't be a revelation to remind decision making devs that a game shouldn't be all one thing or another. Variety is the spice of life. I don't want an all solo game just as I don't want an all multiplayer game in the same respect that I don't want an overly complex game or a brain-dead simple game. For example: I don't want the PoE talent tree as much as I don't want WoW's Legion or BFA skill trees.
I'm a totally solo player in MMOs. Here are my most basic reasons - #1 - I can't find people on my level. By this I mean that people either rush thru everything min/maxing or are just so bad that they waste my precious limited playtime. I don't like to rush and I don't like to waste time either, so there you go. #2 - I don't have time to explain everything in the game to new or bad players. I prefer MMOs to single player games only because to me other players in the game world make it feel alive, they're essentially all just randomly acting NPCs to me, instead of the preprogramed NPCs in single player games. #3 - I like to be able to go AFK or logout or log back in whenever I want. Do whatever I want without having to check with others. I have also found that most people only talk to me in game because they need something, and once you start with the whole "friends list" thing you find yourself always doing shit you'd rather not be doing. There are other reasons but those are the big 3. I think I may be antisocial, but I think I just like being efficient and do things at my own pace, independent if you will.
There isn't any problem with enjoying solo until it becomes the norm in any given community. It's similar to how people gripe about having to say hello to their neighbors or smile at strangers. Once most people stop being friendly, individuals will have a MUCH harder time connecting with anyone in a community. Antisocial people usually have low social needs for various reasons. But life changes. Once you find yourself needing to connect, and a community has become antisocial, it's no longer a personal choice. That's the difference between being alone and happy, versus being lonely and feeling isolated.
You forgot RuneScape also did the bad way of forced grouping. Shield of Arrav and Heroes Quest, two of my most hated quests in the game. At least for Shield of Arrav you can just make another alt to do it with, but I have no idea how people did Heroes Quest before the Clan Chat for finding other people was a thing.
Another bad thing to mention about raids (and technically Barbarian Assault, but that's easy) - you can't learn them by yourself without finding a group, and for the first 5-10 raids you're literally a dead weight in the group.
This SWTOR Slander hurts me :( Game is so good honestly it and GW2 will forever be my comfort MMOs