time for solo instances?

[evilgnomey]

with molten front being aimed at solo players and doing so well plus people soloing older content up to and including cataclysm heroic bosses i believe blizzard should be thinking about adding some solo instances with mechanics on bosses similar to that being used in the molten front. the following are some points that would be key in adding solo instances:

first off a list of mechanics for bosses, trash.
1. dodge-able attacks such as AoE's, fire on ground, breaths and beams etc. for basic bosses.
2. Adds, vehicles, multiple phases etc. and all of above for harder bosses.
3. Some trash having abilities that can kill you if you're not careful.

Basic instance points.
4. Have different ilvl gear drop from each boss in the instance at the moment it could go 346(blue) first boss/bosses - 353(purple) mid-instance boss/bosses - 359(purple) end boss.
5. If above doesn't work you can have currency instead and profession mats drop from bosses in the same fashion for example for example: green gems from first boss, maelstrom crystals from final boss etc.
6. Instances reset every day just like heroics.
7. 1 difficulty, but added achievements/rewards for defeating bosses in a certain way.
8. Instant queues for all classes/specs, which benefits lots of players who don't like waiting for 5-mans or maybe even don't have much time to wait.

Now some questions:

1. Do you think solo instances could work?
2. how could they work?
3. got any idea's for boss fights?

[Belloc]

If you want to play a solo game, play another game. Don't bring that crap into WoW.

The last thing this game needs is more content encouraging people to play by themselves.

[Deleted]

I'll not argue about the viability or logic behind this.

Just a simple question - Can you imagine the number of instance servers needed to run this whole "thingie" if it's launched?...

[S7orm]

soloing contents will be released soon (~Q4), the new patch will be called Diablo3

there are too many different classes with too many differencies to release soloing istances

you can do this in Diablo where most of classes doesn't have healing spells but simply AoE the shit while chuking shitloads of pots

[Baelic]

You'd have to balance it in such a way that makes 5-mans/raids more rewarding, otherwise you can pretty much kiss the "MMO" portion of WoW goodbye.

[Rixis]

aside from anything else, the balancing between tanks, dps and healers would be a massive waste of time

and yeah massive multiplayer .. you (we, because i myself don't raid) get solo content to play with, enjoy what you have

[Draknalor186]

if anything dont bring this into the LFD make us actully go too the instance O_o makes it so much more epic imo

[lopk]

If you want to play a solo game, play another game. Don't bring that crap into WoW.

The last thing this game needs is more content encouraging people to play by themselves.

Excuse me? What other single player content is there at endgame? Dailies? Puh-lease...

Edit: I sound like an ass, sorry, lol, I'm just curious.

[miguelcrespo85]

Theres a MMO that has Single player instances.. just cant remember the name of it

[lopk]

Theres a MMO that has Single player instances.. just cant remember the name of it

There's plenty. Two off the top of my head are Dragon Nest and Dragon Saga (formerly Dragonica).

[Orange Joe]

Excuse me? What other single player content is there at endgame? Dailies? Puh-lease...

thats because endgame IS NOT SINGLE PLAYER and nor should it be

[Clockwork Pinkie]

Could they work? Yes, will they work in the long run? No. you'd get bored in the first few runs. The main point of soloing instances is the challenge.

[Deleted]

If you want to play a solo game, play another game. Don't bring that crap into WoW.

The last thing this game needs is more content encouraging people to play by themselves.

I recall Blizzard saying somewhere that they want to cater those who wish to solo as well instead of going in groups without people.
These days everything is automated so that you need to spend as little time talking to others as possible. You have addons that send out mass invites for guilds, you have the dungeon journal so that you don't need to explain tactics to others and you have the incredibly simple heroics where it's rare that people even say "hi".

My point is that there is no need what so ever to communicate with other players in World of Warcraft and should you ever feel the need to communicate with others, there are addons to do it for you. Blizzard knows this and they seem happy with the way that World of Warcraft is going so solo-able instances would make perfect sense.
And honestly, Blizzard has some of the best people in the gaming industry working for them, if Aion can handle class-balancing for solo dungeons, then I'm rather sure Blizzard can do it at least twice as good.

[Surfd]

with molten front being aimed at solo players(a) and doing so well plus people soloing older content up to and including cataclysm heroic bosses(b) i believe blizzard should be thinking about adding some solo instances with mechanics on bosses similar to that being used in the molten front.

The whole problem here is that your basic premise leading to your idea is very very flawed. For example:

A: Molten front being aimed at solo players and being successfull in no way corelates to any desire or need for blizard to add solo dungeons. Blizzard has ALWAYS had plenty of content aimed directly at solo players. 95% of all quest content is soloable, and Molten front is simply "take three" of the Isle of Queldanas progressive daily quest hub from TBC / Crusaders Colloseum daily quest hub from Wrath.

Content for soloers does not equate, ever, to a need for Solo Dungeons (instanced solo content is almost an oxymoron in itself, as the entire purpose of instances was initially to design a way to allow groups of people to do the same encounters without having to fight over single world spawns to begin with).

B: Soloing Old "group" content / instances is a side effect of Gear / Stat inflation as you level (and to a lesser extent, for those soloing Current content, a side effect of certain classes being UBER overpowered in specific Situations (Blood DKs for example)), and should not be used as some kind of excuse to justify the intentional creation of "solo specific instances".

Just because I can solo Molten Core, or Heroic Utguarde Pinnacle at level 85, does not mean there is some kind of sudden need for solo dungeons.

[evilgnomey]

having solo instances would be like having a harder more rewarding (gear-wise) daily that solo players could run, I don't see how adding such a thing would effect the MMO aspect of the game considering it could only be ran once a day. Balancing wouldn't be to hard if you look at molten front/hyjal mechanics with the mini-bosses, every class can solo them from what I've seen.

There's plenty. Two off the top of my head are Dragon Nest and Dragon Saga (formerly Dragonica).

DC universe has 2 player instances (duos) also.

[lopk]

thats because endgame IS NOT SINGLE PLAYER and nor should it be

I'm not necessarily saying it should be, just that the person I quoted implied that there was already too much single player content and I was curious as to what he meant.

[crovax3000]

If you want exclusively single player content in a game characterized as a multiplayer game, you need to be playing something else.

[Surfd]

having solo instances would be like having a harder more rewarding (gear-wise) daily that solo players could run, I don't see how adding such a thing would effect the MMO aspect of the game considering it could only be ran once a day. Balancing wouldn't be to hard if you look at molten front/hyjal mechanics with the mini-bosses, every class can solo them from what I've seen.

Except that it is almost universally impossible to design a "solo" encounter that everyone could beat, that would actually provide enough of a challenge to justify a meaningful reward. A "solo" boss that is guaranteed to drop a 359 epic item would have to be monsterously difficult / require precision execution that would have people foaming at the mouth on the forums in minutes, or the entire raid community would jump down your throat for "handing out yet more welfare epics".

The logistics behind it would also be stupidly large for a "solo" effort. Remember, they would have to account for something like 30 possible specs across 10 different classes all being able to successfully defeat any encounter they put in the dungeon. And how many bosses are going to be there? One dungeon with 3 bosses? VH style, with random bosses? How would you design 12 bosses that are all "soloable" by every possible spec in the game? Imagine the sheer shitstorm of whining that would happen when it turns out that every boss is 20x more effficient to kill in a DPS spec then a Tank / heal spec?

[Belloc]

Quests and achievements = solo content.
Instances = group content.

[evilgnomey]

Except that it is almost universally impossible to design a "solo" encounter that everyone could beat, that would actually provide enough of a challenge to justify a meaningful reward.

Gave it much thought? i gave examples of the types of mechanics you could solo as any class such as breaths, fire on ground, adds etc. all classes can move, jump, kill adds etc.

Quests and achievements = solo content.
Instances = group content.

we have phased content right now such as the battle with ragnaros at the end of the hyjal chain which i would consider a 1 person instance :P

If you want exclusively single player content in a game characterized as a multiplayer game, you need to be playing something else.

oh so u don't do quests to level up? don't do dailies? don't farm mats? don't use professions? (yeah you level profs. yourself most the time). We have single player content right now, adding an instance that a person can run once a day is not steering the game anymore towards a single player game then the game is currently it's just giving players something else to do while guild mates are offline.