Solo End Game

[Haal]

I saw this post on the SWTOR Forums and wanted to see what you guys thought.

www .swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=327788

(sorry, don't have enough posts to insert link)

How do you feel about a solo end game? I personally like the idea a lot. It would give people something to do on nights they are not raiding and give them gear and other rewards. I do not think that the gear should be as good as gear you would get from a raid. This would also be something for people who do not have time to raid and enjoy playing on their own.

[grandpab]

I think it's a good idea. Rift added something similar but it's more for fresh max lvl chars and people looking for more lore I think. I probably would have kept paying the sub fee if they were more difficult with better rewards.

Finding the right balance is probably the trickiest part about it. It needs appropriate rewards for the level of difficulty.

[jearle]

I could see BW going down this road tbh. This is an amazing single player MMORPG, 3x more fun leveling experience than any other I have played in the last 12 years.

Group content with 4 people is integral to the game from heroic quests to flashpoints and engaging in conversations with your group mates and seeing if your response "wins" is extremely fun and changed the idea behind instancing.

8, and 16 player content is necessary because traditionally players have enjoyed engaging bigger battles with a large group of people that "feels more epic" and this has also been the most difficult part of an MMO and a culmination of a groups effort.

Solo end game content could work, Rift has done something similar to this in one of their recent patches, allowing content to scale with the number of players active.

Using the instancing technology that is already rampant in the game they could do something like this with appropriate level rewards. Would be a neat idea, but I think BW is embracing the fact that alot of people who play their games like solo content.

[Zarasthura]

Solo quests? sure. Solo group quess? why not?

Solo raids? What are you smoking??? Going solely based on the EV operation, do you really think you can solo that? That's time spent (wasted imo) to change content so that it would be incredibly dumbed down and nerfed to accommodate the minority niche that wants to solo raids.

Heroic Flashpoints? not possible at all. Also, see above. You can already do flashpoints with a friend & two companions (companions becoming less useful as you get higher, according to devs). Why do you want more?

Also, do you really want to keep paying $15 a month just to play a pseudo-single player?

[torftw]

I just don't see how they can balance it. Unless they make a totally different encounter for each class. Companions might help a bit with this but that is still only 2 out of 3 roles. Maybe if they let you have 2 companions so you can make a full trinity. Then you just add 1 more and you have a flashpoint that you are soloing. Which kinda defeats the point in the first place, you don't want to play with a bunch of npcs, you want to solo.

I could go on a rant about end game being the end of the game if it was a single player game, but I think there is still a point beyond that. What it looks like these people want is a challenging solo expirience. Whether that is at the end or not doesn't really matter aside from the fact that if you really want a challenge you don't want to out level it. I can see the reason you want this, I just don't see how they can balance it, and in an mmo this is a much bigger issue than in a single player game. Gear probably shouldn't be an issue though, either make it not as good as full on raid gear (pvp has a different stat already so obviously not gonna be as good), or simply make it focus on different stats depending on how it is implemented. The biggest problem with getting gear is that raiders that want to raid might feel required to gear up with solo stuff first (not that soloers don't deserve to continue to progress their character with gear).

I am not familiar with what rift has done, how does that work?

[jearle]

Solo quests? sure. Solo group quess? why not?

Solo raids? What are you smoking???
Heroic Flashpoints? not possible at all.

Solo raids aren't really Raids IMO, the basic idea of a "raid" is taking in a larger than group content number of people to kill something.

Solo dungeon crawl content? I could totally see this in TOR, with some story thrown in. Having a daily dungeon crawl that could be completed with several difficulty levels or something. Downside of this would be the obvious advantage certain AC's would have over others.

[Zarasthura]

Solo raids aren't really Raids IMO, the basic idea of a "raid" is taking in a larger than group content number of people to kill something.

Solo dungeon crawl content? I could totally see this in TOR, with some story thrown in. Having a daily dungeon crawl that could be completed with several difficulty levels or something. Downside of this would be the obvious advantage certain AC's would have over others.

See my edit. Solo dungeons are overkill when you can already go in with 1 buddy and two companions.

Excuses like not having time to raid aren't truly viable reasons to convince Bioware to include solo content. Raids aren't required, and there's always the option of forming your own pug or joining one when it's on. Flashpoints are the same deal.

Also, here is the huge matter of giving a free pass to bot farming if you allow solo content for flashpoints and operations. Whatever they change for you, they change for the farmers too.

[jearle]

I am not familiar with what rift has done, how does that work?

The content scales with the number of people in your party, dmg health ect.

---------- Post added 2011-10-26 at 03:58 PM ----------

Also, do you really want to keep paying $15 a month just to play a pseudo-single player?

I surely wouldn't, Im a proponent of MMO community and playing with as many people as possible.

---------- Post added 2011-10-26 at 04:00 PM ----------

Also, here is the huge matter of giving a free pass to bot farming if you allow solo content for flashpoints and operations. Whatever they change for you, they change for the farmers too.

If the reward given for running said content were BoP only it would get around this idea. Farmer and BoTs will be traditionally doing what they always do, farm crafting nodes. Give it a few months before you see a ton of naked slicers wandering around.

[Landin55]

ToR looks like a solo game that if you want, you can group up with friends/randoms. Wish I was in beta to see for sure. =/

[PuliGT]

On the topic of Solo gear vs. Raid gear vs. Crafted gear etc.

Bioware has a great opportunity with the way that they have set up the game to provide Solo gear that is BIS for solo and small group content, without having that gear be all that great in Raids. Similarly the reverse is true. This is because of the Presence stat that boosts the effectiveness of companions. As we know, Companions will not be usable in Operations at all, so I expect raid gear to have none of that stat. (Or I guess very little) However, companions will be a huge part of a players power while doing solo content or 2 man content. (So each player has a companion)

IMO, create difficult and fun solo content that rewards gear with good all-around stats, but also has a lot of Presence. This way, raiders who feel that solo content shouldn't give comparable gear can be happy because gear with high presence would not be as effective as gear without. Soloers can also be happy because the gear they can get from doing hard solo content will make them better at that content than people in raid gear.

[jvbastel]

I'ld love solo dungeons. Played aion again a while ago and I really loved them in there.

Don't really care if it's balanced or not, some classes are bound to be a bit better in some areas than others.
On the gear thing, I wouldn't mind if they dropped raid equivalent gear, let it all be very rare random drops or sthing, without lockouts. Diablo style

[Trollsbane]

There are numerous solo dungeons in TOR. They're called class quests.

[Arcilux]

I love the idea of solo end game content. In all honesty, that is the one thing WoW could have added to get me to resub for MoP. With SW:TOR I am looking forward to it no matter which route they go, but solo end game content being available while not required would be an absolutely excellent addition

[GarGar]

I like the idea of solo raids, but if they're going to be tuned for one player and their companion they should not reward the same gear as raids. And I think they should be pretty hard.

Personally, solo content with dangerous enemies and a very real risk of failure at every turn is my favorite content, no matter the rewards. It's why I love playing ME2 on the hardest difficulty. I die a lot but finally getting through it is great.

[PACOX]

You can solo endgame in Rift via Chronicles, Rift events and soon to be released instant adventure, as long as Bioware can flesh it out it shouldn't be a problem

[WoWGoneBad]

well i can see this as a good possibility, i mean we already have class phasing during our stories and they could just continue the solo player experience through more class story arcs, which i would love to see.

BUT in that thread the OP is talking bout getting top-tier raid gear which i think is a NO GO. I would like to see more of a starter raid gear reward system with some decent questchains

---------- Post added 2011-10-27 at 12:54 AM ----------

On the topic of Solo gear vs. Raid gear vs. Crafted gear etc.
IMO, create difficult and fun solo content that rewards gear with good all-around stats, but also has a lot of Presence. This way, raiders who feel that solo content shouldn't give comparable gear can be happy because gear with high presence would not be as effective as gear without. Soloers can also be happy because the gear they can get from doing hard solo content will make them better at that content than people in raid gear.

this is a great idea for the solo players as far as gear rewards go. in this respect like you said companions will be more useful during the solo content. Maybe even allow for some crafting of presence gear to add to a companions effectiveness, not sure if that is already in crafting as not in beta lol

[Haal]

I think this is a great idea. It would give people something to do and have a chance to get some gear. I do not think the gear should be as good as what you would get from a raid but I think it should be on par or a little but under high level flash point gear. This will help people gear up before raids without having to find a group to run flash points. This would also be beneficial for people who do not have time to raid, they could run these single player flash points and get some gear from it.

[Toralin]

I personally don't like the idea of it, unless it was ridiculously hard.

[Ighox]

They could and should just do it like chronicles in Rift, they use the look of the instance and bosses of the 20man raids and make it into 1-2man instances with way different skills/mechanics and loot.
That would be pretty good, but raiders should still get their own exclusive gear/difficulty/instances.

All I know is that a MMORPG should have more stuff to do at endgame than WoW or whatever has, raids, daily quests, heroics and shitty crafting gets dull really fast.

[Deleted]

Guys, u want to pay so much money for single player game? Cos this is what its going to be if they make everything soloable. Than i rather play kotor for 9.99€ whole year tbh...
Everything apart from regular quests should be challenging so that most players would group up for it (ofc some players will solo hard grp quests due to their skill and op gear).
Or you mean crafting here? Some forum members think, that, as BW said, crafting is hi end content...