Make this game feel more MMO like..Easy Solution

No, and I know for sure some of us will just stop playing - none of us know what 'most' of the other players of this game actually think, no matter how confident we might be that the 'problem' is they can do this, or that. You might hope that more come in to the game to increase the overall 'activity' that players see, but hope is really the right term for it.

These conversations always end up with people who mean well deciding what should be forced on other people, and that is not the solution to anything at all. It was sold as selective playing modes, already there are plenty of places where multiplayer and PVP flagging is compulsory, and I personally get less and less interested in the game with every step along the 'let's make people do this' road. The problem at heart of these type of threads is not 'the people are in the 'wrong mode', it's that there are not enough people. You do not fix that by doing things that will push away some of the existing ones away in the vague hope that it might persuade more to come in.

 

It seems to me that making it an option to be in Open mode in Novia and Cities gives both sides of this argument what they want...am I missing something with that? I've read all the posts in this thread, and seen no conflict with that as an option.

Only reason I play in Private/Party mode is because of resource competition, and I really hate that I'm forced to do that to make the most out of my gaming sessions. However, mob spawns and resources spawns are so much better in Private/Party, it's just not worth playing in Open mode. Even the experience bonus isn't enough to sacrifice the better resources and mob spawns. Imagine trying to share the Rise mage room in Open mode for example. They could give a 100% xp bonus, and it still wouldn't be worth it compared to Private/Party mode where I get the entire room to myself.

But when I zone out to Novia or go to a town, I really, really, really miss seeing the other players around. It feels so lonely. I have a 100+ on my friends list, but I just want to see people roaming the world again. I could switch my mode, but that's just one more long loading screen to endure, knowing I'll just be switching back to Party/Private mode the next time I need to join an adventure zone. It's tedious and it shouldn't be.

I wonder how many others play the same way for the same reasons. I wonder how many have quit or taken prolonged breaks because of it.

 

this

 

I often switch to party mode if I'm going to go fighting/harvesting - mostly because I can plan a route and know that spawns will be up, but also I get better performance when I'm scene master. However, I'd have no objection to having 'town' be multi - it would save me some time if it automatically switched me while I was on the load screen zoning in instead of making me sit through another load screen and 20 sec wait to switch. I'd love to have this as an OPTION - but sometimes I don't want to deal with people so stay in private.

Most of the time, I honestly just forget to mode swap. I'll realize I've been stood in town for 20 minutes yapping and am sat on private. And if I log off, when I next log in, it puts me back on private. I really miss having the mode selector available at the login screen.

 

It was sold as a selective mode your correct, but I seem to recall in the dim and distant past it was also sold as risk vs reward and original mention from LB that best resources would be in dangerous areas ie pvp areas but due to so much anti that it never happened so now
we have empty pvp zones as theres no reward to go to them over another zone unfortunately. But im sidetracking.

Your entirely correct, Ive spoken people who dont want to play in mmo mode and Ryodin suggestion would / could work as its optional.
Id take that setup and add 2 other options ideally.
[x] Return to OPEN mode on leaving scene. -- I always play in open mode, I just switch when the zone Ive got to is crowded / I need to do a puzzle solo, would be nice if on leaving scene and loading it did switch then for me.

Also how about an option to see ghostly avatars breaking into the works from another dimension - you see the pale ghostly image of avatars in single player / party when this is ticked but cant interact with them,
Im not sure it would be worth it, might be cool for a bit but would probably not be used enough to be worth the dev time, the other options seem simple enough though.

 

what about a low quality safe mode for lowest config, no spell effects, no player housing nor players vendor loading stuff, a basic non laggy mod that doesnt require 90% ram.

 

Option for Open while in town / on world map

+1

 

Yeah I have never understood these single player online mode / party mode options.
Why is this option even there. You want to play offline use the offline mode, you want to play online, play online with everyone else.

Do not come with these hipster semi online/offline modes. It is utterly crap.

 

Good idea, imho the Private and Party mode is pure poison for the Game.

 

As long there are PvP players who think it is hillarious to game the sythem for maximal carnage with the argument "I play an psychotic killer" as long you will experience stiff resistance against badgering non pvp players into pvp zones.
I played EvE and liked its PvP but there it was moderated by game mechanics (mainly generate enough hate and you reap the consequences) I did a lot of blockade running and so on.
In Sota with the way game mechanics are you can be a trolling jerk with impunity and have no negative effects from it, you are an protected troll, people do not like that much.
Even with better nodes in pvp zones, the prospect of getting ganked every five minutes would make them pretty pointless (and players consider guarding an ressource collecting player boring, wonder why...)

 

Think of Friends/Party Online as a LAN game; I want to play with my friends and family that live in other parts of the world. Most MMOs, we can do this but have to deal with other players. Here, with selective multiplayer, we get the benefit of playing together without the need to fight for camps, deal with antisocial behavior, etc.

Single Player Online was Richard's solution to "offline, but with access to all the online benefits". You can still participate in the economy, shop from player vendors, see deco, etc, you just don't see other players. Not an ideal solution; if anything, we could get rid of this one because playing in party mode without a group gives you this same effect.

Offline is a completely separate game. You can't switch between online and offline, so telling people to just "play offline" isn't a solution.

 

More options is better, and this is something I personally would want.
I feel that most players set their multiplayer setting to party or private when adventuring, mostly because they don't want to have to deal with competition for mobs or resource nodes.
It's not until much later, when they're in a town that just feels so empty that they realize that they are still in party/private mode. But don't want to have to wait 20 seconds to change the setting, then an additional load while the scene reloads.
Right now, this is a global setting that applies to your character, in all scenes.
But it would be great if you could tweak the setting for individual zone types. Personally, I would set my multiplayer setting to "multiplayer" for the world map, npc towns, and POT towns (so I actually saw other players from time to time), but "Party" for adventure zones, so the only other people I see when adventuring are people in my party (less competition for enemies and harvesting nodes).

Since you have to load each scene anyway, why not have this setting change as you load from one scene to the next?

 

I think it's beneficial to have party mode, but I also understand the need for people to see other people.

I go into party mode to group up with people. I only play in solo mode when I don't want to see anyone. Sometimes you need space!

But there is something to learn from this. How many people actually want to be seen and how many don't.

I think monthly game gatherings at Central Brittany Castle would be awesome. We could all see eachother and be addressed by the king. Raiding Parties will fix this as well.

Also, livestream events should not be livestream events. They should be in game events so people are IN the game and not staring at Twitch.

 

Iirc i once suggested to be able to choose from SPO, FMO and MPO on every loading screen.
If i enter a scene or OW or a City there could be selection of what mode i want to enter.

 

I think you all may be missing a point here. There a lot of X players. Not everyone wants or needs the multiplayer experience from this game with all its griefing and outright unpleasantness that is seen in a lot of full strictly MMOs such as Aion, Neverwinter, STO, BDO, GW, GW2, SWTOR, EVE etc etc. (note I am NOT saying any of these have these issues just giving examples of MMOs with no true Solo play mechanic) They want the option to dip in to online if they want, or have the time for without having to wait for other people to join etc. If anything the solo online mode needs some changes, such as being able to have all 4 companions with you, enabling you to take on some of the bigger bosses, and the offline mode needs some beefing up and attention etc.
Just saying

 

They already implemented this about 6 months ago Everyone is together in NPC towns and the Novia Map. This was a very positive move and, like another Avatar said, there is offline mode for alone time needs.

 

Positive for some. As I've noted, every one of the players I brought with me to Shroud have left after this change. We choose to come here because we didn't want to play an MMO, and were promised a game where we could choose what other players we can see. Now, I have six extra accounts because noone wants to log in and deal with extremely slow loading into towns, constant interruptions while crafting, and hideous player fashion.

I've said before, if there was an option (even at a Subscription tier) to play in FPO mode exclusively, that would fix 95% of the players that complain that the world is empty, and still allow our small population a place to play together alone. It would have zero effect on the others; right now, we just don't play, so they won't see us anyway.

Also, offline mode isn't a solution. You can't play Selective Multiplayer there, and you don't have access to your main characters or many rewards.

 

I'm so sorry you lost your friends here

 

One of the reasons I almost stopped playing.
I do not like the forced multiplayer, want the selective multiplayer back

 

and one year later... feels absolutely freaking crowded... can't even move... people are just crowding me everywhere... LOL