It’s that time again.
What with the whole “SWTOR companions are solo friendly, and LOTRO Skirmishes are solo friendly and FUN“, the “MMOs are for grouping only” zealots are tunneling out of the woodwork again. More often than not, the acronym “MMO” is cited as self-evident conclusive evidence that grouping is the Only One True Way to Play. (Green Armadillo has a good starting point if you want to start prowling the conversations, and he has a great point to boot. And to answer his question, yes, NPCs can teach you how to group with players. This is precisely how it works in Puzzle Pirates, where NPC pirates train you as a noob, and even let you sail ships solo later on by manning stations. It works, and works extremely well.)
I suppose there’s some sense to it, after all, “multiplayer” does by definition mean more than one player. Of course, given the “virtual world” roots of MMO design, it should be (and has been) noted that “multiplayer” in no way exclusively implies “players playing in a group”. That’s the difference between connotation and denotation. “Multiplayer” denotes “more than one player”, in this case, playing the same game. Some players take it and run with it, believing that it connotes “more than one player playing together“, when the word itself only has that as a possible subdefinition, not an exclusive overarching one. If anything, such is a much more limited and specific small subset of the word “multiplayer”.
I know, English is hard, especially if you’ve gone through American schools, and logic is even harder. Perhaps it’s not the gameplay that needs dumbing down in these games, it’s the terminology and public relations. After all, it’s harder to educate people than it is to make the system stupider. *coughNCLBcough*
Perhaps we need a new acronym. (Muckbeast wrote a great article on this a while back, but I can’t find the link…)
I suggest MGORPG. The G there is for “Grouping”, so that there is absolutely no question what the second letter in the acronym refers to. It also sounds better, since MuhGORPGuh sounds worlds better than MuhMORPGuh. The former just rolls off the gutteral better, while the latter sounds like a stammering hikikomori surrounded by pretty women who want his phone number. Plus, gorp is healthy!
I suppose you could go with GOG (Grouping Online Game), but that’s already taken by Good Old Games, and Gog and Magog are sort of apocalyptic, which may not be a good allusion. And that brings us back around to connotation and denotation.
MGORPG could clarify the debate considerably. Of course, it’s only a mirror suggestion to make the acronym family complete, since others have suggested MSORPG (rather condescendingly and inaccurately… it should be MSPORPG since “single player” is actually two words) for single players.
I’d actually like to see that sort of differentiation in the market. Make a nice Punnet Square of games; MSPORPGs that are just leveling content, MSPORPGs that are just raiding, MGORPGs that are just leveling content, and MGORPGs that are just raiding. Throw a bunch of players at them (F2P to get more players involved, of course), and see what sticks. That’s what happens in a nice, mature, differentiated market. The successful design floats to the top, and the next wave of designs takes those successes and runs with them. Darwinian game design, as it were.
Of course, it might be noted that such is actually the genesis of the increased soloability of MMOs of late. See, people, weird whackjobs that they are (remember, I’m a soloist, too, pleased to be a nutter), actually do like playing solo in MMOs. Games are evolving to cater to such players, and GASP, are proving to be profitable by doing so. Ditto for the differentiation in the business models. Anyone who has spent much time reading about MMOs has certainly seen the fallout from that particular holy war.
The staunch Old Guard still wants subscription based forced grouping death march grindy games, and by gum, those whippersnappers should want them too. It’s self evident that such is the One True Way when it comes to MMORPGs, since that’s how it’s always been. I mean, it’s right there in the acronym, right? Get off my lawn and go play your offline single player games, NOOBz!
Oh, by the way, there’s a black guy as president in the U.S. now. Stupid hippies. Can’t they see that the American Empire only works when there are old rich white guys in charge? We’re doomed! Who let those freaks vote? Let’s go back to landowners (subbers) being the only ones that can vote! Those other people are doing it wrong!!!
Further recommended reading:
Playing Alone, Together (Muckbeast)
That’s Right, I Solo in Your MMOs! (Saylah)
Get Your Party Off Of My MMO (Ravious)
Gaming Dictatorships (Melf_Himself)
AI Allies (Andrew)
Suddenly Bioware is Incompetent (evizaer)
The Social Soloer (Sente)
Three Truths (Cyndre)
Stupid Single Player Games Ruining it for MMOs (Dusty)
Defining “Casual” and “Hardcore” (Gordon)
Grouping Isn’t Always Healthy (Callan)
Disclosure: I’m not an Obama fan, but it’s because I don’t like what he does. Imagine that, judging someone by what they do and by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, or their playstyle, or how they pay for their games…
My complaint really is never that new games are becoming more solo friendly, but that since new games are solo friendly AND successful, old games patch in changes to be like new games. I’d still be playing EverQuest if it was still the EverQuest that I played. Unfortunately now it is EverQuest with a bunch of WoW elements crammed into it where they don’t belong in an attempt to keep people from fleeing to WoW or other games, shooting themselves in the foot because the people who didn’t flee are the ones who liked the game the way it was. Its the Star Wars Galaxies New Game Experience in slow motion.
I chuckled at Gog and Magog, but back to the topic… where to start…:
You are right about the Darwinian design. See what the market wants. MMO design is changing a lot.
While I still feel young, younger gamers have decidedly different views and tastes: http://bullcopra.blogspot.com/2009/12/attention-span-issue.html#disqus_thread
OK, he watched his little kid, and I was not different at this age. Still, I see a trend to a “faster” MMO experience delivered in smaller chunks of time there.
I think there is a way to unite those who believe in grouping for the sake of grouping as the only way to play MMOs with the more solo-oriented players who still enjoy playing online as part of a world/community:
We need new grouping mechanisms. Right now, grouping is a method to assign looting and XP rights. If I help someone fight mobs and I am not part of his party, I get nothing, the mob “greys out” for me.
WAR’s Public Quests allow people to help each other (OK, mostly in self-interest) without having to team up, and this is what makes them fascinating. They often come up in discussions, and I think that no grouping is needed, but you still can work together without declaring allegiance to this or that party is a really good idea.
Yesterday I was in a spider infested cave in LOTRO. I got help by some players and helped other players who were not in my party, when too many spiders swarmed me or them.
But I also noticed small groups standing by, only reacting after someone died right next to them. Why? He was not in their party, they did not pay attention to something right before their eyes. In this case it was not intentional wickedness, he was just not part of their group and thus only of secondary importance in their perception.
I came too late and was tempted to comment that they could have helped him easily, but they ressurected the dead player without words (VoiceChat enabled group of friends, I bet on that) and just went on doing their thing.
I think party/group mechanics that do not require grouping at all would allow for much more dynamic and fluid group play, even for “solo” players.
Regarding SWTOR, my fear – and a quite common fear – is something more than the “solo MMO” feeling and the strong reactions it caused. It is the question if a MMO should really be so much scripted and heavily story driven (usually quest heavy). The opposite idea is to let the players make the story, be the story. Which unfortunately not always turns out to be better. People wonder if SWTOR will be something like Dragon Age online.
This would have the advantages of single player offline games, like a stronger narrative, more options and more action, stronger and less repetitive gameplay.
The problem is indeed how to get another player to play with your char. LOTRO’s devs are working on this with Skirmishes. So you want to play alone? OK. You want to play with a raid? Sure! And now you want to play with a friend, just the two of you? Yes, you can. Skirmishes make it possible.
The Skirmish system is not perfect, it has some issues and IMO it also gets very repetitive quickly. But the general idea behind it is very very promising.
Jason, while I totally understand the pain in seeing a game you love change in ways you don’t like, what if the alternative is seeing the game die? I don’t know that would be the case in EQ, but given the choice (as the devs may have been), what would you do? I’m not sure what I’d do… probably ask for private servers and the ability to roll back to the patch I liked.
Longasc, remember Psychochild’s great “punishing grouping” article? I think that a lot of games could definitely do grouping better, and he outlined some ways they could. I’m not anti-grouping, I’m anti-forced grouping. There really should be ways for these playstyles to coexist.
[...] ~ Tish Tosh Tesh [...]
love your blog Tesh, but i don’t think you’re looking beneath the surface of the issue, you have to look a little deeper to get at the real problems here… i don’t want to re-iterate points others and myself have made already, so i’ll just point you toward the discussion that’s already happened..
http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3186#comments
– scroll down and start reading at about comment #136… i really believe that if you delve a little deeper into the issue you’ll see where the problems are going to be… pay particular attention to the discussion between Nollind and myself… i’m sure you’ll be able to relate to it and hopefully it will get you thinking a little deeper.
Logan, this assertion from Nolland shows a fundamental disagreement:
“In effect, the MMO gameplay experience should be promoting and influencing cooperative play, even when playing solo.”
On that I disagree. These are virtual worlds to some, me included. The real world doesn’t need to “promote and influence” cooperative play. Certain activities will be cooperative, and everyone needs a certain baseline of civility, but there should be no impetus to make people group up. It’s not necessary as a core philosophy, even if it does make sense for things like raiding (notably, just a subset of what one might call “multiplayer” play). If you’re assuming that there does need to be such a core impetus, you’re already arguing from a baseline that I don’t agree with.
That said, I’m completely in agreement that sololists should be able to contribute to the world, maybe even encouraged to do so. That means a more dynamic world, which I’ve argued for more than once. Where it breaks down is the notion that they need to contribute. So long as someone isn’t actively bothering me (which there should be griefing repercussions for), I don’t really care what they are doing in the game. It’s no business of mine.
Why do group advocates care what I do? It’s none of their business.
maybe promote and influence cooperative play is a bad way to put it… i’d say that it just needs to be possible and probable that players will interact with each other on a more interesting lvl than just chat and AH competition.
nowhere do we say anything about FORCING grouping… we talk about how randomly bumping into other players is what makes an MMO enjoyable… if you take out that aspect, which is essentially what swtor is doing, if you look deeper than just the surface…. then you’re left with very little opportunity to interact and bump into people in the game world.
i think even you would have to admit that bumping into other random players is what makes an MMO enjoyable, even for a pure soloer… what seems to be happening is that developers have forgotten that this is what makes MMOs engaging, and without it, even the “solo” players will find the world boring and leave as soon as they’ve sped through all the content.
like you said,
– “multiplayer” in no way exclusively implies “players playing in a group”. –
i totally agree, but swtor seems to be taking out ALL the options for interaction not just grouping…
how many times are you going to even glimpse another player when you’re spending most of your time in instances?
how often are you going to interact with other players when every single bit of content is doable by solo-ing?
how often are you going to even have to ask for help in chat when you’re being led by the nose through a relatively linear story?
now think about in WoW how many people you interact with that are mostly SOLO players, imagine what would happen if every one of them was in their own instance with their own henchman, doing their own thing? …
everything goes downhill, once things become too focused on soloing, the ball starts rolling and will only gain more and more momentum, because there will be no opportunity or reason to randomly bump into other players, things will just slide further and further into all solo and no interaction with others whatsoever.
it has nothing to do with grouping (it seems like everyone is trying to use this straw man argument, but it’s got nothing to do with anything), it has everything to do with random interactions, which even a soloer can see is what makes an MMO interesting… and this is exactly what bioware is removing from the game.
So, it’s another slippery slope argument based on the supposition that SWTOR will be completely instanced with no shared space, no persistence, no player-driven economy, and no community?
I just don’t see that from the source data. I guess we’ll see how it turns out.
Oh, and for the record? I don’t care if other players are off in their own instances or not. That’s their business, not mine. The only reason it might matter is if they promised me otherwise, but that’s a personal thing, not a game design concern.
you’re right, we’ll have to wait and see how far bioware really takes it.
“Oh, and for the record? I don’t care if other players are off in their own instances or not. That’s their business, not mine. The only reason it might matter is if they promised me otherwise, but that’s a personal thing, not a game design concern.”
i think you’ll change your tune when you realize that without other players around, the game will feel pretty lame…. the sky might not fall, but it will definitely be a noticeable detriment to the game, yes even YOUR game… even though you seem to think that what everyone else does, has no affect on YOUR game whatsoever… we’ll just wait and see
^_^
You know how I feel! Either way though I’m excited about playing both of these! With or without my group.
Hey! Your blog ate my vaguely cleaver but unoriginal response =(
My post was prefaced with -insert witty group-zealot response here-
Only I used carrots instead of -
*chuckle*
Tangentially, Ferrel, I mean to ask some questions of the Allods people about guilds and their functions. Is there anything in particular that you’d wonder about, given that you’re WAY more experienced with guilds than I am, and looking at AO as a game that could benefit from seeing how other games have handled guilds?
And my blog is eating comments? It didn’t even tell me. BAD blog.
I just like the word GORP. Of course, new ideas will be tried and emerge, and I think a lot more thinking and testing goes on with these ideas than we give them credit for at first glance.
@ferrel don’t use carrots. Carrots are a reserved html character
But I like carrots =(
Tesh, I can think of a lot of questions for an upcoming game in regards to guild and guild support!
If you like shoot me an email and we can chat all about it!
From the MMORPG.com hands-on preview of SWTOR (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/feature/3797/page/2):
“Temmerman told us that while each of the eight classes has its own unique, solo story-line that takes them all around the world, they’ve gone to a fair amount of trouble to make sure it doesn’t just feel like an RPG. That content is instanced, but it is laced throughout the common game world.
Each class has its own personal arc, and that arc takes them from planet to planet, but each planet also has its own arc, and that one is aimed at groups of players. To fully experience the game and all of its content, players will want to break off as they travel through new areas to work with friends and complete some of that content.”
That would seem to settle it, wouldn’t it?
Now I’m just plain curious as to why you don’t like Obama
He’s like a God over here! I’ve love to see you write a politics post so I can read your views. I would do one too and maybe we could start a trend 
Awesome post by the way
“So, it’s another slippery slope argument based on the supposition that SWTOR will be completely instanced with no shared space, no persistence, no player-driven economy, and no community?”
I think this is the root of the problem. Everyone is making assumptions based on an interview with an SWTOR Dev. I guess he made the comment that all of the content will be available for you to solo (w/ companion). Now a lot of people are assuming the entire game is going to be instanced and you can basically complete the entire game solo just like a single player RPG. I highly doubt Bioware would take this approach because they would retain so little of their customer base.
Even a great single player RPG like Dragon Age: Origins will eventually be shelved by most after a few months of playing. Not because it is horrible, far from it, but simply because you run out of content to play through.
*chuckle*
Oh, no, Gordon. I’m not picking up *that* flamebait idea and running with it. I’m in enough trouble already with this one. Let’s just say I like less government rather than more. If you want specifics, hit me up in an email.
Killer and Randomessa, thanks for the comments. We just don’t know enough about the specifics on this one to be sure what will happen. Of course, even if the fears are true, and the slippery slope accurate, I still say it’s nobody’s business how other people play the game, so long as they aren’t griefing. Soloing != griefing.
I was always under the belief that MMO, in terms of definition was, beyond what the acronym stands for,:
Many, MANY people online at the same time.
If you also read into the English language a bit, you’ll find many statements, or terminology that refers to more than one as never having a double inner “inclusive” meaning.
Massively Multiplayer probably was never intended to also include, within it’s meaning, many small individual groups as a part of the terms definition.
The English language grows and strives from double meaning, yes, but always, always to be clearly understood.
We as humans grow more intelligently and find novel ways, but in the languages essence, we always strive to say what we mean, and mean what we say.
Language is also a living thing, meanings to words change over time. In the scheme of things, I consider the term MMORPG to be very young, in our language.
The simplest way, and with the fewest words said, is the most intelligent and best way to communicate as humans.
To sum up: I think MMO means “many people online at the same time” and there is no further meaning to read into that.
how many times are you going to even glimpse another player when you’re spending most of your time in instances?
how often are you going to interact with other players when every single bit of content is doable by solo-ing?
It depends. City of Villains/Heroes is heavily instanced and almost all content is soloable. Yet this is the MMO where I have spent a relatively large amount of time in teams compared to other MMOs.
Instances and mostly soloable content in itself does not exclude people interactring with each others, be it in teams or in other ways.
Neither does those in themselves enforce people to interact with people either or force them to interact in certain ways.
There is a larger picture to observe here and ripping a few features out of their context (which may not be completely understood for unreleased games) do no good really.