Simple, to "level" a character, you are required to kill thousands upon thousands of mobs to level. Whether its killing mobs for Missions or simply grinding, you need to kill mobs in the thousands. Its a basic game feature for every MMO that exists.
If every kill took 30 secs to a min to kill solo, or required 2-3 people to kill in less time, game is fail, period.
I would guess 90%+ of all MMO players tend to level characters Solo. Make all same level mobs a "challenge" while leveling, game wont last 2 weeks.
However I think the tough mobs should have a reason for being so.. I can see an Orc Compound of season warriors being a hard fought battle but a simple wolf or a bat?
I saw someone saying that longer monsters just make the quests take longer.
I think one of the main problems with todays MMOs is they arent taking the time to make the quests interesting.
And I am NOT saying that we should be innundated with a million cut-scenes either.
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If I am being told by some random NPC I don't care about to kill 10 wolves rince and repeat it puts one in the "lets get this over with" mentality.
If I actually care then the game itself can be more or less than what I am doing and I will still be happy. But they arent making people care.
Rift had a great system but did you really care about the quests -- and what about the theme -- while yes it is world under seige, did they really ever get you worked up about it?
Everquest 2 actually had it at the beginning but ONLY on the evil side. The oppression was tangible. It was truly a dog eat dog place and the NPCs were more trying to take advantage of you than anything else. It was actually alive. Even the world was harsh with tons of aggro monsters from level 1.
The GOOD side of EQ2 was like a candyland where people were constantly asking you to find their lost cat. Bunch of wimpy whiner types and holier than tho types and people would actually be driven to have a disdain for them. Here the zones were easy with solo pulls and little aggro -- easymode.
The result?
On the good side people KSed crafting nodes from each other and generally acted like spoiled brats.
On the evil side people actually were civil to each other and didnt steal nodes so much etc. It was a "opression is all around we only have each other" environment.
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Of course they lost that with the new starting towns etc. Start in the later towns and it is typical themepark fare where the quests are light and the monsters are easy and you are led from point A to point Z by your nose.
Do you know why its that way in so many games? Because thats what the majority of gamers today WANT. The Dev's are just playing to a changed demographic. I'm not fond of that approach myself, but its todays reality. More and more, I'm starting to believe that we are seeing the beginings of the type of society shown in this movie. ^^
MMO combat will continue to suck until we have the tech and bandwidth to give us Devil May Cry / God of War / Zelda game levels of action-packed combat where the challenge comes from more complex mechanics rather then simply larger health pools.
Games like Tera/GW2/TOR are inching closer and closer, but for the "real" combat you still have to have a heavy reliance on instancing like Rusty Hearts / Vindictus.
I mean.. seriously just think about the mechanics from a "easy" fight in a Zelda game in comparison to any MMO-
Active dodging, blocking, counter-attacks, special weaknesses, exposing those weaknesses, proper timing, proper ability usage...
I somewhat agree with this. Traditional MMO combat in its current form is easy, regardless of how much HP or DMG that mob can do. Although I do vastly enjoy group-oriented encounters and gameplay, even then in nearly every game it comes down to a simple Tank'n'Spank routine that isn't that much more challenging.
I won't say that MMO combat needs to become as twitch-oriented like DMC/GoW/etc, but it does need serious rethinking and new ideas implemented.
Enemy AI also needs to be expanded on, and have more tools at their disposal for fighting against players.
Comments
Simple, to "level" a character, you are required to kill thousands upon thousands of mobs to level. Whether its killing mobs for Missions or simply grinding, you need to kill mobs in the thousands. Its a basic game feature for every MMO that exists.
If every kill took 30 secs to a min to kill solo, or required 2-3 people to kill in less time, game is fail, period.
I would guess 90%+ of all MMO players tend to level characters Solo. Make all same level mobs a "challenge" while leveling, game wont last 2 weeks.
I like both setups personally.
However I think the tough mobs should have a reason for being so.. I can see an Orc Compound of season warriors being a hard fought battle but a simple wolf or a bat?
LOL. Agree.
They claim it to be. But it is more a instanced fest twitch console game in a wannabe MMO package.
I somewhat agree with this. Traditional MMO combat in its current form is easy, regardless of how much HP or DMG that mob can do. Although I do vastly enjoy group-oriented encounters and gameplay, even then in nearly every game it comes down to a simple Tank'n'Spank routine that isn't that much more challenging.
I won't say that MMO combat needs to become as twitch-oriented like DMC/GoW/etc, but it does need serious rethinking and new ideas implemented.
Enemy AI also needs to be expanded on, and have more tools at their disposal for fighting against players.