Why do people play MMO's solo? | Asmongold Reacts 

This

true asf

Ouch

I want friend requests but never accept them lol!

Same

@LakehuntistCool😎 go outside

inb4 multiboxing

i think i love elden ring because of this, i like playing solo but its cool to be able to see randomly other people playing the same game and also pvping if you want to, kind of the best game ever made

This is 110% correct, at least for me.

Just like irl. Most people out there suck. Finding that core group on an mmo is gold.

Couldn't have said it better.

Very well said 😉

i played wow for many years i have always played 100% solo if someone whispers me more than once i block them my mother told me never to talk to strangers. ty momma. wow players are weird anyways they just wanna sit around and type about missing ____ expansion they only make toilet jokes.. i prefer to view myself as like an alien visitor just observing never interacting with them. classic players in particular are freaks fr fr

Society is nice

@@labrat-mv2xi lol this kinda true though. I've had stereotypically nerdy interests my whole life (anime & videogames), and i'm older so these were more stigmatized back then in highschool, and yet somehow I've never felt comfortable around other nerdy people who were into games or anime. and there was a time where I gave these types of people a chance, thinking "how bad could it really be?" and I've regretted it every single time. Unfortunately stereotypes about nerds are 99% true. They are typically less socially and emotionally developed, usually with low emotional intelligence, and for the ones on competitive communities, are often just spoiled kids whose parents let them sit there all the time, and they are about every bit as immature as you could imagine them to be. People who are more mature simply usually spend less time on games, so they stick to quiter, more relaxing games where they can chill out for a few hours. It takes a certain type of person to sit there for hours pouring over a game's details min maxing everything, and they usually, just aren't fun to talk to or play with.

Solo player here, I would not care if there were no other players in the MMO I was playing. Sure, other players make interesting background objects but I would not care if they weren't there.

or shared town hubs

Assassin's creed or other "open world" are kind of MMO without multi (poor quest, grinding, gigantic map, microtransactions, looting ...). @@erossenpai2884

I play WOW solo for the most part, but I enjoy the random social interactions that break it up.

The second you take on a more laid back approach to people rather than focusing on max efficiency, you will enjoy gaming way more.

Guild Wars 2 is great for solo play. However, the endgame is more focused on WvW and PvP as well as world events which require groups of 10+ people. Luckily, the community is quite ACTIVE and welcoming, though not always the most helpful at times.

@@jondonnelly4831 Yeah ofc, but that depends on what kind of player you are and what do you enjoy. I used to be a very hardcore mmo player back in the day, but now i just dont have time. So for most part i just do some chilling, fishing, flipping and farming. As i love the economics in mmo games. Everyone is different and that is ok. I find mmos exciting exactly cuz of this reason. I myself hate crafting, but when i see someone crafting like crazy its allways refreshing, cuz i know there are different kinds of people and i feel more excited about the world.

Because people suck the older I got the more I did not want to waste my time with randoms. I honestly avoid co-op situations. I just want pvp and contested events.

@@jondonnelly4831 Few raid and even less PvP. At least in WoTLK classic, raiding is a lot more common, even in small servers it's super easy to find groups.

This is a pretty good analogy honestly. I like going to conventions for the same reasons and in the same way that I like going to Renaissance faires: I want to roll up with a car full of close friends to talk while we eat different foods, watch different shows, engage in activities, and watch people craft things in real time. Which is exactly how I like to play EQ1, LOTRO, and WoW.

Conventions XDDDDDDD

true, when I started playing 14, which was my first mmo, I wasn't expecting to make friends at all and to just go through the story and maybe in endgame do pfing and stuff, but before I could even finish the story I had soo many interactions with people and my friends list grew massive, and I still talk to a lot of the people ingame and outside of the game. Even though I went in 100% determined to do everything solo (or in a random group with no interaction) that's not how it ended up, interactions happen whether you like it or not and that'll always stay true

​@kiiturii that's been the opposite of my experience in 14 so far. I see random shouts about club nights in other data centers, and all groups for dungeons say "o/" when it starts and "gg" when it ends, saying nothing else but blitzing through the dungeon and leaving before I've even finished watching the cutscene. It's good I prefer playing it solo.

Oh I know what that is, those are fun I've done those. Don't remember the official name for it.

This...

@@lilangel2256 fax buddy fax

Why multiplayer? Fun? Nope. But why? Take a look with the boss HP number.

@@c4tch bro that name had me dying 😂😂😂

This. I love MMOs because I love being around other people, but it's annoying to actually play with people who just simply suck at their job or are assholes.

I have never seen that happen. Most people just grind it with a friend or alone all the way through.

@@Chris-ks4sw Honestly, you're probably right. However, I am also right. I played on a private server, so the community culture and size is way different. I constantly ended up playing with someone for a bit after partying with them for the sake of a quest. "You're doing this quest? Cool, lets do it together. Oh, do you also have this quest? Lets do that one too." It was pretty much a staple of my experience.

I didn’t think of the sudden cooperation aspect. I remember growing up playing wizard101, you would occasionally see random people waiting by dungeon doors. This was a universal sign of “im looking for a group” which now that I think about it, was a neat community created concept of the game

i currently started playing wow again and it's really like you say. while i quest, i'm mostly alone and don't see muhc people.. but now and then i go back to stormwind (maincity of alliance) and see all this people doing their own thing, chatting together, walking around etc.. it feels "warm and welcoming". if i play singleplayer games, npcs never really achieve the same feeling. they always do the same, they always react the same.. humans are just different. if i want to, i can send a message to someone and get a response from him. or gift someone something for being nice, and get a response and maybe gift back. its just different.

In what game?

This is such a cool perspective. I love it!

@@TonyKalashnikov I first tried the idea in my first ever MMO, Dofus.

@@fu6817 It used to be highly meaningful, in every MMORPG for the longest time. It's pretty recently it lost it's value since now everything is replaced once a week 😅

@@fu6817 Not in the ones I've played, mate. Dofus, a very old and yet still alive and thriving MMO is a game where crafting is integral to the progression and upkeep of a character as well as their power progression. Almost any Equippable Item, be it armour, weapons, trinkets and so on including all other supportive items like potions, food and even mounts that you can breed and grow and then sell, must be crafted and dungeonlike activities in this game reward the ingredients needed to do so. The best part about it was that when you try to sell these items, only the cheapest one gets sold first, turning the marketplaces into a constant pricing war since even though the player can choose to turn their character into a shopkeep, the vast majority of the goods are on a game-wide marketplace that becomes a list of hundreds of buyables neatly categorised into their respective spots.

Joining a game that is multiplayer then complaining it's multiplayer is something I will never understand. Just like when people demand multiplayer in a single player game. It ends up making both games worse.

@@chaoschris8194 There are a lot of reasons why people play certain multiplayer games that don't typically like dedicating their entire time to playing with others online. I understand where your perspective is coming from, so maybe I can help you understand from some of my experiences. Apologies in advance if I fail to do so. Certain multiplayer games are tacked onto single-player games, like you mentioned, like Red Dead Online or GTA Online. They have their own unique experiences that offer more stories, characters, and content that is basically a dessert following the main single-player story. Sometimes they are sequels or prequels to the single-player content. I recently got into Red Dead Online myself on PC but ran into numerous griefers, hackers and cheaters, but also met some cool people too that I did some content with and had a good time. I like social interactions with people happening organically, and not forced. It's a mixed bag experience overall, but it varies from game to game and community to community. Playing solo allows you to enjoy all the content not found in the single-player, but also shields you from a lot of the bullshit you'll find when being exposed to others online. Some people are complete fucking assholes who ruin your intended experience, while others make the experience much richer because of them. I used Red Dead Online as an example (even though it's not an MMO) because it's my most recent new online experience. I intended to get my cousin into playing with me, but he never ended up giving it a shot, so I decided to jump in and try it during the Halloween event to get in the spirit of the holiday. I had played the single-player a few years back, but never really got neck deep in the online portion beyond the tutorial mission. Pokemon Go is another game I play regularly, which is more of a Massively Multiplayer Local RPG than an online one. I've had stressful situations dealing with people there too, but also a lot of really good ones. Often I play solo, but I do get together with others for events and raids throughout the year and work together in accomplishing goals. Games that have an addictive enough loop and you enjoy playing are reason enough to keep playing solo, because some games don't have good alternatives, or alternatives at all. Bad experiences can also determine how one proceeds to play. They may love a game for everything it offers online, but hate ending up in shitty situations and getting stressed out over bullshit in a video game. Happens every day to people. I used to play FF XIV from 2010 launch to around 2018 or so. Main reason I stuck with that game was for the story, characters, lore, music and the overall world. You really needed players to get anything done in that game, and between my RU-vid channel and co-managing a Free Company centered around the game, we got a lot of shit done via interacting with people online who joined us. However, there were many, many, many ups and downs to experiences dealing with people in that game. Bad experiences and good ones. That includes both the original game and A Realm Reborn. People we knew, and randoms we encountered along the way. But that's life. People want to escape that into a digital world, and when it follows them there too, it defeats the purpose of escapism. Being able to play Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV solo, or when you feel comfortable playing with others, is a great choice because it pulls in more players and enriches the game with more going on. Developers like that because it drives more traffic to their game and generates more money. At least, that's the plan for them. I'll wrap up this post though. Sorry it went on like a George R. R. Martin novel. I hope I helped a little bit in getting a better understanding of why some people are often drawn to the unique experiences only found in online/multiplayer games, but more often stick to themselves with some co-op on the side every now and again. Plus, I personally think MMO's like FF XIV have the best player-expressing, character customization in any game, both offline and online included, and that is a lot of fun for people to get drenched in.

@@Leonesaurus1990 No trust me I get all that, and I understand that part exactly. What I don't understand is choosing to play a game called "massively multiplayer", demanding that the game have more solo content because you want it to be solo. Why play multiplayer? What happens is that the devs end up spending more time on solo stuff and ruining it for the original fanbase. People who want this stuff never seem to care about potentially destroying a game because they don't want to be social. Of course people don't want to be social all the time, I get that. But I feel that the people demanding solo stuff and imposing that playstyle on people who want to be social will eventually destroy the game. There are so few actual MMOs left as it is.

@@chaoschris8194 Yeah, I see what you mean. That is definitely an issue for people who want social-oriented games and the design philosophy behind them kept intact. I think developer's do that to build their playerbase and increase profits. My problem with a developer appealing to everyone is that it kills a part of what makes the game unique and true to themselves. That's what happened to me with an aspect of FF XIV, but that's another story I don't want to bother people with. Interesting fact in regards to anti-social gameplay versus social gameplay was during the COVID era lockdown, Pokemon GO had to make a change in order to survive during that period, so instead of having to walk or drive to a raid to meetup with people, like you would do in older MMOs, they added Remote Raid Passes, which allowed anyone to invite people on their friends list from anywhere in the world. So, people stuck inside worldwide could join any nearby raids going on in their area without ever leaving the house and be invited to any raid currently going on in the world. I think people became really comfortable with staying in their room and raiding for shiny Pokemon and legendaries that it became a really major problem for the developer to get people back outside and moving again, which is something they're really obsessed with. I think it's because they probably sell your roaming data or some shit to people, but that's a whole other story/theory. So, anyway, since then they've been following a major, ongoing process of incentivizing people to get outside and stop remotely raiding as much. They even increased the price of them in-game, along with other incentives. I mean, I can go on and on about the fucking saga that has been for a lot of players, but it definitely goes to show that a lot players will tend to choose what's more comfortable for them and what gets them the same rewards without having to go through the hassle of multiplayer shenanigans and communicating. When a game makes something less social, in any capacity, it makes things more simple, but at the cost of more possibilities blossoming as a result. It's that ultimate risk versus reward choice. Risk stress versus being rewarded with double what you came to collect.

@@chaoschris8194 the original fan base ? most mmo players today arent liek the ones the origina game whre made for .

That is my hope for Diablo 4. They kinda forced coop a bit in Diablo 3 and you felt kind of obligated to play with group instead of check in and out on your schedule IRL if someone has a stricter schedule, or completely alone with no one in game, which also felt kind of empty. I might have to checkout GW2 if Diablo doesn't deliver but open beta was fun, so we'll see.

True thats me, most are used to playing rpg solo, being forced to wait in a lobby for nearly an hour to try and find other players can turn u off a game. Its one of the reasons why i didnt play battlefront 2 that much, impossible to get into a game to improve ur skills.

An MMO making you play with other people is not "forcing" you. It's literally the definition of MMO. Why are you even playing games you don't like?

@@jondonnelly4831 only in new MMOs, old games were not designed this badly.

@@paintspot1509 absolutley nailed it. Teamplay to bring people together ist the main point of online-play. If it becomes too common it might be stressful. But a good balance between soloplay and multiplayer is a key. However for some reason everybody thinks its a cool idea to make everything soloable in easymode. WoW classic had often this mix - mostly soloable PVE in the openworld but sometimes much more convenient to team up. Question: Who would play those games, if there would be NO OTHER players - just bots playing with you. Of course for 12,99$ a month - for the service. Nobody would give a S....

I played EQ when it was new and played WoW through Wrath, and I tried getting back in later but wow things like the lfg tool and cross-world grouping ruined grouping. People knew what they were doing way back.

@@mage1439 yup wrath was the last time I had actually fun grouping up with people LFG stuff is nice for what it is but it comes with a price of making people extremely rude and impatient. Sure the community always had assholes but with manual group tool and servers being their own little thing even the assholes had to behave if they wanted to do anything above leveling.

Funny i start to get way more chill over the time with other people. Sure sometimes annoying stuff happens, but i think its all about your own mindset and focus. When i played competetiv content, i get more eager and frustated if it didnt work. Now i remind myself why i play a game. Its a game nothing more.

The problem is solo games are so much better then any MMO experience you can have playing like this. What your saying is you don't really mind if an MMO is full of bots because you like seeing npcs run around.

@@paintspot1509 No. What I'm saying is I like the leveling, gear collecting and dungeons. It's not mandatory to interact with people to do any of these things.

Never understood the argument that it wasn't a mmo, when it first came out I've rarely used the merc because you never struggled to find a group to do anything, some main missions were very difficult to get the bonus if you played solo. Still playing now and cant get that feeling anywhere else

Garrisons were boring busy work. Very few people like tedious, repetitive and braindead tasks.

Honestly I dont think garrisons are what makes wod so bad. It was the lack of content.

@@brandish8215 really? I thought it was a good idea, maybe not done right but a cool thing to build your own base

@@Bollibompa I didn't even play the expansion when it was current so I can't tell, but didnt people like the idea overall?

@@Magerquark Garrisons seemed exciting at launch but they did become a bit of a chore, especially if running multiple alts. Blizzard would have been better to have made the Garrisons guild based, rather than individual player based. This way you could still do them solo if you wanted to, but you didn't suffer from a sense of isolation if you are a more guild focused person - which i think a lot of people had an issue with over time.

yes but its not even close to sao or other animes he mentioned. the point is that majority of players want to have choice to play solo if he wants

DATABASE DATABASE

@@katsuenyagaming I'd hands down take Log Horizon over the incest fest that is SAO

I really like the politics between guilds in that anime

I think it ok to be Solo but it really nice when an MMORPG encourages group play rather then disencourages it. That is what MMORPG'S these days not going to say fail but kind of stop doing.

Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen

but also ganking and greifing

@@anteprs7908 there is nothing wrong with some ganking greifing. Why do ppl think dying to mobs is "content" yet dying to a player is "greifing". Stop playing MMOs if you don't like the genre.

Agreed, but it really got better in Panda's IMHO, before that it was crap. Also the multitag system was a later introduction and required for good solo.

“Back” in Legion sounds funny to me; I feel like a n00b listening to OGs like Asmon because I started in Cata, and was gone after Garrisons of Draenor. Everyone says the game was horrible in MoP, but I certainly enjoyed the game. I raided the whole expac, and thought the art & world were beautiful.

To add to that, (ESO as an example) beating a dungeon meant to be done by a party of 4, by yourself is a really fun experience. And that is a challenge quite popular in ESO.

but it isn't multiplayer... If you just stumble onto someone and just watching him/her... you are not playing with him/her. It is the same like watching a streamer play a video game... you are not PLAYING with (this is the biggest illusion people have about streamers, they feel like they play with them). When you don't play with someone you are playing alone... thus you are playing a single player not multi player... you are just part of the landscape and not part of the game... This is sad.

​Looks like you missed the point. Shared space and interactions are a thing without needing to directly be involved with other players formally. Like how a mall isn't suddenly NOT a public space simply because you didn't want to go shopping with a friend. A shared space is still a multiplayer experience and way too many games get hung up on requiring specific "multiplayer" style of interactions to justify the gameplay experience. Like wow style games that only cater to instanced group content that ignores the open world... or arena lobbies with nothing beyond a loading screen otherwise. Me crossing paths in a shared space is still a multiplayer game if both myself and the other party are both playing. Again, a non-zero amount of people are hung up on how being ABLE to play solo in a multiplayer setting is NOT multiplayer for some reason despite the fact that spontaneous player encounters CAN and do occur (thus making it inherently "multiplayer" anyways).

there are also many reasons why players choose mmos to get the community feeling in overcoming challenges together wich they couldnt alone.

@@dawgyv72 honestly you are not wrong. In terms of criticism, I don't mind it as long as it's constructive and a lot of times it's not with these kind of games. In terms of competitiveness and teamwork, when I'm with people I know I tend to be more relaxed and can work better. I normally do well in games like valorant or siege when I'm playing with people I know but I do find it hard to work with randoms. Thanks for your comment, I realise I do a lot of what you said outside of just gaming and I need to work on that.

This is actually the reason I got into path of exile lol

Why do you actually play MMOs then? Single player games are way better solo then any MMO will ever be. By this logic just fill the world with bots and it will feel alive.

@@paintspot1509 Bot will never feel 'alive', they don't do unpredictable things. Also, because I can.

Yep, this. Whats the point of working hard in a single player game when you know you could cheat and edit you save file any time and it doesnt affect other people in anyway

@@javierfito5077 Seeing my buddies getting Steam achievements in single player games motivates my monkey brain to play those games and get achievements myself. It's the same thing psychologically I think.

These "hardmode" trials are easier than stormblood dungeons. You can literally stand in all of the mechanics and still not die.

Not soloable, though.

@@Hurbster2112 Nor were the dungeons in the MSQ until Duty Support was added. Your argument is simply a fallacy.

@@Nico78Not I'm sure me from a year ago would really care about this ;)

The thing to not understand is why people want to change the MMO to be more solo friendly. They even go do far that they expect it. That is what's smooth brained.

@@Bollibompa most ppl dont ant more then the whole story to be solo freindly and soloable