Why do people want solo play in an MMORPG?

[Quesse]

I am a huge solo-er so I can give you some perspective.

I started FFXI soon after launch and was super-social, super-party, super-LS all the time. I would do storyline/sky/sea quests for 8 hours in a row or party for the same amount of time, had a static, etc. etc. It was a blast. But at the same time it was incredibly draining and did not make the people in my Real Life very happy with me sometimes.

When my son was born I took a permanent break from FFXI. I quit kabisa. It was liberating and the right thing to do for my family. Three years later, after my daughter was born, I felt like getting back into ffxi but not like before. I wanted some constraints.

The constraints were: 1) no xp partying 2) no questing/storyline blah blah until after bedtime 3) solo if possible

I chose Beastmaster and following those rules became a great BST. No I did not have Relic anything or Nyzul stuff but I poured my time into getting any soloable/buyable equipment I could like Tsar's Egg, Stout Wristbands, Lyracists Gonnelle, Spurrer Beret (favorite solo), Volunteer's Nails (2nd favorite), etc.

I list those pieces because getting them all on my own, including some of the prereq's leading up to them, was a real accomplishment. If you've ever (pre abyssea) solo'ed Morielle Mortelle or tried to figure out the spawn time of Merrow No.5 you'll know what I'm talking about. I would occasionally duo or trio with other BSTs.

Eventually I solo'd my WHM (as whm/bst) to 75 which was almost more fun than BST by itself. Then I moved to BLU/BST, etc. I solo'd full merits on my BST, mainly killing hundreds of Doom Warlocks and netting millions of gil selling Blizzaga III on the AH. Such great memories!

With FFXIV I was hoping for a similar experience but it fell hugely flat. Soloing was easy but only because of Guildleve's and company leve's not because of any strategy on my part. Anyone could solo with no effort. I eventually partied a few times just to get those last levels to 50 because you go basically get them in a few hours from a SB party.

However the party grind from instances made me sick. I watched people in my LS do Ifrit, Shiva, Moogle, CC, etc. HUNDREDS of times with crap drops. This did not look like fun to me. And because of the monotony, people were expected to join these grind-parties any time they were online because of the ridiculous amount of time it took to get anything. Out of the prime fights I did Ifrit one time and got 2 doo-dads. I remember being a total instance noob, I thought each totem could be exchanged for one weapon. When someone told me I needed TEN, I was like @#%(*&@#^???? SCREW THAT! Never went back and I was plenty happy.

The few times I did eventually party after hours was for AF and none of the experiences were good. Hours wasted waiting for people and doing 3 or 4 different fights until it was 3-4 hours past my bedtime and I needed to get up for work in 3 hours. I got all my AF but felt like it was not worth it. I turned to crafting. During the last couple months of FFXIV I got all my equipment crafts to 50 except blacksmith which I felt like I should save for 2.0 so I have at least one craft to experience the new system with.

I'm looking forward to way more solo activities, hopeful that some of the instance requirements will be 1-2 players. Most of all I'm looking forward to the auto-party feature so I can do ONE run of Ifrit and quit without feeling bad - or without waiting hours for people to join. I just don't have the time for that anymore, I have a family of SIX to take care of!

[Yrusama]

I think it's a matter of difficulty catching up to the crowd. Sure, for the most part it's easy to catch up to people in XI, but if you want full +1 or +2 sets you need tons of help. Granted that was never supposed to be easy, but the herds have mostly moved on to Voidwatch and Neo-Nyzul and stuff.

[Xeonerable]

Short and sweet...

You like how the game plays, but people can be assholes.

[ZakarnRosewood]

Its not the playing in a party or a group I dont like. Its the mentality of most of the people in a random group and the waiting literally for hours for a party just to progress your character, (these can change if you join a LS/FC and get to know people). Like others have mentioned, Some of us have kids (I have 4), household duties to do, might have interruptions, and these things are "intolerable" in party play so its nice to be able to pop in when you have some downtime, Progress your character a little so you don't lag woefully behind, be able to duck out to deal with certain things, then spend your day off going hardcore with the rest of the LS.

I honestly must apologize that for myself, and those like me, I do want to be able to play solo for SOME things. I want the option to be able to pop on with rested exp, pound out a few levequests, gain a level then log off, knowing that I can just go do it. But I also want group things that we need to do to progress. There needs to be a balance. Video Games made it big because of the people who grew up in the 80's and 90's. 30 years later, many of us still enjoy games but lack the situations that allow us to sit there for hours on end every day.

My biggest beef with party play that i've experienced is for the most part other players would rather berate you then assist you. If you want to make more people desire the party aspect of a game you need to make it more appealing, but that onus is on the individual themselves. For every 10 nice players you run into there's still that one asshat talking shit that turns people off. Unfortunately there is no way to control that effectively, yet....

The tone of the OP says to me that people like me are not welcome. "Just go play offline and leave the MMO to the elite. We need a challenge and want to play with huge groups but only if you know what you are doing. We wont have these things if you insist on whining for the ability to play solo, even to a point. Solo players ruined this genre." This may be over exaggerating the actual OP but the sentiment is one i see expressed a lot when this topic is brought up.

[Starlord]

The tone of the OP says to me that people like me are not welcome. "Just go play offline and leave the MMO to the elite. We need a challenge and want to play with huge groups but only if you know what you are doing. We wont have these things if you insist on whining for the ability to play solo, even to a point. Solo players ruined this genre." This may be over exaggerating the actual OP but the sentiment is one i see expressed a lot when this topic is brought up.

No, I would like to have a balance of group and solo play. ( even I want to solo from time to time). I just don't want the same thing happening, where in 1.0 all I ever did majority of the time was solo ( till Primals and Dungeons came along) but even that doing that 50 times over got really old really fast. The content was hella fun, but repeating the same things throughout the year did get boring. ( and I actually did stop for 2 weeks at 1 point because of the repetitiveness.)

[Kirito]

I think the reasoning is so you can still play the game long after the severs are ended so you can get all the content you might have missed. Another reason might be to play when you do not have access to the internet like on the plane or long rides on the train.

[Orophin]

Big post about soloing

I've been recently considering maybe I should take the same approach as you and maybe try to not get involved with the endgame stuff this time around. I'd probably be far happier just playing with a friend or two whenever they're on and just do things by myself, while grouping up with random people to get the mandatory grouping stuff done.

[Vanguard319]

For myself, it's more about putting my skills to the test. Party play doesn't really allow you to find your limits as a player quite like solo play does.

[ZakarnRosewood]

No, I would like to have a balance of group and solo play. ( even I want to solo from time to time). I just don't want the same thing happening, where in 1.0 all I ever did majority of the time was solo ( till Primals and Dungeons came along) but even that doing that 50 times over got really old really fast. The content was hella fun, but repeating the same things throughout the year did get boring. ( and I actually did stop for 2 weeks at 1 point because of the repetitiveness.)

I really think people should stop referring to 1.0 as a meter stick. It was a flop from the start, SE acknowledged that and even restructured their teams then rebuilt the game. The leveling curve was ridiculous in 1.0, so was some of the lame dialogue, and poor quest objectives. But they still managed to take that broken POS and make it playable by the end. I said it in another post but they did all this while rebuilding, they really could/should have just closed it down to focus on the rebuild instead of wasting resources on a version of the game that will be completely scrapped.

I too want a balance, and i think we will get it. In most RPG's quests, for the most part, guide you though the mechanics of a game as much as they guide you through the story. Take "Ni No Kuni" the quests and such gradually (maybe a little slow) walk you through all the features of playing. I can imagine ARR doing something like this. Taking us solo up to a point, showing us then how to change jobs, how to cross skill, guide us to a dungeon, explain how to gather groups, a quest to show us how FATE works, etc and so on until we are near end game where most quests require a group or at least a light party to complete.

Not all quests have to be solo quests, correct? That one thought right there should ease the worries of many who are opposed to the quests...

[NeoJason]

Spending time finding 8 players with specific jobs and all know what the hell they are doing already for a primal or dungeon runs, is bullshit in my imo. We spend more time preparing for a dam event then actually doing it.

There should be a difficulty setting on the content based on how many players participate in the event, even if it is solo. Badass players who can find 8 specific players so easy should get the bonus of a higher drop rate or even multiple drops of the same thing, instead of wasting weeks or months of time too only see 1 @#$%ing piece of armor drop for 1 person out of 8. SE really needs feedback on this stupid @#$%.