Single player vs friends.. Please change single player!

I love sota like I did eq when I started, i played it for many years and it has so many things Im just so happy.

but

the 3 online modes dont make sense to me

multi player - fine
friends - awesome
single player - this is just like friends to me, I dont see a time when Id group with people and want to be in single player so, how does this differ to being in friends and just not being in the same instances as the rest?

What Id dearly dearly love, is that, single player was properly single player you didnt see other people online, they dont see you, but you can see the vendors, so its like offline, but online.. you are in the world by yourself.. for that time when you feel savagely anti social, and want to play and not ever speak or see a soul.

 

Agreed! I believe Darkstarr said they plan on implementing a process that makes you invisible to others online...so I'm assuming they were talking about single player online.

 

actually, there is a use case for being in a party while i single player: say you want to talk to a group of people, so you form a party for the chat, but you want to mine the same mine and don't want to share. if you were in friends, you end up in the same instance of the mine. in single you can each have the same mine to yourselves but still chat.

 

I believe Friends mode was originally and may still be intended to automatically match you up with friends listed players if applicable even without them being in your party. The current tech probably just takes dungeon party instance logic and applies it to all non-pvp scenes

 

That's true..which is why there should be an optional "invisible online" mode for those who want a true single player experience while online.

 

@Alley Oop i happened to be grouped with 2 people this evening, who were in friends mode. I logged in as single player.. and when I went to the same zone they did.. I was in their instance and could see them.. so I really cant help but ask despite people saying there was a purpose, i cant see it, if single does exactly what friends does.

 

that's odd, i thought it was changed so it wouldn't do that anymore. bug it?

edit: unless it was a zone that forces multi, like a pvp zone...

 

Nope, was a normal zone.. deep ravenswood.

 

I never group, but am trying to understand what you all are talking about. Are you saying there are two bugs? The first being that if you change modes, the grouping stuff is still keeping you in groups chat wise even though you have changed to solo (and the bug is that changing modes does not reset the groups stuff to off )? The second bug is that if you are playing solo, you are seeing other people in the scene? I play solo and never group up so have never seen anyone.

 

Friends online = anyone on your friends list that is also in friends online mode.
Single player/party = anyone who is partied with you that is also in single player/party mode.

The difference here is that friends do not need to be in a party in friends mode and people in party mode do not need to be friended to you.

 

NO. friends online IS party mode. there is no such thing as a mode purely for your friends list, because that would be completely unlimited. you start an instance, anyone on your friends list can join, then anyone one THEIR friends lists can join, ad infinitum or until you reach the maximum degree of seperation that exists on the server.

from the R40 instructions doc:

 

So, I ask again, if single player doesnt mean you are totally alone, what is the point if its the same as friends

 

One may want to be able to chat with other people in-game and run the same instance such as mine cave without having to do round robin with them.

The point is we have options to choose how we like to play.

 

@Roycestein Kaelstrom but we've established that friends and single player take you to the same place.. there is no difference.. My question still is valid, what is the point of it, if they are the same...

 

They are not the same. If both players are in the Single Player Online, they will be in two separate instances of the same location. Hence, the resource nodes and mobs won't be shared. That difference is huge as well. Resource sharing/competition is one main reason why people choose one mode other others. While they are people who introverts that prefer to do things alone while still connected to the world, there are also folks who don't mind mingle with people, but they simply just have limited game time per day/night and they would rather not be waiting in line to kill or harvest stuff.

 

@Roycestein Kaelstrom but they arent!! I was in a group with 2 people, and I went to single player, and went back to the zone they were in, and I was placed in the same instance they were, I was in deep ravenswood, see post #6 in this thread. My point is, it made no difference I was in the same place and instance they were and i didnt want to be..

I wanted to be on my own, I am used to being on my own.. I have no problem with grouping up, but my daily life I want to be able to go somewhere and do my own thing.. single player should be great, but, if Im grouped with someone, Im not getting an instance to myself like I expected.. Hence the post.

 

You might want to file a bug report then. That shouldn't be the case.