MMO Development Lesson #12
Soloing is not an abomination. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen players make fun of those who almost exclusively solo in an MMO. After all, why would you play a massively multiplayer game to play alone? Well, soloing is in no way abnormal in an MMO, and players (and developers) who claim soloing in an MMO is weird are outright wrong. Many gamers simply desire the shared presence of a virtual world, and don’t desire much direct interaction with other players. Knowing this, you would do well to ensure that solo play in your game is not just viable, but an integral and fulfilling part of the experience for many players.
Thank you for recognizing this! It does tend to get thrown in as an afterthought in some cases…
But like anything else, there are varying play types who solo. Some players exclusively solo, and others fill time between grouping with soloing. Some are casual, and use it as something to do while they chat/socialize with guilds and friends, others are grinding up to hang with friends who are levels ahead.
Please make sure that content is available for the casual/distracted soloer as well as for the advanced soloers who are after a challenge.
It wont hurt if the rewards are ‘rewarding’ as well - this is sadly where soloing tends to take it in the shorts - minimal exp gain, crappier treasure, etc.
You need to find a happy medium - you don’t want to overincent and make soloing MORE rewarding than group experiences, but you shouldn’t penalize the soloer (or small group duo/trio) players.
I am so glad there are MMO game designers who realise this! I mainly play solo due to the little irregular bursts of time that I have available to play. It is wonderful though to see other people running around, being able to chat in the channels and be part of a evolving living world.
I still think SOE had it almost with the splitpaw pack (excluding the XP you got for Harclave, that was way to high).
What I don’t understand though is why developers don’t reuse the art assets that they used for a high level raiding zone to develop group and solo content in different instances of that zone. I realise that I will never get all that leet gear that the raid players get and I don’t mind. But I would love to be able to explore through those same zones, with the level of dificulty that will be challenging for me as a solo player (including rewards that are reasonable for a solo player).
If you guys can get the solo part right, you’ll definately have one customer!
Well said!
I think soloing is an important part of the mix… people should always have the option to do something rewarding even if it’s by themself.
People (myself included) often have other social groups inside the MMO besides a group. And in general, the group is a short-term thing that changes often.
Guilds and, to some extent, chat channels serve as greater social networks inside the game. So theres nothing “asocial” about soloing and talking in your guild or chat channels at the same time.
What I’d love to see is some of the ‘energy’ that always gets devoted to ‘raid’ type content go to making solo content. Yeah, raids are fun and great and whatever, but they shouldn’t always be the ‘endgame’.
Yeah, some stuff should be reserved for it… but there still should be viable ‘endgame’ solo advancement.
Soloing is for carebears!
I think the hard part IS finding the happy medium. Games that build robust solo content often run off more “hardcore” players who prefer the generally higher level of challenge and involvement associated with group encounters. By the same token, build a lot of group content in the game and put nice rewards into it, and you get soloers complaining about how they have to group to get anywhere.
Having played a lot of games, both ones where I could solo a lot and ones where I couldn’t, I have to say I prefer games that force you to group. And I do believe that players need to be forced to group, simply because in my experience, if they’re not forced to group, they won’t do it. They’ll take the path of least resistance (soloing). It’s just human nature. So if you try to make the two systems seperate but equal, as it were, you end up with the vast majority of people soloing because it’s easier, and the people who really want to group eventually bailing on your game because they can hardly ever get a group together for anything.
That said, I think there’s ways to put both solo and group content side-by-side in a game and not run into so much trouble. One way would be to get away from the loot paradigm. For example, if all equipment in your game is player-crafted, then there’s no loot gap between solo and group content, which eliminates a lot of the contention. Of course, players have to get something for their time, and there needs to be an incentive to group, so you could allow that players might find items that could be used in crafting better items during their adventures. Your incentive for grouping? By doing groups you can gather greater numbers of these much faster. So a soloer still has a chance to solo and get great gear out of it, the same great gear that a grouper gets, but the grouper will probably get the gear faster. It would have to be significantly faster to make a difference though. Because of that, there still would be some tension between the two types of content.
Another thing that might work is to introduce metagames that soloers and groupers can contribute to in different ways. For example, soloers can hunt deer to supply the army with food while groupers clear the mines so that the keep can be rebuilt. Both sets of players earn rewards for doing their part. Again though, you still have to provide an incentive in the form of greater rewards for grouping, because otherwise you’ll end up with most everyone hunting deer, except for two or three people who are sick of hunting deer but can’t find a healer to help in the mines.
I think the “soloing is bad” mentality stems directly from the crazy class-based MMO mentality. Of course people will frown on soloing when the game is set up so that each character is only part of a whole, and groups (consisting of characters from various classes) make up the whole. In fact, it seems that class-based games are designed specificially so that players can not play the entire game on their own. Players who are looking for a “shared presence” experience will not be satisfied by the current standard formula for MMO design because the design either does not tend to favor solo-play, or just outright prevents it on purpose.
If they truely want to play an MMO, and not just want to play a single player game with amped up “AI” (where the AI is other players), then they’d probably be better off with a more Worldy, player-driven game, where traditional MMO design is less prevalent.
Of course even in more Worldy, player-driven types of MMOs, players who seek that shared presence should at least expect to encounter some forms of inter-dependency, whether direct or indirect. You don’t plant and harvest (or breed and butcher) the food you eat. You don’t weave and sew the clothes you wear. Someone else does it, and you acquire that stuff from them somehow.
And on the flip side (for crafter folks), you don’t defend the town you’re living in. You don’t fight the wars against your mortal enemies. Someone else does it, and you go on living your life uninterrupted.
Of course there could be individuals who grow their own food, make their own clothes, and fight their own wars, but unless your MMO is set in a world of simple technology (like a dawn-of-civilization type setting) nothing besides specialization would make much sense on a widespread scale.
However, that specialization doesn’t have to be forced on players through hard mechanic rules (like all the class-based MMOs). You could allow players to do everything, and specialization would just happen naturally because players don’t have the time to do everything for self-sustenance. Especially if being able to do something required any sort of player skill or knowledge.
They paid for the game. They can play it however they want as long as there not cheating to get a specific advantage. If they want to go out on there own. By all means they can go right ahead.
Now if a game takes that away from those people and forces them to play as a group then thats players that they lose along with there moolah. A game can not just be suited for one type of player. It needs variety.
AMEN!!. I think there are many reasons why people will want to adventure solo in MMO’s. Irregular hours, sporadic ammounts of playing time, bad experiences when you have grouped before, love of tradeskills/crafting, inability to dedicate blocks of time necessary for raiding.
I play EQII and LOVE the game. I am Australian and play at irregular hours - often difficult to get a group especially during the week. I can sometimes manage a group on my Saturday and Sunday mornings (Friday and Sat night US time). During this time, I occasionally group with guildies to both give and recieve help for HQ’s or more difficult game content. Between those times I want to be completing game content towards advancement of my toon, and to contribute to the advancement of my guild (writs). If I cant, then this leads to much frustration and unhappines for my little dwarven Templar
When I reach endgame, I dont think i want to raid. I accept that I am therefore not going to get all the shiny leet loot and may miss out on some game content. That is OK with me. Just make sure that there is enough content that I have plenty of stuff to continue on with to develop my toon in some way - such as the likes of more detailed deity quests, or questing for special treasures to decorate my home or whatever. The idea of being able to chose solo or small group versions of many more instances is a FANTASTIC idea.
I am part of a guild and even if I dont raid - I can contribute to the guild. Crafting of food, drink, ammo, potions, skill/spell upgrades, mastercrafted adornments, armour and weapons. I can do writs that also contribute to guild progression. I have done all of these things just last night for example - hardly antisocial or against the “community” intent of MMOs.
So the thing is even if I mostly adventure solo, I am still part of the community and make valuable contributions to the community. Please then give me enough game content that I can see my toon develop without forcing me into a group to adventure and advance my toon.
As Robertson points out above - you want my moolah, you need to cater to more than just one style of play:)
Its not classed based design that promotes “no solo” mentalities… its item-centered design. I’d go into it more, but I think I’ll save that for my own blog.
Another reason to solo is when you are a questoholic and lore lover it is often very hard to find a group that is doing all the quests you want to. I’ve had to leave groups because I wanted to finish some quests that they just simply deleted because they had greyed out on them (The dreaded journal full problem doesn’t help here either). Sure I want to do the level appropriate stuff, but I want to try as much as possible as well. Soloing is generally the best way to do that.
[...] Over at the nerfbat, Ryan adds another lesson, this one about Solo Content not being a bad thing. [...]
It’s both really. Actually, it seems to be the entire “typical” MMO design as a whole which is anti-soloing.
Yeah, I’m one of “those” solo people. Don’t get me wrong, I group up to take advantage of all the content I can. But here is why I personally enjoy soloing…
1. Half your group isn’t half way across the map and half dead by the time you are on the second dialogue screen of an interesting back story to the quest that half of those morons didn’t except because the didn’t bother to read the response choices to said quest.
2. You can enjoy the in-game art or actually see the detail in the mob you are fighting instead of the getting an annoying view of all of those avatars, name text, guild text, fly text damage numbers and animations meshed together.
3. The only one to blame for triggering the trap on a box while you’re in combat is yourself.
4. You don’t get called a noob when you suggest that you don’t have to pull all the mobs during a raid in order to fight the named. And then later have to listen to them swallow their pride when one of their guild mates says, “Um, dude, the guy was right…we just need to pull named.” But are you even thanked for saving everyone from death #7? No.
5. You don’t have to explain why, as the MA tank, you did not save the wizard who pulled aggro by gently stating, “The raid was better off with you dead.”
6. After every mob you don’t have to wait for yet another person to AFK bio when you know darn well they went to smoke.
7. All the loot, as crappy as it might be, is MINE!!!!
*grin*
[...] week over on Nerfbat, MMO Development Lesson #12 was that solo content has to be an integral and fulfilling part of any [...]
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