!!! WARNING - WALL O' TEXT AHEAD !!!
I mean, yes stories can be nice, but I really don't care!
This, right here, is the single most important thing you have said to date. It says everything anyone needs to know about you as a player.
I would not bother getting 2077, because you wont enjoy it. You obviously haven't played any good single player games, and if you have and you don't appreciated them for what they are, then I don't know what to say.
Well, there is one thing I can think of to say...
Well, if you are going to make an RPG, you need players. But why make them play alone? What is the point in an MP game, when you can make an MMO? Think: PlanetSide 2 is only FPS, and even that is an MMO. But in Cyberpunk.... "noooo MMO bad, make SP game".
Ok, basic things that Planetside has and Call of Duty or Battlefield don't:
- Territory control
- Strategy (tactics yes, strategy no - it's a question of scale)
- Scale
- A persistant world
- Static Factions
- Faction Specific Equipment
- Zerging
- Spaiz!!!
- Politics (Yeah, anyone who has ever joined a decent sized outfit and become influencial in any way knows what I am talking about...)
- A lack of destrucatble terrain
Do these things make Planetside 2 far superior? For some people, yes. Others, no. As you can see, there are good things AND bad things. It is all down to what sort of game you want to play. If you want to play a more relaxed, less commited game then Battlefield and CoD are the way forward as you can come and go as you please and you don't really need other players to get by. If you want to play a much more involved game where strategic goals are the name of the game and to get involved you need to interact with other players to actually get anything done, then go for Planetside 2.
But! You could make an MMO without emphasizing levels nor grinding. Is that the same thing as MP? I don't think so. In an MP you don't get an open world where people can go about their own business. An MP game is more like just instances (dungeons) of an MMO.
Who said you can't have an Open World? Why not?
Why end it up there? Why no open world? I mean, yes stories can be nice, but I really don't care! The best stories are such that you are part of creating it.
2077 is already confirmed as an open world game. The best stories are the ones that you have a hand in creating, you are correct. But the very best are ones that you can change.
I'd rather not...
Do I have to?
Really?
...oh well, I wil;l take one for the team...
Yeah there are even higher level bosses and even higher level areas for you to explore. But they all are cold areas in a sense that they are just instances and areas you run through. After that - nothing. You got some achievements and new gear, but then what? You have achievements and new gear, but that is it! Where is your own individual story? There isn't such. You did the same instances, the same dungeons, the same areas, the same raids as everyone else.
Worst.
Sales Pitch.
Ever.
Then compare Wow with Cyberpunk SP. Sure you get stories and "dungeons" in Cyberpunk. But then what? The said stories and "dungeons" are the same for everyone - except that it isn't even an MMO!
(I am interpreting dungeons as area's that contain a high number of well armed enemies that will require a protracted fight, cunning and ingenuity - rather than MMO dungeons that need tanks, DPS, healers and crowd control... zzz.... oh, sorry dozed off there thinking about how different all those MMO dungeons are across all those different gamessszzz...)
Are they the same for everyone? I doubt they would be. The most obvious benefit of a SP Open World game is that you can affect the world, meaning you can approach different obstacles or tasks from different angles. You don't always have to kill a target, you can use less than lethal means. You may even be able to negotiate, or better yet, backstab your employer!
You say that SP games
lose gameplay, I say they
gain far more.
Ok, in Cyberpunk you can switch roles a bit around and do few different dungeons in few different ways, but then what? After you solve the "puzzles" that are the stories, roles, and dungeons, then you have solved the puzzles. Ok, you got some puzzles solved. Hurrah. But there are no other players that affect your individual story.
And how do the other players affect your story in MMO's? Ok some will help you out and some will fuck you over. Yay... Does that affect how the game pans out for you? Can these people change what NPC's are in control of a given location? Can they take control of a nations capital? (RPG's only here, EVE not withstanding - as it is the exception to the rule, and it has more in common with PS2 than WoW.) If you are fed up of someone in an MMO, can you eject them from your world/server? If you don;t want to play with other people, do you have a choice in an MMO?
Eve is a good example where people create their individual stories. If you get negative standing because you pirated someone, then well that is part of the game. If you helped someone, you get a positive standing instead. Corporations, alliances and other groups are formed by the players. Areas get divided by the players. Areas are protected by the players. And so on. That is a living world. A SP game is mostly just a game. SP games can be entertaining and offer a lot of possibilities and such, but you cannot make a SP game an MMO and MMOs have even more potential than SPs, because they can provide stories - and they are also an MMO.
EVE boils down to two things; Farming, (of one kind or another - trade included,) and the control of said Farming. Take Mittens; He is a controller, he schemes, plots and dominates. He is the face of Goonswarm and what do they do?
Generate ISK - Farming
Scam - Farming
Generate Tears - Farming
Generally goof around and fuck with carebears, (and everybody else) - Farming
Wait for the alarm clock to be told to press F1 because Mittens commands it... (I don't think that count's as anything. It sure as hell isn't fun!)
The stories you are refering to in EVE all boil down to fucking someone else over, or not getting fucked over. Sure, I can regail you about the time the 6 man corp I was in faced down a 250 man alliance in a 2 month wardeck and we destroyed over 10 billion isk wort of ships, losing 500 million ourselves, we had a 7:1 kill ratio, (and they were almost all combat vessels in proper PVP fights.) No OGB's. No remote reps. Just good old fashioned plated 'canes, a couple of Megathrons, a tackler or two, co-ordination and team work.
Did we affect the game world? No. We fucked over a bunch of guys that didn't want to PVP, (yeah, it's basically a PVP game, I know,) and we made a few quit.
As you aptly pointed out,
IF people want that kind of gameplay, it's already there; it's called EVE Online.
EVE is a very niche game. The majority of people are unwilling to deal with the level of risk involved.
Also, you do realise that just about every MMO community, (especially EVE,) laughs at the WoW player base, right?
Talking about roles in a SP game is kind of boring, because there is no MMO aspect. You have already eliminated tons of subjects of talk. What is left is what kinds of roles there is going to be and how do you balance the game so that you can play it through with those roles.
I suggest you look at the forum a bit more. There are hundreds of threads that have nothing to do with roles or role balancing.
Roles will, (hopefully,) not be the same as 'classes' in other games. I for one am hoping for a much more open approach.
There is gaming beyond MMO's you know. A lot of people actually
LIKE the stories in games, myself included. Many people don't want to play with other people all the time, (or even at all.) That for me is yet another huge drawback to MMO's, the fact that unless you can hook up with other people, you miss out on huge amounts of gameplay. My problem is that When I played WoW, WAR, LoTRO and Conan I could not get online at the right times to go on raids or even dungeon runs because I had a job. In a single player game, (or multiplayer,) that is not a problem, you can do what you want, when you have the time.
The fact is that 2077 would not work as an MMO. The setting is wrong. It's main appeal IS the story, and MMO stories all end up bland and unrewarding, (or, more commonly, the MMO has a great story behind it - like EVE, LoTRO and WoW - but utterly fails to convey it in a meaningful manner.)
But hey, let's talk about your PS2 character. Why did they sign up to fight? What's their family like? How old are they? What's their favourite colour? What's their hobbies? What is their favourite food?
...oh yeah, they are a clone that knows only combat, death and pain. That's deep man.
Tell you what, same questions but for any of your WoW characters.
Can you answer them? Honestly? ...or did you just go "WTF???"
I can answer all of those, and more, about all of my 2020 characters. You see, MMORPG's put far too much stock in the MMO aspects and not enough into the RP aspects. Hell, even the Roleplay servers are full of min-maxers.
And you still have not justified your ridiculous statement of "Single Player game, because SOLO!!!"
