Why do people play online RPGs in ironman? (Solo self-found)

[rusty_shackleford]

For those not aware, a popular mode in a bunch of online RPGs is ironman aka solo, self-found.

What is your opinion on this?
Do you have any guesses as to why it's popular?
What about similar unique gameplay modes?
What about leagues?
Do you think there's anything here that single player developers could learn since this starts veering into single player territory?

[Trickster]

ppl don't like interact with other ppl. That's it.

[Valter]

Path of Exile is a perfectly fine singleplayer RPG but it's online-only because the antichrist is alive and well

[rusty_shackleford]

Path of Exile is a perfectly fine singleplayer RPG but it's online-only because the antichrist is alive and well

Do you think it would have been less popular if it wasn't online only?

[Valter]

Path of Exile is a perfectly fine singleplayer RPG but it's online-only because the antichrist is alive and well

Do you think it would have been less popular if it wasn't online only?

People love trading and leagues. Trading definitely needs an online community, but leagues don't... not necessarily at least. Though it is probably easier to manage what content and at what timing the playerbase has access to if it's online-only. But to counter this, Last Epoch has an offline mode and it's decently popular, though they don't have a trading economy like Path of Exile does.
So, is the player market popular enough to warrant online-only? I don't know, but on a guess I'd say

[TKVNC]

Because modern games are basically single-player always online live service slop.

The days of MMO(insert genre here) are over.

[sheet]

Regarding action RPGs like Diablo or POE:
Don't want to compete against poopsockers.
Don't want to compete against whales.
Don't want to have to min/max to be "viable".
Don't want my progress lost when the servers go down.
Don't want progress reset every season.

[DemoGraph]

I played WoW only solo, closing my eyes and humming loudly at some quests and players passing by.
Because I like some aspects of it. But not the cancer of everyone being super special snowflake on their magic steampunk unicorn bikes showered with Arthas's scalps. And *******. And dangerhairs.
I never paid for WoW for that matter, because the best things that came out of it are level design, music and comfy shitshroom farming in low level locations and I can get them all on a 20 lvl char that I run twice a year.

[TKVNC]

I played WoW only solo, closing my eyes and humming loudly at some quests and players passing by.
Because I like some aspects of it. But not the cancer of everyone being super special snowflake on their magic steampunk unicorn bikes showered with Arthas's scalps. And *******. And dangerhairs.
I never paid for WoW for that matter, because the best things that came out of it are level design, music and comfy shitshroom farming in low level locations and I can get them all on a 20 lvl char that I run twice a year.

Also the reason why cosmetics are generally cringe.

[rusty_shackleford]

Does WoW have an ironman mode?
I suspect not because so much of it is group-oriented?

[Rienen]

Path of Exile is a perfectly fine singleplayer RPG but it's online-only because the antichrist is alive and well

Do you think it would have been less popular if it wasn't online only?

Regarding PoE and PoE 2, by default I end up playing SSF due to the absolute dog-water "trading" system they have in place.

[methoxetamine]

I'm just going to go ahead and blame zoomers like always

[WaterMage]

To see how far I can go. I never reached epic levels in hardcore DDO. But was fun to try.

[rusty_shackleford]

To see how far I can go. I never reached epic levels in hardcore DDO. But was fun to try.

Sorry, meant solo self-found, not permadeath mode

[Oyster Sauce]

A yearning for the childhood experience of MMOs where it feels like nobody knows what they're doing and nobody is following guides. Playing solo isn't exactly like that - you miss out on the more chaotic Varrock bazaar of yore, for example, but since you can't control other players' behavior it's as close as you can get in this gay earth.
I don't think the goal is to play solo at all. Some games have Group Ironman where like 5 people are allowed to trade and group with each other, which I suspect most Ironman players would do if only they had 4 likeminded and reliable friends.

[J1M]

Trading items between your own characters or with a group of friends feels different than interacting with a global economy.

The former feels like a blush of survival/bartering gameplay, making due with what you have to press forward. The latter feels like a shopping chore.

Similar to feeling accomplished for growing your own food, even though it is faster and cheaper to just buy due to mechanization and economies of scale.

Performing self found in an online game has two benefits: the accomplishment can be shown off to someone who might understand it, and a significant barrier to cheating for those with low impulse control.

[SpellSword]

Do you have any guesses as to why it's popular?

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[rusty_shackleford]

What's the part of the game that people prefer over playing a solo RPG?

I guess there's inherently just a different design philosophy where solo RPGs feel like they're meant to be completed, whereas online RPGs are more about the adventure

[Manny V]

What's the part of the game that people prefer over playing a solo RPG?

I guess there's inherently just a different design philosophy where solo RPGs feel like they're meant to be completed, whereas online RPGs are more about the adventure

sums it up for me with WoW

i just get the itch to make a new character doing different race/class combos, enjoy the journey of levelling, but when i get to like 30+ or so where most of your kit is unlocked and you start focusing more on dungeons and whatnot, i get kinda bored/burnt out or want to try another new character lol

[Kalarion]

J1M and Oyster pretty much nailed it for me. I like playing RPGs for work on gear progression, and I like playing RPGs together with friends. SSF is the most fun way to do it online, it seems like.

I do acknowledge the fun of dumpster-diving to find cool items buried away in the bazaar or sold carelessly to NPC vendors; it was fun to listen to your updates on nice items you'd found when we were playing on Oakwynd for instance. But in general when I fire up EQ or FF XI or what-have-you, what I want is to go risk a dungeon, spawn a tough mob, die a couple times and scream at the monitor, and finally win a dangerous fight to get a cool piece of loot that makes me stronger; and it's a lot more fun with friends. Completing our AF quests with J1M and Val was some of the most fun I've had in years in online gaming, for instance.

[DemoGraph]

What's the part of the game that people prefer over playing a solo RPG?

tl;dr level design and sandboxy crafting

I liked
- The style. There's no other RPG like WoW. Cartoony, but perceptible and cute, but not permacute like anime slop.
- Gathering and crafting. Morrowind had alchemy, Witcher had that potionmaking, but that's it. It was interesting for me to look for herbs and stones - it added some agency besides fedexing and murderhoboing. It's bad that the majority of crafts are useless, but I could overlook it.
It would've been even cooler if the world was interactive, DOTA-style - that is, you go help NPCs clear out the location, they build up some fort, area spawn changes. Maybe you can even place some structure of yours on the map and proceed to organization-level play. Goddamn GTA had this, but for some reason RPGs don't bother with an interactive world.
- The graphics are pretty simple, so locations could be large.
- Areas have good progression. In LA2 you often stumbled upon the point where you can't progress solo and so had to adjust your gaming time to someone else. You also often exhausted quests in a location while not leveling enough to go to the next one, so you had to grind levels for some time (or buy boosts for cash). The areas are also often quite bland - not enough clutter or varied geography, not enough POIs.

Only Empyrion, Valheim and Morrowind did let me scratch the same itch. Each of them is more sandboxy than a classic RPG.

[Norfleet]

Similar to feeling accomplished for growing your own food, even though it is faster and cheaper to just buy due to mechanization and economies of scale.

It isn't. Growing your own food costs nothing, while buying means you have to PAY MONEY. It may be faster, but it sure as hell ain't cheaper, and if you have to pay money just to live, when you have no leverage over those people, you are effectively a slave now. Never buy basic necessities from people you don't have power over.

[J1M]

Similar to feeling accomplished for growing your own food, even though it is faster and cheaper to just buy due to mechanization and economies of scale.

It isn't. Growing your own food costs nothing, while buying means you have to PAY MONEY. It may be faster, but it sure as hell ain't cheaper, and if you have to pay money just to live, when you have no leverage over those people, you are effectively a slave now. Never buy basic necessities from people you don't have power over.

Growing one carrot or potato is vastly more expensive than buying it. There is certainly a point where it will become economical, but you are ignoring all of the costs involved: land, shovel, soil, fertilizer, water, seeds, and potentially garden boxes, gloves, fencing if needed. I'm assuming you are getting a benefit out of spending your time planting, watering, and weeding, but if you were to consider your time as a cost as well it's a very expensive potato you are growing.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What's the part of the game that people prefer over playing a solo RPG?

I guess there's inherently just a different design philosophy where solo RPGs feel like they're meant to be completed, whereas online RPGs are more about the adventure

The artbook fantasy aesthetic. As aforementioned by @DemoGraph, the aesthetic is uncommon in high production value singleplayer Western RPGs. To get that you either have to play MMOs or Asian games.

Immense amount of visual character customization in terms race + armors + mounts, etc.

MMO maps tend to be bigger and more varied than singleplayer game worlds, with many different zones/biomes and enemy faction types. Singleplayer worlds tend to be smaller and more samey.

Optionality of being able to play by yourself or with other people.

The presence of other people makes the world feel more real in ways that few singleplayer games can achieve. There are other adventurers and warriors of your faction out there and they feel more real than any NPC, and the enemy faction feels much more like a real threat lurking out there as represented by enemy players. The enemy faction also feels much more realized as a real country of real people since real players chose to join that faction, whereas in a singleplayer game I will often just not even really consider the enemy factions since they are just whatever scripted fodder.

Playing an MMO or a live service game is a "safe" choice. Once you know you have found a game you like, you can consume content for that game for years on end knowing you at least fundamentally like the game. Whereas with trying out a new short singleplayer game each time, there is some anxiety/resistance because you don't know whether or not you will actually like it. Reviews/word of mouth has failed me many a time, and then there is the sunk cost fallacy where you don't know how many hours you might spend slogging through an unenjoyable experience hoping for it to "get good" before cutting your loses.

[Norfleet]

Growing one carrot or potato is vastly more expensive than buying it. There is certainly a point where it will become economical, but you are ignoring all of the costs involved: land, shovel, soil, fertilizer, water, seeds, and potentially garden boxes, gloves, fencing if needed.

That's because all of the things you're talking about, you should already have. How the hell do you NOT have a shovel? Everyone should have a shovel. Even my kids have shovels. Shovels are just things you should already have. Soil is dirt. You have a shovel. Figure it out. If you're living somewhere, you have land. If you're a homeless person, then just plant them in the middle of nowhere. Seeds? You just take some potato, and when some of them start to get a little sprouty-looking, you bury them instead of throwing them in the trash. Those are the ones that will become new potato. And if anything is showing up to eat your potato, well, it looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!

[Norfleet]

where you don't know how many hours you might spend slogging through an unenjoyable experience hoping for it to "get good" before cutting your loses.

And more importantly, even if it DOES get good, it also quickly gets OVER, and then you've wasted your time on figuring out how to play this only for this skillset to go nowhere.

[swbgtoc]

Self-imposed challenges are fun in all games because they have you explore the limits of the games. You have to prepare fights and use mechanics you never used before because the games are too easy. I'm not going to write an essay on it but it's more fun and when you're done it's more fulfilling.

What's the part of the game that people prefer over playing a solo RPG?

I guess there's inherently just a different design philosophy where solo RPGs feel like they're meant to be completed, whereas online RPGs are more about the adventure

Other people. Even the most complex and well written dialogue tree can't compare to real human interaction.

[J1M]

Growing one carrot or potato is vastly more expensive than buying it. There is certainly a point where it will become economical, but you are ignoring all of the costs involved: land, shovel, soil, fertilizer, water, seeds, and potentially garden boxes, gloves, fencing if needed.

That's because all of the things you're talking about, you should already have. How the hell do you NOT have a shovel? Everyone should have a shovel. Even my kids have shovels. Shovels are just things you should already have. Soil is dirt. You have a shovel. Figure it out. If you're living somewhere, you have land. If you're a homeless person, then just plant them in the middle of nowhere. Seeds? You just take some potato, and when some of them start to get a little sprouty-looking, you bury them instead of throwing them in the trash. Those are the ones that will become new potato. And if anything is showing up to eat your potato, well, it looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!

Sorry, I thought you were a skybox renter. But by your own words here the cost to grow a potato is at least the cost to buy a potato (and therefore not cheaper) since you plan to buy one to plant.

[Acrux]

I believe we've just discovered the perfect closed-loop system, where one potato (old) equals one potato (new).

[Norfleet]

Sorry, I thought you were a skybox renter.

No, I'm a diggy diggy hole man. Sky is bad!

But by your own words here the cost to grow a potato is at least the cost to buy a potato (and therefore not cheaper) since you plan to buy one to plant.

You don't have to BUY potato. After all, you aren't looking for FRESH potato for this purpose. You want expired potato! The very properties that make potato undesirable for consumption are the kinds of potato you want to bury. Just swipe them from the trash!