I share his thoughts, I don't mind joining a guild if there's people I know but I'm almost always a lone wolf when playing, that way I don't screw up for people whenever I do something wrong/forget something.

Unbreakable said:

I share his thoughts, I don't mind joining a guild if there's people I know but I'm almost always a lone wolf when playing, that way I don't screw up for people whenever I do something wrong/forget something.

Clan choice is everything in an MMO. MMOs are all just boring grinds that take place in the background while you chat with your friends. It's basically why my best MMO experience was Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, just because there were some people I really got along well with. (Although I still think it's a criminally underappreciated game for having an ingenious player-driven economy and actually enjoyable and varied gameplay.)

One reason I've always enjoy Guild Wars 2, ironically, is just how much you can get accomplished WITHOUT a guild. Certainly no barriers to getting the best possible equipment stat-wise among other things. I don't think MMOs absolutely require one to be social, sometimes it's just fun to "people watch" or get a sense you're part of a larger experience. It's similar to why living in a city is more appealing to some people than living in the country, even if you're not participating in any kind of social scene.

NWSiaCB said:

Clan choice is everything in an MMO. MMOs are all just boring grinds that take place in the background while you chat with your friends. It's basically why my best MMO experience was Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, just because there were some people I really got along well with. (Although I still think it's a criminally underappreciated game for having an ingenious player-driven economy and actually enjoyable and varied gameplay.)

I myself don't much mind being in a guild anymore, but that's probably due to my own stance in the games; I usually end up in weird builds for some reason; it's not that I'm wanting to be different for others, but often that there's that one skill that I'm like "THIS IS SO COOL I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE" which turns out to be a not that great skill.

But instead of giving up I often go all around searching how to make it viable, but that's usually the limit; viable. I can have fun by myself, but often either clan members or ingame friends will wall me off because I am not an optimal choice to bring, specially when there is a limited amount of players in a party or somesuch. I don't blame them, as that ONE non-optimal member may cause the downfall of the party sometimes; plus, I myself feel like I'm weighting them down, so I'd feel bad just by joining a party.

So I'll often refuse either Clan invites or party invites. And friend invites, though that's another matter. I'll often donate or help newbies, and they'll send me a friend invite. Since I'm a bit of an easily manipulated idiot, I'll often refuse friend invites from the people I help because they might just see me as that one guy who will give away his equipments and money/or help with something whenever you call.

So in a sense I am very social without being actually social in MMOs. I'll help you but it's unlikely you'll ever see me again.

Shounen_Fake said:

So in a sense I am very social without being actually social in MMOs. I'll help you but it's unlikely you'll ever see me again.

So in a way, you're just like Mahiro doing drive-by healings?

ninakemi said:

One reason I've always enjoy Guild Wars 2, ironically, is just how much you can get accomplished WITHOUT a guild. Certainly no barriers to getting the best possible equipment stat-wise among other things. I don't think MMOs absolutely require one to be social, sometimes it's just fun to "people watch" or get a sense you're part of a larger experience. It's similar to why living in a city is more appealing to some people than living in the country, even if you're not participating in any kind of social scene.

Well, the problem is that MMORPGs are generally really shitty, boring games without the people as the "content" you actually play the game to enjoy. That's why every time someone is hooked on an MMORPG, they're doing it because they're thinking about trying to keep up with their friends (I.E. the MMO), and when they quit, they think back on all the pointless grinding that they did (I.E. the RPG), and wonder why the hell they put up with it for even a minute. MMOs just don't work without that MM component.

Or to put it in the terms of your city analogy, if you're not going to talk to anyone, then a city is just the isolated countryside with more traffic problems.

Unbreakable said:

So in a way, you're just like Mahiro doing drive-by healings?

I suppose so, though I don't actively run away; just well, I'm not going to stick around and I'll just do my own thing.

NWSiaCB said:

Well, the problem is that MMORPGs are generally really shitty, boring games without the people as the "content" you actually play the game to enjoy. That's why every time someone is hooked on an MMORPG, they're doing it because they're thinking about trying to keep up with their friends (I.E. the MMO), and when they quit, they think back on all the pointless grinding that they did (I.E. the RPG), and wonder why the hell they put up with it for even a minute. MMOs just don't work without that MM component.

Or to put it in the terms of your city analogy, if you're not going to talk to anyone, then a city is just the isolated countryside with more traffic problems.

I don't play "really shitty, boring games" in general. That's very much a matter of opinion. I play good games and I don't play bad games. I like my very solo-friendly MMO as a game, even if it has its faults. No way I'm going to play something that's crap if I don't enjoy it on my own and I sure as hell am not going to make my friends play a crappy game with me. Not if I wanted to keep them as friends anyway. I also think "grinding" is legitimately enjoyable for some people, as a sort of low-impact activity. It's especially great coming home from work after a nasty or intensive day to play something I can just turn off my brain for. So long as it's not entirely mind-numbing and I still have to make some interesting decisions every so often I do enjoy a bit of farming here and there.

My city analogy still works. You can definitely enjoy your time in the city even if you don't talk to anyone. Just enjoy the ambiance, architecture and the availability of different activities and stores and such. It's a case where experience creates a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. If you want another good example of this sort of thing, consider Dark Souls which is almost wholly a solo experience but you really lose something if you turn off the internet features.

Just because you personally didn't find any MMO worth playing solo does not mean that none of them are worth playing solo. Or that the genre is inherently limited in its ability to cater to different playing styles besides the ones you're familiar with. I'm sorry you've not found an MMO you'd consider worthwhile to play without friends or a guild, but some people do. Like myself and Mahiro. If you're a very social gamer who wouldn't have fun alone in an MMO even if the game was decent, that's a matter of taste as well. It takes all types of people to make a world and we just happen to be different.

Sorry for the necro but, well, relevant:

I used to suffer massive social anxiety in games and play solo because of clans/guilds. I was in a clan with a RL friend, all of us used to meet up in rl a few times a year and stay over at my friends house. Problem was, several other members of the clan were involved in some sort of 'we hate everyone' circle jerk. They would pick one of the other members and harass them until they left, often leaving the game too. These were also the only other members that attended the meetups besides myself and my friend who was the clan leader.

Eventually it got to be my turn and let's just say they weren't shy about taking the harassment out of game, but only when my friend wasn't looking. Things like leaving me in the middle of a town I didn't know by myself on a night out, leaving me vile messages in my private message inbox on our forums then making my access read only, stealing my accounts in various games etc, finally culminating in them saying I wasn't welcome at the meetups.This lead to me basically not being able to trust anyone online because they sort of stalked me across several games.

Anyways I recently started playing Final Fantasy XIV again and seeing as I wasn't in that games version of a guild I got an invite from someone to join theirs. I was super nervous, and even after accepting I was debating just running away and not logging in on that character anymore. I am glad to say I have never regretted an action less than accepting that invitation because not only was everyone genuinely helpful and nice, they were all my kind of people sharing similar hobbies, interests and sense of humour.

Sooo errr anyways I can definitely relate to this strip ^^;

ninakemi said:

I don't play "really shitty, boring games" in general. That's very much a matter of opinion. I play good games and I don't play bad games. I like my very solo-friendly MMO as a game, even if it has its faults. No way I'm going to play something that's crap if I don't enjoy it on my own and I sure as hell am not going to make my friends play a crappy game with me. Not if I wanted to keep them as friends anyway. I also think "grinding" is legitimately enjoyable for some people, as a sort of low-impact activity. It's especially great coming home from work after a nasty or intensive day to play something I can just turn off my brain for. So long as it's not entirely mind-numbing and I still have to make some interesting decisions every so often I do enjoy a bit of farming here and there.

My city analogy still works. You can definitely enjoy your time in the city even if you don't talk to anyone. Just enjoy the ambiance, architecture and the availability of different activities and stores and such. It's a case where experience creates a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. If you want another good example of this sort of thing, consider Dark Souls which is almost wholly a solo experience but you really lose something if you turn off the internet features.

Just because you personally didn't find any MMO worth playing solo does not mean that none of them are worth playing solo. Or that the genre is inherently limited in its ability to cater to different playing styles besides the ones you're familiar with. I'm sorry you've not found an MMO you'd consider worthwhile to play without friends or a guild, but some people do. Like myself and Mahiro. If you're a very social gamer who wouldn't have fun alone in an MMO even if the game was decent, that's a matter of taste as well. It takes all types of people to make a world and we just happen to be different.

If you mention Dark Souls, then starting with Demon's Souls, I absolutely could not STAND the online components of that game, which seemed designed solely to ruin the experience. Your reward for completing a boss was to be constantly harrassed by an endless stream of invaders trying to kill you when you just want to grind up a few souls, literally spawning new ones in mere SECONDS after you kill the last one so that there's no way to get ANYTHING done until you either commit suicide or yank your modem connection out. Those stupid post-it-note messages were eyesores, the other players joining into battles just caused lag and could make you miss parts of the game. Then there's the fact that the game makes you have to control the color/dark-light balance of different areas, but other players are constantly ruining it as long as you're online. Frankly, the multiplayer is the biggest single reason I hated Demon's Souls while everyone else seemed to love it... alongside the BS of how those stupid crystal geckos worked, making you permanently lose the ability to upgrade your weapons until a new game+ just because you happened to get knocked down a pit somewhere near one.

Anyway, I'm not someone who only plays for social aspects - in fact, I'm someone plays a lot of single-player games, and hates how everyone tries to constantly say that everything should be multiplayer no matter how much that might change the dynamics of the game. Making something multiplayer isn't just adding some other feature onto a game, it forces redesigns of everything about how the game is played. You aren't allowed to pause in most multiplayer games, for one thing, which can dramatically upset the pacing of the game, especially anything meant to be tactical or strategic, since those games tend to let you pause to issue complex orders, but it becomes a full RTS where the ability to micro effectively becomes a prerequisite skill before good tactics can even matter when you introduce multiplayer.

Hence, MMOs are games I generally don't like playing to start with, but will only put up with if I'm playing with friends as a social experience.

NWSiaCB said:

Anyway, I'm not someone who only plays for social aspects - in fact, I'm someone plays a lot of single-player games, and hates how everyone tries to constantly say that everything should be multiplayer no matter how much that might change the dynamics of the game. Making something multiplayer isn't just adding some other feature onto a game, it forces redesigns of everything about how the game is played. You aren't allowed to pause in most multiplayer games, for one thing, which can dramatically upset the pacing of the game, especially anything meant to be tactical or strategic, since those games tend to let you pause to issue complex orders, but it becomes a full RTS where the ability to micro effectively becomes a prerequisite skill before good tactics can even matter when you introduce multiplayer.

Hence, MMOs are games I generally don't like playing to start with, but will only put up with if I'm playing with friends as a social experience.

I more or less think the same thing as you here, I'm constantly afraid of screwing up and ruining it for everyone if I play multiplayer so I tend to stick to myself.

Unbreakable said:

I more or less think the same thing as you here, I'm constantly afraid of screwing up and ruining it for everyone if I play multiplayer so I tend to stick to myself.

Likewise. If I fail, I want to be the only one who is "punished" because of it. The inverse is also very much true, of course- I don't exactly relish the times that a Leeroy Jenkins ruins everything.

NWSiaCB said:

If you mention Dark Souls, then starting with Demon's Souls, I absolutely could not STAND the online components of that game, which seemed designed solely to ruin the experience. Your reward for completing a boss was to be constantly harrassed by an endless stream of invaders trying to kill you when you just want to grind up a few souls, literally spawning new ones in mere SECONDS after you kill the last one so that there's no way to get ANYTHING done until you either commit suicide or yank your modem connection out. Those stupid post-it-note messages were eyesores, the other players joining into battles just caused lag and could make you miss parts of the game. Then there's the fact that the game makes you have to control the color/dark-light balance of different areas, but other players are constantly ruining it as long as you're online. Frankly, the multiplayer is the biggest single reason I hated Demon's Souls while everyone else seemed to love it... alongside the BS of how those stupid crystal geckos worked, making you permanently lose the ability to upgrade your weapons until a new game+ just because you happened to get knocked down a pit somewhere near one.

Anyway, I'm not someone who only plays for social aspects - in fact, I'm someone plays a lot of single-player games, and hates how everyone tries to constantly say that everything should be multiplayer no matter how much that might change the dynamics of the game. Making something multiplayer isn't just adding some other feature onto a game, it forces redesigns of everything about how the game is played. You aren't allowed to pause in most multiplayer games, for one thing, which can dramatically upset the pacing of the game, especially anything meant to be tactical or strategic, since those games tend to let you pause to issue complex orders, but it becomes a full RTS where the ability to micro effectively becomes a prerequisite skill before good tactics can even matter when you introduce multiplayer.

Hence, MMOs are games I generally don't like playing to start with, but will only put up with if I'm playing with friends as a social experience.

In Demons' Souls, I would invade as a red phantom and just be the lingering cheerleader making gestures when they beat the mobs and being a rogue gave me better luck (aka more drops), so I'd give away something then jump off a cliff or stand next to the fog gate. It was pretty fun. Quite a few people picked up on what I was doing and even thanked me in a message. Heck, Demons' Souls was one of the only ones where you could actually help people as a red.