Time to get rid of single player p2p mmos?

[D3athsting]

As the title says i think it's time to let developers know what MM prefix means in mmoprgs, it means MASSIVELY MULTPLAYER, that said this i'll take two examples here:
Swtor: some party quest (ok) and lot of instancing even for non story-related quests so that you won't see any player for the majority of your play time, you need to group other ppl/friends if you don't like playing alone, this is a kind of co-op and is how d3 works (with difficulty tuned for the number of players), NOT HOW A MMORPG SHOULD WORK, then you reach 50 and finish your story quests you have poor endgame pve and pvp for those who like it and game cease to be attractive as it was in the beginning, this is exactly what happens in single player mmos: finish the story = game box on the shelf

Tsw: here things get even worse, there is not much instancing as it swtor but no there are no group missions (except dungeon ones) and most important aspect that hurts this game badly is that single player instances are hard capped to one player preventing party friends from entering with you, i won't talk about endgame coz i quit this game after 8 days because of this aspect and because of awkward and boring combat.

Now you guys mights say: "wow lvling is single player too", that's true, it became single player when blizz decided to downtune elite quests and related elite npcs to normal quests and normal npcs mainly becuase the majority of players sat at level cap and did endgame dungeon/raids and became difficult for lowbies and alts to find a leveling mate, i can remember back in the days of vanilla dozens of players zerging elite areas of the game and my countless corpse runs to get the quest done, that was really fun and that's how a mmorpg should be. Now, a month ago I played my first gw2 beta weekend and i must say i had almost the same fun i had in old good wow days, getting pwned by attackers while resting in an outpost, defending bases by shooting at enemies from top of city walls and having them come to kick ur ass, assaulting enemy villages with 50+ ungrouped players with enemies coming from everywhere is pure enjoyment, a true mmo experience, that's why i'm looking forward to this game to be the one that will hook me for months (or years?) to come...

Having played those games i see how the gaming industry is becoming bad and greedy (tsw has an expensive cash shop in addition to a 15$/15€ monthly sub) and thinks that putting some stupid unpolished dungeons/raids for endgame in a theme park game with no "fluff" is enough to justify the monthly fee and keep players paying for a game that can be everything but a MMorpg. Even Tera (apart from the most repetitive and boring leveling experience ever) gives a way better mmo experience than the hyped tsw and ultra hyped swtor. All in all IMHO if you're looking for a mmo experience wait for gw2 or play wow's endgame, if you're mainly a casual gamer and looking for a mmorpgs to play alone whenever you have the time then the above games might be good for you but remember that there are plenty of single player rpgs out there without monthly fees and overall better quality level.

[Elenion]

solo playing has NOTHING to do with MMO by definition.

The game can be an MMO as long as there are tons of (relative numbers here, 1000-10000) players able to connect in a same persistent world and interact if they choose to.

Giving players choice to play solo or together is one thing, but it is not an attractive model to force single way in a current standard.

[Kisho]

Forcing people to play single player or with other people will just end in turning some people away. Give people the choice: either you can group up, or go solo. You're not forced one way or the other. You should of course have the 'best' stuff be group only (raids, rated battlegrounds, arenas, etc.).

SWTOR actually got quite close to the solution: scaling instances. Whether you're solo or in a group, the difficulty scales depending on how many are in your party. Works really well for allowing people to do what they want.

[namelessone]

MMO = massive multiplayer online. If you have hundreds of players in the same online "world" - it's an MMO, whether you like it or not. By the way, the big reason Blizzard scaled the Elite quests was because no one was doing them in the first place. Devs are very easy to blame when you forget that most decisions they make are a direct result from player behavior.

Players cooperate in these kind of games spontaneously. In fact, most of the cool "living world" interactions in MMOs (like much-lamented world PvP) happen spontaneously. You can't force it. It's like a bar basically. If you just let people get together with a good atmosphere, music, drinks, whatever - some good socializing might happen. But if you grab twenty random people, stick them into the same room and tell them "now you must talk to each other for a minimum of two hours and drink two bottles of this beer, then we pay you 50 bucks each in the end" - people would treat it like a job. ESPECIALLY if you also add "if one of you is not having a good time, no one will get the cash".

[WarpedAcorn]

I don't think its time to get rid of P2P models. However, the developers need to understand that the average consumer will only pay for 1 MMO sub a month. I think a lot of MMOs will find more success with a B2P or F2P model that includes a cash shop for cosmetic or quality of life items. The major point, though, is that the cash shops can never sell something that directly affects gameplay that can not be compensated by a player simply spending more time (I.E. buying a 10% EXP buff is fine, but not a 10% Damage buff).

That being said, I think the bigger issue MMO developers need to consider is the Theme Park vs. the Sandbox. Sandbox MMO's are harder, but arguably more fun as the Players create their own content. The Themepark style of creating treadmills of things to do is just too played out right now, and puts a huge strain on resources to continue to pump out content/rides for players to go on.

[Sanguinare]

sitting at level 5 and needing other player to join a party not finding them for 10min so you have nothing to do will kill a game faster then the "solo mmo you talk about"

TSW:fighting is not the strong point of the game the investigations are granted you need to do them but i guess thinking is just to hard for you.(with new quest monthly)
SWTOR: has a big alt gimmick but 80% of all your alts do the same thing so no one wants to make alts in the first place.

[conscript]

As someone who played SWTOR the first three months before quitting, what are you talking about? SWTOR has as much if not more "multi-player" interaction than WoW has ever had. There were plenty of dungeons, far more group/heroic quests than WoW has ever had. SWTOR you get 6-7 Heroic group quests per planet, WoW you got one quest that required multiple people every 10-15 levels, maybe. I'll never get why people were so set on labeling that game as single player just because certain story areas were instanced off for story reasons, to prevent waiting for respawns, etc. The end game stuff is identical to WoW so if SWTOR is single player, so is WoW.

On TSW, if that game was B2P I would be totally on board, but I can't see myself paying a monthly sub for that game at all.

[namelessone]

That being said, I think the bigger issue MMO developers need to consider is the Theme Park vs. the Sandbox. Sandbox MMO's are harder, but arguably more fun as the Players create their own content. The Themepark style of creating treadmills of things to do is just too played out right now, and puts a huge strain on resources to continue to pump out content/rides for players to go on.

Sandbox MMOs tend to run into the same problem - people running out of things to do. It's kinda like that with EVE Online - you either fall in love with it or quit within 2 months wondering what the hell is all the hype. The difference is Sandbox games usually try to appeal to a smaller and very specific kind of audience, unlike Theme Park games that usually try to go after huge sub numbers and please as many people as they can. It LOOKS like sandbox games tend to outlast the Theme Park games, but not when you look at the sub numbers.

[Profyrion]

"MASSIVELY MULTPLAYER" does not mean MANDATORY MULTIPLAYER. By the way, you misspelled MULTIPLAYER.

Also, your complaints about SWTOR are laughably wrong. Please educate yourself about the game before you talk shit about it.

[D3athsting]

The end game stuff is identical to WoW so if SWTOR is single player, so is WoW.

Lol are you really trying to compare wow's endgame with swtor's? Actually wow is a single player from 1 to 85 but the main difference between wow and all other wannabe wow-killer games is that wow starts at level cap while others end at level cap for lack of content or lack of quality of content.

TSW:fighting is not the strong point of the game the investigations are granted you need to do them but i guess thinking is just to hard for you.(with new quest monthly)

Investigation mission are the best part of the game for me idd, along with zone design and atmosphere

[kliffharry]

Tsw is hard enough to not require any spesific group quests, even though it has those as well. When you get to Blue Mountains every mob feels like your regular "elite" from WoW.

[Deleted]

The idea of MMO (hundreds people doing something on screen) died long time ago. Players wanted to play a game, not live a life in different colors. There is no individuality in masses.

[Thelxi]

Basically you want to be forced to group up, instead of having the choice to group up and get the best out of the game. Forcing other people to group up with you won't make you more social or popular, if you want a pixelated social orgy you can still have at it in most MMOs.

[mistuhbull]

I really like how dcuo does it out in the world. At no point, aside from repeatable bounties and dungeons, are you forced to group up but if you see someone else questing you are not penalized by questing together out of group. everyone who contributes get loot/quest credit, hell if the objective is break the shield and then disable the device and I break the shield and you disable it (out of group) we both get credit.

[Ferocity]

While I agree with TS on part that MMORPGs could use some more group quests while leveling, and other things like that, you must understand one simple thing.

Capability to play game when you have no friends online should be there. It was needed. I wonder if you played FF XI or EQ I back in time. At around lv11 mobs started to scale way faster than your characters, so you had to group to do absolutely everything in the game. Games are used to bring some kind of relaxation, and sometimes after dealing with our things in real-life (especially true for managers), we just don't want to get another headache in game, trying to assemble groups or anything for such primitive thing as trying out alt.

Also another big "-" in all this. While you explore areas on your own, you are at your own pace. You can afk how much you want, mess around how much you want. While in group, pace is dictated by group. Forget about having time to look "what was that behind that tree/or what was that statue about". Making supper or got need to use bio room? Well that sucks, as no leveling/questing group will want afker with them, and even if will want - you will miss up on progress and most likely won't be able to catch up quest-wise.

5-men dungeons, raids, BGs - you have that MMO aspect. I wish we got couple group quests here and there, and more elaborated profession system. But dictating player when and how he should play all the time is not a good move.

Edit: Group experience might be good, all-time crowd experience - not so much.

[Zenotetsuken]

No one ever really did the Elite quests in WoW, it was always easier to just skip them. No one ever really did the low level dungeons, because again it was always just easier to skip them. People only ever even started doing the low level dungeons when they were made as easy as questing and give nearly the same amount of xp per hour as questing AND gave gear loot just for participating.

SWTOR was always just a single player game that with the added ability to see some people around tacked on as a justification to charge $15 a month. (That's the exact comment that got me banned from the SWTOR forums BTW)

[Dezerte]

Once we start seeing MMO's with massive amount of tools to help grouping, sure. But until then, solo play needs to stay.

[Olala]

Swtor: some party quest (ok) and lot of instancing even for non story-related quests so that you won't see any player for the majority of your play time, you need to group other ppl/friends if you don't like playing alone, this is a kind of co-op and is how d3 works (with difficulty tuned for the number of players), NOT HOW A MMORPG SHOULD WORK, then you reach 50 and finish your story quests you have poor endgame pve and pvp for those who like it and game cease to be attractive as it was in the beginning, this is exactly what happens in single player mmos: finish the story = game box on the shelf

Tsw: here things get even worse, there is not much instancing as it swtor but no there are no group missions (except dungeon ones) and most important aspect that hurts this game badly is that single player instances are hard capped to one player preventing party friends from entering with you, i won't talk about endgame coz i quit this game after 8 days because of this aspect and because of awkward and boring combat.

Alright, you obviously haven't put any time in to the way the end game is today.

The single player experience was awesome. it motivated me to level! I leveled much faster in SWTOR than WoW or Rift or LOTR or any other MMO I've played, simply because I loved my class story. Given I think KOTOR and KOTOR 2 are two of the best RPGs of all time.. *insert kanye west*

But anyway-- I did some GW2 beta. Yeah, those public quests you can hop in are a brilliant idea.

But I grouped with so many random people in SWTOR while I leveled the first time. I've grouped with random people while I'm leveling a new toon now!
It's about you being social in a game like SWTOR. You have to ask. In GW2, there is NO communicating in those public quests. You just see a massive herd of people moving and you run and jump in! I played for a few hours in GW2 and i greatly enjoyed the fun. Except when I go to talk to people, no one responded. It's like the grouping was automated for me.

Another point you make-- SWTOR has no end game. I say it does. Three raids. Looking for dungeon/ story raid tool. Warzones. Rated Warzones.
You gotta try Hard Mode Explosive Conflict before you tell me that PvE is faceroll and "too easy".

You compare SWTOR to Vanilla WoW. You can't capture Vanilla WoW again. The playerbase is dramatically different. The veterans are older and play more casual and usually with old friends. There are tons of children in MMOs who troll you for whatever reason. Servers have lower pops.. Try to find that same magic on any WoW server today, and expansion releases don't count

I just wanted to touch on the subject that I know.

[Deleted]

To put it bluntly, you're wrong.

The MMO part relates to the actual interaction of players in the frame of a shared game world. Playing solo or with a group is a different thing.

[Larynx]

They can keep the optional soloing. They need to get rid of P2P.