Originally posted by Senadina

Actually, balancing solo and group play is VERY difficult due to human nature. If I can solo a mob, why would I ever group to kill it?

Wrong, CoX does this without a probem.  Everything can be solo'd but most people group, why?  Faster exp.  But yes you can still solo.  And no solo players do not quit.

I agree.

There should be content for solo players.  This is not saying that the group or raid content should be removed.

While many games do cater for solo play at lower levels, the holy writ for the maximum level players is that "Thou shalt group or raid or quit the game". 

I doubt that you can make the same encounter challenging for solo, group, and raid.  CoH/CoV addressed this issue by scaling their instances to match the level and number of players.  Because it is in an instance, solo players and groups were not actually facing the exact same encounter.   However, the experience did not scale very well, as groups usually got a lot more experience than solo players, particularly after your level reached the high teens.

Originally, in Everquest, the only way to get the best gear was to raid.  Then expansions like LDoN allowed groups to get gear that was close to raid quality from instances.  This did offend some players who felt that raiding should be the ONLY way to obtain good gear.  However, there was no way for solo players to get good gear.

For some reason, there is a trend for PC games to be distributed as online games.   Maybe it is because the registration process for online games reduces piracy.  Given this trend, there should be games that cater for solo play as well as games that cater for group and raid play.

 I think it's possible to balance. I think Warhammer does this too, but in FFXI the 'solo' content is basically fighting monsters together in a warzone with other players, but you don't have to team up to do so. You can group up if you wish, which would make it safer to kill the monsters, but it's not mandatory. 

Also, the exp isn't so good that players wouldn't want to group up in the 'normal' exp method. If you have more than an hour of playtime, you're always lfg and hoping for an invite. 

This is what solo play should be about imo. Like a waiting room, or if you don't have much time you can still progress-type of thing. You can boost it even further by giving something like rested exp for the soloers for like 30mins-1h that give as much exp as you'd get in a party. That way even if lfg takes a bit longer than usual or you only have 1h to play, you can still progress at a fair rate. After 1h you'll surely want to group if you have time.

But I'm not really a fan of "solo to level cap".. so the system shouldn't encourage it. You can disagree with me, but I don't think in every MMO you should be able to solo to level cap. In some maybe, if not most, but not all.

I have a hunch that FF14 will use a similar system for solo players... and still allow for a great grouping experience. It might be hard to get used to it as a player without experience of FF11, but after the initial shock I'm sure it'll prove to be much more fun than people thought.

Originally posted by Vrazule

So, we soloers are never suppose to have a single MMO that treats us like top dogs, it's always going to be groupers and raiders?  Bullshit.  You're so worried about your play style being ruined, but never give a damn about other play styles getting the crappy end of the stick.  Every frigging MMO out there gives groupers and raiders the best content and rewards, bar none.  It's about frakking time we soloers get one that truly caters to us.

Let's see, just about every single player game caters to you but yet you enter a genre that specifically caters towards a social dynamic. Even if they made a game that caters to you casuals you will devour that game in no time (as most of these so called casuals are just bad and spend just as much time in game as cores) and then show in our grouping games demanding that the game be changed to your vision.

Originally posted by protoroc

Originally posted by Vrazule

So, we soloers are never suppose to have a single MMO that treats us like top dogs, it's always going to be groupers and raiders?  Bullshit.  You're so worried about your play style being ruined, but never give a damn about other play styles getting the crappy end of the stick.  Every frigging MMO out there gives groupers and raiders the best content and rewards, bar none.  It's about frakking time we soloers get one that truly caters to us.

Let's see, just about every single player game caters to you but yet you enter a genre that specifically caters towards a social dynamic. Even if they made a game that caters to you casuals you will devour that game in no time (as most of these so called casuals are just bad and spend just as much time in game as cores) and then show in our grouping games demanding that the game be changed to your vision.

 

QFT

Originally posted by Scot

If you start a game and you immediately need to team up, even if its just in a group of two, you will immediately get into and stay in the grouping mentality until endgame.

Or just uninstall the thing...

Few MMO's force teaming from day one because they don't want to chase soloers away - everybody pays the same for their account (usually) and a successful MMO is going to have to cater for both camps to some extent..

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by horrid

Quit it with the sports analogies!  Nerds only here!  But - as we are on that topic - mmorpgs almost always have different zones (even the non zoned sandbox games).  Zones can be broken down into sub areas.  Think of zones and sub areas as courts.  Some area/courts are intended for solo players, others for teams and then you have the pro raiders will full TV coverage.  There is no rule to say that someone who likes to solo can't also play group or go pro just as there is no rule saying a pro player can't shoot some solo hoops.  They are given different zones for different play types.

 

EQ2 supports solo, small group, full group, 2X raiding and 4X raiding and its all active used content.  Proof it does work.   It worked in WoW as well. 

 

 

 

There is only one COURT, because I'm talking about the RULES OF THE GAME.

The rules of the game are the same for everyone on the server. If you change the rules on the server for the solo player, you change the rules on the servr for the group player too, and screw up their group game.

AS far as I know, there is no game that has different rules for different players on the same server.

So to keep the analogy, shooting solo hoops would definitely scew up a team basketball game.

To shoot hoops and not do that, you'd need to be on another court, which means ANOTHER SERVER.

Otherwise, you change the rules for everyone, and the group based game has to now play by the solo rules.

You've basically said, HEY, I want to change the rules for your fun group based game and turn it into a solo game, and you should be happy with that, because I like solo games!

Uh, no, I still want a grouping game.

Your'e saying WoW is a great game! Look you can group if you want to!

Yes, WoW is a great solo game. If I wanted a solo game, I would certainly like WoW.

But again, I"m looking for a group game. You're just saying, why don't you play my solo game? It's much better! I still want a groupoing game, not a solo game like WoW. Your "solution" is simply a solo game. Great solution..... for solo players.

 

Everytime that idiotic basketball analogy comes up I have to shake my head in dibelief.

It is based entirely on the presumption that the group-based design is the right design.  In fact that design is purely arbitrary and neither right or wrong.

The basketball court analogy presumes that there is a very small and limited playing field available and if both playstyles are allowed in at the same time, there will not be any room.   That is purely a limitation of the design of a  basketball court.  One can very easily design a basketball court where a team game is in progress while mutlitple soloers are shooting baskets in the same time.   The reason that it is not done is because everyone assumes that the team players will share the court with the soloers in such a way that both groups can enjoy themselves.  They either take turns or the soloers join up with a team or a team just does solo activities together. 

The implication of the basketball analogy is that group players are selfish snobs who cannot abide the fact that soloes might use the same space as they do and are completely unwilling to share. 

Um, no.

If the same rewards exist for the solo part of the court, then you've changed the rules for the group part of the court as well.

So you want to win the NBA. You can either build the best basketball team in the world, OR you can shoot solo hoops at the other end of the court.

Which way do you think would be the easiest to win? Let's see, I can either play against the Lakers (play a team based game), OR I can just decide to shoot hoops solo and get the same reward. Hmmm, such a hard decision. Not.

You see, you can't change teh rules for one person on the Court without changing the rules for everyone.

Originally posted by Senadina

Actually, balancing solo and group play is VERY difficult due to human nature. If I can solo a mob, why would I ever group to kill it? So you end up with a solo game that groupers hate. If I can only kill most mobs with  a group, the soloers leave. WoW actually has it right, and is one of the reasons it is so successful. Most of the content is soloable, but if yoy want the gear and the experience of the instances you have to group. It keeps everyone reasonably happy.

The soloers will also eventually leave when they realize their character cannot compete with those who group and raid when it comes to experiencing and attaining end-game content. Eventually, soloers realize they are being coded out of such content for no reason other than to provide a certain kind of playstyle with a sense of superiority.

Why should casuals, or soloers, pay as much as anyone else to eventually be nothing more than 3rd rate characters? No thanks.

You don't need scalable bosses, all you need is a set-up question from an NPC, such as asking the player if they are traveling alone, in a group, or will their guild be organizing a raid; your answer sends you to the solo, group, or raid version of the content.  Or, "crisis zones' like the ones in CO could be made, where you enter a raid zone and everyone there is doing "the raid" whether it was organized or not; contributing significantly to the effort gets you the rewards from the raid encounter.  Even soloers can do that.

Originally posted by Vrazule

So, we soloers are never suppose to have a single MMO that treats us like top dogs, it's always going to be groupers and raiders?  Bullshit.  You're so worried about your play style being ruined, but never give a damn about other play styles getting the crappy end of the stick.  Every frigging MMO out there gives groupers and raiders the best content and rewards, bar none.  It's about frakking time we soloers get one that truly caters to us.

If Bioware plays their cards right and don't cave in to the whining groupies and raiders, they might actually tap a huge market that has been waitiing for a truly casual game that doesn't pull the ever present bait and switch that is casual to start, hardcore from middle to end game.

The only game that will ever top World of Warcraft will be the one with the balls and the sense to create a casual game from beginning to end with absolutely no preferential treatment towards groupers and raiders.

Oh yeah, we all know just how anti-social soloers are.  We just pretend it's a single player game and try our hardest not to interact with other players.  OMG are you people so frakking clueless?  Stop using that tripe as some kind of proof positive that soloing is evil.  It's not even remotely true and I challenge you to proove it otherwise.

QFT

I would also like to ask where is the established rule book that states all MMOs have to be forced grouping? If thats a rule, then they should rename the genre MMOWFG (added:  With Forced Grouping). It's to bad devs cant make a game with a SIMILAR mechanic in Diablo to where the more people in your group, the tougher the dungeon crawl and better CHANCE to find good  loot. If they could do that, the soloers wouldn't complain about not seeing content and the elitists raiders could still have a tough dungeon crawl with better chances for better loot. That seems like win/win to me, but I'm sure some one will say "Hurm! Thats to hard to code in!" or "but but, then the soloers will cry about not having the same loot as the raiders! Hurm!" . Simple, for those that played Diablo know at least what I'm trying to say, those that haven't played Diablo yet,...your missing out.

Originally posted by protoroc

Originally posted by Vrazule

So, we soloers are never suppose to have a single MMO that treats us like top dogs, it's always going to be groupers and raiders?  Bullshit.  You're so worried about your play style being ruined, but never give a damn about other play styles getting the crappy end of the stick.  Every frigging MMO out there gives groupers and raiders the best content and rewards, bar none.  It's about frakking time we soloers get one that truly caters to us.

Let's see, just about every single player game caters to you but yet you enter a genre that specifically caters towards a social dynamic. Even if they made a game that caters to you casuals you will devour that game in no time (as most of these so called casuals are just bad and spend just as much time in game as cores) and then show in our grouping games demanding that the game be changed to your vision.

 

Wrong!  Every single player game does not cater to solo players.  The last single player game I enjoyed was the 2006 Titanquest.  It is very similar to an MMO in many respects except it can be played solo offline.  In contrast, there are heaps of MMO's that have a similar style of play, they just need some more single player content.  There is stuff all similar solo games coming out that are offline. I do not like first person shooters, which dominate the offline market.  Out of desperation I have replayed Might & Magic 6 to 8 several times, but being circa 1990 the low resolution graphics look terrible on modern monitors.

Surely it is cheaper to add solo content to an existing MMO than to develop a game from scratch that only caters for solo play.  The trick is to do this in a way that does not diminish game experience for groups, raids or solo players.

As others have said, the problem is with the players less than it is with the game design. Essentially, if you offer soloing as a viable option, that's what most people are going to do.

I think the main reason people solo is because they don't have the patience to find a group. And those that do have the patience are not rewarded for it. I cant' count the times where somebody is "LFG" in the chat when I log in, and still "LFG" for the same instance when I log out a couple hours later.

Here are just some of the problems that need to be overcome:

1. Most people are LFG for a particular instance or quest, at a particular level range. This narrows the window of potential group mates greatly.
2. Low demand for anybody who isn't a tank or a healer.
3. In many games it is hard to recruit from outside your zone without sending a runner. This is made even more difficult by games that drop high-level instances in low-level zones.
4. Very few people want to start a group, most people want to join a group (preferably one that is short just one member).
5. Once you do have a group together, there's always some clod with full inventory who needs to run to the bank. Or another guy who needs to get stuff repaired.

DDO is one of the few games that gets grouping right. Jumping into a group is fast, and easy. However, there are sacrifices for this convenience (for example, be prepared to run the same instances over and over again -- and to never see the less popular ones).

In short, make it easier to jump into a group, and more people will do it.

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Originally posted by angre1
I got out of everquest when it became impossible to find groups and it was impossible to continue without grouping. The early levels, over course, you could solo easily. The higher levels you only needed one or two people. Then it became impossible without a full group. It seems like forced social interaction.
Why can't they make it so that the bad guys recognize a group level and adjusts accordingly so that a solo player would have to work hard to be successful, but so would a group against that same boss? Surely it can't be that hard.

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Because then there would never be groups. As you've noticed yourself, it's much easier to just go out and solo something then to try to put together a group. If something can be done solo, people will do it solo, and it will become flat impossible to make groups to do it.

You know, for me, it goes back to Eq. When I first started, I met a young girl from Australia. I was a thief and she was too. Because I was there to play the game and didn't ask her stupid stuff like ASL, she would team up with me whenever I was online. We teamed until about lvl 20 or so. And then, because we have the same class, grouping was not as easy. We both needed a tank, a healer, and a nuke.

Then we got even higher, and we couldn't play without a specialized person in each slot of our team. We couldn't team up if we wanted to. Unless, of course, we just wanted to kill trolls in the beginning lands.

So, our game experience ended up being LFG. And then when we got into a group, our tank would leave and we would have to find a tank. Then our healer, who has a tank, would log off, bring in his tank, and we could get a friend who is a healer to join us. And then when he showed up, our nuker would have to eat dinner, and we would try and figure out if we can get another nuker. And only four hours had passed since we originally logged on and we still hadn't killed a thing. So, EQ was made into a chat room with costumes, because we couldn't fight, we couldn't quest, we couldn't do a dang thing.

And I wasn't just a noob. I had a lvl 53 thief when I gave up. And it wasn't even my primary.

And during those times when you can't find a group, if these games had somewhere for Solo players to play until a group can be formed, that would be awesome. Instead, we sat around LFG calling hoping someone would join in before dawn broke and I had to pretend to get up to go to work so my wife wouldn't think i sat on the computer all night chatting with my guildmates.

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Originally posted by angre1

<snip>
So, our game experience ended up being LFG. And then when we got into a group, our tank would leave and we would have to find a tank. Then our healer, who has a tank, would log off, bring in his tank, and we could get a friend who is a healer to join us. And then when he showed up, our nuker would have to eat dinner, and we would try and figure out if we can get another nuker. And only four hours had passed since we originally logged on and we still hadn't killed a thing.
<snip>

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The answer to that is not to replace the group content with soloable content (and if soloable content is created, it will replace the group content, guaranteed, even if the group content is technically still available), it's to make it possible to form groups where each slot is not only fillable by character requirements so specific that only one in a hundred players can fill it. See, for example, FFXI's level capping system.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

But again, I"m looking for a group game. You're just saying, why don't you play my solo game? It's much better! I still want a groupoing game, not a solo game like WoW. Your "solution" is simply a solo game. Great solution..... for solo players.

But almost every single game out there is a group game, you can group in any game you want to group in, nobody will stop you.  But what you're trying to do is make everyone else group too.  You want a group-only game and you'll never get it.  The overwhelming majority of MMO players want to be able to play solo, at least part of the time.  Any game that catered exclusively to grouping is going to go out of business, there just aren't enough people who think like you do to support it unless you want to pay $1000 a month to play.

So be happy that you can group in virtually every game out there and leave the people who don't want to alone.

Originally posted by Cephus404

The overwhelming majority of MMO players want to be able to play solo, at least part of the time. 

How do you know? Usually people take the easiest route, which happens to be soloing in most casual MMO's. But that doesn't prove anything.

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Originally posted by Cephus404

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Originally posted by Ihmotepp

But again, I"m looking for a group game. You're just saying, why don't you play my solo game? It's much better! I still want a groupoing game, not a solo game like WoW. Your "solution" is simply a solo game. Great solution..... for solo players.

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But almost every single game out there is a group game, , nobody will stop you. 
But what you're trying to do is make everyone else group too.  You want a group-only game and you'll never get it.  The overwhelming majority of MMO players want to be able to play solo, at least part of the time.  Any game that catered exclusively to grouping is going to go out of business, there just aren't enough people who think like you do to support it unless you want to pay $1000 a month to play.
So be happy that you can group in virtually every game out there and leave the people who don't want to alone.

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Wrong, wrong, wrong. A group game *must* encourage grouping or there will be nobody to group with. I'm not saying every game has to be like this, but any game which is seriously intended for grouping must be.

Originally posted by Eronakis

The only way to balance it out is to have 60% group content and 40% solo content. Notice when games have more solo content the community is garbage. Give the edge to the grouping content and give bonuses for grouping becuase thats what makes the MM in the mmo. I think some things can be soloed and should have some spots and side quests for that. Soloing is only viable when you cant find a group imo. If there are levels in the game grouping should be faster than leveling as well.

Why would you give 60% of the content to 20% of the playerbase?  The overwhelming majority of players will solo at least some of the time, in fact, in my experience, the only reason most people ever group is to get things they can't get solo, but in the team, they act just like soloers and are only out to grab XP and loot for themselves.  They might put themselves out to protect their tank or healer, but otherwise... you're screwed, nobody is going to go out of their way to keep you alive if you're not directly benefiting them.  Heck, I even saw someone in a team saying that he'd only buff others if they buffed him in exchange or PAID HIM!

By the way, MM stands for massively-multiplayer, not forced-teaming.  You can be massively multiplayer and never team in your life.

Originally posted by ChrisMattern

 

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong. A group game *must* encourage grouping or there will be nobody to group with. I'm not saying every game has to be like this, but any game which is seriously intended for grouping must be.

Then any game that is seriously intended for grouping is going out of business and rightfully so.  There just aren't enough people out there who can support a group-only or even a group-primarily game.  Now that MMOs are in the mainstream, and there's no putting that genie back in the bottle, appealing to a certain type of pseudo-hardcore player is just not going to work.