When I play single-player games I often find myself wishing that I could bring my friends along to see. We could go through the treacherous wastelands together, like companions but with slightly less scripted dialogue, at least until someone drops a Monty Python quote and we begin the verbatim recital (sad irony). Maybe it's because of my tendency to play in wastelands. Stalker and Fallout are not kind places and sometimes covering fire is the nicest gift you could ever get (and never do).
Then I get into an MMO and wish all those damn people would go away. I'm trying to get my ten bear asses here! Not bare asses, get your ERP out of here; there are children! And I wish there weren't.
I wonder why this is.
Perhaps it's that in a single-player game, I have all I need. Adding players is a bonus. It's allowing me to create a shared experience, truly shared, in a detailed world. In contrast, MMOs demand other players, and performance from them, so that they are a built-in aspect. An aspect which can very easily and frequently break.
Then I get into an MMO and wish all those damn people would go away. I'm trying to get my ten bear asses here! Not bare asses, get your ERP out of here; there are children! And I wish there weren't.
I wonder why this is.
Perhaps it's that in a single-player game, I have all I need. Adding players is a bonus. It's allowing me to create a shared experience, truly shared, in a detailed world. In contrast, MMOs demand other players, and performance from them, so that they are a built-in aspect. An aspect which can very easily and frequently break.
3 comments:
Well, there's also the fact that in MMOs, other players are competition. You compete with them on the auction house, in the wild for quest drops, in groups for loot drops. TBH, unless they are friends of mine (who I'd hang with outside of the game), most other players are a nuisance.
Its also the nature of MMOs....you are force to, at some point, group with people. Many single player games are more fun with a buddy, but needing to find 4 other people to complete a game (or 9 or 24 others) feels like a chore. By the time you get together, one good lost loot roll to someone who didn't need the item as much as you is enough to make the game suck.
In the AH I find them to be a challenge rather than competition. They can be beaten, rather than being little more than a handicap on the chance of getting loot. Though when grouping was trickier, when it felt like other players had put in some effort to get into the group, I didn't mind quite as much when I lost drops (not that I never got mad about losing...), because it felt more like I'd lost to a person rather than a person-like AI.
In single-player games, you wish your buddies could join you. In MMORPGs, you'd still like that. But you wish the strangers would go away.
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