Leoking
Kaiser
There are games I've played where the content is spread so thin and usually lacks any quality design in them that it's easy to identify them as content similar to that of an MMO, generally, these are the things that give me that "I'm playing a singleplayer MMO" feeling a lot of the times:
Homogeneous Quest Design
Quest design in MMOs share a similar structure, they'll follow a formula that's designed to keep you as engaged as possible while also taking you more out in the world and potentially discover more content and potentially inflate their sales as the more you stay engaged in the game, the more you stay in the subscription service and the more money these people get. - And while I understand that goal to some degree in an MMO as maintaining the servers is a cost that needs to be rectified somehow otherwise there won't be any game for players to enjoy (Although that game could contain custom servers but I digress), This gets tricky in singleplayer games where the idea of adding filler content to inflate playtime is less understandable because the player isn't paying monthly to launch and have fun with your game, therefore, no such reconciliation is necessary, and the overall experience should be tightly designed to contain as much possible fun content ever yet isn't as these games can be filled with quests that mirror fedex in terms of objectives, "Collect X amount of Y", "Travel to Y and Kill X", "Search for X located in Y" so and so forth.
Another issue is the dynamic systems that games introduce to fill up playtime which is procedurally generated content, the biggest example I can name that features this is Skyrim, branded under the name "Radiant quests" It's a system that dynamically generates quests based on variables like the location (being ones you haven't discovered yet) and a randomly selected objective (such as clearing beasts, forts, etc). The radiant quests were an overall success in that they succeeded in extending playtime. Still, they failed hugely in the 'fun' department as all they did was provide you with meaningless, low-effort content not to mention it's been pointed out that they highlighted a huge hole in the quest design of Bethesda's games, In Interviews, the developers were proud of their system and how excellently it deceived players into thinking they're playing through handcrafted quests as opposed to the radiant ones they were going through when in reality it's viewing it backwards; It's that the regular quests are so bland and formulaic that they appear as radiant quests and not the other way around.
Expansive but Empty Worlds
A lot of the worlds in MMOs are often made with the express purpose of making them as huge as possible so that the content could be spread evenly to provide a healthy dosage of content at regular intervals - This, again is understandable as with the features of things like Factions, zones, player outposts, hubs etc. Players can be expected to reasonably experience a ton of content even in locations that the developers haven't populated with 'things' to do because the social nature of a lot of MMOs will mellow out that issue naturally.
This brings me back to singleplayer games and how those cannot reconcile this issue due to the nature of playing alone, Companions also do not alleviate this issue as they're not players and cannot provide that sense of socialization that players will, and thus, a large world with a noticeable lack of any content in between will become immediately apparent as not only are humans exceptionally good at noticing patterns but the cycle will spring itself at every turn the more the player continues to engage in the content, take dungeons for example, in games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, a large amount of dungeons and quests that take you to those individual dungeons, take up a huge amount of the game and it'll often be the most distinct memory in every player's memory due to how much it eates up your total playtime, and your enjoyment in the process as they include a tedious amount of repetition that'll ruin any novelty or enjoyment they may've featured in the first place.
Itemization
MMOs will often entice the player with a continuous stream of glowing, rare items that provide a feedback loop of " Explore ---> Find Dungeon ---> Go through encounter after encounter through combat ---> Find exciting piece of loot with a bright background and qualities that shine green" which keeps the player going to find more good loot and experience more of the game's content through that cycle, it's one again, understood why MMOs adopt this formula because it's a good way to keep the player engaged and therefore, engaged in the game through the subscription service and both the game developers and the player win.
In singleplayer games, they'll adopt this formula because it keeps the player engaged but often copies the worst aspects of it, usually in MMOs they'll highlight the more important parts of the item's quality with simple descriptions like "20+ Poison Resistance" will give you a good idea of what that item has, even at a pure glance - games like Diablo IV while not strictly singleplayer, still adopts this formula but it often overwhelms the player rather than reward, as 9 times out of 10 it'll contain a laundry list of mechanical adjustments/enhancements that are so long and convoluted that it'll take the player a huge time to figure out what each stat represents and whether it's worth equipping despite its downsides, the latter being understandable, the former being unreasonably tedious.
Mind you, this is excluding games like Looter shooters which focus on this core idea of finding good loot and venturing forth, enhancing your build with items that compliment its overall goal, as they only follow One of these core tenets I'm talking about, and not all of them.
Do any of you have good examples as well where games gave you this overwhelming sense of "I'm playing an MMO that is disguised as a single-player RPG"?
Homogeneous Quest Design
Quest design in MMOs share a similar structure, they'll follow a formula that's designed to keep you as engaged as possible while also taking you more out in the world and potentially discover more content and potentially inflate their sales as the more you stay engaged in the game, the more you stay in the subscription service and the more money these people get. - And while I understand that goal to some degree in an MMO as maintaining the servers is a cost that needs to be rectified somehow otherwise there won't be any game for players to enjoy (Although that game could contain custom servers but I digress), This gets tricky in singleplayer games where the idea of adding filler content to inflate playtime is less understandable because the player isn't paying monthly to launch and have fun with your game, therefore, no such reconciliation is necessary, and the overall experience should be tightly designed to contain as much possible fun content ever yet isn't as these games can be filled with quests that mirror fedex in terms of objectives, "Collect X amount of Y", "Travel to Y and Kill X", "Search for X located in Y" so and so forth.
Another issue is the dynamic systems that games introduce to fill up playtime which is procedurally generated content, the biggest example I can name that features this is Skyrim, branded under the name "Radiant quests" It's a system that dynamically generates quests based on variables like the location (being ones you haven't discovered yet) and a randomly selected objective (such as clearing beasts, forts, etc). The radiant quests were an overall success in that they succeeded in extending playtime. Still, they failed hugely in the 'fun' department as all they did was provide you with meaningless, low-effort content not to mention it's been pointed out that they highlighted a huge hole in the quest design of Bethesda's games, In Interviews, the developers were proud of their system and how excellently it deceived players into thinking they're playing through handcrafted quests as opposed to the radiant ones they were going through when in reality it's viewing it backwards; It's that the regular quests are so bland and formulaic that they appear as radiant quests and not the other way around.
Expansive but Empty Worlds
A lot of the worlds in MMOs are often made with the express purpose of making them as huge as possible so that the content could be spread evenly to provide a healthy dosage of content at regular intervals - This, again is understandable as with the features of things like Factions, zones, player outposts, hubs etc. Players can be expected to reasonably experience a ton of content even in locations that the developers haven't populated with 'things' to do because the social nature of a lot of MMOs will mellow out that issue naturally.
This brings me back to singleplayer games and how those cannot reconcile this issue due to the nature of playing alone, Companions also do not alleviate this issue as they're not players and cannot provide that sense of socialization that players will, and thus, a large world with a noticeable lack of any content in between will become immediately apparent as not only are humans exceptionally good at noticing patterns but the cycle will spring itself at every turn the more the player continues to engage in the content, take dungeons for example, in games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, a large amount of dungeons and quests that take you to those individual dungeons, take up a huge amount of the game and it'll often be the most distinct memory in every player's memory due to how much it eates up your total playtime, and your enjoyment in the process as they include a tedious amount of repetition that'll ruin any novelty or enjoyment they may've featured in the first place.
Itemization
MMOs will often entice the player with a continuous stream of glowing, rare items that provide a feedback loop of " Explore ---> Find Dungeon ---> Go through encounter after encounter through combat ---> Find exciting piece of loot with a bright background and qualities that shine green" which keeps the player going to find more good loot and experience more of the game's content through that cycle, it's one again, understood why MMOs adopt this formula because it's a good way to keep the player engaged and therefore, engaged in the game through the subscription service and both the game developers and the player win.
In singleplayer games, they'll adopt this formula because it keeps the player engaged but often copies the worst aspects of it, usually in MMOs they'll highlight the more important parts of the item's quality with simple descriptions like "20+ Poison Resistance" will give you a good idea of what that item has, even at a pure glance - games like Diablo IV while not strictly singleplayer, still adopts this formula but it often overwhelms the player rather than reward, as 9 times out of 10 it'll contain a laundry list of mechanical adjustments/enhancements that are so long and convoluted that it'll take the player a huge time to figure out what each stat represents and whether it's worth equipping despite its downsides, the latter being understandable, the former being unreasonably tedious.
Mind you, this is excluding games like Looter shooters which focus on this core idea of finding good loot and venturing forth, enhancing your build with items that compliment its overall goal, as they only follow One of these core tenets I'm talking about, and not all of them.
Do any of you have good examples as well where games gave you this overwhelming sense of "I'm playing an MMO that is disguised as a single-player RPG"?
