MMO Friday Fight Round 2: Solo Play Vs. Group Play | MMORPG.com

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MMO Friday Fight Round 2: Solo Play Vs. Group Play | MMORPG.com

This week, we're tossing a new pair of combatants into the ring: solo play vs. group play. It's the nature of MMOs for players to have to engage in both solo and group play, but which one is better?

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sabrefoxx

You know what type of game play I love? opt-in multiplayer, with a dedicated open world single player RPG game with amazing story and immersion of that story that make me care about the dialogue of the narrative. Think more games like Ghost of Tsushima, and the new game "Where Winds Meet" that's in development (I played the beta of it and it was AWESOME!).

I love games like that, more than theme park MMOs like T&L, WoW, New World, ESO, Star Citizen, etc. Elden Ring is sorta like the games I like but Elden Ring or other From Software Games, are much different than games like Ghost of Tsushima and "Where Winds Meet".

Dattelis

The dumb thing about 'solo-play' is that you're gonna find the best solo player experiences in a single player game. Just hop on a discord if you want 'interaction' with people, but stop trying to say mmorpgs need as much solo play as group play. The problem many mmorpgs have now is that the objective difference between solo progression and 'elite' group progression is minimal and usually on a clock. Solo players have a 6 month clock to essentially get within maybe a 15-30 ilvl difference of people who play at the highest level, then it soft resets and you do it all over again.

deniter

In an MMO game you need both solo and group content but why call it an MMO game (or even a multiplayer game) if it doesn't have a heavy emphasis on group play? I mean, most of the time i want to play alone far away from the other players but acknowledging i can't get anywhere in the game if i don't participate group content.

elric_of_melnibone

The only time solo play was fun for me in MMORPGs is when we had games in which you needed to figure out really specific and interesting ways to achieve soloing in a way that was at all worth it. Certain class/item/spell/mob/zone combinations that weren’t intended as “solo play” but which the community figured out through experience that you could make work. Typically this would be for grinding routines, when grinding in and of itself was enjoyable because you were talking to all of your friends in the chat the whole time, had strangers stopping by to chat or fuck with you, and because you might be in a zone that was really hard for you to get to and that not many people had been to yet so just looking around while you killed things was exciting.

But the genre lost me at “viable solo-play” that was intended to be played as such from the start. No thanks. I’ve got more enjoyable games for that.

elric_of_melnibone

deniter said:

In an MMO game you need both solo and group content

This isn’t even true. Many of the most celebrated MMORPGs were nearly devoid of solo content in their prime.

Gorwe

MMOs should by their own very nature be designed around group play(on a fundamental level), but they should also support solo play. But that's it: GROUP CORE + SOLO ADJUNCT.

Things like SWTOR etc are fantastic, but they would be even better as solo experiences with potential optional coop.

Angrakhan

elric_of_melnibone said:

deniter said:

In an MMO game you need both solo and group content

This isn’t even true. Many of the most celebrated MMORPGs were nearly devoid of solo content in their prime.

"In their prime" being the key phrase here. The market has shifted. The tolerance for sitting on the edge of the zone spamming the LFG channel for a half hour in the hope of finding a group are long gone. There's a few folks that will put up with that mess but it's a very small niche market and no AAA studio is going to build a game for it. There may be some Indy game efforts to satisfy that dwindling market but don't expect high production values or lots of content because those things cost money.

Scot

Let me throw something in the ring for you, MMORPG's went solo and the site is also doing articles on why the genre is dying. Need I say more?

olepi

To me, what made MMORPG's stand out from the earlier single player games was the grouping and also that they provided a real-time living persistent world to be in. I want all the options to be in the game, including:

- solo play
- group play
- league play/raids
- harvesting/crafting
- PvE
- PvP
- sieges
- housing

Which one of these is "better"? The game is better when it has it all and I can choose what to do.

Scot said:

Let me throw something in the ring for you, MMORRG's went solo and the site is also doing articles on why the genre is dying. Need I say more?

I don't think the genre is dying. There are multiple MMO's going strong right now, like ESO, WoW, and FF14. I'd bet that the number playing MMO's now is greater than it was in the early years; the market is bigger than it ever has been. It's just that there are so many other variations of games out there now that MMO's are not dominant like they were in the beginning.

Theocritus

Group play worked fine when the genre first started....The mobs were often difficult, especially the bosses, and you really did need other players to accomplish things, but it also had too many drawbacks which I am sure are much worse today....These experiences are from EQ in its glory days where grouping was pretty much required.

1. You pretty much needed a guild for other players...you could occasionally find a pickup group but often they were short lived and took a long time to get going, especially if you had to travel to where you wanted to fight.

2. Players often left.....Back then people had more time to game, but still you would run into players only playing a small amount of time and then leaving...If it was the tank or healer, you were pretty much done.

3. Loot...unless it was a group you knew well and trusted, you probably got shorted on loot...I spent many multi hour sessions where I walked away with next to nothing. At least the soloer gets all his loot.

4. Raids...they often took a very long time...It took a long time to organize them (some had as many as 72 players!) and then a couple more hours to do them. I remember rolling on items competing against as many as 20-25 players for a single item. Often you ended up with nothing.

Conclusion: I enjoyed grouping in the early days and met many people....I met more people in EQ than I have in all other MMOs I have played combined.....but.....there came a time when it was almost impossible to find a group anymore....The content became so difficult that if the players werent decked out in the best gear in the game, you wouldn't survive.

Scot

olepi said:

I don't think the genre is dying. There are multiple MMO's going strong right now, like ESO, WoW, and FF14. I'd bet that the number playing MMO's now is greater than it was in the early years; the market is bigger than it ever has been. It's just that there are so many other variations of games out there now that MMO's are not dominant like they were in the beginning.

I don't think the genre is dying myself, it was the site here that did the articles.

Gorwe

olepi said:

To me, what made MMORPG's stand out from the earlier single player games was the grouping and also that they provided a real-time living persistent world to be in. I want all the options to be in the game, including:

- solo play
- group play
- league play/raids
- harvesting/crafting
- PvE
- PvP
- sieges
- housing

Which one of these is "better"? The game is better when it has it all and I can choose what to do.

Scot said:

Let me throw something in the ring for you, MMORRG's went solo and the site is also doing articles on why the genre is dying. Need I say more?

I don't think the genre is dying. There are multiple MMO's going strong right now, like ESO, WoW, and FF14. I'd bet that the number playing MMO's now is greater than it was in the early years; the market is bigger than it ever has been. It's just that there are so many other variations of games out there now that MMO's are not dominant like they were in the beginning.

Here is a challenge for you. Courtesy of Warhammer Online. And its similar problem(s) that ultimately were its death knell.

You say that you want it all to be present in the game. But! How to stop them from stepping on each other's toes? How to "make" people have a "versatile" playstyle and not just an "efficient" playstyle? Can you ever have such a manpower and resources to ensure that all of these are equally developed and of the same quality?

KnightFalz

deniter said:

In an MMO game you need both solo and group content but why call it an MMO game (or even a multiplayer game) if it doesn't have a heavy emphasis on group play? I mean, most of the time i want to play alone far away from the other players but acknowledging i can't get anywhere in the game if i don't participate group content.

They are called MMO because they have the capacity for many concurrent players online. Nothing about that capacity requires that people play together. That it somehow does is a perspective lingering from when MMORPGs were designed mainly around group play, but their focus has long since shifted to be more solo inclusive.

Scot

Gorwe said:

Here is a challenge for you. Courtesy of Warhammer Online. And its similar problem(s) that ultimately were its death knell.

You say that you want it all to be present in the game. But! How to stop them from stepping on each other's toes? How to "make" people have a "versatile" playstyle and not just an "efficient" playstyle? Can you ever have such a manpower and resources to ensure that all of these are equally developed and of the same quality?

You are quite right that can't be done, but that does not mean the narrowing of focus to MMO-lite is the answer. It is a tricky balance, but everything in a game is a balance between the varying needs of the gameplay.

elric_of_melnibone

Angrakhan said:

elric_of_melnibone said:

deniter said:

In an MMO game you need both solo and group content

This isn’t even true. Many of the most celebrated MMORPGs were nearly devoid of solo content in their prime.

"In their prime" being the key phrase here. The market has shifted. The tolerance for sitting on the edge of the zone spamming the LFG channel for a half hour in the hope of finding a group are long gone. There's a few folks that will put up with that mess but it's a very small niche market and no AAA studio is going to build a game for it. There may be some Indy game efforts to satisfy that dwindling market but don't expect high production values or lots of content because those things cost money.

Yet the genre is dying or dead depending on how you look at it.