Well, one overall theme of this thread is, I don't like wasting game time forming up groups.  So the real answer I guess is that developers need to come up with a faster/better way to form groups.  Or start making quests such that there isn't a "perfect" balance of classes that is almost required.

Another big help would be strong encouragement to group.  Best way to do that as I see it is remove the diminishing returns on grouping.   Two players kill a mob...don't make them split the experience/loot.  Have the mob drop at least the same amount of exp/gear they would have gotten solo, and even consider adding a group bonus which increases as you get more and more people.

I agree with what is said in the article. People flame others who like to solo just because it's called an MMORPG.

Their arguement is why play  a mmorpg if you want to solo? And along comes this article that explains it all.

 

WoW DID add something that was supposed to speed up group building. They even simply named it the "Looking for Group" function. You opened its window, clicked on the available dungeons, based onyour lvl,and other players interested in thesame dungeons would automatically begin being placed in to groups. Only thing wrong is that players themselves have to actually USE this function. Veryfew every do.

Quote From Dan:

Even with that whole confession behind me, I still count the times me and a small group of friends spent murdering helpless players as some of the best times I've ever had in a game, so maybe there is hope for me yet in the group centric world of MMOs.

Once again, Dan brings in his PvP view into an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with pvp.  The above statement, especially when he refers to them as "hapless players" implies to me that he's one of those low-skill bullies that can't beat a player of equal level/gear so he runs to Newbie Land and proves his leet skillz by slaughtering the lowbies.   Yeah very impressive there. 

I have said it before and I'll say it again.   The fun or challenge of pvp comes from defeating an opponent that has a realistic chance of defeating me.  If the other player has virtually zero chance of defeating me, what's the fun (or point) in that?

Back on topic...

I do agree with him on the Raiding Being All to do at high levels, I have no problem with raid content as long as I have non-raid options as well.  Do I expect the non-raid rewards to be equal?  Of course not, but just "better" than what I have would be good.  Games like EQ1 are very anti-soloing, so it can take sometimes hours just to FIND a group, especially if you are playing at an off-peak time. 

This gusy a total nub .

"(I don't recall ever calling Hold Person a 'root' spell in AD&D)"

Uhh dee de dee, if an mmo camp out today and HP was in it , it would not be called a root ... BECAUSE ITS NOT A ROOT.

This guy one doesn't know what a "root" is or two doesn't know what "hold person" is, and here they are talking big and s@## give me a break.

And Ad&D really was not about soloing... really. (You could do whatever you wanted with it but playing it with yourself is beyond sad).


I understand the entire i want to solo bit ... i just wish mmos would go back to more groups but make them fun ... not penalties but bonuses.. i think that is what mmos are missing atm.  (A REASON to group, beyond to get an eleet sword).

"I have said it before and I'll say it again.   The fun or challenge of pvp comes from defeating an opponent that has a realistic chance of defeating me.  If the other player has virtually zero chance of defeating me, what's the fun (or point) in that?"

Best pvp in mmo is DAOC w/o a contest because of this ... you can be out numbered and you can be flanked by an entire Side that you where not even fighting... of course you can still win (proably will not but it happens), but at the same time you may be the people flanking or the people orginaly defending. Sometimes your outnumbered 2-1 but you win because of a few players wonderful actions.(2-1 is harsh tho)
There is little room for solo player s in daoc pvp unless your a stealther AND THIS SI THE WAY MMOS SHOULD BE. You should not be able to solo a fg by yourself. But mmos lean that way in the name of making solo content. Or they make groups not help so much in pvp / pve .... same thign if ya don't really need it then your not gonna do it and then whats the point of a mmo .. play a 8-12-32 player game like an fps or something.

Having read your reply to the OP you have ignored it or misunderstood it totally or you are just ranting for rantings sake. I guess you have to keep your ranking up but any rep you have is down the drain ...

The OPS main critique is around the change of approach from in depth and enjoyable to a baby fest of abreviations for the sake of the rat race to be... well a lame underacheiver

I hate grouping mostly cause people are dicks and split xp.

Originally posted by Isane

Having read your reply to the OP you have ignored it or misunderstood it totally or you are just ranting for rantings sake. I guess you have to keep your ranking up but any rep you have is down the drain ...

The OPS main critique is around the change of approach from in depth and enjoyable to a baby fest of abreviations for the sake of the rat race to be... well a lame underacheiver

Hmm including a name (who you are talking about) will help clear stuff up.

IF its me , why because the poster obviously is not familer with roots or D&D and then he goes out and talks about it ? Who does me pointing this out ruin my rep?


"The OPS main critique is around the change of approach from in depth and enjoyable to a baby fest of abreviations for the sake of the rat race to be... well a lame underacheiver"
- To address this point , the reason for these "abreviations"[sic] are because unlike in D&D there are a lot of spells that do the same thing or similar things (with-in a single game and among many games).  Thus Terms are defined to describe the basics of the spell. AOE (hits an area of effect) , Root (zero movement),  etc.  How do these lessen a game or make it a "baby fest" as you say ? I can call fireball a wiz/sorc 3rd circle or CL spell and its still AOE. see these terms fit the D&D world not all of them but hey thats why new terms are made , and what is wrong with that.

Still your wrong he spent most of the article on solo content vs group.


Sorry this is so sad the most fun i have had is zerg and group pvp where THERE WAS A FIGHT and up hill battle and i won. taking 5 people with 2  one fg vs 2 fgs.  THIS is was makes the BEST moments in mmos, a challenge , winning against the odds. Tho i can tell you some times 2 fg repedatly kills my FG over and over ... its not so fun. But its that one win you pull off that make it worth it.

Not your full group GANKING, this posters believe groups are good because you can GANK with them. And your telling me i what ".. but any rep you have is down the drain ..." I would argue it not my Rep. that is down the drain, for i am not the one defending that the full extent of a group's use is to GANK.

I understand that the writer of this posted his feelings thats fine , i simply do not share them and truely he seems rather removed from the 1st and 2nd gen mmos (muds and D&D) for you almost had to group in those to really have fun in them. MMO's if anythign have become more solo centric because groups offer problems , people are not perfect they will upset you , steal loot, etc. but at the same time MMO's are really more than single player games that "feels much more alive" , if your missing that i feel your missing the best fun MMO's have to offer.  If you disagree with me go ahead say it, but i have soloed and i have lead guilds and been part of guilds that accept everyoen and still compeat at the best levels of the game, supply noobs ... ie one of the few rare guilds that are almost perfect its happened only twice to me , i been in the eleet of eleetest guilds , i been in the smallest and poorest guilds, i been solo too. All offer different experience but if you have not experienced them its hard to comment about the different aspects of grouping. Still maybe the writer has... but Ganking would not be high on the list accomplishments and fun other than for the solo , and poor/sad guild.  (ps i loved a few of my sad guilds they just were not very good).

If i am wrong then so be it. Oh and if Isane wasn't talking to me then ... oh well , now you know why i posted what i did before.

Lots of people are casual players thess days, getting a group is not always a quick and easy experience.  If you only have a couple hours to play, getting into the right group might be quite hard.

So if a game has not too much solo content, that will be a hardship on some players. 

But, the concept of a MMO is to play with others, so it is good sometimes you have to group to achieve some goals.

Some good games, like AC1 had no group ability, yet you still played with others in certain areas as it was pretty dangerous to do otherwise. 

Take Wow for an example, you need to group for the instances, but can solo much of the quest content.  Grouping was pretty easy when they had the lfg channel, but when they replaced that channel with an inept lfg tool, everyone started using other less useful methods to form groups, like trade and local channels.  Shows how a devs can mess it up too.

Just curious, I was confused about the hold person commentary.  What does that have to do with grouping?  P.S. hold person is most certainly a root, maybe you have a different definition, but you are most definitely in a minority on your view of it.

Originally posted by Ciredric
...

Just curious, I was confused about the hold person commentary.  What does that have to do with grouping?  P.S. hold person is most certainly a root, maybe you have a different definition, but you are most definitely in a minority on your view of it.

...

Ps i can not believe i am posting here again :) I'll try to clear it up .. Doubt ill be successful however.


Your confused because you also do not know what HP or a root is.

Hold person is this.

"It is aware and breathes normally but cannot take any actions, even speech."
"Paralyzes target humaniod."
"The enemy humanoid becomes paralyzed and freezes in place. It is aware, but can take no actions for maximum of 6 seconds per caster level."

- various but licenced sources

Root is
"movment reduced by 99%:
"Entangling Roots - Roots the target in place and causes X nature damage over X seconds."
"Target is effectively immobilized (loses 99% of possible movement speed) for the duration of the spell. If any damage is done to the target, the spell will break."
"Arcane Bindings Roots the wizard's target in place, preventing them from movement. Any damage received by the target has a chance at breaking the effect." _ i think was not a mage in eq2 so... but i am pretty sure (i made one just didn't play it much).


Do you see the difference. If not ill tell you, in HOLD person you can take no action because your paralyzed , ROOTs on the other hand you can do what ever you freakin want but you can't move.
- and thus i win (ok this is cocky, but you people should know this .... this writer should know this he is writing for a mmo gaming focused site. ) How am i supposted to read that article and go , oh yeah their opinion is right, when the writer doesn't even know 1 the spells or 2 the terminology. (PS Hold person is very defined and i picked 3 of the more influencing mmorpgs for root. If you say well that not what i think root is then your in the minority , because thats how most mmorpgs and their players define a Root). Wow DAOC and EQ 1/2 i mean come on i could look for more, i randomly picked 3 and bingo root = ROOT = immobilize, not paralyze.
HP is CC = crowed control = stun = a few other things . (MMO terms do not really = D&D terms you kinda have to draw lines of function, regardless it is CC).

and when i point this out ( and that this article really says like 4 different things in 5 or 6 paragraphs, and i am asking so what was the point? of this writing .. really)  I get told i lost my "mmo cred" (yes a joke peoples)  because i don't know what I am talking about.... i am like what the. Really i thik alot of people agree with most desenting voices about mmos in general because they are not perfect , and yet as humans thats what we want.. IE fix our games make them perfect.

To clear things up before i get another post,  I believe the writer was saying :
1) MMORPG's today lack the depth that old rpgs had . Look at the spell discriptions and what they do. (REally look at them they have a story to themselves often, i loved playing wiz that would only cast like bigby's and other named spells just for the role play of it. (had to be higher i realize this) even weapons had stories sometimes). IE depth. [agree but it not like there is a lot of type of spells in mmos today ... there more than Ad&D , yet many mimic each other, so do some in D&D tho]
2) Soloing is good - as the author i like it, so do many others [So do i {jetrpg}, I solo or play with rl friends and sometimes add a few people who are good/fun most of my MMo play time, so i get this and agree.]
3) Solo play should provide players with compeditive equipment [agree]
4)Groups are fun if you use them to gank -- maybe they do have uses. [disagree for them many reason listed in the last post]

I must admit, I haven't read all replies, but just want to give my 2cts worth.

As for an eyeopener because you mention ADnD, I wonder did you go venture out alone (when a person DM was around and other people with different classes) or did you group? I doubt you did...again because of the social aspect. MMOs are basically that paper and pencil game applied to PC gaming industry.

Now back to some of your points. Having solo players isnt the problem. The problem as mentioned is, missing real solo player content. And this is because of the fact of greed of players... What would a solo player as a quest reward for example? You cant expect to get the same "uber leet" loot from a special solo player content quest as that from a raid.

Unfortunately, a lot of solo players DO have that attitude. They *want* to be able to solo *everything* (SWG is a good example, with recent Chap 6 update, making the AI *normal* (read DIFFICULT) again)  and don't care about the fact that for that "uber leet" loot groups are a prime requisite for getting it done.

Then some of the better solo players state that is stil can be done, soloing some of the tougher mobs, but again, most of them keep on whining about the difficulty. And more complaints arise, same like here, about being unable to group/to find a group/buff and so on in a short time.I call that BS. With SWG all of that got killed, because of the NGE, but I remember times, I had to DECLINE group invites, because I wanted to do something else. I remember times, where it was not an issue to get buffs or anything like that, because their were waiting lines (instead of people complaining now that nobody is around to give them)... A CHALLENGING PvE (read: not everything solo-able again, especially not if you want to go in with blazing fists and WITHOUT using your head and tacticts) will lead to more socializing and more people getting together and helping eachother out. Vanguard is an example where that works too.

Then the next part is "end game".. What is there to do for the solo player beside "pvp-ing". Most, if not al,l make it sound like PVP is the most important thing to do in a game. And then even more whining start "I cant defeat class X, nerf-calls" and so on and so forth. In the end it's the groupplayer and or the PvE solo-player who are drawing the short straws.

And that, basically is what keeps pissing me off.

An MMO is NOT about grouping, it's NOT about SOLO-ing, it's about ENJOYING and having fun WITH others, socializing.
If PvP leads to anger, jealousy and the-unable-to-be-the-uber-leet-invincible-solo-player kind of people they have NO place in an MMO.
Go play a Single player, or one purely DESIGNATED for Online gaming (like halflife, battlefield, you name them) where PvP/solo is part of the system.

And in case you haven't noticed, I'm both a solo player (but NOT a PVPer as I don't like it much; I'm not good at it, because I just cant care enough about my own performance, but because I like to have a challenge in PvE and enjoy helping people in groups, socializing, tutoring the game and so on). And most of those people I meet are likeminded.

As for your point about solocontent.. yes it should be there, but NOT designed purely for the soloplayer. That has NO place in an MMO.

I really don't see how solo play can test your skills. Let me make that clearer with examples:

-Open-PvP: well there will always be people who will group to win against the lesser-disorganised warriors and then sort things out between them (so group-playing to the very end wins)

-anything non-instanced like a boss made for solo-killing would be easily farmed by a small group of friends

-instanced solo-boss: i bet if that were created then in several weeks there would be 9999 step-by-step guides made by hardcore skilled players making everything easy for everyone ("after 3 secs cast ***, then run to the 3rd tile to the right...etc"

-crafting or questing rewards: let's say there were specifical drops that u can't trade, only get them yourself. Well i doubt this is skill, it's more like farming...so "let's give grand prizes to the farmers and macro-ers!!" is not a good idea.

I can't find any other ideas. I am against immense groups of people for raiding and such, because that makes strategy a bad joke. But i do enjoy getting with 10-20 or so of my friends and going to kill some strong boss. In such a group, strategy matters and individual skill is important since u usually have a specific role in the group and if that goes wrong it's clearly your fault. The downside is having to spend a lot of time finding the right people, but i like to think that a MMO-player without friends in-game is not a good player. It rarelly happens to me to log on and not find a party somewhere fast (and not only in weekends and such).

Another option for soloing players could be an button in charaktercreation, there u have to decide, wether that char is for soloing or grouping/guild, that could take influence on the Items/coins/XP while playing. For example the Items(armour/weapon) are resticted with a no sell tag (exept sell to NPC). Most replys here are describe that most players have only a part of time to play and dont want  search a long time for groups.Another thing is that in a persistent world the players change by hour arround the worldtime, some of the player i meet only on the weekend, if i have time to play maybe at my local nighttime :), so its not possible to have allways the same players at the sametime on the same server. I have meet a lot of nice gamers from many different countries, and talking in chat beween a dungeon/ quest , was very nice , so thats a point to play a mmorpg, to meet people from foreign countries as well, however i solo or not.

greetings

I am anti-social as well, I usually feel very uncomfortable in social situation and it doesn't really change just because I'm in game.  I mean don't get me wrong I love playing with friends/family, but random grouping is just not something I enjoy doing.  I really don't like the raids, I am just not that into team work.

I have been happy about how the MMO's that I have played seem to make it less complicated to solo, now I can play my characters solo instead of playing my solo characters.   When I first started out, not that long ago really, I remember haveing to pick a solo character, now I feel like I have more options, I can pick a character, and then choice to play it solo.

I still sometimes feel like the games are designed to give more rewards to people who have a great community of friends (even if it's just a great guild, with people they only know online).  I feel like since I'm not in one of those "uber" guilds/groups/raids, and never plan to be, that there are things I will never be able to accomplish.  It almost feels like, just because I don't interact well with other characters, I will never be a great game player.  Then again, I guess there is a reason they call them MMO's, and I'm still playing them, so  the rewards must out weigh any problems that I see, and if I get too frustrated, there are always normal RPG's.

what i don't get is why don't they make MMorpgs life real life, by which i mean if u have a task to do u can either a get some mates to help or just do it on ur own but its obviously easier with the help of mates, what im getting at is why do they have to have RAIDS and all that crap when they could make normal game content everyone could play but u'd have to be pretty good at soloing to do it, infact it would then exstend the solo game longer than the group content then

answered my own question there really didnt i? it would make the game soling orientated at the end game and hardcore grouping fans would complian, poor games companys no way they can win

I voted that it should be even in Clea's poll. Why try to push people into finding a group?

  I think a smart idea for any mmo for soloers is to maybe have certain classes that are better at soloing and/or have quest for everyone that can be done solo.

 

I do see the soloers view, though i perfer grouping.  I usually dont play an mmo without about 5-6 friends playing with me so we're always grouping and getting good teamwork down to level fast and eventually PvP well.  I think if it's a pvp game that it's important to kinda force grouping because when you pvp you're never going to be able to solo unless your somewhat of a stealther. 

 

 

i found this post by chance and i have to say i am sick of having to group to do anything these days i like grouping but sometime i like to just wander off and solo but i find you are dead in seconds or anything you can kill is total pointless

it would be nice to find a nice game that allows an even mix of both.

Ok there is a difference between a hold and a root spell (or whatever).  In City of Heroe/Villains, I can immoblize you (root) but you can still attack, just cannot move or jump.  However, if I land a hold on you not only can't you move but you cannot take any action.  In WoW terms entangling roots is a "root" while pally/rogue stun would be a "hold".

While I very much appreciate discussions and debates on this very issue, I have very low hopes that developing companies will ever take them seriously.  Even though soloing seems like a very popular game play style, it simply requires too much effort on the developer's part to program for, they might actually have to earn those millions of dollars each month from subscription fees.  The industry as a whole is lazy and money hungry.  They look for the mechanics that allow for the greatest amount of income for the least amount of effort.  Raiding and forced grouping fall smack in the middle of that business model.  Maybe someday, when people start cancelling games that follow this kind of business model, they will change the way they make these games, till then, we'll be stuck with these tired old paradigms for a long time yet.

As things are right now, the majority of developers and publishers are only interested in income rather than making a fun game.  Pavlov's experiments are very much alive and healthy and implemented in every MMO to date.