It's fine when there's enough people wanting to run what you want to run but if I'm new and you've been playing for 5 years, it may be rough finding a group for what I want to run.

They were never a thing I wanted to do, but I thought it was great the content existed.

For me, dungeons and raids were THE thing that made me want to play WoW. It’s fun working towards a goal with others and there are so many possible encounter designs you can make that would be basically impossible if the content was meant to be done solo.

That said, two caveats:

• It’s fun to work with people you trust and like, not randos. So while I do appreciate the dungeon finder they added to WoW in WotLK as it really let me experience the dungeons long before I was able to establish myself with a guild, I do see the ways in which design catering to that system has hurt a lot of content. My favorite period of WoW was actually early Cataclysm before they nerfed the launch dungeons. They were difficult in a genuinely engaging way and at least when I played with guildmates, I was pretty happy to spend an hour or two trying and failing at a heroic dungeon. Unfortunately that isn’t true for most players queueing with randos, so they got dumbed down.

• I had a very similar experience to what you described but in FFIV. The leveling experience was pretty heavy on story, which was nice, but for the final part of the story of the base game, you needed to go do basically a big dungeon. Not quite a raid, but more people than the normal dungeons. It was pretty clear that most of the people queueing for this were just there to farm whatever and they were rushing through the place, not even killing enemies, so I just had to run after them to keep up. There were a few mid dungeon cutscenes, but you could skip these individually. While I watched the cutscene, most of the group moved along and they did so so quickly that at some point they would trigger a new cutscene before I had finished the first so that as soon as it was done it played the next one. This didn’t update my position, so even if I wanted to continue the dungeon, after a certain point I just couldn’t. It was such an awful experience it made me quit on the spot.

It's an MMO. As in "Massively Multiplayer". If you don't want that, then go play a single player game.

IMO, the friction between players is the point. The dependency on others in the world is what makes it an MMO, otherwise it's just a bunch of people playing a single player game next to each other.

But that's also not the current design meta of MMOs. Dependency on other players means that it's difficult to have a clear definition of a player's experience with the game will be, which means it's hard for the designers to make guarantees about player retention to investors. Imagine telling an investor who doesn't play games that "we don't know exactly what keeps players playing, but we do know that it's possible for one player to ruin another player's experience." So over the last 15y, player interdependence has been optimized out of MMOs.

I wind up feeling like my lackadaisical approach is probably fucking up someone else's farming loop...I feel like the person that cares enough to grind a dungeon reward as fast as possible should get right of way over my happy ass

Those players exist, but they're not important. I do think most players want to go at a chill pace and have an experience they will remember. Running dungeons as fast as possible to farm gear without interacting with any other players creates a very dependable dopamine loop, and a very forgettable experience.

I don't think it's fun to be forced to interact with others in an MMO, but I do think it's fun when your best option is to interact with other players. Ex. make it possible to do something by yourself in 5h of play, or with a group in less than 1h, and people will just prefer interact. I think cave quests in wow are a great example of this. Caves can be lethal to a player questing by themselves, very inconvenient, but if they run into another person questing the same cave, there is safety in numbers. Their survivability goes up exponentially, and they can complete the work faster. It just makes sense.

I think the cave quest has been optimized out of modern/retail wow. Every quest is easily solo-able, everyone can self-heal, everyone can take on 5+ mobs at a time, everyone can just fly in/fly out. My hope is that they've learned how unfun this, and WoW Forever will retain that old-style fun where players just have to talk to each other.

I think Warhammer Online had the best mix. They just had some balance problems, and of course huge technical issues. There were some great elements to the game though. The automatic pickup raids and scenario system were pretty good ideas.

In FF14, it tells you if it’s someone’s first time, so for big setpieces, there’s a culture of “let the newbie take the lead and do all the cool stuff.” I’ve seen everyone like stand beside the interactables and pose, too, so they know where they have to go. I absolutely don’t mind waiting for a newbie and letting them get the full experience.

But then, they’ve also gotten better about not making it, like, 20-minute unskippable cutscenes, and weaving it better into the gameplay so the people coming back have less waiting around to do.

I don't like it. I play odd hours or very sporadically, sometimes with large gaps, due to life/work. I would prefer the ability to jump in, have fun solo, and bounce.

Hated it for anything related to story completion. For all cases where it was optional in the scope of the story, no problem.

I think it is the only way to do it.

Most MMOs don't go far enough with "forced" group stuff.

I played wow again not long ago after years and you where forced to do group dungeons but talking to each other was never encouraged. Quite the opposite.

Idk man I play gw2 now which it’s fine.

If you have a group of friends it’s good fun, and really cool. You can also get in Groups fine for easy enough content and it’s there if you want more but also in gw2 nothing is really forced there’s a ton of open world content and story and etc you can do even for endgame that don’t require you to form a party. But also that games built to make seeing other humans a good experience instead of bad, and map meta events bringing everyone together but not needing to coordinate or anything save for specific maps make it fine for those who don’t want to talk to others (or are trash at the game) but still want big cool fights and such.

There is story in the 5 man dungeons but the literal story paths for those are soloable, and the 5 man ones do I guess have story but it’s mostly irrelevant (plus it’s not very hard content)

If there's a good in-game group finder, where you can specify like "first time doing it" or "chill group" vs "speed runner" then it's probably fine. If you can find players, that is.

I played a lot of guild wars 2. I'd start groups on the lfg with a message like "chill [content] run - I don't care about your build" and people would join, and we'd have a fine time.

Some other MMO, I forget which, I'd end up sitting at the lfg for a long time and never got a full group

I feel like forcing the multiplayer, and especially communication enforces the "multiplayer" part of MMOs, and it's great. I'd often just play alone till I get bored if it wasn't for these "forced" interactions with random people.

We got couple new guildies while leveling in classic TBC earlier this year, and some of them still play with us which is nice

In a single sentiment? Fuck em.

If you didn’t want me to sit there watching the content cutscene, reading intro text and participating in your game, don’t put cutscenes and text in. Somebody worked on it and put in the effort, least I can do is try and enjoy it without peer pressure to get me to skip any optional bits.

Ultimately a good mmo should be playable and fun solo without the need to involve other people, but adds interesting twists, complexities and mechanics when there’s multiple people attempting the same content as a group.

The game design should serve the people playing it, not people serving the design of the game in order to make it playable.

I play mmos and expect to be social, otherwise it’s just an RPG.

A lot of people have this problem and the answer is always the same: find like-minded people.

I used to play pretty hardcore, these days I'm just like you. But I always would ran into a guild or two that was doing things fairly oddly, slowly, to their own drum.

Either create a guild, if you've got that kind of ability, or, take some time to ask around and look for one and start on their server.

There is always a need for this kind of thing, you just have to find it.

I hate it, but understand why they put it in multiplayer games.

Playing with other people is such a hassle. You mentioned SWTOR, so let's use that as an example. The "Operations" have some fun story content, don't they? Suppose I want to play one of those.

If you get a bunch of randoms, you'll get a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, or could try doing their own thing. Many of the Operations bosses have mechanics that require coordination, so your party of randoms is going to get wiped.

Clearly, you need to get a team together to do it. But Operations want 8 players (including you), who all have their schedules free to do the operation with you. And you have to hope that people don't get other plans or drop out midway through. And you have to be in a position where you can arrange such a group in the first place.

I'm fine with forced group content if it's easy for randoms to clear, and if no one gives a shit to queue for it anymore, that it can be done solo. Coordinating big groups isn't feasible these days.

I hate being hand-cuffed to other people. I just want a cool world to explore and experience, temporarily group up when i want to. I'm the opposite of most people, i like leveling and growing my character and despise end game gear grind shit. I don't understand how people can stand grinding the same dungeons over and over again for hours on end for a tiny chance to get a new gear piece. When it comes to hitting max level, that's when i start a new character and class.

I played SWTOR during the early early days and yeah. Hated being forced into group stuff. However, being early days, most people didn't mind waiting for people to see the cutscenes. These days I think they'd be...very impatient. I really wish there was options to go "Hi I'm here for the story please let me cut through this easily and see the story”

Sort of like that one lady who suggested that since you can skip story you should also skip play and I agree with her. Didn't work out well for her though.

Honestly it depends, if different roles are needed and have to be performed to get through the dungeon then I think it is kind of cool and a fun experience, coordinating and doing your roll and stuff like that. But if it is just a slaugtherfest to be run through then fuck it.

A lot of it hinges on the playerbase and modes of communication though, if you can't communicate and find each other properly then it is kind of meh tbh, even worse if there are no players or generally just shitty attitudes to newer/unexperienced players.

Forced group content is why I don't play most of these games. I'm not playing at a specific time to do a specific thing. I'm going to play when I want.

I hate it. I'm literally waiting for Warframe's new "forced six-player mode" to allow undermanned teams (future update), so I can try to solo it. Unless I can carry the team myself, I feel like I'm not contributing and therefore never want to play with others.

As a former MMO player, I absolutely hated anything that required playing with a group. I mostly played solo (although back in my LotRO days I had an awesome guild to occasionally play with). I remember this being one of the reasons I liked ESO (I haven't played an MMO in ages so I don't know if anything changed or my memory of that is bad).

If something required a lot of group play, I was likely to stop playing it and find something else. It really depended on how easily I could ignore the group content.

If you want a single player MMO, check out Erenshore. It's still in early access so maybe just wishlist it for now, but all the other "players" are scripted. There's even trade apparently.

Forced to group reminds me of college and forced group projects. Hard pass as you know someone is not going to do their job...

In swtor it's recommended to try story mode first, to experience the story on your own at a reduced difficulty, where possible.
And then subsequent runs can be Skippy, for the grind.

For myself, I enjoy being carried by whales who don't bitch about carrying or are actually enjoying it, in which case I have no issue lathering them with praise.

The only reason I dread forced grouping is meeting all-around unpleasant fellows who just drain all the fun out of playing because it makes me wanna annoy them back if only to be petty.

Deadmines in WoW

Idk when you played but my buddy and I pretty much duo'd the dungeon starting both at level 11. Took down all the bosses except the VC because of the minion respawn mechanic. Had a lot of fun, level 17 by the time we got wiped.

Last time I played, the requirement was level 17 to enter the dungeon. I just laughed. Same with elite areas that got nerfed that I would solo became regular. The amount of runs I did solo to get the barmans shanker lol, that was like the rogues right of passage.

It wasn't fun to see that raids could be 5 manned.

Originally it was like, you need the best fire resist gear so we can clear this raid--forget about all the cool gear you got, that's why I always called dibs on trinkets--proc'ing multiple strikes was fun, I think I did 8-9 once (in other words instead of 1 hit per, lets say second, it was 9). I played a rogue that was a engineer/enchanter (usually engineering goes with mining, but I did it the hard way, buy and sell stuff and farm enchanting mats and sell enchants.

So I would often times rez a priest after a raid wipe with a trinket saving everyone time to run back. It's 40 people, and everyone has only so much time. We all chatted on teamspeak, it was fun to establish a order of communication.

I would say I had a lot of fun playing it when I did; I don't think the modern generation will be able to enjoy something like that.

So hopefully that gets you a better idea of what I think MMOs. Don't get me going on Lineage 2.

Edit: Oh yeah I was tester, so I also got to enjoy the unreported glitches.

Most of my experience with MMOs nowadays is just a fan server to an old kids MMO ( Toontown ), so my opinion isn't as strong, but I still don't like being forced into working with others unless I choose to.

In the beginning of me playing I nearly got softlocked because I didn't wanna do a forced quest to friend another player ( and I'm pretty sure they have to friend back ). Couldn't really progress without completing it, IIRC. Similar thing applied to a quest where I had to do a quest that required me to play a certain minigame that requires multiple players. Despite that only being an anniversary festival quest for a cosmetic item, I was still a little annoyed.

Though, to get into a more serious MMO experience, back when I played Dofus and Wakfu, despite not getting far on either, I was also a solo player. More of a fan of going into dungeons and quests and battles alone. Just made things easier when I didn't have to coordinate attacks with another player who might push/pull the enemy I was gonna attack away or kill them and ruin my turn, whether accidental or on purpose.

Your play style sounds exactly like mine!

I avoid it completely.

Although I have had some great experiences with groups of randos, I like to play at my own pace. I like to explore and play the market house, and when I'm in a group, I feel like I have to keep with the pace. I always just skipped the instances in WoW, because I couldn't find a group and when I joined one, I didn't know what I was doing because I'd never seen it before.

So im just playing the cryptica mmos and people joke they are one player games. Rewards are gated around events mostly but you can make a powerful endgame build with year around grind items. All of its grind is easy dailies but you get more repeating with alts on some. My main issue is I rarely have all that much time or im playing here and there and going away from the games so I can't really chat all that much. I would like to hang and light rp. mostly joking around with my rp. my time limits and the way the grind takes up time make it kinda hard. Its actually to bad because champions was kinda in a maintenance mode where you could quickly gear up endgame and most rewards were cosmetic but even better you could save event currency so if you did not have time one year but you did it a lot previously you could get what you want. They kinda got it going again and it has more of the grind of the others now though. They are easy games which I like. I often like to say its like playing with dollies. Its tab targeting and you can do some scripting to bind things to hotkeys and such. I have mentioned to places in the past they are nice games if someone had a handicap as you can make builds that just require a few things and following along to contribute. Even now the holloween event you can do the tfo daily which is a team but they have now split the components of the tfo into patrols which are single player.

That's the type of content I enjoy the most. Lately MMOs have been drowning in solo content and while it doesn't "hurt" me in any way, it also does not interest me in the slightest, so I end up losing interest.

The few MMOs I played have normal/easy/exploration versions of group content instances, where it's generally expected to be slower and at the very least do the quest and watch cutscenes. I do those up until I'm comfortable with the layout and mechanics and move on. When I encounter people doing the quests in harder instances I do get mildly annoyed, but depending on what exactly is it I can slow down to give them time to click through the dialogue options. If they state beforehand that they are doing something extra or they want to go for a secret/achievement that's usually out of the way, I'm almost always down.

Just set your expectations right before dipping into any group content. If the instance is expected to be easy and is even designed specifically for low power players then it's entirely your prerogative to take it as slow as you want, do the quests, watch the cutscenes, and anyone who is rushing it is the one ruining the experience. If the instance is clearly going to be difficult then don't pug it, find your own group that wants to learn it or look up the mechs beforehand if you don't mind that (I know I hate looking up tutorials myself).

Nowadays there are also so many casual chill guilds in MMOs that specifically gather players who play 2h a week, go very slow, help out with all sorts of content and such, try to look for and join one.

The only aspect of group content I dislike is the potential of future lockout due to extremely low engagement. In those cases games must keep some incentives for all sorts of players to continue replaying old content regardless of whether or not they need anything from that specific instance.

I really only have the WoW experience (I went back to classic two years ago), but that seems fine to me. I've leveled characters to 60 just fine without stepping into a dungeon, but I've also carried a lot of guildies through all the low- to mid-level dungeons. I look at them as alternate paths.

I do hate it that some class quests require dungeons though - that's more on keeping with "forced grouping" to me.