1P or not 1P
Ha nailed it
Repost of my comment under that Video:
Those are all good reasons for why people might play a game alone. Not, however, why they would specifically play an MMOG. This was only touched upon briefly in this presentation by claiming that to be the loner, you need a group to differentiate yourself from. But that’s a weak argument, really, and nothing was delivered to back this up.
These days, almost everyone plays solo most of the time in modern MMOGs, mainly because, oddly enough, these supposed multiplayer games are designed to be played solo. Almost everyone plays a loner now - there is no group anymore to distinguish the loner from. And as I see it, if everyone plays by themselves in a multiplayer game, they might as well play singleplayer games instead. Yet people still choose to play multiplayer games solo, and developers opt to make multiplayer games and then make them as soloable as possible. That’s the part I don’t get.
As a player, who wants to experience leveling in a group, experience a storyline in a group, gather materials and build things in a group, in todays context, this presentation feels rather odd to me. Sure, this was back in 2011, when things were slightly different. But today, playing an MMOG solo is not the odd thing that needs to be defended anymore. It’s the norm, and the people who actually want to play a multiplayer game with other people are the oddballs. And that seems rather strange to me.
I don’t say MMOGs that can be played solo shouldn’t exist. I don’t need to understand why people like to play the way they do to accept it. However, why can we apparently not have both? Can’t we have a couple of MMOGs again where you actually need to find a group to succeed? Where you need to actually interact with other players and discuss roles and strategy, instead of just pushing a button and then facerolling your cookie-cutter build in a “group” that you never talk to and never will meet again in the game ever? Where you need to argue about who gets the loot, and where you need to fight other groups for access to the dungeon entrance or the world boss? Pretty please?
A lot of people in EVE play in groups. Or what do you think corps and alliances are? A lot of people, however, use the available content to earn ISK solo because it is more efficient, as the very annoying null sec incursions and FOBs show.
People play MMOG on their own (not alone, that’s a wrong description of the situation.) because the MMOG offer the potential of actual interaction between other humans when and if you want it. This is similar to working on your own in big office or at home but you have and use the opportunity sometimes to go out with friends to the movies or a restaurant or on an adventure trip. You do not play alone, you play on your own. And that is absolutely fine.
Putting aside that “success” is relative, for a lot of “successes” in EVE you must be in a group. You cannot hold a sov region on your own. You cannot wage a war against a big, active alliance on your own. On your own you can contribute to the success but you cannot accomplish them on your own.
Funnily enough, this is commonplace in EVE already. PVP fleets where loot funds SRP for free ships regularly has people who rather keep the good stuff for themselves instead of giving it to the FC to help the entire group/fleet. Access to escalations and DED complexes can be camped, you can camp and contest relic and data sites. EVE offers all of this; however, it also offers to play and enjoy and achieve other “successes” on your own. If you do not see it, you should undock more.
Like the OPs video, my comment was not aimed at Eve in particular. Eve is not a modern MMOG. Eve is ancient.
Edit: Also, Eve isn’t really comparable to probably any other game. Eve is something else.
As this is not EVE content, I have moved it to Out of Pod Experience. Also, please include more than just a video link next time. Thank you.
1P it is then
This is talk about gameplay style and is curcial about Eve future and content.
By moving it you have just shown your misunderstanding of essential topics about EVE.
Pitty.
You posted a link to a 51 minute video with 0 context. That is the primary reason it was moved. If you want to do this in the future, add some context or make a discussion occur, please don’t just throw a video down and say it’s EVE related. Thanks.
If you add context words to the first post and ask nicely, ISD Dorrim Barsto
Barster
ISD DB might move it back 
Yes. While I watched this presentation I kept noticing again and again that EVE offers all these things. Even multi-alliance affiliation to some extend.
Does it? (Genuine question.)
Take the first half dozen reasons suggested for playing an MMPORG solo. Then the parallel options proposed for game designers to “combat” those reasons. And then compare those proposals with the reality of EvE’s game design.
Noobs play solo because they don’t know the game’s social conventions. Game designers should use social engineering to get around that. EvE is however designed to be a “sand pit” = no social engineering?
A RL-solution to the existence of solo lurkers in any business environment is to create smaller, busier environments. EvE, being designed around space (in all its concepts) is pre-destined to fail that option?
Sociopaths, who both lack empathy and also later reject it (via a cause-effect relationship with online anonymity), should be rejected by the game. EvE, as a sandpit, is not deigned to reject anyone.
The need to be solo in your RL expression of gameplay (eg limitations of time, noise, not being caught bludging at work) means online interactions can also be limited. In parallel, the minority pyschology in RL (introversion) is actually represented by the larger player base online. EvE does nothing to counteract and/or oppose either of these things. But, the player base surely does, through its insistence on actively talking in RL using Discord, etc?
Finally ('cause I got bored at this point), it is only at #6 that the presenter actually suggested solo play was perhaps broken play. Yet, it was only broken in his definition if you had interaction first, then lost it. And Eve is most legendary (outside of its mythical set piece battles) for its underhandedness and skulduggery based on taking such things away, or collapsing corps, by betrayal. Amongst other anti-social devices.
So, either the social types in EvE are the winners of the game, because they work together despite EvE’s game design, not because of it. Or, perhaps, the solo players are the winners, 'cause they lurk, survive and milk all the approbation of those who say they are doing it wrong?
Corp recruitment tool, recruitment forums, stories and alliances mentioned all over the place in news, forums and so on that give you hints to who to join and what to look out for.
Corps, mining fleets, incursion fleets, PVP roams and fleets, mission running together, defense efforts together in your alliance. Organizing your corp/alliance.
Introversion is a rather big demographic, and as stated above and in the video, solo play has other reasons as well (efficiency, not wanting to deal with other people all the time, not wanting to deal with stupids, etc.) EVE offers activity and participation for introverted and extroverted users. Communications tools are also provided in the form of mail, chat. Comms are not provided any more because the external tools are better.
Those are the risks of social interaction and EVE gives you the choice to take part in those risks or don’t participate (all the time) and instead have fun on your own for the most part.
EVE demands group play to accomplish the really big goals like sov holding, dominating the cluster, dominating markets, mass producing things. You can only win in those big picture things if you are in a group. That’s EVE’s game design on this aspect. And EVE also allows you to win in smaller, more individual settings like camping relic sites and destroying explorers day in, day out in your immediate area. Or infiltrate a corp and flip it dead. That’s another aspect of winning. EVE gives you the option.
Hints? Really? More like choices, with no social engineering to suggest either you must join to succeed, never mind what to join.
Player-based choices. There is no game play - inherent in the design - that appears to make this happen. In fact you have to actively look for interaction in fleets. They usually don’t just exist in proximity.
I know; we were reviewing play by play however.
Exactly.
No, it doesn’t. At least I don’t think it does. It provides tools, and arguably opportunities. But its game play design appears to demand no such thing. It is (part of the) player base that “demands” it.
Such as:
Can’t argue with that.
Hints, choices, that’s semantics. A game telling you to join Corp A or Guild B for arbitrary reasons is the same as watching a video about an awesome fight between Corps D and C and you deciding to join Corp C because how they fought. Furthermore, in EVE you technically do not have to do things. You do not have to join a corp to have fun, you do not have to work together with other people to enjoy yourself.
If you want to lead a big corp on your own if you wish, the gameplay design of EVE allows you to do that. Whether it is efficient or will burn you out or not is irrelevant to the design, because EVE gives you other choices as well for group play.
What do you expect? That the game tells you to rep that guy or that it tells you that you do not have enough DPS or logi and that you should look for more people? That’s not how social interaction and group play in EVE works.
Exactly; choices.
Exactly. We now seem to be in furious agreement.
my 2 cents on this is I play MP games solo because most people are stupid but you may sometimes find a few who aren’t.
Why does most people play MMOs alone? Because of time. Playing with people costs more time than soloing and the reward is dubious at best -actually more often than not, other people are a liability to having fun, instead of contributing to it.
And since time is the single most precious currency of a gamer, MMO players aren’t willing to risk it unless it’s really, really, really worth it. Which MMOs can’t deliver. Thus the solo players rule the genre.
All in all, most people live in a multiplayer reality and yet have a pretty solo experience of it…* 
*PS and I’m not just talking about Mr. Loner. How much time of your life you spend with your family, if you have one? And of that time, how much is spent actually doing things together? And of that time together, how much is spent actually cooperating to do something? And they’re your family. You’d die for them. Just you just have a pretty solo experience… why would games be unlike that, specially when the others there are not your family, but a bunch of potential jerks?
I find there is an obvious misinterpretation here.
Not every MMO is the same. A PvP MMO such as EVE is certainly more inclusive than a PvE MMO. I find it difficult to describe anyone in EVE to be playing alone when even the economy itself is player-driven. Trying there to find a play-style, which doesn’t somehow affect another player’s game, is difficult.
I then choose to play solo, meaning in my own 1-player corporation, simply because my game-play affects too many other players for me to dedicated my game time to a single, individual corporation of players. In other words, I trade, haul and mine so much that I’m too busy to do much else, but I’m very much aware of my influence on the market and it drives my dedication for the game, knowing that I have many players buying from and selling to me. I’m therefore not alone and I don’t see myself as a loner.
Now in a PvE MMO, which I occasionally play, too, do I then certainly seek out friends and I have several there, because it’s necessary to play in groups to gain access to end-game content. Everyone of my friends knows it and it’s what keeps us together.
I then find talks about who is and isn’t a loner often to be exclusive. It’s often done by people who don’t know how to include others and first have to find labels. To me they’re like the kid who one needs to tie a sausage to before even the dog wants to play with it. Nobody is a loner to me.
I disagree, mainly because my experience playing with others is a different one. But that’s fine. People are different after all.
What I would like to know is: Why an MMOG? In your case, do you play them for the games themselves, because you like their freedom or graphics or gameplay, and they just happen to also be MMOGs, or do you deliberately choose to play MMOGs for being multiplayer games?