All Group Content Should Have A Solo Option

DenMoria

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Chadak wrote: »

To everyone trying to hide behind the ricepaper-frail deflection of 'go play skyrim', consider very carefully that Elder Scrolls has no player base without the single player game fans having been handed this MMOificated Elder Scrolls game rather than ES6.

All I and a number of my friends have ever wanted was multi-player LAN play in our elder scrolls games.

So we're making due with this MMOified thing. We weren't touching it at release. It was a crap MMO hitting all the same pants-on-head ridiculous points as pretty much every mmo that came before it, but this one had Elder Scrolls lore and graphics.

Big.

Freaking.

Woop Dee doo.

For most of two years, we mocked this games very existence without mercy or relent.

Why? Because it was, in our eyes, a pathetic nd arrogant betrayal of a playerbase nearly 20 years in the cultivating.

One Tamriel got some of my groups attention. We looked into it. Some of us liked what we were seeing in the massive de-MMOifying of the newest elder scrolls game.

I've been running around in game with anywhere from 2-7 of my best gaming and work buddies since one Tamriel hit. We're liking it pretty ok. We mock the unexplained absence of underwater exploration, but it isn't a big deal that it isn't here.

What would be a big deal would be if we couldn't play most of it like an elder scrolls game. Ya know, like more than half of us have been doing since Arena and Daggerfall kept us awake far too often on school and work nights.

I'm fine with content requiring a group, but the simple fact at hand is this - Elder Scrolls does not have, and has never had, a hardcore multi-player customer base.

Me and my buddies are not antisocial. We've had no trouble doing every bit of group content we've felt like doing so far.

We couldn't possibly care less about the vast majority of players not in our real life clique though.

Why not?

Because we're here for an elder scrolls with multi-player experience, not the experience of putting up with every one man clown show in the game.

We don't care about your metas. We don't care about your achievements.

Did we recently complete white gold tower with no tank and everyone off healing while dpsing? Rather fantastically, we did.

Do I have a clue what the difficulty setting was? No.

We'd still have preference for LAN/Internet multiplayer.

Then we wouldn't have to put up with the annoyingly MMO junk.

So, yelling at people like me and mine top 'go play skyrim' is really about as effective as poisoning yourself and waiting for us to get sick.

There's an amazingly good chance we don't care what you think, and if Bethesda/Zenimax bother us into quitting, you won't hear much about it.

Because we basically don't care what you think.

And I think too much MMOification is crap in an elder scrolls game. I'm liking One Tamriel pretty well. I'm not liking how mmoified all the skills and powers are, but it could be worse.

Ta.

Yeah that door swings both ways. Betrayed , jilted, don't care what anyone thinks. Lol and here you are spouting a bunch of nonsense. This is not a traditional Elder Scrolls game, I personally find it to be better than some other titles. Maybe this is a shift for the Elder Scrolls series. Who really cares. Either play the damn game or dont. Zos nor Bethesda have any obligation to you or me. They own the rights. It's their toy to play with you just rent it. So you can play by their rules or find something else to play while waiting for Elder Scrolls VI or whatever is coming out next year.

How is it nonsense that the salient point here is that most of us wanted TES Co-op and settled for a lame MMO that is just like every other boring MMO with it's boring cliques and elitists and insults and every other thing that MMOs always have. I agree with the poster. I play ESO with my partner and with a select group of a few friends that I actually know as a co-op, not as an MMO. I could care less about "achievements" or the stupid "war" or any of the junk that goes with it. When TES6 comes out, I'll probably never even pick the game up again. Putting up with insults, homophobia, sexism, juvenile behavior, bullying and outright nastiness is, while certainly something MMOs are very well known for, is not my cup of tea.

That's not to say that, in general, the ESO Community isn't, on the whole, an awesome community and that probably 90% of the players are great and incredibly nice and accommodating, but, once, just once of running in to the a**hats that are there is enough to make you hate the game. And there is nothing you can do about it. They are there and they have their little cliques and they remain and make life miserable.

DragonBound

Chadak wrote: »

CosmicSoul wrote: »

Yeah. Crazy. Why would people that've been playing and loving Elder Scrolls games since Arena/Daggerfall, some of whom have spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to make a networking mod actually work for LAN play, ever finally get around to trying to make a go of it in the MMOified redheaded stepchild variant?

I mean, we shouldn't be allowed to play with other people unless we're willing to play with the entire population of a small country, right? Why would anyone ever want to play with their friends instead of random strangers, many of whom are almost as literate as a dead rat.

Its just incomprehensible. I can totally understand why you just don't understand it.

And this is why you find a guild or make one with your friends so you do not ever have to group with strangers, I hardly ever pug and me and my guild get along quite well.

I'd still be much happier renting a proprietary multiplayer server for $15/month on which I and my friends could play together rather than having to put up with a game design and balancing schema catering to MMO-style ideas of 'balance' and 'Fun™'.

Since that sort of madness is inconceivable in the world I live in, however, we're doing just fine in our troop of 4-7.

We've mostly joined merchant guilds so we can have ready access to stuff that, in a normal elder scrolls game, would be much more readily findable/craftable. There seems to be no other particular point to being in a guild, and we're certainly not looking for more people to play with.

Do you have a fundamentally difficult time imagining why some people do not, in fact, like spending their freetime doing things with complete and total strangers?[/quote]

Back in the days of everquest the community was awesome, when an mmorpg is more group forced like eq was where your name actually means something everyone has to be nice to each other and in many ways it was really cool, it is kind of the same thing with guilds now days with mmos, if you find a good guild they are no longer strangers, and if your on teamspeak often you gain connections with them.

DragonBound

DenMoria wrote: »

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Chadak wrote: »

To everyone trying to hide behind the ricepaper-frail deflection of 'go play skyrim', consider very carefully that Elder Scrolls has no player base without the single player game fans having been handed this MMOificated Elder Scrolls game rather than ES6.

All I and a number of my friends have ever wanted was multi-player LAN play in our elder scrolls games.

So we're making due with this MMOified thing. We weren't touching it at release. It was a crap MMO hitting all the same pants-on-head ridiculous points as pretty much every mmo that came before it, but this one had Elder Scrolls lore and graphics.

Big.

Freaking.

Woop Dee doo.

For most of two years, we mocked this games very existence without mercy or relent.

Why? Because it was, in our eyes, a pathetic nd arrogant betrayal of a playerbase nearly 20 years in the cultivating.

One Tamriel got some of my groups attention. We looked into it. Some of us liked what we were seeing in the massive de-MMOifying of the newest elder scrolls game.

I've been running around in game with anywhere from 2-7 of my best gaming and work buddies since one Tamriel hit. We're liking it pretty ok. We mock the unexplained absence of underwater exploration, but it isn't a big deal that it isn't here.

What would be a big deal would be if we couldn't play most of it like an elder scrolls game. Ya know, like more than half of us have been doing since Arena and Daggerfall kept us awake far too often on school and work nights.

I'm fine with content requiring a group, but the simple fact at hand is this - Elder Scrolls does not have, and has never had, a hardcore multi-player customer base.

Me and my buddies are not antisocial. We've had no trouble doing every bit of group content we've felt like doing so far.

We couldn't possibly care less about the vast majority of players not in our real life clique though.

Why not?

Because we're here for an elder scrolls with multi-player experience, not the experience of putting up with every one man clown show in the game.

We don't care about your metas. We don't care about your achievements.

Did we recently complete white gold tower with no tank and everyone off healing while dpsing? Rather fantastically, we did.

Do I have a clue what the difficulty setting was? No.

We'd still have preference for LAN/Internet multiplayer.

Then we wouldn't have to put up with the annoyingly MMO junk.

So, yelling at people like me and mine top 'go play skyrim' is really about as effective as poisoning yourself and waiting for us to get sick.

There's an amazingly good chance we don't care what you think, and if Bethesda/Zenimax bother us into quitting, you won't hear much about it.

Because we basically don't care what you think.

And I think too much MMOification is crap in an elder scrolls game. I'm liking One Tamriel pretty well. I'm not liking how mmoified all the skills and powers are, but it could be worse.

Ta.

Yeah that door swings both ways. Betrayed , jilted, don't care what anyone thinks. Lol and here you are spouting a bunch of nonsense. This is not a traditional Elder Scrolls game, I personally find it to be better than some other titles. Maybe this is a shift for the Elder Scrolls series. Who really cares. Either play the damn game or dont. Zos nor Bethesda have any obligation to you or me. They own the rights. It's their toy to play with you just rent it. So you can play by their rules or find something else to play while waiting for Elder Scrolls VI or whatever is coming out next year.

How is it nonsense that the salient point here is that most of us wanted TES Co-op and settled for a lame MMO that is just like every other boring MMO with it's boring cliques and elitists and insults and every other thing that MMOs always have. I agree with the poster. I play ESO with my partner and with a select group of a few friends that I actually know as a co-op, not as an MMO. I could care less about "achievements" or the stupid "war" or any of the junk that goes with it. When TES6 comes out, I'll probably never even pick the game up again. Putting up with insults, homophobia, sexism, juvenile behavior, bullying and outright nastiness is, while certainly something MMOs are very well known for, is not my cup of tea.

That's not to say that, in general, the ESO Community isn't, on the whole, an awesome community and that probably 90% of the players are great and incredibly nice and accommodating, but, once, just once of running in to the a**hats that are there is enough to make you hate the game. And there is nothing you can do about it. They are there and they have their little cliques and they remain and make life miserable.

This makes zero sense eso has never lead anyone to believe it was co op, skyrim has a multiplayer mod instead of complaining about this one maybe you should give that a try. Also I have played allot of mmorpgs the questing is top notch in this, the only reason it sucks to you is because you skip the dialogue.

kyle.wilson

Palidon wrote: »

Many may disagree but it is my opinion there is too much Group Content forced upon solo players. I am a solo player. I do not like running in groups. The World Bosses, Undaunted Pledges and much of Craglorn with the exception of the Craglorn quest line are all geared for group play. My suggestion is to have a solo option for all group content. The rewards do not have to be the same since the difficulty would change but there should be a solo option.

Almost every world boss can be solo'd, But, I don't understand why there are so many people playing an MMO that don't want to play with other people. I don't think that making group content available to solo player would be a good idea.

idk

CosmicSoul wrote: »

Chadak wrote: »

CosmicSoul wrote: »

Yeah. Crazy. Why would people that've been playing and loving Elder Scrolls games since Arena/Daggerfall, some of whom have spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to make a networking mod actually work for LAN play, ever finally get around to trying to make a go of it in the MMOified redheaded stepchild variant?

I mean, we shouldn't be allowed to play with other people unless we're willing to play with the entire population of a small country, right? Why would anyone ever want to play with their friends instead of random strangers, many of whom are almost as literate as a dead rat.

Its just incomprehensible. I can totally understand why you just don't understand it.

And this is why you find a guild or make one with your friends so you do not ever have to group with strangers, I hardly ever pug and me and my guild get along quite well.

I'd still be much happier renting a proprietary multiplayer server for $15/month on which I and my friends could play together rather than having to put up with a game design and balancing schema catering to MMO-style ideas of 'balance' and 'Fun™'.

Since that sort of madness is inconceivable in the world I live in, however, we're doing just fine in our troop of 4-7.

We've mostly joined merchant guilds so we can have ready access to stuff that, in a normal elder scrolls game, would be much more readily findable/craftable. There seems to be no other particular point to being in a guild, and we're certainly not looking for more people to play with.

Do you have a fundamentally difficult time imagining why some people do not, in fact, like spending their freetime doing things with complete and total strangers?

Back in the days of everquest the community was awesome, when an mmorpg is more group forced like eq was where your name actually means something everyone has to be nice to each other and in many ways it was really cool, it is kind of the same thing with guilds now days with mmos, if you find a good guild they are no longer strangers, and if your on teamspeak often you gain connections with them.[/quote]

While I respect your choice to play with a small friends and family group, I think you answered the situation this thread is talking about. Finding a guild one fits with well and the other members, at least some of them, are no longer strangers and that is the begining of making an MMO fun for people to do group content with.

I do not have sympathy for those that come into ESO alone and completely reject the group aspect and refuse to search for a guild that works for them only to want solo options of group content for them to play with. It is not a simple change of a number to scale a trial to EZ mode for a single player. If they did it could bring about cries for people wanting content scaled to different sized groups which would be even more work. Not something Zos should have to deal with.

Stopnaggin

DenMoria wrote: »

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Chadak wrote: »

To everyone trying to hide behind the ricepaper-frail deflection of 'go play skyrim', consider very carefully that Elder Scrolls has no player base without the single player game fans having been handed this MMOificated Elder Scrolls game rather than ES6.

All I and a number of my friends have ever wanted was multi-player LAN play in our elder scrolls games.

So we're making due with this MMOified thing. We weren't touching it at release. It was a crap MMO hitting all the same pants-on-head ridiculous points as pretty much every mmo that came before it, but this one had Elder Scrolls lore and graphics.

Big.

Freaking.

Woop Dee doo.

For most of two years, we mocked this games very existence without mercy or relent.

Why? Because it was, in our eyes, a pathetic nd arrogant betrayal of a playerbase nearly 20 years in the cultivating.

One Tamriel got some of my groups attention. We looked into it. Some of us liked what we were seeing in the massive de-MMOifying of the newest elder scrolls game.

I've been running around in game with anywhere from 2-7 of my best gaming and work buddies since one Tamriel hit. We're liking it pretty ok. We mock the unexplained absence of underwater exploration, but it isn't a big deal that it isn't here.

What would be a big deal would be if we couldn't play most of it like an elder scrolls game. Ya know, like more than half of us have been doing since Arena and Daggerfall kept us awake far too often on school and work nights.

I'm fine with content requiring a group, but the simple fact at hand is this - Elder Scrolls does not have, and has never had, a hardcore multi-player customer base.

Me and my buddies are not antisocial. We've had no trouble doing every bit of group content we've felt like doing so far.

We couldn't possibly care less about the vast majority of players not in our real life clique though.

Why not?

Because we're here for an elder scrolls with multi-player experience, not the experience of putting up with every one man clown show in the game.

We don't care about your metas. We don't care about your achievements.

Did we recently complete white gold tower with no tank and everyone off healing while dpsing? Rather fantastically, we did.

Do I have a clue what the difficulty setting was? No.

We'd still have preference for LAN/Internet multiplayer.

Then we wouldn't have to put up with the annoyingly MMO junk.

So, yelling at people like me and mine top 'go play skyrim' is really about as effective as poisoning yourself and waiting for us to get sick.

There's an amazingly good chance we don't care what you think, and if Bethesda/Zenimax bother us into quitting, you won't hear much about it.

Because we basically don't care what you think.

And I think too much MMOification is crap in an elder scrolls game. I'm liking One Tamriel pretty well. I'm not liking how mmoified all the skills and powers are, but it could be worse.

Ta.

Yeah that door swings both ways. Betrayed , jilted, don't care what anyone thinks. Lol and here you are spouting a bunch of nonsense. This is not a traditional Elder Scrolls game, I personally find it to be better than some other titles. Maybe this is a shift for the Elder Scrolls series. Who really cares. Either play the damn game or dont. Zos nor Bethesda have any obligation to you or me. They own the rights. It's their toy to play with you just rent it. So you can play by their rules or find something else to play while waiting for Elder Scrolls VI or whatever is coming out next year.

How is it nonsense that the salient point here is that most of us wanted TES Co-op and settled for a lame MMO that is just like every other boring MMO with it's boring cliques and elitists and insults and every other thing that MMOs always have. I agree with the poster. I play ESO with my partner and with a select group of a few friends that I actually know as a co-op, not as an MMO. I could care less about "achievements" or the stupid "war" or any of the junk that goes with it. When TES6 comes out, I'll probably never even pick the game up again. Putting up with insults, homophobia, sexism, juvenile behavior, bullying and outright nastiness is, while certainly something MMOs are very well known for, is not my cup of tea.

That's not to say that, in general, the ESO Community isn't, on the whole, an awesome community and that probably 90% of the players are great and incredibly nice and accommodating, but, once, just once of running in to the a**hats that are there is enough to make you hate the game. And there is nothing you can do about it. They are there and they have their little cliques and they remain and make life miserable.

Yeah there are a few ***, block em and move in, if you're a solo player why even gave chat on? No reason to be so easily discouraged over a few people that are trolls.

Yes you can do something about it. You can block them, report them, ignore them or you can choose to engage them.

It's really pretty simple, you can enjoy the game for what it is or move along. I don't mean that in a bad way, just that if these things bother you so much why continue to play?

Kodrac

Anhedonie

It's not content that must be made easier. Player skill should be raised higher.
All these healers that don't know what drain, orbs, repentance and shard means...
Or even better - heavy armoured damage dealer spamming poison injection + LA all day in dungeons. Numbskulls are the bane of PUGging.

We need something like sexEd in USA, but about roles. PugEd (?).

Llaren_Uvayn

Would like to see solo versions of dungeons but only if it doesn't take away from the developers' time to create new content for groups.

olivesforge

I think I've got a fair trade.

Everything is soloable, with equal rewards & achievements to group versions...

... for ...

Open world PvP. It makes soloing better in that you don't get repetitive, predictable mobs but actual dynamic content!

Fodore

You can solo stuff

DenMoria

Fodore wrote: »

You can solo stuff

Ah! But you can't solo EVERYTHING! (which would be kind of pointless in an MMO, but, still...)

linoge63

All Group Content Should Have A Solo Option Bookmark

I massively agree!

DenMoria

linoge63 wrote: »

All Group Content Should Have A Solo Option Bookmark

I massively agree!

I wonder if that would hurt or help ESO.

Honestly, I prefer to solo most things, but I wonder if it would hurt something sold as an MMO if Solo was an easy option for anyone.

Are there any other online solo games of this type?

Riejael

Llaren_Uvayn wrote: »

Would like to see solo versions of dungeons but only if it doesn't take away from the developers' time to create new content for groups.

Most content is already soloable (there is one dungeon that isn't, and then its a single boss).

What people are asking for is easier content, disguising it as a request to 'help the solo player'.

DenMoria

Riejael wrote: »

Llaren_Uvayn wrote: »

Would like to see solo versions of dungeons but only if it doesn't take away from the developers' time to create new content for groups.

Most content is already soloable (there is one dungeon that isn't, and then its a single boss).

What people are asking for is easier content, disguising it as a request to 'help the solo player'.

Really? Personally, I would love to be able to solo everything, but, I would certainly hope that the content and difficulty wouldn't change.

Oh well. I have plenty of SPG's.

Browiseth

if you're good (or willing to get good) at the game you can pretty easily solo most world bosses and all of Craglorn

but of course that's out of the question with most people i find, so never mind

Wifeaggro13

All solo content should have a group option.

DenMoria

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

All solo content should have a group option.

But not all group content should have a solo option? Is that what you're saying?

Riejael

DenMoria wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

All solo content should have a group option.

But not all group content should have a solo option? Is that what you're saying?

'Group' content nearly is already soloable. Only one boss in Wayrest Sewers II isn't due to mechanics. You're basically asking for Wailing Prison Harborage to be soloable. As they already are.

STEVIL

laksikus wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Three things to point out.

1) To all the people saying "this is an MMO" please note that MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online - nowhere in that is there a requirement " group up" - MMO does NOT mean "group content", it means lots of people playing in the same gameworld at the same and able to interact with one another if they choose to.

2) This game was marketed with a "play your way" marketing strategy - which would imply that Solo Play should be equally supported. Now, currently not ALL content is completely soloable but all content is (as far as I am aware) possible in a group - so we still don't yet have the "play your way" solo/group parity.

3) Making almost all group content soloable in SWTOR didn't really benefit anyone. Everything became too mundane, too boring and led to the disastrous counter-reaction of the last KotET expac.

All The Best

You can solo everything except maybe trials on normal.
And even "play your way" doesnt mean "play your way and solo things that is for 12 man groups..."

Actually some pledges like Direfrost still have "stand in two places at once to progress" gates that stop solo.
others like Blackheart iirc have the "too long boss auto cc" designed for pinning one down while group saves them which are killer for solo. (though some have shorter types of that which can still be soloed if done right.)

i have no objection whatsoever to having "solo-blocker" content on all vet level and above "group content."

But i would tend to agree with the poster that, at least for normal mode, the four man dungeons should have no auto-stop solo mechanics. that still leaves them out of the contention for masks... since those only drop on vet or hardmode.

Arenas, trials - different story.

DenMoria

Riejael wrote: »

DenMoria wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

All solo content should have a group option.

But not all group content should have a solo option? Is that what you're saying?

'Group' content nearly is already soloable. Only one boss in Wayrest Sewers II isn't due to mechanics. You're basically asking for Wailing Prison Harborage to be soloable. As they already are.

True. I more commenting on the phrasing.

DenMoria

STEVIL wrote: »

laksikus wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Three things to point out.

1) To all the people saying "this is an MMO" please note that MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online - nowhere in that is there a requirement " group up" - MMO does NOT mean "group content", it means lots of people playing in the same gameworld at the same and able to interact with one another if they choose to.

2) This game was marketed with a "play your way" marketing strategy - which would imply that Solo Play should be equally supported. Now, currently not ALL content is completely soloable but all content is (as far as I am aware) possible in a group - so we still don't yet have the "play your way" solo/group parity.

3) Making almost all group content soloable in SWTOR didn't really benefit anyone. Everything became too mundane, too boring and led to the disastrous counter-reaction of the last KotET expac.

All The Best

You can solo everything except maybe trials on normal.
And even "play your way" doesnt mean "play your way and solo things that is for 12 man groups..."

Actually some pledges like Direfrost still have "stand in two places at once to progress" gates that stop solo.
others like Blackheart iirc have the "too long boss auto cc" designed for pinning one down while group saves them which are killer for solo. (though some have shorter types of that which can still be soloed if done right.)

i have no objection whatsoever to having "solo-blocker" content on all vet level and above "group content."

But i would tend to agree with the poster that, at least for normal mode, the four man dungeons should have no auto-stop solo mechanics. that still leaves them out of the contention for masks... since those only drop on vet or hardmode.

Arenas, trials - different story.

So you are a proponent of forcing people to group, yes? I don't really care since I'll never make it to such daunted levels myself, but... Of course, it wouldn't be much of an MMO is you didn't group, now would it?

Heroeric1337

Practically 90% of the game you can play solo, there needs to be at least some grouping requiring to make the game an MMO...lol

Hawklord

linoge63 wrote: »

All Group Content Should Have A Solo Option Bookmark

I massively agree!

Me too...
I never asked for a MMO.
I asked for a Skyrim,Morrowind whatever solo RPG.

I love the world and Lore but I HATE FORCED GROUPING!

Give me brainless NPCs to fill my group like Guild Wars and I'll be happy!
I'm ready to pay for that!

Palidon

First of all I think many making comments in this tread are missing the point or key word. The point and key word is "Option".

If you want to group then do so. If players want to do Group Content on a solo level then they should have that option available. If you think about it ZOS changed the Main Quest Line in Craglorn so it could be played solo. I see no difference in having the Undaunted Pledges with a solo option. Why should any player be forced to do Group Content if he or she does not want to but wants the achievement and fun in exploring the delve.

ZOS had been putting out a lot of Group Content material. Example: Shadow of the Hist with two Group Undaunted Delves and I understand there is more of the same in the works.

Shadesofkin

There is literally no way to argue that there is too much group content after the changes made by One Tamriel.

DenMoria

Shadesofkin wrote: »

There is literally no way to argue that there is too much group content after the changes made by One Tamriel.

Do you mean "forced" group content or content you can complete as a group or that there are more "solo only" areas now?

I mean, honestly, I can pretty much group up anytime I want, there are a few areas (very few) that you really have to group up and I don't really notice a change for solo only.

Thoughts?

Arreyanne

DenMoria wrote: »

linoge63 wrote: »

All Group Content Should Have A Solo Option Bookmark

I massively agree!

I wonder if that would hurt or help ESO.

Honestly, I prefer to solo most things, but I wonder if it would hurt something sold as an MMO if Solo was an easy option for anyone.

Are there any other online solo games of this type?

Tera has solo mode for all Dungeon 1-60, but why do that you can, since its still the original dungeons from release and now as you level you get super weapons and armor, you can solo almost all the old content with any class. Although using a Priest might take you about 2 hours in some of them

borchan

I agree that it should have a solo option.Not been in a group since i started playing 3 years Ago, playing around with some tedious multiplayers that running around killing stuff and trying to steal my thunder.